Fight. For everyone.

Judicial reform, fair elections and the protection of voting rights, and an overhaul of campaign finance laws must be at the forefront of any future Democratic agenda.

Our current system prevents the achievement of most other policy objectives. Six idealogues on the Supreme Court with lifetime appointments have essentially claimed a veto over legislative action. Partisan extremists are trying to disenfranchise any group that votes against them. A single billionaire, the richest person on the planet, paid for nearly half of Trump's last campaign – and has been given immense power as a reward.

Even after Trump is out of office, many anti-democratic forces will remain as an obstacle to the lasting and successful implementation of a policy agenda that includes the critical reforms we need to address the cost of living, health care access, climate change, equal rights, and a more just society.

This is why I use the term “priorities” instead of referring to my “platform”. I believe that in our current political environment, efforts to pass legislation that benefit all of us – not just the wealthy – are hamstrung at the start and risk complete nullification if we do not first address the courts, elections, and campaign finance laws.

The reality is that, on most matters of policy, I have agreed with Senator Markey, particularly with respect to the climate crisis. But these are not normal times. My campaign is driven by our current political reality – because until we secure our democracy, any other policy victory would be at risk.

Whatever your specific policy preferences are, we all have a stake in saving our Constitutional form of government and returning it to a place where those policy debates can once again be at the forefront.

The Trump administration is trying to end American democracy.

Fortunately for the rest of us, American democracy is resilient, and destroying it is a complicated and time-consuming process. We must seize that advantage by delaying this administration in every way possible. Senators must deny unanimous consent, place holds on all appointments, and filibuster every one of their partisan proposals.

Delaying their damage is critical, but it is also not enough on its own.

Democrats must constantly offer specific counter-proposals. We must remind the public that we can make things better, and pressure Republicans to join us against Trump’s disastrous policies. Many assume that any Democratic proposal is doomed to fail under the current circumstances - but we cannot let that assumption prevent us from putting forward specific legislative solutions. Every proposal is an opportunity to remind the public what is at stake and to encourage them to engage.

For example, the Trade Review Act of 2025 is an excellent response to Trump’s abuse and misuse of tariff authority. However, Democrats delayed too long before proposing it, and have put minimal effort into pressuring Republicans to support it. We should be offering topic-appropriate solutions more often, and spending more energy publicizing and rallying support for these initiatives.

Most importantly, we must defend everyone.

The Trump administration thrives on division and chaos. They want to isolate us – turning racial justice, gender equality, and LGBTQ+ rights into separate battlegrounds and attack each group in isolation.

Because we are strongest together, and they know that, they fear that. We do not win by picking just one cause. There can be no “strategic retreat” from the rights of whichever group of our neighbors poll the worst this week. The only path forward is to stand together, loudly and publicly, using every media platform, and making use of all the power available to us.

This campaign is about standing up for everyone. Because defending democracy means defending all of its people. It means exposing the administration’s actions for what they are: immoral, unconstitutional, and fundamentally un-American.

The current Supreme Court majority has become a partisan entity. Without judicial reform, we cannot achieve major policy initiatives.

This majority has imagined brand new legal doctrines out of thin air and used them exclusively to advance their partisan agenda. They have made it nearly impossible to be convicted of bribery, and at least one justice has accepted millions in “gifts” from people with business before the court. They ignore precedent and invent history.

A Court that bent over backwards to overturn Roe vs. Wade, gut the Clean Air Act, provide immunity to the President from criminal acts, and prevent some of President Biden’s moderate compromises will never allow necessary efforts at campaign finance reform, voting rights protections, or critical reforms that expand the social safety net.

A Democratic party that is not serious about court reform is a party that is not serious about good governance.

There are many possible ways to reform the Supreme Court and address its many challenges. My preferred approach would start with these:

• Impeach Clarence Thomas for numerous ethics violations, including accepting millions of dollars in illegally undisclosed gifts & refusing to recuse himself from cases that involve his wife.

• Impeach Samuel Alito for numerous ethics violations, including accepting illegally undisclosed gifts from individuals with business before the Supreme Court & refusing to recuse himself from cases on which he had demonstrated bias.

• Institute an enforceable Supreme Court Code of Conduct.

• Institute term limits and appoint Justices on a fixed every-other-year schedule, to ensure each presidential term gets two appointments, leading to a court that is more reflective of the electorate.

I support expanding the court.

Beyond the Supreme Court, an additional reform needed for the Federal District Courts is to end the practice of “judge-shopping”, where lawsuits are filed in unrelated jurisdictions in order to appear before a favorable partisan judge.

A single billionaire paid for nearly half of Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign.

The final cost of purchasing the United States presidency was less than 0.1% of his net worth – about the equivalent to him of an average American buying a new iPhone.

It is unacceptable that we allow such a system to be legal.

Money isn’t speech.

The Citizens United ruling won’t be overturned under this current Court, and we cannot wait for a Constitutional Amendment to strike back against it. Congress should declare that money is not speech and Citizens United was wrongly decided by passing campaign finance reform laws that explicitly reject the premise of Citizens United.

Eliminating the outsized influence of corporations and the wealthiest Americans is the most important step towards cleaning up campaign finance laws, but there are many other steps we should take as well.

We must demand transparency in donations to candidates and elected officials. We need stricter disclosure rules for SuperPACs and “Dark Money” groups. Campaigns should be required to publicly disclose their donors more frequently.

An important part of clean elections is enforcement – we must make sure the Federal Election Commission is fully funded, functional, and non-partisan. The FEC was already underfunded before Trump, and the current administration is making more cuts and attempting to politicize this critical institution. A stronger FEC will be better able to enforce the rules that already exist – most notably, the rules that prohibit candidate coordination with outside groups.

Over the last 15 years, Republicans have passed numerous state-level laws aimed at voter suppression while the partisan Supreme Court gutted The Voting Rights Act. These actions, combined with extreme gerrymandering, have led to a situation where researchers have declared some states can “no longer be classified as a true democracy”.

We need nationwide voting protections.

To start, we must pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act. Those bills would:

• reinstate the protections of Voting Rights Act

• establish automatic voter registration

• make election day a federal holiday

• expand early voting and vote by mail

• improve access for voters with disabilities

• improve access for overseas military voters, among many other necessary improvements.

Improving citizens’ ability to vote is not enough. We must also make sure those votes count. Partisan gerrymandering has led to a situation where party primaries are more impactful than actual election day in most races. While gerrymandering shifts the power to the primary, it is the single-party primary that pushes politicians towards extremes and punishes good faith compromises. In any “safe” red or blue district with a single-party primary, the biggest threat to a representative’s career is a primary challenge that caters to the activist base. We must end partisan gerrymandering, and we must pair that with an end to single-party primaries.

I support a Constitutional Amendment to abolish the Electoral College, and the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPCIV) – which is an effort to effectively end the Electoral College without requiring a Constitutional Amendment. However, any effort to eliminate the Electoral College must be paired with or come after the passage of voting rights protections.