Every year when plans renew, Elle’s insurance company denies coverage for her insulin prescription, demanding proof she still has type 1 diabetes. It’s an incurable disease! I’ve seen and experienced first hand how broken our health care system is and how difficult it is to get the care doctors prescribe. The mixture of frustration, fear and rage that builds up when anything comes between a person you love and the care they need to live is all too familiar to me. 

Corporate monopolies and Wall Street investors have taken over health care. While they make record profits, people in need of care are getting the short end of the stick. More than three quarters of the teams in the NFL are sponsored by a health care company, that’s where our money is going, not to the doctors or nurses helping patients.  It’s absurd! 

Getting people the care they need and can afford is my bottom line. I know we can do better. We must do better. To get the massive change we need, everything should be on the table. But people simply cannot wait years for a new administration, so I’m focusing on action that will make a difference for people now. This is where we start:

• Break up the corporate monopolies taking over the entire health care system, buying up hospitals, primary care practices, pharmacies, everything, and taking a cut at every stop, raising costs for all of us. I’ll fight to stop big Wall Street banks and investment firms building these monopolies and getting richer by raising costs for everyone. 
• Stop big drug companies from ripping us off by charging Americans more than people in other countries for the same medicines. Granite Staters are paying two, three, or even four times more for medicine than our Canadian neighbors. This must stop.  
• Pass legislation introduced by Senator Bernie Sanders to expand Medicare to cover dental, vision, and hearing – essential care that two thirds of seniors need. 
• Prevent AI from making decisions that should be made by doctors. The Trump Administration is getting ready to launch a program that would allow AI to deny coverage and care to people on Medicare – that would affect more than 350,000 Granite Staters. Doctors and nurses should be making decisions about health care, not computer algorithms.

The Supreme Court said clearly: Trump’s tariffs are illegal. Worse, they’re increasing the price of everything, straining family budgets already stretched thin, crushing small businesses, alienating our allies, and disrupting tourism and trade.

It’s critical that the small businesses on Main Streets across New Hampshire, not just the large corporations get their money back. Small businesses are the backbone of New Hampshire’s economy.  They employ the majority of our work force. 

This includes people like Jim from Flight Coffee Company in Bedford. Tariffs drove up the price of his most popular beans, cutting into his bottom line and raising the price of a cup of coffee. The story is the same for Marty in Barrington. His fence company imports lumber and other materials from Canada.

Revlon, Costco, FedEx and other large companies are in court now demanding a refund. I believe Jim, Marty and countless others, as well as the customers who stuck with them through this chaos deserve to get their money back just as much as those giant corporations and I will fight to get them the refunds they are owed.

Ten years ago a first time home buyer was 31 years old. Today, they are 40 – almost a whole decade older. The American dream of owning your own home is slipping away for an entire generation of young people. 

Here’s the problem: one third of all the homes sold in the United States last year were bought by investors. Hedge funds and private equity firms can claim tax breaks when buying homes that aren’t available to the rest of us. The tax code is helping Wall Street buy up Main Street and turn the middle class into forever renters. This needs to change now!

Step one is to end these Wall Street tax breaks for buying up our homes. Next, we need to: 

• Expand support for first-time and middle class homebuyers, as well as the popular Low-Income Housing Tax Credit program. 
• Cut red tape that’s preventing construction of new affordable housing and get serious about federal investment in the skilled trades so we can build new homes faster.   
• Use surplus public buildings and land to create new housing opportunities.
• Preserve currently available affordable housing so communities stop losing affordable housing faster than new units are constructed.
• Remove barriers for faith-based community organizations to participate in housing programs.

It’s time to put the housing market back in the hands of the American people. Otherwise, millions of Americans today in their teens and twenties won’t be able to afford a home in their 40s or even their 50s.

For months ICE agents have terrorized Americans, snatching people off the street, detaining them illegally and deporting them, even breaking into homes, and, as we saw in Minneapolis, killing them in cold blood. 

ICE must be completely overhauled. Agents must adhere to the same basic standards we demand from our local police departments here in New Hampshire. This includes requiring body cameras, banning masks, stopping warrantless searches and ending ICE raids in schools, churches and hospitals. And there will be no ICE warehouses anywhere in New Hampshire. 

As a Portsmouth Police Commissioner in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, I worked with our police department and community members to secure the necessary resources, including de-escalation training, mental health support for our officers, and a re-commitment to community policing practices rooted in accountability and transparency to build trust. This year, all of us have seen how that trust is destroyed when ICE agents violate basic rights and commit violence with impunity. 

I am crystal clear on this: anyone who committed a crime against Americans will be prosecuted.  

Read more about my views on overhauling ICE in this op-ed for the Portsmouth Herald.

Donald Trump and his family are lining their own pockets to the tune of $4 billion through gifts from foreign governments, meme coin and investment scams, selling pardons, sweetheart contracts and more. This is an unthinkable, unprecedented level of corruption. 

Cleaning up this mess demands a new level of transparency and accountability. My campaign is powered by more than 2,600 Granite State contributors and NO corporate PAC money.

Here are additional steps we should take to restore trust:

• Get Dark Money Out: Overturn Citizens United and demand that anyone who wants to spend money on political ads or contribute to political candidates must do it in their own name, just like the rest of us.  
• Ban Insider Trading: Prohibit members of Congress, their families, Supreme Court Justices, and senior Executive Branch officials from owning, buying, and selling individual stocks and certain other financial assets.  
• Lock the Revolving Door: Stop politicians from using their elected office as a stepping stone to a career lobbying, with a lifetime ban on lobbying by former Presidents, Vice Presidents, Members of Congress, federal judges, and Cabinet Secretaries. 
• No Pardons For Sale: If you give more than the federal contribution limit in support of a presidential candidate you and your immediate family are not eligible for a pardon of any kind. 

New Hampshire families and small businesses pay some of the highest annual utility costs in the country.  We can’t afford four years of inaction while climate change accelerates and energy prices continue to rise simply because Donald Trump is in the White House. 

Action is needed now to seriously tackle climate change, increase clean local energy production, and reduce energy costs. These are issues I hear about frequently from voters across the district. Here are some ideas for both addressing climate change and delivering clean and cost-effective energy: 

• Increase local clean energy production: New Hampshire is already home to a number of solar, wind, hydro, and bio fuel companies. We need a lot more. It’s a win-win, creating good paying jobs while simultaneously reducing our dependence on big oil companies and foreign countries. 
• Upgrade our electric grid: To deliver meaningful energy savings we need to address the costs of transmission and distribution, as well as production. Upgrading our grid to allow local storage will help reduce overall grid strain, especially during peak hours saving money for all of us. 

Eliminate home utility bills: The cheapest kilowatt is the one we never use. New housing developments in New Hampshire are already offering homes where families won’t pay a monthly electric bill. You shouldn’t need a new house to make it happen. Retrofitting homes, businesses and other buildings and adding onsite generation reduces costs and our environmental impact at the same time.

I remember watching my grandfather coming home after a day working in law enforcement and removing the painful leg braces he wore as a result of surviving polio as a child. There was no polio vaccine then, but there has been for more than 70 years now. It’s outrageous that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is trying to gut vaccine requirements for polio, measles, and other deadly diseases.  Kids are dying because of his disregard for public health!

Donald Trump and RFK Jr. have destroyed America’s leadership in medical and scientific research, destroying as well the hopes of millions of Americans counting on a clinical trial, new treatment, or new drug to save their life or the life of someone they love. Trump and RFK, Jr. have emptied labs, sent researchers and scientists packing, upended and killed years of progress that promised cures to deadly diseases such as cancer, and more.

In place of these reckless and irrational cuts, we must restore investments in life-saving medical research and stop the brain drain that has our brightest scientists leaving to work in other countries. Millions of Americans have seen their lives fundamentally changed for the better as a result of medical innovation in this country. 

For their sake and countless others we have to get doctors and medical experts back in charge of care. No more conspiracy theorists in trusted leadership roles at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration or the National Institutes of Health. And let’s double investment in medical research to speed the development of the next generation of treatments for cancer, Alzheimer’s and so many other chronic, deadly illnesses. 

The first PFAS exposure in New Hampshire, at the water supply on the Pease International Tradeport (formerly Pease Air Force Base) near Portsmouth, impacted our whole community. PFAS are forever chemicals that don’t break down and build up in the body, linked to real health concerns. An estimated 10,000 people including Air Force personnel, their families, civilian employees, local businesses, even a day care center on the base, had been exposed and we didn’t know what that meant for their health. 

As a City Councilor, I fought alongside local families to make sure that anyone who was exposed to contaminated water had access to blood testing. As a City Councilor and later as a community member, I continued the fight to clean and restore the water supply. When you’re waiting to find out if your kid is okay, seconds feel like an eternity.  Waiting months is torture. Together, we pressed both Democrats and Republicans to do more and move faster.  

Today, PFAS contamination is a persistent problem across the state, in Portsmouth, Merrimack and even more recently, near Conway. Studies show it’s leading to higher rates of cancer. 

But Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth don’t care. They’re delaying the clean up of these forever chemicals nationwide by up to a decade. This is completely unacceptable. I will hold the federal government and corporate polluters accountable for the damage they’re causing to our water and our health, and enact stronger safeguards to prevent PFAS chemicals from leaching into our drinking water. 

Andrea Amico, the founder of Testing for Pease, a local advocacy group dedicated to helping families exposed to PFAS chemicals, kicked off the very first event of my campaign. I’m proud of that support. This is personal for me and always will be.

After the birth of my first two children, I suffered two miscarriages. While the first one occurred very early in my pregnancy, the second was more complicated.

As I lay bleeding on a hospital gurney being prepped for surgery, I distinctly remember how it felt when I was told to review and sign a waiver for an abortion. At that moment, through the fog of pain, I understood that doctors were preparing me for a procedure called dilation and curettage, or D&C. It’s the most common method of early abortion. 

Signing the waiver was my only option. My pregnancy was over. My life was at risk.  My two daughters needed me. I wanted the chance to have more children. 

Like millions of women I needed an abortion when a pregnancy went wrong. A few years ago, I decided to share my story, not because it’s unique but because countless other women have faced the same experience. 

I would go on to give birth to my youngest daughter and my son. Without that abortion, they wouldn’t be here today. You can know from my experience, exactly where I stand on abortion access and reproductive rights. I will always and tirelessly fight for both.