POLICIES & GOALS

Nothing is more urgent for Democrats than stopping the brutal assault on federal career public servants, and rebuilding the critical federal programs that Trump has gutted. 

My last day on duty in the federal government was July 14th, and I retired effective the 1st of October, so I have seen firsthand the efforts of the Trump Administration to destroy the Federal government, both through wholesale liquidation of critical federal agencies like USAID and programs. Our education, healthcare, public health, scientific research, global humanitarian assistance, and disaster preparedness and response systems have been hit particularly hard. Critical federal systems Americans need for their very survival—systems like food safety inspection, medical research, infectious disease response, and lifesaving natural disaster response—are being dismantled. 

The important thing for all Americans to understand about the Trump-DOGE destruction of the federal government is: the attacks on the federal workforce are key. Federal workers are being illegally fired, and hundreds of thousands of others of us have been forced to retire by a sustained psychological operation of what Russell Vought calls “traumatizing” patriotic federal workers. 

Since inauguration day, collectively more than two million years of experience and institutional knowledge has been lost. To be clear: the federal government will never be able to recover, if we do not prioritize the federal government workers. 

So for me, restoring the federal workforce, and the lifesaving critical programs of the federal government that Trump is destroying, is the highest priority. If Democrats win the majority, or if Democrats win the White House in 2028, no other policy goal for the American people that we want has any chance of success if we don’t reconstitute the federal executive branch’s career workforce. This is why Trump, Vought, Musk, and their crew have made crushing federal workers their very highest priority—because it is the key for Trump to make his policy changes permanent and irreversible. So it must be our #1 priority too.

If Democrats win the majority, we must immediately take these steps to turn things around:

• Write into statute that the president has no authority to impound, repurpose, or reprogram any funds. 

• Clarify unambiguously in the language of the Anti-Deficiency Act that any Cabinet Department or agency head or subordinate who eliminates a program created by Congress, or redirects appropriations without explicit authority from Congress, commits a criminal act.

• Legislate the immediate restoration of critical programs and agencies destroyed by Trump, including USAID and key offices in CDC and US Department of Education. The law must include monthly reporting requirements to Congress from Cabinet Departments and agencies about progress to restoration.  Specific timelines for restoration of programs and rehiring numbers of workers must be set.

• Create a Direct Hiring Authority authorizing immediate, expedited rehire or return to duty of any career federal official, civilian or uniformed, who exited service after Inauguration Day. Federal workers must be able to be rehired in a non-competitive, instant process.

Additionally, Democrats together need to pass new laws to better protect and empower federal career officials, and help fix our over-politicized government. These include:

• De-Politicizing Government. There are far too many non-Senate-confirmed (Schedule C) political appointees in government. Over the last several presidential administrations, Red and Blue alike, power has been increasingly concentrated in the hands of non-Senate-confirmed political appointees, and taken away from career professionals. No one else would run anything like this: with total amateurs giving orders to seasoned professionals. But political appointees are in almost all cases amateurs, who give orders to career executives, who are professionals. We need to shift the pendulum away from political appointee power to career officials.  I propose that we eliminate Schedule C. The only politically appointed positions in government should be specifically created by Congress in statute, and most of them should be Senate-confirmed. Let the professionals, with experience, manage government again, not the inexperienced amateur who worked on the president’s campaign, or the 22-year-old whose parents are big fundraisers.

• Resurrecting Independent Oversight. Trump, with complicity from his usual enablers on the Supreme Court, has demolished the system of Inspectors General, civil rights ombudspersons, and every other independent check on executive power. We need a new system, with oversight agencies appointed by Congress but not subject to firing by either Congress or the White House, that investigates potential wrongdoing and makes reports not just to the Department of Justice and Congress, but also the Attorneys General of the states and the public. 

• Modernizing the Hatch Act. The Hatch Act was intended to be a protective wall between career professionals in government and the political system. But today the Hatch Act is the rope used to tie career feds’ hands behind their backs while political appointees punch them. Kristi Noem can use tax dollars to turn our airports into propaganda mills, but ordinary feds face severe penalties for even acknowledging that the abuse they are taking is wrong. We should update the Hatch Act to create criminal penalties for political appointees who use federal funds for campaign propaganda, while freeing career feds to openly oppose political attacks on their families and livelihoods. 

• Ending the Shutdown Circus. Congress’ dysfunction has made government shutdowns due to a lapse in appropriations commonplace now. This must end. We need legislation that would impose consequences on every member of Congress in event of a shutdown. For example, if Congress fails to pass a budget and a shutdown ensued, that should trigger immediate recall elections for the current member. Every seat would stay with the same party, but that elected official must step down and be replaced. Alternatively, in the event of a shutdown, House and Senate leaders in both parties are automatically disqualified from leadership posts and new leaders selected. Currently, members of Congress pay no price for the enormous harm they inflict on feds and American citizens with their shutdown tantrums. We must make the people who cause shutdowns—Members of Congress—also face penalties when they happen. 

If Democrats remain in the minority, we must:

• Conduct our own investigations, inviting Republicans to join but not delaying if they refuse, into the impacts of Trump’s assault on the federal workforce. We need the American people to hear from federal workers and experts on the harms created by the assault on our public servants and their agencies.

• Wage a campaign of direct in-person oversight of federal executive branch operations.

• Provide material and moral support to federal workers’ unions and others suing the Federal government. 

• Active support, participation, and encouragement of protests designed to protect federal workers and restore federal programs.

• Publicly pledge, to send a message to Republicans now, that when we are in the majority we will actively investigate whether laws have been broken now, and we will compel the next Democratic Administration to conduct extensive criminal and civil investigations of Trump appointees who violated the Hatch Act or civil service protection laws. 

• Make a solemn commitment at all levels in the Democratic Party that if we win the White House in 2028, we will appoint former career federal workers to senior positions throughout the government, as the only people qualified to rebuild what Trump has destroyed.

Whether Democrats regain the majority or remain in the minority as a result of Republican cheating through redistricting, I will make protecting Federal workers and getting them back on the job my very highest priority.

The most dangerous assaults on democracy today are being conducted by Trump, Stephen Miller, and Tom Homan using a masked, militarized secret police under the banner of immigration enforcement. The brutal crackdown on our hardworking, law-abiding immigrant neighbors has been so vast and so breathtakingly unconstitutional that it has caught up American citizens as well. 

If Democrats win the majority, we must:

• Defund the president’s secret police. We must reduce the grotesque budget Congress has given ICE.

• Outlaw masked secret police. We must specify in statute that immigration and federal police operations must be by unmasked law enforcement, wearing clearly identifiable agency indicia, names, and badge numbers.

• Kick white supremacists out of uniform. We know that the current ICE hiring bonanza has included January 6th terrorists and avowed white nationalists. We must make membership in white nationalist and domestic violent extremist groups disqualifying to serve in federal law enforcement. No other violent terrorist group can have its members put on federal law enforcement badges and guns; it is time to hold neo-Nazis and other white nationalists to the same standard.

• Restore DHS Ombuds Offices and the Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. Trump, Miller, and Noem eliminated the systems in DHS that protect Americans’ civil rights. Those entities must be restored, with statutes forbidding the president or secretary from firing them, and given new powers to enforce our human rights standards on ICE and CBP.

• Hold Full Investigations of Criminal Wrongdoing by ICE.  Kidnappings, extortion, police brutality, unlawful detentions of American citizens are all illegal. We must investigate those crimes, link them to specific orders by specific leaders, and preserve evidence for state Attorneys General and for the day when a real patriot, not Trump’s lawless puppet Pam Bondi, sits behind the desk of US Attorney General.

• Give State Attorneys General More Authority to Enforce State Laws on Federal Immigration Authorities. When ICE agents commit crimes under state law like abduction or assault, they should have no sovereign immunity or protection from prosecution by state and local authorities. It is also time to give State Attorneys General authority to prosecute the federal crime of “deprivation of rights under color of law” when DOJ is too compromised and corrupt to do so.  

• Outlaw Family Separation. When I was testifying before Congress about family separation in the first Trump Administration, I repeatedly begged Congress to pass a law outlawing separating immigrant children from their parents except under narrow, specific circumstances. Neither the Democratic majority at the time nor the Republican majority since has passed that law. Thousands of children, including American citizen children, are being ripped from their parents right now, because Congress failed to heed my warnings. We need to outlaw family separation once and for all. 

• Close the Concentration Camps. Sites like Alligator Alcatraz and others around the country are black site concentration camps intended to terrorize immigrants into “self-deportation.” Such places are inconsistent with the values of human dignity, due process, and basic rights that Americans hold sacred. They must all be closed. 

• End ICE Human Trafficking. We need to outlaw deportations without due process to third country warzones like Sudan or third-country torture prisons like CECOT. That’s not law enforcement; it’s human trafficking. 

• Commit to Criminal Prosecutions. Every elected Democrat, and every candidate for elected office in the Democratic Party, must commit that when Democrats win the White House, there will be robust criminal investigations and prosecutions of senior officials who orchestrated kidnappings off the streets of our cities and human trafficking efforts to send people without due process to torture prisons in foreign countries. 

• Fix Broken Immigration Courts.  The Executive Office of Immigration Review (EOIR), the immigration court system, is broken and corrupted. We must take EOIR out of Pam Bondi’s corrupted Department of Justice and put the immigration courts where they belong—inside the Judicial Branch. We must have an immigration court system that doesn’t have a 3+ year backlog to hear cases. Fixing the immigration courts would do more to bring the rule of law to immigration in America than any other single change.

• Seek Comprehensive Immigration Reform.  I worked for ten years of my life inside the federal immigration system and I can attest: it is irreparably broken. It is time to end the utterly failed thirty-year experiment in criminalizing and punishing migrants for seeking safety, freedom, and opportunity in our country. We need a new way forward that secures our sovereignty and borders with clear, lawful pathways to admission either for temporary work visas or to join American communities. 

If Democrats remain in the minority, we need to:

• Hold Our Own Investigations. Even if Republicans are too intimidated by Trump to investigate the abductions of American citizens and immigrants off our streets, or the lawless military-style invasion of our cities, Democrats should hold their own investigations. We should work to expose what is happening, document it, and prepare for a future Democratic Administration where lawless ICE agents and their leaders are no longer shielded from prosecution when they commit felonies.

• Partner with Protest Movements. The line of defense against ICE out of control has been community members. Minority Dems need to lead with them, instead of running away from those brave fighters for freedom and the rule of law.

• Refuse to Trade Away Asylum Rights. Joe Biden sold out the immigrant communities he campaigned on protecting when he preserved Trump’s policies blocking asylum rights immigrants have under US and international law. People who flee credible fear of murder or torture in their home country should be welcome to find safety in the US. We cannot continue the weak-willed moderate Dem habit of selling out asylum rights. It doesn’t make us look moderate; it makes us look hypocritical and cowardly.  We must refuse any deals for funding offered by the GOP that require us to abolish lifesaving asylum rights. 

• Change the Narrative on Immigrants. Democrats, including Joe Biden’s Administration, have been weak in recent years, capitulating to the false and racist narrative pushed by Republicans about immigration. To be clear: immigrants are not a threat or a burden. Immigrants make America great.Immigration is the main engine of America’s three greatest strengths: innovation, economic opportunity, and diversity. Without immigrants, America would be poorer, weaker, and above all less fun. Democrats must stop selling a “Stephen Miller Lite” idea that immigration is a problem. Immigration is what makes America great.

I have real-life experience pushing back against ICE human rights abuses, more than most incumbent Democrats can speak of from their whole career. I understand the immigration system from the inside out, and how corrupt and immoral it has become. 

Whether Democrats win the majority in 2026, or remain in the minority, we must show much more moral courage, guts, and fighting spirit in confronting the autocratic and brutal crackdown by Trump, Miller, Homan, and their racist crowd on immigrant families and Americans alike.

As a US Public Health Service Commissioned Corps Officer, I led domestic disaster and public health emergency response and recovery missions in the Obama, Biden, and both Trump Administrations. I am an expert on our systems for disaster preparedness, response, and recovery, and our systems for public health preparedness for future pandemics, terror attacks, mass shootings, and natural disasters. 

Please believe me: Trump, Noem, and Kennedy have been dismantling the national systems that save lives and keep Americans safe in a crisis. We must save these, before the next Katrina or the next COVID costs us thousands or hundreds of thousands of preventable American deaths.

If Democrats win the majority, we must:

• Protect American Families’ Access to Vaccines. Make no mistake: Bobby Kennedy Jr., Dr. Oz, and the other grifters placed on top of our public health system by Trump are in the process of taking away access to vaccines that prevent illnesses and save lives. They are spreading conspiracy theories instead of science, and punishing and firing the real scientists and public health experts. They are motivated by greed, not belief: Kennedy and Oz stand to make even bigger fortunes with their investments in shady alternative health companies. Measles is back in America, and other vaccine-preventable diseases will follow. We must pass laws taking away Secretary Kennedy’s arbitrary authority to keep vaccines from American children.

• Save CDC. CDC is under brutal assault  by Trump and Kennedy. Its leadership—even its political appointee—have been fired by Kennedy for insisting on science instead of supporting his crackpot MAHA ideas. CDC workers have been abused, and m ore than 500 rounds were fired into CDC headquarters by an anti-vaccine extremist who was radicalized by lies from Bobby Kennedy. Programs in injury prevention, communicable disease, and epidemic response have been decimated. We must save CDC, and restore the rule of science there. 

• Require Health or Human Services Professional Expertise to Be Secretary of HHS. The Secretary of HHS should be a doctor or other licensed healthcare professional, or have an advanced degree in public health or human services. Both Republicans and Democrats give the job to career politicians, lawyers for Big Pharma, or grifters like Kennedy. A long career in either healthcare, public health, or human services should be a statutory requirement to be Secretary. 

• Roll Back the Gutting of FEMA. Congress must mandate an immediate return to the Stafford Act system from before this president assaulted FEMA. We need emergency managers back on the job. The president’s Executive Order requiring states and local governments to take care of disasters themselves (which he uses only against Blue states) isn’t just contrary to the Stafford Act, it’s also absurd: we have a federal system precisely because each of the states could never afford to each have their own disaster resources, so instead the whole country shares them. We must restore FEMA, and take it out of DHS, making it its own Cabinet-level agency.

• Reform the Stafford Act. We see currently that Trump is using purely political criteria to decide which states get FEMA assistance in disasters under the Stafford Act. Right now, Maryland is suffering as floods go unaddressed, solely as a way for Trump to punish Blue states. It is time to reform the Stafford Act to take the decision on approving a governor’s request for a Major Disaster Declaration under the Stafford Act away from the president, and entrust it to a  career official, such as the FEMA Regional Administrators, to approve based on objective criteria, not political whims.  Disaster aid is not a bribe or threat for the president to use to get what he wants; we need to pass laws to stop him using it that way.

• Strengthen the Laws Around the FEMA Administrator. The Trump Administration is currently violating the laws passed after Katrina to guarantee that never again would an unqualified person be the FEMA Administrator. Those laws need to be strengthened. In any situation where the FEMA Administrator is not a senate-confirmed emergency manager as required by law, the duties must devolve upon a senior career SES leader in FEMA, not an incompetent political appointee like the one “leading” FEMA now despite having just learned in the job that there is a hurricane season.

• Protect and Expand the US Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. I served for two decades in the world’s only elite uniformed service focused on health. The USPHS has been neglected, defunded, and threatened with elimination under presidents of both parties, but it is an essential weapon in America’s readiness for future pandemics and current climate change-created disasters. It is time for the Corps to be protected better in law, to be led by a career officer commandant instead of two political appointees in rented uniforms, to have a full military-style force management system, and to be expanded in numbers to be the surge force to address areas in the country where healthcare is hard to obtain.

• Restore USAID. In an interconnected world, the public health threats and disasters that strike other countries pose threats to the US in terms of infectious disease spread, migration crises, and political instability. Our national security and the safety of our people depend on our ability to promote stability around the world. Yet our most important resource for doing that was destroyed by Elon Musk as revenge for USAID’s role in overturning apartheid in South Africa. We must reconstitute USAID, restore its operations, and fight threats against us overseas so they don’t come to our shores.

• Build a Disaster Response System for the Global Climate Emergency. While Republicans have made the absurd argument that climate change is real, and many Democrats have made the true but outdated argument that we need to prevent future climate change, climate change has happened. The global climate emergency is everywhere. I have seen it firsthand: fires in Maui, floods in the California desert, hurricanes in Asheville five hundred miles inland. We need to invest in mitigating the effects of the global climate emergency, building more robust disaster preparedness, response, and recovery capabilities in the National Weather Service, FEMA, HHS, HUD, DOT, DOI, and other federal agencies so that Americans are safer and healthier in the face of the emergency that is no longer something we can deny or prevent: it’s already here. 

If Democrats remain in the minority, we must:

• Conduct independent investigations into the destruction of our emergency preparedness and response systems and public health systems. 

• Refuse any budget proposal from Republicans that allows the president to take money away from FEMA disaster response to use for his immigration crackdown.

• Work with the US healthcare and public health community, including groups like the American Academy of Pediatrics, to form a “Shadow CDC” and “Shadow FDA” to provide real, science-based information to American families about vaccines and other public health issues.

• Travel to communities ravaged by climate-related disasters that the president refuses to declare as Major Disasters, to help the people in those communities talk directly to the American people about what happened to them and what they need.

• Support state Attorneys General in their lawsuits against the Administration for denial of required Stafford Act funding post-disaster.

• Constantly refute the lies of Bobby Kennedy and his cronies not only about public health in general, but COVID in particular. 

• Platform disaster survivors and worried parents in Red districts who are being hurt by the president’s policies on disasters and public health, bringing them to DC to confront their own members for selling them out.

• Disrupt proceedings and bring the House and Senate into chaos if we need to, rather than let our lifesaving systems be destroyed. 

Whether Democrats win the majority in 2026, or Republicans successfully cheat in the redistricting process and retain their majority, I am committed to continuing the work I have done for two decades in protecting America’s public health, safety, and national security from diseases, terrorism and violence, and the global climate emergency.

• Restoring Women’s Right to Choose. The biggest single failure of the Democratic Party in 2021-22, when it had the White House, the House, and the Senate, was being unable to codify Roe rights in statute. We must change this. In the majority, Democrats must be stronger and more united next time. We must protect abortion rights and reproductive freedoms. If Republicans stay in the majority, we Dems must fight with whatever tools we have to preserve access to abortion in the states where it is still legal, to stop Makary and Kennedy from taking away medication abortion, and to defend contraception and sex education, the next things the extremists in the GOP are looking to take away.

• Healthcare Access for All. In the immediate term, we must stop the Republican attempt to destroy Medicare and Medicaid and double the premiums on ACA health insurance plans. Long term, we need a more affordable and more equitable health care system. As a service member, my family got Tricare for two decades, the only true single-payer healthcare system in the USA—and it worked great for us. We need to ensure all Americans can access healthcare, and no one goes bankrupt with medical debt anymore. This is achievable, with a Tricare For All-type approach. 

• Defend LGBTQ+ Rights. As a proud, out bisexual man, I have been an activist for LGBTQ+ civil rights my entire adult life. After years of progress, we now see a reactionary backlash from the Republican Party. We must protect marriage equality rights in statute. We must defend transgender people from the hateful rhetoric that treats them as a terrorist threat or as sexual predators, when in fact transgender people are our friends, family members, and neighbors. We must stop the cruel state-sponsored bullying of LGBTQ+ youth. We must push forward for equality for everyone, not special rights for bigots.

• Curb Racist Police Brutality. Before Trump’s election, this country was on a positive path to correct the national problem of racist police brutality and killings of African American and Latino community members. We must return to that important work, and create effective legislative controls on out-of-control cops while supporting the good police who want to help American communities. 

• Create Educational Opportunity. We must save special education, community college, Head Start, child care support, free breakfast and lunch in schools, and other educational programs under attack by Trump. We need to rebuild the Department of Education. We need to stop stealing funding from public schools for private schools. We need student loan forgiveness and reform of the corrupt higher education system. Let’s abolish student loan debt entirely for the future, and replace it with a system of national service. Students who want to go to college, trade school, or grad school should serve their country or their community, rather than borrow money, for federal help with their education. 

• Build An Economy That Works for Working Families, Not Just Billionaires. We need to stop predatory buying of residential homes by big corporations and take other steps to drive down home prices. We must have tax policies where the ultra-rich pay their fair share. The top tax rate, for billionaires only, should be raised to 80% on everything after the first billion. We need to tax wealth at the same rate as work. We need to end corporate welfare and tax credits for the ultra-rich. We need to make child care affordable for working families. We need federal programs to bring green tech jobs to  rural communities where traditional employers are disappearing. We need to have agricultural policy that helps family farmers, not just giant agribusiness. We need to end Trump’s tariffs that are driving up consumer prices. And we need a national living wage of $25, adjusted annually and regionally based on cost of living. We must stop paying for public benefits for people who work 40 or more hours a week, as corporate welfare to their bosses. We must pass laws limiting the ability of private employers to reward executives with bonuses for laying off American workers or sending American jobs overseas. 

• End Censorship. We need federal laws that protect freedom of speech from the attacks MAGA extremists have mounted on libraries, museums, universities, and schools. No more book bans, and no more forcing teachers to stop teaching real American history—including Black History and the history of enslavement and genocide in the US—just because it makes some MAGA people uncomfortable. We should make it a criminal offense for the FCC Chair to abuse his office to intimidate networks from criticizing the president. 

• Stop Shielding Rich Pedophiles. The Epstein Files need to be released, now, and Congress must investigate why the coverup of the Epstein Files occurred, including putting Bondi and Patel under oath. We must stop Trump’s enablers from lying with legal impunity. We know already as a matter of established Court ruling that Trump was found civilly liable for sexual assault—or, in common terms, Trump is a rapist. We all deserve to know if he is also a pedophile. Republicans love to weaponize false allegations of sexual abuse against LGBTQ+ people and their supporters, calling teachers who support their straight and gay students alike “groomers,” but they are hypocritical cowards when it comes to protecting America’s richest child sex abusers from justice.  Democrats must do whatever is necessary to put the Epstein Files before the public, with or without Mike Johnson’s approval.

• Take the Global Climate Emergency Seriously. I support a Green New Deal to realign our economy to respond to the very real Global Climate Emergency happening right now. It is also essential that we have targeted programs to bring jobs to communities affected by climate laws—like coal mining communities, or communities where people work in fracking, or timber communities—so that workers who lose employment when a coal mine closes have a job waiting for them with the same pay and benefits, and represented by the same union, in green tech. We need to invest in rural America as well as inner city America, and bring the digital revolution and the sustainable tech revolution everyplace in America. 

• Support a Just Two-State Solution in the Gaza War. Israel, like the US, has a Far Right government in power that disregards the basic principles that are fundamental to democracies like America and Israel. Like Trump, Netanyahu is an utterly corrupt and unfit leader who uses human rights abuses to distract from his own financial and political crimes and stay in power. In Gaza, we have seen Netanyahu’s government perpetrate war crimes and attempt ethnic cleansing. We must oppose both the terrorism of Hamas against Israeli civilians and the terrorism of Netanyahu and settler extremists against Palestinian civilians. It is time to make US military aid to Israel conditional on Netanyahu respective international human rights standards, including ending the collective punishment by famine being imposed on civilians in Gaza. Too many Democrats in Congress, excessively influenced by AIPAC’s outsize role as the primary funder of many campaigns, have been silent on Netanyahu’s abuses in Gaza and the West Bank, and that has emboldened him. The Democratic Party must reclaim its role as the voice of human rights in US foreign policy. At the same time, we must absolutely reject those voices who use the Israel-Gaza war to inflame anti-Semitism. We must repudiate both anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, commit to an international effort to rebuild Gaza not displace its people, insist upon a two-state solution for a secure Israel and a free Palestine, end terrorism against civilians in both countries, and above all seek a future where Palestinians and Israelis live in peace.

• Level the Playing Field When It Comes to Trump’s Extortion. We all know that Trump uses threats and bribes to coerce people outside government to bend to his will.  Law firms, universities, private companies, media networks, and others who do his bidding get rewarded; those who choose to resist him get punished. Democrats need to commit that whenever we get in the majority, we will make whole any private sector entity that was punished by Trump. And we will impose an appropriate negative penalty on any law firm, university, private company, or media network that capitulated to him. That makes it fair: now companies and schools are free to actually choose what they want to support, because we are promising that the rewards and punishments will be the same either way.