Incorruptible Mass

Our goal is to help people transform state politics. We investigate why it’s so broken, imagine what we could have here in Massachusetts if we fixed it, and report on how you can get involved. If you believe in fighting for social justice, in reducing inequality, in health care for all, in affordable housing, in reforming our criminal justice system, and if you want to be part of getting these policies – and more – passed, then this is the podcast for you.

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Incorruptible Mass

Year-End Predictions

January 15, 2026 • Anna Callahan • Season 6 • Episode 23

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This week, the Incorruptibles gaze into their crystal balls to predict the year ahead. We discuss what's already happened in a turbulent 2025, what might be coming in a pivotal 2026, and what we can do to make our future brighter.

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ANNA

Hello and welcome to Incorruptible Mass. Our mission here is to help us all transform state politics because we know that we could have a state legislature that truly represents the needs of the 7 million fantastic people who live here with us in this beautiful state. And today we are going to close out the year 2025. We are going to talk a little bit about what happened this year. We're going to then move into talking about 2026. We'll cover the ballot measures that are going to be on the ballot or that we think are likely to be on the ballot. And then we will maybe do some predictions. Pardon me for saying, but I think we have some pretty lame predictions for 2020 predictions.

JORDAN

No, they're the best predictions and you should stick around to hear them all.

ANNA

You should definitely stick around to hear all of our predictions.

JONATHAN

The hottest of hot takes.

ANNA

Fabulous. And before we do any of that, I will have my super amazing co-hosts introduce themselves. Oh, should we just introduce each other? That'd be hilarious.

JORDAN

I feel like we should do some prep before we do that. Maybe that's a—

ANNA

Next time. Next time. Okay, I'm going to call on you.

JONATHAN

Jordan.

JORDAN

And I have many years experience in politics and, and policy and. Yeah, and I live in Worcester.

ANNA

Amazing. Jonathan.

JONATHAN

Jonathan, he/him/his, I live in the South End in Boston. I've been active on progressive issue and electoral campaigns for a little over a decade.

ANNA

And I'm Anna Callahan, she/her, coming at you from Medford where I am a city councilor and I before being city councilor did a lot of work traveling around the country training people in local electoral politics. So today we're talking about 2025. Let's start in on what happened this year and I will give the super hot take that will be a total surprise to everyone who has ever listened to this podcast. Did pretty much nothing important. On to you Jonathan.

JONATHAN

After I actually will do a rundown of that. I was thinking before when you were talking, when we were talking about hot takes that it's like baby, it's cold outside. So join us for the hot takes. Although it's actually the day that we're recording is actually kind of warm outside unseasonally so. Yeah.

ANNA

Do you remember the year that I sang on camera? Do you remember that one in the.

JORDAN

Yes. Yeah, of course.

ANNA

Could happen again.

JORDAN

That would be fantastic.

JONATHAN

Say things like baby, it's daytime to find out. Okay. So as there's notice this is maybe a few things happen and I'll update us mid episode when I look to see if anything has happened since this weekend when I last updated these numbers. But in terms of like in these 12 years of 2025, when the Massachusetts legislature for the Massachusetts legislature, when we saw so many things in D.C. fall apart with Trump administration, Elon Musk, Stephen Miller, J.D. Vance, congressional Republicans taking acts to so many things that we care about and destroy. Like any real progress made under the Biden administration and then like like 50 years of civil rights progress, 100 years of like the ax to everything. Our legislature was largely hard at work doing little in this.

ANNA

Hard at work, Jonathan.

JONATHAN

Hard at work doing little. Have you ever tried doing nothing? It's. It's so time consuming. The. That there are 79 bills signed into law. Again, this is as of this past weekend. A majority of them were home rule petitions and they're not even the like interesting, exciting home rule petitions like rent control or ranked choice voting or a transfer fee. But largely like changing a board of select men to a select board type of thing. Like why are you voting? Like why does this need to be something the legislature cares about?

JORDAN

Yeah.

JONATHAN

So majority of them, 42 out of 79, 17 of them were personnel matters about one person or other. So like a sick leave bank, that kind of administrative thing for our state employees. Predominantly. Eight of them were budgets or supplemental budgets that legally needed to pass. They often had good things shout out to the fair share amendment that is helping the Massachusetts budget stay afloat. But there are things that need to pass. Three awareness days, I believe two for diseases, maybe all three for diseases. No shade on the diseases, but shade.

ANNA

On awareness days as legislature.

JONATHAN

Like come on like it. I'm just fascinated by the process behind them. Yeah. Like that that's somebody's caught like main cause having a holiday that no one will know happens.

ANNA

Two bond officers or the 200 legislators. That is what they are doing with their time.

JONATHAN

Exactly. And then six other standalone bills. So one of them was extending hybrid meeting access for local. For local bodies like where city councils, town meeting, et cetera. With the problem being they won't make it permanent. The legislature. It was a great. It was one of the good things that came out of like reforms from COVID of recognizing that hybrid meeting access helps improve participation and they refuse to just make it a permanent change and keep doing temporary patches. They set the primary date for next year, September 1, which is an attack on. An attack on cities or renters in general given how often September 1st is move in day. And I for one am not looking forward to like knocking on a door where I see a moving van outside. I'm like on every one who ran.

ANNA

In a race where September 1st was the primary. It sucks.

JONATHAN

Yes, it's. It is the worst. One good thing about strengthening our state shield law for reproductive and gender affirming care with a bill basically improving a bill that like tightening up a bill that they passed last session, expanding protections against assault and battery of transit workers. I can't speak to what the existing law what is because it's illegal to attack people. And I'm not sure if there was like a specific animating incident on that front. They lowered the cost of rental cars.

JORDAN

Critical stuff.

ANNA

Our national 200 people probably use rental cars.

JONATHAN

Yeah, right. Probably true.

JORDAN

Yeah.

JONATHAN

And it was like something. The one thing I believe when I looked this up, it was something that like Massachusetts was an outlier and not having done already.

ANNA

Of course even the little things they do are behind the.

JONATHAN

And then one bill around like improving data collection around like vital statistics. So like birth info, death info, etc. But for really for the 12, for like all 12 months or 11 and a half months if you will, those are the only things that have been sent a lot. There are some decent things in the budget like shout out to the banning of brokers fees or the money that they dedicated to kind of legal aid for immigrants facing deportation, which were real wins but they were through the budget that needs to pass rather than standalone legislation. And I think the fact that so little standalone legislation passed speaks to the fact that the legislature is increasingly unable to pass standalone. Like the chambers are not able together they each pass some other bills that some of them good, some of them I've already forgotten about on their own. Like I'll shout out to the Senate doing a data privacy bill as well as passing a book to reign in politically motivated book bands. But they, they should be law, right?

ANNA

They're not law because they're not exactly.

JONATHAN

They're not law yet. So I can't like. So I as brand as Brandy run saying almost doesn't count.

ANNA

I was just going to turn it over to Jordan and asked you Jordan, like please let us know what are the things that they should have been passing but didn't pass.

JORDAN

I mean I, I mean I just, I want to start with just a reminder that they could pass something today. There was actually no requirement that they waited till July of an even numbered year to pass things. Most legislature see a problem and then pass it.

ANNA

That's the solution.

JORDAN

Right? Like it's like I just want to just say like there's nothing about this that makes.

ANNA

And let's can we remind because people who didn't listen to the episode that we talked in depth about this like 18 episodes ago or whatever it was.

JORDAN

Right.

ANNA

That our state legislature has a strict schedule. So they have a two week schedule where they first introduce bills and if you don't introduce your bill during that period of time, the first couple of months, you're screwed. Your bill is not getting covered in two.

JONATHAN

Yeah.

ANNA

And then they have hearings and things and that is a process. And so this when Jordan says there's no reason why it has to be in July of even numbered years is because like that is the only time of year that these bills have made it to the point where they could potentially be passed. Which is dumb because like if something comes up at a different time, why can't it be considered and then, and then passed?

JORDAN

Yeah. And they could just do what they do when they, when they want to. If there is some, there are some rules about why they have to like it has to be something that gets proposed but they end around that rule all the time by just gutting a bill that got, that's, that that's not going to go anywhere and adding language that they want to pass it. So it's not like they couldn't end around some of these rules to, to do things that matter to people but they just, they just won't. And you know, I'm reminded of like, so I just, I always like we're in a time of Trump and people are literally being snatched from our streets. Like, like, like one of the most famous cases of a human being being snatched off the street by unarmed people. And our legislature has done nothing to push back on that. There is a concentration camp in our state. A real concentration camp.

JONATHAN

Conferences.

ANNA

Sternly Word of love A real.

JORDAN

Concentration camp in our state. That is, that is, that was illegally put to turned into a place of holding people that is not meant to hold people. That when legislators have gone inside have said it is the, it is inhumane. People don't have places to go to the bathroom, they don't have places to sleep, they're not getting fed. That is the definition of a concentration camp. Right. In Massachusetts the legislature could act to say this is illegal. You cannot do this here. We have regulations for when you hold people. We have, you know, rules.

JONATHAN

Yeah. And human rights own world sized attention.

JORDAN

Exactly. The legislature has done nothing that it has the power to do to oversight the. A real concentration camp in our states. It has done nothing to say that we should. You know, there's a really. There's a good bill about trying to make it harder for ICE to work in Massachusetts. It has not done anything on that. You know, we have seen children literally stolen from our streets and taken to God knows where only to be some, only to a few being returned, but most of them not. And the legislature, again, has not done anything to act. I'm reminded of the simplest thing. Just like this is my favorite example. California. When there was talk of Trump taking away people's 501c3 status, their nonprofit status through the IRS, if he didn't politically agree with them, California immediately passed a law that said that you don't need an IRS number. You can get designated a 501C3 through the state. And they worked it out so that it would be legal. It took them no time to do that. Nobody I'm aware of has actually had their C3 status taken away. So it's not even something that happened. And they're reacting to it. They are preemptively reacting to Trump making threats by fixing the problem. And we can't even react to things that have already happened in the first Trump administration. What alone happening now? They've got nothing to take on Trump. It's embarrassing.

ANNA

It's embarrassing.

JONATHAN

The.

ANNA

It is.

JONATHAN

I feel like that's such a good point of one of the need to be proactive on things rather than wait and to be like, until something gets bad enough. But then also at the same time, not acknowledging when things are really bad and you should be acting. The combination of those, I always find jarring.

ANNA

Yeah.

JONATHAN

It's like when it comes to, let's say, the. Back when we had the. During the shutdown, when the Trump administration illegally decided not to use SNAP funds to, like, disperse SNAP funds. And there were. The legislature and the governor were like, oh, no, we don't want to use the rainy day fund. And he and Governor Healey's take was, let me just ask some, like, rich people to donate a little bit more money. I'm like, we have. We have a flush rainy day fund. That's kind of the definition of that. It's not going to tax the rainy day fund that much. And there's just, like, an unwillingness.

ANNA

And I, I want to comment that, like, you know, we live in a state that is basically incapable, the state legislature is incapable of passing the things that we want, the things that are in the Democratic Party platform America for all, you know, like, same day registration, like, you know, support educational support for LGBTQ Youth, like, all these things that. And we could go on and on and on. And we have in other episodes, like, these are all the things that they can't pass. And I feel like voters and our populace generally, that's like the frog in hot water. In water. Right. The frog in the water that gets slowly, slowly warmer and warmer. Like, we're just, we're just so used to it that we don't think. But the reason Jordan is talking about is so stark, is because these are new emergencies. Like, there are new things happening. This is like somebody is pouring boiling water on us right now. And it's new. And they are doing nothing. They're doing nothing at all. So I can't say we're surprised, but, you know, it. It just is. It should be shocking. I love what Bernie Sanders says when he says, you should never lose your sense of outrage. Like, we should be outraged. Like, we should be outraged at the fact that for, you know, decades and decades, they have crushed, you know, the efforts to get Medicare for all. They crushed the efforts to get public finance re elections. They have over and over, like, crushed all of these movements. But we should newly be outraged when the Trump administration is doing these horrible outrages. And our state raps in a progressive, supposedly progressive state are completely incapable of doing anything to protect us.

JORDAN

I, I just want to say it's not. Oh, I'll just say really quickly. It's also like, it's not even that progressive. Like Democrats across the Democratic. Liberal Democrats want people to take on Trump. There's. We're in a super blue state that doesn't like Trump. It would be to your benefit if you just care about reelecting Democrats. Yeah, these are easy wins. It's easy wins. Easy things to do. Just would not take. You could pass them in an afternoon and people would be happy and you would. It would cause you no harm to do these easy things. But they're so. They wrap so tight in authoritarianism that like all authoritarians, it doesn't matter that they hurt themselves.

ANNA

Yeah. All right, I'm gonna, I'm gonna move us. Unless. Jonathan, you have one last comment.

JONATHAN

Oh, I can just go one. I can just do a quick update. If you know that they're now actually at 87 bills, shout out to them. It is still three awareness days. It is still two bond authorizations. It is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. 9. Budgets and supplemental budgets. It is. How many home rule petitions do we have now? The magic number is 49. Homeworld petitions shout out to the latest one of an act authorizing the town of Somerset to grant an additional license for the sale of wine and malt beverages not to be drunk on the premises.

ANNA

Oh, my God. So by the way, I will say, because I have been keeping track. So there are eight more bills and seven of them are home roll petitions.

JONATHAN

Yes. The. I would really like. I can imagine a great video montage that showing all of these things on the last page to Vitamin C's Friends Forever. Do you, do you guys remember that song? It's as we go on, we remember all the times we had together and then just have that. While it's showing all of these exciting. While it's showing exciting bills past like the one I just said. Authorizing the continued employment of Stephen A. Hillinger, a firefighter in the town of Lancaster.

ANNA

Wow. What on earth are these 200 legislators doing thinking about that one guy in a one town, like as a firefighter? Why don't the town. Why get the town just.

JONATHAN

Why can't they just do it? Does the legislature need to be involved?

JORDAN

Yes.

JONATHAN

Where we really need them, they're not, they're not stepping up. But they really want to meddle with cities and towns abilities to pass their own laws rather than making it easier for cities and towns to be proactive when they want to be proactive and do basic administrative work, where the thing is really just basic administrative work, what.

ANNA

They'Re spending their time doing is not just nothing. What it takes them so much time to do is to make everyone else unable to do anything as well.

JONATHAN

Yeah.

JORDAN

I mean, the reason for that is that they don't. If you're a state rep, you don't actually have any control over. You only vote with the way the, the way the speaker tells you to vote. So the one place that you can exercise power and the one place that you can actually have a say and the one place that you can ensure that no one can run against you is by being the sole person who has oversight over the runnings of your towns. So that sort of fiefdom, that sort of authoritarianism at the, at the. What the speaker does, that trickles down to our state reps, where they then have their own fiefdoms and their own authoritarian ways. And that's why they like it, because they don't have control over anything else. They don't have a set. They don't, they don't get consulted on legislation. They don't do regular committees where they're marking up bills and considering things that they get told out of and committee, they get told how to vote in in the legislature. So, you know, I'd say the one positive thing that the legislature, if I were going to be like, what's something you're probably did this year? I would say the thing I'm proud of is that after corporations told our speaker how to create a bill to make them all richer and make us poorer by stealing more money from us, a bunch of the state reps said, you know, maybe we shouldn't roll back our climate things and make corporations richer by stealing, by stealing from us. Maybe we shouldn't just do what the energy lab to build, the energy lobby literally wrote to roll back or to make themselves richer and roll back climate things. Maybe we shouldn't do that. And I will say the legislature did internally say we're not comfortable doing this, so shout out to our legislature for successfully again. That was a lot of work, to Jonathan's point, doing nothing in this case. And it was like after our super majority Democratic leadership took a bill written by corporate lobbyists to roll back climate change.

JONATHAN

It is the kind of thing that's kind of funny to me when I was like, wow, this is the one of the few times I'm actually happy the legislature didn't do something. But it was actually. And it took a lot of people like emailing, calling, yelling at their, their state reps to get them to realize how much, how they'd be in deep water.

ANNA

For God's sake. Please keep doing nothing.

JONATHAN

Right. Like we want them to do. We want them to not cause harm.

ANNA

Totally, totally.

JONATHAN

We should, we should be wanting them to do, to actively seek to do more.

JORDAN

All right, what say let's talk ballot.

ANNA

Thank you. I was just gonna say we gotta move to the ballot initiative. So I think, Jonathan, you're gonna give us a. I don't know if you guys want to split the rundown. If you know, Jonathan, you want to give the rundown and then we can all comment.

JONATHAN

But what works best.

JORDAN

Jonathan should give the rundown.

JONATHAN

Okay, I will, I'll do a rundown of them. Okay. So the one, the one question that is guaranteed to be on the ballot next year is around referendum on the gun safety omnibus bill passed in the legislature last session because goal, the state affiliate of the NRA collected signatures to put it on the ballot. That then is a people's vote. So that means you vote yes to keep it, you vote no to repeal it. So that is a yes campaign. On housing policy. There is a, the rent control ballot question that we have talked about on the show before that would be kind of capping rents, the growth of rent statewide as well as a question to eliminate minimum lot sizes. If you're in the burbs there can often be like 1 acre, 2 acre maybe even 3 acre requirements for a single lot for a single property. On the in the space of like democracy electoral forum voting systems there is a question to expand the public records a lot include the governor and the legislature because we are the only state where it like that allows all three branch branches of state government to claim full exemption from the public records law.

ANNA

I have to. I'm sorry, I gotta jump in there. I mean that would be in my opinion one of the only things that could actually get our make some change in our state legislature.

JONATHAN

And it's something that I think is an important file. Although it's its origin was separate from it. It is an important follow up to the audit question because the audit obviously has not happened because the legislature refuses to comply. But that makes it so that they have to turn over things publicly because rather than that there is the stipend reform question which is about reforming the hierarchical pay structure of the legislature where chair help vice chairs get effectively loyalty pay and for sometimes work that they're not even doing.

JORDAN

I just want to say about that one really again a reminder that we actually that's in the constitution of our state and they're just not following it. Currently it's constitutionally mandated their pay and that they cannot do this system but they have end around it by creating this stipend around the constitutional amendment. And as far as I'm concerned it's a clear violation of the constitution but they don't care.

ANNA

Can I ask a question about this ballot measure? Would this ballot measure right into law that they are allowed to do this and therefore we would no longer be able to sue them for being outside the constitution. Unconstitutional according to the constitution of Massachusetts.

JORDAN

Sort of.

JONATHAN

Although it's not if some of you are arguing that something is constitutional.

JORDAN

Yeah.

JONATHAN

This isn't a constitutional amendment. So.

JORDAN

Right. You could still argue with constitutionality but it does sort of play into the idea that the system itself is.

ANNA

Yeah.

JORDAN

Come to come if you want to come to. I feel like it's another podcast where we can internal. We can external debate the internal conversation we had about.

JONATHAN

But I think that would be a great idea to just even have like an episode devoted to that question itself. There's the one to do what are often called jungle primaries the California style of election. Everybody runs on the same ballot two people advance the one to partially recriminalize marijuana just one that'd be utterly destructive to state budget of a 20% reduction in the state income tax as well as another corporate backed one to change what's. What's called 62F. If people are familiar back in 2022 that got a lot of attention. It's known as the tax cut law passed back in the 80s and they the basically corporate lobby wants to change it to make it easier to hit that which when that that limit through its calculations that hit the state loses money. So basically for both of these questions at a time where we're going to lose a lot of federal dollars next year our big. Our big businesses and rich people want us to lose more one about dedicating money from the outdoor recreation excise tax to kind of various types of like nature conservation and related programs. I forgot when I was talking about elections Election day registration from Secretary Bill Galvin's question on allowing people to register to vote on election day and then there is one from SAIU88 about allowing public defenders to unionize. So these are all ones. These are all questions that so the one as I noted is guaranteed to be on the ballot next year. And then the other 11 have either claimed or the secretary of state has confirmed that they have submitted enough signatures to advance to the next round. I will just as a quick jump back and then handing it over to both of you when talking about stuff that the legislature did it was even I still I would claim it as a win that the legislature finally passed joint rules and that we are getting public committee votes out of the House and Senate amongst other changes even though they need to update their website faster. As an example that it took the Senate almost a month to post one committee vote recently which is embarrassing and you should have a better system. But that was something that advocates had fought for for years. So credit worth credit's due that they finally passed finally adopted that practice.

JORDAN

Yeah.

ANNA

I think my primary comment on this entire list of 12 well the list of 11. Right. Is that why is our state legislature not passing some of these things? I mean some of them we don't like.

JONATHAN

But.

ANNA

But like yeah there are one. You know some of these are. Are not you know, election day registration.

JONATHAN

Yeah. Like why does that have to go to the ballot?

ANNA

Why does that have to go to the ballot? Why is. Why aren't they doing it? You know.

JONATHAN

Yeah. And I feel like the same way when it comes to say like the the public defenders unionization one was like, why aren't they? Like, why not?

JORDAN

Like, why other states did this in the 90s, right? Yeah, yeah. It's, it's just. And the reason it has to happen is because the legislature had a hissy fit like, like they threw a tantrum like, like children over, over the fact that they were like, you didn't come to us in the right way in the right time. Like, like children, like little children. They like, you know, like, you're not.

JONATHAN

Like, not like large children, to be clear, I bet.

JORDAN

Like, you know, like toddlers, like, you know, like, I feel like I could have a more rational conversation with my 12 year old than I can often legislative leadership because they act like, hurt. They act like her toddlers. They, you know, they want to take their ball and go home and they're just like, you hurt my feet, legs. It's just like, how old are you? Like, 12 year old has more emotional regulation.

ANNA

Right.

JORDAN

Than a lot of these legislators.

ANNA

It's also standard practice when you don't want to do something to say, oh, you didn't follow the right process we want, but you didn't follow the process. It's like, ugh, it's so tired of those excuses.

JORDAN

Yeah. So I think the other piece just is there's this thing that's happening which is that as we get more ballot initiatives, which is actually a really hard process, it's not easy to collect all of those signatures. It's really difficult. It's much harder here than in California. The legislature wants to take that away and it wants to take it away because it's an authoritarian regime, not dissimilar from Trump. And it's distaste for us regular people, people who want to have a state that works and functions. And yes, it is not as evil. It's not trying to like, do the same harm. It's basically trying to doing nothing for the most part. Unlike Trump, who's trying to make the world a worse place. But it is the same impulse to hate us who want it to do things and for it to have total control. And we wouldn't like Anna's point about it should just, those things should just pass. But also the fact that people feel like their only avenue for passing these things is going directly to people and the impulse isn't, wow, we should take some stock of why all these people are spending million dollars or more to try to go to regular people to have this because they can't get it through. Rather than taking stock. Their impulse is fu f all the people f that Democracy thing. We should take away those rights. We should make it like Florida where we. Or Ohio, where Republicans have made it harder to do ballot initiatives. That's their impulse is to act like Republicans and authoritarians and say, you people should have less rights. Not, you know, all these ballot initiatives are a real call to how broken we.

ANNA

100%.

JORDAN

It's just. It's just troubling. And, you know, anyway, it's going to be really hard. We're going to have to be like, yes, no, yes, no, I'm not looking.

JONATHAN

I'm not looking forward to that at all. And it also, like, speaks to the importance of voter education next year because we have 12 questions. Like, that's a lot for anybody to handle when they see, like, when you walk into the ballot and puts us so important, the work of voter education ahead of time, the creation of voter guides, canvassing, et cetera, so that people go in knowing what they're voting on.

ANNA

Yeah, it was funny when things can.

JONATHAN

Be deceptive when you read it, Jordan.

ANNA

Was like, yes, no, yes, no. And I was in my thing of like, why aren't they passing these things? And I was looking through, I was like, oh, wait a minute, because that one's bad, that one's bad. Oh, that one's bad. Like, we gotta remember that not all of these ballot initiatives are things that we think are good ideas.

JONATHAN

And it's always so nice with ballot questions when you have a year where it's like, yes on all or no.

JORDAN

Or no on all, which it should.

JONATHAN

Or like, yes, yes, yes, no, or like, no, no, no, yes, or something when like, this could be like, yes, yes, no, yes, no, yes, no, yes, yes, no, no, or something like some kind of iteration like that, which is.

ANNA

At least, at least they have a single numbering system and it's not like random in every district. Can you imagine?

JONATHAN

Yeah.

ANNA

Nightmare. All right, gang, we are running a little late today. I am going to turn us over to the. Well, first of all, before our incredibly exciting predictions, I'm going to remind you all that it's the end of the year and if you have just a little bit of funding for donations for important causes. We do all know and recognize here that in Massachusetts we do not have a great progressive media system. And we. It's important to support folks like us who are getting out real news to you in a very unique viewpoint on things. The. The people that we bring in for interviews often are really not heard from in other places. And you can get the kind of news here and information and Analysis that you don't get in other places. So the link is below. You can donate just a little bit or you can donate a lot. We welcome all donations. And anything else for you guys to say during this, this little coffee break here.

JORDAN

Just that we appreciate the people who give. Like, it makes it possible. And, you know, I think we're really, we're really proud of what we're building and like, continue to share, continue to, like, I'm more and more people are like, I talk to people like, oh, that. But I know about that podcast. So, like, just continue to share, continue to talk about it. That it is, this is not separate from the work we do to, to make Massachusetts what it can be. It's actually central, you know, independent media having conversations with each other, complex conversations about policies that you don't get other places. That's actually core to this work is that we talk to each other. So thank you for doing that. Thank you.

ANNA

Thank you.

JONATHAN

Yeah, I would underscore that, that we appreciate kind of our loyal listeners and those who not only listen, who listen but share, and those who not only listen and share, but also listen, share and donate.

ANNA

And on that note, we have some very shocking predictions for the year 2026. I'm going to start with my most shocking prediction, which is that the state legislature ain't going to do jack.

JORDAN

Yeah, I guess I'll go next. That's fine. I have real, some real predictions. I think, I think Markey wins the Senate race. I, I, we had a joke about, like, which Senate race, what we're talking about, but that's like one of my predictions. I think that, I think Democrats are going to have a good year at the midterms, but, oh, yeah, see what Trump does about it. And if we actually have, I don't, I think that people think like, free affair means like, like, don't just stop voting. But actually I worry more about, like, the ways in which they meddle in such a way that it hurts the ability to have open, like the bomb threats that happened in election things like putting troops in front of polling locations. Like, things to intimidate in such a way that you don't have, like, sometimes you can, you can, there's lots of ways to screw with elections beyond just like the obvious that I worry about. But if we have sort of the same sort of, sort of, sort of up. And I think that the work of, I think the legislature is coming to its breaking point. I just do not think people are, I don't think you can continue to get 200 people to show up, to do nothing. I think they're frustrated. I think voters are frustrated. And I think this sort of authoritarian regime is like Trump's. It's. It eventually, like it just loses its ability to squeeze at some point. So I think the work we're doing, the ballot initiatives, all of those, all of the pushes on the legislature are the reason they're doing less is because of how much. So that's my prediction for us.

ANNA

Great. And we can, we can go around a couple of times. Jonathan, why don't you go with some of your predictions?

JONATHAN

I'll just do my main top line prediction. As I noted before, we're talking that I think that 2026 as a year will suck, but that there will also be glimmers of hope.

JORDAN

That was pre.

JONATHAN

Laughing.

JORDAN

Sorry. Laughter.

ANNA

Love it. I will also say that, and this is not a 2026 prediction exactly, but it has been my understanding for quite a few years that, like, there is a certain point at which inequality breaks, right? That inequality is too high. High. Too many people, too much, too many, like percent of the population are living unbelievably precarious, deeply stressful, miserable lives. And at some point it breaks. And, you know, historically, it's either going to break because we elect a Mussolini or Hitler and we're kind of in the Mussolini phase right now, or it's going to break because we elect an fdr. Like one of those things is going to happen. And, you know, it can break violently or it can break nonviolently. There are many different options. But I do believe that there will come a moment in the relatively near future where, you know, both at the state level and at the national level, we have the opportunity to elect someone like Zora Mamdani, Bernie Sanders, fdr, someone who will radically reduce inequality, which I look at as kind of a single one parameter that you can go to to make simple a very complicated system. And we need to be ready for when that moment comes, because if we're not ready and we're not, we haven't built the muscle to make the incredible effort of winning that particular race, then we're going to end up on the, with the other side, which the other outcome which is. Will not be pleasant. It's already not pleasant, and it will not be pleasant when we get there. So that's my other sort of big prediction is like, be ready, people run. You know, we're, I don't believe that we run, you know, all these small elections because we're gonna, like oh, we're gonna win one, and then we'll win two, and then we'll win three. I believe we run them because we build the muscle that Jonathan has a lot of these muscles because Jonathan's constantly, like, every single week and he's canvassing somewhere, you know, rebuild that muscle to be able to make that case, to get people out there to, like, do all of the absolute grunt work necessary to win when we do get that window in time where we win something that truly matters. And I think Zoran was a case exactly like that. Exactly like that.

JORDAN

Yeah.

JONATHAN

That, like, almost. This is the. Like, to not sound glib and mean this in the actual, like, serious way. Like, way, but I guess Mockington about how, like, things will get worse, but they could get better. It's like, basically there and like, men both, like, in that, like, half just way, but also the serious way of the fact of. I think that the one thing that I always take hope in is the lack of inevitability right in the world and the fact that things can. Things can move. They. They can change. It has happened in history. Things have got moved for the better. They have sometimes moved for the worst. So you need to always be on guard for when things move for the worse, but always be ready to push when you have the opportunities to move for the better.

ANNA

Jordan, any final words?

JORDAN

Yeah, just. I agree. I think there's, like, you know, that's. The lesson from the Shock Doctrine is like, we need to be ready when things. As things are breaking down, that means there's opportunities. I have had this quote up since I think the Bush administration because I've sort of been feeling this way for a while, which is just like, the old world is dying. The new world struggles to be born. Now is a time of monsters. I just think, yeah, that's. We're in a place where it's becoming untenable. The affordability. It's so weird to call it affordability crisis because it's just corporations are stealing from you. And the question is, are you going to do anything or are you. You know, and I believe that we're going to do something about it because we are constantly having. We're. This podcast is a working event. Must you going out?

ANNA

We lost Jordan for a sec.

JONATHAN

Oh, no. I thought that was me.

ANNA

Wise words.

JONATHAN

Oh, no, it was the big corporations trying to prevent him from talking.

ANNA

Wait, donate quick. Donate quick. And he'll come back.

JONATHAN

They're like, hold on. It's like, we should do one of the, like the, you know, the Peter Pan things like clap your hands if you believe fairies is that if we. If you clap. If you donate harder. Jordan, come back.

ANNA

Jordan's Internet will get paid for. Just kidding.

JONATHAN

Not back yet. It means that some of our lawyer, loyal listeners have not donated yet.

ANNA

Our, like, secret way of, like, running one of those NPR things where they just keep like, oh, we can't get money. We can't run our programming until you donate more.

JONATHAN

No. Something's glitching. I might not fix until the next ten recurring donors.

ANNA

That's right. And Jordan has, in fact, dropped off completely. His Internet has gone out. And how long do we milk this, Jonathan?

JONATHAN

Until we reach our end of year.

ANNA

Fundraising goal for 2025.

JONATHAN

Exactly.

ANNA

Wait, let me quickly look that up. I have no idea.

JONATHAN

Put a thermometer on the screen.

ANNA

That's right.

JONATHAN

Exactly. So how close we are.

ANNA

All right, well, I know what I mean.

JONATHAN

Like, a nice. Could be. Actually, you could do that as, like, a Christmas tree, and as soon as it reaches the top, the, like, star and it starts to be lit up.

ANNA

I like that. Here you vamp for 10 seconds.

JORDAN

That.

JONATHAN

Let's see. Again, thank you to everybody. Yes.

ANNA

So, yes, thank you to everybody. We are going to go ahead and say we reached our donations.

JONATHAN

It's funny also because Zoom has enough noise cancellation where, like, you can't even hear the bell.

ANNA

Oh, man, I just rang a cool bell. Oh, and you guys didn't hear it?

JORDAN

Well.

ANNA

Oh, well, maybe I'll put it in and post.

JONATHAN

We can beat Zoom's noise cancellation if.

ANNA

Only you will donate more. All right, gang, we love our listeners, we love our donors, we love all the folks who have been involved in this podcast. We've had so many people who do interviews, you know, get interviewed here. We love all of you, and we wish everyone the best of holidays and a few fabulous new year, and we will see you in 2026. Ciao.