STANDING ON BUSINESS
Affordability: We shouldn't have to choose between groceries and rent!
Every month, families across the 7th District sit at their kitchen tables doing the same impossible math — stretching a paycheck that doesn't stretch anymore. Grocery bills are up. Utility costs are up. And the people responsible are posting record profits.
This isn't bad luck. Corporate giants are using every excuse to jack up prices while pocketing the difference. In 2025, corporate profit margins hit historic highs — not because costs went up for them, but because they could charge you more and get away with it. Meanwhile, middlemen in the drug industry, junk-fee companies, and monopoly retailers add hidden costs to everything you buy. Hardworking people who play by the rules deserve to keep more of what they earn.
What I'll fight for:
-
Crack down on corporate price gouging and monopoly pricing in groceries, energy, and pharmaceuticals
-
Eliminate hidden junk fees on banking, ticketing, and rental applications
-
Break up dominant firms in meatpacking, shipping, and big retail that control prices
-
Bring essential manufacturing back home — medicines, food processing, building materials — so our supply chains aren't hostage to foreign disruptions
-
Make corporations pay their fair share so working families aren't carrying the whole burden
This is about freedom — the freedom to build a life without being squeezed by companies that answer to shareholders, not to you.
+122%
-
Affordability: We shouldn't have to choose between groceries and rent!
Every month, families across the 7th District sit at their kitchen tables doing the same impossible math — stretching a paycheck that doesn't stretch anymore. Grocery bills are up. Utility costs are up. And the people responsible are posting record profits.
This isn't bad luck. Corporate giants are using every excuse to jack up prices while pocketing the difference. In 2025, corporate profit margins hit historic highs — not because costs went up for them, but because they could charge you more and get away with it. Meanwhile, middlemen in the drug industry, junk-fee companies, and monopoly retailers add hidden costs to everything you buy. Hardworking people who play by the rules deserve to keep more of what they earn.
What I'll fight for:
-
Crack down on corporate price gouging and monopoly pricing in groceries, energy, and pharmaceuticals
-
Eliminate hidden junk fees on banking, ticketing, and rental applications
-
Break up dominant firms in meatpacking, shipping, and big retail that control prices
-
Bring essential manufacturing back home — medicines, food processing, building materials — so our supply chains aren't hostage to foreign disruptions
-
Make corporations pay their fair share so working families aren't carrying the whole burden
This is about freedom — the freedom to build a life without being squeezed by companies that answer to shareholders, not to you.
-
Housing: A home in your own neighborhood shouldn't be a bidding war against Wall Street!
In the 7th District, one investment firm alone owns over 5,000 rental units in Chicago. They're not building homes — they're extracting wealth. They buy up apartments, raise rents 14% in a year, and call it "luxury upgrades." Meanwhile, families who've lived here for generations get pushed out of the neighborhoods they built.
54% of renters in IL-7 spend more than 30% of their income on housing. That's not a market working. That's a market being rigged by corporate landlords and algorithmic rent-setting tools that coordinate price hikes across thousands of units. Your home is sacred — it shouldn't be a line item on a hedge fund's quarterly report.
What I'll fight for:
-
Limit corporate and Wall Street ownership of residential housing — homes are for families, not hedge fund portfolios
-
Ban algorithmic rent-setting tools that let corporations coordinate price hikes behind closed doors
-
Fast-track affordable and middle-income housing on public land, built by local workers with local apprenticeships
-
Require full transparency on who actually owns rental properties — no more hiding behind shell companies
-
Protect tenants from predatory fees, retaliatory evictions, and screening abuses
Every family in the 7th District deserves the security of a home they can afford — in the neighborhood they call theirs.
-
Competitive Jobs & Wages. If you work 40 hours a week, you should be able to live here"
In the 7th District, a full-time minimum-wage worker can't afford a one-bedroom apartment. Not a nice apartment. Any apartment. That's not a labor market — that's a broken promise. The deal used to be simple: work hard, and you can provide for your family. Corporations broke that deal when they shipped jobs overseas, crushed unions, and fought every attempt to raise wages.
What I'll fight for:
-
Raise the federal minimum wage to a real living wage — because dignity at work means dignity in life
-
Stand with unions and protect the right to organize, because workers bargaining together is the most proven way to raise wages
-
Invest in apprenticeships and skilled trades tied to infrastructure, manufacturing, clean energy, and healthcare
-
Require "Buy America" and domestic content rules so federal dollars create jobs here, not overseas
-
Penalize companies that offshore jobs while taking taxpayer subsidies
The dignity of work means your labor has value — and no corporation should be able to take that from you.
-
Public Safety & Gun Violence - Every parent should be able to send their kid to school without being afraid"
In the 7th District, gun violence isn't a talking point — it's a daily reality. It's the sound your neighbor heard last Tuesday. It's the reason a mother in Austin plans a different route home. It's the active shooter drills your kid memorizes alongside multiplication tables. And it's the 21-year life expectancy gap between the Loop and West Garfield Park — a gap driven by violence, disinvestment, and a system that has abandoned entire neighborhoods.
What I'll fight for:
-
Invest in community violence intervention programs — the interrupters, trauma care workers, and youth mentors who are already saving lives on the ground
-
Crack down on illegal gun trafficking networks, including cross-state flows and straw purchasing
-
Regulate ghost-gun parts and require serialization so every weapon is traceable
-
Fund youth employment programs, mental health services, and reentry support — because safe communities need economic opportunity, not just enforcement
-
Hold bad-actor gun dealers accountable with real inspections and real consequences
Our neighborhoods are sacred. Our children's safety isn't negotiable. And the people doing the hardest work to keep our blocks safe deserve a Congress member who fights alongside them — not one who offers thoughts, prayers, and nothing else.
-
Inflation: Prices are up because corporations got greedy — not because you did something wrong"
When your grocery bill climbs higher every month, that's not some abstract economic force. That's specific companies making specific decisions to raise prices. Their profits prove it.
Three corporations control 80% of the meat market.
A handful of companies dominate shipping, retail, and pharmaceuticals. When there's no competition, there's no incentive to lower prices. And new tariff policies are projected to cost the average IL-7 household an extra $1,300 this year in higher costs for essentials.
Meanwhile, 70% of those tariff costs get passed directly to you at the checkout counter. Businesses aren't absorbing the hit — you are. That's not how a fair economy works.
What I'll fight for:
-
Federal anti-price-gouging enforcement to stop corporations from using inflation as cover for profiteering
-
Break up monopolies in food, energy, and healthcare so competition actually drives prices down
-
Oppose reckless tariff policies that function as a hidden tax on working families
-
Crack down on middleman markups — pharmacy benefit managers, junk fees, and hidden surcharges that inflate every bill you pay
-
Ensure that when supply chains recover, the savings reach your kitchen table — not just the C-suite
You're not imagining it. The game is rigged. And the first step to fixing prices is holding the people who set them accountable.
-
Reproductive healthcare is personal. It belongs to you, your family, and your doctor. Not to politicians in Washington, not to corporations, and not to anyone who has never met you. In the 7th District, we believe in medical self-determination: the freedom to make your own decisions about your own body without the government telling you what to do.
Access to reproductive care — contraception, maternal health, abortion services — is under coordinated national attack. And the communities hit hardest are the ones already underserved: the West Side, the South Side, neighborhoods where a maternal health clinic closing means a 45-minute bus ride to the next one.
What I'll fight for:
-
Protect and expand access to the full range of reproductive healthcare — including abortion, contraception, and maternal care
-
Fight any federal ban on reproductive rights and codify protections into law
-
Invest in community health centers and maternal health infrastructure in underserved neighborhoods
-
Protect domestic supply chains for contraceptives and essential reproductive medications
-
Ensure that healthcare decisions stay between patients, families, and their doctors — period.
-
mmigration policy in America is broken. and both parties broke it. One side uses immigrants as scapegoats while protecting the corporations that exploit cheap labor. The other side offers speeches but never delivers real reform. Meanwhile, our neighbors — people who work, pay taxes, raise families, and contribute to our communities — live in fear.
The recent actions by federal immigration enforcement agencies have torn apart families and terrorized communities across Illinois. That is unacceptable. Enforcement agencies that operate with impunity, destroying lives without accountability, must be held responsible for their actions. At the same time, we need an immigration system that actually works.
What I'll fight for:
-
Oppose mass deportation raids and hold enforcement agencies and their contractors accountable for abuses — no one should be able to terrorize communities and walk away
-
Create a clear, non-complicated pathway to citizenship for people who contribute to our communities
-
Fund immigration courts and legal services so the system works efficiently and fairly
-
Enforce labor standards hard so corporations can't undercut American wages by exploiting undocumented workers
-
Address the root causes that drive migration — including the situations our own government's policies have created abroad
In the 7th District, we watch out for one another, care of our own — and "our own" includes the neighbors who chose to make this place home. A fair system protects both American workers and immigrant families. Both things can be true.
-
Enhancing Benefits and Services
Improving Healthcare Access For Veterans
Supporting Veteran's Transitions to Civilian Life
Veteran Homeless Prevention
WHERE I STAND
I will fight for veterans the way veterans fought for us—without excuses, without half-measures.
FULLY FUND AND STAFF OUR VA HOSPITALS
Jesse Brown VA is in my district. I will treat any attack on its staffing, services, or quality as an attack on my neighbors. No DOGE cuts. No vacancy freezes dressed up as "efficiency." You can't run a five-star hospital on a two-star budget.
PROTECT THE VETERANS CRISIS LINE
We do not cut the phone line that saves lives. Period. Any politician who signs off on firing crisis counselors has disqualified themselves from talking about "supporting the troops."
FULL IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PACT ACT
You breathed in burn pit smoke in Iraq. You were exposed to Agent Orange in Vietnam. The government finally admitted it owes you care. I will make sure you actually receive it—not in five years after paperwork delays, but now.
END VETERAN HOMELESSNESS IN CHICAGO
Nearly 14,000 veterans in the Chicago area are homeless or one bad month away from it. We have the tools—HUD-VASH vouchers, wraparound mental health services, transitional housing. What we lack is the political will to fully fund them. I will be that will.
PROTECT YOUR GI BILL BENEFITS
You earned your education benefits. The VA doesn't get to reinterpret a Supreme Court ruling to claw them back. I'll co-sponsor legislation to close the Rudisill loophole and ensure every eligible veteran gets every dollar of education funding they're owed.