America’s greatest strength is its people, but our education and workforce systems haven’t been upgraded in decades. College is too expensive. Our K-12 curriculum needs to be more project-based and connected to the real world. Students need to be engaged and empowered to find purpose, found companies, develop missions, and learn 21st century skills. I promote embracing alternate forms of postsecondary education and credentialing that are lower in price, higher in return, and more workforce-aligned than traditional higher education. While the college-for-all boon of the last fifteen years has had certain advantages, and the undergraduate degree remains the gold standard, the financial incentives of higher education have led to millions of young Americans drowning under $1.8 trillion in student debt, and smart new policies are needed to reduce the cost of college and solve this debt crisis. As someone who has worked in this industry for a decade, I have some innovative ideas. Technology can and should empower new ways of learning and preparing for future success. This administration plans to introduce specific programs to that end. We cannot afford to waste time with so-called culture wars. We must push back against the dangerous and antiquated practice of book banning. I support rapidly implementing personalized learning powered by technology in America’s public schools and implementing policies that encourage states to give every teacher a 25% raise. If I could I would throw educators a ticker-tape parade in every county in America, because our teachers are the unsung heroes who are inspiring our next great generation of leaders.

Our broken immigration system hasn’t been upgraded in forty years. Previous immigration reform efforts under President Biden (in 2024), President Obama (in 2013), and President Bush (in 2006) have all failed because previous presidents have always tried to enact “comprehensive immigration reform” that tries to solve all of our immigration problems all at once, and the effort is too big and too polarizing. My administration will address immigration by recognizing that our system needs three distinct upgrades, and we will tackle them one at a time, so that the effort doesn’t overwhelm our political process.

Our first commitment once elected will be to protect Dreamers, young people who came to the United States as children and have been undocumented for most of their lives through no fault of their own. They consider themselves American and have known no other home country than the United States, having been fully integrated into our schools, communities, and economy, yet they live with the dread of deportation at any time. We must put people first and do the right thing for Dreamers, giving these two million American patriots a clean 3-year path to full citizenship. More than 75% of Americans support giving the Dreamers a pathway to full citizenship.

Second, the chaos at the border during the past eight years represents a gross dereliction of duty. The president’s job is to protect our borders and ensure our country does not feel lawless. The current administration has completely failed to manage our borders, which is perhaps the biggest catastrophe of the past four years. I believe in modernizing the border. A modern border would leverage digital technology, expedite asylum processing through ‘rocket dockets’, and harness resources innovatively to balance security with compassion. This will require implementing a variety of ideas to dramatically improve asylum processing, such as completely changing the way asylum cases are processed and offering safe mobility offices for migrants. Experts estimate that only about 10% of illegal border crossers are legitimate asylees. The other 90% should be efficiently processed to determine if they might deserve guest worker visas, but the majority should immediately be returned to their home country or safe third countries where the United States could establish special asylum partnerships. To accomplish this, we need a surge of more than 1,000 asylum judges to reduce the time it takes for a new case to be heard to just 30-90 days (compared to the multiple years it takes now). We should also collaborate with international organizations to address the root causes of migration, including misinformation and corruption.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, we need to update our primary system of legal immigration. My plan aims to attract global talent by creating a new merit-based pathway to green cards and citizenship, similar to modern immigration systems that have been very successful in Canada and Australia. In 2023, the the United States naturalized 878,500 new citizens and experts estimate there are another 11.5 million undocumented individuals in the country. A merit-based system for legal immigration would allow individuals and their families to obtain green cards based on earning “points” for positive factors like work experience and opportunities, years of education completed, degrees and certificates earned, ability to communicate in English, and family ties to the United States.

When taken all together, these reforms will stem the tide of illegal migrants crossing our border and stressing our social safety nets, while simultaneously increasing the number of talented, highly qualified new citizens we naturalize each year to 2 million annually. Our administration plans to triple the number of high-skilled and work-based visas we issue in order to fill critical gaps in the labor market in a way that values the contributions of immigrants to our economy. In addition, we will give green cards to every foreign student who earns a PhD (in any discipline) or a master’s degree (in STEM fields).

Overall, as a nation of immigrants, Americans should embrace and expand our diverse heritage, but much more intelligently than we’ve been doing lately. Refugee and asylum standards need to be clear and rapidly enforced, prioritizing safely returning non-qualified border crossers and improving application processes in neighboring countries. We must disincentivize illegal and unsafe activities like human trafficking, under-the-table employment, and other forms of modern enslavement while attracting the world's best and brightest. The Statue of Liberty's call for the "tired, poor huddled masses yearning to breathe free" should guide a system balancing humanitarianism with economic interests. Achieving this will require significant effort, but it's feasible and crucial--if we divide the effort into three parts.

To learn more, read our 10 page white paper on Immigration Reform.

Our nation deserves a much better, more efficient medical system. Americans live five years less on average while spending twice as much as citizens of Canada, Britain, or Australia on healthcare. This is unacceptable. We need to upgrade Obamacare and make it work for more middle-class Americans, especially those who own or work for small businesses. In addition, I will propose we implement “Medicare For More”, allowing anyone 50 years old or older the ability to buy into Medicare for the price of a Gold or Silver Obamacare Plan. Priced correctly, Medicare For More can help solve Medicare’s long-term financial woes and reduce the deficit. Additionally, we need to increase transparency about employer spending on health care and mandate that Flexible Savings Accounts roll over from year to year to incentivize innovation across sectors. When consumer-based, community-focused clinical care grows we all win.

America needs a complete re-think on crime. On the one hand, our nation—and our large cities especially—are not doing enough to reduce violent crime by rapidly arresting and prosecuting criminals. In my home city of Baltimore, experts estimate that less than 40% of homicide cases are solved and closed (defined as perpetrators being arrested, charged, convicted and sent to prison). This is unacceptable. Nor are we doing enough to implement evidence-based policies that we know can attack the root causes of illegal activities at their source like Arne Duncan’s CRED effort in Chicago. Our prison system has become a revolving door of recidivism, unequally targeting people of color across a $10.3 billion industry. We need to invest more in rehabilitation, education, and second chances for the millions of imprisoned Americans. As an impact investor, my firm invested in this industry and we understand it well. I propose we increase funding for solving violent crimes, mandate police officer training in de-escalation, and encourage innovative new models that enable unarmed “police social workers” to resolve non-violent issues like homelessness, mental illness, and the like.

All women in America deserve the right to control their own bodies, including the right to choose an abortion until twenty weeks into their pregnancy for any reason, or until twenty-four weeks if needed to protect the life of the mother (essentially the same right as Roe v Wade). Our administration plans to work with Congress to pass a national right to choose law in order to enshrine this right. Reproductive justice requires every individual to have the right to make their own decisions about having children regardless of their circumstances and without interference and discrimination. Reproductive justice seeks to address restrictions on reproductive health, including abortion, that perpetuate systems of oppression and lack of bodily autonomy

Every American should have the legal right to enjoy sovereign, inalienable human rights, both social and economic: freedom of choice, freedom to love, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of (or from) religion. I am also in favor of protecting LGBTQ+ rights at the federal level. I believe all citizens should have freedom of autonomy over their own bodies and who they choose to love. I am firm in my conviction that the federal government has no business trying to dictate the personal lives of its citizens. With this level of freedom, American democracy will not only survive, but thrive.

To unlock the full economic potential of America, we need to recognize that childcare and early childhood education are essential elements of economic infrastructure, just as important in the 21st century as broadband, quality roads and utilities, and good K12 schools. Research shows that students who attend quality preschool education when they are 3-4 years old graduate to kindergarten with significantly better executive function and language skills, which dramatically improve literacy rates between the ages of 6-8, and has a lasting effect on high school graduation and economic success all the way into adulthood. In today’s economy, jobs follow talent; employers want to be in places where people want to live, and people want affordable child care and free early childhood education. Early childhood education is the ultimate multigenerational support—it puts each child on the road to educational (and professional) achievement while allowing the adults in their lives to lead an economically productive life. Childcare facilitates economic growth in communities and spurs individual economic mobility and security. My administration will propose increasing federal aid to states which provide free early childhood education and financial incentives to families to make childcare more affordable.

I’m pleased that the DoD has some programs to help veterans in transition, but we need to do much more. Too many of these programs are understaffed and underfunded. It’s gotten harder for our returning men and women in uniform to be successful in their post-military lives. Bureaucratic hurdles abound. While protecting and simplifying Skillbridge as a government program, we need to dramatically expand services for organizations like Bunker Labs, where they support veteran and military spouse entrepreneurs. Supporting entrepreneurship helps get veterans and military spouses financially situated. Too often it’s hard to get a job due to trouble translating skills, resume gaps, and military spouse licensure issues. My people-first, talent-focused administration will help to change all that. When Biden signed the Military Licensing Relief Act in January 2023, it seemed like a good thing—but putting it into practice with the states has proven to be a major challenge. Military spouses are still struggling. My administration will honor those who serve by increasing veteran transition resources in both public and private sectors, including COMMIT Foundation, New Politics, Hiring Our Heroes, Zero Mils, and Hill Vets.