US Congressional District 4

A: Since 1977, Congress has passed all 12 appropriations bills on time exactly four times, and not once since 1997. In every other year, continuing resolutions have papered over the failure, freezing agencies at prior-year funding levels, blocking new program starts, inflating project costs, and handing bad-faith actors a recurring deadline to manufacture crises. Budgets are moral documents, and when they are not treated as such, working people become governing collateral, absorbing the disruption that Congress was too dysfunctional or too cynical to prevent. I will push to eliminate the CR as a governing default by imposing real consequences for missed deadlines, including no recess and no adjournment until the work is done. I support moving to a biennial budget cycle through S.2090, the Budget Reform Act of 2025, which gives agencies the two-year planning horizon that governance actually requires. I support the biennial structure; I do not support using budget reform as a vehicle for the spending cuts and austerity provisions attached to current budget vehicles, and I will not vote for one to get the other.

A: Yes. The immigration system is broken not because reform is impossible, but because one party killed the most serious bipartisan attempt in decades for political reasons. In February 2024, a $118 billion bipartisan bill was introduced. The changes I would pursue build on that framework: fair asylum processing with adequate immigration court resources to clear the nearly 4-million-case backlog; permanent status for DACA recipients and long-term TPS holders; right to counsel in immigration proceedings; and repeal of the OBBBA provisions stripping lawfully present immigrants of healthcare and nutrition access. The 2024 bill proved the votes exist when politics don’t get in the way. I will endeavor to build a mirror coalition in the House.

A: No. Members of Congress routinely outperform the market at rates that don’t reconcile with coincidence, because they have access to non-public information about legislation, regulatory action, and federal contracts that the rest of the market doesn’t. The STOCK Act of 2012 was supposed to address this; it has not, because disclosure requirements without enforcement are not accountability, they are theater. I would support a full ban on individual stock trading by members of Congress and their immediate family members for the duration of their service, with mandatory divestiture into blind trusts or broad index funds upon taking office. I would also support strengthening the STOCK Act with real penalties, automatic referral to the Ethics Committee for late or missing disclosures, and public real-time reporting rather than the current 45-day lag that allows trades to be completed and profits locked in before anyone can see them. The public’s loss of confidence in Congress as an institution is directly tied to the perception, often accurate, that members are legislating for their portfolios rather than their constituents.

A: The most sustained act of standing up to authority I can point to is this campaign. Running for Congress against an incumbent in a district where the political ecosystem has already decided the outcome requires confronting a specific kind of institutional authority; the kind that works through assumption rather than argument, that uses access, money, and endorsements to signal who is serious before the voters have any say. I chose to run anyway because I believe the people in this district deserve a proactive representative who understands that implementation matters more than incumbency, that proximity to power is not the same as accountability to the community, and that the measure of a candidate is not whether the establishment approves but whether the district is actually being served.

A: What Congress is missing and has been missing is someone who understands how to implement and deliver. Congress is full of lawyers who know how to argue and politicians who know how to campaign. What it lacks are people who have actually managed public resources at scale, navigated federal funding requirements, built coalitions across agencies, and been accountable for outcomes rather than rhetoric. I am on a team that manages an $11 billion capital program. I know what it looks like when federal investment works and when it doesn’t, and I know the difference between a policy that sounds good in a hearing room and one that actually gets implemented in a community.

A: Congress needs to stop governing by crisis. I would end automatic appropriations for congressional salaries so members have an incentive to pass a budget on time, and I’d guarantee that federal workers are funded at the previous year’s level during any lapse so they’re not used as leverage. We also need to get back to a clean budgeting process. Spending bills should only be about funding the government, not for unrelated policy demands. If members want to pass separate legislation, they should do that through the normal legislative process, not by holding the budget hostage.

A: I support abolishing ICE. Immigration is a civil matter, and placing it under the Department of Homeland Security has led to an enforcement system that relies on detention, family separation, and violations of due process. We need to fundamentally restructure how immigration is handled by moving it out of DHS and into a civilian agency focused on services, legal processing, and accountability. That includes ending detention, banning family separation, restoring due process, and holding elected and appointed officials accountable for abuses of power.

On bipartisan support, I’m focused on outcomes. There is broad public support for keeping families together, ensuring due process, and creating a functional immigration system. I’ll work with anyone willing to move those priorities forward, but I’m not willing to compromise on basic human rights to get a deal.

A: No. Members of Congress shouldn’t be allowed to trade individual stocks. It’s a clear conflict of interest, and people should never have to wonder whether decisions are being made for the public good or personal profit. I support banning individual stock trading outright and strengthening enforcement of insider trading laws. I’ve also made a personal commitment not to own individual stocks.

A: In grad school, I developed a proposal to expand access to reproductive healthcare on campus, including things like contraception and safer sex products. When I brought it to my campus health center, I was told it wasn’t a priority and they wouldn’t invest in it. Instead of dropping it, I spent over a year researching student needs across Maryland and found the gaps were statewide. I took that work to a state lawmaker, helped draft comprehensive legislation, and worked alongside her to pass it for every public college in the state.

The policy required campuses to provide or connect students to the full range of reproductive healthcare services and ensure access to contraception and education. I later worked on implementation with those schools. That experience taught me that when institutions say no to something people need, it’s often a sign the solution has to be bigger than the institution.

A: I’ll bring integrity and a willingness to fight for the people I represent. So many of our elected officials are more focused on protecting their own positions or responding to party pressure than on delivering for their constituents. That destroys trust and leaves people feeling like no one is actually on their side. I’m also bringing a different kind of leadership. I’m not interested in quietly holding a seat. I’m running to use it to speak up, challenge broken systems, and fight for change for working-class people.