Issues

In my time as a foster care social worker, I've provided care for and even specialized in case management for children and teenagers who either had a history of trafficking, or were at high-risk of being trafficked again. This battle is personal for me.

I know what it means to work alongside lawyers and judges to keep children safe and hold adults accountable. People will tell you that I don't have experience in the court room. They're right. Instead, I have experience doing boots-on-the-ground, 24/7 care for children to do my part in keeping them safe. Traffickers and pedophiles don't run on a schedule and neither do I. I've gotten children out of dangerous situations, I've documented run-in's with possible traffickers, I've helped children's judges gather evidence, and I intend to continue doing that in Washington D.C. to help put every pedophile in power behind bars.

(This topic was last updated on 5/13/2026 to better reflect my professional experience.)

Due to the recent actions and blatant disregard for human life, we must not accept anything less than the abolishment of ICE. This agency is well past the point of reform and their actions have proven that they are more of a danger to our communities than anything resembling help and safety. There is no reforming hate.

To help and encourage the next generation of immigrant Americans, we must make immigration easier, safer, and cheaper. Additionally, we must right the wrongs of our previous xenophobic policies. I propose a program to allow undocumented Americans the ability to formally begin the immigration process without the threat of legal recourse or deportation.

This program would not only empower disenfranchised and marginalized Americans, it would allow them to more formally contribute and participate in their communities through official employment and paying income tax. Shortly after the implementation of this program, we would be able to deduce that those individuals who are still undocumented are, in fact, here in bad faith. We could save money by having local and state law enforcement handle these rare fringe cases instead of a bloated, redundant, and costly ICE agency.

Relative Sources:

NPR - How ICE grew to be the highest-funded U.S. law enforcement agency

Kansans are suffering and Healthcare executives are thriving. The profit incentive of the healthcare industry is inherently designed to harm Americans. There is a reason your treatment is always denied: they want your money without actually helping you. To boot: every year they pay off legislators to try to pass bills to hold insurance companies less and less accountable for denying your right to medical care.

In a United States with universal healthcare, not only would your medical needs never get denied, but the overall system would be 13% cheaper than what we are currently paying as a nation now.

Politicians that are lining their pockets with healthcare PAC money try to scare you telling you that it would raise your taxes. It would. But, it would also significantly raise your paycheck from your employer since you no longer need a company healthcare plan. You also wouldn't need to pay premiums or deductibles. Not only does universal healthcare optimizes our paychecks by saving us up to 13%, it also helps the lives of every American.

Relative Sources:

National Center for Biotechnology Information - National Library of Medicine - Improving the Prognosis of Healthcare in the United States

Without question, the federal minimum wage must reflect the actual needs of Kansans while also restoring the American dream. The working class once had a capital power to choose to lead a life where a family of four could live comfortably on a single source of income; corporate profit margins have taken that from us. In 2025, working $7.25 an hour, 40 hours a week, for a year ($15,080/year) still leaves you around $500 shy of the individual/1-person family poverty line. The 2025 4-person family poverty line $32,150. Why do we allow our fellow Kansans to live so close to poverty when we have the ability to fix it. While various organizations will report different numbers, we know the new federal minimum wage must be at least $20 an hour.

In the long run, the only true solution to combat wage theft and achieve true financial empowerment for American laborers is to introduce legislation that puts a pay-ratio cap into place (i.e. a CEO/owner can only make, at most, 50 times more than the lowest paid employee). Any other solution would simply decay due to runaway economic inflation.

Relative Sources:

Healthcare.gov - Federal Poverty Level

Our social security program is silently in it's death throws. With the current trajectory set in place by DOGE, some expert say that our social security program could be completely insolvent as early as 2032.

We currently live in a nation that over-prioritizes the DoD and DHS budgets while simultaneously sending over $40 billion to foreign countries like Argentina. That is your money, and it could be used to actually help Americans. We have the ability to fix looming threats like the social security crisis, but our current administration and representatives instead choose negligence, or worse, privatization. We have to invest more of our current federal budget into social security to: 1) stabilize the balance, and 2) increase cost-of-living adjustments in order to better align with reality.

Regarding the links below, I value their analysis but not their solutions. There are bad faith experts amongst the social security conversation that want to involve trust funds or other privatized "solutions." Let's be clear: they aren't solutions, they are methods of kicking the can down the road and indebting our country to financial elites even more than we already are.

Relative Sources:

Social Security Administration - The Future Financial Status of the Social Security Program

Brookings - The Real Issues Facing the Social Security Program Aren’t Inefficiency or Fraud

Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget - As Social Security Turns 90, It's Racing Towards Insolvency

Politicians and candidates love talking about affordability... yet never actually give any meaningful, long-term solutions to the issue. It is a lot of empty talk.

The truth is that affordability cannot be discussed in isolation of any other topic—it is the end result of dozens of other topics and policies that shape our communities. It is a final score, not a single issue.

All of all the policies and positions I support positively effect affordability. I encourage you to read them by continuing through this page. If you have any other questions or notice any omissions, please do not hesitate to reach out to our campaign at the "contact" tab above.

It is simple: Elections should not be bought. They should be earned. The ability for PACs and other bad faith entities to pump unlimited amounts of money into campaigns must end. We must push for our elections to have a higher sense of integrity by ending Citizens United.

Once elected, whether at the federal, state, or local levels, officials should not be holding or trading stock in any capacity. This goes for their families as well.

We must expect a higher standard of accountability from our elected officials. I am here to meet that standard.

One of the core crises that Trump's Big "Beautiful" Bill created is that of the ever-increasing healthcare deserts that significantly affect our rural communities. Since July, over a trillion dollars of cuts to Medicaid and the Child Health Insurance Program (CHIP), as well as an additional $120 billion in losses to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), have affected the people that rely on them the most to keep their families safe and fed.

In our own district, Rock Regional Hospital in Derby closed just at the start of 2026. Now, Pratt Regional Medical Center, along with other rural cornerstone medical facilities across the nation, face the looming reality of closing their doors. People will die. Communities will suffer. Highly trained medical professionals will go without work. We must reverse these policies and create robust financial supports to keep these crucial medical facilities open and well-staffed, whether they are "profitable" or not.

Relative Sources:

Center for American Progress - The Truth About the One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s Cuts to Medicaid and Medicare

KAKE News - Concern grows about Pratt Regional Medical Center after it defaults nearly $1.6M

We must defend and rebuild the Department of Education to ensure the enforcement and protection of core policies like the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). At the federal level, we must create safeguards and guidelines that require a higher level of equity between school districts' funding at the state level to protect marginalized districts. As well, we should always be striving for the next milestone of empowering the next generation: universal higher education and student loan forgiveness.

Relative Sources:

Learning Policy Institute - How Money Matters: Education Funding and Student Outcomes

Bad faith actors cannot be allowed to consistently use the rights of others as bargaining chips and distractions to seize more financial gains and power in D.C. We must protect trans rights and gay marriage permanently by enshrining them as amendments in the Bill of Rights. We must also create federal standards and safeguards so individual states can't marginalize and disenfranchise the transgender community with draconic policies involving birth certificates and state-issued IDs—issues that current Kansans are facing.

Relative Sources:

ACLU - Cases - Kansas v. Harper

Kansas has always been a state where women's rights are championed. I was proud to have seen us be the first individual state to vote 59-41 to maintain the right of reproductive autonomy. Despite this landmark 2022 victory, opposition at every level is still dead-set to overrule the will of the people time and time again. We must end this discussion for good and enshrine women's reproductive autonomy as an amendment in the Bill of Rights.

Relative Sources:

KCUR - Kansas Republicans again propose near-total abortion bans, despite constitutional protections

Trump's tariffs have wreaked havoc on our local farming communities. With backed up supply chains, artificial and circumstantial international competition, and this administration bailing out MAGA-aligned foreign entities such as Argentina via beef imports, our farmers are suffering. We must end Trump's tariffs and reinforce economic incentives to use logical, local supply chains with our farmers' wellbeing at the center.

Relative Sources:

CBS News - Trump signs executive order quadrupling beef imports from Argentina

Driven by profits, megacorporations every year are sending more and more jobs overseas at the cost of this nation's ability to independently manufacture for it's population. They send these jobs to countries that our administration regularly antagonizes and threatens with military action. If conflict were to arise, we would be crippled in a matter of months due the corporate elite's dismantling of our stateside production. We must incentivize—and in some vital markets, require—large scale manufacturing to return to U.S. soil, reclaiming millions of meaningful jobs in the process.

Relative Sources:

SmarterEveryDay - I Tried To Make Something In America (The Smarter Scrubber Experiment) - Smarter Every Day 308

While I support the true end goal of Universal Healthcare for all Americans, making some VA programs redundant, I know that aspiration is a process that will take time, both culturally and administratively. What we can do right now is work to reverse the cuts to the VA that the Trump administration and DOGE have done, like the layoffs of 40,000 employees in fiscal year 2025 of which 88 percent of those who left the Department were health care staff, including doctors, nurses, mental health clinicians, and other frontline employees.

I've seen firsthand how the VA helped my grandfather, a drafted Vietnam army veteran, my father, an army infantryman turned logistics officer, and what it will eventually do for myself and my brother, a marine officer in flight school. We must protect the VA today and restaff it to work as well as it did prior to Trump's second term.

Relative Sources:

U.S. Senate Committee on Veteran Affairs - Cuts, Cover-Ups, & Chaos: Blumenthal Releases Report Exposing Harm of the Trump Administration's Ongoing Assault on Veterans

Lets do some conceptual math. If nearly 31% of all wealth in America is held by the 1%, and the 1% consistently obfuscates and manipulates their income through stocks and other means to evade income tax, and we've historically allowed megacorporations to get away with sidestepping most, if not all, taxes year after year... our local, state, and federal budgets are operating far from full capacity. By holding the financial elite accountable for stealing the value of hundreds of millions of Americans' labor, as well as creating laws that account for the ways they receive their "income", we could increase the federal budget significantly without touching a single penny in your paycheck. Expensive policies like Universal Higher Education, Universal Childcare, and even Universal Basic Income, would instantly transform from grand aspirations into trivial lay-ups.

For Kansas Congressional District 4, this would not affect any tax-paying citizen that calls this area home. Well... except for Charles Koch.

Relative Sources:

Inequality.org - Billionaire Wealth Concentration Is Even Worse than You Imagine

The Fact Coalition - Under U.S. Pressure, OECD Agrees to Deal Allowing Continued Tax Abuse by Big U.S. Corporations

Americans for Tax Fairness - GOP Senate Votes to Enable Trump’s Massive New Loopholes for Wealthy Corporations to Evade Paying Their Fair Share

Year after year, politicians on both sides of the aisle throw more money at the Department of Defense for less and less results. Since the first independent financial audit in 2018, the pentagon has never passed an audit. Where is that money going? I can tell you first hand it is not being used for meaningful wage increases, enlisted housing programs, dining facility upkeep and food quality, or facility maintenance. It is going into the pockets of defense contractors for bogus, over-costed projects and services that could be done in-house for a fraction of the cost.

We can have today's Department of Defense with the today's operational tempo for $167.5 billion cheaper (or even more) by simply cutting out contractors. We need our military budget to be dictated by the military, not private investors.

Relative Sources:

Project on Government Oversight - DoD Contractors Cost Nearly 3 Times More than DoD Civilians

Just recently, NASA faced a nearly 40% budget cut from the Trump administration. Thankfully, congress rejected these assaults on science and his overall crusade on "intellectualism" by choosing to keep the budget the same (although, it is technically 1.6% less than last year).

Currently, we are wasting money on an Artemis program that is not mission oriented. It has been designed solely to line Elon Musk's pockets. He wants to send up to 28 rockets to orbitally refuel an egregiously oversized landing craft on the taxpayer's dime to perform a single, short-stay moon landing. What is worse? SpaceX is years behind schedule and, due to the slow and systemic gutting of NASA's various departments throughout the decades, the only realistic alternative to getting the Artemis program back on track is Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin. We must keep the sanctity of space science and space travel in the hands of the people, not in the hands of billionaires.

NASA is our leading organization in the tracking of earth science and climate change. We need to be providing NASA with more funding so America's brightest can lead our charge into space as well as give us the data needed to save our environment, all with public interest at the forefront.

Relative Sources:

U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation - Science Survives Existential Threat From Trump Budget as Senate Rejects Gutting NASA, NSF, & NIST

SmarterEveryDay - I Was SCARED To Say This To NASA... (But I said it anyway) - Smarter Every Day 293 - 28:50 for math involving refueling launches for Artemis III

There are no compromises for human rights.

Our ally, Israel, has shown they are willing to use the weaponry provided by the U.S. to launch aggressive and unprovoked attacks on innocent Palestinians, Syrians, and even more recently, dragging us into a war with Iran.

We cannot turn back the clock on the atrocities that have taken place, but we have the power to prevent it from continuing. We need to do everything possible to protect and advocate for Palestinians to have a truly equal platform to speak their truths to the United Nation and other international authorities. We must demand that Palestinians are assured, at minimum, a 50/50 split of land and coastline to operate as an independent Palestine. The current maps cannot be allowed to stand and they must be redrawn with Palestinian economic independence, dignity, and rebuilding in mind. As the United States, we will then need to provide them with aid to help rebuild—it is only right.

We don't have to pit ourselves against Israel, but we must hold ourselves and our allies accountable for atrocities and genocide committed against innocent people. We must stop providing and selling military equipment to Israel. We must condition aid and force them to stop being hostile in the region. If we claim to be the infallible international leader we are, we must prove it with our actions rather than our thoughts and prayers.

(This topic was updated on 5/13/2026 to more clearly state my stance on a 50/50 two independent-nation resolution, as well as updating a pre-March 1st statement regarding Israel's strikes on Iran to now reflect Israel's involvement in the U.S.-Iran War.)

Relative Sources:

United Nations - Israel has committed genocide in the Gaza Strip, UN Commission finds

Britannica - Israel-Iran Conflict

We must support those being wrongfully invaded.

This isn't about the geopolitical positioning of NATO or "holding Russia back", this is about fighting for and supporting the innocent families that call Ukraine their home and want to represent themselves with their own government. As soon as it didn't fit Donald Trump's narrative, he cast this crisis aside and told Ukraine to fend for themselves. Formalizing consistent and regular aid to Ukraine via the House of Representatives and the Senate is what must be done to protect the innocent.

Relative Sources:

Atlantic Council - Why the Pentagon’s ‘pause’ on weapons to Ukraine backfired

Congress has to clamp down on Trump's ability to lead international discussions on the United State's behalf. We need to leave Greenland alone, stop holding Venezuela as a hostage nation for oil, and formally end our outdated disdain and trade embargo with Cuba. We cannot allow ourselves to act as the enemy against those in our own backyard.

Also in regards to foreign affairs, finding more neutral ground with Russia and China to minimize future conflict should be a priority of the U.S. government.

We need to empower all 14 of our territories, such as Puerto Rico, Guam, the Virgin Islands, and others, as well as the state of Hawaii, by reversing the unethical ownership of large swathes of crucial land currently owned by "mainland millionaires" and giving economic power back to their respective local governments. The Jones Act, an outdated policy of only allowing trade vessels of American origin to enter ports of U.S. territories, is significantly impacting residents' quality of life and skyrocketing their cost of living. The Jones Act must be repealed.

With this empowerment, we must also offer territories the ability to separate and operate as sovereign national entities if they so choose. We can no longer justify the exploitation of innocent islands and people because of "strategic ownership".

Relative Sources:

CATO Institute - The Effect of the Jones Act on Puerto Rico

We need to get legacy politicians out of D.C.

In turn, we cannot allow a new generation of legacy politicians to take their place.

I am proud to have taken the U.S. Term Limits pledge to do my part to make sure the voices shaping our nation are of those that have recently lived and worked in our nation, not lived in the D.C.-echo-chamber.

3 terms for the House. 2 terms for the Senate. That is the gold standard and I will fight for it.

(This topic was added on 5/13/2026. Simply put: I missed this topic in my initial writing of this page back in February. It came to my attention I missed it once I took the U.S. Term Limits pledge.)

Disregard for the wellbeing of Native Americans has become the norm for centuries at this point in the U.S. We do nothing to support reservations and allow corporations to regularly get away with desecrating their lands, a further insult to injury. We need a better way to represent Native Americans by giving reservation and tribal community leaders a voice in federal policy. While a final vision would take a lot of refinement and collaboration with Native American communities, meaningful solutions could manifest as an advisory board or even additional tribe-elected representatives being added to the House. Studies show that we need more representatives due to our population size. Why not give representative power to those of communities and tribes here long before the United States was established?

Relative Sources:

Government Accountability Office - Funding and Programs Meant to Help Tribes May Not Be Reaching Them

American Academy of Arts and Science - Enlarging the House

We have a representation issue. Right now, each representative in the House speaks on the behalf of nearly 800,000 Americans. It is no wonder Americans feel like their representatives are out of touch—they simply have no ability to talk to that many people.

Up until 1920, the U.S. House of Representatives was expanding regularly to make sure people were represented in good faith. Year by year for over a century now, our voices continue to get increasingly diluted, representatives feel more removed from their constituents, and the democratic process breaks down as more and more Americans become disenfranchised and stop voting.

Here is my proposed plan to help increase representation in our country:

1) Immediately work to restore the Voting Rights Act and protect policy that promotes democratic equity.

2) Immediately work to use federal legislation to reverse all recent, partisan-fueled congressional map re-drawings. We cannot allow the new norm of states redrawing their maps on a "whim". Representative maps need to be redrawn in unison as a nation.

2) Use the "cube root" approach for expanding the house in preparation for the 2030 election cycle. Using the 2020 census's population of 331,449,281 and taking the cube root, we should have 692 representatives. 257 more than we currently have. There should be consideration for the base number of representatives for each state being increased from 1 to 4, leaving 107 representatives to be doled out using standard apportionment methods. While it would take extra efforts, I would also like to find a way for some representatives to represent Native American reservations and tribes.

3) Using the cube root formula for the 2030 census, have the maps updated for use in the 2032 election cycle. This approach can then be used decade after decade.

Relative Sources:

Mr. Beat - The problem with 435 representatives in the U.S. House

Protect Democracy - Expanding the House of Representatives, explained

No American should have to wait for their state government to come around on the recreational use of low-risk drugs. Marijuana needs to be legalized at the federal level to lower the amount of racially fueled and pointless incarcerations across the country. For the good of our most vulnerable populations, we must decriminalize the possession and use (not sale) of "hard drugs". Instead of throwing endless amounts of money away to privatized prisons, we could instead spend as much as 88% less by sending those with arrested for drug use to rehabilitation programs.

Relative Sources:

The Council of State Governments Justice Center - Prioritizing Prison over Substance Use Treatment Costs Kansans Safety and Money

While America has made genuine progress with wind turbines and solar farms, the third pillar for a surplus-producing, 100% clean power grid is nuclear energy. We need to increase our pace in nuclear power investments and not allow corruption from the oil and coal industries to sway our current or future administrations.

Relative Sources:

U.S. Department of Energy - U.S. Sets Targets to Triple Nuclear Energy Capacity by 2050

The "free market" recently has found a new way to weaponize and profit off of addiction: digital sports betting and even worse, "prediction market" gambling. We must put massive regulations on these industries to combat the predatory practices that take advantage of everyday Americans.

Relative Sources:

STAT News - The rise of sports betting is a growing public health crisis

We are seeing, now more than ever, a corrupt and partisan supreme court that has shielded this administration from accountability for actions that simply and blatantly violate the constitution.

We must end lifetime appoints to the supreme court and begin enforcing term limits. New appointments should not be made by a president, but by vote alongside our normal election cycle so that the highest court in the land is for and by the people.

Relative Sources:

Hank Johnson Government Webpage - Rep. Johnson Re-Introduces Supreme Court Justice Term Limit Measure to Restore Balance, Legitimacy for SCOTUS

Brennan Center for Justice - Supreme Court Must Explain Why It Keeps Ruling in Trump’s Favor

Let's be clear: I want better laws around guns to stop school and public shootings. However, this is far from the time to enact these policies. We have ICE terrorizing innocent Americans and an administration that threatens to send in the national guard every other month to quell protesters. Imagine how much worse and oppressive these state-sponsored actions would be if they didn't have to worry about citizens owning weapons?

For an immediate solution to school shootings, I want to work to put standards in place that require states to more aggressively fund youth-focused mental health and staff a larger number of school counselors in schools. I intend to work with experts in the field of education and child psychology to devise the best solution possible.

(This topic was added on 5/13/2026 following a meaningful conversation on social media.)