Healthy People,
Healthy Democracy

Affordable Health Care

• Protect Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act—and fight to ensure that any restructuring of these programs expands coverage and lowers costs.
• Building on bold state initiatives like the New York Health Act and broad bipartisan public support, legislate a single-payer healthcare system that guarantees coverage for every American, eliminates insurance companies as gatekeepers, and ends the era of ruinous premiums, deductibles, and surprise bills that push families into debt. We can get there by incrementally lowering Medicare eligibility until all Americans are covered.
• American taxpayers fund the research behind most major FDA-approved drugs, yet we pay the highest prices in the world for them. I will cut drug costs by expanding Medicare price negotiation authority and conditioning publicly funded research on affordable pricing.


Primary Care for All

• Dramatically expand Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs)—community clinics that provide preventive care, including mental health services, cancer screenings, vaccinations, and chronic disease management, and are open to all regardless of insurance status or ability to pay.
• Restore full federal funding for safety net hospitals. These are the public and nonprofit hospitals, like NYC Health + Hospitals, that are legally required to treat everyone who walks through the door, regardless of ability to pay. When federal funding is cut, they are usually the first to close and the last to be reopened.
• Protect reproductive freedom by passing a federal law that overrides state abortion bans and guarantees access to abortion care nationwide. Extend postpartum Medicaid coverage to a full year and invest in community-based doula and midwifery programs.

Mental Health & Addiction Services

• Expand and fully fund accessible community-based mental health services that provide the full range of necessary services for individuals and their families, including crisis intervention, employment, and housing support.
• Protect kids online by requiring age verification for social media platforms to address rising rates of anxiety, depression, and social isolation, particularly among preteens and adolescents.
• Sustain and expand overdose prevention programs and harm reduction services, including naloxone distribution, supervised consumption sites, and syringe exchange programs.
• Support the Better Care Better Jobs Act to fund the training and hiring of home health aides, mental health workers, and direct care staff so that when someone in crisis calls for help, there is actually someone available to answer.

Older Americans & Disabilities

• Protect and expand Social Security and Medicare benefits, opposing any cuts, privatization efforts, or conditionalities that make benefits harder to access for those who need them most.
• Combat the epidemic of loneliness and social isolation among older New Yorkers by funding community connection programs, expanding senior centers, supporting volunteer visitor and friendly caller initiatives, and ensuring that homebound seniors have access to the social engagement they need to thrive.
• Expand access to long-term care by fully funding home- and community-based services under Medicaid, increasing the direct care workforce, and reducing waiting lists for waiver programs so seniors and people with disabilities can live with dignity in their own homes and communities.
• Pass the ADA Restoration Act to close the loopholes that have gutted the program after the 2008 Supreme Court ruling in the Sutton case, which made it harder for people with disabilities to prove they are protected under the law. Strengthen federal enforcement across employment, housing, and healthcare so that the law’s promise is finally made real.

• Reverse the Trump administration’s cuts to state and local health departments, which receive over half their funding from federal grants and cannot absorb a 53% cut to the CDC without the collapse of core services—from disease surveillance to HIV prevention to maternal health.
• Restore evidence-based vaccine schedules and remove anti-science appointees from the CDC, NIH, and FDA, and their advisory committees. Vaccine safety must be grounded in rigorous, independent science, not political ideology.
• Strengthen national disease surveillance by modernizing real-time data infrastructure and interstate coordination so the federal government can detect, track, and respond to emerging health threats before they become crises, not after.

• Reinstate federal scientists and public health officials removed without cause or performance justification. Restore statutory independence to the CDC, NIH, FDA, and NOAA by prohibiting political appointees from overriding career scientists on findings, approvals, and publications. End the practice of requiring White House or agency leadership sign-off on peer-reviewed grant awards and scientific reports.
• Restore and expand funding for basic research, including through NIH, the National Science Foundation (NSF), and NOAA. The administration’s proposed FY2026 budget would cut NIH by nearly 40%, NSF by more than 50%, and reduce overall non-defense research spending — adjusted for inflation — to levels not seen since 1991.
• Recommit the U.S. to international scientific cooperation, restore cancelled research partnerships, and ensure science education reflects current peer-reviewed consensus.
• Co-sponsor H.Res.944 and support impeachment proceedings against Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose anti-science agenda has already resulted in 75 million children around the world missing routine vaccinations and the collapse of measles vaccination coverage to just 28% of U.S. counties. As the only member of Congress with a PhD in Public Health, this will be a legislative priority from day one.

Housing

• Create a Social Housing Development Authority to build permanently affordable, mixed-income housing modeled on the proven Mitchell-Lama program – the New York initiative that built quality apartments for working families, teachers, and retirees alongside higher-income neighbors while keeping rents stable by retaining public ownership.
• Repeal the Faircloth Amendment to allow construction of new public housing and fully fund NYCHA with independent tenant-led oversight.
• Expand HUD rental assistance and housing vouchers for low-income families, seniors, and people with disabilities, and use federal tax incentives and housing investment programs to build more affordable units across the district. 


Utilities and Energy

• Expand the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) so no family must choose between heat and food.
• Fully fund the Weatherization Assistance Program, which pays for insulation, window sealing, and heating system upgrades in low-income homes, to lower energy bills and improve home efficiency for low-income households.
• Federal energy infrastructure dollars should lower bills, not protect profit margins. I will condition all federal energy grants and loan guarantees on binding consumer protections that prohibit corporations from passing costs onto ratepayers. Companies that violate these conditions should repay the funds.

Fair Wages

• Push the federal minimum wage law to at least $20, indexed to inflation so it never falls behind again. For New York City, the minimum wage would need to be much higher. According to MIT’s Living Wage Calculator, a single adult in New York City needs at least $32.85 an hour just to cover the basics.
• Expand the Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit to put more money directly in the pockets of working families. When Congress temporarily expanded the Child Tax Credit in 2021, it reduced child poverty. Then Congress let it expire.
• Pass the Social Security Expansion Act to increase benefits and keep the program fully funded by applying payroll taxes to annual incomes greater than $400,000. Today, a CEO earning $5 million stops contributing after the first $184,500. A worker earning $60,000 pays on every dollar earned. Without action, the program faces a funding shortfall by 2033. This fixes it.

Social Support

• Pass the Family and Medical Insurance Leave (FAMILY) Act and the Healthy Families Act to guarantee paid parental, family, and medical leave and earned paid sick days. The United States is the only wealthy nation in the world without this protection.
• Establish universal childcare through the Child Care for Every Community Act so that no parent has to choose between their career and their child, and no family has to spend more on daycare than they do on rent.
• Expand SNAP and WIC access and reject any efforts to impose work requirements or other barriers that strip food assistance from families who need it.
• Establish a National Public Service Corps to address critical workforce shortages in public health, teaching, and emergency preparedness while creating pathways to public sector careers. Modeled on the best of AmeriCorps and the Peace Corps but dramatically expanded, the program would provide a living wage, student debt relief, and a pipeline into government careers.
• Invest in harm reduction programs and strengthen the social service workforce by providing living wages, tax credits, and student debt relief. Give social service professionals the resources they need to address homelessness, economic instability, mental health challenges, addiction and chronic disease at their root.

Mobility

• Secure dedicated federal funding to make every subway station fully ADA-accessible, ending the daily exclusion of seniors, people with disabilities, and parents with strollers from a system they pay into and depend on
• Expand federal transit funding through Urbanized Area Formula Grants and Capital Investment Grants to modernize signals, infrastructure, and service. A transit system running on 1930s technology cannot serve a 21st century city
• Secure dedicated federal funding to climate-proof New York's transit network against flooding, extreme heat, and increasingly severe storms

E-bikes

• Current federal law treats high-speed e-bikes as consumer products rather than motor vehicles, creating a dangerous regulatory gap on the sidewalks, bike lanes, and pedestrian spaces of communities like NY-12. My legislation closes that gap by reclassifying any e-bike capable of exceeding 15 miles per hour under motor power alone as a motor vehicle — requiring licensing, registration, and federal safety standards — while leaving true pedal-assist bikes completely unaffected.

Rail & Tunnels

• Protect every federal dollar already allocated for the Gateway Tunnel—the single most important infrastructure project for the 200,000 daily commuters who depend on Penn Station and the entire Northeast rail corridor
• Require Amtrak to conduct a full engineering study of through-running operations at Penn Station to reduce chronic delays and dramatically increase capacity.
• Establish a community advisory board for Penn Station redevelopment with genuine authority (e.g., binding vote on major design, budget, and contractor decisions, independent access to project records, and the power to pause milestones pending community approval).

Noise & Air

• Restore the EPA’s Office of Noise Abatement and Control, which was gutted in 1981 and never restored. Strengthen the Noise Control Act to address the health consequences of chronic noise exposure in dense urban environments.
• Direct HUD to update its outdated noise standards for federally assisted housing, which have not kept pace with urban density or current public health evidence.
• Strengthen Clean Air Act enforcement and increase EPA air quality monitoring in New York's most overburdened neighborhoods, where pollution-linked asthma and cardiovascular disease rates are highest.
• Expand federal subsidies for electric vehicles and trucks, reducing both tailpipe emissions and traffic noise in dense urban neighborhoods. Invest in the charging infrastructure needed to make EV adoption accessible

Investing in Classrooms

• Increase Title I funding, the main federal program that sends money to schools serving low-income students, so that high-need schools get the resources they deserve. Expand the Teacher Quality Partnership Program to recruit, train, and retain great educators.
• Expand Title III funding for English Language Learners and ensure immigrant students have the language support they need to thrive.
• Preserve and expand arts education, which research consistently shows improves academic outcomes, attendance, and student engagement.

Every Student Supported

• Fully fund the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Congress promised to cover 40% of special education costs in 1975 and has never exceeded 20%, contributing to a chronic staffing crisis in District 75 – New York City's network of schools serving students with the most significant disabilities and where over 1,400 paraprofessional positions sit vacant.
• Expand mental health support through Title IV-A and pass the Counseling Not Criminalization in Schools Act to replace punitive discipline with care.
• Develop a comprehensive school pandemic preparedness plan, including broadband and device equity, continuity of learning protocols, mental health surge capacity, and school nutrition backup systems, so that every school can hit the ground running on day one of the next crisis.

Higher Education

• Support College for All legislation to make public college tuition-free and ensure higher education is a path open to everyone.
• Pursue broad student debt cancellation to free working people from the crushing burden of loans that were supposed to be a ladder, not an anchor.
• Protect academic freedom and students’ rights to organize and protest from federal overreach. A university should be a place for debate, not political intimidation.

Consumer Privacy & Data Rights

• Pass comprehensive federal privacy legislation giving every American the right to know what data is collected about them, the right to delete it, and the right to sue when companies violate those rights – modeled on Europe's GDPR and building on the bipartisan framework established by the American Privacy Rights Act.
• Strengthen healthcare data protections beyond the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) to cover the apps, wearables, and data brokers that currently operate outside it. Your health data belongs to you, not to corporations profiting from it.
• Prohibit the use of personal data to manipulate consumers through predatory targeting and hold corporations financially accountable when data breaches expose people to harm.

Algorithmic Accountability & AI Oversight

• Require corporations deploying AI in high-stakes decisions—hiring, housing, credit, healthcare—to conduct and publish bias audits and create a federal right to review by a qualified human being with the authority to override it.
• Protect workers from AI-driven displacement by requiring companies to notify and consult with workers before implementing automated systems that eliminate or significantly alter jobs, and invest in transition support and retraining for affected workers.
• Establish enforceable federal standards for responsible AI development, including transparency requirements and civil liability when AI systems cause demonstrable harm.

• Abolish ICE and replace it with an accountable immigration enforcement agency — end illegal raids, family separations, and federal interference with sanctuary cities.
• Guarantee legal representation for every person in immigration proceedings, accelerate case processing by hiring more immigration judges, translators, and staff.
• Pass the American Dream and Promise Act to create clear pathways to citizenship for DREAMers, those who hold Temporary Protected Status (TPS), and long-term residents who have built their lives in this country. 

• Secure full federal reimbursement to New York City for migrant services costs, including shelter, food, healthcare, legal assistance, and school; restore the Immigrant Workforce Integration Initiative; and fund community organizations providing legal aid, English language instruction, and resettlement support. 


• Target federal investment in historically redlined neighborhoods through community land trusts, small business grants, and workforce programs, and strengthen enforcement of the Fair Housing Act.
• Eliminate mandatory minimum sentences, invest in alternatives to incarceration and rehabilitation, and increase funding for education, mental health, and youth programs.
• Address the structural inequity of school funding tied to local property taxes, restore DEI programs in federal institutions, and protect the teaching of history that includes the full American experience—slavery, redlining, Japanese American internment, and displacement of Native peoples.

• Pass federal legislation, including the BE HEARD in the Workplace Act, to protect LGBTQ+ workers from discrimination No one should have to hide who they are to keep their job. Pass the LGBTQ+ Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Act to fund targeted mental health services for a community facing disproportionate rates of depression, anxiety, and suicide.
• Protect access to gender-affirming care. The American Psychological Association (APA) strongly supports and approves of gender-affirming care, defining it as evidence-based, medically necessary, and crucial for the well-being of transgender, gender-diverse, and nonbinary individuals. Ensure inclusive, accurate public documentation for all Americans.
• Restore LGBTQ+ civil rights protections across Title IX, military service, and federal workplace law — and ensure full legal equality for every American regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity.
• Rescind the Mexico City Policy and fight all conditionalities that block US funding for organizations providing gender-affirming care, DEI programming, or LGBTQ+ services abroad — including restrictions on PEPFAR and the Global Fund. LGBTQ+ rights are human rights, here and everywhere.

Restoring the Rule of Law in U.S. Foreign Policy

• Reassert Congress's constitutional war powers — no president may commit American troops to armed conflict without congressional authorization. This starts with repealing the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force, passed three days after 9/11 to authorize action against those responsible for the attacks, but since used to justify military operations in at least 19 countries against groups that didn't exist in 2001 and had no connection to September 11. It must be replaced with narrow, time-limited authorizations that require regular congressional reapproval.
• End unconditional support to authoritarian regimes and condition military assistance on verified compliance with human rights law. Civilian protection and human rights must be the foundation of U.S. foreign policy.
• Re-engage with the UN at all levels as the primary forum for multilateral diplomacy and collective security. The United States shall rejoin ECOSOC and all other UN bodies from which it has withdrawn, resume full payment of assessed dues and arrears, and return to the World Health Organization — restoring the American leadership across the international institutions essential to global stability and human welfare.

Israel and Palestine

• Demand an immediate and permanent ceasefire, protection of hospitals and medical workers, and unimpeded humanitarian passage.
• Support a Jewish State of Israel, a free Palestine, and accountability for war crimes on all sides — Hamas for the October 7th attack that killed over 1,200 Israelis, and Israel for its devastating assault on Gaza.
• Co-sponsor H.Res.876 to halt arms transfers, ensure ICJ compliance, restore UNRWA funding, and cooperate with the ICC. We cannot provide $21.7 billion in military aid while claiming to uphold international law.
• Pass the Block the Bombs Act, targeting the most destructive offensive weapons — bunker busters, JDAMs, tank rounds, and artillery shells — while preserving defensive systems like Iron Dome. This is the minimum action required to comply with existing U.S. law.

• Condition all foreign aid—military and civilian—on verified compliance with international humanitarian law.
• Restore U.S. development and humanitarian assistance and recommit to international partnerships.
• Restore funding to the more than 60 international agencies from which the U.S. has withdrawn. Pursue legal remedies where the president's withdrawal was unlawful. Oppose the systematic dismantling of the United Nations, which supports over 20,000 jobs in New York City and generates $3.69 billion in economic activity for our community.

• Implement a 2-3% annual wealth tax on fortunes over $50 million through the Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act, ensuring that accumulated wealth, not just income, is taxed fairly. If you have $50 million in accumulated wealth, you’d pay two to three cents on every dollar above that threshold.
• Reform capital gains taxation through the Equal Tax Act so that investment income is taxed at the same rate as wages. Right now, money made from buying and selling stocks is taxed at a lower rate than money made from showing up to work. That is why billionaires pay a lower tax rate than nurses and teachers.
• Strengthen estate taxes and close the loopholes, including the stepped-up basis and "buy, borrow, die" strategies, that allow dynastic wealth to pass between generations virtually untaxed, and cancel federal subsidies and tax breaks for luxury housing developers.

• Enforce Congress's constitutional power of the purse—no administration may impound, redirect, or withhold funds appropriated by law, and Congress must reassert its authority to hold the executive branch accountable.
• Conduct a full audit of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spending to identify misallocation of resources and redirect funding toward its core public safety mission
• Build mandatory accountability mechanisms into every federal program, including performance indicators, spending transparency, and regular reporting to Congress, so that the public can measure how federal funds are being spent.

• Mandate community scorecards that measure federal program performance at the district level, putting real data in the hands of constituents about what federal investment is and isn't delivering in their neighborhoods.
• Legislate government-wide performance indicators that track efficiency, speed, and outcomes across federal agencies, with results reported publicly and tied to budget decisions.
• Strengthen the independence and enforcement authority of federal Inspectors General and the Government Accountability Office, so that when waste, misallocation, or abuse is identified, there are real legal consequences, not just reports that sit on a shelf.

• Overturn Citizens United by supporting a constitutional amendment to end the doctrine that unlimited corporate and billionaire spending in elections is protected speech. Until that amendment is ratified, pass legislation to limit the influence of Super PACs by requiring real-time disclosure of all donors and prohibiting coordination between Super PACs and candidates they support.
• End the era of billionaire-funded elections by establishing public financing through small-dollar matching funds and passing the DISCLOSE Act, which would require every political ad to reveal who paid for it, to end the flood of anonymous dark money in federal elections.
• Pass the For the People Act – the most comprehensive voting rights legislation in a generation – to guarantee automatic voter registration, restore the full protections of the Voting Rights Act, and ensure every eligible American can vote without barriers.
• Pass the Ranked Choice Voting Act to require ranked choice voting in all federal primaries and general elections, so that voters can express their true preferences and winners reflect genuine majority support.

• Fund building electrification and weatherization for New York City's aging housing stock, reducing both emissions and energy costs for low-income residents.
• Invest in grid infrastructure to handle offshore wind capacity and streamline federal permitting for offshore wind development.
• Rejoin the Paris Agreement and recommit to the emissions standards this administration has abandoned.


• Support the Green New Deal framework to build fossil-fuel-free housing, modernize and expand mass transit, and fund sea walls and climate resilience infrastructure across New York.
• End federal subsidies for fossil fuels and redirect those funds to green energy, grid modernization, and the good-paying jobs that come with them.
• Oppose new interstate pipelines, liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminals, and drilling on federal lands and condition all federal energy infrastructure funding on verified emissions reductions.

• Restore and fully fund the CDC's dedicated pandemic preparedness office, disbanded in 2018 and never rebuilt, and invest in national, state, and local health department data systems, surveillance infrastructure, and workforce capacity to meet legally mandated preparedness benchmarks.
• Legislate U.S. membership in the WHO and ratification of the Pandemic Treaty into federal law, removing the ability of any future president to unilaterally withdraw from the international frameworks that protect Americans from global health threats.
• Legislate a national One Health infrastructure at the CDC and across federal agencies, mandating integration of human, animal, and environmental health surveillance to detect and prevent diseases that jump from animals to humans before they become outbreaks, with dedicated funding and staffing that cannot be eliminated by executive action.
• Mandate federal investment in a whole-of-government pandemic preparedness plan with legally binding readiness standards for every federally funded institution, including schools, elder care facilities, prisons, public housing, and hospitals. When the next pandemic hits, no vulnerable population is left behind, and no institution is starting from scratch.

• Fund a federal climate and health research and response program at the NIH and CDC, tracking the growing health burden of extreme heat, wildfire smoke, flooding, and severe storms, and developing evidence-based clinical and public health responses.
• Address the northward spread of mosquito- and tick-borne diseases driven by warming temperatures, funding surveillance, prevention, and treatment programs in states and cities that were previously considered low-risk, including New York.
• Require HHS to develop a national climate and health adaptation plan with targeted investments in cooling centers, heat emergency protocols, air quality monitoring, and climate-resilient healthcare infrastructure in the most vulnerable communities.
• Legislate that all federal environmental standards—including air quality, water quality, and chemical exposure limits—be regularly updated to reflect current scientific evidence on the health impacts of a changing climate.