Defending the Constitution

Affirming Constitutional rights shouldn't be a partisan issue!

When I joined the U.S. Army, I swore an oath to defend the Constitution and the rights granted to all U.S. persons, not just citizens. That oath does not expire. Once elected, I will hold the executive branch accountable and work to claw back the Congressional powers that have been surrendered to the President over decades.

Protecting First Amendment Rights

I support freedom of speech as guaranteed by the Constitution. Every US person has the right to be heard, to make their grievances known, and to petition the government for redress, as long as they are not causing harm to other people's basic human rights.

The time, place, and manner restrictions created by decades of court precedent are difficult to understand for most ordinary people, and they disproportionately impact marginalized communities and protest movements. I support clarifying and simplifying these rules so that they protect public safety without functioning as a tool to silence dissent. The right to assemble and protest loses its meaning when exercising it requires navigating a maze of permits, buffer zones, and selective enforcement that average people can’t reasonably be expected to understand.

The Trump administration has engaged in a coordinated and consistent campaign to inject supposedly Christian values into almost all parts of the government, working to create a Christofascist state. Aside from being inconsistent with what I – and most people – understand as Christian values of care, community, and compassion, this is an assault on religious freedoms. Freedom of religion means the freedom of every person to practice their faith, or no faith at all, without coercion. It also means freedom from the establishment of any official religion by the government. The separation of church and state is not an attack on religion. It is how religious practice has flourished in this country. I will oppose efforts to enshrine any particular religious doctrine in federal law, to direct public funds to religious schools or institutions, or to use the power of the state to impose one set of religious beliefs on a diverse population.

Enhancing Voting Rights

A democracy that does not protect the right to vote is not a democracy. The United States has some of the lowest voter turnout rates in the developed world, which is not an accident. It is the product of policy choices designed to make voting harder, especially for working people, people of color, and people in communities that have been systematically excluded from political power.

In Congress, I will fight for:

• Automatic nationwide voter registration, so that every eligible person is registered by default without having to navigate paperwork, deadlines, or bureaucracy. 

• A mandatory, guaranteed paid day off for all federal elections, along with free public transit to and from polling sites. Voting should not require choosing between democratic participation and a day's wages. 

• Nationwide standards requiring ballot box access for every voter within a reasonable distance of their home or workplace. 

• Stopping the closing of polling places in working-class and minority neighborhoods, a well-documented form of voter suppression. 

• Constitutional amendments to ensure the integrity and independence of our voting infrastructure, protecting it from political interference and from the corporate influence that has hollowed out so much of our democratic process.

I will also fight to ensure that every US citizen has the ability to vote and have representation within the government. This means statehood for Washington, DC and likely Puerto Rico. Additionally, we must strengthen the representation and rights of residents of US territories including Guam, American Samoa, the US Virgin Islands, and the Northern Mariana Islands. 

Following Due Process and Fourth Amendment Rights

The Fourth Amendment protects all people in the US from unreasonable searches and seizures. The Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments guarantee due process of law. These rights apply to everyone on American soil, not only to citizens, and they apply regardless of whether the government finds them inconvenient.

The Trump administration's efforts to deploy the military on domestic soil, to use federal agents as an instrument of political enforcement, and to strip due process from people the administration decides it does not like, are direct and serious threats to constitutional order. There is no "military or secret police on our streets" exception in the Bill of Rights. Deploying ICE, the National Guard, and other military forces as secret police with unchecked power has already eroded our constitutional rights. The Posse Comitatus Act exists for a reason, and the erosion of that principle over the past year has put every American at risk, regardless of their political views and activities. 

I ardently oppose the deployment of active-duty military forces for domestic law enforcement. I oppose the use of federal agencies to target political opponents, protestors, or immigrant communities without due process. I will support legislation that strengthens judicial oversight of federal policing, limits the use of masked and unidentified federal agents, and restores the basic constitutional protections that every person on US soil is owed.

Stopping Mass Surveillance

The Fourth Amendment cannot be meaningfully protected while the federal government and its private partners build and operate a surveillance apparatus with essentially no oversight. The NSA's bulk collection programs, the warrantless surveillance conducted under Section 702 of FISA, and the growing network of public-private surveillance partnerships like Flock Safety's automated license plate readers have created a system of mass tracking that the drafters of the Bill of Rights would find appalling. Flock's network can now search tens of thousands of cameras across the country, and these systems have already been used to track people seeking abortion care, to surveil political protests, and to feed data to ICE for immigration enforcement. I will support real reform of FISA, including an end to warrantless surveillance of Americans under Section 702, stronger judicial oversight of the NSA, and federal limits on the use of automated license plate readers and other mass surveillance tools, whether they are operated by government agencies or by private companies acting as extensions of law enforcement.

Holding the Executive Accountable

Congress has handed extraordinary power to the presidency for decades, across administrations of both parties, and we are now watching the consequences in real time. Reclaiming the legislative branch's constitutional role is one of the most urgent tasks in front of us.

That means using Congress's power of the purse, its oversight authority, and its legislative power to check executive overreach, regardless of which party holds the White House. It means restoring meaningful limits on emergency powers, war powers, and unilateral executive action. And it means rebuilding a political culture in which members of Congress act as members of a coequal branch of government, rather than as loyalists to whoever currently occupies the Oval Office.

The Constitution is not a partisan document. Defending it is not a partisan act. It is the job I swore to do, and it is the job I intend to do.