Trump Must Be Beacon Hill’s Wake-up Call

If Massachusetts is going to survive the Trump era, we need to start fixing our problems at home.

Just two weeks into office, President Donald Trump has already issued executive orders that target immigrants, LGBTQ+ citizens, equitable employment practices, and more.

In an interview last Thursday, state representative Marjorie C. Decker indicated that the Massachusetts state legislature is preparing to defend residents against deleterious executive actions. We should commend Decker and her fellow legislators who are promising to take a stand. We need their leadership now more than ever.

But good intentions aren’t enough. If we are going to successfully resist the president’s agenda, we need a state government actually capable of taking decisive action.

As things stand, Beacon Hill is hardly up to this task. In 2021, only 0.41 percent of bills introduced in the State House passed, earning it the unfortunate superlative of least effective legislature in the nation, according to one study.

When it comes to D.C. politics, it can seem like gridlock and government are synonymous. We should expect better from our leaders closer to home.

State Attorney General Andrea Campbell’s concrete action to block executive orders provides one avenue of recourse — but our legislature should also be working to protect the residents of the Commonwealth. If state legislators like Decker want to fulfill their promise to protect Massachusetts residents, the first thing that they need to do is enact serious reform on Beacon Hill.

Massachusetts is often seen as the paradigm of a progressive state. On paper, this is a near-truism: Its odd habit of electing Republican governors aside, both of its legislative chambers hold a Democratic supermajority, and it has voted Democratic in all but four presidential elections since 1928.

Even its Republican governors are far from staunch conservatives when it comes to policy; after the overturning of Roe v. Wade, then-Governor Charlie D. Baker ’79 signed an abortion sanctuary bill into law to protect the reproductive freedoms of those from states with restrictive measures.

Democrats finally gained back the governor’s office in 2023, but even this victory has not produced notable results. That year, only 0.2 percent of bills passed successfully. The Democratic Party’s grip on power in recent years makes their ineffectual record all the more damning.

The root of the problem? Despite legislators’ left-wing views relative to the rest of the country, the state’s institutions and norms are deeply conservative.

Consider how the incentives are structured for state legislator salaries: Their base pay is approximately $82,000 per year. In practice, however, many earn more. “Leadership pay” supplements, given for additional committee assignments, range from $7,776 to $119,632, potentially doubling members’ pay.

Because these leadership assignments are largely controlled by party brass, this precedent gives massive sway to a tiny number of individuals. Research from The Boston Globe found that in 2023, 149 out of 200 legislators received this “leadership pay” which made up, on average, 20 percent of legislators’ salaries.

Combined with the fact that votes to advance bills in House committees are not required to be public, we are left with a legislature that is neither truly democratic nor accountable to the public. Instead, bills are far too often “sent to study” and never heard of again.

These perverse incentives promote perverse outcomes. On average, Democratic legislators vote the same way as the speaker of the house 90 to 100 percent of the time, according to the advocacy group Act on Mass. This figure should hardly shock us as long as a powerful few can shape legislators’ career prospects, salaries, and powers.

This top-down control makes the legislature’s lack of productivity head-scratching. If anything, it should ensure a completely effective (while undemocratic) system of governance. Its record of inefficiency, therefore, looks like a choice made at the top. The only way out is to overhaul the system.

The next four years will be difficult across the country, but if we can have true leadership here at home, we can avoid the worst of it. It is time to demand that this legislature fix the mechanisms that have rendered it ineffective.

Allison P. Farrell ’26, a Crimson Editorial editor, is a Philosophy concentrator in Leverett House.