VOTE411 Voter Guide

The three most important challenges facing our country are the erosion of the American middle class, our crumbling infrastructure, and the fragility of our democracy. On the economy, I will fight to pass the PRO Act, defend prevailing wage standards, and oppose any policy that favors corporations over working families. On infrastructure, I will champion a long-term transportation reauthorization with sustainable funding mechanisms and fight to reinstate the IRA energy tax credits that are keeping people working. On democracy, I will support the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and every measure that protects every American's right to vote.

The federal government has a critical responsibility to ensure that money in elections does not corrupt the democratic process or drown out the voices of everyday citizens. The Supreme Court's Citizens United decision opened the floodgates to unlimited, often anonymous corporate spending in our elections, fundamentally tilting the playing field toward wealthy special interests and away from working people.

That must be corrected. I support full transparency and disclosure requirements for all political spending, public financing options that empower small-dollar donors, and legislation that restores Congress's ability to regulate campaign finance in the public interest. Democracy should be driven by the voices of working Americans and not the checkbooks of billionaires and corporations.

I find it deeply troubling because it represents a serious blow to voting rights and fair representation across our nation. I hold with Justice Kagan as she pointed out in her dissent; for over a decade, this Court has had its sights set on the Voting Rights Act, and this decision renders Section 2 all but a dead letter in the states where racial discrimination in voting remains most acute. The practical consequences are already unfolding as several southern states have initiated redistricting in the weeks following the decision, claiming their existing majority-minority districts are now unconstitutional under Callais. This is precisely the wrong direction. Every American deserves equal representation, and I am committed to supporting legislative action to restore and strengthen the Voting Rights Act in response to this decision.

In the new Congress we should be focusing on restoring the clean energy tax credits that were recklessly gutted, investing in resilient infrastructure, and pursuing an all-of-the-above energy strategy that aggressively grows renewable capacity while responsibly managing existing resources.

Addressing climate change is not at odds with protecting workers, done well, it is one of the greatest job-creation opportunities of our generation, and labor & working class people should be the ones building it.

The U.S. has a strategic interest and a moral responsibility to support the international institutions that underpin global stability and protect American workers and industries.

NATO remains the cornerstone of our collective security, and abandoning or undermining it emboldens adversaries, destabilizes alliances that have kept major power conflict at bay for eighty years, and ultimately threatens the stable global environment that American infrastructure and energy industries depend on.

The United Nations, despite its imperfections, provides an indispensable forum for diplomacy, humanitarian coordination, and conflict prevention that directly serves American economic and security interests.

Withdrawing from or weakening these institutions does not make America stronger so much a it creates a vacuum that China, Russia, and other adversaries are eager to fill. U.S. global leadership is not a burden; it is our greatest strategic asset, and one that working families depend on.

Money in politics, which is upstream of all our substantive issues - overturn citizens united and fix campaign finance

Cost of living - inflation runs rampant while the oligarchs look for new ways to have AI replace us. We need to federally, look at price gouging, and the role that big tech and oligarchs play in stagnant wages, housing costs, and the general immiseration of the American public.

Healthcare - Medicare for all

It should have a much greater role. Overturn citizens united, fix the dark money problem, ban politicians from working on corporate boards after their terms (creates a perverse incentive structure), and fix how elections are financed. A system where only the very rich, or those who suck up to the very rich, are the only ones permitted to run for office distorts the public servant from the public they're meant to serve.

Disgusting. Completely perverts the actual meaning of the voting rights act, taking a boneheaded reading of the legislation to mean that, essentially, equal representation = disenfranchising anyone who is not MAGA, especially voters of color, who are being gerrymandered into ruby red districts, diluting their voting power.

We first must take a look at ourselves. The United States Military is one of the world's most prolific polluters. Stopping the endless war machine goes a long way to helping rectify this issue. Those responsible for poisoning this planet must be imprisoned, and real and substantive steps must be taken

We have the utmost responsibility to uphold international law. The UN, which is an institution under Trump which is crumbling, should be essential for the maintenance of peace worldwide, and while it has largely failed, due to the US centralizing too much of it's own power, we must contend with its failures to make it better rather than let authoritarian charlatans like Trump, Putin, and Netanyahu to run amok.

NATO is essential, and must be preserved, and the ICC must be respected for its independence rather than being alleged to be a tool against Western interests. Western interests might, and as we have seen, HAVE, been counter to the furtherance of international law.