2024 Democratic Party Platform | The American Presidency Project (2024)

Democratic National Convention
Land Acknowledgement

The Democratic National Committee wishes to acknowledge that we gather together to state our values on lands that have been stewarded through many centuries by the ancestors and descendants of Tribal Nations who have been here since time immemorial. We honor the communities native to this continent, and recognize that our country was built on Indigenous homelands. We pay our respects to the millions of Indigenous people throughout history who have protected our lands, waters, and animals.

While we meet in Chicago, we also recognize and honor the traditional homelands of the Anishinaabe, also known as the Council of the Three Fires: the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi Nations.

We acknowledge the many other tribes who consider this area their traditional homeland, including the Myaamia, Ho-Chunk, Menominee, Sac and Fox, Peoria, Kaskaskia, Wea, Kickapoo, and Mascouten.

Democrats continue to support tribes as they advocate for the United States to uphold treaty and trust responsibilities. We applaud that in 2024, under the Biden-Harris Administration, the Prairie Band of Potawatomi Nation became the first federally recognized Tribal Nation in Illinois in 175 years, when the U.S. Department of the Interior placed 130 acres of the Shab-eh-nay reservation in nearby DeKalb County into trust.

Preamble

Our nation is at an inflection point. What kind of America will we be? A land of more freedom, or less freedom? More rights or fewer? An economy rigged for the rich and powerful, or where everyone has a fair shot at getting ahead? Will we lower the temperature in our politics and come together, or treat each other as enemies instead?

The stakes in this election are enormously high.

President Biden and Vice President Harris took office during a time of global pandemic, record job loss, and record crime. These past four years, Democrats proved once again that democracy can deliver, and made tremendous progress turning the country around. President Biden and Vice President Harris turned a setback into a great American comeback for working families.

We've created nearly 16 million jobs, a record number of small businesses are being started, and factories are coming home. We lowered families' health insurance premiums, and we stood up to Big Pharma to lower prescription drug prices. We're helping students catch up on learning loss, and we're forgiving millions of crushing student loans. We passed the first significant gun safety law in decades and made record investments in public safety, putting more police officers on the beat; today, violent crime is at its lowest in 50 years. We're fighting climate change, reducing pollution, and fueling a clean energy boom. We're rebuilding our nation's roads, bridges, highways, ports, airports, water systems, and more. We're seizing record amounts of fentanyl and securing our border in the face of Republican inaction. We're closing the racial wealth gap and the gender pay gap. We've expanded benefits and services for toxic-exposed veterans; and we're strengthening NATO and restoring American leadership in the world.

There is so much more to do. Democrats will fix the tax system so everyone has a fair shot. We will restore the right to choose. We will continue to bring down costs for families. We will continue to reject political violence of all forms and give hate no safe harbor.

Donald Trump has a very different vision – one focused not on opportunity and optimism, but on revenge and retribution; not on the American people, but on himself. He and his extreme MAGA allies are ripping away our bedrock personal freedoms, dictating what health care decisions women can make, banning books, and telling people who they can love. They're rigging our economy for their rich friends and big corporations, pushing more trickle-down tax cuts for the wealthy and powerful, and a new national sales tax that will cost every working family an average $2,500 a year. They'll cut the Social Security benefits that folks have paid into for their whole lives; and gut Medicare, Medicaid, health care, and prescription drug coverage. They are eroding our democracy with lies and threats, have refused to denounce political violence, and are making it harder to vote. And given the chance, they'll keep stacking our courts, locking in their extreme agenda for decades. We cannot let that happen.

President Biden, Vice President Harris, and Democrats are running to finish the job. To grow our economy from the middle out and bottom up, not the top down. To reward work, not wealth. To lower costs. To tackle the climate crisis, lower energy costs, and secure energy independence. To protect communities and tackle the scourge of gun violence. To secure the border and fix the broken immigration system. To advance the President's Unity Agenda. To strengthen American leadership worldwide.

History has shown that nothing about democracy is guaranteed. Every generation has to protect it, preserve it, choose it. We must stand together to choose what we want America to be.

Economic Progress8
Investing In America9
Good Jobs10
Small Businesses12
Agriculture13
Fighting Poverty14
Ending Special Interest Giveaways 15

Chapter Two: Rewarding Work, Not Wealth 16

Cutting Taxes For Working Families 17
Making The Wealthy & Big Corporations Pay Their Fair Share 17

Chapter Three: Lowering Costs 19

Health Care & Prescription Drugs 19
Child Care, Home Care, & Paid Leave 22
Gas & Groceries 24
Corporate Greed 24
Housing 25
Education 28
Social Security, Pensions, & Medicare 30

Producing Cleaner, More Affordable Energy 33
Lowering Energy Costs 33
Creating Clean Energy Jobs 34
Reducing Pollution & Making Polluters Pay 35
Environmental Justice 36
Building Climate Resilient Communities 38
Conservation 38
Global Climate Leadership 39

Gun Safety 41
Policing & Public Safety 42
Criminal Justice 43
Violence Against Women 45

Judges 48
Voting Rights 49
Stopping The Influence Of Special Interests 50
Reproductive Freedom 50
Women's Rights 52
Racial Equity 54
Lgbtqi+ 58
Disability 60
Tribal Nations 61
Combating Hate & Protecting Freedom Of Religion 62
Freedom Of The Press 64
Arts & Humanities 64
D.C., Puerto Rico, Territories 65

Securing The Border 68
Expanding Legal Immigration & Deterring Illegal Immigration 70

Chapter Eight: Advancing the President's Unity Agenda 73

Beating The Opioid Epidemic 73
Investing In Mental Health 74
Protecting Kids Online, Strengthening Americans'
Data Privacy, & Promoting Competition74
Ending Cancer As We Know It 76
Meeting Our Nation's Sacred Obligation To
Veterans And Military Families 77

Chapter Nine: Strengthening American Leadership Worldwide 79

Europe 79
Indo-Pacific 81
China 82
The Middle East & North Africa 84
Western Hemisphere 87
Africa 88
Strengthening The U.S. And Global Economy 89
Leading With Diplomacy And American Values 90
Strongest Military In The World 92

Chapter One: Growing Our Economy from the Bottom Up & Middle Out

This election is a choice between two very different economic visions for America: Donald Trump, who sees the world from his country club at Mar-a-Lago; and Joe Biden, who sees it from kitchen tables in Scranton like the one he grew up around. His economic agenda is about Main Street, not Wall Street. It's about ending the days of trickle-down economics and investing in America – in all Americans – and delivering for communities too long left behind.

While Democrats keep fighting to lower costs for working families, Trump is rigging our economy for his Mar-a-Lago friends and billionaire donors, who like him, are only in it for themselves.

As president, Trump doubled down on the trickle-down policies of the past, cutting investment in infrastructure and education, and rewarding big corporations that ship jobs and profits overseas. He vowed to bring new factories to communities across America, but left nothing behind but a string of broken promises.

Democrats have a different record. We're delivering on President Biden's pledge to rebuild our economy from the middle out and bottom up, not the top down. We're investing in America – in our infrastructure, our industry, our people, and our future. While Trump left office with historic budget deficits and the worst jobs record since Herbert Hoover, since President Biden took office, this country has come back from the brink, the deficit has fallen by over $1 trillion, and we have the best jobs record since John F. Kennedy. We're powering the strongest economic recovery in the world.

ECONOMIC PROGRESS

At the start of the Biden-Harris Administration, in the midst of the worst economic crisis in 100 years, experts feared a stagnating recovery and even worried about a new recession. But Democrats chose to put workers first, and instead of recession, America has seen remarkable strength and resilience. Our economy grew by 3.1 percent last year – the fastest rate of any major economy in the world.

We've added nearly 16 million jobs – not only recovering all the positions lost during Trump's botched handling of COVID, but also adding 6.3 million more than existed before the pandemic – surpassing pre-pandemic projections for the labor market. During this Administration, 30 states from Mississippi to Pennsylvania have seen record-low unemployment; and the run of low unemployment nationwide hasn't been this long in over 50 years. Wages are up across the board, and rising fastest for lower-income workers, Black workers, Latinos, and women. Today's recovery is the fairest on record; in just four years, we've erased 40 percent of the wage inequality gap that took four decades to build. A record 18 million small business applications have been filed since President Biden took office, each one of them an act of hope.

While too many families still feel the pain of inflation at the grocery store, or around the kitchen table when they sit down to pay their bills, we're making progress. Wages are rising faster than prices, and inflation today is down nearly two-thirds from its peak. We have to finish the job. Democrats will keep fighting to prevent the kind of supply chain shocks and corporate greed that have done so much to raise prices. And we'll keep investing in American workers, American jobs, and American families, bringing factories home to win the race for the future. Democrats know the story of the middle class isn't separate from the state of the economy – it's at its heart. And we'll never quit fighting to make sure that everyone is in on the deal.

INVESTING IN AMERICA

Infrastructure

We can't have the best economy in the world if we don't have the best infrastructure. And for generations, American infrastructure was the envy of the world. But over the years, we stopped investing in it, and we fell to thirteenth in infrastructure rankings. The Trump Administration declared it "Infrastructure Week" every week for four years, and never built a thing. But under President Biden, we're finally rebuilding our roads, bridges, ports, airports, water systems, electric grids, broadband, and more, paving the way for a great American "Infrastructure Decade" that will create hundreds of thousands of good-paying union jobs.

The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law is breaking ground on over 57,000 projects across 4,500 communities nationwide. We're rebuilding major roadways, from the Blatnik Bridge, a vital link between Wisconsin and Minnesota that carries more $4 billion in goods a year through the largest Great Lakes port; to a key stretch of the I-10 outside Phoenix that sees 126,000 vehicles a day. We're making the biggest investment in public transit in history, and at last building America's first true high-speed rail lines. We're replacing every toxic lead pipe in the country within a decade, so every child can turn on the faucet at home or at school and drink clean water without risking cancer or brain damage. We've added over 80,000 megawatts of new clean power capacity, the equivalent of building 40 Hoover Dams, to help shrink energy costs and meet ambitious climate goals. And we're bringing affordable, reliable, high-speed internet to every American household. High-speed internet is as vital to our economy today as electricity first was a century ago; Americans need it to do their jobs, to do their homework, to access health care, and to stay connected. But a full 45 million of us still live in areas where there is no high-speed internet. Democrats are closing that divide. These projects don't just build infrastructure, they create hundreds of thousands of good jobs for American workers.

Manufacturing

Democrats are also taking historic steps to bring home critical supply chains, and to reaffirm our nation's leadership in cutting-edge industries that America in fact often pioneered. After the pandemic exposed our reliance on foreign-made semiconductors, we passed the CHIPS and Science Act, to restore America's role producing the tiny computer chips needed to make everything from cell phones to dishwashers to cars. And as the climate crisis makes the shift to clean energy more urgent, we passed the Inflation Reduction Act, making the world's biggest investment ever in building renewable energy, electric vehicles, and other green technologies here at home.

The President's Investing in America agenda has incentivized a historic $877 billion in private funding across the United States to date. Companies are investing hundreds of billions more than under Trump to build new factories. In fact, under President Biden, more than a dozen states have seen the largest private sector investments in their history. We've designated more than 30 tech hubs in communities from Reno, Nevada; to Charlotte, North Carolina; to North Central Pennsylvania. And we've made sure that lower-income counties see a larger share of investment. Today, instead of exporting American jobs for cheaper labor, we're creating American jobs and exporting products, leaving no one behind.

Under President Biden, we've also boosted funding for the kind of research and development that can seed economy-transforming breakthroughs, like the internet. In recent years, America became one of the world's only major countries to pull back on R&D investments; Democrats are changing that. President Biden for example launched the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) in 2022, to find game-changing medical cures and treatments and transform important areas of medicine. Under his leadership, we'll continue supporting NASA and America's presence on the International Space Station, and working to send Americans back to the moon and to Mars. Democrats will keep America at the forefront of scientific discovery and innovation, responsibly leading the way in the defining fields of the future, like AI, biotech, quantum computing, advanced materials, and more.

GOOD JOBS

These generational investments are transforming our economy, creating new businesses, new jobs, and new cycles of hope – in red states and blue states; in rural, urban, and Tribal Nation communities too long left behind. In all, President Biden's agenda has already created nearly 800,000 manufacturing jobs, and 880,000 more jobs in construction, building the roads, factories, and dreams of our future. More Americans are employed in these fields and clean energy today than ever were under Trump. President Biden's agenda requires that any federally-financed infrastructure job must include wage and labor protections. And we're making sure that these projects use American-made goods, by strengthening "Buy American" procurement rules to their toughest level in seven decades. That means every federally funded infrastructure project is being built with American-made steel, lumber, drywall, concrete, and other products, by American workers. And the Administration has taken historic steps to ensure that these workers are paid prevailing wages, with the free and fair choice to join a union; and to incentivize project labor agreements.

President Biden believes that you shouldn't have to go to a four-year college to live a good, middle-class life. Democrats are working to make sure that every American can access these quality new jobs, where many people can earn over $100,000 a year. The American Rescue Plan supported more than 4,300 state- and local-government workforce development programs; while our Investing in American agenda is expanding job-training partnerships between high schools, community colleges, unions, and employers. We have a million trainees enrolled in registered apprenticeships today. Apprenticeships have long provided a reliable path to the middle class, empowering workers to earn while they learn, not only in traditional trades, but also in new cutting-edge industries. Extreme Republicans have proposed gutting funding for registered apprenticeships in this year's budget. We'll keep making historic investments in them to keep expanding opportunity, including by partnering directly with unions.

Democrats know that Wall Street didn't build America. The middle class built America – and unions built the middle class. President Biden and Vice President Harris are proud to lead the most pro-union Administration in history. President Biden named staunch labor allies and former union leaders to positions across the government, and empowered them to fight for good jobs and workers' rights. Biden is the first President to walk a picket line, joining UAW workers on strike in Detroit before they won historic wage increases last year. He knows that when unions win, all workers benefit; and as we rebuild our economy for the future, every worker needs a voice and a fair shot.

Democrats will keep fighting to pass the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, to give everyone the right to organize for better pay, benefits, and working conditions, and to hold abusive bosses accountable for violating workers' rights. We oppose state right-to-work laws, which drive down wages and leave workers unsafe; and we support penalizing employers who engage in union busting. We'll work to pass the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act, guaranteeing public sector bargaining rights; and to codify a right to organize for domestic workers, farm workers, and other unprotected laborers. Democrats will continue to create strong labor standards for jobs created with taxpayer dollars through legislation and with strong Buy American rules. Consistent with the law, we will ensure that federal grants and other assistance to employers are contingent on recipients committing to not interfering with workers' efforts to form a union. By leveraging the benefits of federal grants for infrastructure, manufacturing and services, we will seek to ensure that all Americans have the opportunity to participate in the American Dream.

We'll strengthen enforcement and penalties for safety, wage, and other labor and employment violations. And, Democrats will continue to aggressively hold companies accountable for violating child labor law. We've increased funding for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to protect workers on the job; and we'll continue to support workplace whistleblowers.

At the same time, we're pushing to guarantee workers the pay, benefits, and protections they deserve as well. We passed the Butch Lewis Act, keeping over 2 million people's hard-earned pensions solvent. We also raised the minimum wage for federal contractors to $17.20 an hour, and will keep pushing Congress to increase it to at least $15 for all Americans. We're making millions more hourly workers eligible for overtime pay; and we've cracked down on wage theft and exploitation, recovering over $750 million for low-wage workers wrongly denied pay. We're making it harder for employers to misclassify workers as independent contractors to avoid paying them full pay and benefits. We're banning most non-compete agreements, freeing workers to move between jobs and negotiate. And we've restricted mandatory arbitration, so fewer employers can silence wronged employees in a workplace dispute.

We also recognize that the U.S. Postal Service is the world's most efficient, and Democrats are wholly committed to supporting a public U.S.P.S. We will fight all efforts to privatize it and will work to ensure that it's financially sustainable. We will protect its universal service obligation and on-time delivery. And we will support a Board of Governors and a Postal Regulatory Commission that champion a strong public Postal Service.

Trump has a very different record. As President, he not only failed to bring manufacturing jobs home, he pushed to cut funding for R&D and job training. He gave tax breaks to big corporations, with no condition that they invest in workers or innovation in return. He stacked his Labor Department and National Labor Relations Board with corporate lawyers who made it harder to organize, not easier. His Administration ripped protections from federal workers, slashed workplace safety inspections, and blocked increases in overtime pay. Now, Trump and his allies are vowing to repeal key pieces of the Biden agenda – stalling historic progress; undermining American manufacturing; and costing hundreds of thousands of Americans the good paychecks and future prospects that they deserve.

Democrats won't let that happen. We fought hard to pass the most significant investments in America in generations. Now, we'll continue the important work of implementing them, to be sure that the benefits are shared in every corner of America and create good-paying jobs that folks can raise a family on, with the chance to join a union, and that rely on materials made here at home. We cannot go backwards. We have to own these industries and jobs of the future.

SMALL BUSINESSES

Small businesses are the engine of America's economy and the glue of our communities. They employ nearly half of all private sector workers, and drive half of all economic activity. They embody the vision and grit that literally built this country.

When President Biden took office, our economy was reeling and millions of small businesses were hanging by a thread. Business owners faced the prospect of losing not just their livelihoods, but their dreams, their life's savings, and their hopes of leaving something behind for their kids. So Democrats moved fast. Within weeks, we reformed the Paycheck Protection Program, getting game-changing help to thousands of America's smallest businesses, which had been shut out by Trump. Then, we passed the American Rescue Plan and helped 6 million small businesses pay their bills and workers and stay afloat. And thanks to that legislation, we provided additional support to 100,000 restaurants and 220,000 child care centers serving millions of kids, which working parents rely on. Not a single Republican voted for it.

Since then, Democrats have passed other historic laws, to build infrastructure, semiconductors, clean energy, and the small-business supply chains that support those cutting-edge industries, here at home. The Administration is expanding access to capital, business opportunities, and training to help those small businesses; while working for a fairer tax code, to level the playing field for small entrepreneurs who have to compete against corporate giants. The Administration has invested a record $12 billion in Community Development Finance Institutions (CDFIs), to support small businesses and growth across low-income communities. The Small Business Administration is nearly halfway to its goal of providing $250 billion in financing to 500,000 small businesses by 2030. For example, to get mom-and-pop businesses the small loans, under $150,000, that are often hard to secure, the SBA has brought in additional non-traditional lenders that specialize in working with underserved small businesses. It's now on track to double these loans by year's end, compared to 2020. The Administration is also directing billions of dollars to community lenders and state-level small-business programs. Along with initiatives like Vice President Harris's Economic Opportunity Coalition, it is mobilizing hundreds of billions more in private investment. At the same time, the federal government this year set a record for small business contract spending, awarding them 28 percent of total procurement dollars, directly supporting a million jobs. It is on track to meet its goal of increasing federal contracts awarded to small disadvantaged businesses by 50 percent.

As a result, America is today in the midst of a historic small-business boom. A record 18 million new business applications have been filed since Joe Biden became president – the three strongest years of new business growth in history, and over 90 percent faster than pre-pandemic averages. Since the pandemic, the share of Black households owning a business has more than doubled, Latino business ownership is up 40 percent, and women own a record share of businesses. As President Biden often says, each new business formed is an act of hope.

Thanks to President Biden's Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Minority Business Development Agency is now a permanent part of the Commerce Department, where it's training underserved entrepreneurs. The SBA's innovative Community Navigators program meanwhile helped 350,000 small businesses tap into resources that have helped them grow. In a second Biden term, we'll make that Navigator program permanent, and include new lenders, new markets, and fairer taxes.

Trump still puts Wall Street before Main Street. As president, he slashed the tax rate for giant corporations, but left small businesses behind. His disastrous response to COVID funneled assistance to well-connected friends and companies, but left too many of our smallest businesses without essential help. More than 300,000 closed. He's now running on a plan to double-down on his tax scam to benefit big corporations and billionaires. His Congressional allies keep trying to slash SBA funding, and to repeal our investments in infrastructure and manufacturing – the same ones that are lowering costs for small businesses, boosting their revenue, and helping millions to thrive. Democrats won't let that happen.

AGRICULTURE

American farmers are the backbone of our country. They feed America, and help feed the world. But over the years, trickle-down economics has hit rural America hard. Farming costs have gone up and incomes have gone down. Big Agriculture moved in, telling too many small farms that the surest path to success was to get big or get out. As a result, we lost over 400,000 farms in America in the last 40 years, and rural communities have paid a steep price. Too many young people have had to leave their hometowns to find good-paying work and a shot at their dreams.

The President believes that no one should have to leave the community where they grew up just to find opportunity. His Investing in America agenda is investing in all of America, including farms and rural areas. It's creating new sources of income for farmers and increasing competition among suppliers, to both lower the cost of farm inputs and to get small and mid-size farmers a larger share of profits. The Inflation Reduction Act is helping farmers and ranchers adopt climate-smart practices, which make the land more resilient and increase profitability, while connecting them to new markets and premiums for sustainably produced commodities. The Administration recognizes the critical role that our land stewards play in our food systems, economy, and environment, and is working hard to drive both public and private funds to reward these champions for nature for their hard work. The Administration has also supported independent meat and poultry processing, reducing producers' reliance on big companies to buy their product; and it's working to make livestock and poultry markets fairer and more transparent. Today, family farms have more income from more varied sources, so their children have more opportunity to stay family farmers.

At the same time, the Administration is helping family farmers service distressed loans in order to keep their lands and ultimately pass them down to their kids. It has worked with many farmers to boost the production of expensive fertilizer, increasing supply and easing costs for everyone else. The U.S.D.A. also expanded farm insurance to allow for more double cropping, a practice that increases farm earnings, expands the food supply, and helps lower average food prices for American families. Going forward, Democrats will also work to get farmers the right to repair their own equipment, without having to pay big equipment makers for diagnostic tools and repairs. And we will look to further limit foreign ownership of U.S. farmland to protect our food supply and national security.

Throughout, Democrats have stood by farm workers. We are working to improve workers' safety at meat processing facilities, and we will continue to enforce and advance labor and environmental rules, for example promoting organizing rights and requiring overtime pay, and boosting protections against harmful pesticides and extreme heat.

FIGHTING POVERTY

As Democrats, we believe in an America where people look out for one another and leave no one behind. But we know we still have a long way to go to make America's promise real for everyone. Some 40 million Americans still live in poverty. The pandemic made things worse, hitting the poor hardest, and pushing millions more families to the brink. The American Rescue Plan drove poverty to record lows in 2021. It expanded the Child Tax Credit and made it available to all low-income children for the first time, helping to slash child poverty by nearly half. It tripled the maximum Earned Income Tax Credit for millions of low-income workers, so their taxes wouldn't push them deeper into poverty. It kept 8 million families in their homes, child care centers open, and small businesses on their feet. It increased Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, helping tens of millions of Americans keep food on the table. Not a single Republican voted for the bill.

And the Administration has done more. It reversed a Trump-era policy that would have risked putting half-a-million children in poverty. It modernized SNAP benefits for the first time since 1975, permanently increasing them and lifting more than 2 million people, including over a million children, out of poverty as well. President Biden signed into law a permanent special summer nutrition program that will help 21 million kids. And he successfully blocked Congressional Republican proposals that would've increased poverty by slashing health care, housing, food assistance, and more.

Now, it's time to finish the job. Democrats know that most folks fundamentally want the same things – not a hand out, but a fair shot. That's why we'll keep pushing to restore the expanded Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit, which proved so effective at reducing poverty before Republicans let them expire. We'll work to finally raise the federal minimum wage to at least $15-an-hour. We'll fight for paid leave, better health care, and more investment in public schools and affordable housing. We'll reduce the need for foster care, by supporting families and engaging kin. We'll further expand public transit, connecting communities that have been cut off for too long. We'll keep working to get more low-income families access to affordable banking as well, and to boost the supply of capital and loans by investing more in CDFIs. We'll also push to make the New Markets Tax Credit permanent, drawing new investment to low-income communities nationwide. And we'll continue to reject Republican proposals to increase poverty by making devastating cuts to programs that vulnerable Americans count on.

In the wealthiest nation on earth, we all benefit when we help one another. Democrats will keep working to build an economy that rewards work, not wealth; where we care for the most vulnerable, and unleash the potential that all our children have to grow and thrive. We remain committed to fighting poverty and enabling all Americans to live up to their God-given potential.

ENDING SPECIAL INTEREST GIVEAWAYS

To invest in the American people and reduce the deficit, Democrats are also ending giveaways to big corporations and special interests that have benefitted at the expense of American taxpayers for too long.

We're seizing a tremendous opportunity for savings on prescription drugs and insurance. The Administration has already cracked down on one of Big Pharma's biggest scams, by finally giving Medicare, the single biggest buyer of drugs in America, the ability to negotiate lower prescription drug prices, as the VA and private insurers have done for years. The Administration is also requiring drugmakers to reimburse Medicare if they hike prices faster than inflation. That kind of markup pads Big Pharma profits, wasting taxpayer dollars. Democrats will expand the number of drugs subject to price caps and negotiation under the Inflation Reduction Act, saving taxpayers nearly $160 billion over the next 10 years, as Medicare will no longer have to pay Big Pharma exorbitant prices.

At the same time, we'll keep pushing to crack down on outsize insurance company profits, for example by requiring health insurers to reimburse Medicaid if they bill more than they actually spend on patient care. We also believe in saving taxpayers money by investing more in preventative health care, vaccines, and other treatment for Medicaid and CHIP beneficiaries, avoiding unnecessary medical costs by keeping folks healthy – investing in America, and in the American people.

Chapter Two: Rewarding Work, Not Wealth

To any American with the ingenuity and drive to make a million bucks, President Biden says, great. Just pay your fair share in taxes. A hedge fund manager or CEO should never pay a lower tax rate than a teacher or firefighter. A company with billions of dollars in profits should not pay $0 in taxes.

A fair tax code is how we invest in the things that make our nation strong, like health care, education, a clean environment, and the national defense. It's how we protect programs that Americans rely on, like Social Security and Medicare. It's how we build a powerful economy, reduce fiscal risks, and lead the world.

Donald Trump is focused on rigging the game for his billionaire donors instead. He always puts himself and his rich friends first. In 2017, he enacted a reckless, unpaid-for tax cut that overwhelmingly benefited the very wealthy and biggest corporations. It was full of outrageous giveaways, including a massive tax break for the wealthiest 0.1 percent. It slashed the corporate tax rate by nearly half, with executives plowing their windfalls into stock buybacks for their own benefit, rather than investing in workers or better products, or lowering prices. After weakening labor protections and complaining that wages are "too high," Trump is now telling donors behind closed doors at Mar-a-Lago: "You're rich as hell, and we're going to give you tax cuts."

That trickle-down approach never worked. Trump's allies predicted that his tax scam would push economic growth as high as 6 percent, but America's growth rate barely changed. The law had no impact on the average American's income – only boosting wages for those in the top 10 percent. Trump's allies claimed it would pay for itself, but it instead exploded the federal deficit by $2 trillion. Trump's policies added more to our national debt than has ever been added in a presidential term.

Corporate profits have doubled since the pandemic, yet Trump wants to reward corporations with another big tax cut. Republicans are doubling down on Trump's failed approach and have proposed $1 trillion in new corporate tax cuts. They'll repeal the estate tax, so the wealthiest 0.1 percent of Americans can pass wealth on to their heirs tax-free. They'll give American billionaires an average $3.5 million tax break – a giveaway nearly 50 times bigger than what the average family earns in a year. House Republicans have vowed to pay for part of all that by cutting Social Security and Medicare for everyone else. Economists say Trump's billionaire giveaways and extreme tariffs will slow growth, cost jobs, and trigger a recession his first year back in office, raising taxes on middle-class families by $2,500 a year, and adding trillions to the deficit.

Democrats have a different view. We don't believe we should add $5 trillion to the national debt to give more tax breaks skewed to the wealthy and big corporations. We're fighting to reward work, not wealth – to cut costs and make the tax code fairer for the middle class, while making the wealthy and big corporations finally pay their fair share. Under President Biden's plan, no American earning less than $400,000 a year will pay one single penny more in federal taxes, period. We're working to end special interest giveaways, and to make sure all Americans play by the same rules. And instead of exploding the national deficit, our plan cuts it by $3 trillion over the next decade, delivering real results for the American people in a fiscally responsible way.

CUTTING TAXES FOR WORKING FAMILIES

Democrats will protect everyone earning less than $400,000 a year from any tax increase; and we will fight to protect and expand other tax benefits for working people and families with children.

During the pandemic, Democrats expanded the Child Tax Credit, saving nearly 40 million families with 65 million children up to $3,600 per child per year, and cutting child poverty nearly in half to its lowest rate on record. We expanded the Earned Income Tax Credit as well, saving over 17 million low-paid workers an average $700 a year. And, we expanded the health insurance premium tax credit, saving millions of families who buy coverage on an Affordable Care Act exchange about $800 a year.

Republicans are opposed to this tax relief for families that need it. They already blocked renewal of our Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit expansions, pushing 3 million children back into poverty. Republicans also keep trying to repeal our premium tax credit expansions, which will raise health care costs for millions of families. Democrats will keep fighting to restore and protect that tax relief, giving tens of millions of families some breathing room again. And President Biden has also proposed a $10,000 tax credit for first-time homebuyers and people selling their first homes, to help reduce housing costs for working families.

The Treasury Department and the IRS are also making it easier and cheaper for Americans to file their taxes and collect the refunds they're owed. The IRS successfully piloted a free, easy-to-use online tool, Direct File, which has already saved taxpayers millions of dollars in filing fees. It has since announced that Direct File will be a permanent offering, saving users an average $150 in filing costs – but Republicans keep trying to defund this free tool.

MAKING THE WEALTHY & BIG CORPORATIONS PAY THEIR FAIR SHARE

President Biden's plans will cut taxes for middle-class and low-income Americans – and we'll finance those cuts by making the ultra-wealthy and big corporations finally start paying their fair share.

There are a thousand billionaires in America, and they pay an average 8 percent in taxes – a far lower rate than a firefighter or teacher. Democrats will make billionaires pay a minimum income tax rate of 25 percent, raising $500 billion in 10 years. We'll end the preferential treatment for capital gains for millionaires, so they pay the same rate on investment income as on wages.

We'll put an end to abusive life insurance tax shelters, and stop billionaires from exploiting retirement tax incentives that are supposed to help middle-class families save. We'll eliminate the "stepped-up basis" loophole for the wealthiest Americans, so they can't avoid paying taxes on their wealth by passing it down to heirs. Democrats will close the "carried interest" loophole, which wealthy fund managers have long used to halve tax rates on their own personal pay, so they pay a lower rate than some teachers or firefighters do. That's wrong. And, we'll increase our new stock buyback tax to 4 percent to discourage stock buybacks that benefit executives and wealthy shareholders, instead of workers and consumers.

We will also keep upping the pressure on wealthy and corporate tax cheats that fail to pay what they owe. The IRS was severely underfunded for years; but Democrats are improving IRS services for everyday taxpayers and reviving enforcement against wealthy and corporate tax cheats, raising more than an estimated $440 billion in additional revenue as a result. The IRS has already collected over $500 million in unpaid taxes from less than 2,000 delinquent millionaires, and launched efforts aimed at thousands of other millionaires who hadn't filed a return in years. Democrats will protect this progress by continuing to invest in modernizing the IRS. Republicans are working to reverse it, protecting wealthy tax cheats and increasing the deficit instead.

Democrats will also make billion-dollar companies pay their fair share. In 2020, 55 of the biggest companies in America made $40 billion in profit, but paid zero in federal income taxes.

Corporations are seeing record margins, but their share of federal taxes has fallen below 10 percent, down from 30 percent in the 1950s. It's wrong. Trump doesn't care: he slashed the corporate tax rate to 21 percent, down from 35 percent. President Biden will raise that rate back to 28 percent. And for those billion-dollar tax dodgers, the President signed a historic 15 percent corporate minimum tax into law. He also reached a global minimum tax agreement with 140 countries, so that big multinational companies will no longer be able to pit nations against one another in a race to the bottom. And, Biden will double the tax rate that American multinationals pay on foreign earnings to 21 percent; and end incentives, introduced by Trump, that encourage companies to shift jobs and operations overseas and book profits in low-tax countries.

Democrats oppose unfair loopholes and wasteful subsidies that benefit special interests at everyone else's expense. We will fight to get rid of them. That starts by eliminating tens of billions of dollars in subsidies for oil and gas companies. It means ending special tax breaks for corporate jets, and boosting fuel taxes on corporate and private jet travel, saving taxpayers $4 billion over 10 years. And we'll no longer permit companies to deduct the cost of paying executives more than $1 million a year. Corporations shouldn't get a tax break for giving huge pay packages to CEOs.

We'll also eliminate the so-called "like-kind exchange" loophole that allows wealthy real estate investors to avoid paying taxes on real estate profits, as long as they keep investing in real estate – a tax break that Trump protected for himself and other corporate landlords in his 2017 tax scam. No other industry has that kind of sweetheart deal; it ends now.

Chapter Three: Lowering Costs

Today, our economy is growing, wages are rising, and a record number of Americans have good jobs. But for too many hard-working families, the cost of living is too high. Lowering costs is Democrats' number one economic priority. We're using every tool to bring prices down on health insurance and prescription drugs, including negotiating the price of commonly used drugs for diabetes and heart failure; and on housing, child care, internet, banking, credit cards, and more. We have more to do, but our actions are already putting thousands of dollars a year back in people's pockets. Those savings add up, and Democrats will keep fighting until every American feels them.

When the pandemic disrupted supply chains, everyday items became hard to get, raising prices. When Russia invaded Ukraine, food and gas prices spiked more. As companies' costs went up, they raised prices, too. President Biden worked across industries to ease supply bottlenecks and get goods and energy flowing again. He delivered, and inflation has since dropped two-thirds from its peak.

But some companies haven't passed those new savings on to consumers. Their costs have come down, but they've kept prices high anyway, boosting profits. Corporate profits have more than doubled since 2017. Last year, after-tax profit ratios for corporations outside the financial sector were their highest in 90 years.

President Biden's lowering costs agenda is historic in scope, attacking the issue from every angle to help cut costs for consumers, crack down on price gouging, and get companies to use their record profits to reduce prices long-term. It's also investing in making things in America again to boost supply, push down prices, and bring jobs home.

Donald Trump hasn't offered a single solution to lower families' costs. He wants to drag America backwards, with extreme import tariffs that will make life more expensive for folks nationwide. And for corporations that hiked prices and doubled profits since the pandemic, Trump wants to reward them with a massive tax cut. Independent analysts say his MAGA tax and tariff plans will increase inflation, cost 3 million American jobs, and slow growth, triggering a recession in his first year back in office. Trump's plan will increase costs for working families by $2,500 a year.

Today, America has built its way back into the strongest economic recovery in the world. Democrats won't let Trump throw that all away.

HEALTH CARE & PRESCRIPTION DRUGS

Health Care

Health care should be a right in America, not a privilege. Every American deserves the peace of mind that quality, affordable coverage brings. That's why Democrats fought so hard to pass the Affordable Care Act, providing 45 million Americans with insurance, guaranteeing protections for 100 million people with preexisting conditions, and protecting nearly 180 million people from lifetime coverage limits. Yet even now, 14 years after we passed that landmark law, Trump and Republicans are still threatening to repeal it. Democrats will never let that happen. We'll never quit fighting to protect and expand the Affordable Care Act, making quality care more accessible and affordable, as the Biden-Harris Administration has done.

Today, more Americans have health insurance than ever in history. Coverage is up and costs are down. A record 21 million people signed up through the Affordable Care Act this year, helping to slash the uninsured rate from 16 percent in 2010 to under 8 percent now. Democrats have expanded the health insurance premium tax credit twice, saving millions of Americans an average of $800 a year on coverage; and helping an additional 1.7 million Latinos, 830,000 Black Americans, and 110,000 Asian Americans buy more affordable insurance. Republicans want to let those credits expire, increasing premiums. Democrats will fight to make them permanent.

As Democrats, we support Medicaid expansion, encouraging states to provide health coverage to low-income Americans on the federal government's tab. The Administration has helped over a million people in four states to enroll; and we'll keep pushing Congress to further expand Medicaid-like coverage to the 2.8 million uninsured low-income adults who live in states where Republicans still refuse the help.

Democrats are working to protect kids' health coverage as well, by removing financial barriers for the Children's Health Insurance Program; and making it easier for families to keep kids on Medicaid. President Biden's plan will let families go three years without having to resubmit Medicaid paperwork for children younger than six, reducing burdensome red tape.

Democrats believe that quality, affordable health care should be available in every corner of America. The Administration has invested in new mobile health clinics; and in keeping community and rural health centers, lifelines for tens of millions of people, open, well-staffed, and well-equipped. We want to double those investments now. And the Administration is cracking down on federally funded health care providers that turn away or otherwise discriminate against people on the basis of race, sex, age, national origin, or disability.

Democrats will keep working to grow the health care workforce, so workplace and other provider shortages no longer create barriers to quality care and inflate health care costs. We are investing in programs that train primary care practitioners, registered nurses, mental health specialists, and others to work across our health care system, including in rural and low-income areas.

The Administration is also cracking down on surprise medical billing and junk health insurance, so patients are no longer ambushed by unexpected bills or scammed into buying low-quality health coverage. Democrats will expand "no-surprise billing" to include costly ground ambulances; and we'll keep using antitrust laws to stop hospital, insurance, and Big Pharma mergers that undermine competition and increase health care prices for consumers.

At the same time, Democrats will keep fighting to ease the burden of medical debt, which makes it harder for millions of Americans to get a mortgage or other loan for the future. Democrats provided funding to forgive $7 billion in medical debt for nearly 3 million Americans; and the Administration is urging states to use remaining funds to do more. It already persuaded credit reporting agencies to exclude many medical debts from credit reports, boosting people's credit scores and prospects for the future. In all, these actions have reduced the total number of Americans with listed medical debt from 46 million in 2020 to 15 million. Democrats will keep pushing to exclude medical debts from credit scoring entirely.

Democrats also support the Administration's historic work to close fundamental gaps in women's health care, including by protecting access to reproductive health care. This includes its efforts to reduce maternal mortality, led by Vice President Harris. She called for states to provide a full year of postpartum coverage for Medicaid beneficiaries, with 46 states, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Virgin Islands now taking that step. The Administration is also making transformative investments in women's health research to find better ways to prevent, diagnose, and treat health conditions in women, and to make care more accessible and affordable. And it is leading game-changing work to end cancer as we know it, including through the creation of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H).

Trump has no plan to reduce health care costs for Americans. He and his MAGA allies have spent years working to repeal the Affordable Care Act, trying and failing over 50 times. Now, Trump is once again promising to "terminate" the landmark law, gutting coverage for the 45 million Americans who rely on it for care. Doing so will cost families $13,000 a year, and threaten protections for 100 million Americans with pre-existing conditions. It will strip 150 million people of preventative care like cancer screenings, and reduce access to mental health and substance use treatment. A Republican repeal will also deny life-changing home care to millions of seniors and people with disabilities, and kick young adults up to age 26 off their parents' insurance plans. And, it'll push more of the 500-plus rural hospitals that are already at risk of closing to shut down.

Prescription Drugs

Big Pharma has ripped off Americans for years, charging two and three times more here than in other countries for the exact same medications. Nearly three in ten Americans can't afford their prescriptions as a result. Instead of working to change that, Trump gave drugmakers massive tax breaks that only incentivized them to shift production overseas.

President Biden, Vice President Harris, and Democrats took on Big Pharma and won. Democrats capped the price of insulin at $35 a month, down from as much as $400, for nearly 4 million seniors on Medicare. And President Biden persuaded the nation's top three insulin makers to lower their prices for everyone. Now, we'll fight to expand that $35 cap to cover everyone, saving millions of Americans with diabetes nearly $1,000 a year. Starting next year, the Inflation Reduction Act also caps total out-of-pocket drug costs at $2,000 a year for millions of seniors and others on Medicare. Democrats will fight until that cap covers every single American.

For the first time, Medicare now also has the ability to negotiate lower drug prices, as private insurers and the VA have done for decades. It started doing so this year, beginning with 10 commonly used medications for conditions such as diabetes and heart failure. Democrats will push to add at least 50 drugs a year to that list, lowering prices for 500 drugs this decade. Medicare Part-D is also working to cap cost-sharing for life-saving generics at $2 a dose; Democrats will make this mandatory for all Medicare beneficiaries.

The Administration is also leading the charge against Big Pharma price gouging, by requiring drugmakers that raise prices faster than inflation to pay the difference back to Medicare, which will then pass savings on to consumers. This will protect over 750,000 seniors, who could save as much as $4,500 per over-priced dose. Democrats will keep fighting to expand these rebates, applying them when drugmakers overcharge not just Medicare, but private insurers as well. We're also cracking down on improper drug patent listings, which some drugmakers use to shut out competition. Once companies drop their improper patent listings, other companies will be free to make cheaper alternatives. The FTC's work in this area has already pushed three of the biggest makers of inhalers to lower prices to $35 a month, saving people with asthma hundreds of dollars a year. The Administration also enacted rules to finally make hearing aids available over-the-counter, saving millions of Americans up to $3,000 a pair. And Democrats will continue the Administration's work to require that any drugs developed with taxpayer dollars be available to taxpayers, including at reasonable prices. Democrats will keep working to lower drug prices by requiring more transparency from the "pharmacy benefit manager" middlemen who generally decide which drugs are covered by insurance and bought by doctors, and how much they cost.

All these actions will benefit family budgets. And they'll boost the federal budget, too – reducing the deficit by $160 billion over the next ten years, as Medicare no longer has to pay Big Pharma exorbitant prices.

Every Democrat in Congress voted for the Inflation Reduction Act, the historic law behind these savings. Every single Republican voted against it – against $35 insulin for seniors, against Medicare negotiating lower prices, against saving millions of seniors' money on life-saving drugs. Now, Trump and his MAGA allies are promising to repeal it entirely, and to funnel our savings back into Big Pharma's pockets. We won't let that happen.

CHILD CARE, HOME CARE, & PAID LEAVE

Child & Home Care

The United States can't have the best economy in the world without strong support for caregiving. But today, the cost of care is too high, pay for care workers is too low, and families are caught in the middle of a broken system. Democrats understand that fixing the caregiving crisis cannot wait.

During the pandemic, Democrats' American Rescue Plan kept 220,000 child care centers open, getting parents back to work and saving families an average $1,250 a year per child. It preserved a million care workers' jobs, and increased their pay by 10 percent. It expanded support for home- and community-based services for seniors and people with disabilities.

And not a single Republican voted for it.

Last year, President Biden issued a historic executive order directing agencies to further expand access to affordable care. The Administration also capped child care costs for 100,000 low-income families at 7 percent of their income, saving each an average $2,400 a year. Overall, the Administration increased federal child care funding by 50 percent.

Democrats will make investments like these permanent, and guarantee affordable, quality child care to millions of working families for less than $10-a-day per child. And we'll restore the expanded Child Tax Credit and strengthen Head Start. For seniors and people with disabilities, Democrats will improve and expand home- and community-based services, working toward finally eliminating the 700,000-person Medicaid waiting list, so more people can live and work with dignity in their own communities. We'll also keep pushing to improve pay and benefits for care workers, for example by fighting to get many of them a bigger share of Medicaid home care payments. Democrats will overhaul the quality of care and quality of life for our nation's 1.3 million nursing home residents by defending Administration regulations that require minimum staffing standards at nursing homes.

Democrats are the only party with a plan to expand access to care, and to make it more affordable and accessible for all. Trump and his MAGA allies in Congress have voted repeatedly to increase the cost of care, for example by slashing Head Start and child care programs, eliminating slots for half a million kids. Trump has no plan to lower child care or home care costs for American families. Instead, House Republicans have promised to slash Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the Children's Health Insurance Program, while their continued efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act will strip millions of seniors and people with disabilities of life-changing home support.

Paid Leave

America is the world's only advanced economy not to guarantee paid leave. The vast majority of employers don't offer it – nearly three-quarters of private-sector employees don't have paid family leave through their jobs, including 94 percent of America's lowest-paid workers. The pandemic only made the economic consequences of this failure more devastating. In the United States of America, no one should have to choose between caring for a parent who raised them, a child who depends on them, and the paycheck that they need to survive.

Trump and Republicans failed to guarantee any new paid leave to private sector workers. Instead, their various proposals included unfunded mandates on states, tax credits that failed to expand access but subsidized large businesses, and schemes to force new parents seeking paid leave to borrow against their own future Social Security funds.

From Day One, President Biden has pushed to do more. He fought to include a comprehensive paid leave program in legislation that ultimately became the Inflation Reduction Act. He instructed federal agencies to expand access to paid and unpaid leave for federal employees. He expanded the Military Parental Leave Program, so all active-duty, new-parent servicemembers can take 12 weeks. And his budget includes the strongest paid leave proposals in history, permanently funding the national paid leave plan that America needs.

That plan will create America's first, full, national paid family and medical leave program, guaranteeing every American worker up to 12 weeks of paid time off to care for a new child or loved one to recover from an illness, in cases of domestic violence, or military deployment. It will help families care for one another, and it will help businesses retain valuable talent and small businesses to compete. Millions more parents will be able to work, and it will add hundreds of billions to our economy. Democrats have pushed for this for decades. It's past time that America caught up with the rest of the world.

GAS & GROCERIES

When the pandemic crushed supply chains, prices for everyday items, from food to gas to airfare, went up. But after supply bottlenecks eased, many companies didn't lower prices in line with their falling costs. President Biden will keep calling those companies out for price gouging, and hold them accountable when they don't pass savings on to consumers.

To lower prices, Democrats will also keep working to boost supply, fix supply chains and promote competition, especially for essential items like gas and groceries that families depend on.

Through record energy production of clean energy, oil, and gas, we've lowered prices at the pump for American families. The Administration also released nearly 200 million barrels of gasoline from the Strategic Petroleum and Northeast Gasoline Supply reserves; and it is lowering gas prices by up to 25 cents per gallon more in certain markets, particularly in the Midwest, by making cheaper, E15 ethanol-blended gasoline available each summer. And, the Administration is cracking down to prevent collusion by oil companies that could raise prices more.

Chapter Four: Tackling the Climate Crisis, Lowering Energy Costs, & Securing Energy Independence

Every year, the devastation caused by climate change grows more urgent. Across the country, Americans experience the dire impacts of climate change: Floods and storms wipe more homes off the map. Wildfire smoke spreads thousands of miles, forcing millions to shelter indoors. We've had the worst droughts in a thousand years, and the fastest sea-level rise in over a century. Last year was Earth's hottest on record. Natural disasters and extreme weather have cost America over one trillion dollars in damages in just the last seven years. And they hit the most vulnerable among us hardest – seniors, people with disabilities, people in neighborhoods without resources to blunt the impact.

The climate crisis is decades in the making, an existential threat to future generations who deserve better. It's a consequence of delay and destruction by people like Donald Trump and his friends in Big Oil, who still deny what we all see happening right before our eyes.

President Biden is delivering on the most aggressive climate agenda in history. His landmark legislation has unleashed a clean energy boom that's slashing pollution, lowering energy costs, and has already created over 300,000 good-paying American clean energy jobs. America is now producing more energy than ever in its history. He has taken more environmental actions than any president before him – providing cleaner air and water, making communities more resilient, and forcing polluters to pay for the damage they've done. He is on track to protect more of America's lands and waters than any president before him, and he has restored our global climate leadership. He is positioning America to lead the future – energy independent, resilient, innovative, and strong.

Trump is only interested in himself and his wealthy donors, who got rich polluting our country. As president, he gutted more than 125 environmental policies that had protected the American people from toxic pollution, everywhere from sewage plants, to oil and gas fields, to our own homes. He pulled out of the Paris Climate Agreement at Big Oil's urging, weakening America's role in the world. He fired scientists from federal agencies, replacing them with oil and gas lobbyists who rewrote our nation's environmental rules. And he handed oil companies $25 billion in tax breaks.

Now, Trump is set to do Big Oil's and polluters' bidding again. He told oil executives he'd reverse our climate progress and slash their taxes once more – if they'd give him $1 billion for his campaign. Oil and gas lobbyists are already drafting executive orders for him to sign on day one. He wants to roll back the clean energy progress that President Biden has made, gut the Environmental Protection Agency, and let polluters dump dangerous PFAS chemicals in our water. His MAGA allies have tried 42 times to repeal our landmark climate law. If they succeed, they'll eliminate tens of thousands of good-paying jobs, drive up home energy costs, sicken thousands of Americans with toxic pollution, and cede the race for the future to China.

PRODUCING CLEANER, MORE AFFORDABLE ENERGY

Across the world, we're seeing massive new clean energy production and uptake. We're at the dawn of a new era that will redefine the global economy, and that America must lead.

President Biden's Investing in America agenda makes the largest clean-energy investment in history; and it has already attracted over $400 billion in private sector commitments, to develop and manufacture solar, wind, battery, and other clean technologies here at home. Today, 585 new clean energy manufacturing projects are underway – not just on the coasts, but in 47 states, including in places too often left behind. Some 81 percent of the investments made since our landmark climate law passed are going to counties with below-average weekly wages.

America is making leaps forward in energy generation and storage, while modernizing our electricity grid and upgrading transmission lines to deliver reliable, clean power. Private sector companies have announced investment in solar modules that will power 18 million homes; and the Biden-Harris Administration has approved the first nine commercial offshore wind projects in federal waters, set to power nearly 5 million homes. Large-scale energy storage capacity has increased twelve-fold since the President took office, and is expected to double again by year's end.

This clean energy boom has already created over 300,000 jobs and lowered energy costs for millions of families. It puts us on track to triple clean-energy generation by 2030, reducing Big Oil's hold on our economy, protecting families from wild price swings, and bringing America closer to energy independence than we've been in over 70 years.

Going forward, Democrats will keep working to incentivize investment in transmission upgrades and new lines, and in the grid-component manufacturing that's needed to support that growth. We will improve and speed up the processes of environmental review and clean-energy permitting; and further scale up development of clean energy on public lands.

We'll also continue to invest in clean energy research and development, building on America's legacy as a nation of new frontiers and possibilities. To help find new ways of generating and storing energy, reducing emissions, and boosting climate resilience, we'll launch an Advanced Research Projects Agency for Climate (ARPA-C), modeled on the defense research agency that's behind breakthrough technologies like the internet and GPS, and the new ARPA-H that the Administration created to transform medicine. We'll also establish a new national lab for climate research and innovation, affiliated with an HBCU, Hispanic-, or other Minority-Serving Institution, to ensure the opportunities of the future are available to everyone, and built by everyone. And we will continue to invest in climate research across NASA, NOAA, the National Science Foundation, and other agencies, to make sure that America leads the world in clean energy innovation.

LOWERING ENERGY COSTS

Democrats' historic climate and clean energy agenda is lowering energy costs for families and small businesses long-term and today – with cheaper, cleaner energy and with tax credits to make home energy use more efficient and affordable. America's clean energy boom is giving everyone more energy choices than ever, and more choices mean lower prices. According to the Department of Energy, our policies are expected to slash overall electricity rates by 9 percent and gas prices by as much as 13 percent by 2030, saving Americans tens of billions of dollars.

At the same time, the Inflation Reduction Act is providing tax credits and rebates to make Americans' homes more efficient, so families can immediately start saving on their energy costs, now and for years to come. Families can reduce their bills up to $2,000 a year by making their homes more energy efficient with new insulation, windows, and doors; and by installing rooftop solar panels, home battery storage, and electric pumps for heating and cooling. Democrats are also offering rebates on new, energy-efficient appliances; and people can save up to $7,500 when they buy a new plug-in hybrid or fully electric car, or $4,000 if they buy a used one.

The Administration has toughened efficiency standards on new appliances and cars as well, which will further reduce emissions and energy bills. New fuel economy and tailpipe standards alone are expected to save drivers some $6,000 per car by reducing fuel and maintenance costs.

The Administration has also taken historic action to lower gas prices at the pump, by standing up to Big Oil's price gouging, releasing strategic reserves to blunt profiteering, and promoting competition with cleaner, cheaper, renewable fuel.

CREATING CLEAN ENERGY JOBS

President Biden has long said that when he thinks about climate change, he thinks about jobs. Good-paying union jobs that people can raise a family on. As President, he's delivering. The clean energy manufacturing and deployment boom ignited by his landmark climate law has so far directly created over 300,000 jobs in communities nationwide; and we're making sure those jobs meet rigorous worker and environmental safety standards. The legislation is helping to push American factory construction to an all-time high as well, as we build new plants to make things like batteries and electric vehicles, solar panels and wind turbines, and bring the supply chains needed to power a clean energy future home.

The President's agenda also includes extended Buy Clean and Buy America standards, requiring federal projects to use low-carbon, American-made cement, steel, and other materials; and providing credits for private companies to do the same, creating more American jobs. It also provides extra incentives for private companies to hire registered apprentices and pay prevailing wages. Through executive action and with Congress, Democrats will continue to work to create strong labor standards for jobs created with taxpayer dollars.

To help prepare people for these jobs, Democrats launched the American Climate Corps, a new workforce training and service initiative that will put more than 20,000 young Americans to work on clean energy, conservation, and climate resilience projects nationwide. President Biden has set a goal to triple the size of the American Climate Corps by the end of this decade, ensuring that young people are given the skills and tools they need to succeed in careers in our new clean energy and climate resilience economies. The Administration is also making record investments in registered apprenticeships, including in clean energy industries. Registered apprenticeships train more than a million Americans a year across industries, 90 percent of whom stay on in those jobs as full hires. We're also boosting investment in STEM education and workforce training programs for women and at Historically Black Colleges and Universities and other Minority Serving Institutions, to make sure the clean energy and manufacturing jobs of tomorrow are open and accessible to communities that have been too often left out in the past.

The Administration is also investing in new sources of income for America's farmers, and working to make our farm sector the world's first to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. Under President Biden's landmark climate law, the Agriculture Department is paying farmers to adopt climate-smart practices, which sequester carbon from the atmosphere, improve soil health and biodiversity, and restore water cycles, all while opening new revenue streams from ecosystem services markets. Already, over 80,000 farms covering 75 million acres have adopted these practices.

Above all, Democrats will unite against the Republican war on clean energy, blocking their obsessive attempts to repeal President Biden's clean energy investments. Republicans will not be allowed to pull the rug out from American clean energy businesses, send hundreds of thousands of jobs overseas, and strip all Americans of cheaper, cleaner energy choices, all to please their special interest backers.

REDUCING POLLUTION & MAKING POLLUTERS PAY

These transformative investments in American energy are lowering energy costs, creating good-paying jobs, revitalizing local economies, and reducing pollution.

Transportation is America's biggest emitter, responsible for a third of emissions. The Administration has put us on track to eliminate all carbon from the sector by 2050. It's making generational investments in transportation infrastructure, including in cleaner shipping, trucking, transit, rail, and aviation. It issued the toughest-ever fuel economy and tailpipe standards, so new cars both get better mileage, and reduce emissions per mile by as much as 50 percent.

With tax credits, Democrats helped quadruple sales of electric vehicles, with the goal that 50 percent of all new passenger cars sold in the U.S. by 2030 be electric. We're protecting American children from asthma-related diesel pollution by giving school districts rebates to buy thousands of electric school buses so kids don't have to breathe polluted air. We'll keep working to electrify the nation's fleet of school buses, transit buses, and federal vehicles, including the U.S. Postal Service fleet. We'll double funding to repair and expand active transportation and public transit, reducing pollution and traffic, and connecting people to jobs and opportunity. And we'll work to electrify our ports and waterways, prioritizing progress towards a goal of zero-emissions freight.

We'll keep pushing to reduce emissions from America's buildings and heavy industry. We support local and state efforts to adopt energy-efficient building codes. We'll require that low-carbon materials and clean power be used in all new federal buildings by 2030, and invest in upgrading VA hospitals, federal offices, and K-12 public school and community college buildings, making them innovative, energy efficient, and safe places to learn. And we'll support investments in heavy industry, to make America the leader in clean steel, cement, aluminum, and other products.

We'll also keep stepping up action to crack down on other forms of air and water pollution, repairing damage done by Trump's failed oversight, and making polluters pay. The Administration has strengthened dozens of environmental and safety standards to reduce smog, soot, carbon, methane, mercury, and other toxic pollutants in our communities. After 30 years of inadequate protections, we finally banned all cancer-causing asbestos, including from homes, cars, and water filtration sites. And we prohibited the use of chlorpyrifos, a pesticide that can sicken farmworkers and children.

We also set America's first national drinking water standard to finally protect local water supplies from pollution with PFAS, toxic "forever chemicals" linked to cancer. Through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, we're upgrading wastewater systems. And we're replacing every toxic lead pipe in America – long-overdue work that will finally guarantee that every person in the country can turn on the faucet and drink clean water.

The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law also includes important work to speed the cleanup of toxic Superfund and brownfield sites that have leached poisonous waste into nearby neighborhoods for decades. To cover those costs, the law finally restored a vital "polluter pays" tax that had lapsed 26 years before, once again collecting revenue on any chemical sold in the United States, and directing it to the Superfund Trust Fund to pay for cleanup.

At the same time, the Administration has greatly increased civil and criminal enforcement of our nation's environmental laws, boosting funding for the Justice Department and Environmental Protection Agency, resulting in faster cleanups and tougher compliance. We support increased monitoring, transparency, and community engagement in this work.

Throughout, we'll keep standing up to Big Oil, as our clean energy boom breaks the industry's monopoly hold on energy markets. For the first time in 100 years, we've increased the royalties that oil and gas companies have to pay to drill or mine on public lands; and we're charging at least 10 times more for the bonds that are required to hold companies accountable for cleaning up drilling sites or capping their abandoned wells, which have been left to spew methane. States and private landowners have for years charged more than the federal government does to lease their lands; it's time the taxpayers got a similar return.

Going forward, we'll also eliminate tens of billions of dollars in other unfair oil and gas subsidies. When windfall profiteering causes prices to spike at the pump, we'll release our own supplies to keep costs down for American families. And, when we hear of potential collusion or price-gouging, we'll hold oil and gas executives accountable.

ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE

For too long in this country, too many communities have been denied the basic security and dignity that comes from having clean air, clean water, and functioning infrastructure. Too many parents still lay awake at night worrying what the rain or soil or water or air is doing to their kids. That kind of inequity goes against everything that we stand for as a nation. To finally change that, President Biden's climate agenda includes the most ambitious environmental justice actions in history, making sure that the people who've suffered most from legacy pollution can now share in the benefits.

During his first week in office, the President established the Justice40 initiative, with the goal of directing 40 percent of the benefits of our historic climate and clean energy investments to fenceline communities hit hardest by past pollution. Last year, he gave the program new teeth, with an executive order requiring every federal agency to designate its own Environmental Justice Officer to consider and improve the health impacts of its work on all communities.

Every major plank of our Investing in America agenda shares that commitment to environmental justice. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law invests a record $21 billion in tackling legacy pollution, the biggest effort to right such wrongs in American history. We're also investing in capping orphaned oil and gas wells, which leak deadly methane into surrounding communities well after Big Oil is gone.

And to help ensure new climate and clean energy projects can get financed across America, particularly in communities historically left behind and overburdened by pollution, President Biden and Vice President Harris launched a first-of-its-kind $27 billion national financing network as part of the Greenhouse Gas Reduction fund. This program will ensure communities across the country have access to the capital they need to participate in and benefit from a cleaner, more sustainable economy as we slash harmful climate pollution, improve air quality, lower energy costs, and create good-paying jobs.

Our climate law makes major investments in long-overdue clean water and sanitation as well. It launched a Clean Ports program to help ease the impact of air pollution around ports and airports, where thousands of trucks move goods in and out, often through neighborhoods experiencing distress as a result of historic disinvestment. It invests in clean public transit, connecting communities that have been isolated or disconnected by infrastructure and development to jobs, healthcare, education and opportunities. And under this climate law, millions of trees will be planted, deploying a nature-based solution to combat the urban heat island effect by cooling our streets and easing the deadly impact of extreme heat on people living and working in these areas. We will continue to implement the President's Executive Order on Environmental Justice for All, and will seek legislative options to further advance environmental justice.

Democrats also know we have a moral obligation to make sure that fenceline communities benefit from the clean energy revolution. Programs like Solar for All are helping to lower energy costs, by installing nearly a million solar rooftops in low-income areas by 2029. At the same time, we're providing bonus tax credits to draw clean energy and clean manufacturing to former fossil fuel and legacy power plant communities. They powered our nation for generations and deserve a just transition away from fossil fuels. Today, they're seeing rapid growth.

BUILDING CLIMATE RESILIENT COMMUNITIES

We have an urgent obligation to make every community in America more resilient to climate change and extreme weather. A record more than 2,300 Americans died after extreme heat exposure last year, making it the top weather-related killer; while as a country, we had to build back from 28 separate billion-dollar weather and climate disasters. It's not sustainable.

The President's infrastructure and climate laws are improving our climate resilience by boosting readiness and response, including by recruiting and retaining more wildland firefighters, and increasing budgets at FEMA. And, they're preparing us to better mitigate the impact of each extreme weather event as well. We've taken unprecedented steps to reinforce our nation's infrastructure, building new roads, bridges, and ports that are less vulnerable to flooding. We're putting power lines underground, so winds can't bring them down where they catch fire. We're making our electric grids more reliable and more energy efficient, so families and businesses don't lose power in critical moments. We're restoring wetlands to help protect communities from sea-level rise and storm surge. We've stabilized the Colorado River System, which provides water for more than 40 million Americans, after the worst drought in over a thousand years. We'll continue investing in public safety measures, like resiliency and cooling centers, so everyone, including our most vulnerable residents, can find refuge during extreme weather events. And we're looking out for workers, who often risk their lives on the job in extreme weather, with President Biden for example introducing the first national heat standards to protect workers from dangerous heat last year.

Going forward, Democrats will work to pass the bipartisan Disaster Resilience Tax Credit, to help low- and middle-income families and small businesses invest in preparing for and easing the impact of storms, heat, floods, and other natural disasters.

Trump refuses to admit that climate change, and any of the devastating impacts that communities nationwide, are real. His allies have promised to privatize the National Weather Service, downsize the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and stop the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research from conducting climate research, making it much harder to predict when extreme weather is coming, respond or help communities recover.

CONSERVATION

America's natural wonders are our nation's heart and soul. They unite and inspire us, and connect us to something bigger than ourselves. From his first day in office, President Biden has taken historic steps to protect, conserve, and restore them. He set our nation's first-ever national conservation goal to protect at least 30 percent of our lands and waters by 2030, including by supporting locally-led, voluntary efforts. Today, he is on track to conserve more American lands and waters than any President in history – over 41 million acres so far, including dozens of new national monuments, wildlife refuges, and other protected areas, from the Grand Canyon to the Great Lakes.

Trump is the only president in history to have stripped more public lands of protection than he designated, opening tens of millions of acres of our most pristine national monuments to mining and drilling. The Administration has reversed that, canceling leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and prohibiting new leasing in Minnesota's Boundary Waters; restoring important protections for places like Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and Bears Ears National Monument in Utah and expanding the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument in California; and protecting places that are too special to develop, like Alaska's Bristol Bay.

Going forward, Democrats will increase protections for America's Arctic, and ensure clean water for all Americans by protecting rivers and wetlands. We'll protect our oceans by working to designate new marine sanctuaries, and protect coastal communities from climate impacts. We'll keep pushing to fully fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund, partnering with state and local governments; and work to reduce threats to iconic old growth forests. We'll reward Americans across the country who engage in voluntary conservation on private lands, and we'll work with landowners to protect endangered species and our economy by restoring habitats and enhancing biodiversity, and continuing to protect lands and waters as National Monuments.

GLOBAL CLIMATE LEADERSHIP

With these historic actions and sustained engagement, President Biden has restored America's global climate leadership, once again making our nation the world's pivotal force against climate change. The United States rejoined the Paris Climate Agreement on day one of his presidency, and President Biden set an ambitious goal to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, in line with climate science. He used the restored power of America's example to press other nations to do more, persuading 155 countries to agree to slash methane emissions, a potent greenhouse gas, by at least 30 percent by the end of this decade. The United States is increasing the resilience, diversity, and security of our clean energy supply chains, while making sure they reflect our values, including by creating good-paying, safe jobs for workers. The Administration has rallied the world to commit for the first time to transitioning away from fossil fuels. It set a bold new goal for nations to triple renewable energy worldwide and to double energy efficiency by 2030; and it helped to launch a new global clean-energy supply chain partnership to make that happen.

As Democrats, we believe the United States has an indispensable role to play in solving the climate crisis, and we have an obligation to help other nations carry out this work. America's leadership in domestic clean energy development is driving a global cycle of innovation and investment that will help lower the cost of clean energy technologies in a fair and transparent way for all nations. We believe that international climate finance is an important tool in this fight. That's why the Administration committed to achieve $11 billion dollars of climate financing a year by 2024, to help develop the international clean energy market. And it worked with other nations to achieve a landmark global goal of mobilizing $100 billion in collective climate financing by 2022, fulfilling a promise of the 2015 Paris Agreement.

Going forward, we'll continue to support efforts to boost funding for initiatives like PREPARE, our program to build out better early warning systems for climate impacts in critical regions of the globe. We will use America's leadership to drive global innovation and build out clean energy supply chains. We'll work through the Multilateral Development Bank to elevate climate and clean energy priorities within the global development finance system. And we'll build on our leadership in innovative debt-for-nature swaps, which have helped countries from Barbados to Gabon to restructure over $2 billion in debt so far, unlocking hundreds of millions of dollars for nature and climate investments.

Chapter Five: Protecting Communities & Tackling the Scourge of Gun Violence

All Americans deserve freedom from fear: to be confident that their children will come home safely from the store or the playground, and to know that their loved one will come home safely from their shift policing the streets. Young Americans deserve a president who's fighting to keep guns out of school. Women deserve a president who has worked his whole life to end violence against women. Families deserve a president who has delivered safer neighborhoods.

Under President Biden, in 2023 the murder rate saw the sharpest decrease in history and violent crime fell to one of the lowest levels in more than 50 years. He defeated the gun lobby and passed the first significant federal gun safety law in nearly 30 years. And, Democrats provided funding for communities to hire more police.

During Donald Trump's last year in office, murders surged by nearly 30 percent, the highest increase recorded in modern history. Trump tells families traumatized by gun violence to "get over it" and brags that he did nothing about guns. His budgets repeatedly cut law enforcement funding.

Americans deserve the freedom to be safe, and America is safer today than when President Biden first took office.

GUN SAFETY

The gun violence epidemic is a scourge ripping apart our communities; it is the leading cause of death for children and teens. Mass shootings at schools, grocery stores, houses of worship, dancehalls, and nightclubs, as well as daily gun violence at home and on streets, devastate American families.

President Biden has been fighting and beating the gun lobby for decades, and he's continued to do so as president. With his leadership, Congress passed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA), the first significant federal gun safety law in nearly 30 years. It includes the first-ever federal gun trafficking and straw purchasing law, enhanced background checks for gun purchasers under the age of 21, funding to implement red flag laws, a narrowing of the "boyfriend loophole" to keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers, and new requirements so all gun dealers now must conduct background checks no matter where or how they sell their merchandise. And, the law helps schools hire and train an estimated 14,000 school-based mental health professionals, including counselors, psychologists, and social workers.

President Biden also established the first-ever White House Office of Gun Safety Prevention - led by Vice President Harris - and took nearly 40 gun safety executive actions, including going after dangerous "ghost guns." He launched new law enforcement strike forces within the Department of Justice to crack down on gun trafficking.

While President Biden has stood up to the gun lobby, Trump is proud of doing their bidding. He stood before the NRA convention this year and said, "During my four years nothing happened. And there was great pressure on me having to do with guns. We did nothing. We didn't yield." While he "did nothing," gun violence spiked: Trump oversaw the largest single-year increase in murders in history, including a 35 percent increase in gun murders. He refused to limit the use of high-capacity magazines after a Las Vegas shooter used a dozen 100-round magazines to kill 58 people. And, when confronted with horrific gun violence, he told families to "get over it."

Democrats will establish universal background checks, a step supported by the vast majority of Americans, including gun owners. We will once again ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. We will require safe storage for guns. Democrats will end the gun industry's immunity from liability, so gunmakers can no longer escape accountability. We will pass a national red flag law to prevent tragedies by keeping weapons out of dangerous hands. We will increase funding to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) for enforcement and prosecution, and to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for firearm background checks. And, because the gun violence epidemic is a public health crisis, we will fund gun violence research across the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and National Institutes of Health (NIH) as well as community violence interventions.

POLICING & PUBLIC SAFETY

President Biden recognizes the sacrifices police officers and their families make to keep our communities safe. Every day, officers risk their lives for the safety of people they do not know. And since Day One, President Biden has been working to make sure police officers have the tools they need to protect their communities, including more police officers on the street. We need to fund the police, not defund the police.

Democrats passed and President Biden signed the American Rescue Plan, with the largest-ever federal investment in fighting and preventing crime, reducing violence, and investing in public safety. That funding enabled cities and states to invest more than $15 billion in public safety and violence prevention, putting more police officers on the beat for accountable community policing, as well as interrupting and preventing crime. In 2023, the Justice Department provided $5.8 billion tostate, local, Tribal, and territorial law enforcement agencies, research institutions, and nonprofits to advance public safety – including funding for 1,730 new police officers in nearly 400 communities. Because police officers should be able to focus on fighting crime, President Biden secured the first-ever federal funding solely dedicated to community violence intervention programs; and he increased funding for crisis interventions, mobile crisis teams, and training for first responders and law enforcement. President Biden also signed legislation replenishing the Crime Victims Fund, which supports programs that assist survivors. Democrats also secured funding for extra security at places of worship and community institutions; and we are investing in Tribal public safety.

Public trust, as any police officer will tell you, is the foundation of public safety. Police cannot fulfill their role to keep communities safe without public trust and confidence in law enforcement and in the criminal justice system. Yet, there are places in America today where the bonds of trust are frayed or broken. President Biden took action to enhance public trust by signing a historic executive order on police reform alongside George Floyd's family. He launched the National Law Enforcement Accountability Database with information on misconduct by federal law enforcement officers, and sharply restricted chokeholds and no-knock warrants for federal law enforcement. And, the Administration is publishing data on the use of force and is also preventing certain militarized equipment from being sold or transferred to local police agencies.

Trump oversaw the largest one-year increase in murders ever recorded. On January 6, he encouraged the rioters who attacked the police officers protecting our Capitol; since then, he has promised to pardon these convicted criminals. He is the candidate who wants to defund the police: As president, he repeatedly proposed cutting funding to state and local law enforcement programs, including the COPS program that funds local police officers, for three years in a row. He has called to defund the Department of Justice and the FBI. And, he says he will withhold federal funding from local police departments that don't adopt policies like stop-and-frisk or assist in mass deportations.

Trump has been equally disastrous for accountable policing. As president, he reversed restrictions that limited the transfer of surplus military equipment to local police departments and effectively abandoned pattern-or-practice investigations into police misconduct. When protests followed George Floyd's murder, he tweeted, "when the looting starts, the shooting starts" and referred to protesters as "THUGS," and tear-gassed nonviolent protesters outside the White House. If he gets another term, he will resume stop-and-frisk practices and withhold federal funding from local police departments that do not adopt this discriminatory policy. He's promising to sign legislation to broaden qualified immunity to prevent legal accountability for police misconduct.

President Biden is committed to making our country safer for every American, civilians and law enforcement alike. Democrats will pass his Safer America Plan, which calls on Congress to invest $37 billion to support law enforcement and crime prevention. That includes funding 100,000 additional police officers for accountable community policing and $5 billion in community violence intervention, which will help prevent crime, keep communities safe, and build trust between law enforcement and the communities they serve. We will create a new Violent Crime Reduction and Prevention Fund to give federal, state, local, and Tribal law enforcement the resources they need to fight crime, including to hire more agents, prosecutors, and forensic specialists. We will give communities the tools to crack down on gun crime, retail crime, and carjacking. Democrats will build on the progress in President Biden's executive order on effective, accountable policing by passing the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. And, we will end racial profiling and religious discrimination in law enforcement.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE

President Biden is committed to rehabilitation and reentry for people returning to their communities after incarceration, and to building a criminal justice system that lives up to those ideals and ensures that everyone receives equal justice under law. That's why he's taken historic steps to make this promise a reality.

No one should be in jail just for using or possessing marijuana. Sending people to prison for possession has upended too many lives and incarcerated people for conduct that many states no longer prohibit. Those criminal records impose needless barriers to employment, housing, and educational opportunities, disproportionately affecting Black and brown people. President Biden took historic action to end this failed approach by pardoning people convicted federally for using or possessing marijuana. He has called on governors to use their pardon power to do the same for state-level offenses. And his Administration is taking a major step to reschedule cannabis so it's no longer classified as more dangerous than fentanyl or methamphetamine.

President Biden has released a comprehensive strategic plan to improve the criminal justice system and strengthen public safety, including more than 100 concrete actions. The Administration is improving rehabilitation in jails and prisons and helping people rebuild their lives, an important step in reducing recidivism. It has invested nearly $1 billion in job training, addiction recovery, and reentry services across the country; and expanded access to Pell Grants, so people can earn a college degree while they are incarcerated, starting over with new skills. The Administration will keep investing in housing, mentorship, job training, and apprenticeship programs as well. It is working to end the school-to-prison pipeline by reissuing guidance from the Departments of Education and Justice to prevent disparate discipline of children of color and with disabilities and incentivizing states to develop community-based alternatives to prison for young people. And, President Biden reestablished the Justice Department's standalone Office for Access to Justice to ensure that everyone can get legal assistance.

President Biden has used his pardon power to right historical wrongs. In addition to pardoning simple possession and use of marijuana, he's pardoned or shortened the sentences of people convicted of other nonviolent drug offenses and pardoned approximately 2,000 gay, lesbian, and bisexual veterans who were convicted years ago just for being themselves.

Democrats will take action to expunge federal marijuana-only convictions. We will combat drug trafficking and expand the use of drug courts, interventions, and diversion for people with substance use disorders. We will fund a new Accelerating Justice System Reform grant program to provide jurisdictions with critical resources to foster community trust and safety, reduce inequity and justice system involvement, and alleviate burdens on police. We will expand access to public defenders and step up civil rights enforcement, including by boosting funding for the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division and hiring 50 new Assistant U.S. Attorneys. And, we will remove barriers to legal access, combat hate crimes, and counter cyber threats. To keep children and teens safe and out of the justice system, we will invest in after-school programs, community centers, and summer jobs. And, to ensure young people get a second chance after leaving the justice system, we will automatically seal and expunge juvenile records.

Democrats will end state-level use of private prisons and detention centers, and we will restrict state and local practices like solitary confinement, chokeholds, and restraints on pregnant inmates. We will guarantee access to medical care in prison and will eliminate profiteering from diversion, bail, electronic monitoring, commissaries, and reentry programs. We will support rehabilitation and education, including college programs, for inmates in prison and after their release. To help returning citizens succeed upon their release, we will boost access to transitional housing, affordable housing, mental health and substance use treatment. We will limit reincarcerating people federally to only serious violations of supervised release. And, we will work to expand "ban the box" so returning citizens can more easily find work, protect their right to vote, and protect their right to public services like Pell Grants and nutrition assistance.

Trump's approach to criminal justice could not be more different. His Administration threatened federal prosecution for marijuana cases in states where marijuana was legal. As president, Trump granted fewer clemency requests than nearly every president since the start of the 20th century; and many of his grants were reserved for well-connected offenders and close friends and associates like Steve Bannon, Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn, and Charles Kushner. HisAdministration cut support for halfway houses and decreased the number of federal prisoners sent to transitional housing. And, it reinstated contracts with private prisons.

VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN

Ending violence against women has been the cause of President Biden's life. In the U.S. Senate, with the help of courageous and committed advocates, he wrote the original Violence Against Women Act and spent the following decades working to expand and improve it with each reauthorization. As president, he was proud not only to reauthorize this landmark law but also to strengthen it. Democrats secured the highest-ever funding level for VAWA implementation, and are distributing record funding for local prosecutors, law enforcement, and survivor advocates. Crucially, the Administration has also expanded support for Native survivors and strengthened protections for Tribal communities; improved prevention and services for survivors of sexual assault, including through the Fairness for Rape Kit Backlog Survivors Act; expanded housing protections for domestic violence survivors; and increased services and support for survivors, including survivors of technology-facilitated abuse.

President Biden launched the first-ever National Plan to End Gender-Based Violence, and the American Rescue Plan provided immediate crisis intervention, health supports, and emergency services for survivors. He expanded funding for campus sexual assault prevention and is keeping students safe on campus by restoring and strengthening protections under Title IX, including explicit protections for LGBTQI+ students. He signed legislation that narrowed the "boyfriend loophole" to keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers. He signed into law new protections to support survivors and address sexual assault and sexual harassment in the workplace. And, he signed a historic executive order on sexual assault and domestic violence in the military, transferring key decision-making authority from commanders to independent military prosecutors – the most significant transformation of the military justice system since the Uniform Code of Military Justice was established in 1950.

Trump has made it abundantly clear that he doesn't care about ending violence against women. As president, he failed to reauthorize VAWA. And, his Administration rolled back campus sexual assault protections, making it even harder for survivors to get the justice they deserve.

Democrats will work to end sexual assault, domestic violence, online abuse, and all violence against women. We continue to strengthen VAWA; keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers; and expand housing and legal services for survivors. To keep students safe on campus, we will work with schools to implement and enforce Title IX and end sexual harassment and assault in our nation's schools. We will eliminate the rape kit backlog. And, we will strengthen legal protections for and support survivors of deepfake image-based sexual abuse building on the federal civil cause of action established under the president's reauthorization of VAWA in 2022.

Chapter Six: Strengthening Democracy, Protecting Freedoms, & Advancing Equity

President Biden, Vice President Harris, and Democrats know that democracy has always been America's sacred cause. Whether that's still true is the most urgent question of our time, and it's what the 2024 election is all about.

America is the only country on earth built on an idea: that all people are created equal. We've never fully lived up to that, but we've never walked away from it, either. And we won't let Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans walk away from it now.

The President, Vice President, and all Democrats will continue to work every day to ensure that our democracy endures.

President Biden has put protecting American democracy at the heart of his presidency. When he took office, the nation was reeling from what it had just witnessed on January 6: a violent mob storming the Capitol, smashing windows, kicking in doors, attacking scores of police officers, and roaming the corridors hunting for elected officials – all whipped into a frenzy by Trump's lies, repeated over and over for months, to overturn the will of the people.

President Biden spent his first term working to restore trust in our institutions, protect our freedoms, and preserve our democracy for the future. President Biden, Vice President Harris, and Democrats have consistently made it clear that political violence has no place in America.

Trump refuses to defend core tenets of our democracy: the Constitution, the rule of law, our system of checks and balances. He still doesn't accept the plain truth, upheld by scores of courts, that he lost in 2020, even describing himself as a "very proud election denier" – and he has never agreed to accept this year's results. After years undermining public faith and confidence in our elections, he has warned of a "bloodbath" if he loses now. He lionizes the convicted criminals who perpetrated the January 6 attack on our Capitol and brave police, calling those insurrectionists "patriots" and "hostages" while promising to pardon them.

We know how Trump will weaken our democracy if he gets another term. He has promised to be a dictator on "Day One" – and we've already seen how he fawns over other dictators. He has vowed to weaponize our government to go after his enemies and benefit his allies. He has plans to fire dedicated, nonpolitical civil servants and replace them with loyalists who will do his bidding; and he has promised to exert presidential authority over what have long been independent agencies. And to silence his critics, he suggested the "termination" of our Constitution. The stakes in this election for the soul of our nation are profound.

This election will decide whether the next generation of Americans has more rights and freedoms than past generations, or fewer. Trump and Republicans are already ripping away Americans' hard-won freedoms. Reproductive freedom, freedom from hate, freedom from fear, the freedom to control our own destinies and more are all on the line in this election.

Democrats will not let that happen. Together, we will continue uniting and rallying Americans across the political spectrum in defense of our democracy, and making it clear that political violence has no place in America. We will defend our freedoms, restore essential trust in our institutions, and preserve America's vital role as a beacon of democracy across the world.

JUDGES

One of a president's most important duties is appointing the judges who shape our country's laws. Judges matter. They have the power to uphold basic rights or to roll them back. They hear cases that decide whether women have the freedom to make their own reproductive health care decisions; whether Americans have the freedom to cast their ballots; whether workers have the freedom to unionize and make a living wage for their families; whether children have the freedom to breathe clean air and drink clean water; and whether a president is above the law.

Judicial appointments are crucial at every level of the federal bench, but nowhere more so than on the Supreme Court. The next president could appoint one, two, or more new Supreme Court justices. Those justices will determine what freedoms Americans have – or lose – for the next 30, 40, or even 50 years.

The choice is clear. President Biden appointed Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman ever named to the Supreme Court, who has stood up for Americans' rights and freedoms throughout her career on the bench. Trump handpicked three justices who have pushed a far-right agenda with devastating consequences. The Court's attack on a wide range of long-established American legal principles – from overturning Roe and eliminating the right to choose, to weakening voting rights and civil rights, to granting immunity for presidential crimes – in fact undermines the rule of law.

If he's elected again, Trump will appoint more justices in the same mold; his past Supreme Court short lists have always been stocked with far-right ideologues. Trump made clear in his first term that his goal was to appoint as many far-right judges as he could, regardless of their qualifications – even appointing to lifetime seats a series of candidates deemed "not qualified" by the American Bar Association. While President Biden has sought to appoint judges who look like America, three-quarters of Trump's judicial appointees were men and 84 percent were white. If Trump keeps stacking the Court with extreme conservatives, the far right will have final say over our laws for decades to come, wreaking even more havoc on our system of checks and balances and the consequences for our country will be devastating.

President Biden will continue to appoint justices and judges across the federal bench who are like Justice Jackson: brilliant jurists committed to defending American rights and freedoms.

Judges should reflect the diverse population whose laws they shape, and President Biden has appointed more than 200 highly qualified federal judges who look like America. Nearly two-thirds of the judges he's appointed have been women, and nearly two-thirds have been people of color. President Biden has appointed more Black women to federal circuit courts than every other president combined; more Latino judges have been confirmed to circuit courts than under any other president; more AANHPI judges have been confirmed than in any other Administration; and after only one term, he is already tied for the most openly LGBTQI+ judges appointed. President Biden has also chosen judges from diverse professional backgrounds, ensuring a range of perspectives and experiences are represented on the federal bench: at least 40 of his judicial appointees are former public defenders, at least 25 have served as civil rights lawyers, and at least nine have represented workers.

In President Biden's second term, he will continue selecting judges who will protect fundamental rights and who represent the diversity of the American experience. We will push for a Supreme Court that follows the rule of law, protects people's freedoms, and abides by the highest ethical standards.

VOTING RIGHTS

The right to vote and to have your vote counted is the threshold of American democracy and liberty. Without it, nothing is possible; with it, anything is. Decades after a generation of civil rights leaders faced fire hoses and batons, were brutally beaten and even died to secure this fundamental right, it remains under assault.

Since their first days in office, President Biden and Vice President Harris have taken action to protect the sacred right to vote in free, fair, and secure elections, especially for communities of color who have been historically disenfranchised.

Within the first 100 days of his presidency, President Biden signed an executive order directing an all-of-government effort to promote access to voting. Agencies have taken historic action to help veterans, college students, Native Americans, and other underserved communities register to vote.

Because laws are only as effective as their enforcement, the Department of Justice has more than doubled its staff dedicated to enforcing voting rights laws. And because the American people deserve to have faith in their elections, President Biden signed the Electoral Count Reform Act to preserve the will of the people and to protect against the type of attempts to overturn our elections that led to the January 6 insurrection.

Trump has a dark and different view, with a long history of supporting rollbacks to voting rights. He has spent years undermining the electoral process and confidence in elections, and continues to spread blatant lies about the election he lost. Trump's allies in state legislatures across the country have enacted and continue to introduce laws that make it harder to vote and undermine the will of the people. Trump supported Georgia's voter suppression law, which makes it illegal to hand out water to voters waiting in line. If he returns to the White House, he will seek to eliminate early voting and mail ballots to make it harder for Americans to exercise their right to vote.

Key to the right to vote is ensuring that voters pick their elected officials – not the other way around. President Biden has spoken out against extreme gerrymandering and harmful court decisions that perpetuate it, and he has consistently advocated for legislation that would end it and create fair congressional maps. Meanwhile, Trump opposes efforts to draw fairer maps.

Congress must restore the protections of the Voting Rights Act and take additional steps to ensure access to the ballot box. Democrats will pass and President Biden will sign the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act to fully secure the right to vote in every state, ensure fair congressional maps for every American, modernize and secure our elections, and curtail the corrupting influence of money in politics.

STOPPING THE INFLUENCE OF SPECIAL INTERESTS

Too much money flows in the shadows to influence our elections. Advocacy groups can run ads on issues attacking or supporting a candidate right until Election Day without disclosing who's paying for that ad. Too often, powerful special interests use front groups to run these ads to win at any cost. Even foreign entities that aren't allowed to contribute to political campaigns use dark money loopholes to try to influence our elections.

To fight back, President Biden has called for immediate passage of the DISCLOSE Act, which will require advocacy groups that run ads to influence elections to disclose donors who contribute more than $10,000, and ban foreign entities from contributing to them. Under President Biden's leadership, the FEC has also finalized a rule expanding political advertising disclaimer requirements for online public communications.

Democrats will also fight to strengthen public financing with small-dollar matching for all federal candidates and crack down on foreign nationals who try to influence elections. We will keep super PACs wholly independent of campaigns and parties and pass a constitutional amendment that will ban all private financing from federal elections. Democrats will end "dark money" by requiring full disclosure of contributors and ban 501(c)(4) organizations from spending on elections. And, to curb the influence of special interests in our elections, Democrats will prohibit corporate PACs and lobbyists from donating to anyone they lobby.

Trust in democracy is critical to protecting democracy. Democrats will adopt ethics reforms to ensure every American can feel confident that their government is working for them, not for special interests. Democrats will enact legislation to apply similar standards to Members of Congress. Democrats will create a federal ethics commission to strengthen good governance laws, like those requiring financial and lobbying disclosure. Democrats will require all federal candidates to disclose at least 10 years of tax returns. To ensure tax dollars go to work for the American people, not for special interests, Democrats will reestablish merit-based federal contracting and ban political appointees from interfering in grantmaking. And to ensure that policy decisions are guided by what's best for the American people, not by special interests, Democrats will strengthen laws that regulate lobbying by foreign governments and lower the threshold for registering as a federal lobbyist.

REPRODUCTIVE FREEDOM

Trump's Supreme Court appointees overturned Roe v Wade, eliminating a fundamental constitutional right and denying women across the nation the right to choose. The extreme act of overturning Roe , which had been the law of the land for nearly half a century, has already had devastating consequences nationwide.

Over the past two years, more than 20 states have imposed extreme and dangerous abortion bans – many of which include no exception even for rape or incest – that put the health and lives of women in jeopardy, force women to travel hundreds of miles for care, and threaten to criminalize doctors for providing the health care that their patients need and that they are trained to provide. Laws that limit access to contraception and to fertility treatments like IVF. Laws that were first adopted in the 1800s.

More than one in three women of reproductive age, and more than half of Black women and 40 percent of Latinas, now live under an abortion ban. Today, our daughters have fewer rights than their grandmothers.

President Biden, Vice President Harris, and Democrats are fighting back to restore reproductive freedom for every woman in every state. President Biden signed three executive orders and a presidential memorandum to stand up for reproductive rights. The Administration is protecting access to abortion, including by creating a new path for pharmacies to dispense FDA-approved medication abortion and defending access in court. It is expanding reproductive health care for service members, veterans, and their family members. The Administration is defending access to emergency medical care, including clarifying that federal law on emergency care preempts state abortion bans, educating patients on their rights, making it easier for patients who have been denied emergency care to file a complaint, and ensuring hospitals meet their legal obligations to offer care. It is challenging threats from Republicans to prosecute people who help women travel to a different state for abortion care, and helping states expand access under Medicaid for women who travel from states with bans. We are safeguarding patients' and providers' privacy, including by strengthening HIPAA protections, cracking down on the illegal sharing of personal information, strengthening consumer data protections, and issuing guidance to protect student privacy in this area. And we are ensuring access to accurate information and legal resources, including by launching ReproductiveRights.gov and convening more than 200 lawyers and advocates to support abortion-related legal defense services.

The contrast between President Biden and Trump is stark. Trump handpicked Supreme Court justices he knew would overturn Roe, saying it would be overturned "automatically." He's said that he's "proudly the person responsible" for overturning Roe, and he continues to brag about it. Trump is responsible for the more than twenty state bans that are now in effect as a result. He has said women should be punished for getting an abortion, and that states should be able to punish doctors who provide them. If he returns to the White House, Trump will ban abortion nationwide. And his allies plan to ban medication abortion nationwide, without Congress or the courts, by enforcing a law from the 1800s, including prosecuting women and doctors for sending or receiving medication abortion in the mail.

Nine in 10 women have used contraception, and Democrats are also working to expand access to birth control. Under President Biden's leadership, the FDA approved the first over-the-counter daily oral contraceptive, making birth control easier than ever to access. President Biden has also built on the Affordable Care Act to make a broader range of contraceptives available to women at no cost through their health insurance. The Administration has boosted access to free and low-cost services through the Title X family planning program, and expanded access to birth control for service members and through the VA.

Trump's record on contraception could not be more different. Trump undermined access to contraception as president, decreasing access for millions by sabotaging the Title X family planning grant program and weakening the ACA's coverage mandate. His allies have published plans to further attack access to contraception through executive action, including by further undermining women's insurance coverage for birth control and reducing access to condoms and emergency contraception.

The Supreme Court's elimination of the protections of Roe has also had devastating consequences for families who have suffered the heartbreak of infertility. Each year, tens of thousands of Americans start or grow their families with the help of in vitro fertilization. IVF is enormously popular, enjoying the support of the vast majority of Americans. Yet Trump's overturning Roe opened the door to laws that rip away access to this vital care – as we saw when Alabama families had treatments halted earlier this year. President Biden has responded to attacks on reproductive care by expanding IVF access for service members, veterans, and federal employees. Meanwhile, Trump has refused to commit to vetoing the Life at Conception Act, a national abortion ban that threatens IVF access nationwide, and his allies are openly attacking IVF.

President Biden, Vice President Harris, and Democrats are committed to restoring the reproductive rights Trump ripped away. With a Democratic Congress, we will pass national legislation to make Roe the law of the land again. We will strengthen access to contraception so every woman who needs it is able to get and afford it. We will protect a woman's right to access IVF. We will repeal the Hyde Amendment. And in his second term, President Biden will continue to support access to FDA-approved medication abortion, appoint leaders at the FDA who respect science, and appoint judges who uphold fundamental freedoms.

WOMEN'S RIGHTS

Despite the progress we've made since our nation's founding, there is more work ahead to knock down the barriers that stand in the way of women and girls realizing their full potential. In a country founded on freedom and equality, nothing is more fundamental.

No one should be discriminated against based on their sex; and we, as a nation, must affirm and protect women's full equality. Democrats will fight to make the Equal Rights Amendment the law of the land.

When women thrive in the workplace, our economy is strong. Under President Biden's leadership, more women are in the workforce than ever, matching the lowest annual women's unemployment rate since 1953, with the narrowest gender pay gap on record. Democrats passed and President Biden signed the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act to protect women's rights on the job, ensuring that pregnant and postpartum workers have the basic, long overdue protections they need to stay in the workforce while pregnant and as new mothers. Democrats also passed the PUMP Act, so more nursing mothers have access to break time and a private place to pump. To promote pay equity and curb pay discrimination, the Administration ended the use of salary history in pay-setting decisions for federal workers and will expand this protection to most contractors. As the President's economic agenda creates millions of jobs, he is making sure that women benefit, including through his Million Women in Construction Initiative, registered apprenticeship programs, and the Good Jobs Initiative. He has also expanded opportunities for women entrepreneurs, increasing SBA loans to women-owned businesses by 70 percent, and awarding more federal contracting dollars to women-owned small businesses than ever. And because affordable child care is critical to expanding opportunities for parents, especially women, President Biden helped hundreds of thousands of child care providers keep their doors open to millions of children and saved families thousands of dollars on child care costs. The President also signed into law new protections to support survivors and address sexual assault and sexual harassment in the workplace.

While President Biden has worked to support women in the workplace, Trump weakened protections for them. He moved to block an Obama-era rule that required companies to report pay by race and gender, an important tool in the fight for pay equity. He also limited the salary threshold increase under which salaried workers were eligible for overtime, leaving behind millions of workers who would have benefited under the original rule.

There is more work to do. Democrats will work to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act and end pay inequity not just in the federal workforce, but throughout the economy with penalties for companies that discriminate against women. And, we will guarantee affordable, high-quality child care from birth until kindergarten, with most families paying just $10 a day — and make it free for low-income families. We will protect the health and dignity of older adults and people with disabilities by improving long-term care and supporting family caregivers, and we will invest in care infrastructure by raising wages and the quality of care worker jobs. We will establish a national, comprehensive paid family and medical leave program to ensure that all workers, including women, can take the time they need to bond with a new child, care for a loved one, or recover from an illness.

We are also closing fundamental gaps in women's health care and addressing the maternal health crisis. Women in America are dying at a higher rate from pregnancy-related causes than women in any other wealthy nation, especially Black and Native women. Vice President Harris came into office as a key leader on maternal health and continues to lead the fight for improved maternal health outcomes, elevating the issue nationally and convening experts and activists to find solutions. The American Rescue Plan gave States the option to provide a full year of postpartum coverage to women on Medicaid, increasing it from just 60 days. Vice President Harris challenged all states to provide a full year of coverage; and 46 states, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Virgin Islands now do. The Administration also expanded access to maternity care coordinators for U.S. military veterans, from eight weeks to 12 months postpartum. And, it established the first-ever national maternal health and safety standards for hospitals across the country, which include requirements that hospitals have resuscitation equipment in labor and delivery rooms and proper protocols and supplies for emergency deliveries. The Administration released a blueprint outlining other federal actions to combat maternal mortality and improve maternal health. And it launched the National Maternal Mental Health Hotline which has helped tens of thousands of women.

For too long, women haven't been able to get the answers they need when it comes to their health—from cardiovascular disease to autoimmune diseases to menopause-related conditions. To pioneer the next generation of medical discoveries, the President and the First Lady launched the first-ever White House Initiative on Women's Health Research, which aims to fundamentally change how we approach and fund women's health research in the United States. It includes a $100 million commitment to fund the ARPA-H Sprint for Women's Health, a $200 million National Institutes of Health-wide effort to catalyze interdisciplinary research, and more than 20 other new actions and commitments to advance women's health research and especially research on menopause-related conditions and women's midlife health. And President Biden signed an executive order to direct the most comprehensive set of executive actions ever taken to expand and improve research on women's health.

Democrats will continue working to address the maternal health crisis and ensure every American has access to high-quality, culturally competent care before, during, and after pregnancy. And we will continue to invest in women's health research to galvanize new research and breakthroughs on a wide range of topics.

Trump will reverse our progress. He will repeal the Affordable Care Act, putting coverage of prenatal, pregnancy, and postpartum care at risk. And he has attacked Medicaid, which covers 65 percent of births to Black mothers and 58 percent of births to Latino mothers.

RACIAL EQUITY

Since Day One, the Administration has championed an ambitious equity and racial justice agenda to ensure the full and fair participation of all communities in our economy and democracy, and to ensure the promise of America for everyone, including Black, Latino, and Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) Americans.

Democrats are building a strong economy from the bottom up and the middle out. Black and Latino unemployment has hit record lows under President Biden, and the AANHPI employment rate is at its highest since 2008. Wages are rising faster than prices, and the greatest gains have gone to the low-paid workers.

The ideal of equal opportunity is the bedrock of American democracy, but our laws, public policies, and institutions too often exacerbate disparities or deny equal opportunity to individuals and communities. President Biden signed two Executive Orders to change that, including by increasing access to federal contracting dollars, capital, and lending programs for small disadvantaged businesses; reducing discrimination in the housing market; protecting overburdened communities from environmental harms; addressing historic disinvestment and infrastructure neglect; addressing health and health care disparities; rooting out educational inequities and preserving pathways to equal opportunity; tackling persistent poverty and building economic prosperity in rural communities; promoting equity and fairness in the justice system; combating bias, discrimination and hate-based violence; and bolstering proactive enforcement that protects the civil rights of all Americans.

Democrats expanded the Child Tax Credit to millions more families, slashing the child poverty rate in half to record lows, including for Black, Latino, and AANHPI children. We'll keep fighting to make that expansion permanent. The Administration has also expanded food assistance to those in need, providing the typical low-income family of four about $2,000 more for groceries each year by improving SNAP; and it launched a summer food benefits program that serves nearly 21 million children. Democrats will keep working to increase food security, including through WIC and Summer EBT, and by bringing back the enhanced Child Tax Credit.

Starting a business is part of the American Dream, and Democrats are working to make that possible for everyone, boosting access to capital and loans, and to business through government contracting work. Today, Black Americans are starting new businesses at the fastest rate in 30 years; and Latinos at the fastest rate in over a decade. Since the pandemic, the share of Black households owning a business has more than doubled, Latino business ownership is up 40 percent, and women own a record share of businesses. The Administration set a goal that 15 percent of federal contracts go to small disadvantaged businesses (SDBs)and will continue expanding these opportunities for SDBs in a second term. The Small Business Administration (SBA) has doubled the number and dollar value of loans awarded to Black-owned businesses, and doubled the rate of SBA-backed loans to Latino-owned small businesses. We eliminated the ban on SBA lending to people on probation or parole, and banned "the box" on SBA loan forms, so that people are no longer asked about their past records when applying for a loan. And, the Minority Business Development Agency, now a permanent part of the Commerce Department, is opening new offices and building partnerships with HBCUs, in its work to help minority-owned businesses across the country to overcome barriers and grow.

The Administration has also increased investment in Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) and Minority Depository Institutions (MDIs), and issued new licenses for nonbank lenders, helping more people in underserved communities to get capital and start businesses. As part of this work, Vice President Harris launched the Economic Opportunity Coalition bringing together major corporations and foundations to align public and private sector investments with a particular focus on driving private investment in CDFIs and MDIs. By investing in community lenders, we're driving an estimated $130 billion more in loans to Black and Latino communities over the next decade. Going forward, we'll double that funding for CDFIs, and expand and make permanent a New Markets Tax Credit, to encourage development in places too long left behind.

The American Rescue Plan also provided $4 billion of debt forgiveness for Black and other "socially disadvantaged" farmers, a group that has endured decades of discrimination from banks and the federal government. Trump's MAGA allies brought lawsuits, and his judicial appointees blocked that funding, but Democrats kept pushing. They secured over $5 billion in the Inflation Reduction Act to provide financial assistance to farmers, ranchers and forest landowners who've faced discrimination; and to cover loan payments for farmers in financial distress. Over $2 billion has already been distributed to more than 40,000 people. The Agriculture Department estimates that Black and underserved farmers have benefited most.

The robust economic recovery that President Biden is leading is also working to close the persistent racial wealth gap that has plagued our country for generations. Today, Black wealth has climbed 60 percent since before the pandemic; Latino homeownership is higher than before the pandemic, and median Latino household wealth is up 19 percent in the last three years.

Homeownership is one of the most important ways that families can build wealth. The Administration launched a first-of-its-kind task force to end pernicious bias in the home appraisal process, which has for too long undervalued Black- and Latino-owned homes. Since then, the likelihood that a home in a Black community is undervalued compared to a home in a white community has been cut by more than 40 percent.

Democrats are working to bring down housing costs across the board. The American Rescue Plan kept 8 million families in their homes throughout the pandemic; and the President has since introduced the most ambitious housing agenda in 50 years, with plans to boost supply, lower rent, and make homeownership more affordable. It includes down payment assistance for first-generation homeowners and a mortgage relief tax credit for first-time homebuyers, which will disproportionately benefit communities of color.

We are also working to connect communities that have been isolated from opportunity for too long. Highways and rail lines have disproportionately torn through Black, Latino,and low-income areas; displacing and segregating residents and businesses; stifling economic growth and investment; and cutting people off from groceries, jobs, and health care. Through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, we are righting those historic wrongs by investing in new roads, bridges, railways, and public transit and more,

We know that no child's future should be determined by their parents' income or ZIP code. We've made historic investments in education in the last four years, boosting funding for Title I and community schools, investing in thousands of new school counselors and mental health providers, and supporting efforts to boost attendance and expand tutoring and summer programs. We passed the most significant gun safety law in 30 years, an important first step toward protecting all our children from the scourge of gun violence. We're supporting students with disabilities, and working to end physical restraint and prevent discrimination, bullying, and harassment. And, where MAGA extremists are politicizing our classrooms, banning books, and trying to erase history, we are fighting back, including by appointing a federal coordinator to address the threat these bans pose to students' civil rights. We're also investing in recruiting and training teachers from all communities, including in partnership with HBCUs, MSIs, and TCUs; and helping them to get the pay that they deserve. It matters to children when they see someone who looks like them at the front of a classroom.

Democrats are also working to make college more affordable, and to relieve the crippling burden of student debt, which disproportionately falls on students of color. Black students take on 85 percent more debt than white peers, and both Black and Latino borrowers are more likely to hold debt many years longer after graduation, deferring their dreams to buy a home, build a family, or start a business. That's why the President's action to cancel $167 billion in student loans for nearly five million Americans, and to ease repayment for millions of others is such an important step in leveling the playing field for everyone.

To help more low-income students afford college in the first place, the Administration has also increased the maximum Pell Grant by $900, and will double it in the future. We're expanding access to free community college; providing subsidized tuition for children from families earning less than $125,000 a year who attend HBCUs, TCUs, Hispanic- and Minority Serving Institutions. The Administration has made historic investments in those schools, as well as in registered apprenticeships, to train Americans everywhere for the careers of the future.

Democrats are also committed to ending generations of environmental injustices that have left communities of color bearing the brunt of toxic pollution and climate change, decaying infrastructure, and inadequate services. The Administration is delivering on its Justice40 Initiative to deliver 40 percent of the overall benefits of our investments in infrastructure, clean energy and manufacturing investments to disadvantaged communities. Today, we're replacing every toxic lead pipe in the country, accelerating Superfund cleanups, cracking down on polluters that have poisoned their neighborhoods air, water, and soil for too long. We're making sure that every community benefits from home energy tax credits, low-cost solar panels, and other programs that can save families money while reducing emissions. And we're investing in climate-resilient infrastructure that will protect every part of this country from extreme weather and other consequences of climate change.

Democrats will also keep fighting to address disparities in health care and make sure every American has access to quality, affordable health care. We've continued to protect and expand the Affordable Care Act, expanding coverage to more Americans ever in history; and we're taking historic steps to lower the cost of prescription drugs — like capping insulin at $35 a month and prescription drug costs at $2,000 a year for seniors — and we'll keep fighting to expand those caps for every American. We will keep pushing to provide Medicaid-like coverage to people in states that have not expanded Medicaid, and to make it easier for parents to keep children enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP. We'll defend all women's right to reproductive health care. As highlighted above, we're tackling the crisis of maternal mortality, expanding Medicaid to cover women for a full year postpartum and investing in a diverse workforce to support pregnant and postpartum women. And, we will address the disproportionate impact of infectious diseases, including HIV and Hepatitis C, and expand access to PrEP to end the HIV epidemic.

We have a long way to go to realize the full promise of America, but we are committed as a party to continuing the work to build a nation where all people are not only created equal, but treated equally throughout their lives. To determine how best to right historical wrongs, Democrats support Congress executing a study of reparations and the continuing impacts of slavery.

Trump's vision for America is very different. As President, he shortchanged Black-owned businesses when it was time to hand out COVID relief funds. His tax law benefitted wealthy white Americans over everyone else. Unemployment rates soared during his presidency for people of color, while he tried to cut health care, affordable housing, and Social Security.As a real estate developer, he was sued for race-based housing discrimination and systemic violations of the Fair Housing Act, engaging in long standing racial segregation and discrimination in properties they owned and operated.

Now, he wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act, ripping health care away from millions. He will gut President Biden's landmark jobs, prescription drug, and climate bills, and put a crippling import tax on the everyday things people need to get by, raising costs for Black and Latino families on everything from insulin to internet to school supplies. He will increase the racial wealth gap, by cutting taxes for billionaires and big corporations while sticking working families with the bill. He will make our communities less safe: the murder rate spiked by a record during his presidency; crime is near a 50 year low under President Biden. Trump and his hand-picked courts will continue their attacks on our rights and freedoms, eroding voting rights, the freedom to protest, and freedom to make one's own healthcare decisions. America cannot afford to go back.

LGBTQI+

For generations, LGBTQI+ Americans have summoned the courage to live authentically and proudly, even when it meant putting their lives and livelihoods at risk. LGBTQI+ Americans continue to inspire and bring hope to all people seeking a life true to who they are, and to enrich every aspect of American life. But the fight for equality is far from over, as the LGBTQI+ community continues to face attacks and bigotry in states across the country. Democrats are committed to defending LGBTQI+ rights.

President Biden is committed to leading the most pro-equality Administration in history. Democrats passed and President Biden signed the historic Respect for Marriage Act, enshrining marriage equality in federal law. He reversed Trump's un-American ban on transgender servicemembers and ended the disgraceful and discriminatory ban on blood donation by gay and bisexual men. On Day One of his presidency, he signed a historic executive order extending federal nondiscrimination protections to LGBTQI+ people, and he signed executive orders strengthening civil rights protections in housing, employment, health care, education, and the justice system. He pardoned service members who had been discharged for being themselves.

As president, Trump rolled back the LGBTQI+ community's hard-fought progress. Trump gutted Obama–Biden anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQI+ Americans and banned transgender service members from serving, overruling the recommendations of military leaders and public health professionals. And, he appointed judges who oppose same-sex marriage, have sided with businesses to reject LGBTQI+ customers, and helped implement the military's transgender ban.

When a person can be married in the morning and thrown out of a restaurant for being gay in the afternoon, something is still wrong. That's why Democrats will pass the Equality Act to codify protections for LGBTQI+ Americans and their families. We will prohibit employment discrimination in the federal government, including contractors, and make federally-funded seniors programs LGBTQI+ inclusive. And we have and will continue to make great strides in protecting LGBTQI+ children and prospective parents in the adoption and foster care systems.

President Biden has delivered on his promise to ban discrimination in health care on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation. He has protected transgender Americans' access to health care and coverage, including medically necessary gender-affirming care; and implemented a national strategy to end the HIV epidemic in this country. Democrats will build on this progress to expand mental health and suicide prevention services for LGBTQI+ people.

Trump wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which will increase costs and rip away protections for LGBTQI+ Americans. That landmark law ensures LGBTQI+ people nationwide can access health care free from discrimination; helped reduce the uninsured rate among LGBTQI+ Americans and their family members; and banned insurance companies from denying care or charging more for people with pre-existing conditions. Trump's MAGA Republican allies are also looking to target surrogacy for LGBTQI+ Americans next.

As President Biden has said, LGBTQI+ youth are some of the bravest people he knows, and he has made it a priority to fight for them. The Administration is combating the dangerous and cruel practice of so-called "conversion therapy." Democrats have invested in supporting LGBTQI+ youth mental health, including through the historic Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. President Biden has also taken action to support LGBTQI+ youth in foster care; and is fighting book bans that censor LGBTQI+ content. He signed an executive order recommitting the federal government to guarantee educational environments free from sex discrimination, including on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. He signed a historic executive order to address discriminatory legislative attacks against LGBTQI+ children and families, directing key agencies to protect families and children; safeguard health care and programs designed to prevent youth suicide; and support LGBTQI+ children and families by launching a new initiative to protect foster youth, prevent homelessness, and improve access to federal programs. And, he established the White House Task Force to Address Online Harassment and Abuse to help fight online hate that disproportionately targets LGBTQI+ people, including youth.

Trump is running on an extreme plan to punish doctors who treat transgender youth and to ban gender-affirming care, and his MAGA Republican allies have pushed a tidal wave of extreme anti-LGBTQI+ bills in statehouses across the country. Democrats will vigorously oppose state and federal bans on gender-affirming health care and respect the role of parents, families, and doctors – not politicians – in making health care decisions.

Democrats will continue to fight for LGBTQI+ youth by building on President Biden's historic actions to ban so-called "conversion therapy"; protecting LGBTQI+ children from bullying and discrimination; guaranteeing that transgender students are treated fairly and with respect at school; and ending the homeless crisis among LGBTQI+ youth.

LGBTQI+ Americans have long faced threats to their safety just for being who they are. President Biden launched the LGBTQI+ Community Safety Partnership to provide community safety trainings, support health care providers who serve the LGBTQI+ community, and support LGBTQI+ communities to report hate crimes, and build cross-community partnerships to address hate-fueled violence. The Justice Department is taking an all-of-department approach to protecting LGBTQI+ rights. Democrats will end violence against transgender Americans, especially Black and brown transgender women, and prioritize the investigation of hate crimes against trans and non-binary people.

DISABILITY

People with disabilities have long strengthened our economy and expanded our nation's possibilities. And, groundbreaking legislation like the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act have made significant strides toward equal opportunity for people with disabilities. But there is more work to do. People with disabilities are three times less likely to have a job, and when they do, they are often paid less money for doing the same work.

Democrats are taking action to fix that. President Biden signed an executive order establishing a government-wide commitment to advancing equality and equity in federal employment, including for people with disabilities. The Labor Department is protecting workers with disabilities and fighting to end unjust employment practices. The Administration is helping state and local governments, businesses, and nonprofits access federal funds to hire more disabled Americans. And President Biden is making sure his Administration looks like America, appointing people with disabilities to positions all across our government. He is making the federal government a model employer when it comes to wages, accommodations, and opportunities to advance for people with disabilities. And he's helping young people with disabilities transition from education to employment through the Disability Innovation Fund.

President Biden is also working to improve health care for people with disabilities. The Administration released a rule barring providers from denying medical treatments related to organ donations or lifesaving care for disabled Americans based on their disability alone. It launched long COVID clinical trials and created the Office of Long COVID Research and Practice. The National Institutes of Health designated people with disabilities a "health disparity population," unlocking new resources for research. President Biden also signed an executive order increasing access to quality care and supporting caregivers; as well as historic legislation that expands home- and community-based services under Medicaid.

Accessible public spaces are essential to ensuring equal opportunity for people with disabilities. Democrats have invested in accessible infrastructure, including rail station accessibility and actions to make airports and airplanes more accessible. And Democrats passed and President Biden signed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which expanded access to affordable broadband, an especially important step for people with disabilities.

Trump has a long record of discrimination against people with disabilities, including publicly mocking them. His business has faced a series of lawsuits for failing to comply with the ADA. Discrimination complaints from federal workers with disabilities employed at Cabinet-level agencies increased 20 percent while he was president, and in his first year in office, the number of people with disabilities fired by the government increased 24 percent, with workers with disabilities fired at almost two times the rate of workers without disabilities.

Trump repeatedly proposed billions in cuts to Social Security Disability Insurance and called for restrictions on eligibility and benefit cutbacks. He called to cut funding for special education grants and eliminate federal funding for the Special Olympics. He has promised to close the Department of Education, threatening enforcement of IDEA protections for students with disabilities. And he rescinded guidance protecting students with disabilities, including guidance aimed at ensuring students with disabilities were not unfairly disciplined.

Democrats will enforce laws that ensure equal opportunity for people with disabilities: the ADA, IDEA, the Fair Housing Act, the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, the Mental Health Parity Act, and the Help America Vote Act. We oppose efforts to weaken the ADA and build on the ACA to prevent health care discrimination. Democrats will enforce the Olmstead integration mandate and enforce non-discrimination protections in health care, employment, education, housing, voting. We will promote equitable treatment of students with disabilities so every child with disabilities can thrive. And to support people with disabilities and their families, we will support home and community-based care and end the subminimum wage.

TRIBAL NATIONS

President Biden's relationship with Tribal Nations and their citizens is built on respect for Tribal sovereignty and self-governance, honoring federal trust and treaty responsibilities, protecting Tribal homelands, and conducting regular, meaningful, and robust consultation with Tribal Nations.

Native communities pass down rich cultures, knowledge, traditions, and ways of life. But throughout our history, Native peoples' cultures, identities, and governments were not always seen as a part of this Nation but as a threat to it, and they faced violence and devastation that cost countless lives, tore families apart, and caused lasting damage to Tribal communities and institutions. Despite centuries of violence and oppression, Native peoples remain resilient and proud. Today, Native Americans are essential to the fabric of the United States.

Since President Biden took office, he has helped champion a new and better chapter in the story of our nation-to-nation relationships. He appointed the first Native American Secretary of the Interior, Deb Haaland, and more than 80 Native Americans hold senior Administration roles. He also relaunched Tribal Nations Summit and reestablished the White House Council on Native American Affairs. He is protecting sacred and Tribal lands, including by restoring protections for Berryessa Snow Mountain, Avi Kwa Ame, and Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments. To further tribal self-governance and usher in a new era of self-determination, he signed a historic executive order that ensures the federal government respects the nation-to-nation relationship with tribes by ensuring maximal autonomy in funding and other steps.

He has invested in supporting Native families and communities: Democrats passed and President Biden signed the American Rescue Plan, which made the largest direct federal investment in Tribal Nations in history, along with additional historic funds in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act. Democrats expanded the Child Tax Credit, pushing Native child poverty to a record low in 2021. We secured the first-ever advance appropriations for the Indian Health Service. And President Biden also defended the Indian Child Welfare Act and will continue doing so.

For decades, Native communities have been devastated by an epidemic of disappearances and killings, too often without resolution, justice, or accountability. President Biden is taking action to address the missing and murdered Indigenous persons crisis; the Departments of Justice and the Interior working together to accelerate investigations, DOI creating a unit to work on this issue, and FBI hiring personnel to focus on these cases. After Trump failed to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act, Democrats finally did and included new protections and programs to support Tribal survivors through the expansion of special criminal jurisdiction of Tribal courts. The Administration awarded $68 million in grants to support Native communities to provide services and promote justice for survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, dating violence, stalking, and trafficking. His Administration has continued to implement the Not Invisible Act Commission recommendations to address violent crime and the high rates of people reported missing in Native communities and relaunched the North American Trilateral Working Group on Violence Against Indigenous Women and Girls. And the Administration has issued final fee-to-trust land acquisitions rules and changes to Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act regulations.

Trump's presidency was a disaster for Native communities. Tribal communities were disproportionately harmed by Trump's disastrous response to the COVID pandemic, seeing higher hospitalization rates than other demographics. He worked to sabotage the ACA and will repeal it if he gets back to the White House. He tried to cut agencies and programs important to Tribal communities, like job training and business development funding and from Tribal scholarship and education programs.

Democrats will continue promoting nation-to-nation partnerships with Tribal Nations. We will continue strengthening and respect for Tribal sovereignty, the federal trust responsibility, Tribal treaty rights, and Native history, including educating the federal workforce, providing best practices for sacred sites, and ensuring Native American history is recognized. Democrats will keep working to make federal resources for Tribal Nations more accessible and protect health, education, safety, and welfare in Indian Country, particularly for Native women, children, and families. We will make IHS funding mandatory. We will invest in housing in Tribal communities, and support Tribal conservation through co-stewardship of public lands and waters. We will continue to usher in the next era of Tribal self-determination. And Democrats will invest in public safety and justice, including by increasing the number of officers and investigators on the ground; address the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous persons; and supporting VAWA programs, including a new grant program to address the missing and murdered Indigenous persons crisis.

COMBATING HATE & PROTECTING FREEDOM OF RELIGION

As President Biden often says, certain core values bring us together as Americans — and one of them is standing together against the hate, racism, bigotry, and violence that have long haunted our nation. We can and must come together regardless of our backgrounds.

President Biden and Vice President Harris have taken historic action to stand up to hate. President Biden signed the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act to finally make lynching a federal crime. He hosted the United We Stand Summit, elevating the fight against hate to the highest levels of our government. He signed COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act after AANHPI Americans faced a wave of hate during the pandemic. He has sought increased funding to improve the prevention, reporting and prosecution of hate crimes. And Democrats secured the greatest funding increase in history for bolstering the security of nonprofits, including houses of worship.

President Biden has been a strong and unequivocal voice speaking out against rising antisemitism in America. The Administration released the first-ever National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism, outlining a whole-of-society effort, including unprecedented, coordinated, and bold actions across government agencies, and calls to action for Congress, state and local governments, companies, technology platforms, and others. As part of that strategy, the Administration clarified, for the first time in writing, that Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits certain forms of antisemitic, Islamophobic, and related discrimination, including discrimination by national origin, in federally funded programs and activities. President Biden continues to take bold action to combat antisemitism on college campuses. And he has prioritized fighting antisemitism abroad by appointing Deborah Lipstadt as U.S. Special Envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, an ambassador-level position.

President Biden knows that Islamophobia has no place in our society. Across his Administration, agencies are taking action to fight Islamophobia and support Muslim Americans. His Administration is developing the first-ever U.S. National Strategy to Counter Islamophobia and Related Forms of Bias and Discrimination, including hate against Arab, Sikh and South Asian Americans. He is the first president in history to recognize the International Day to Combat Islamophobia, and his Administration released a Dear Colleague Letter reminding schools, including institutions of higher learning, of their legal obligation under Title VI to address discrimination, including harassment, based on race, color or national origin, including discrimination against students who are or are perceived to be Muslim, Arab, Sikh, South Asian, Hindu or Palestinian based on shared ancestry or ethnic characteristics.

Again and again, Trump has shown us who he is on the issue of hate. He rubs shoulders with and encourages white supremacists, even launching his 2024 campaign with a meeting with white supremacist, antisemite, and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes. He called white supremacist and openly-antisemitic Charlottesville protesters "very fine people." He reportedly thinks Hitler "did some good things" and echoes his hateful rhetoric about immigrants, including that they're "poisoning the blood of our country." He will reinstate his disgraceful Muslim ban if he's elected, continuing his long history of Islamophobia. And he fueled anti-Asian hate as the AANHPI community faced a spike in hate crimes surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic.

Democrats condemn the decades-long campaign to demonize the Muslim community and will end policies that target American Muslims as security threats. We will combat hate crimes and white nationalist terrorism. We will prioritize the investigation of hate crimes against trans and non-binary people. And we will continue to increase security at houses of worship. President Biden deeply believes everyone must be able to practice their faith without fear.

That's why Democrats will protect the First Amendment right to free exercise of religion for everyone, and we will maintain the separation of church and state. In contrast, the Trump Administration attacked religious freedom by demonizing some faiths and preferring others.

We will advocate for religious freedom across the world. And, we will continue to honor both religious freedom and other civil rights, not put them at war with one another. This critical work is led by Ambassador Rashad Hussain, the first Muslim to serve as Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom.

And we will continue to recognize faith communities' acts of service, which are critical pillars of their communities. That's one reason why President Biden reestablished the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships — so that the government can work better with faith and community groups to serve people in need.

FREEDOM OF THE PRESS

Freedom of the press is foundational to our nation, and President Biden is committed to safeguarding it. That's why he has called for the immediate and unconditional release of journalists who have been locked up abroad for doing their jobs. He is taking action to combat crimes against journalists, strengthen security for independent media outlets, and provide legal support for investigative journalists around the world. And his Administration brought together a coalition to counter proliferation and misuse of commercial spyware.

Democrats reject Trump's denigration of the free press and recognize its importance to our society. We will strengthen media ownership rules and direct federal antitrust agencies to investigate media mergers, pushing back on the potentially harmful effects of corporate consolidation. And we will appoint an independent media professional to head the U.S. Agency for Global Media.

ARTS & HUMANITIES

America is a great nation in large part because of the power of the arts and humanities that's embedded in the DNA of America. The Administration has taken historic action to support the arts, helping libraries, theaters, concert halls, and other venues stay afloat during the pandemic. The Administration has strengthened the National Endowment for the Arts, Institute of Museum and Library Services, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. President Biden also reestablished the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities and signed an Executive Order to make art more accessible to people from underserved communities, elevate new voices through the arts and humanities, and expand opportunities for artists and scholars. He has celebrated and elevated the arts by hosting performances and screenings, and has awarded National Humanities Medals, National Medals of Arts, and hosted Kennedy Center honorees at the White House.

Democrats value the humanities, arts and art education for developing imagination, creativity, innovation, and critical thinking, and for building bridges within and between our communities. We will promote arts funding and education — and we will invest in the arts and humanities accordingly. Democrats will fund the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and art and music education in public schools. Democrats know that federal grants for cultural organizations, artists, scholars, library systems, museums, and state and local governments only strengthen our communities and our cultural heritage.

D.C., PUERTO RICO, TERRITORIES

President Biden, Vice President Harris, and Democrats have made historic investments in Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and American Samoa – delivering billions for infrastructure, semiconductor, clean energy, and transportation projects, and creating thousands of good jobs.

Democrats reject the unequal treatment of residents of D.C., Puerto Rico, and the U.S. territories. We unequivocally support statehood for D.C., which its residents overwhelmingly support but Republicans blocked from even getting a vote in the Senate.

Democrats recognize that the people of Puerto Rico have earned and deserve to resolve the political status questions. For this reason, Democrats support the enactment of the Puerto Rico Status Act/H.R. 2757, and promote full civic and political representation for Puerto Ricans. We will work to end its unequal treatment by the federal government, and fight to provide equal access to federal programs like Medicaid, SNAP, and the CTC. Democrats reject Trump's failed response to Hurricane Maria, which devastated Puerto Rico, and will ensure that the federal government's response to disasters in Puerto Rico is as urgent as it would be anywhere else in the country. When disaster does strike, we will speed access to recovery funds to help rebuild. We will build on the Administration's investments to invest further in energy, infrastructure, economic development, education, health care, housing, energy, and climate resilience. We will help restructure Puerto Rico's debt to relieve its debt burden, and we will work to dissolve the Financial Oversight and Management Board.

Democrats also support self-determination for the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and American Samoa. We will create a Congressional task force to study equal voting rights and House representation; and we will work to ensure equal access to federal programs like veterans' benefits, the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid, and SNAP food assistance for all those eligible. Democrats support funding to improve critical health care facilities in the territories, including construction of a state-of-the-art medical complex in Guam that co-locates health agencies on a single campus for a more integrated healthcare system that will benefit the region. We will also invest in ending disparities in agriculture, economic development, education, employment, energy, health care, housing, and infrastructure, and help the U.S. territories diversify their economies. We will help them recover from natural disasters, and we will invest in expanding clean energy and water systems to be more resilient. Democrats support reimbursing U.S. territories for more migration costs, including restoring Medicaid eligibility for legal migrants under the Compacts of Free Association. And Democrats will continue to recognize the sacrifices and honor the contributions of residents who suffered because of their U.S. nationality during the Japanese occupation during World War II.

Democrats also recognize that millions of U.S. citizens live abroad, and we will consider their unique circ*mstances and challenges when shaping policy. We will work to protect their voting rights and ensure they're able to participate in the democratic process here at home.

Chapter Seven: Securing our Border & Fixing the Broken Immigration System

Since our founding, immigrants have traveled to America to pursue freedom and opportunity, to flee oppression, and to reunite with family members, and in turn have made our country stronger. President Biden has led with the conviction that we must secure our border and fix a broken immigration system decades in the making. Through it all, the United States must continue to be a beacon of hope and opportunity.

On his first day in office, President Biden sent Congress legislation to secure our border, fix our immigration system, and provide a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers and others. This past year, the President worked across the aisle and negotiated a bipartisan deal that included the toughest and fairest set of reforms to secure the border in decades. It would have made our country safer and made our border more secure, while treating people fairly and humanely and expanding legal immigration, consistent with our values as a nation.

Congress failed to act because Republicans, led by Donald Trump, would rather play politics than solve problems. Trump's plans for a second term will devastate our economy and tear families apart. Trump has said that if he's elected, he'll move to immediately deport millions of undocumented immigrants, including those who have lived in and contributed to this country for years. He and his allies have also promised to end birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented individuals, ignore the Constitution and Supreme Court precedent and bar undocumented children from public schools, and once again separate children from their families. Trump's plans are out of line with American values, and Congressional Republicans are currently blocking President Biden's bipartisan border security proposals because they lack the courage to stand up to Trump.

President Biden has led a hemispheric response to the challenge of irregular migration, launching and leading the Los Angeles Declaration for Migration and Protection with 20 countries to increase enforcement, expand legal pathways to citizenship, and stabilize and integrate migrants in neighboring countries. President Biden has taken decisive action to secure our border through executive actions that have significantly restricted eligibility for asylum at the border and created innovative legal pathways to the U.S. that, when coupled with strong enforcement, have decreased illegal border crossings. Since President Biden announced new border restrictions in June 2024, the number of unlawful crossings has fallen by 40 percent, demonstrating that the policy works. He has also implemented policies that have stopped record amounts of fentanyl from crossing our border.

President Biden has done all of this while ensuring that people are treated humanely and with dignity. As one of his first actions, President Biden established the Interagency Task Force on the Reunification of Families, which as of March 2024 has reunited nearly 800 children with their parents in the United States that were separated in Trump's presidency.

In President Biden's second term, he will push Congress to pass legislation that is consistent with our values as a nation. Legislation must secure the border, reform the asylum system, expand legal immigration; and keep families together by supporting a pathway for long-term undocumented individuals, improving the work authorization process, and securing the future of the DACA program.

President Biden has taken action to advance each of these goals, but lasting, comprehensive reforms require congressional action.

SECURING THE BORDER

The President has already taken steps to increase border resources, working within the limits imposed by Congress. He has increased the number of agents and officers on the southwest border to over 24,000, added thousands of additional support personnel, surged thousands of law enforcement and other personnel from across the Department of Homeland Security, and secured the first significant increase of Border Patrol agents in more than a decade. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law modernized border stations and land border ports of entry. The Administration is providing support to cities and states, on the border and across the country, that are sheltering migrants. He has also taken executive actions, including launching expedited immigration court dockets, to more quickly resolve immigration cases for those crossing the Southern border and remove those who do not establish a legal basis to remain.

President Biden has repeatedly asked Congress for additional resources to secure our border, including increases for personnel that are critically needed to quickly deliver consequences at the border to those who cross unlawfully. The Department of Homeland Security requested funds to hire 1,300 Border Patrol agents and 1,600 asylum officers. Meanwhile, the bipartisan Senate bill would have provided an additional 1,500 Customs and Border Protection personnel and 4,300 asylum officers. Congressional Republicans continue to play partisan politics with the security of our border instead of working with Democrats to fund these critically needed resources for DHS and border communities.

In President Biden's second term, he will push Congress to provide the resources and authorities that we need to secure the border. This includes additional border patrol agents, immigration judges, asylum officers, cutting-edge inspection machines to help detect and stop the flow of fentanyl, and funding for cities and states that are sheltering migrants.

Reform the Asylum System

Congress must pass legislation to reform our asylum system modeled after the bipartisan Senate deal so that we can quickly identify and provide protection to those who are fleeing persecution and ensure it is not used as an alternative to legal immigration by others. Democrats believe that asylum processing should be efficient and fair, and that those who are determined not to have a legal basis to remain should be quickly removed. In order to achieve this, we need Congress to strengthen requirements for valid asylum claims. Congress must also finally fund a sufficient number of asylum officers and immigration judges to facilitate timely decisions. In addition, asylum seekers, especially the most vulnerable, including unaccompanied children, should have access to legal counsel. Individuals who pass this strengthened initial screening and are determined to be likely to qualify for asylum should be given quick access to work authorization while they go through a streamlined court process.

After Congress repeatedly failed to act, President Biden announced executive action that significantly curtailed asylum eligibility at the border when crossings reach a certain threshold and strengthened our ability to impose timely consequences for crossing the border illegally. Those who attempt to cross into the United States unlawfully are being quickly returned to their home countries, as well as Mexico. Since the President took this action, unlawful entries between ports of entry declined by more than half. And, President Biden is changing the asylum process to more quickly screen and identify individuals who pose a threat to national security or public safety so that they can be swiftly removed.

Temporary Emergency Authority to Shut Down the Border

When the system is overwhelmed, the President should have emergency authority to expel migrants who are crossing unlawfully and stop processing asylum claims except for those using a safe and orderly process at Ports of Entry. The authority should be accompanied by humanitarian exceptions for vulnerable populations including unaccompanied children and victims of trafficking.

Congress should also dedicate resources to detain and remove individuals quickly, and rapidly process those who cannot be detained in a non-custodial setting under government supervision. Those who pose a threat to public safety or national security must be identified and removed as quickly as possible.

Fighting Human Trafficking

We need more resources and Congressional authorization to increase penalties to prosecute and punish human smugglers and traffickers who prey upon families and migrants. President Biden has already taken numerous steps to go after these bad actors including by revoking the visas of private sector CEOs and sanctioning government officials who profit from migrants coming to the U.S. unlawfully, and by expanding efforts to dismantle human smuggling and prosecute offenders.

President Biden also established Joint Task Force Alpha, a law enforcement task force that marshals the investigative and prosecutorial resources of the Department of Justice, in partnership with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), to enhance U.S. enforcement efforts against the most prolific and dangerous human smuggling and trafficking groups operating in Mexico and the Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. Joint Task Force Alpha has delivered significant results, including: over 240 U.S. convictions against leaders, organizers, and significant facilitators of human trafficking and substantial seizures and forfeitures of assets including cash, property, and firearms.

Cracking Down on Trafficking Illicit Fentanyl

President Biden has made fighting the trafficking of fentanyl a top priority. He has seized record amounts of fentanyl at our border— and arrested more individuals for fentanyl-related crimes in the last two years than in the previous five years combined—and secured funding for more cutting-edge inspection machines to help detect fentanyl at our southwest border. He also issued an Executive Order to go after the global illicit fentanyl trade, which led to the imposition of sanctions on some 300 persons and entities. President Biden has also continued working with Mexico to extradite and prosecute key fentanyl traffickers, and negotiated the resumption of bilateral cooperation on counternarcotics with China, which had been stalled since 2019. As a result of these efforts, the number of fentanyl-related deaths has started to decline for the first time in five years.

In his second term, President Biden will work with Congress to deploy more cutting-edge inspection machines to help detect fentanyl at our ports of entry. He will also leverage all resources of the federal government to stop tech platforms from being used for criminal conduct, including sales of dangerous drugs like fentanyl.

EXPANDING LEGAL IMMIGRATION & DETERRING ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION

America is a nation of immigrants. The legal immigration framework was last updated in 1990 and does not reflect the needs of our country in the 21st century. Many immigrants today are forced to wait years, and often decades, to immigrate lawfully to the United States. A robust immigration system with accessible lawful pathways and penalties for illegal immigration alleviates pressure at the border and upholds our values. The U.S. Citizenship Act would permanently increase family-sponsored and employment-based immigration. The bipartisan border legislation would increase the number of immigrant visas that are available by 250,000 over 5 years.

Legal Immigration Pathways

While we wait for Congress to act, President Biden has used his authority to provide orderly, legal immigration pathways for those fleeing violence, and decrease the number of illegal border crossings. The Biden-Harris Administration established a humanitarian parole process for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans (CHNV), which allows people from these four countries who have a sponsor in the U.S. and who pass a background check to come to the U.S. for a period of two years to live and work lawfully. Border encounters from these nationalities decreased by 89 percent in the first six months after CHNV was put in place—incentivizing migrants to stay in place, rather than make the dangerous journey to our southwest border.

He also established New Family Reunification Parole Processes to allow eligible individuals from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Colombia, Cuba and Haiti to be reunited with family in the United States while they wait to complete the process for securing lawful permanent residence.

The United States has long been a leader in refugee resettlement, providing a beacon of hope for persecuted people around the world, facilitating international efforts to address record displacement, and demonstrating the generosity and core values of the American people. After Trump decimated the program, President Biden rebuilt the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, which is now on track to admit more than 100,000 refugees this fiscal year, the most in three decades. The Administration also established Safe Mobility Offices in countries throughout the Western hemisphere, where migrants can be processed for refugee admission or referred to resettlement programs elsewhere - rather than making their way to our border. And, the Administration expanded opportunities for communities and individual Americans to sponsor and welcome refugees to the United States.

President Biden has worked closely with partners throughout the region – including, most importantly, the government of Mexico – to undertake coordinated actions to stop the flow of migrants before they reach our border. And he has supported our regional partners through the LA Declaration process – working together on coordinated enforcement, development of lawful pathways, and efforts to address the root causes of migration.

As outlined in the U.S. Citizenship Act, Congress must act to increase the number of family-sponsored and employment-based immigrant visas that are available each fiscal year so that people aren't forced to wait decades for a visa. Legislation should also include provisions to ensure that children who came as dependents on their parents' temporary visas can remain in the United States with their families, even after turning 21, provisions to streamline applications of at-risk Afghan allies to the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, and a process for Afghan evacuees to have their status adjusted to lawful permanent resident.

Legislation should also extend work authorization to those who utilize lawful visa pathways so that families can more quickly get on the path to economic self-sufficiency. This includes K-1, K-2, and K-3 nonimmigrant visa holders (fiancés, spouses, children of U.S. citizens), and the spouses and children of high-skilled temporary visa holders. And, Democrats will explore opportunities to identify or create work permits for immigrants, long-term undocumented residents, and legally processed asylum seekers in our country.

Congress should also increase the number of visas for the Special Immigrant Juvenile Status program for abused, abandoned, or neglected youth, building on actions that the Administration has already taken to provide deferred action and work authorization for juveniles in this program.

Keeping Families Together and Supporting Long-Term Undocumented Individuals, including Dreamers

In 2012, then-Vice President Biden worked alongside President Obama to establish the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Since then, President Biden has taken steps to support undocumented people and families, including Dreamers and DACA recipients. President Biden has vigorously defended DACA against legal challenges in the courts, and has extended Affordable Care Act coverage to DACA recipients for the first time. In addition, President Biden is taking action to make it easier for Dreamers, including DACA recipients, who have earned a higher education degree in the United States and have a job offer to more quickly receive work visas. And, the Administration allowed undocumented workers in labor disputes to apply for deferred action so that they are not afraid to report violations of labor law. Trump tried to end the DACA program in his first term and will do so again if re-elected.

President Biden also announced new actions to keep an estimated 500,000 American families together by allowing certain noncitizen spouses and children of U.S. citizens who have been in the country for 10 years or more to apply for lawful permanent residence—a status they're already eligible for—without leaving the country first. The average beneficiary has been in the United States for more than 20 years, and will finally be able to come out of the shadows and fully contribute to our communities.

President Biden has also taken steps to preserve and expand Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for individuals from countries experiencing armed conflicts, natural disasters, or other crises, giving thousands authorization to live and work in the United States without fear of deportation for a temporary period. Since 2021, DHS – which oversees the program – has added Afghanistan, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Myanmar, Ukraine and Venezuela to the list of TPS-eligible countries. DHS has also extended TPS for immigrants from most countries that were already covered by TPS, including the countries that Trump attempted to terminate.

Congress must pass legislation to provide a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers, farmworkers, careworkers, and other long-term undocumented individuals who contribute to this country, by paying taxes and contributing to their local economies, and in his second term, President Biden will continue pressing them to do so.

Fast, Efficient Immigration Decisions

Immigration officers have to make the right decisions, and they also have to make them quickly and efficiently. Under the Administration, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has cut processing times significantly for those awaiting work authorization and ensured that immigration decisions – including naturalization and work permit applications – are made fairly and as quickly as possible. As of April 2024, the Administration achieved the lowest wait time for naturalization since 2016 and the lowest wait time for work authorization documents from certain categories of applicants since 2017. In FY 2023, USCIS administered the oath of allegiance to more than 878,500 new U.S. citizens, including 12,000 members of the military, effectively eliminating the backlog of naturalization applications. It also reduced the median processing time for naturalization from 10.5 months to 6.1 months.

The Administration has also partnered with state governments and non-profit groups to host Work Authorization Clinics, which have eased the burden on American communities by helping migrants support their families and move out of emergency shelter into more stable housing options. It will also help to fund community-based organizations that host clinics to assist with immigration cases.

To make scheduling appointments at U.S. ports of entry safer and more orderly, the Administration launched CBPOne, a free online tool available to migrants in parts of Mexico. Scheduling appointments makes the process at our border safer and more orderly, and the advance information that is submitted to CBP creates a more efficient and streamlined process for CBP and for individuals. CBPOne has increased administrative processing capacity fivefold since its introduction.

Chapter Eight: Advancing the President's Unity Agenda

Since the day he took office, President Biden promised to be a president for all Americans. He knows that we agree on a lot more than we disagree on.

During his first State of the Union, President Biden outlined a unity agenda to make progress solving big challenges that Americans have in common: beating the opioid epidemic, tackling the mental health crisis, holding Big Tech accountable, ending cancer as we know it, and meeting our nation's sacred obligation to veterans.

Under President Biden's leadership, Democrats worked across the aisle to make real progress on these critical issues. We're providing life-saving treatment for opioid use disorder to end the epidemic, making historic investments in mental health care to help struggling Americans, establishing new high standards for AI safety and protecting American privacy, bringing together providers, insurers, and researchers to work toward ending cancer, and passed the PACT Act to expand health care benefits to veterans.

Donald Trump divides us for his own political gain. He refuses to reach across the aisle to deliver results for working families, and he will cut veterans' benefits, mental health care for kids, opioid treatment, and cancer research.

BEATING THE OPIOID EPIDEMIC

For too long, the scourge of opioids has torn through our communities, ripping apart families and shattering lives. Our nation's opioid epidemic impacts Americans in every corner of the country, from small towns to large cities to Tribal lands. Far too many Americans have lost loved ones to addiction and overdose.

The Biden-Harris Administration is strengthening prevention, investing in treatment, and expanding recovery support services.

The Administration has increased the number of medical providers who can initiate treatment from 129,000 to 2 million and made historic investments in the State Opioid Response program to help states deliver free treatment services to over 1.2 million people and enabled States to reverse more than 500,000 overdoses. To curb opioid overdoses, the Administration is making naloxone, an overdose-prevention drug, available over-the-counter at grocery stores and pharmacies. They also took steps to increase access to naloxone at federal facilities, and ended a requirement for length of addiction before entering treatment. Democrats will continue these critical investments in life-saving medication and care for Americans struggling with addiction and most at risk of overdose.

As president, Trump failed to mount an effective and coherent strategy to prevent overdoses. Under his watch, opioid-related deaths spiked, and now, he's promising once again to repeal the Affordable Care Act. If he's allowed back in the White House, many Americans who struggle with addiction will lose critical, live-saving health care.

INVESTING IN MENTAL HEALTH

The pandemic exacerbated feelings of sadness, isolation, and loneliness across the country and strained our health care system, including mental health services. President Biden, Vice President Harris, and Democrats know mental health care is health care.

For millions of Americans, that essential mental health care is out of reach. In 2020, less than half of all adults with a mental illness diagnosis received care for it and it's worse for kids – nearly 70 percent of children who need mental health care cannot get it. That's why Democrats are taking steps to dramatically expand access to mental health care in America.

The Administration launched 988,the National Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, which has connected nearly 10 million Americans in crisis to immediate, confidential, and free support from trained counselors. And, the National Maternal Mental Health Hotline has received more than 30,000 calls and texts, to help mothers and their loved ones navigate mental health issues. Democrats will push to expand 988 to handle increased capacity and serve more Americans.

At the same time, we must make it easier for all Americans to access high-quality mental health and substance use treatment by recruiting and training more professionals to deliver culturally and linguistically competent, high-quality behavioral health care; and by strengthening coverage across all health plans. And we must extend workforce development and incentive programs. The Administration is delivering $1 billion to hire or train 14,000 school-based mental health counselors – the largest investment in school-based mental health in history – thanks to the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. And, it is delivering additional resources to support students who need mental health care.

As mental health care becomes increasingly expensive, Democrats are pushing for permanent funding for Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics, which provide 24/7 crisis care and treatment for mental health and substance use disorders, regardless of individuals' ability to pay. And, the President is calling for additional resources to connect more Americans to affordable care at work and at school.

President Biden, Vice President Harris, and Democrats are working to ensure full mental health parity so that mental health care is covered the same as physical health care. We're strengthening mental health parity requirements and closing insurance loopholes for the more than 150 million Americans with private health insurance. And, the President is calling on Congress to expand Medicare's coverage for mental health care, applying the same parity protections to Medicare beneficiaries.

Trump has a different vision. When he was president, he proposed cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and rollbacks of mental health funding.

PROTECTING KIDS ONLINE, STRENGTHENING AMERICANS' DATA PRIVACY, & PROMOTING COMPETITION

Tech platforms and companies help keep us connected, inspire ideas and innovation, and create a global marketplace. At the same time, they collect, share, and exploit data; risk our children's mental health; and deepen extremism and polarization. There is growing scientific evidence for what so many Americans already know: Social media and other online platforms can affect our mental health and well-being – particularly for our kids. In addition, a handful of dominant tech platforms and companies increasingly control much of the market, allowing them to exercise enormous power over Americans' daily lives – and, too often, use that power to exclude competitors and undermine consumers and innovation.

President Biden believes that all companies, including technology companies, should be held accountable for the harm they cause. The president has raised the alarm that social media and other platforms have allowed abusive and even criminal conduct like cyberstalking, child sexual exploitation, and non-consensual intimate images to proliferate on their sites – and called on Democrats and Republicans to unite on legislation to address these issues. The Surgeon General issued an advisory warning about the impacts of social media on youth mental health, noting that he cannot conclude social media is safe for children and adolescents. Democrats will pass bipartisan legislation to protect kids' privacy and to stop Big Tech from collecting personal data on kids and teenagers online, ban targeted advertising to children, and put stricter limits on the personal data these companies collect on all of us. And, the Administration has strengthened legal protections for survivors and victims of non-consensual intimate imagery, including those generated by AI, building on the federal civil cause of action established under the Violence Against Women Act Reauthorization of 2022.

President Biden has also called on Democrats and Republicans to pass bipartisan legislation to promote competition and privacy in the tech industry. Important policies include promoting interoperability between tech services and platforms, allowing users to control and transfer their data, and preventing large platforms from giving their own products and services an unfair advantage in the marketplace. We must also fundamentally reform Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which shields tech platforms from liability even when they host or disseminate violent or illegal content, to ensure that platforms take responsibility for the content they share.

Democrats are determined to strengthen data privacy. The President issued an Executive Order to protect America's sensitive personal data from commercial data brokers, identity thieves, and foreign intelligence actors. And, the Federal Trade Commission is cracking down on commercial surveillance and taking on technology companies for illegally retaining children's data. We must do more and update and pass the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights, protect student data privacy by ensuring what is collected in schools is only used for education, and update the Electronic Communications Privacy Act to protect personal electronic information and safeguard location information.

Seizing the Promise and Managing the Risks of AI

Artificial intelligence (AI) holds extraordinary potential for both promise and peril. While AI is helping to cure diseases, predict the weather, and transform education, it's also being used to clone voices, commit fraud, institutionalize bias, and undermine democracy.

We need to act now and act fast to realize the promise of AI and manage its risks to ensure that AI serves the public interest. Democrats are finding solutions to make sure that as AI's capabilities grow, we can manage the implications for Americans' rights, safety and security.

President Biden issued a landmark Executive Order directing federal agencies to establish new high standards for AI safety and security, protect Americans' privacy, advance equity and civil rights, stand up for workers and consumers, promote competitive markets for AI development and use, and more. Democrats are committed to ensuring that workers get a voice in how AI is used in their workplace and that they share fairly in any economic gains AI produces.

We know that AI can deepen discrimination, bias, and other abuses in justice, health care, education, and housing. That's why the Administration has already taken action by publishing the Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights and issuing new guidance from federal agencies on combating algorithmic discrimination across the economy.

As AI becomes more prevalent, it's critical we have the brightest minds working to understand new technologies. The Administration launched an AI Talent Surge to accelerate hiring AI professionals across the federal government, launched a pilot program to enhance successful initiatives for training additional scientists in AI, and created the AI Safety Institute at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to set rigorous standards for extensive testing of powerful AI models to ensure safety before public release.

During President Biden's second term, Democrats will continue to advocate for the safe and secure development of AI. We will invest in the AI Safety Institute to create guidelines, tools, benchmarks, and best practices for evaluating dangerous capabilities and mitigating AI risk. We will also prioritize funding for critical AI research and development that advances AI safety.

We will also ban voice impersonations, and President Biden will take action to provide heightened protections in critical sectors such as health care, financial services, education, housing, and transportation. Finally, we will make sure that we responsibly develop, test, procure, integrate transformative AI across the federal government.

ENDING CANCER AS WE KNOW IT

Cancer has touched nearly every single American family. As we honor the enormous courage and strength of the millions of Americans facing the disease, we're working to end cancer as we know it and get patients and families the quality care and support that they deserve. The president and first lady re-launched the Cancer Moonshot in 2022 to reduce the nation's cancer death rate by at least half and improve the experience of people who are touched by cancer.

The Cancer Moonshot has already announced more than 95 new programs, policies, and resources, including commitments from seven leading insurance companies to reimburse for navigation services, new actions from 40 comprehensive cancer centers and community oncology practices to bring effective navigation support to underserved communities, and established insurance codes so practices, including Medicare providers, have a way to bill for patient navigation services.

The Administration launched the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), which is supercharging high-impact research and development to improve American health outcomes and deliver breakthroughs on cancer. President Biden is calling on the private sector to develop and test new treatments, make drugs more affordable, and share more data and knowledge that can inform the public and benefit every company's research.

We're supporting these initiatives by providing funds to essential programs for cancer research and health care like the National Cancer Institute (NCI), FDA, Center of Disease Control (CDC), Veterans Affairs (VA), Indian Health Service (IHS), and ARPA-H.

Trump will set back our progress finding treatments for cancer and other diseases - he proposed cutting funding for critical scientific research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). And, he and Republicans loosened regulations to get rid of toxic chemicals that cause cancer and made it easier for chemical companies to poison our air, water, and land.

With a second term in office, President Biden will continue to work to prevent cancer, detect it early, deliver innovation, care for families facing cancer, and, ultimately, end cancer as we know it.

MEETING OUR NATION'S SACRED OBLIGATION TO VETERANS AND MILITARY FAMILIES

President Biden believes that our nation has no more sacred obligation than providing for our military service members when they're sent into harm's way and caring for them and their families after they come home.

Trump called members of the military who died in war "suckers" and "losers." He disparages the brave men and women who wear our uniform and protect our democracy and national security. And, as president, he pushed to cut funding for veterans' benefits.

President Biden signed into law more than 30 bipartisan bills addressing critical issues facing veterans, service members, and families today. He signed the PACT Act – the most significant expansion of health care benefits and services for veterans in more than 30 years – which expands VA eligibility and services to veterans who were exposed to toxic substances. Thanks to the PACT Act, more than 888,000 veterans and survivors are now receiving new service-connected disability benefits, making care and benefits available to veterans battling over 300 medical conditions.

Democrats are also taking steps to support veterans' mental health and decrease the scourge of veteran suicides by expanding mental health screenings, increasing access to legal and financial support, and hiring more mental health professionals at the VA. President Biden took historic action to end sexual assault and domestic violence in the military by calling for the establishment of the Independent Review Commission on Sexual Assault and then implementing the Commission's recommendations to better protect survivors. The Administration will prioritize the effective implementation of the Military Justice Improvement and Increasing Prevention Act, including by successfully operating the Offices of Special Trial Counsel within the military services branches, and the Office of the Chief Prosecutor of the U.S. Coast Guard.

We're also taking steps to boost access to affordable and stable housing for all veterans, who often face a high risk of homelessness, with a focus on women veterans. Last year alone, the VA helped more than 145,000 veterans and their families stay in their homes and permanently housed more than 46,000 veterans. The Administration awarded more than $1 billion in grant funding to help homeless veterans and house their families and launched a first-of-its-kind funding for legal services for veterans experiencing or at risk of homelessness to support accessing government benefits, navigating family law, ensuring access to safe housing, and assisting with debt.

The Veteran Scam and Fraud Evasion (VSAFE) Task Force has cracked down on scams targeting veterans, and the new National Veterans Financial Resource Center has promoted financial stability, literacy, and debt management for veterans. The VA is making it easier and faster for veterans to get their VA medical debt forgiven.

Our commitment to our veterans and military members extends to those who care for and support them. That's why President Biden signed an Executive Order to help military spouses obtain and maintain careers in the federal government. The Department of Defense and the Department of State also took action to ensure military spouses can keep their federal jobs when their loved ones are stationed overseas. President Biden has made child care more affordable and accessible for military families, and signed an executive order providing financial support for military-connected caregivers.

Going forward, we will continue to implement the PACT Act; and we will strengthen VA care by fully funding inpatient and outpatient care and long-term care, and by upgrading medical facility infrastructure. We will also improve and increase access to mental health care, expand suicide prevention, and invest in opioid overdose prevention and treatment.

Democrats are also determined to expand women veterans' health care and access to benefits, and to continue implementing key Independent Review Commission on Sexual Assault recommendations. With a second term in office and a majority in Congress, we will fulfill our promise to end veteran homelessness and support military students with disabilities.

Democrats will strengthen their support for military families by making child care more affordable and accessible, expanding job opportunities for spouses, and investing in a stipend for caregivers. We will also continue implementing the military spouse Executive Order and ensure the federal government is an employer of choice for military families.

In recognition of our nation's greatest heroes, we will expand memorial benefits to honor their years of service and lasting memories.

Chapter Nine: Strengthening American Leadership Worldwide

We live in a period of significant global change. The world is at an inflection point between those who argue that autocracy – rule by dictators or single leaders – is the answer to facing today's challenges and those who understand that democracy – rule by the people – is essential to moving our world forward and uplifting people everywhere. President Biden believes at this decisive moment we must demonstrate that democracy can still deliver for our people. We must rally the world to address the challenges that impact all of us, from climate change and global health to human rights, technology, food security, and inclusive economic growth.

The challenges of the current moment require us to revisit old assumptions and invest in new sources of American power. We have seen aggression from authoritarian powers, the destabilizing impact of a global pandemic, the growing existential danger of the climate crisis, the awesome power of emerging technologies, and the shared vulnerabilities that underlie the 21st century global economy. Most importantly, these challenges underscore how lives and livelihoods across the world are increasingly interdependent.

For too long, American foreign policy was conducted as if our domestic challenges were disconnected from global ones. President Biden understands that the two go hand-in-hand, and that leading abroad means being strong and resilient at home. He also knows that the United States is strongest when our partners are strong too. That's why he has met the challenges of his first term – including the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the existential threat of climate change, and intense strategic competition with China – by leading coalitions of nations who share our values to stand together.

Donald Trump made America less safe by significantly straining U.S. alliances and emboldening autocratic regimes, while weakening global democratic norms. He insulted our allies and withdrew from international agreements and organizations that were in the national security interest. Trump praises dictators, including Vladimir Putin, and attempted to weaken the NATO alliance. And, he repeatedly disrespected the brave men and women in the U.S. military.

When he entered office, President Biden moved to quickly and decisively repair the damage that Trump had done to America's relationships with our allies and our reputation around the world. Trump's America first strategy meant America was alone, less secure, less prosperous, and with American leadership and values falling behind worldwide. By reinvesting in America's manufacturing base, leveling the playing field for American workers, and standing alongside our allies to support democracies and push back against autocracy, President Biden has bolstered our national security and is investing in a future where America will continue to lead on the world stage.

EUROPE

During President Biden's first term, no region of the world has better illustrated the importance of our alliances than Europe. When Vladimir Putin launched his reckless war of aggression against Ukraine, he sought to shake the very foundations of the free world. He thought he could roll into Ukraine and that Ukraine and the world would roll over. He was wrong. Instead, he met the determination of the Ukrainian people. He also enhanced the resolve of NATO, the greatest military alliance in the history of the world, led by the United States. Under President Biden's leadership, the United States has been steadfast in standing alongside our European allies to defend principles of sovereignty, deter further Russian aggression, protect our shared values, and make critical investments to ensure the security of the United States and our transatlantic allies in the years to come.

President Biden has pursued three core objectives in Ukraine: help Ukraine defend its sovereignty, maintain unity in our transatlantic alliances, and prevent escalation into direct conflict with Russia. On all three fronts, the United States has succeeded. Under President Biden's leadership, America has provided Ukraine with the weapons as well as the diplomatic and economic support needed to defend its sovereignty from Russian aggression. That work has created good paying American jobs as we build the arsenal to defend ourselves at home and help protect democracy abroad. Alongside our allies, the United States has rallied a coalition of approximately 50 nations to provide much needed security assistance to Ukraine and coordinated unprecedented international actions to impose tough sanctions on Russia and hold Putin accountable on the world stage. The Biden-Harris Administration has also helped protect Ukraine's civilian population and energy infrastructure from unprovoked Russian attacks and worked to resume trade of Ukrainian agricultural products to support global food security.

Under President Biden's leadership, NATO is stronger and more united than ever and has bolstered its ranks by adding two highly capable allies: Sweden and Finland. NATO nations are meeting their financial commitments as well, with 23 NATO countries on track to meet a spending target of 2 percent of GDP on defense in 2024 – up from 9 countries in 2020. President Biden has also made clear that he considers the 2 percent goal to be a floor not a ceiling, and he continues to press the alliance to do even more to bolster collective defenses.

More broadly, the Administration has deepened cooperation with Europe to confront a range of shared challenges. President Biden has worked with our European allies to manage competition with China, resolve disputes between America and the European Union, and address long-standing conflicts in the Balkans and Caucasus and persistent trade issues across the continent. The US-EU Trade and Technology Council has established rules of the road on global economic and technology issues. The United States and United Kingdom AI Safety Institutes have agreed on a common approach to developing artificial intelligence safely. And President Biden has led the development of the US-EU Energy Council to counter the effects of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

President Biden has also been willing to lead where other Presidents have not, becoming the first President to recognize the Armenian genocide.

The threat posed by Russia transcends its war of aggression in Ukraine. Russia is enlisting North Korea, Iran and China in its efforts to attack freedom across the world through military equipment sales and economic partnerships. By strengthening our alliances in Europe and Indo-Pacific, and strengthening the connections among our allies, including by inviting our Indo-Pacific allies to participate in the NATO Summits in Madrid, Vilnius, and Washington, DC, the United States is countering Russia's disruptive actions no matter where they occur.

Where President Biden has made strengthening and reassuring our allies a priority, Trump has repeatedly threatened to withdraw America from the world's most powerful military alliance and has invited Vladimir Putin to "do whatever the hell he wants" to any NATO country. While President Biden has always stood by Ukraine, Trump attempted to help his own political prospects by extorting President Zelenskyy – including by withholding much needed security assistance. And, now behind closed doors, Trump is supporting a policy of pushing Ukraine to surrender sovereign territory to Putin.

President Biden will never turn his back on our allies. In his second term, he will continue to stand with Ukraine to stop Putin's atrocities and constrain Russia's threat to allied nations and America's vital interests. In addition to continuing to strengthen NATO, he will help Ukraine recover economically and support ongoing efforts to strengthen Ukraine's democracy and deepen its political and economic relationship with European and transatlantic institutions. President Biden will continue to work closely with the EU on emerging political and economic challenges and work with our European and Indo-Pacific allies to disrupt Russia's emerging military and economic alliances with Iran and North Korea.

INDO-PACIFIC

The United States is an Indo-Pacific power. The region, stretching from our Pacific coastline to the Indian Ocean, is home to more than half of the world's people, nearly two-thirds of the world's economy, and seven of the world's largest militaries. In the years ahead, as the region drives as much as two-thirds of global economic growth, its influence will only grow – as will its importance to the United States.

President Biden understands that standing up for the rules of the road in the Indo-Pacific, and standing by our allies, makes us safer. That is why he has maintained a commitment to freedom of navigation across the Indo-Pacific, standing with the Philippines and other allies and partners to push back against hostile actions and coercion by China. He also worked to expand our military presence in Japan and secure access to strategic sites in the Philippines through a new defense cooperation agreement – steps that will help deter future regional aggression.

Across the Indo-Pacific, President Biden has prioritized strengthening key multilateral partnerships. He elevated the Quad – which brings together the democratic strength of the United States, Australia, India, and Japan – to unleash new forms of regional cooperation on technology, climate, health, and maritime security. He founded AUKUS – a partnership among the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia – to better integrate the defense industrial bases of two of our closest allies and to produce conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarines and increase cooperation on advanced capabilities such as artificial intelligence, autonomous platforms, and electronic warfare. Under President Biden's leadership, the United States hosted a historic trilateral Camp David Summit with Japan and South Korea, enshrined the Washington Declaration with South Korea, and extended trilateral deterrence discussions with Japan. The Administration has elevated our relationships with Vietnam, Indonesia, and ASEAN to Comprehensive Strategic Partnerships. It has intensified our engagement with vital regional fora in the Indo-Pacific, including hosting the leaders of the Pacific Islands Forum and ASEAN nations for face-to-face summits in Washington, DC, and hosting the 2023 APEC Summit in San Francisco. President Biden is also investing in a twenty-first-century partnership between the United States and India that builds technology into the fabric of our cooperation through programs such as the U.S.-India Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology.

President Biden has also worked alongside our allies to counter the threat posed by North Korea's destabilizing development of nuclear and missile programs, in violation of multiple UN Security Council resolutions. By bolstering our trilateral cooperation with South Korea and Japan, we are maintaining peace and stability in the Korean Peninsula and beyond.

Trump took a different approach in the region, embarrassing the United States on the world stage including by flattering and legitimizing Kim Jong Un, exchanging "love letters" with the North Korean dictator. Trump directly threatened our valued ally South Korea with the withdrawal of U.S. troops stationed there over a trade dispute. President Biden has and will stand by our allies, especially South Korea, against North Korea's provocations, including its illegal build-up of missile capabilities.

In his second term, President Biden will continue to promote a free, open, connected, prosperous, secure, and resilient Indo-Pacific. He will deepen economic engagement to drive inclusive growth. He will champion human rights. And he will continue to strengthen our traditional alliances and broaden regional partnerships to bolster deterrence and resist coercion.

CHINA

President Biden recognizes that the People's Republic of China (PRC) is America's most consequential strategic competitor. The PRC is the only global actor that combines the intention to fundamentally reshape the U.S.-led international order with an increasing military, economic, diplomatic, and technological capacity to do so. President Biden understands the imperative of rising to this challenge while managing the competition between our countries responsibly.

President Biden has invested in our strengths at home and our alliances abroad to compete vigorously with China, but we do not seek conflict. He has maintained a steadfast commitment to being tough but smart towards the PRC, relentlessly advancing U.S. interests and values while ensuring a floor of stability in the relationship with China. We will make no apology in pushing back on unfair trade practices that harm American workers. And we will guard against China taking advantage of America's openness to use U.S. technologies against America, our allies, and our interests. Against this backdrop, we seek to "de-risk" and diversify the economic relationship between our countries, not decouple. We will protect a targeted number of sensitive technologies with focused restrictions, creating a "small yard and a high fence" that preserves our national security.

President Biden has taken decisive action to counter unfair economic practices by the PRC and level the playing field for American workers, strategically increasing tariffs on a variety of products such as steel and aluminum, semiconductors, electric vehicles, batteries, critical minerals, solar cells, ship-to-shore cranes, and medical products.

President Biden also knows that for America to succeed in future competition with China, we must continue to invest in our workers and industrial base now. That is why he issued an executive order on outbound investment, preserving and protecting American and allied national security interests by denying China access to most advanced technologies that allow them to develop their military and surveillance capacities. He also tightened restrictions on the export of artificial intelligence chips and manufacturing equipment, as well as semiconductor, artificial intelligence, and quantum computing technologies to China, stifling their military use of these technologies.

And in areas where it is in the interests of the United States and the world for our two nations to work together – like addressing climate change and countering fentanyl trafficking – the United States will do so. President Biden pushed China to take action to curb the flow of fentanyl into the Americas, as well as to commit to climate change mitigation efforts as part of a global coalition.

For all of this tough talk on China, Trump failed to deliver results for the American people. His reckless proposal to raise tariffs by 10 percent – not just on goods from China, but across the board on any imported goods from any country in the world – will cost American families an estimated $1,500 a year. His threat of a 60 percent tariff on Chinese goods will add another $1,000 annually. Trump's temper tantrums have harmed our alliances, and if he is elected, will hurt the American people. Trump talks. President Biden delivers.

In his second term, President Biden will remain focused on actions at home and abroad to outcompete China. He will continue to stand up to unfair economic practices, restrict the PRC's access to advanced technologies that could be used to harm American interests, and reshore supply chains for materials and technologies critical for the 21st century.

The Administration will continue to invest in our alliances and partnerships to ensure China cannot coerce its neighbors or overturn the international rules that keep America secure and prosperous. President Biden will also remain steadfast in America's commitment to peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait consistent with the U.S. One China policy – guided by the Taiwan Relations Act, the three Joint Communiques, and the Six Assurances – in order to continue to ensure that there are no unilateral changes to the status quo from either side.

Even as we compete with China, the Administration will continue to responsibly manage the relationship with the PRC to avoid a costly spiral to conflict and seek to identify new areas where the United States and China may be able to work together, such as setting guardrails on the safe usage of artificial intelligence.

THE MIDDLE EAST & NORTH AFRICA

President Biden is working to build a durable peace in the Middle East bolstered by regional integration, a strong coalition to counter and deter Iran and prevent it and its terrorist proxies from threatening the security of the region, and a negotiated two-state solution that ensures Israel's future as a Jewish and democratic state with recognized borders and upholds the right of Palestinians to live in freedom and security in a viable state of their own. The terrorist group Hamas sought to destroy the promise of that vision on October 7, 2023, but they will not succeed. The United States strongly supports Israel in the fight against Hamas. And the hard work of diplomacy under the President's leadership has made real progress on a way forward that will free the hostages, establish a durable ceasefire, ease humanitarian suffering in Gaza, and make possible normalization between Israel and key Arab states, together with meaningful progress and a political horizon for the Palestinian people.

President Biden has spent decades working to advance U.S. interests and values in the Middle East. As President, he has met with and worked alongside every key leader in the region to de-escalate conflicts, deter aggression and forge new ways to promote stability, prosperity, human security, and peace. President Biden has long believed that partners and allies should be able to deter conflict and defend themselves in ways that safeguard human rights and prevent civilian harm.

The Administration has worked tirelessly to deepen and widen regional integration. In September 2023, President Biden announced a new economic corridor to connect India to Europe through the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Israel. He also directed his Administration to build on the Abraham Accords and work on a historic normalization deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia, As a tangible sign of this normalization process, President Biden helped negotiate the first-ever civilian aviation agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia, allowing for overflight of Israeli civilian aircraft in Saudi airspace and leading to a more integrated and economically connected Middle East.

Through aggressive diplomacy backed by U.S. military power, the Administration has worked alongside our allies and partners to deter and defend against Iran and its terrorist surrogates. President Biden has postured U.S. military forces in the region and authorized precision airstrikes on key Iranian-linked targets tied to attacks against U.S. troops to deter further aggression by Iran. President Biden has also continued to protect the American people from terrorism, authorizing military strikes that took out ISIS emirs and the leader of Al Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

In response to brazen attacks by Iranian-linked Houthi forces against international commercial shipping, U.S. naval vessels in the Red Sea, and Israel, President Biden ordered military strikes, alongside key allies, against Houthi targets and organized Operation Prosperity Guardian, a coalition of more than 20 nations committed to defending international shipping and deterring Houthi attacks.

When Iran launched more than 300 missiles and drones against Israel in April 2024, President Biden led an unprecedented defensive coalition – together with partners from Europe and across the Middle East – to defeat the attack, protect Israel, and stop the spread of a wider war. Through direct defensive action by the U.S. military and its partners, Iranian munitions did not cause significant damage, demonstrating both America's ironclad commitment to the security of Israel and our unrivaled ability to leverage growing regional integration among U.S. partners to counter Iranian aggression.

All of this stands in sharp contrast to Trump's f*cklessness and weakness in the face of Iranian aggression during his presidency. In 2018, when Iranian-backed militias repeatedly attacked the U.S. consulate in Basra, Iraq Trump's only response was to close our diplomatic facility. In June 2019, when Iran shot down a U.S. surveillance aircraft operating in international airspace above the Straits of Hormuz, Trump responded by tweet and then abruptly called off any actual retaliation, causing confusion and concern among his own national security team. In September 2019, when Iranian-backed groups threatened global energy markets by attacking Saudi oil infrastructure, Trump failed to respond against Iran or its proxies. In January 2020, when Iran, for the first and only time in its history, directly launched ballistic missiles against U.S. troops in western Iraq, Trump mocked the resulting Traumatic Brain Injuries suffered by dozens of American servicemembers as mere "headaches" – and again, took no action.

The Administration continues to manage the fallout from Trump's reckless and short-sighted decision to pull the United States out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action to constrain Iran's nuclear weapons ambitions. Iran was abiding by the agreement not to expand its nuclear capacity until Trump's costly mistake. Since then, as a result, Iran has gone from being more than a year away from being able to produce enough weapons grade material for a bomb to a matter of weeks, should it choose to do so. Iran has continued to advance its nuclear program, increase the size and enrichment level of its uranium stockpile, and develop, manufacture, and operate advanced centrifuges. President Biden remains committed to a diplomatic solution while standing resolute that Iran will never be allowed to develop nuclear weapons.

Response to the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel and Next Steps to a Lasting Peace for Israelis and Palestinians

President Biden and Vice President Harris believe a strong, secure, and democratic Israel is vital to the interests of the United States. Their commitment to Israel's security, its qualitative military edge, its right to defend itself, and the 2016 Memorandum of Understanding is ironclad. President Biden and Vice President Harris recognize the worth of every innocent life, whether Israeli or Palestinian.

President Biden and Vice President Harris have unequivocally denounced Hamas's brutal attack on Israel on October 7, condemned the gruesome violence – including conflict-related sexual violence – demonstrated by Hamas and made clear that the United States wants to see Hamas defeated.

President Biden traveled to Israel – the first U.S. president to do so at a time of war – in the days after October 7 to demonstrate that the United States stands with Israel in its quest for peace and security. He has also defended Israel at the U.N. against one-sided efforts to condemn Israel. The Administration worked with Congressional leaders to pass a historic aid package worth $14 billion to help Israel defend itself and to provide more than $1 billion for additional humanitarian aid to Gaza.

President Biden has also been determined to broker an immediate and lasting ceasefire deal that once finalized secures the return of all hostages, including the remaining Americans held in Gaza; addresses the immense civilian pain and extreme suffering being caused by the conflict, including the displacement and death of so many innocent people in Gaza; results in a durable end to the war in Gaza; and sets the stage for a lasting regional peace. The President has made clear to the world the importance of this ceasefire and he and his team are working at the highest levels to finalize this deal.

President Biden has also worked tirelessly – including through the appointment of a senior civilian coordinator for humanitarian relief – to surge and ensure the unimpeded delivery of humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian people. Many vulnerable civilians are suffering deadly consequences of the Israel-Hamas war. Residents of Gaza have been displaced, and food insecurity has been severe. The Administration has worked relentlessly to deliver food, medicine, and other aid to the people of Gaza and to set the conditions for the reconstruction of communities in Gaza that have been devastated by the war.

As President Biden has made clear, a ceasefire deal will lead to a more secure Israel and unlock the possibility of greater regional integration and historic normalization with its Arab neighbors. It will allow Israelis to safely return to their homes without fear of being attacked. A deal will also allow for Arab nations and the international community to help rebuild Gaza in a manner that does not allow Hamas to re-arm. It will allow the United States to work with partners to rebuild homes, schools, and hospitals in Gaza and repair destroyed communities. It would create the conditions for a better future for the Palestinian people, one of self-determination, dignity, security, and freedom, and ultimately a state of their own – a contrast to Trump, who refuses to endorse the political aspirations of the Palestinian people.

President Biden and Vice President Harris oppose any unilateral steps by either side, including annexation, that undermine prospects for two states. We will continue to stand against incitement and terror. The Administration opposes settlement expansion. President Biden has spoken out against extremist settler violence, and in February, the President issued an executive order establishing U.S. authority to impose financial sanctions against foreign persons engaged in actions that threaten the peace, security, or stability of the West Bank. The Administration believes that while Jerusalem is a matter for final status negotiations, it should remain the capital of Israel, an undivided city accessible to people of all faiths. We support critical assistance to the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Gaza, consistent with U.S. law. The Administration opposes any effort to unfairly single out and delegitimize Israel, including at the United Nations or through the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement, while protecting the Constitutional right of our citizens to free speech.

The Lebanese people deserve to live in an independent and sovereign Lebanon that is free from the grip of Iran-backed Hezbollah, and a corruption-free, competent, reform-minded government focused on addressing the needs of its people. In this regard, the Administration is also committed to facilitating a diplomatic resolution to the ongoing hostilities along the Israel-Lebanon border that would ensure the return of both Israeli and Lebanese families to their homes.

WESTERN HEMISPHERE

No region impacts the United States more directly than the Western Hemisphere. With $1.9 trillion in annual trade, shared values and democratic traditions and family bonds, our partners in Latin America and the Caribbean are key contributors to U.S. prosperity and resiliency. The President is building coalitions across the region that make America safer and more prosperous. He knows that we must work in lockstep with our neighbors to ensure democracies deliver on the issues that matter most to all of us.

In the last four years, President Biden has strengthened ties with key allies across the Hemisphere. He designated Colombia as a major non-NATO ally, a recognition of the close and unique relationship between the countries that will strengthen our military and economic ties. Understanding that irregular migration affects every country in the hemisphere, President Biden led the development of the Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection, a landmark agreement that strengthens cooperation on migration among 22 countries and promotes responsibility-sharing and a more orderly and humane management of migration across the region. He and the Vice President have created over 250,000 new jobs in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala under the Administration's ambitious Root Causes strategy for Central America. President Biden also hosted the inaugural Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity Leaders' Summit to establish an enduring forum to mobilize economic investment for the region. And he has strengthened bonds with our closest neighbors, Canada and Mexico, on issues ranging from border security to trade.

President Biden is committed to countering corruption, authoritarianism, democratic backsliding, and violence in the region. He has continued to lay the groundwork for progress on U.S.-Cuba relations in a manner that benefits Americans, resuming flights between the two nations, reuniting separated families, and restoring diplomatic engagement on discrete issues like migration. And his Administration has also played a critical role in supporting Haiti's stabilization efforts, becoming the largest financial sponsor to the Kenyan Multinational Security Support mission that is countering gang violence in the country and providing humanitarian aid.

President Biden is also supporting human rights and fundamental freedoms as people across the region pursue a more just and prosperous future. Under President Biden, the United States negotiated the release of ten American hostages from Venezuela, reinstated sanctions on Venezuela's oil and gas sector in response to President Nicolás Maduro failing to commit to free and fair elections, and cracked down on Nicaragua for repression of their population and abuse of migrants.

In sharp contrast, the chaos of Trump's presidency threw our critical partnerships in the region into turmoil. He normalized autocratic leadership and failed to stand up for shared American values. In his second term, President Biden will continue the work to ensure a secure border, protect U.S. jobs, and maintain stability in neighboring countries in order to keep Americans safe and prosperous.

AFRICA

By the end of the century, an estimated 40 percent of the world's population will live in Africa. President Biden has strengthened partnerships in the region and recognizes African nations' critical role in global stability and economic development. In a historic move, the Administration successfully advocated for the African Union to become a permanent member of the G20, ensuring Africa's voice in global economic discussions. And President Biden's hosting of Kenyan President Ruto for a state visit, the first by an African Head of State since 2008, underscored the importance of the U.S.-Kenya partnership, reflecting a broader strategy of strengthening bilateral ties across the continent grounded in mutual respect.

The Administration's work with the continent is focused on advancing democratic governance, fostering sustainable economic growth, improving health outcomes, and addressing the urgent challenges of climate change. The U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit in 2022 underscored how the United States and African nations are expanding partnerships to meet shared challenges. The President is committed to continuing work that will support American and African institutions and citizens as they respond to emerging opportunities and challenges in an increasingly urban and connected world. His pledge to invest $55 billion over three years across Africa is a reflection of that commitment. Through initiatives like the African Growth and Opportunity Act and Prosper Africa, the Administration is deepening economic ties between African countries and the United States, advancing regional integration, and helping realize Africa's immense economic potential for our mutual benefit.

President Biden is committed to addressing development challenges and urgent humanitarian needs across the continent. The Administration has invested and committed to provide nearly $20 billion in health programs across Africa. It has delivered over $13 billion in emergency aid and food security assistance for resilient African food systems and supply markets. President Biden has also launched a new strategic partnership on food security between the United States and the African Union that will leverage the public and private sectors, along with multilateral development banks and international financial institutions to accelerate transformational investments in sustainable and resilient food systems to prevent food shocks before they happen.

Strengthening the capacity of African nations to address security threats, including terrorism and violent extremism, remains a top priority. The Administration is expanding support for African-led peacekeeping operations and conflict resolution initiatives, ensuring that interventions align with the aspirations of local communities. President Biden also places significant emphasis on human rights and the rule of law, leveraging diplomatic channels and development assistance to promote these values. He will continue to push for a return to democracy in cooperation with the African Union in areas experiencing violence and instability, including Sudan, where he named a Special Envoy to work towards ending the conflict. .

Trump routinely ignored and disrespected the African continent, denigrating some nations as "sh*thole countries." By giving up America's moral authority in the region, he damaged America's ability to collaboratively shape Africa and the world's future.

In his second term, President Biden will continue to build 21st century U.S.-African partnerships. He will also work to ensure that Africa has a seat at the table in major global decisions by lobbying for United States Security Council reform that will secure permanent representation for Africa.

STRENGTHENING THE U.S. AND GLOBAL ECONOMY

President Biden's international economic policies promote growth, resilient supply chains, and clean energy adoption, while empowering American workers and workers everywhere. For too long, America's trade policies and approach to the global economy let middle-class jobs move offshore, hollowed out our supply chains, rewarded corporate CEOs instead of valuing workers, and failed to generate inclusive economic growth. In response to the previous status quo, President Biden is committed to building a fairer, more durable global economic order, for the benefit of the American people and for people everywhere.

Under President Biden, the United States is championing a modern industrial and innovation strategy, both domestically and with international partners. That strategy is focused on bolstering our economic and technological strengths, promoting diverse and resilient global supply chains, and setting high standards for labor, environmental practices, trusted technology, and good governance. It also aims to channel capital towards delivering public goods such as climate solutions and healthcare advancements.

America's prosperity and the prosperity of our allies and partners are mutually reinforcing. Under President Biden's leadership, companies from American allies are building cutting-edge factories in the United States, employing hundreds of thousands of Americans. U.S. partners provide critical materials, expertise, and products the world needs to achieve global climate goals, and are important markets for U.S. goods. Trade with allies and partners on fair terms promotes growth and reinforces alliances.

With the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF), the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment, the Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity, and bilateral initiatives such as the U.S.-Kenya Strategic Trade and Investment Partnership, the United States will mobilize tens of billions of dollars to invest in clean energy development and critical infrastructure with high labor standards around the world. These investments will result in high-quality growth, increased supply chain resilience, and progress toward global climate goals.

American strength at home and leadership in the world depends on America remaining at the forefront of technological innovation. President Biden will work with governments, experts, and members of the private sector to ensure that artificial intelligence and other innovative technologies lead to progress without creating new national security risks and societal divisions. Building on joint technology initiatives with the European Union, India, Singapore, South Korea, and other partners, President Biden will promote innovation and shared rules for global technologies.

Trump was the first President of the United States to leave office having fewer jobs in his Administration than when he became President. Unlike Biden, whose targeted tariffs on China will promote U.S. growth, Trump's plan to increase taxes on imports from allies, like European cancer drugs and foods from Mexico and Latin America, will fall hard on American families. Trump has consistently failed to help American workers because he has always put himself first. President Biden has and always will put American workers first.

In his second term, President Biden will continue to invest in America and our allies and partners to grow the middle class globally. He will pursue modern industrial policies, make strategic public investments to fill in where markets cannot, work to secure our supply chains on critical technologies, and fight for a global minimum tax that ensures corporations pay their fair share. President Biden will also continue to work with our allies and partners to protect labor and climate standards while helping America compete and win on the world stage. He will leverage economic tools and diplomatic partnerships and he will rally the world against economic coercion, utilizing mechanisms like the G7, World Bank, and other multilateral institutions.

LEADING WITH DIPLOMACY AND AMERICAN VALUES

President Biden has often said that the United States is strongest when we lead not only with the example of our power but with the power of our example. Military force should be a tool of last resort, not the first. Commitment to our values at home and abroad requires working alongside our allies and using every diplomatic tool available to advance American interests. It means investing in members of our Civil and Foreign Service, who lead America's engagement with the world and work in support of our shared prosperity and security in rapidly changing and increasingly complex environments.

President Biden ended America's longest war, bringing our troops home from Afghanistan and facilitating the resettlement of over 120,000 Afghan partners and their families in the United States, the largest resettlement effort since the Vietnam War. And in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the United States rallied the world to address a global food crisis and provided $2 billion in global humanitarian assistance.

President Biden's leadership globally was clear in his response to the COVID-19 pandemic among other global health challenges. Between May 2021 and February 2024 the United States donated more than 693 million vaccine doses to 117 countries and economies. And the Administration led the largest-ever replenishment of the Global Fund to fight HIV/AIDS, TB, and Malaria, with donors pledging $15.7 billion.

Understanding that there is nothing more important than addressing the climate crisis, President Biden has kept his word and ensured that the United States leads the world to combat climate change. The record-breaking heat, floods, storms, drought, and wildfires devastating communities around the world underscore the grave risks we already face and the urgency needed to reduce emissions and to help the most vulnerable countries cope with devastating climate impacts. The United States rejoined the Paris Climate Agreement on day one of his presidency, and President Biden set an ambitious goal to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, in line with climate science. And the Administration is supporting investments in climate infrastructure that make tangible progress on climate mitigation and adaptation while also helping developing countries unlock economic growth in key areas.

In response to the rise of authoritarianism across the globe, President Biden convened two Summits for Democracy, bringing allies and partners together to strengthen democratic resilience, combat corruption, and promote human rights globally, including for LGBTQI+ persons. The third Summit occurred this year under South Korea's leadership, and President Biden is proud to have catalyzed this new global forum to support and coordinate democracies around the world, and which will continue in his second term.

President Biden believes the United States must continue to be a strong advocate for the rights and opportunities of women and girls around the world. Under his leadership, the United States issued its first-ever National Strategy on Gender Equity and Equality, which recognizes that elevating the status of women and girls is not just the right thing to do – it is a strategic imperative that advances American interests in prosperity and stability. When women and girls are healthy, educated, and able to participate economically, their families and communities prosper, poverty decreases, and economies grow. And when women participate in conflict resolution and post-conflict processes, it improves the likelihood of securing sustainable peace.

President Biden will continue to support the United States Strategy and National Action Plan on Women, Peace, and Security and will continue to work to end the epidemic of gender-based violence around the world, including efforts to increase accountability for conflict-related sexual violence. His Administration will continue prioritizing ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. President Biden understands that advancing the rights of women and girls includes sexual and reproductive health and rights. His Administration has prioritized women's health by rescinding the global gag rule (Mexico City Policy), and supporting funding for the UN Population Fund.

Trump's undermining of democratic institutions, attacks on the free press, and refusal to accept the results of the 2020 election weakened the global perception of American democracy, giving autocracies a pretext to dismiss democratic values and practices. These actions collectively eroded the United States' standing on the world stage.

President Biden will never turn our back on our alliances or fail to stand up for human rights and democracy around the world and at home. In his second term, he will support the critical work of our diplomats and continue to fight to bring Americans detained abroad home. President Biden will continue work to strengthen global health systems, bolster pandemic preparedness programs, and alleviate global food insecurity. He will expand on America's track record of providing humanitarian assistance to those most in need including by resettling 100,000 refugees in 2024, the most in three decades after Trump nearly destroyed the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program. President Biden will also ensure the United States continues to drive multilateral efforts to reduce poverty, address unsustainable debt burdens and build a more inclusive and more fair global economy. He will continue to lead on efforts to combat the existential threat of climate change and support adaptation efforts in developing nations. And he will keep fighting corruption, supporting good governance, and countering terrorist threats around the world.

STRONGEST MILITARY IN THE WORLD

The United States has the finest fighting force in the history of the world. And while our soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, Coast Guardsmen and guardians remain the envy of the globe, President Biden understands that maintaining our military advantages in the future means making strategic investments now. That is why the Administration has invested in cutting-edge capabilities across all services and domains and maintained a commitment to modernize and recapitalize the nuclear triad as the bedrock of deterrence. That is also why President Biden has made historic investments in America's military industrial base, putting billions of dollars to work in America to increase production capacity of critical munitions and other capabilities to support U.S. and allied forces in combat zones such as Ukraine. And as the Administration does the work to plan against dramatic changes in geopolitics, technology, economics, and the environment, our military has maintained its ability to address terrorist threats, evidenced by successful strikes against leaders of al-Qa'ida and ISIS.

Properly investing in our military also means first and foremost investing in those who are the bedrock of it: our service members. President Biden has secured pay raises for military personnel in recognition of their invaluable service. His Administration has allocated over $10 billion to enhance health care services for veterans and active-duty personnel, including expanded mental health resources and programs to support those suffering from PTSD and other service-related conditions. President Biden's consistent efforts to address military housing issues resulted in a $1.4 billion investment in military housing improvements, leading to better living conditions and increased oversight of housing contracts. The Administration's policies have also supported military spouses, with over $200 million in funds dedicated to bolstering education and employment opportunities, underscoring the critical role that families play in the strength and resilience of the armed forces.

Aware of exacerbated nuclear proliferation challenges that the world is facing as Russia, the PRC and North Korea expand and diversify their nuclear arsenals, and in the context of Iran continuing to enrich uranium at dangerous levels, the Administration is showing what it means to act responsibly as a nuclear power. Nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. The United States is developing and fielding only what is required to deter while signaling openness to future arms control negotiations if competitors are interested. The Administration is modernizing each leg of our nuclear triad, updating our command, control, and communication systems, and investing in our nuclear enterprise – to ensure that we can sustain and enhance if necessary capabilities and posture. President Biden has reaffirmed in U.S. doctrine that U.S. nuclear weapons are reserved for deterring strategic attack by those that threaten us and our allies and partners with nuclear weapons.

Trump has never understood the values that our military swears to uphold. Instead, he calls our service members "suckers" and "losers." He can never make America great, because he does not understand the values represented by our military that already make us great.

President Biden has never and will never turn his back on our military. In his second term, he will continue to invest in upgrading to next-generation weapon systems, cutting-edge training opportunities, and deterrence capabilities such as our submarine force and the nuclear triad. He will continue to address cyber threats by bolstering the capacity of our intelligence communities and leading the development of rules of the road for technologies like artificial intelligence. And he will continue to always put our veterans and military families first by securing additional pay raises for service members, accessible and affordable childcare for our military families, good-paying job opportunities for military spouses, effective suicide and sexual assault prevention programs, and benefits for our veterans and their families.

Democratic Party Platforms, 2024 Democratic Party Platform Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/373813