ON THE ISSUES

Amanda has always fought for an economy that works for everyone. As a Houston City Council member, she created the City of Houston Women and Minority-Owned Business Task Force to ensure that small business owners have fair access to capital. Amanda also fought for higher wages and better protections for workers — something the Trump administration has consistently tried to undermine.

As a proud graduate of Eisenhower High School, Amanda knows that the foundation for a better future starts with high-quality public education. And unlike Trump’s undermining of our public schools and gutting of the U.S. Department of Education, Amanda believes that every child deserves a great education, and that higher education should be accessible to all.

As a Member of Congress, Amanda will:

• Expand access to capital, training, and other resources for small business owners.

• Strengthen the rights of workers to unionize and collectively bargain, and push back against the Trump administration’s efforts to weaken worker protections. 

• Fight for a true living wage, because hardworking Americans deserve to earn enough to support their families. 

• Create opportunities for workers by expanding apprenticeship programs and introduce innovative and modern approaches to job training.

• Tackle the soaring costs of higher education, champion initiatives to support community colleges, and fund innovative education initiatives in our neighborhood schools. 

• Fight back against the Trump administration’s wholesale attacks on the federal programs and agencies we rely on, starting with working to reverse the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill,” which passed in July and will slash food programs like SNAP and Meals on Wheels, leaving millions of people hungry; shrink the funding available to students trying to pay for graduate school; rob more than sixteen million people of healthcare access nationally; and raise taxes for more than fourteen million households – all to pay for tax cuts for a handful of billionaires. 

Amanda knows firsthand that healthcare access isn’t just a policy issue — it’s a matter of life and death. Having lost both of her parents to cancer, Amanda understands the importance of affordable healthcare. Under Trump, millions of Americans are now left vulnerable as his administration guts Medicaid, actively dismantles the Affordable Care Act and rolls back protections for pre-existing conditions.

Here in Texas, we have the most uninsured people in the country, in part because our state leadership refused to expand Medicaid under the ACA. Texans also live with bans on reproductive health care –  and experience some of the biggest health disparities in the country, including one of the highest rates of Black maternal mortality. We deserve leadership that puts people’s health first.

As a member of Congress, Amanda will:

• Fight for health care access for everyone, starting with plugging the gaps in Affordable Care Act coverage that leave too many residents underinsured. 

• Work to preserve Medicare, Social Security, and other benefits that our seniors rely on to survive – and defend these vital programs against the slash-and-burn tactics of the Trump administration.  

• Address Black maternal mortality and other disproportionate health outcomes by securing research funding for conditions that disproportionately harm communities of color and working to expand access to care. 

• Protect health privacy by expanding HIPAA to ensure that private medical decisions, especially decisions about women’s reproductive health, truly stay private. 

• Work to codify the protections of Roe v. Wade at the federal level.

• Fight against bounty-style abortion bans by pursuing protections that would prevent the stalking or hunting of people seeking abortion care.

When Amanda served on H-GAC, our regional planning body, she learned that our eight-county region will grow by 4.2 million people within 20 years. With this type of anticipated growth, ensuring resiliency by investing in our transportation and flood mitigation infrastructure, housing stock, and the systems that power our region is mission critical. But under Trump, federal investment in critical infrastructure and climate change mitigation being slashed, and environmental rules that protect the health of our communities are being rolled back wholesale. Amanda is prepared to fight back against this disinvestment and bring our district the investments in flood infrastructure, disaster recovery, and environmental remediation that we need and deserve.

As a Member of Congress, Amanda will:

• Champion an improved, efficient, long-term funding system to address  the unique infrastructure needs of the Houston region – especially the flood infrastructure that is increasingly taxed by major storms. 

• Fight to ensure that our disaster systems – from early warning through disaster relief and recovery – have the funding and resources necessary to protect and restore our communities.

• Work across industries and communities to ensure Houston will lead the energy transition – and be the energy capital of the world of today and tomorrow

• Invest in multi-modal transportation infrastructure to support the anticipated 4 million people joining our region. 

• Work to right-size our housing supply by expanding federal support for housing planning for cities and using federal resources to incentivize the building of new housing.

• Develop innovative solutions to protect our residents from gentrification and displacement, and champion increased resources for CDBG programs. 

• Support policies that combat climate change, which continues to pose severe threats to the longevity of our community.

Amanda is inspired in her work by the deep civil rights legacy of the 18th Congressional District. The late, legendary Congresswoman Barbara Jordan and Congressman Mickey Leland made our region an important hub in the fight for democracy and civil rights for everyone. But today, our civil rights are under threat in a way we have not seen in generations. From Trump’s wholesale targeting of immigrant communities, to his willingness to unleash the military against peaceful protesters, to his attacks on birthright citizenship, voting rights, elections – and the very existence of the 18th Congressional District – the foundations of our democracy are in danger. We need a representative in Congress who understands the stakes – and will not back down from this fight. 

Amanda, with her deep roots in the district and her record of stalwart service to our community, is the leader we need in this moment.

As a Member of Congress, Amanda will:

• Fight to keep the 18th Congressional District in tact against an ongoing redistricting effort that is an explicit attempt by the Trump Administration to strip Black and Latino Texans of their voting power.

• Champion a comprehensive approach to securing our democracy, including expanding and protecting voting rights and addressing the extreme gerrymandering that suppresses the votes of Black and Latino communities. 

• Fight to ensure LGBTQIA+ people are federally protected from discriminatory policies that states including Texas are increasingly enacting. 

• Fight for environmental justice. Develop comprehensive equitable solutions for communities impacted by environmental injustice and resulting health issues, like the Fifth Ward cancer cluster.

Having lost her own cousin at an early age to gun violence, Amanda knows real solutions are needed to keep more families from losing their loved ones. But Trump’s repeated failure to address the gun violence epidemic in America, combined with his consistently encouraging rhetoric toward political violence, has left our communities without the safety and security they deserve. In contrast to this failure of leadership, Amanda knows that everyone deserves to be safe, both from crime and from police violence. Amanda will fight for a common-sense gun safety regime, and a law enforcement and justice system that treats us all fairly. 

As a Member of Congress, Amanda will:

• Advocate for community-led training and resources to support true community policing practices that build trust and collaboration between law enforcement and our communities. 

• Support reforms included in the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act.  

• Fight for common-sense gun control measures, including mandatory background checks and a federal red flag law.

• Support the expansion of community violence intervention programs, which are proven to make a difference in the safety of our communities.