Puerto Rico is a U.S. colonial possession and territory since the war with Spain in 1898. Its people enjoy American citizenship but lack true representation within its relationship to the federal government.
It lacks sovereignty with plenary power over the territory held by Congress by the Territorial Clause of the Constitution. Puerto Ricans cannot vote for president with a single non-voting representative in Congress for 3 million U.S. citizens—more than Arkansas, Kansas, Mississippi, and many other states and territories. Governance is imposed on the island through the PROMESA oversight board with ultimate control over its budget and finances and appointed by Washington.
We must take this opportunity for sweeping democratic reforms to include an equitable settlement of Puerto Rico’s status.
Matt is fighting to correct a historical wrong and push for an equitable settlement of Puerto Rico’s political status with the United States. Congress must set a federally-sponsored, binding referendum for Puerto Rico to choose its path forward with statehood, independence, or autonomous free association.
Legislation must include a gesture of friendship and justice with federal funding to rebuild and repair the island’s electrical grid and the assumption of Puerto Rico’s outstanding debt by the federal government. In the wake of the Revolution, the federal government assumed the war debts of the original thirteen colonies and established a national line of credit. This courtesy must be extended to the Puerto Rican people, regardless of the outcome of a plebiscite.
Congressional authorization for a binding referendum of the Puerto Rican people to determine the island’s status
Selection between statehood, full independence as a sovereign nation, or free association with the U.S.
Assumption of all remaining Puerto Rican debt by the federal government
Increase federal funding for, and resolve the delayed disbursement of, federal funding for repairs to the island’s electrical grid
Properly fund FEMA operations to adequately review energy projects and provide technical support to PREPA
Streamline the review process to speed up approvals
Over 700,000 people live within the District of Columbia—a population larger than Vermont (644,000) and Wyoming (588,000) but without the representation on Capitol Hill. Residents of Vermont and Wyoming have a voting member in the U.S. House of Representatives and two U.S. senators. Yet D.C. residents do not.
It’s taxation without representation. A clarion call that helped spark the American revolution. It is long past time to ensure residents of the District of Columbia receive full representation in Congress.
Matt is fighting for D.C. statehood. As a former resident of D.C. for over a decade, Matt knows taxation without representation first-hand. It’s unfair to the city’s residents who pay federal taxes like everyone else.
Self-determination through the franchise is fundamental right for which this nation was founded. In our constant struggle to live up to our founding creed, Americans fought, and bled, and died for it on distant battlefields and American streets. We would dishonor their sacrifices if we did not protect the right for which many gave their lives.
Matt is fighting to protect and expand voting rights.
Pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act
Restoration and modernization of preclearance
Prohibition of partisan gerrymandering
Transparency with 180 day notifications for changes to voting laws and procedures like polling site closures
Improve polling location accessibility for voters with disabilities
Expand early voting
Same day and automatic voter registration
Establish standards to combat voter suppression tactics
Set minimum standards for national mail-in voting, early voting periods, federal standards for adequate number of polling sites and location accessibility
Restoration of voting rights for the formerly incarcerated
Our nation’s founding document declares all are created equal. We are confronted with an administration—and the political movement which swept it back into power—committed to denying these equal rights to millions of Americans including the LGBTQ+ community. It’s a campaign of erasure.
The LGBTQ+ community is under assault at every level of government. School boards, allied with far-right activists, ban books. In the last several years the ACLU tracked hundreds of anti-LGBTQ+ bills in state legislatures across the country targeting health care, driver’s licenses, and bans on facility use or athletics. With Donald Trump’s return to the White House, his administration targeted federal funding for schools over bogus claims of “gender ideology” and reversed decades of precedent on gender markers on U.S. passports.
With increased demonization of the LGBTQ+ community, violent crime against people within the LGBTQ+ community increased. A 2025 study of data from 2022 and 2023 found that LGBT people are five times more likely to be victims of crime than others. A report released earlier this year described 2025 as “one of the most dangerous years on record for LGBTQ Americans.” Half of all incidents targeted transgender and gender-nonconforming people.
Matt is fighting to protect the LGBTQ+ community and push for equality. Matt is a longtime ally of the LGBTQ+ community. In the wake of the same-sex marriage bans in 2004, he sought out renown professor, V. Spike Peterson, on the Arizona campus to conduct an independent study on marriage equality the following spring. He has long supported LGBTQ+ candidates and causes.
His allyship comes from an understanding that our futures, no matter what our background, are inextricably tied together. As President Franklin Roosevelt read from a Stephen Vincent Benét prayer in 1942, “We are all of us children of earth—grant us that simple knowledge. If our brothers are oppressed, we are oppressed. If they hunger, we hunger. If their freedom is taken away, our freedom is not secure.”
Prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity by passing the Equality Act
Pass the Do No Harm Act to limit how the Religious Freedom Restoration Act can be used to prevent invocation to discriminate against the LGBTQ+ community
Make HIV prevention medication universally accessible and affordable by requiring private health insurance plans cover them through the PrEP Access and Coverage Act
Pass the Real Education for Healthy Youth Act to fund comprehensive, evidence-based sex education across the U.S. with a requirement that it is LGBTQ+ inclusive
Leverage oversight powers on health care restrictions
Investigate Department of Justice subpoenas of children’s hospitals
Demand CMS cost-benefit analyses
Direct GAO to study health impacts on restrictions
Classify conversion therapy as fraudulent with the Therapeutic Fraud Prevention Act
Add sexual orientation and gender identity to the Fair Housing Act
Strengthen the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act with increased funding for enforcement and a lowered threshold for federal intervention
Permanently end the ban on transgender people serving in the military and pass the Fit to Serve Act
This administration and their Republican lackeys in Congress greatly increased the budget for immigration and deportation measures to $170 billion. It makes immigration enforcement the largest paramilitary force in the country. The budget surpasses all annual law enforcement expenditures on police by state and local governments. Deportation operations under ICE saw a three-fold increase in its annual budget. $30 billion over four years to hire 10,000 new agents.
DHS and ICE recruitment propaganda are overtly white supremacist. The standards and training for new ICE agents are abysmal. The process, by which corners are cut, was described as a “shit show.” The results are predictable.
Masked ICE agents without name badges are documented to have:
Murdered a woman in her car in Minnesota
Unlawfully detained U.S. citizens without proper due process
Unlawfully detained legal immigrants without proper due process
Misidentified individuals with benign NIKE or autism tattoos as signifiers for MS-13 gang membership and deported them to a foreign torture gulag
Drawn firearms on peaceful protesters
Fired “non-lethal” projectiles at peaceful protesters including in the head
Violently assault U.S. citizens and immigrants on the streets and within government buildings
Despite its claims to deport “the worst of the worst,” data leaked in October 2025 showed only 5 percent of those detained by ICE held violent convictions. 73 percent had no convictions at all.
Matt will fight for the abolition of ICE and prosecution of human rights violators. Under this administration, supercharged by the Republican Congress with massive increase to its budget, ICE is a flagrant human rights violator. It regularly violates the constitutional rights of U.S. citizens and immigrants of every status. ICE agents hide their identities in an attempt to escape accountability.
ICE must be abolished and its functions drawn-and-quartered into separate agencies. We must clean house. Everybody involved in this national disgrace must understand that the present circumstances are not going to last forever. There will be a day of reckoning and it is coming.
Roots of the militarization of local police departments extend back to the 1997 National Defense Authorization Act and the creation of the 1033 Program, or Law Enforcement Support Office (LESO) Program. It authorized the Department of Defense to transfer excess military equipment, vehicles, and other supplies to federal, state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies. Following the attacks of September 11, 2001 and the expansion of the Global War on Terror, these transfers intensified over terrorism fears. Manufacturers also began marketing military-grade equipment directly to local police departments. Training programs for police departments increasingly adopted a “warrior” ethos and combat tactics.
Matt is fighting to demilitarize the police. The forever war is over but its impacts are still felt in communities around the country. It is time to end the forever war at home, too.
End the 1033 Program which transfers military surplus equipment to police departments at no cost
Reclaim the controlled equipment still under ownership of the Department of Defense, like vehicles, and redeploy them to our ally in Kyiv for the defense of Ukraine
Place restrictions on federal grant programs which fund equipment purchases
Condition federal funding contingent on local police demilitarization efforts
Provide federal funding for community policing models which show positive results over militarization
Additional transparency requirements for the acquisition and tracking of equipment transfers
The decision on when and how to start a family is sacrosanct. It does not belong in the hands of any legislator or judge.
The situation post-Roe v. Wade is one of dramatic health and economic impacts. A 2024 study revealed the Dobbs decision led a 7 percent increase in infant mortality. Abortion bans, deeply unpopular around the country, were linked to a dramatic jump in sepsis—50 percent in Texas, for example. These burdens are, of course, borne more heavily on marginalized communities, Medicaid beneficiaries, individuals without college degrees, young people, and communities in the South.
A number of women died because they were denied abortion care when it could have saved their life.
A 2024 study found that states with the most restrictive policies experienced a combined economic loss of $64 billion as it reduced women’s labor force participation, ages 15 to 44, by 556,000.
Matt will fight to establish a national right to abortion access and protect those who seek and perform an abortion. Anti-abortion forces spent decades concocting a myriad of ways to weaken access to abortion prior to and after Dobbs. There are a number of actions Congress must undertake to restore abortion access.
Establish a statutory right to abortion with minimum standards for access
Repeal the Comstock Act to prevent a backdoor national abortion ban
Codify FDA approval of mifepristone
Shield FDA decisions from judicial meddling
Outlaw fetal personhood
Prohibit criminalization of travel to obtain an abortion
Protect those who assist an individual to obtain an abortion
Protect doctors and hospitals who perform abortions
Prohibit crisis pregnancy centers from lying to women
Prohibit government registries or databases which track personally identifying information of those who had an abortion
Prohibit civil actions and deputized private citizens as defined in Texas’ SB 8
