What We're Fighting For

I became acutely aware of the cost of healthcare at an early age. When I was in seventh grade, my father worked two jobs, and my mother had a poorly paid job – both worked at night. Because both of my parents were working, I bicycled to catechism class at my church which was only a few miles away, but when it was time to bicycle home, it was already dark. I crashed my bicycle and broke my arm on my way home from catechism class. With my broken arm tucked into my jacket zipper as a makeshift sling, I walked the rest of the way pushing my bike with my unbroken arm. Since my parents were at work, I called my grandmother when I got home, and she took me to a hospital near her house. My father’s employer-sponsored HMO did not cover the emergency room visit asserting that the hospital was out of network. For the next two months, I heard my parents fighting at night about money due to the cost of me going to the emergency room while I laid awake with my arm in a cast. Hearing my parents fight about the money that they did not have despite having three jobs among them indelibly taught me that Americans need to be able to see doctors and get medical attention without worrying about whether insurance will pay. Families should not suffer financial hardship because their children have bicycle accidents. As a preteen, I recognized the desperate need for all Americans to have access to healthcare. Thirty years later, the solution finally had a title: Medicare for All.

In 2019, Congresswoman Jayapal (D-WA) introduced HR 1384 commonly referred to as the Medicare for All Act or M4A, a bill similar to S 1804, the 2017 bill introduced by Senator Sanders (I-VT) that would have given access to health insurance to all United States citizens. In 2021, 2022, 2023 and April 2025, both Jayapal and Sanders reintroduced similar bills (HR 3069 and S 1655 in April 2025). Passing the 2025 bill would have been a monumental win for Americans, but due to Republican and non-progressive Democratic opposition, neither the House nor the Senate voted for the Medicare for All bill. The bill had significant support including 106 cosponsors in the House and 15 in the Senate. Medicare for All bills should be updated and brought forth for a vote in both chambers of the US Congress; Americans are ready for universal access to healthcare.

In the final months of 2025, Congress shut down over an inability to fund the Affordable Care Act with enhanced subsidies consistent with the COVID-19 relief measures enacted a half decade ago. The showdown on healthcare led to the dramatic events of January 2026 where Congresswoman Taylor Greene, a congresswoman with whom I generally disagree but applaud her 2025 efforts to fund enhanced subsidies, left Congress. The US House of Representatives circumvented Speaker Johnson's refusal to put enhanced subsidies to a vote and passed enhanced subsidy legislation with a 230-196 bipartisan vote on January 8, 2026. The bipartisan initiative shows that Americans are ready to provide access to healthcare and health insurance.

If I am elected by the people of Philadelphia to represent them in Congress, I will make it a priority to champion a path that ensures all Americans have healthcare coverage. Whether by enacting the Medicare for All Act or something better, I commit to help providing healthcare access to all Americans.

Fight for $15

Adjusted for inflation, the current minimum wage has approximately half as much buying power as the minimum wage had from 1967 to 1972. Meantime, American workers have increased productivity exponentially over the past 50 years. Now, American workers are essentially compensated half as much for twice as much output. Simply to keep up with inflation, the federal minimum wage should be doubled.

The minimum wage has not changed since 2009; it remains $7.25 per hour. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania follows the federal minimum wage; therefore, Philadelphia employers are not legally required to pay workers more than $7.25 per hour. This needs to change, and organized labor started the fight for a $15 minimum wage more than a decade ago. As a former member of two labor unions, to wit, AFSCME and SEIU, and as a former union steward of SEIU, I support the fight for a $15 minimum wage. As a member of the US House of Representatives, I will fight for a $15 federal minimum wage and demand a floor vote on it.

I personally adopted the fight for higher wages in 2016 when I supported Senator Bernard Sanders (I-VT) in his primary bid for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States. As the majority shareholder and operations manager of USA Tax Service, I could not reconcile my support of the Sanders’s candidacy with my own failure to pay some of my employees at least $15 per hour. I took a leap of faith in 2016 and raised all employees’ wages to at least $15 per hour. Higher wages improved employee retention which obviously increased employee effectiveness. More effective employees led to better client retention. The increase in labor was more than offset by a decrease in marketing, recruiting and training. Based on my success, I would encourage all employers who currently employee people at a rate lower than $15 per hour to try raising their employees’ wages. I bet employers will enjoy the benefits of happier staff, better retention of skilled workers, higher client satisfaction and an overall growth in both top-line revenue and net profit.

I believe that middle-class workers and professionals will benefit from a higher minimum as much as low-wage workers. Because I have worked in the income tax industry for over two decades, I have concluded that the beneficiaries of the deflated minimum wage are large corporations that employ many people but pay them very little. The true victims of the deflated minimum wage are not only the workers who are paid little; low wages hurt everyone who punches a timecard. After reviewing tens of thousands of income tax returns, I am certain that middle-class workers and white-collar professionals pay for low wages while oligarchs amass the benefits.

Many low-income workers are essentially subsidized by the Earned Income Tax Credit, the Additional Child Tax Credit, i.e., the refundable child tax credit, and myriad other programs. To the extent that these programs help needy people, I support them, but middle-class workers and white-collar professionals pay the bulk of the federal income tax revenue that funds these programs. Basically, the low minimum wage compels middle-class taxpayers to pay for the labor that benefits the ultrarich. Amazon and Walmart should be paying their employees better wages; I and other middle-class taxpayers should not be picking up the slack for corporate behemoths like Amazon and Walmart.

There is a second way in which the fight for a $15 minimum wage directly affects middle-income earners. When the minimum wage is only $7.25 per hour, it is difficult for skilled employees to negotiate higher wages with their employers. Raising the minimum wage would provide middle-class employees and labor union organizers more leverage to negotiate higher wages and better benefit for skilled labor.

For the reasons I have enumerated in this policy statement, I am proud to join the fight for a $15 minimum wage.

Freeze ICE and Fight Fascism

As I draft this statement on January 10, 2026, I must start by acknowledging the killing of Renee Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement ("ICE") agent and the forced deposition of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela. The events are horrible and – in the case of Renee Good – tragic symptoms of imperialism and autocracy; two apropos descriptors of the current executive branch.

The recent actions of the Trump administration exemplify the administration’s imperial and autocratic values which are antonymous to the American ideals negotiated by our founders, ratified in the US Constitution and embraced by political and civil rights leaders for the past two and half centuries. Although we Americans have never perfectly executed our ideals, and although we have never fully realized the aspirations etched in the preamble of the US Constitution, we have always strived “to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity…” In our efforts to form a more perfect union over the past two and a half centuries, we Americans have expanded opportunities to work and achieve to people of all races, ethnicities and national origins. America has adopted lines from New Colossus, a sonnet by Emma Lazarus, as our motto; “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” remains indelibly stamped not only on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty but also on the hearts of many Americans including me.

In this policy essay, I identify the underlying problem, i.e., the unfettered authority of the executive branch entrusted to a uniquely unfit executive, and I offer some solutions. I identify both immediate actions that I will take if the great people of Philadelphia honor me with their vote to represent them in the US House of Representatives, and I identify long-term safeguards that I will work on to protect future generations from unfit autocrats.

Presently, everything that I consider truly great about America is under attack from within. On January 6, 2021, five years ago, we witnessed armed invaders attack the US Capitol trying to disenfranchise the record millions of Americans who had duly elected Joe Biden as President. Since returning to the White House, Donald Trump pardoned violent, duly convicted rioters from the January 6, 2021 assault on the US Capitol, and his administration has threatened the civil liberties of all Americans.

The Trump Administration has infringed on the freedoms of speech and press enshrined in the First Amendment. The Trump Administration has outlawed political statements such as flag burning, leveraged the authority of the Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”) to compel ABC to cancel Jimmy Kimmel, has sued several media outlets for publishing accurate criticisms of the administration and has revoked visas of students engaged in constitutionally protected speech. Our freedoms of speech and press are under siege.

The administration is actively violating the First Amendment’s religious freedoms; both as a patriot and as a Christian, I abhor the apparent efforts to institutionalize Christian nationalism as political dogma. The first ten words of the Bill of Rights are, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,” and the next six words of the Bill of Rights are, “or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;” the Trump Administration's adoption of Christian nationalism violates the First Amendment’s prohibition against state-sponsored religion. Speaking as a lifelong Christian, I am personally offended by the Chistian national ideology espoused by Donald Trump and agents of his administration. Christian nationalism does not represent the teachings of Jesus; rather, it opposes the two most important commandments cited by Jesus, i.e., love God and love your neighbors as yourself. Christian nationalism is neither American nor Christian, and the deference that the Trump administration gives to Christian nationalists infringes on the civil liberties of all Americans. While the administration is trying to establish Christian nationalism, it is simultaneously infringing on the free exercise of other religious faiths.

Emboldened by the gargantuan funding of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (H.R. 1, PL 119-21, a/k/a “OBBBA”), ICE now has a nearly unlimited budget. There have been more than 170 incidents resulting in injury reported in the past 12 months, and there are reports that at least 30 people have died in ICE custody. In addition to jailing and deporting undocumented immigrants with no due process, the Trump Administration has also interned US citizens, permanent residents and visa holders without due process; the administration clearly violates the Fourth and Fifth Amendments to the US Constitution repeatedly. The current executive branch has replaced the words of Emma Lazarus; rather than saying, “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” the administration says, “Get out, and stay out.”

Remembering Renee Good, Keith Porter and the 30 or more people who have died in ICE custody in the past 12 months, I am compelled to oppose the asministration's unbridled violence against Americans and relentless attack on constitutional rights. Indeed, when agents of the executive branch of the government arrest people without due process, without warrants, without probable cause, and when the executive branch commits extrajudicial homicide, we all must stand up to tyranny.

If the people of Philadelphia send me to Congress, here are some tactics I pledge to swiftly deploy to stem the Trump Administration’s assault on civil liberties and bridle ICE. I will work with other members of the US House of Representatives to eliminate ICE's budget. I will work to investigate the unlawful searches, seizures and rendition of US citizens and US nationals. Where there is evidence of malfeasance, I will work with states' attorneys general to prosecute the illegal actions of ICE agents. (Prosecutions will need to be done at the state level because prosecuting ICE agents for unlawfully detaining and assaulting people in federal court would only result in pardons from Donald Trump like how he pardoned people who committed crimes at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.) I will draft legislation to cut ICE funding to eliminate the administration’s means, and I will draft legislation to invalidate the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 and restrict the Insurrection Act of 1807 to eliminate the administration’s thin veil of legal justification.

I call on all legislators to actively reduce the authority of the executive branch and erect safeguards to prevent the ascension of a future tyrant. The constitutional framers intended for the legislative branch to be the most powerful, and the framers intended that the executive branch would have only enough domestic authority to effectuate the laws passed by the legislators. The executive branch has grown significantly over the past two and a half centuries, but most importantly, the executive branch has ballooned over the past two and half decades. Congress handed George W. Bush carte blanche authority to mobilize troops without the consent of Congress simply by making vague allegations of terrorism. Donald Trump used the same rationale to kidnap and depose Maduro. Legislatively, I will work on eliminating the president's power to engage in combat without Congressional approval.

In one of the worst Supreme Court decisions issued in my lifetime, the US Supreme Court essentially invented presidential immunity on July 1, 2024. The holding in Trump v. United States allows presidents to do almost anything in their official capacity; however, the legislature still has the constitutional authority to delineate what actions are official and – perhaps, more importantly – make clear what acts are not official. Legislatively distinguishing official and unofficial duties will create frameworks for prosecuting presidents for their worst activities, and I will work with fellow legislators to create a comprehensive list of what executives can and cannot do in their official capacities. For instance, the constitutional prohibitions against foreign emoluments almost certainly forbids the president from profiting from $TRUMP, a meme coin that has been reportedly funded in part by agents of other countries, but without a structure to prosecute the president, he cannot be held accountable for his pecuniary windfall from foreign emoluments.

Preventing future tyranny and mitigating the current administration’s threats to our constitutional rights requires that the legislative branch wield the authority that founders like Alexander Hamilton and James Madison negotiated here in Philadelphia. The founders designed the legislative branch to have the most authority, the authority to enact laws and earmark funding. During the 21^st century, Congress has abdicated its authority, and the Supreme Court has usurped the legislature’s authority positing too much power in the executive branch. If I have the privilege of representing Philadelphians in the US House of Representative, I will work to reduce executive authority and fortify the constitutional bulwark against tyranny.

Data Center Oversight

In December 2025, over 200 progressive climate groups called for a moratorium on data center construction. Senator Bernard Sanders (I-VT) joined the fracas over data centers with his support for the moratorium. I care about wealth inequality, public utilities, privacy, environmental stewardship and environmental racism; consequently, I have watched data center issues develop over the past few years, and I agree with Senator Sanders that a temporary moratorium is necessary for several reasons. In this policy statement, I identify the threats and recommend tactics to address the threats, but because data center construction and operations are emerging issues, I rely on generalities.

My primary concerns about data center construction and operation involve two inextricably intertwined factors: cost and environmental impact. Both construction and operation will impact the environment and raise the cost of living to residents near data center sites. Construction alone will impact the environment, but the extent of the impact is hard to quantity. Construction risks require scrutiny on a per project basis, and as member of the US House of Representatives, I will work to standardize data center construction project review.

Data center operation can affect nearby residents’ cost of living and local ecosystems indefinitely without regulatory oversight. Data center operation requires massive amounts of water and electricity, two essential public utilities. Electricity production almost always involves the burning of fossil fuels resulting in carbon emissions, but increased carbon is only one of the environmental impacts associated with electricity. Electricity distribution requires robust power grids, and retrofitting electrical grids to deliver electricity to data centers will require mammoth infrastructure investment. Several states’ agencies have grappled with strains on their electrical grids due to data center operations including the Public Utility Commission of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and the struggle to deliver electricity to data centers has no end in sight. Data centers require enormous amounts of water – as much as five million gallons per day per large data center. Siphoning potable water from personal use and agricultural use for industrial use will almost certainly affect local economies, individuals' health and food production. Legislators need to protect Americans from the impacts derived from water consumption, and legislators need to ensure that data center operators guarantee that waste water remains unpolluted.

Both the environmental cost and the literal cost, i.e., dollars and cents, associated with electricity and water are especially relevant to the voters of the Pennsylvania 3^rd Congressional District. Harrisburg has greenlit a data center construction project in Conshohocken, a municipality only a few miles away. Increased electricity and water usage will almost certainly impact voters who live in neighborhoods such as University City, Roxborough, Manayunk, Cobbs Creek and Germantown. Many residents of Pennsylvania's 3^rd Congressional District may see prices for water and electricity skyrocket in the next two years if no regulatory safeguards are put in place; now is the time for regulatory restraint on data centers.

Environmental impact and public utility costs are not the only data center side effects that deserve attention. Data center construction and operation risks accelerating wealth disparity, compromising Americans’ privacy and exacerbating environmental racism.

Arguably, data are the unofficial currency of the 21^st century, and whoever controls the most currency wields the most wealth. Concentrating data in so few hands will accelerate wealth accumulation among people who are already very wealthy, but Alaska has modeled a solution to the wealth gap for half a century, and using the Alaska Permanent Fund as an example, Congress has a viable tactic for curbing greater wealth disparity.

In his 2020 presidential campaign, Andrew Yang compared data to petroleum in the 20^th century. Citing the Alaska Permanent Fund, Yang presciently argued that data collection should be taxed, and a dividend should be paid to Americans for the collection and use of their data. I agree with Yang, but I note that on the stump he acknowledged that his platform relied heavily on the work of Andy Stern, the former president of SEIU, the union for which I previously served as a steward. I credit both Yang and Stern with identifying the Alaska Permanent Fund as a paradigm for preventing a massive wealth gap derived from data collection. As a member if the US House, I will work toward compensating Americans for their data to prevent exacerbating wealth disparity.

Data centers may compromise individuals' privacy. When so much data about so many people is housed under so few roofs, I fear that data breaches may increase identity theft and other forms of misappropriation of people's personal information. I call on Congress to strengthen safeguards to protect Americans' privacy.

Data center construction has justifiably been associated with environmental racism. For instance, Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company xAI, developed to support the Grok chat bot, has been accused of methane emissions that may have affected the health of residents of Boxtown, a Memphis neighborhood. Congress must prevent low income and minority neighborhoods from bearing a disproportionate amount of the brunt of data center construction and operation.

I recommend a moratorium to allow legislators enact guardrails before data center construction continues. Regarding the additional strains on public utilities, owners of data centers need to pay the cost of retrofitting power grids pay premiums for electricity and water. Taxpaying Americans should not need to fund infrastructure and public utilities that primarily benefit Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Peter Thiel. Congress must prevent price hikes on public utilities precipitated by data center utility consumption. Congress needs to enact air and water safeguards to protect Americans from data center pollution. Until we have firm protection for residents and strict environmental standards, I support a moratorium on data center construction.

Having grown up on land that had been my grandfather and great-grandfather's dairy farm in Western Pennsylvania with well water and no public infrastructure for potable water, I witnessed the adverse environmental impacts of unregulated commerce first-hand. When I was very young, my paternal grandfather died from lung disease, possibly Farmer's Lung, a disease that affects farmers akin to how Black Lung affects coal miners. As early as kindergarten, I knew that agriculture, though vitally important, impacts local ecosystems and the people who rely on them. Seven miles away from where my paternal grandfather died of lung disease, my maternal grandmother later died of cancer of many varieties – stomach, brain and bone marrow. Although I don't know for certain, I personally believe her myriad cancers were precipitated by her well water that was spoiled by an unregulated trash dump near the farm that once belonged to my mother's ancestors. These personal losses directly influenced my passion for environmental oversight.

In the 19^th and early 20^th centuries, the economy of Western Pennsylvania relied on Bituminous coal mining. Due to oxidation from nearby coal mines, the aquifer that supplied water to my family’s well produced red, rusty water which was unfit for cooking and drinking – probably even bathing. At great expense to them, my parents had to drill a second well that was much deeper when I was in elementary school. In the 1980s, my father worked as a social worker and my mother worked at nearby hotels cleaning rooms for about $1.25 per room; consequently, our family did not have the financial resources to drill a new well, but our safety required clean water. Drilling the deeper well financially burdened my parents for years.

While a law student, I was the president of the Environmental Law Society and interned with the United States Army Corps of Engineers where I liaised with the Department of Justice and the Environmental Protection Agency to prosecute polluters of the San Francisco Bay. I have cared about environmental protection since childhood and worked on environmental regulation since 2000.

Historically speaking, both Republicans and Democrats have stewarded the environment; environmental oversight became bitterly partisan mostly in the past two and a half decades. Before becoming the essential Bull Moose, Republican Theodore Roosevelt signed the Antiquities Act of 1906 that recognized the need to preserve natural resources and empowered the federal government to establish National Monuments. With bipartisan support in both the US House of Representatives and the US Senate, Congress overruled Richard Nixon’s veto of the Clean Water Act in 1972. Democratic President Lyndon B Johnson initially signed the Clean Air Act into law in 1967, and Republican George H. W. Bushed endorsed the 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act that effectively ended acid rain. The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act a/k/a Superfund, was signed into law by Democrat Jimmy Carter, but the first Superfund projects commenced under Republican Ronald Reagan.

In the early 2000s, the Overton window shifted, and the narrative adopted a decidedly libertarian tone. Since then, opponents of the environment have run up the score. Carbon offsetting, the right-wing environmental position regarding greenhouse emissions of the 1990s, became the legislative standard pushing out the 1990s left-wing position, i.e., carbon emissions elimination, altogether. Simultaneously, Republicans have significantly weakened the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act with financial backing from the fossil fuel industry. There has not been a Superfund project approved since Donald Trump returned to the Whitehouse in January 2025.

Over the past decade, new environmental concerns have arisen that materially and detrimentally impact Americans. For example, we now know that microplastics exist in all water on Earth and in the atmosphere around the Earth. Likewise, we now know that PFAS (Perfluoroalkyl and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances) may last forever. While enviros like me have been losing political and legislative battles for years, new battlefronts have emerged.

Despite the many environmental threats, there is hope. In early 2019, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Senator Edward Markey (D-MA) introduced the Green New Deal. Although the framework was non-binding, its tenets directly influenced President Joe’s Biden’s Build Back Better agenda. The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 demonstrated through various subsidies and initiatives that green energy sources were economically viable.

As a Representative in the US House, I will fight for carbon sequestration, methane and other greenhouse gas reduction, PFAS regulation and plastic reduction. I will work to create careers in green industries that provide American workers financial stability and professional dignity. In sum, I will join Representative Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Markey to reintroduce the Green New Deal, but this time, it will not be a non-binding resolution. I will work to make the Green New Deal binding law.