The 7th District is deeply affected by food deserts and food insecurity. 22% of the district's residents are SNAP recipients, a program the Trump Administration has severely gutted.

As your Congresswoman, I would fight to pass policies that support the creation and growth of municipally-owned grocery stores that will help fill the crucial gap left by the reduction in SNAP and the abandonment of our communities.

Municipally-owned grocery stores will help us in three major ways:

1. Ensures ALL communities have access to quality grocery stores within their neighborhoods and affordable, healthy food options wherever they live.

2. Hits back against corporate-owned grocery stores getting to cherry-pick where they’re based, often saturating in only the wealthiest neighborhoods but leaving obvious food deserts in the poorest regions.

3. Stabilizes food prices and forces corporate-owned grocery stores to stay competitive with municipally-owned stores, meaning no more Jewel-Osco or Whole Foods price gouging customers for basic necessities like milk and eggs just because they feel like it.

Additionally, electricity costs are expected to spike by 20-30% by 2030 due to the construction of energy intensive AI data centers that demand a massive amount of energy to power AI systems. In upcoming years it is extremely likely that the 7th District will suffer from rolling blackouts during the summer months due to these different factors, putting communities in danger of suffering through intense heatwaves, like the deadly one in 1995, without access to air conditioning.

I will support legislation to drastically slow down and halt the construction of data centers until AI companies are able to prove that they will not be the cause of additional rate hikes or leave residential customers at greater risk of blackouts and will support legislation to dramatically increase the development of renewable energy and battery projects on the grid.