Immigrant communities should be able to live, work, and attend school free of fear. That reality is impossible as long as ICE roams our communities tearing families apart, border officials put young children in cages, and millions of undocumented Americans are forced to live in the shadows. For decades, cruelty toward immigrants has been a matter of bipartisan consensus. Mckayla believes that consensus must end — now. That's why she is calling for the abolition of ICE, a moratorium on deportations, the decriminalization of border crossing, and a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants and holders of Temporary Protected Status.

As a working-class mother of two, Mckayla is intimately familiar with the economic, social, and psychological challenges of raising a family during the Covid-19 pandemic. The United States' lack of material support for families with children is a moral disgrace. In this country, the natural stress of parenthood is compounded by significant — and preventable — economic risk, which has only become more acute during the pandemic. Mckayla believes raising children should be affordable for all families. That means guaranteeing 40 weeks of paid parental leave, establishing a universal monthly child allowance of $300, and providing free child care and Pre-K to all American families. 

While the US continues funding endless war abroad, hundreds of thousands of American veterans come home to a country that provides completely inadequate care to deal with war’s devastating toll. Many service members return with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and other mental health challenges. A staggering proportion of veterans show signs of a diagnosable mental health condition — one in four, according to one study — and the epidemic of veteran suicide is a national shame. Our failure to fully fund the Veterans Health Administration has led to long wait times and broad inefficiencies. Therefore, our federal veterans policy must do more to help transition service members into civilian life. We must protect the VA from right-wing privatization attempts, invest billions towards filling staff vacancies at the Veterans Health Administration, and expand the VHA mandate to include dental care.

As a Lesbian, Queer woman, Mckayla knows the pain that the LGBTQ+ community has felt in our country’s past and in recent history. On the national level, her community has endured the HIV/AIDS crisis, the Defense of Marriage Act, and the transgender military ban. At the state and local level, LGBTQ+ individuals are discriminated against in foster care, adoptions, health care, sports, education, and public accommodations. Mckayla firmly believes that LGBTQ+ rights are civil rights and will fight to pass the Equality Act to include sexual orientation and gender identity under federal non-discrimination statutes, cover LGBTQ+ identity in school health education programs, require insurance programs to cover the costs of gender re-affirming surgery, ban the abusive practice of conversion therapy, end the practice of sex reassignment surgery on infants, and federal protection for trans-rights, including life-saving medical care.

Despite tremendous legal, professional, and social gains, women continue to experience disproportional sexual harassment and assault, workplace discrimination, and limitations to comprehensive health care. These issues have only worsened during the pandemic; women – most acutely Black/Latina women – accounted for all jobs lost during December 2020. Mckayla believes that narrowing these financial, legal, and professional gaps is possible by ending pay discrimination and workplace sexual harassment, passing a federal Sexual Assault Survivors Bill of Rights, reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act, and addressing the practice of non-consensual distribution of pornography, also known as “revenge pornography”.

The fight for disability rights is a fight for equal protection under the law. The disability community, while often ignored in broader campaigns for justice, includes over 25 percent of all American adults, or about 60 million people. In recent years, despite landmark legislation like the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, progress has slowed or been actively undermined. Mckayla will join the fight for disability justice by working to protect and enforce the ADA, raising Supplemental Security Income and Social Security Disability Insurance checks to lift disabled Americans out of poverty, removing the exploitative subminimum wage exemption, ensuring marriage equality for disabled partners, and increasing the accessibility of schools and homes. 

The ongoing ethnic cleansing of indigenous peoples in the Americas is a deep moral crisis. From centuries of genocide to the 2016-17 construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, the U.S. government has continually violated the human rights of Native American communities. It's time to create a process to distribute uninhabited federal lands to Native American tribes, guarantee tribal governments the right to prior consent for U.S. government actions on indigenous land, revoke federal construction permits for all pipelines, prohibit states from requiring a physical address to vote, and affirm the legitimacy of the Fort Laramie Treaty.

The United States' aggressive military adventurism has been a complete failure. The federal government has poured trillions of dollars into wars which only serve to starve domestic social programs and cause human misery abroad. Instead of an arrogant and shortsighted foreign policy, we need an anti-imperialist foreign policy based on peace and cooperation. That's why Mckayla supports ending U.S. support for the illegal Saudi military campaign in Yemen; pulling American troops out of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria; passing a new Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) that severely curtails the president's ability to start military engagements without congressional approval; and redirecting at least $200 billion in defense funding toward foreign aid and domestic social programs.

The climate crisis, which threatens Southern Maryland with rising sea levels, extreme weather events, and severe economic disruption, is the context for all the social and economic challenges we face in the coming decades. Recent research suggests we are currently on track for the worst case climate scenarios. We are currently projected to reach 1.5 degrees Celsius global warming by 2030 — a decade ahead of what the 2018 U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report predicted — and 2 degrees Celsius before 2050, way ahead of the Paris Agreement’s goal of averting 2 degree rise by 2100.

This challenge demands the kind of society-wide mobilization unseen in American history since World War II. Given the United States' historic and ongoing role as the largest greenhouse gas emitter, we have a special obligation to the Global South and the rest of the planet to lead an unprecedented transformation toward a decarbonized global economy. We can win a Green New Deal that decarbonizes the US economy by 2030, repairs the generational harms of racism, and guarantees economic security for all.

The state and corporate surveillance apparatus intrudes on every aspect of our lives. The War on Terror has functionally ended Americans’ constitutional right to privacy, and career politicians like Steny Hoyer have been complicit in expanding the power of unaccountable national security officials. As we enter a post-Covid world and the surveillance apparatus’ power is consolidated, we must ensure our public squares and private spaces preserve individual liberty and autonomy. That's why Mckayla supports passing a comprehensive Data Bill of Rights, ending warrantless collection of electronic communications on U.S. soil, closing Guantanamo, and ending solitary confinement. 

In a country where death-by-guns claim more than 39,000 lives every year, our political leaders' failure to take on gun violence is a national disgrace. Common-sense gun reforms are popular; it's time to take the will of the people to the halls of Congress. The crisis, of course, doesn't affect Americans evenly: gun violence disproportionately plagues low-income and minorities communities, including many in Maryland's 5th district. We cannot become numb to the magnitude of this problem. It's time to enact comprehensive universal background checks, enact a two week waiting period for the purchase of all firearms, ending the sale of guns that enable the killing of a large number of people, and demilitarize law enforcement.

No one living in the richest nation should ever have to choose between paying for health care, housing, and food for their family. Yet, even before the Covid-19 pandemic, 40 million Americans were food insecure, including over 6.5 million children. Now, that number is expected to be over 54 million, including 17 million children. At the same time, billions of pounds of food are wasted annually. We have the resources to feed our hungry — we just lack the infrastructure and political will. It's time to change that. Mckayla supports increasing SNAP benefits by at least 30 percent; allowing SNAP benefits to be used to purchase hot foods and at markets, bodegas, and express stores; providing three free and healthy meals to all students from Pre-K through graduate school, including on weekends and over holidays); and removing work and educational requirements to qualify for SNAP benefits.

In the United States, those at the top of the economic ladder own the vast majority of wealth, leaving everyone else to live in permanent economic insecurity. It's appalling that the top ten percent of households own more than 80 percent of the stock market. We need a social wealth fund that democratizes the stock market and produces a yearly payout — much like a universal basic income — to every adult in America. The basic idea is simple: The federal government starts buying stocks, bonds, and other financial assets, and manages them in an investment fund, in which every American adult is a stakeholder. Each year, a set percentage of its value is paid out to stakeholders in the form of an equal dividend. So as the fund grows, so does the annual payout. The result is a more equal economy, more money in the pockets of regular Americans, and more democracy in American finance.