Championing the Environment, Boosting Clean Energy, and Protecting Green Spaces

We see climate change playing out every day. Fires have raged for weeks and months in precious forests and nature areas across the country in recent years. Our Lake Michigan shorelines are eroding from stronger storms and waves right here in the 9th District in Rogers Park, Edgewater, Uptown, Evanston and Wilmette, and the planet is getting hotter and weather patterns more extreme as our carbon footprint expands. We are at a crisis point and must reduce our reliance on fossil fuels at a systemic level by incentivizing new solar, wind, and other renewable energy sources. That means adding electric vehicles to our roads and to our public transit systems across the nation, and building up green infrastructure at every opportunity in housing and commercial buildings. Every sector has a role to play and the federal government must lead. The Trump administration has been doing the opposite, instead firing hundreds of EPA workers here in Chicagoland who monitor our air and water and union busting on top of it, further increasing our risk from corporate polluters. I am committed to speaking truth to power and pushing to tackle climate change on an aggressive timeline as the science is clear that we are nearly out of time.

In the State Senate, I fought hard for passage of Senate Bill 727, passed into law in January 2025. I knew if Donald Trump got elected in 2024, he’d gut EPA regulations and protections around PFAS, also known as “forever chemicals.” They told us they’d do just that in Project 2025, so I drafted and passed legislation to codify federal protections at the state level to set limits of forever chemicals in our state water supplies. Sure enough in April 2025 the Trump Administration made good on their plans and gutted protections we now had proactively codified in Illinois. Clean water, air, and land are absolutely a human right and I will fight vigorously and proactively to protect these precious resources.

Speaking of water, I have also been a critical champion for replacing lead pipes as an environmental justice issue. In my freshman term as state senator, I secured $1 million in state capital dollars to replace lead pipes in south Evanston. It’s time for a reckoning on replacing lead pipes quickly. They are unsafe and getting people sick. More urgency and proactive leadership are imperative to bring in the funds and replace all lead pipes at the necessary scale. Setting a timeline that’s a generation away won’t cut it. If we stick to the status quo on lead pipes, we’ll have another generation impacted by lead poisoning and its adverse health effects.

I will also be a strong voice in Congress against drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and will use my platform to vocally oppose all efforts to develop or destroy precious natural resources – including indigenous communities’ water, land, and air – for the profit gains of corporate polluters and overdevelopment. I will also introduce budget bills to increase funding for protection and preservation of environmental treasures such as forest preserves, endangered animals, natural habitats and ecosystems, and waterways such as rivers, swamps, streams, and fens.

I am very concerned with the high energy consumption of artificial intelligence data centers, which is going to exponentially increase in the coming years. The amount of power - and the use of hundreds of thousands to millions of gallons of water every day to operate the centers - needs to be publicly reported to fully comprehend the environmental impact to our energy grid, utility bills, water supplies, carbon emissions, and other environmental impacts. We need more transparency as this issue grows and I am currently investigating legislation to introduce in the Illinois Senate.

Finally, I am proud to be a strong supporter of Green New Deal policies. I would pick up and champion numerous Green New Deal bills within my first three months of being sworn into Congress. There is so much work to be done to save our planet and allow communities that have been disinvested and polluted for decades to participate fully in a green economic recovery. As a Black person I know firsthand how our national policies have placed environmental polluters right in the middle of Black and Brown communities that have dramatically increased rates of cancer, asthma, and other illnesses. We need much stronger leadership on environmental policy in Congress, and my work will always bring a focus on equity to legislation and budgets with an eye toward reckoning with past environmental injustices.