Education — Matt Ortega for Congress

Defend the LGBTQ+ community and fight for equality

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

Free child care

Every moment of early childhood development can make a significant impact on a child’s long-term learning. Studies show returns as high as $4 to $9 for every $1 invested in early childhood development. (One estimate showed return as high as $16.) A young child’s introduction into a learning environment improves their social, emotional, and cognitive development. Children enter the school system equipped with language, problem-solving, sharing, and educational skills.

Universal child care programs also provide immense benefit to parents. They know they are giving their child the best chance to learn and succeed as studies show benefits last into high school. Working parents are able to ensure their children are cared for while they earn an income to support their families. Data shows 70 percent of children under the age of 6 have both parents who work.

An estimated 12 million children under the age of 6 receive regular weekly care from center-based care, at home, or with relatives. A 2024 report showed working parents with young children spend up to 24 percent of income on child care. Single parents face an even more daunting task with costs as high as 75 percent of their income. The lack of child care hurts families, businesses, and taxpayers, resulting in billions of lost economic activity.

Matt will fight for universal child care. As a working father with two young sons, Matt is all too familiar with the struggle to secure affordable child care. Quality child care full-time can rival the cost of housing. With two good-paying jobs, he and his wife were only ever able to send one son to child care at a time and only for three days a week. He is determined to expand access for quality child care to every child. For their future and ours.

Cancel student loan debt

A summer 2025 report revealed that outstanding federal student loan debt totaled $1.661 trillion held by 42.5 million borrowers. Over 10 percent of those federal student loan dollars were delinquent in Q2. Observers worry of a “default cliff” where a large number of borrowers default on their loans.

The administration’s plan on student loan debt is to garnish wages from more than five million borrowers in 2026.

Matt will fight for student loan debt cancellation. A college graduate in 2006, he knows the struggle to pay off student loans first hand. He knows what borrowers sacrifice and what we, as a country, are missing out on from millions of Americans, young and old.

Cancellation of student loan debt would free millions of borrowers to secure a better financial foundation for themselves. This may include the first time they were able to seriously build life savings or invest in retirement. Borrowers may be able to make milestone purchases of a new car or become a first-time home owner. Freed from student loans, borrowers can create or invest in businesses, spurring economic activity.