Journalists representing The Belmont Voice, Brookline.News, Cambridge Day, Lexington Observer, and The Waltham Times met with U.S. Senator Ed Markey, D-Mass., who is running for re-election in the U.S Senate. The same group also met with Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass.

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In a sit-down interview with local newspapers, Sen. Ed Markey shared personal ties to Cambridge, how his mother and aunts motivated his career in politics and discussed his plans for re-election. Markey, 80, has served as senator for 13 years and before that spent 37 years in the U.S. House of Representatives and three in the Massachusetts House. He said he wants to defend the local innovation economy from the Trump Administration budget cuts, will continue to champion immigrants, wants to see the country establish Medicare for All and promote affordability through programs like free public transit. 

Cambridge’s dominant institutions, Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, have been under siege from the Trump Administration through sharply higher endowment taxes and massive proposed cuts to research budgets at the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, which also threaten the city’s biotech and high-tech industries. Markey said re-investing in these local economic drivers are on his priority list.

Continuing to fund an innovation economy

“We are the innovation economy,” said Markey. “[Kendall Square] didn’t even exist 35 years ago. It all has come from largely the NIH grants that create the basic research, that then spins off to other companies that grow into the big names that are standing above the buildings … That is what I continue to fight to protect.” He pointed to companies like Moderna and Vertex, both founded in Cambridge (Vertex moved to Boston in 2014), as specific examples of industry powerhouses in Kendall Square.

Markey said he has worked across the aisle to help restore funding cuts in several sectors, noting “I fought hard as the lead Democrat on the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee to create exemptions for the small businesses here in Cambridge and other communities,” in particular working with Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa to restore Small Business Innovation Research grants. 

He said after the Trump Administration proposed cutting the National Institutes of Health budget by 40 percent, he and other members of Congress have worked to restore that funding. 

“Massachusetts per capita is number two in the receipt of NIH grants, we’re number two in National Science Foundation grants. That’s the money that then draws the young talent to people from around the country and around the world to come here. I’ve been leading the effort, the restoration and protection of those funds, to make sure that we don’t see a destruction of this engine of scientific and innovation growth, which we’ve been able to create here in Cambridge and other communities.”

Markey said that he believes industry development cannot happen without the help of immigrant communities and that Trump has “declared war” on their ability to come work and attend school in the United States.

Pathway to citizenship

He continues to call for abolishing the U.S. Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), something he first did in 2018). He also wants to establish a proper pathway to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the country.

“I voted against the creation [of ICE]” he said, explaining that he feared that it would plant “seeds of authoritarianism.” He continued, “now that prediction has been borne out by the way in which Donald Trump is using ICE as a means of terrorizing communities across the country.” Markey said he and Rep. Ayanna Pressley have legislation to appeal qualified immunity, which would push back protections that shield federal agents. Additionally, he pushed for the passage of the Securing Help for Immigrants Through Education and Legal Development (SHIELD) Act which created a $100 million grant funding program which is aimed at providing lawyers for individuals facing deportation.

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Free transit improves affordability

On affordability, Markey and Massachusetts Rep. Pressely released the findings of a case study report they conducted in western and central mass that made bus transportation free for riders. 

“What we’re seeing in Pioneer Valley, what was seen in Worcester, and what we’ve seen around the Commonwealth is when fare free transit is put into place, it dramatically increases ridership and It increases economic activity.”  Markey also added that free ridership helps provide lower income families a way to get to work and around the community without having to take a “disproportionate bite” out of their monthly budgets.

As a longtime environmental activist and co-author of the Green New Deal, Markey said that fare free transportation “also reduces greenhouse gases because people get out of their cars. and they start to take public transit. So it fits into a strategy of cleanup communities, but greater accessibility.”

Markey is also a strong proponent of Medicare for All, which would extend the health care coverage system for seniors to all U.S. citizens. In the short term, he said he is working to restore $100 million in cuts to Medicaid funding slated for January, saying “that would devastate Cambridge Health Alliance.” He added, “We know that [health care] costs are too high and access is too difficult for too many…We have to eliminate all middle men and women, all of the additional costs.”

Surveillance a community decision

Markey said the use of surveillance technology such as ShotSpotter, a hot issue in Cambridge, needs to be decided locally. “Each community has a decision to make,” he said.

On the federal level, Markey acknowledged safety concerns about the technology itself, as well as within communities, and “without question, without safeguards, without regulation, there will be a compromise,” said Markey. “Whether we have ShotSpotter, or Flock, there have to be safeguards built in. We have to ultimately understand that vast amounts of information about every single citizen in the community is being gathered simultaneously with the police having access to that information … but it should not be assumed that it’s just automatically safe.”

He said the same need for regulations was true of artificial intelligence. Additionally, last month Markey released his framework for how he plans to approach AI legislation. The framework includes a series of safeguards to protect users, especially children, from engaging with AI and its algorithmic feedback.

At the end of the conversation Markey got candid. He said, “Everything I do is just motivated by the reality that I’m not as smart as my mother or my Aunt Mary … I just got opportunities” they did not. Both his mother in Malden and his aunt, who lived on Langdon Court, had to help raise their siblings after their mother passed.

“Let’s not pretend that they didn’t have dreams, too. They just never got to realize it,” Markey said. “What Trump is doing is attacking all of these kids on every porch all across our country, because they’re Black, they’re brown, and they’re immigrants. It just brings out the Malden and Cambridge in me … it absolutely ticks me off.”

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The Massachusetts primary election will take place on Sept. 1.