Policy and Platform

PLANK 01Labor, Sectoral Bargaining, and the Right to Organize

I will introduce a constitutional amendment enshrining the right to organize. Not a statute that can be gutted by the next Congress or struck down by a captured court. A constitutional right, because the ability of working people to bargain collectively is as fundamental to a functioning republic as the right to speak, to assemble, or to vote.

I will co-sponsor the Protecting the Right to Organize Act in full, and push for federal legislation establishing sectoral bargaining as the standard across critical infrastructure, using Presidential Policy Directive 21 as the framework for binding industry-wide wage boards covering transportation, energy, water, communications, healthcare, and food production. I will tie any federal contract above the Cost Accounting Standards $50 million threshold to a binding collective bargaining requirement, ban captive-audience anti-union meetings, make first-contract arbitration mandatory when employers stall negotiations beyond ninety days, and end qualified immunity for any government official who retaliates against organizing workers.

I will defend the independence of the National Labor Relations Board as a national security imperative. In ninety years, no Board member had ever been removed before their term expired until January 27, 2025, when President Trump fired Gwynne Wilcox without cause, leaving the Board without a quorum for nearly a full year. The administration then signed an executive order citing national security to strip collective bargaining rights from two-thirds of the federal workforce, including VA nurses, EPA scientists, and weather forecasters at NOAA. Using national security as a pretext to dismantle the agencies that protect workers does not make the country safer. It makes our institutions more fragile and more susceptible to political capture.

I support a four-day work week. Productivity does not require five days. Every serious study of reduced work weeks has shown the same result: output remains constant or increases, worker health improves, and turnover drops. The five-day work week was a victory won by organized labor a century ago. It is time for the next victory.

Unless a union label guarantees a product, there is no guarantee of human dignity in its making and no assurance of quality in its construction.

Working examples: Australia's Fair Work Commission sets binding minimum wages and conditions through industry-specific awards. Iceland and Belgium have piloted four-day work weeks at scale with measurable productivity gains and reduced turnover.

PLANK 0250% Worker Codetermination on Corporate Boards

I support requiring 50 percent worker representation on the boards of every corporation employing more than 1,000 workers, with the board chair retaining a tiebreaking vote in cases of deadlock. Senator Sanders proposed 45 percent. Senator Warren proposed 40 percent. Senator Baldwin's Reward Work Act proposed one-third. I respect the progression, but anything short of fifty percent leaves workers as a permanent minority on the board, outvoted on every decision where shareholders and management align against them. Half the board, half the vote, half the voice. That is not radical. That is partnership.

When half the board answers to workers, wages rise, layoffs decrease, long-term investment replaces short-term extraction, and the executive impulse to offshore production for short-term margins is checked by the people whose jobs are on the line. This is not theory. Germany has operated this way since 1976 and built one of the strongest manufacturing economies in the world.

Working example: Germany has required 50 percent worker representation on the supervisory boards of companies employing more than 2,000 workers since 1976. Research by economist Bernd Frick found German firms under codetermination saw a 25 percent increase in productivity.

PLANK 03AI, Automation, and Worker Protection

I have spent over a decade working in national security technology. I know what AI can actually do and what it cannot. I will introduce legislation establishing a federal right to know when AI is making consequential decisions about you in hiring, lending, healthcare, housing, criminal justice, or government benefits, with an enforceable right to human review. I will push for a federal AI worker-displacement levy on companies deploying automation at scale, with proceeds funding retraining, transitional income, and healthcare for displaced workers. I will introduce a federal procurement standard requiring third-party safety and bias auditing of any AI system used by the federal government, and codification of algorithmic accountability so no American is denied a job, a loan, or a public benefit by a system that cannot be inspected.

This wave of automation is not the first one America has faced. The difference now is that we know what happened to the last generation of displaced workers, and we have no excuse for repeating it.

Working example: The European Union's AI Act, in force since 2024, establishes risk-tiered regulation with mandatory transparency, human oversight, and bias auditing for high-risk applications.

PLANK 04Federal Jobs Guarantee, Worker Cooperatives, and the Federal Workforce

I support a federal jobs guarantee providing every American who wants to work a publicly funded job at a living wage with full benefits, focused on care work, public infrastructure, climate adaptation, and community investment. I will push to establish a federal Office of Worker Cooperative Development with seed capital, technical assistance, and preferential federal contracting to expand worker-owned businesses, especially in communities where private capital has withdrawn or where retiring small business owners would otherwise see their companies close.

I will fight to expand collective bargaining rights for federal workers, restore the merit-based civil service against political attacks, reverse every executive action that fired career civil servants without cause, and make remote work the default for any federal role that does not require physical presence. I will also fight to fire up the arsenal of democracy in Baltimore, restoring shipbuilding, munitions production, and direct seaborne supply lines to democratic allies, and to establish the technical arsenal of democracy here in Maryland's 8th District, anchoring secure software, AI assurance, cybersecurity, and microelectronics production in the corridor that already houses our intelligence community and federal research labs. Both arsenals will be built on union labor, with apprenticeship pipelines from local high schools, community colleges, and historically Black colleges and universities.

Employee ownership is not charity. A modern, trusted federal workforce is not a luxury. Both are infrastructure.

Working examples: The Mondragón Corporation in Spain's Basque Country has operated as a federation of worker cooperatives since 1956, employing over 70,000 people. The Defense Production Act, used to mobilize Baltimore shipyards in World War II, remains active law today.

PLANK 05A $24 Minimum Wage and Investment in American Small Business

I support a $24 federal minimum wage indexed to productivity and regional cost of living, phased in over five years with regional triggers and a structured adjustment period for federal contractors and federal workers so that no civil servant earns less than the floor they are tasked with enforcing. A wage of poverty is a subsidy paid by the public to employers who refuse to pay what their work is worth. We end that subsidy.

For small businesses that can document genuine inability to pay, I will push for transitional grants of up to $100,000 to bridge operations toward compliance, with packages of up to $200,000 for small businesses holding Department of Defense contracts and up to $300,000 for DoD-supporting small businesses headquartered in Maryland's 8th District. These are not bailouts. They are investments in American workers, American ingenuity, and the American industrial base. The corporate tax cuts of 2017 cost the federal government $1.35 trillion in revenue with no measurable wage increase for working families. A targeted small-business investment program at one one-thousandth that scale, paired with a real wage floor for the people who keep American businesses running, will more than pay for itself in consumer spending, retained workers, and reduced public assistance to people whose employers refuse to pay them enough to live.

The point is not to crush small employers. It is to lift the floor while building the ramp, and to invest public dollars in American workers and American small businesses rather than in corporate tax breaks for the largest firms in history.

Working example: California's $20 fast-food minimum wage took effect in 2024 with sectoral wage-board authority through AB 1228, demonstrating that high regional minimums combined with industry-specific councils are administratively workable.

PLANK 06Retirement Security Insurance

The FDIC insures every American's bank deposits up to $250,000 against bank failure. There is no equivalent guarantee for retirement accounts. A 401(k), IRA, or pension can be wiped out by a market crash, a corporate bankruptcy, or a fraud, and the federal government offers no floor. I will introduce legislation establishing a Retirement Security Insurance Corporation, modeled on the FDIC, that guarantees a minimum lifetime retirement income for every American who has worked the equivalent of a full career, financed by a small assessment on financial institutions and supplemented by general revenue.

I will also defend Social Security as the single most successful domestic program in American history. Social Security must be expanded, not cut. The cap on income subject to Social Security taxes must be lifted so that the wealthiest Americans contribute proportionally to a system that the rest of us depend on. Retirement should be a right, not a gamble.

Working example: The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation already insures defined-benefit pensions; this proposal extends that guarantee to defined-contribution plans (401k, IRA), which today carry no equivalent federal floor against market loss.

PLANK 07Public Banking and Postal Banking

I will introduce legislation establishing a federal public bank to provide low-cost financial services to underbanked Americans, finance public infrastructure at cost, and serve as a counterweight to the consolidated private banking sector. I will push to restore postal banking at the United States Postal Service, ended in 1967 despite its hundred-year history of serving working-class Americans, with services including basic checking, savings, small loans, and bill payment. I will support breaking up the largest commercial banks under updated Glass-Steagall principles and capping the size of any single financial institution at a percentage of GDP that prevents future "too big to fail" bailouts.

Working example: The Bank of North Dakota, founded in 1919 and still operating, is the only state-owned bank in the United States and consistently outperforms private competitors in returns to its public owners while financing infrastructure, agriculture, and small business across the state.

PLANK 08Recarbonization, Regenerative Agriculture, and Right to Repair

I will introduce a federal Recarbonization Act paying farmers and ranchers per ton of carbon sequestered in their soils through verified regenerative practices including cover cropping, no-till, rotational grazing, agroforestry, and the rebuilding of mycorrhizal soil networks. I will push for a federal program to restore native grasslands at scale, repair the Dust Bowl-era damage that industrial agriculture compounded, and pair carbon payments with debt relief and price-floor guarantees that make small and mid-sized farms economically viable again.

I will also introduce a federal Right to Repair Act guaranteeing every American the right to repair the things they own, including agricultural equipment, vehicles, electronics, medical devices, and household appliances. Manufacturers will be required to make parts, tools, diagnostic software, and repair documentation available to owners and independent repair shops at fair prices. The current system, in which a corn farmer cannot fix a $400,000 tractor without paying a John Deere technician to drive out and unlock the software, is a tax on rural America paid to a handful of monopolists. It ends.

Working examples: Project Drawdown ranks regenerative annual cropping among the highest-impact climate solutions globally. The European Union's Right to Repair Directive, adopted in 2024, requires manufacturers to provide repair services and parts for years after sale.

PLANK 09Breaking Up Big Agriculture and Restoring Parity Pricing

Four companies control most of America's beef, pork, poultry, grain trading, and seed supply. Family farms have been crushed between input monopolies that set the price of seeds and fertilizer and processing monopolies that set the price of what farmers can sell. I will push to break up Cargill, ADM, Tyson, JBS, Smithfield, and Bayer-Monsanto under updated antitrust standards, restore the Packers and Stockyards Act to its original strength, and ban any company with more than fifteen percent of a national agricultural market from acquiring competitors.

I will fight to restore parity pricing for farmers, an idea pioneered by the New Deal and abandoned in the 1970s, so that the price a farmer receives covers the cost of production plus a decent living. A farmer who cannot make a living growing food in the most agriculturally productive country on earth is not a market failure. It is a policy failure, written into law by the same processors and traders who profit from the imbalance.

Working example: The Packers and Stockyards Act of 1921 successfully broke up the original "Big Five" meat-packing trust and was enforced effectively until the 1980s.

PLANK 10Breaking Up Big Tech

I will introduce legislation to break up Amazon, Meta, Google, Microsoft, and Apple under updated Brandeisian antitrust principles, separating their platform businesses from the businesses that compete on those platforms. Amazon should not own the marketplace and the products sold on it. Google should not own search and the advertising auction that ranks results. Meta should not own Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Apple should not control both the iPhone and the App Store that dictates what runs on it. These are not exotic positions. They are basic enforcement of the antitrust law that built American prosperity for most of the twentieth century.

I will fight to fully fund the Federal Trade Commission and the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice and to remove the political constraints recently placed on them.

Working example: The 1984 court-ordered breakup of AT&T into seven regional Baby Bells launched the modern telecommunications and internet industry by ending Ma Bell's stranglehold on innovation.

PLANK 11Ending Contracts with Companies That Obstructed Democracy

I will introduce legislation establishing a federal commission, with subpoena power and a public mandate, to investigate any company or individual who has materially obstructed democratic processes, supported authoritarian mandates, profited from the dismantling of the federal civil service, or provided technology used in extrajudicial detention or mass surveillance of Americans. Companies and individuals found by the commission to have done so will face termination of federal contracts, revocation of federal licenses, criminal referral where warranted, and where the conduct rises to the level of obstruction or sedition, the personal liability of their executives.

The list of companies whose conduct will require examination includes but is not limited to Palantir, Booz Allen Hamilton, Lockheed Martin, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Google, ExxonMobil, the Musk-controlled companies (SpaceX, Tesla, xAI), and any oil major or financial firm that materially funded or staffed efforts to undermine free elections, the federal workforce, or constitutional government.

This is not a political vendetta. It is the basic principle that the federal treasury does not pay companies who attack the constitutional order. The same standard would apply to any company of any political alignment that did the same thing.

Working example: The post-World War II denazification process in occupied Germany, administered by the Allies, included the breakup of IG Farben and the prosecution of executives who had materially supported the Nazi state, establishing the principle that corporate participation in authoritarian government carries personal and institutional consequences.

PLANK 12Federal Contracting Reform: Cutting the Middleman

The federal government routinely pays large prime contractors a markup of 15 to 50 percent on subcontractor labor while the actual work is performed by small businesses who never get the customer relationship, the technical reputation, or the long-term contract. The small company does the work. The prime takes the credit and the fee. This is not capitalism. It is rent-seeking, paid for by the American taxpayer.

A Federal Direct Small Business Contract Vehicle

I will introduce legislation establishing a GSA-administered direct contracting vehicle that lets federal agencies contract directly with qualified small businesses without going through a prime. Lower compliance costs. Faster onboarding. The same work, with the customer relationship preserved for the company that actually performs it. The federal government saves the markup. The small business gets the contract, the credit, and the chance to grow into the prime contractor of tomorrow.

Pass-Through Markup Caps

For contracts where a prime contractor is genuinely necessary (true integration work, security clearances at scale, multi-vendor coordination), the prime's allowable markup on subcontractor labor will be capped at 10 percent, with full public disclosure of every subcontractor and the markup applied. Small businesses performing work under a prime contract will retain the customer relationship and credit on any work they perform. The prime gets paid for the work it actually does, not for the work it merely passes through.

Subcontractor Bill of Rights

Federal subcontractors will have an enforceable right to be paid within 30 days of invoice, protection from retaliation for raising concerns about the prime's performance, and standing to challenge a prime contractor's billing of work the subcontractor actually performed. The current system, in which subcontractors are entirely at the mercy of primes who can shift labor categories, claim work as their own, and delay payment indefinitely, is a captured market that punishes small business for trying to participate.

Working example: The SBA's All Small Mentor-Protégé Program is a partial version of direct small business contracting, but its scale is too small to displace the prime-contractor markup model. This proposal expands that vehicle into a true direct channel.

PLANK 13Federal Direct Hire: Ending the Body-Shop Conflict of Interest

For positions currently filled by consultants from Booz Allen Hamilton, Deloitte, Accenture, Leidos, McKinsey, BCG, and similar "body shop" agencies, the federal government routinely pays two to three times what an equivalent civil servant would cost. The consulting firm bills the agency for a contractor's labor at a marked-up rate, pays the contractor a fraction of that rate, and pockets the difference indefinitely.

The conflict of interest is structural. Consulting firms are paid to fill seats, not to solve problems, because the moment the problem is solved their contract ends. They have a permanent financial incentive to prolong the work, expand the scope, and keep their people embedded in agencies long past the point where direct federal hires would be cheaper, more accountable, and more effective.

I will introduce legislation establishing a federal Direct Hire Authority Expansion that brings the work in-house at federal salaries, with streamlined hiring authority for technical positions currently filled by contractors, a binding requirement that any contractor position held for more than three consecutive years be evaluated for conversion to a federal civil service position, and a federal hiring rule that consulting firms which have held a contract on a particular work stream cannot recompete for that contract for five years after a federal employee has been hired to perform the same work. This breaks the revolving door at its source.

This reform alone could save the federal government tens of billions of dollars per year while building a skilled, accountable, mission-driven civil service.

Working example: The Department of Veterans Affairs and the U.S. Digital Service have used direct-hire authority and term-limited civil service appointments to bring critical technology work in-house at a fraction of contractor cost, with measurably better outcomes.

PLANK 14Tax Justice and the Restoration of Progressive Taxation

The corporate income tax share of federal revenue has fallen from about one third in the early 1950s to under 10 percent in most recent years. The tax code generates $2.2 trillion in annual tax breaks, more than the United States spends on Social Security, Medicare, defense, or any other single program. Since 1975, $79 trillion has been redistributed from the bottom 90 percent of Americans to the top 1 percent, with $3.9 trillion in 2023 alone, enough to give every full-time worker in the bottom 90 percent a $32,000 annual raise. That revenue gap is not an accident. It is the product of fifty years of deliberate policy choices.

A Progressive Corporate Tax Reaching 80 Percent

I support a progressive corporate tax reaching 80 percent on profits over one billion dollars, building on the academic framework developed by Professor Reuven Avi-Yonah. The United States had a progressive corporate tax structure for 81 years, from 1936 to 2017. What was radical was abolishing it and handing the largest corporations in history a flat rate lower than what a family-owned machine shop pays in effective terms. Under my structure, a small business earning $100,000 in taxable profit pays 10 percent. A business earning $1 million pays approximately 17 percent. Not one of the 36.2 million American small businesses would ever see the top rate. The 80 percent rate applies to a few hundred corporations at most. This is the most pro-small-business and most aggressively anti-monopoly tax proposal on the table simultaneously.

A 90 Percent Top Marginal Individual Rate

I support a 90 percent top marginal individual income tax rate on income above $4 million per year. Between 1944 and 1963, the top marginal individual rate never dropped below 91 percent. During those decades, the wealthiest Americans still accumulated wealth, still invested, still built businesses, and still lived extremely well. The $4 million threshold means this rate applies to roughly the top 0.1 percent of earners. The vast majority of Americans, including virtually all small business owners, professionals, and high-earning workers, would never see this rate.

Capital Gains and Unrealized Gains

I support taxing capital gains as ordinary income. The preferential capital gains rate is the single largest mechanism by which the wealthiest Americans pay lower effective rates than the workers who earn wages. I also support taxing unrealized gains on net assets above a defined threshold. A regular citizen pays property tax every year on the value of their home whether or not they sold it. A billionaire pays nothing on the appreciation of their stock holdings until they choose to sell, and through borrowing against those holdings, often never sells in their lifetime. Why should a regular citizen be taxed on their home while the oligarch pays nothing?

Taxing Oligarchy Into Extinction

There should be no billionaires in a country where children go hungry, where families lose their homes to medical bills, and where the wealth of three men exceeds the combined wealth of 170 million Americans. I support an annual wealth tax of eight percent on net assets above $1 billion, scaling upward, with proceeds dedicated by statute to universal childcare, public housing, and the federal jobs guarantee. The mathematical effect, applied consistently, is the elimination of billionaires as a class within a generation. That is the goal. The existence of a billionaire class is not a sign of national prosperity. It is a policy failure.

Closing Loopholes and Religious Mega-Organizations

I will close the carried interest loophole, impose a financial transactions tax, restore robust estate taxes that effectively dismantled the great industrial fortunes of the Gilded Age, and establish a corporate minimum tax that books cannot game. I will push to revoke 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status from any religious organization with annual revenue above $50 million that has functionally operated as a partisan political organization, and to mandate comprehensive IRS audits of every religious organization above that threshold with full public disclosure of finances. The Johnson Amendment was effectively gutted in 2025 by the IRS itself. If churches now operate as political organizations, they will be taxed as political organizations.

Working example: The United States itself maintained top marginal individual tax rates above 70 percent from 1936 to 1980, a period that included construction of the interstate highway system, the GI Bill, the moon landing, and the broadest middle class in human history.

PLANK 15Federal Social Housing and Tenant Protection

I will introduce legislation establishing a federal social housing authority with the mandate, capital, and standing inventory to build mixed-income public housing at scale, financed through long-duration federal bonds and operated under permanent public ownership. I will push for federal preemption of exclusionary single-family-only zoning in metropolitan areas receiving federal transportation and infrastructure funds, modeled on the Clean Air Act's preemption mechanism. I support full funding of Section 8 housing vouchers as an entitlement rather than a lottery, federal financing for permanent supportive housing for the unhoused under a Housing First framework, and a federal Renter Protection Act establishing baseline tenant rights including just-cause eviction standards, rent stabilization in high-cost markets, and a federal anti-eviction floor.

I will fight for direct federal grants to homeowners to climate-proof their homes against flooding, heat, wildfire, and storm damage, prioritizing low-income households and communities already absorbing the costs of climate change. I will push to make rooftop solar, heat pumps, weatherization, and home electrification a near-zero-cost upgrade for working families through expanded tax credits and direct rebates.

Housing is the crisis underneath every other crisis on this page. A worker who cannot afford rent cannot accept a better job in another city. A nurse who cannot afford to live near the hospital cannot serve her community. A veteran who cannot find a home is a debt this country has failed to pay.

Working example: Vienna's social housing system, built and operated by the city since the 1920s, houses roughly sixty percent of residents in publicly owned mixed-income housing.

PLANK 16Public Lands and the Half-Earth Commitment

A decent home is not just four walls. It is the land, the air, the water, and the wild that surround it. I will introduce legislation committing the United States to the international "30 by 30" target of protecting thirty percent of American land and waters by 2030, and the Half-Earth target of fifty percent by 2050, advanced by biologist E.O. Wilson as the minimum required to prevent mass extinction. I will push for full funding of the Land and Water Conservation Fund, expansion of the National Park system, federal acquisition of conservation easements at scale, and treaty-honored co-management of public lands with the Tribal nations whose ancestral territory they are.

Public lands are the inheritance of every American. They should be larger, better protected, and more accessible than they are today.

Working example: Costa Rica protects roughly twenty-five percent of its land area in national parks and reserves and has doubled its forest cover since the 1980s while growing its economy.

PLANK 17Medicare for All and Comprehensive Healthcare

I support Medicare for All as the destination, with a clear transition path that begins by lowering the Medicare eligibility age to 50, capping insulin and essential medications at production cost plus a regulated margin, granting Medicare full price-negotiation authority across every drug class, and ending the surprise-billing and prior-authorization games that currently consume more healthcare worker hours than direct patient care. I will fight to repeal every Medicaid, Medicare, and ACA cut in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which stripped over a trillion dollars from the healthcare system to finance tax cuts for the wealthy.

I will push to make mental health parity real and enforced, fund community-based mental health infrastructure at the level of need rather than the level of leftover budget, expand mobile mental health response programs that send trained clinicians rather than armed police to mental health calls, and treat the maternal mortality crisis (especially for Black mothers) as the public health emergency it is. I will support federal minimum staffing standards for nursing homes and nursing ratios for acute care hospitals.

Healthcare is national security. A country whose workers cannot afford to stay healthy is a country whose readiness erodes one preventable illness at a time.

Working example: Every other industrialized democracy delivers universal coverage at lower per-capita cost than the United States. CAHOOTS in Eugene, Oregon, has dispatched mental health responders to crisis calls for over thirty years at a fraction of the cost of police response and with measurably better outcomes.

PLANK 18Reproductive Rights and Bodily Autonomy

Equal rights for all means exactly what it says. Every person in this country has the right to make decisions about their own body without interference from the state. A government that can dictate what you do with your own body is a government that owns you, and ownership of human beings is something this country supposedly settled a long time ago.

I will fight to codify Roe v. Wade and the protections of Planned Parenthood v. Casey into federal law through the Women's Health Protection Act, and to pursue a constitutional amendment establishing the right to full bodily autonomy. I will go further by guaranteeing the right to contraception, in-vitro fertilization, and the full range of reproductive healthcare. I will push to repeal the Hyde Amendment so that low-income women's healthcare is treated identically to every other healthcare service, fully fund Title X family planning, protect interstate travel for reproductive care, protect medication abortion against federal restriction, and shield healthcare providers from prosecution by states attempting to extend their reach across state lines.

Working example: Ireland, after decades of one of Europe's strictest abortion bans, repealed the Eighth Amendment by referendum in 2018 and now provides legal abortion through its national health service.

PLANK 19Childcare, Paid Leave, and Family Support

I will push for federal universal childcare from birth through age five, capped at no more than seven percent of family income, with childcare workers paid as the skilled professionals they are and unionized through sectoral bargaining. I will co-sponsor the FAMILY Act for twelve weeks of paid family and medical leave at the federal level, available to every worker regardless of employer size or job type, and push to extend it to a full six months for new parents and serious medical conditions. I will support full federal funding of the federal share of special education, originally set at forty percent of excess costs in 1975 and never delivered. I will push to expand school meal programs to year-round and free for all students, and to fund universal pre-kindergarten in every state.

Working example: Quebec's universal childcare program, established in 1997 and continuously expanded, costs families a small fraction of U.S. childcare while measurably increasing women's workforce participation and family economic security.

PLANK 20Veterans, Trans Service Members, and Gun Safety

Expanded Veteran Benefits

I will introduce legislation guaranteeing every veteran lifetime healthcare through the VA, regardless of discharge status (with narrow exceptions for dishonorable discharges from combat-related crimes), automatic disability presumption for any condition with a documented service connection, lifetime education benefits transferable to spouses and children, and Housing First placement for any homeless veteran. I will push to fully fund the VA at the level of need rather than the level of appropriations, end the chronic backlog in disability claims processing, and expand mental health, traumatic brain injury, and toxic exposure care including for burn pit, Agent Orange, Camp Lejeune water, and post-9/11 generation conditions.

The Trans Service Apology and Restoration

I will co-sponsor and push to pass the SERVE Act, currently championed by Representatives Pappas, Levin, Jacobs, and Dexter, to guarantee VA benefits for every transgender service member discharged because of who they are, and every LGBTQ+ veteran previously discharged under Don't Ask, Don't Tell, World War II-era blue discharges, and earlier exclusionary policies. I will push to go further with full retirement benefits restored, back pay calculated to the date of separation, a guaranteed burial space in Arlington National Cemetery, automatic discharge upgrades, and an end to the burdensome appeals process. I will fight every active effort to remove transgender service members currently serving, because their oath is identical to mine and so is their service. An estimated 114,000 service members were forced out under these bans. Our Oath Is Eternal, and so is the debt this country owes them.

Gun Safety as Public Health

As a Marine and a responsible firearm owner, I support universal background checks, a renewed federal assault weapons ban with stronger definitions than the 1994 version, mandatory safe storage requirements with federal funding for safes and trigger locks, and a federal red-flag law with strong due-process protections. I will push for full repeal of the Dickey Amendment so the CDC can conduct gun violence research at the scale every other public health crisis receives. I will support closing the gun-show loophole, the boyfriend loophole, and the Charleston loophole. None of these positions infringe the Second Amendment. They infringe the convenience of bad actors.

Working examples: The 2024 Pentagon settlement automatically upgraded discharges for hundreds of LGBTQ+ veterans. Australia's 1996 National Firearms Agreement, passed by a conservative government, banned semi-automatic rifles, instituted a national registry, and effectively eliminated mass shootings as a regular feature of Australian life.

PLANK 21Universal Education and Student Debt Cancellation

I support free public education from pre-kindergarten through doctoral programs at every public institution. I will push to fully fund universal pre-K, triple federal investment in special education, and make community college, public four-year college, public graduate school, and public professional school (medical, legal, dental) tuition-free for citizens and qualifying residents.

I will fight to expand registered apprenticeship programs and trade schools at parity with academic programs. The distinction between vocational schools and four-year universities is a tool of the oligarchy to divide the people who do the work. The welder, the electrician, and the licensed practical nurse are as essential to the country as the lawyer and the engineer, and they deserve training pipelines that are fully funded, debt-free, and treated with the same respect.

I support full cancellation of federal student loan debt across both four-year colleges and trade, technical, and vocational schools. The plumber, the welder, the HVAC technician, and the licensed practical nurse carry the same crushing debt as the office worker, and they deserve the same relief. I will fight to restore Pell Grant purchasing power to its 1975 inflation-adjusted level, reimburse public school teachers for out-of-pocket classroom spending at $1,000 per year of service, and end the federal predatory practice of charging interest on student loans, which alone generates billions in profit on the backs of young workers and their families.

The GI Bill funded my education. It also built the American middle class. When this country decided that every returning veteran deserved a college education, it did not destroy the economy. It created the greatest expansion of prosperity in human history. The only question is whether we believe the children of working families deserve the same investment this country once made in its veterans. I believe they do.

Working example: Germany, Norway, Finland, and most of continental Europe make public higher education and vocational training tuition-free for citizens.

PLANK 22Public Media, Culture, and Public Works

I will fight to increase the federal appropriation to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting by five times its current level, with the increase directed toward investigative journalism, local news bureaus in every congressional district, expanded educational programming, and infrastructure to keep PBS and NPR independent of corporate underwriting pressure. I will push to legislatively codify the journalism standards already maintained by NPR and PBS as the floor for any media organization receiving federal funding.

I will fight to pass the COVID-19 National Memorial Act, introduced repeatedly by Rep. Espaillat and never given the floor vote it deserves, to permanently honor the more than one million Americans we lost. I will push to fund a Public Works of America program modeled on the Works Progress Administration and Public Works of Art Project, providing federal grants directly to artists, historians, oral historians, muralists, documentarians, and community organizations to record local history, build monuments, and create public art across every congressional district. I will support tripling the budgets of the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, and direct federal grants to community centers in every Maryland 8th District municipality.

Working example: The original Works Progress Administration, between 1935 and 1943, employed millions of Americans on public works including the Federal Art Project, Federal Writers' Project, and Federal Theatre Project.

PLANK 23The Constitutional Amendments Package

The fundamental rights of the American people should not depend on the temporary good will of the courts that interpret them. I will introduce and fight to pass the following constitutional amendments, each grounded in international precedent and decades of domestic legal scholarship.

The Right to Vote Amendment

An affirmative constitutional right to vote for every American citizen, self-executing and beyond the reach of any court reinterpretation, congressional repeal, or state-level suppression. It is a national disgrace that the United States Constitution does not explicitly guarantee this right.

The Right to Organize Amendment

A constitutional guarantee that the right of workers to form and join labor unions, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to take collective action including the right to strike, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State.

The Expanded Equal Rights Amendment

Immediate recognition of the existing Equal Rights Amendment as ratified by 38 states, plus a new expanded amendment with the language: "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex, sexual orientation, or gender identity."

The Citizens United Reversal Amendment

A constitutional amendment establishing that constitutional rights belong to natural persons, not corporations, and authorizing Congress and the states to regulate political spending to prevent corruption and protect democratic self-government.

The Bodily Autonomy Amendment

A constitutional guarantee of the right to bodily autonomy, including reproductive healthcare, gender-affirming care, end-of-life decisions, and the right to refuse medical treatment.

PLANK 24Climate, Adaptation, and Environmental Restoration

I support a Green New Deal at the scale and speed the science demands, with binding emissions targets, federal financing of clean energy infrastructure, just-transition guarantees for workers in fossil fuel industries, and a national adaptation program modeled on the Dutch Delta Programme. I will push to end all federal subsidies for fossil fuel extraction, ban new oil and gas leases on federal lands and waters, accelerate the buildout of grid-scale renewables and storage, and establish a federal green bank to finance clean energy projects at scale.

I will introduce a $100 million, ten-year Eastern Forest Restoration Initiative, anchored at Maryland's universities in partnership with the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, the U.S. Forest Service, and The American Chestnut Foundation, to restore the American chestnut, ash, hemlock, and elm to the eastern forests they once dominated, alongside a systematic program to remove invasive flora and fauna from Maryland's forests, waterways, and Chesapeake Bay tributaries. I will fight for restoration of the Endangered Species Act protections weakened over the past decade, full funding of the Land and Water Conservation Fund, and a federal Civilian Conservation Corps to put young Americans to work outdoors at union wages.

Working examples: The Netherlands' Delta Programme has delivered fifty years of continuous climate adaptation. SUNY ESF's American Chestnut Research and Restoration Project has spent over thirty years developing blight-tolerant chestnut varieties.

PLANK 25Transit, Data Centers, and 21st-Century Infrastructure

I will fight to invert the federal transportation funding formula so that public transit, passenger rail, and active mobility receive primary investment, with road and highway funding placed in a secondary position. I will push for full federal funding of the Purple Line and MARC expansion in Maryland's 8th District, electrification of the entire Northeast Corridor, and high-speed rail connecting Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York at speeds and frequencies competitive with the best European and Asian systems. I will support universal free public transit fares, treating transit the way we treat roads, which is as public infrastructure paid for collectively.

I support a federal moratorium on new data center construction in communities already overburdened by industrial pollution, with any new construction conditioned on the operator funding the remediation of existing local toxic pollution before the first server rack is installed. I will push to require all federally subsidized data centers to be powered by new clean generation rather than displacing existing clean capacity onto residential ratepayers, and to publish full water and energy consumption data publicly.

The 2025 ASCE Infrastructure Report Card identified $3.7 trillion in unmet infrastructure investment over the next decade across nine categories that remain in the D range. Closing that gap is the work of a generation, and it is also the most direct way to put millions of Americans back to work in good union jobs.

Working examples: Luxembourg made all public transit free in 2020. Tallinn, Estonia, has offered free public transit to residents since 2013. Ireland imposed effective data center moratoria in the Dublin region in 2022.

PLANK 26Democracy, Campaign Finance, and the No-Donation Model

I will co-sponsor the For the People Act in full, including automatic voter registration, restored Voting Rights Act preclearance, independent redistricting commissions, public financing of federal campaigns, and Election Day as a federal holiday. I will push for a complete ban on stock trading by members of Congress, their spouses, and their senior staff, with mandatory disclosure of all financial transactions and real-time public auditing. I will support a ban on members of Congress serving on corporate or nonprofit boards while in office. I will introduce legislation to investigate and dismantle organized criminal influence inside government from every direction, with whistleblower protections that have actual teeth.

My campaign accepts zero donations. No PAC money. No corporate money. No individual donations. The ask is voices, conversations, and votes. Every other candidate in this race accepts donor money. I do not. This is not a gimmick. It is a structural proof that Citizens United can be made irrelevant by an engaged electorate. If I can win the Democratic primary in Maryland's 8th District against a sixteen-year incumbent without raising a single dollar, I will have demonstrated something the entire country needs to see: that money is not necessary in politics, and that the people who tell you it is have a financial interest in saying so.

That is the model. That is the receipt. No PACs. No donations. Just us.

Working example: Connecticut, Maine, Arizona, and several other states already operate clean-elections public financing systems where qualified candidates run competitive races on small-donor and matched public funds.

PLANK 27Judicial, Executive, and Congressional Accountability

Judicial Reform and Impeachment

I will introduce articles of impeachment against federal judges, from district courts to the Supreme Court, who have demonstrably violated their oath through corruption, undisclosed financial entanglements, or partisan misconduct. The documented cases include but are not limited to Justice Clarence Thomas (undisclosed gifts and travel from billionaire donors with cases before the Court) and Justice Samuel Alito (undisclosed luxury travel and the public display of insurrectionist symbols at his residences). I support a binding code of ethics for the Supreme Court with enforcement by an independent inspector general, and expansion of the Court to thirteen justices with eighteen-year staggered terms.

Mandatory Retirement Age and Term Limits

I support a mandatory retirement age of seventy for federal judges and Supreme Court Justices, members of Congress, the President, and presidential and Senate-confirmed appointees including cabinet officials. After seventy, federal judges may continue in senior status without active caseload. I support term limits of twelve years for House members and two terms for Senators. This proposal applies to elected officials, judges, and political appointees, the people who hold significant public power and can shape the country for decades after their judgment, their health, or their connection to ordinary American life has begun to slip. It does not apply to career civil service. The federal worker, the postal carrier, the VA nurse, the air traffic controller is governed by performance and the worker's own choice, not arbitrary age limits. The point of this reform is to refresh the ruling class, not to push working people out of jobs they are doing well.

Pentagon Audit and Defense Reform

The Department of Defense has failed every audit it has ever undergone, seven in a row through 2024, while consuming roughly half of all federal discretionary spending. I will vote against any defense authorization that increases the Pentagon budget until DoD passes a clean audit. I will push for a binding ten percent reduction in the topline Pentagon budget redirected to healthcare, housing, and education, paired with full funding of service member pay, benefits, and military family support.

Restricting Presidential War Powers

I will introduce legislation repealing the 2001 and 2002 Authorizations for Use of Military Force, push for a War Powers Act with teeth requiring an affirmative congressional vote within thirty days of any military deployment for it to continue, an explicit no-first-use policy for nuclear weapons, and the closure of overseas military bases that no longer serve a clearly articulated strategic mission.

Filibuster Elimination and Statehood

I support full elimination of the legislative filibuster, an extra-constitutional rule that has converted the Senate into the place where popular legislation goes to die. I support immediate statehood for the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, conditional on a binding referendum in Puerto Rico, and a path to statehood for any U.S. territory whose residents democratically choose it.

PLANK 28Foreign Policy, Ukraine, and the Restoration of American Soft Power

Conditioning Aid and Restoring American Soft Power

I support full conditioning of all U.S. military aid on documented compliance with international human rights law, the laws of war, and the Leahy Law, with no exceptions for any country regardless of strategic relationship. This includes but is not limited to U.S. aid to Israel under the current Netanyahu government, where ongoing violations have been documented by the United Nations, the International Court of Justice, and credible human rights organizations. I support the two-state solution as a goal, recognition of Palestinian statehood, full restoration of UNRWA funding, and a Marshall Plan-scale reconstruction commitment for Gaza.

The United States spends roughly $900 billion annually on defense and a small fraction of that on USAID, the State Department, and the soft-power infrastructure that built American influence in the twentieth century. We invest a thousand times more in the military than in the institutions that make the military a tool of last resort. I will fight to rebuild USAID and the State Department, rejoin and reform multilateral institutions including the WHO and the UN, and reclaim American climate leadership as the most important foreign policy commitment of this generation.

Full Armament of Ukraine

Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine is the most consequential test of post-WWII international order in our lifetimes. I support full provision of every weapons system Ukraine has requested and is qualified to use, including long-range missiles, F-16s in adequate numbers, Patriot air defense systems at scale, and the loosening of restrictions on the use of U.S.-supplied weapons against legitimate military targets within Russia. I support an expedited NATO membership pathway for Ukraine, a Marshall Plan-scale reconstruction commitment financed substantially through the $300 billion in frozen Russian sovereign assets, and shipping U.S.-manufactured weapons from the restored Baltimore arsenal directly to Odesa via the Black Sea once secured. The fall of Ukraine is the fall of the rules-based international order. It will not happen on our watch.

PLANK 29Immigration and Asylum

I am the son of Salvadoran immigrants. I will fight for a humane, legal, and orderly immigration system that includes a path to citizenship for Dreamers, TPS holders, farmworkers, and the long-term undocumented who have built their lives here. I will push to end family separation and indefinite detention as policy, abolish ICE in its current form and rebuild immigration enforcement under civilian, due-process-respecting authority, and expand asylum capacity with humane processing. I support special asylum protections for journalists, dissidents, and human rights workers from any country whose government has turned against them.

Communities are kept safe by community centers, not by ICE deployments. The killings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis are not isolated incidents. They are the predictable result of a federal enforcement apparatus that has been given political license to kill American citizens with impunity. That apparatus must be dismantled and rebuilt from the ground up.

Working example: Canada's Private Sponsorship of Refugees Program has resettled hundreds of thousands of refugees through community-led sponsorship since 1979.

PLANK 30Policing, Decarceration, and Drug Policy

Policing and the End of Qualified Immunity

I will co-sponsor the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act and push to go further by ending qualified immunity for all government officials, not only police, and establishing a federal civil rights cause of action with attorney's fees for any constitutional violation by a federal, state, or local agent. The doctrine of qualified immunity is judge-made, not statutory, and Congress can end it.

Decarceration and Drug Policy

I support full federal marijuana legalization with automatic expungement of past convictions, decriminalization of all drug possession at the federal level following the Portugal model with redirected funding to treatment and harm reduction, federal closure of all private prisons and immigration detention facilities, an end to cash bail in federal cases, federal sentencing reform that retroactively applies to currently incarcerated people, and full abolition of the federal death penalty. The carceral system in this country is a moral and economic failure. We end it.

Working example: Portugal decriminalized possession of all drugs for personal use in 2001 with measurable reductions in overdose deaths, HIV transmission, and incarceration.

PLANK 31The Reckoning and Unification Day

The Reckoning is not chastisement. It is liberation.

Most of these wrongs do not belong to those of us alive today. We did not commit them. We are not personally guilty of them. But we are the generation who can redeem them, and that is the most extraordinary inheritance any generation has ever been handed. The chance to do justice for those of the past, those of the present, and those of the future, in one act of national becoming, is not a burden. It is the privilege of a lifetime.

The Reckoning is what makes a more perfect union possible. A country that hides from its history is a country that cannot heal from it, cannot defend itself against the propagandists who weaponize that history, and cannot build the political coalition required to do anything else on this page. A country that faces its history, acknowledges it in law, repairs it in policy, and integrates it into public memory is a country that becomes unattackable from within. We will be one people, finally, because we will have done the work to be one people.

This is how we get stronger. This is how a divided nation becomes a coherent one. This is how the children of the wronged and the children of the wrongdoers become, simply, Americans together. Reckoning is not what makes us weak. It is what makes us whole, and there is no strength greater than the strength of a whole people.

Unification Day: A New National Holiday, August 10

I will introduce legislation establishing Unification Day as a federal holiday observed annually on August 10, the anniversary of the 1988 Civil Liberties Act under which President Reagan apologized to Japanese Americans for internment and authorized $20,000 in reparations to each survivor. That date is no accident. It is the day America proved, for the first time at federal scale, that a nation can apologize for what it has done, pay for what it has taken, and emerge stronger.

Unification Day is a celebration. It is fireworks and parades. It is free admission at federal museums and national parks. It is the public reading, in every congressional district, of every formal apology Congress has issued. It is school programs that teach children the full history of this country in a single day, in voices of the people who lived it. It is community meals where the descendants of every group America has ever wronged sit together, eat together, and tell their grandchildren the story of how this country chose, finally, to face itself.

Unification Day is the day America stops carrying the weight of what it has refused to acknowledge, and starts carrying the strength of what it has chosen to integrate. It is the holiday of the made-whole nation. The fireworks of Unification Day will burn brighter than any Fourth of July, because they will be lit by people who understand what it cost and what it built.

The Acts of Reckoning

I will introduce, co-sponsor, and fight for the following acts of reckoning, each accompanied by formal congressional apology, material reparations or restitution, federal funding for descendant communities, and integration of the truth into federal curricula and public memorials.

Native American Sovereignty, Treaty Obligations, and Land Back

The 368 ratified treaties between the United States and Indigenous nations between 1778 and 1871 are, per the Constitution's Supremacy Clause, "the supreme Law of the Land." The United States has broken nearly all of them. I will introduce legislation committing the federal government to a comprehensive treaty compliance audit, the return of public federal lands to tribal stewardship and ownership beginning with sacred sites (Black Hills/Paha Sapa, Bears Ears, Standing Rock, Mount Shasta, and others), the restoration of fractionated allotment lands to tribal trust, and treaty-honored co-management of national parks and forests on ancestral lands. I will push for a federal apology and reparations program for the Trail of Tears, the Indian boarding school system, the General Allotment Act, the Indian Termination Policy, and every other federal action that violated tribal sovereignty. I will support full self-determination for tribes that choose it, including taxation authority, criminal jurisdiction (restoring jurisdiction stripped by Oliphant v. Suquamish in 1978), and natural resource sovereignty. I will push for full federal funding of the Indian Health Service at parity with Medicare, full federal funding of Bureau of Indian Education schools, and federal recognition of Indigenous languages and educational institutions. I will introduce legislation formally repudiating the Doctrine of Discovery, the medieval legal fiction underlying U.S. claims to Indigenous land, which the Vatican itself formally repudiated in 2023.

Black Reparations and the Racial Wealth Gap

I will co-sponsor H.R. 40 to establish the federal commission on reparations, and push to go beyond the study to direct policy: baby bonds for every American child with weighted contributions to address generational wealth disparities, federal funding for historically Black colleges and universities at parity with federally supported white institutions, restoration of the property and businesses lost in documented incidents of racial violence (Tulsa, Wilmington, Rosewood, and others), and a federal land restitution program for the descendants of those who lost property to redlining, eminent domain abuse, and Jim Crow legal violence. I will push for federal apology and reparations for the Tuskegee study, the use of Henrietta Lacks's cells without consent, the federal sterilization programs of the 20th century, and the targeted enforcement of drug laws against Black communities for the past fifty years.

Mexican American and Latino Apologies

Approximately two million people of Mexican descent were forcibly deported during the Mexican Repatriation of 1929 to 1944, and roughly sixty percent of them were U.S. citizens. California apologized in 2005. The federal government has never apologized. I will introduce legislation for a formal federal apology, a national memorial, descendant compensation, and the integration of Mexican Repatriation into federal curricula. I will introduce companion legislation for federal apology and material redress for the Bracero Program wage theft (1942 to 1964), in which an estimated $500 million was withheld from Bracero workers' paychecks (worth billions today) and never returned.

Jewish Refugee Rejection and the MS St. Louis

In 1939, the United States refused entry to the MS St. Louis and its 937 Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany. The State Department issued a partial apology in 2012. There has been no full congressional apology, and the lessons of the St. Louis are not yet binding obligations in U.S. asylum and refugee law. I will introduce legislation for a full congressional apology, the codification of the lessons of the St. Louis as binding constraints on any future executive attempt to deny refuge to people fleeing genocide, and federal funding for Holocaust education and Jewish refugee history.

Asian American Apologies and Reparations

The Civil Liberties Act of 1988 provided $20,000 per Japanese American survivor of internment and a federal apology. I will introduce legislation for expanded reparations to descendants and a federal commitment to never repeat this kind of mass detention. Congress apologized for the Chinese Exclusion Act in 2011 and 2012. I will introduce companion legislation extending recognition and material redress to Chinese American communities and to other Asian American communities affected by the Page Act, the Gentlemen's Agreement, the National Origins Act, and the post-9/11 surveillance and detention of South Asian and Muslim Americans.

Filipino Veterans of WWII

The 1946 Rescission Act stripped benefits from Filipino soldiers who fought under U.S. command in WWII. Partial redress was provided in 2009. I will push for full restoration of every benefit owed.

LGBTQ+ Americans and the AIDS Crisis

Reagan-era government inaction during the HIV/AIDS crisis cost an entire generation of mostly LGBTQ+ Americans their lives. I will introduce legislation for a formal federal apology, full funding of AIDS research and care, expansion of Ryan White CARE Act funding, and federal recognition of the AIDS Memorial Quilt as a national memorial.

U.S. Interventionism Abroad

I will introduce legislation for federal acknowledgment of and material redress for U.S. interventions that destabilized democracies and devastated communities abroad. This includes Guatemala 1954, Iran 1953, Chile 1973, El Salvador throughout the 1980s, Honduras 2009, the destabilization of Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen, and the support of authoritarian regimes from Suharto to Pinochet to Mobutu. As the son of Salvadoran immigrants whose family fled conditions the United States helped create, I understand viscerally that the immigration crisis at our southern border is, in significant part, an American crisis of our own making. The Reckoning includes acknowledging that, and committing to a foreign policy that does not produce more refugees we then refuse to accept.

This list is not exhaustive. It is a beginning. Every constituency that has been wronged by the United States and has organized to demand recognition deserves a hearing, an apology, and material redress. The work of redignification is the work of becoming, finally, the country we have always claimed to be.

PLANK 32Children, Online Safety, and Political Crimes

Children and Predatory Platforms

I will introduce legislation banning algorithmic amplification of harmful content to minors, prohibiting targeted advertising to anyone under eighteen, requiring social media platforms to default to the most protective privacy settings for minor accounts, and establishing a federal duty of care that platforms exercise toward children using their products. I support enhanced federal penalties for crimes involving children, including child labor violations, child trafficking, predatory online targeting, and sexual exploitation, with enhanced sentencing minimums when the perpetrator used a corporate platform's recommendation systems to identify or contact victims. The companies that designed these platforms know exactly what they are doing to children. They will face the consequences.

No Statute of Limitations on Political Crimes

I will introduce legislation eliminating the statute of limitations for federal crimes committed by elected officials, federal officers, and high-ranking corporate executives in the course of obstructing democratic processes, conspiring against constitutional rights, committing election interference, or engaging in seditious conspiracy. The current limitations periods, which protect officials who can run out the clock through procedural delay, are inconsistent with the gravity of these crimes.

The most serious crimes are not the ones that happen quickly. They are the ones that are concealed for years and protected by power. The law must be designed for the patient.

Working example: The United Kingdom's Age-Appropriate Design Code, in force since 2020, requires platforms to apply the highest privacy and safety defaults to minor users.