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Mass. Senate president: America ‘is starting to feel like Europe in the 1930s’
Senate President Karen Spilka and many of her colleagues accused President Trump of seeking unchecked power during remarks Monday.
State Senate President Karen Spilka issued a dramatic warning Monday that the Trump administration is pursuing an all-out assault on American democracy and the rule of law.
Speaking on the Senate floor about the federal government’s immigration crackdown, Spilka said that she is now seeing echoes of the encroaching fascism that occurred in Europe before World War II.
“As someone who lost family members in the Holocaust, I do not say this lightly. But what we are experiencing in America today is starting to feel like Europe in the 1930s — and it is not just terrifying, it is enraging,” she said.
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Spilka’s comments come a few weeks after senators launched a new “RESPONSE 2025” initiative designed to counter some of the Trump administration’s actions. That effort was framed as a response to residents clamoring for leaders to do more to stand up to Trump. Spilka highlighted the first legislation filed under that initiative: a bill meant to “protect the personal information of people who provide, receive, or support reproductive and gender-affirming care.”
Spilka spoke about her grandfather, who fled Russia to avoid repression, and her father, who helped liberate the Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald.
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“I feel the danger of what is happening in America today deep in my bones,” she said.
The senate president mentioned the “horror” of watching Tufts student Rümeysa Özturk “kidnapped” by ICE agents off a Somerville sidewalk. She touched on the detention of Juan Francisco Méndez, who was arrested in New Bedford after ICE agents smashed his car windows with a sledgehammer. Spilka spoke about Kseniia Petrova, a Russian-born cancer researcher who has been detained for weeks after agents stopped her in Logan Airport while she traveled with undeclared frog embryo samples. She said that the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia is a way for Trump to test the limits of what he can get away with.
Before Trump’s second inauguration, Spilka said that she hoped he would do more to control immigration. Like Gov. Maura Healey, she has repeatedly called on Congress to pass comprehensive immigration legislation, and supported the bipartisan border bill that Trump helped kill before he took office. The state’s shelter system became overburdened and extremely costly in recent years as Massachusetts leaders struggled to respond to a surge in migrants wanting to build a life here.
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Spilka said that she does not want “violent criminals on our streets,” but that the Trump administration is instead co-opting federal agents to carry out “capricious” and “vengeful” actions that do not target these violent criminals.
“If we are to remain the America we know and love, we must do all we can to fight back against this 21st century tyranny. Because make no mistake — this regime has clearly demonstrated that it hates democracy as we know it, and wishes to break the spine of America so it can bend us to their will,” she said.
After Spilka’s comments, a series of her colleagues spoke at length about the actions of Trump and his allies over the last few months.
They denounced the administration’s efforts to cut funding that supports schools and sciences. They accused Trump of ignoring court orders, of refusing to grant due process to people being detained and deported. They invoked the founding fathers, sometimes reading direct quotes from them and comparing the fight against the British empire to the current need for resistance against an aspiring monarch.
“We must acknowledge that this is not a series of disconnected policy failures. This is a strategy. A strategy to dismantle democracy, to sow fear, to consolidate power and wealth in the hands of the very few and to silence the rest of us,” state Sen. Jacob Oliveira said. “It is no accident. It is no mistake. It is no coincidence. It is the oldest story in the world: the story of a would-be king.”
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