increasingly challenging. With the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act becoming law, relief is on the way. This is proof that when Congress works across the aisle to solve important issues, and when my Republican colleagues decide standing up to President Trump is worth it, we can deliver the transformative legislation that our constituents deserve.  

Childcare and senior care costs are also concerns I hear frequently from our community, and I am working to address the problem from all angles. These are not just buzzwords for me – my own parents live with me in Pennsylvania, and my daughter and her wife are still trying to figure out how they will afford to pay for daycare when their second child arrives later this year. Seeing these challenges within my own family is one of the many reasons I am so committed to bringing about solutions in Congress.  

Recently, I introduced a new bill, the Careworker Visa Act, to help families continue getting the care they need from the providers they know and trust. For millions of Americans with young kids or aging parents, the careworker keeping their family afloat is an immigrant. These families deserve stability in their care, and careworkers need secure pathways to legal citizenship. That’s what my bill does, creating that pathway and making sure our kids, elders, and people with disabilities can keep getting the support they need from dedicated, hardworking caregivers. 

Last week, the House voted on the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Just a few years ago, the idea of voting against this bill would have been nearly unfathomable to me. For more than six decades, the NDAA was a serious, sober, and bipartisan bill to fund our national defense, a priority that used to take precedence over partisanship.

In recent years, partisan poison pills have sometimes made versions of the bill impossible to support. This was again true this year, but my concerns go much deeper than any individual provision or amendment.  

Under the leadership of President Trump and Secretary of Defense Hegseth, we are nearly five months into an unpopular, unaffordable, and unlawful war with Iran. It has claimed the lives of at least 17 service-members, injured at least 600 more, and is causing skyrocketing gas prices here at home. While President Trump keeps failing to negotiate an end to this very real war, Secretary Hegseth is distracted by a culture war. He is using his office to politicize the force, purge expertise, limit opportunities for qualified servicewomen and servicemembers of color, and substitute his own ideology for the professional military judgment our national security requires.  

There is a lot in the NDAA, including some provisions which I do support and worked across the aisle for months to secure. But of the 11 amendments I submitted to rein in the reckless leadership of this Administration, Republicans rejected every single one. I cannot and will not give President Trump and Secretary Hegseth more money without accountability, more authority without restraint, or more opportunities to place American servicemembers at risk without a lawful mission and a coherent plan.

That is why I voted against the NDAA, and why I will keep advocating for the Senate to make significant revisions before letting it move any further. 

I voted against this Continuing Resolution because I have not given up on brokering a real budget. Speaker Johnson may not want to work with the whole Congress, but I do. I respect my responsibility to our community, and I will do everything in my power to negotiate a budget that delivers for us.

Unfortunately for all of us, the political games did not stop there. Congress also voted last week on the so-called “Stop Insider Trading Act.” The only problem? This bill doesn’t actually stop insider trading.  

I don’t buy or sell individual stocks, because elected officials are here to serve our communities, not to get rich – and I have spent years trying to hold my colleagues to the same standard. I am proud to cosponsor the TRUST in Congress Act, a bipartisan bill to do exactly that.  

But that’s not the one we voted on. Instead, the “Stop Insider Trading Act” only bans trading on future stock purchases. It lets members keep the investments they already own, preserving the conflicts of interest that a real ban would eliminate.  

The other major problem is that this was not a “clean” bill. My Republican colleagues attached unrelated, divisive, and harmful elements of the SAVE America Act, adding barriers to voting by mail by requiring photocopies of a narrow set of acceptable IDs. That means more ballots rejected over paperwork, more burdens on voters without access to a copier, and more strain on election offices. These are not just voter ID requirements, which I have consistently supported. They are complicated and costly hurdles that would make it harder for eligible voters to make their voices heard. 

As I said on the House floor on Thursday, if Speaker Johnson brings us a clean, serious stock-trading ban, I will vote for it. Like the NDAA, here too I offered amendments to make this bill clean and straightforward. Republicans rejected them. I can only assume that the division and dysfunction around this bill is a feature, not a bug. 

Still, the progress we are making to lower housing costs and expand paid leave are not just wins in and of themselves. They remind us of the good we can do when we put our heads down and do the important work. Now and always, that is exactly how I’m fighting for you.