What types of transportation do you use during an average week, and how has this shaped your view of transportation policy?

I use all forms of transportation, including Chicago’s CTA system, the Metra, travel by car, and e-bikes. My husband and I invested in e-bikes to utilize during Chicago’s warmer months to cut down on car usage. Living on the South Side of Chicago, we typically rely on getting to the lakefront for safer e-bike usage given the clear bike lanes up and down the lakefront trail and the safe distance away from cars and traffic. Many of the streets on the South Side do not have protected bike lanes with barriers to help prevent deadly traffic accidents, something that I feel is an important investment to make as part of equitable transportation policy. Additionally, while I tend to use the CTA for short trips or to get into the Loop from where I live, there is no easy transit route to visit my parents who now live on the far northwest side of the city. To do so via the CTA would require multiple train and bus transfers and would take well over an hour. For this reason, when visiting my parents, I often rely on getting there by car and utilizing the express lanes on the Kennedy. I believe transportation policy must invest in the expansion of train and bus routes to ensure residents can easily get across this city with ease.

What are some transportation challenges in your district?

One of the biggest transportation challenges in my district include the poor maintenance of our streets, especially pothole repairs and lack of unprotected bike lanes that make it unsafe and challenging for bikers to be able to commute around the city. Coupled with this, much of the South and West sides –especially our more industrial neighborhoods with big warehouses and construction sites– have wide, multi-lane boulevards where cars often speed down as if it's a highway. In Chicago Lawn for instance, street corners are often marked by flowers and ghost bike memorials of where a pedestrian was hit and killed by a car. With the South and West sides being heavily segregated parts of Chicago where predominantly Black and brown families live, these transportation challenges are issues of racial justice. Our streets deserve to be safe for all residents, not just some, and transportation policy must be invested in solutions that prioritize our most vulnerable communities and deliberately underserved neighborhoods.

How do you view Congress’s role in setting priorities for public transit, passenger rail, and strengthening accessibility in transportation?

Congress holds the power of the purse and can authorize funding for major federal investment into mass transit systems across the country, including right here in Chicago. This includes pushing for robust funding in transportation reauthorization bills, securing dedicated dollars for CTA upgrades, and expanding federal grants that help cities buy new buses and trains, improve stations and make them more accessible to people with disabilities, and modernize signals.

In Congress, I will champion efforts to ensure our federal dollars don’t just cover construction costs but also build more reliable service,safe staffing levels, and transit systems that utilize renewable energy. I’d work to change federal rules so cities can use more federal funds to keep trains and buses running on time, hire more operators and pay these workers a living wage with strong retirement benefits, expand service to neighborhoods that have been underserved for decades, and support the reduction of carbon emissions in our transportation systems.

What’s your position on the Federal government and Illinois’ current transportation infrastructure spending, and if you could change anything, what would it be?

Recent federal investments have helped our state make good progress on transportation infrastructure that helped stabilize long-delayed projects and modernize aging systems. But the reality is we have been underinvested in for decades and we’re still playing catch-up. Too much of our federal funding for transportation infrastructure is unpredictable, moves too low, and vulnerable to changing politics.

At the federal level, I support strong, sustained transportation spending because it’s one of the best ways for us to give back to and strengthen our communities in the form of good-paying jobs, safety, climate resilience, and economic mobility.

Congress has a significant role to play in moving us away from crisis-by-crisis infrastructure spending and toward a long-term, predictable federal partnership with states like Illinois that treats transportation as essential public infrastructure, not a political bargaining chip.

What is your position on investing to expand passenger rail service in Illinois, including the development of high-speed rail?

I believe that expanding passenger rail service, including high speed rail, is a net positive for the people of Chicago’s 7th Congressional district and across Illinois, and must be made affordable for all residents. It would bring much needed union jobs to our state, bring people together, and help us reduce the effects of travel on the environment. Additionally, investments in passenger rail service will also benefit local small businesses with additional foot traffic from commuters going in and out of areas like the Loop in the 7th district, and it would support workers in being able to get to and from work with greater ease and reliability. Additional investments in passenger and high speed rail would bring a much needed new investment across the 7th district that, if done correctly and with equity at the forefront, will help to close the inequalities prevalent in our district.

Federal funding for Illinois transportation projects – such as the Red Line Extension and Red-Purple Modernization projects – has come under threat from the Trump administration. How do you plan to shore up funding for critical infrastructure projects under a hostile federal climate?

I am running to be a fighter for the people of my district, and I’m not willing to accept the idea that our communities should be punished because Washington politics are dysfunctional. Projects like the Red Line Extension and Red-Purple Modernization aren’t partisan wish lists, they’re economic engines, climate investments, and public safety necessities for millions of people.

These projects shouldn’t rise or fall based on who’s in the White House. My job in Congress is to lock funding into law, not leave it vulnerable to political games. I’ll fight for multi-year transportation funding with clear formulas, build bipartisan coalitions to protect it, and make sure Illinois is ready to capture every available dollar. And if an administration illegally withholds funds, I’ll back strong oversight and legal action. Infrastructure is about people getting to work and home safely; it shouldn't be a bargaining chip.

Our streets have become increasingly militarized in the past several months as the Trump administration has ramped up DHS and ICE activity in our cities. This past summer, Congress voted to increase the ICE budget larger than most of the world's militaries.

What is your position on ICE and related immigration enforcement?

As someone who has spent the last 10 years on the frontlines organizing with undocumented immigrant youth, I have seen first hand the terror and harm ICE has caused on immigrant and Latino communities. In the past year, with Operation Midway Blitz, we have seen ICE agents violate people’s due process, separate families, and in some cases, kill everyday citizens, like Silverio Villegas González in nearby Chicago, Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, and Keith Porter in LA. 2025 was one of the deadliest years in ICE detention in nearly two decades, with 32 people who died in custody. We began just the first few weeks of 2026, with already over 6 documented deaths in ICE custody. ICE is a violent and rogue agency that makes us less safe, and erodes community trust hurting public safety. Many families and workers are afraid to leave their homes and take public transportation to get to and from work knowing that at any moment, they could be targeted by masked and armed immigration agents. ICE and CBP should be abolished, and the billions in federal dollars that goes to fund their harmful actions year after year should be reinvested in strengthening and modernizing our transportation system, ensuring health care is something everyone can afford, and delivering a pathway to citizenship that actually promotes stability, safety, and helps our communities and economies grow.