Issues

Most Americans now believe our government is more responsive to money than to its own citizens. Unfortunately, this is based on a strong degree of truth. Elections are bought through SuperPACs while our representatives are insider trading. Lobbying is another better-known form of corruption, but our government’s bureaucracy has also grown corrupt via regulatory capture by industries. Regulators who are responsible for regulating industry often pass through revolving doors from government roles to high paying executive roles in industry. As a result, our bureaucracy tends to align with industry perspectives and even relies on industry funding and research for expertise and information, rather than protecting Americans.

We will overturn Citizens United to end corrupt elections. We will ban stock trading in Congress. We will end gerrymandering. We will end revolving doors. And we will rebuild a more independent government and competitive public workforce from industry to ensure controls in our economy and society protect our fundamental liberties, adhere to the public interest, and respond effectively to the needs of the People. 

The state of housing in California is past the breaking point. The overwhelming cost of housing also means intransigent homelessness, young people cannot afford to start families, our elders are at risk of poverty in their retirement, and other unbearable cost of living conditions. Meanwhile, developers tend to only build either distant single-family housing that deepens sprawl, or dense, short-term apartment projects optimized for profit rather than long-term family life. By phasing out unfair deductions and loopholes that reward vacancy, rent extraction, and speculative development models that prioritize quick returns over livable communities, we can restore housing’s true purpose: shelter, community, and stability. 

At the federal level, I will act to open supply chains for housing materials, coordinate regional participation in housing development, expand HUD funding and public housing construction, and reform the tax code to drive out investors from treating housing as an investment vehicle. I will also work to ensure the incentives of cities, investors, and developers are aligned to build dense, large, durable, and quality housing integrated with commercial space to reduce the strain of sprawled housing developments on municipal budgets while simultaneously improving residential quality of life. 

The state of healthcare in America is indefensible. Millions remain uninsured or underinsured, costs continue to skyrocket, and families face bankruptcy for simply getting sick. We are the only developed country with a system like ours and we shouldn't tolerate it. Employers and workers alike shoulder crushing premiums, while pharmaceutical and insurance companies extract billions in profit. Healthcare should not be a privilege, but a public guarantee.

I will work to establish a universal, single-payer system, like "Medicare for All", to ensure every person in this country has access to high-quality, affordable care. By reducing the inefficiencies of middlemen and private insurers, and negotiating fair drug prices, we can redirect billions toward direct care, prevention, and medical innovation. 

The United States of America has an indispensable role as leader among the free world, a provider and protector of global public goods, and a defender of liberty and democracy. These ideals endure among our allies, and among those living under oppressive regimes that too often exist with our enabling and making. But under successive betrayals to these ideals, American leadership has tarnished our nation's standing and credibility to them. Whether it is our erosion of NATO and realignment toward dictatorial regimes, denigration of allies' interests and capabilities, withdrawal from commitments to treaties and multilateral institutions, complicity to genocide in Gaza, flagrant violations of international law and the national sovereignty of other countries, and the continued use of Guantanamo Bay for extra-Constitutional actions, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney was correct to state the obvious; the world is rupturing from the United States' leadership towards a new international order, with or without us. 

I will work to restore our nation's ideals in American foreign policy, reaffirm our liberal values and financial commitments to the world's intergovernmental institutions via the United Nations, recommit the United States to global human rights and development programs, renew our credibility as a good faith partner in international relations, and repair the lost trust and faith in the American system. 

The Bay Area stands at the front line of the climate crisis. Our oil refineries are closing, our agricultural regions are drying and flooding in the same year, and the workers who literally power California’s economy will be left behind if nothing is done. Entire industries are being reshaped by forces far larger than any one county, yet our policies remain reactive and piecemeal. We cannot allow climate action to mean community abandonment. A "Green New Deal" for the Bay Area would mean investing in a just transition by rebuilding the economic foundation of our refinery towns, retraining workers for clean energy industries, and restoring agricultural resilience through sustainable water, soil, and energy practices.

I will work to pass the Green New Deal to expand clean energy supply chains, incentivize domestic renewable production, and direct federal funding to regional climate adaptation led by local communities. We will mobilize public investment to create new industries, new jobs, and a livable planet. 

For too long, our nation's approach to education has been to treat it as a commodity for corporate and market needs. This is wrong. Education is a public good, expands individual liberty, and is a cornerstone of democracy. Our country depends on individuals being capable of understanding the world we live in, self-governing, and finding opportunities to better their own lives and our society. That is why I support dramatically increasing the national funding and improving the standards of public education. To do so, we will need to close the gaps between wealthy and under-resourced districts, strengthen support to teachers and school staff, and ensure civic education has a primary place in among our nation's pedagogical priorities. In addition, it is worth noting that the aggregate amount of student debt in America is reaching $2 trillion. Americans' futures, and the economy itself, cannot continue to sustain this amount of debt. Among the principal reasons for this much debt are the low subsidization of public education and high interest rates.

I will work to free Americans of their unreasonable debts for education, rebuild the Depart of Education to greatly expand national funding and improve standards for institutions of public education, and end the practice of applying above-inflation interest rates on government loans to unleash the full potential of citizens seeking education for the benefit of our civic life and the economy. 

California Forever's current plans are outrageous in scope and scale and need to be brought to heel. Make no mistake, they are working to subvert public will and corrupt local governments to build a corporate city without adequate democratic oversight and extract value from its residents, the productivity of the region, and public finances. As a result of their own actions, there is little reason to trust them to do anything other than build a neo-Feudalistic city for their own profit. While it's true that they are within their legal rights to purchase land and pursue development, they are not entitled to public financing or federal investment without clear, enforceable commitments to democratic governance, transparency, and the public interest. 

I will fight to help organize our local governments and communities against oligarchy and use the powers available in Congress to hold California Forever accountable to We the People. 

Immigration to the United States has always been among the principal contributions to our greatness. We are all immigrants if we are not indigenous, and we should share the same opportunities we had with others who continue to believe in the American Dream and strive for a better life here. Instead, the Trump administration is using its stated goals of reducing immigration to advance its implied fascistic goals: the conversion of the United States into a white supremacist nation state, and the expansion and deployment of ICE in American cities are its tools of political violence to intimidate and punish citizens opposed to its authoritarian status. 

I will support immigration reform that would allow anyone with the goodwill to become an American to enter and succeed fairly, and punish domestic industries who criminally incentivize and employ illegal immigrants as a form of indentured servitude. I will not allow this administration to scapegoat immigrants for our problems and use them to overturn our democracy. 

Democrats must clearly and unequivocally defend trans people, and more broadly women, LGBTQIA+ people, and anyone targeted by gender-based hatred and discrimination. Protecting vulnerable communities from all forms of hate and violence is not a fringe issue, and it’s not a political liability. Meanwhile, the Republican Party and its allies have openly targeted trans people, women, and queer families with dehumanizing rhetoric and punitive laws. Calling people “groomers,” attacking reproductive freedom, and stoking fear around gender expression is not about protecting children. It is dangerous, dishonest, and fundamentally incompatible with democracy, and the fact that this still feels controversial is deeply disappointing. 

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I will vote to protect women, minorities, and other vulnerable classes of Americans against gender-based forms of discrimination and hate. 

Social Security is the greatest program devised by Americans to end the blight of poverty in our country. Shamefully, the Social Security trust fund is being targeted by wealthy interest groups who want to privatize it and gamble our earned benefits on market uncertainty. This would put the one thing that guarantees income to millions of deserving and vulnerable Americans at risk of financial insolvency during a market crisis; precisely when they would need it most.

I will vote to protect Social Security and expand it by lifting the payroll tax cap so that the most well off pay their fair share.