The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog.

“All politics is loco,” Senator Ed Markey told a gathering of the New England Council on Monday, paraphrasing a favorite saying of House Speaker Tip O’Neill of Cambridge. Just part of the craziness this week is the President’s unilateral decision to activate the California national guard and use active duty Marines to control crowd protests in Los Angeles, a ploy not undertaken without consulting with a state’s governor for the past 60+ years. Shades of 1930’s Germany?

And let’s not forget the insanity of tomorrow’s $45 million Red Square-type military parade in Washington to celebrate Trump’s birthday. The authoritarian theatrics are a woeful distraction from the abomination of the “Big Beautiful Bill Act,” passed by the House of Representatives and now in the Senate.

Markey’s briefing was rich in specifics. This bill will have huge impact on the Commonwealth of Massachusetts but also on the health and well-being of every part of this nation, red and blue. The vibrant dynamics of the state economy are rooted in the intertwined medical and education sectors (“meds and eds”), the first-in-the-nation bio-tech and health sciences sectors along with the higher education institutions and hospitals that train scientists, do research, save lives, and advance the New England economy.

Markey scoped out Massachusetts’ leadership in clean tech, bio tech, life sciences, education, and investing in the technologies of the future. We educate and develop entrepreneurs, drawing smart people from around the world. We connect them with the highest per capita venture capital funding in the United States. (28% of all venture capital – $8 billion – is in this state, second only to California). We support the immigration that brings skills into our communities and schools. We give our industries access to the most skilled workforce in the United States to produce their products.

Our 100 colleges and universities are a case in point. Ten percent of MIT students come from Massachusetts; 35% of its graduates stay here. So, too, with Tufts and other institutions of higher education. We draw them; we keep them. 80% of all the Chinese students who come to MIT stay here. Some 82 thousand international students pay $3.9 billion to colleges and universities here, with a ripple effect throughout the economy. They file patents. They start businesses. A third of all new businesses here are started by immigrants. It’s why Trump’s assaults on our universities and our international students is a direct attack on who we are. In the wake of Trump’s attacks, there are already vigorous international efforts to recruit those students away.

Massachusetts alone faces the loss of $3.5 billion in NIH funding, the second highest per capita in the country.The threat to Harvard University to cut $3 billion in grants along with the nationwide threat of cuts to the National Institutes of Health endanger hopes for cures for Alzheimer’s, diabetes, cancer and other diseases.

Markey is particularly compelling when he uses the example of Alzheimer’s research, a disease that killed his mother. 7 million families in the U.S. are dealing with Alzheimer’s. In 2024, $240 billion was spent through Medicaid and Medicare to care for Alzheimer’s patients. At the rate our population is aging, he said the costs could go to $700 billion. (Here’s a chart showing $637 billion.) The point is that, if you eliminate the $4 billion asked for research this year, you’re just extending the time to find a cure and multiplying the high price of caring for the afflicted, a classic case of being penny wise and pound foolish. Disease does not recognize a partisan divide, and Markey, who with Republican Susan Collins, started an Alzheimer’s Caucus in the Senate, hopes to rally Republicans to fight Trump on this.

The battles are being fought on broader fronts, including cuts of $760 billion from Medicaid healthcare; $250 billion from supplemental food and nutrition; $500 billion in cuts from green energy projects – all in jeopardy in the Big Beautiful Bill Act. Of seven million people in Massachusetts, two million are on Mass Health, our name for Medicaid; half of all children in America are on Medicaid. He said that 70 percent of people in nursing homes are on Medicaid (my research says 62 percent, but the point is the same) and half of those have dementia. These are not just the poor but also from blue collar families. Taking away federal funds from our hospitals undercuts their ability to be platforms for medical research. Take away federal funds from community hospitals and health centers, and they will close. This message didn’t get through in the House, and the outcome in the Senate is still TBD.

Renewable energy is another battlefront. Notably this week Trump had a rally celebrating his overturning California’s electric vehicle mandate, phasing out new gas-powered cars by 2035. Trump is also targeting offshore wind energy generation. Killing subsidies for renewables causes energy costs to rise. According to Markey, 96% of all new installed electrical generation capacity in US in 2024 was from wind, solar and battery. Just six percent was natural gas. Here, too, he hopes to collaborate with Republican colleagues. 85 percent of funding in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) has gone to red districts, creating 400,000 new jobs.

If not, problems will only get worse. The energy demands of Artificial Intelligence over the next ten years could double the amount of electricity they’re requiring. Killing subsidies for wind and solar, battery storage technology, and electric vehicles means killing jobs in those sectors and hiking costs.

Markey promises an historic battle against these “loco” ideas in Washington. The arguments are clear. The young people in our schools are our future. The researchers and entrepreneurs are essential to our health and economic well being. Sadly, Republicans in Congress haven’t demonstrated any spine in fighting for those values so far. We can complain about the wasteful excesses of Saturday’s military parade on Trump’s birthday. But the existential threats to focus on are those in that Big Ugly Bill awaiting action.

From the fight 250 years ago when the British were coming, Massachusetts, said Markey, has known what it means to lead – not just with innovation but with compassion and courage. Let’s hope that the media are purposeful in focusing a disinfectant spotlight on the Big Ugly and that our elected officials somehow demonstrate a measure of sanity and resolve in modifying its most lethal provisions.