There’s a question you should be asking this election:

Who actually represents you?

Not their party.

Not their donors.

Not their career.

You.

Because right now, that’s the problem.

Too many people go to Washington and forget who they work for.

They get pulled into party politics.

They follow the script.

They vote the way they’re told.

And meanwhile …

Your costs go up.

Your paycheck doesn’t stretch as far.

Your life gets harder.

You send someone to represent your district … and they end up representing the system instead.

That’s not representation.

That’s compliance.

I’m running for congress because I don’t owe the system anything.

I’m not backed by party leadership.

I’m not part of the political machine.

I’m accountable to you.

That means:

• I won’t answer to a party line

• I won’t vote based on political pressure

• I won’t protect the system at your expense

I’ll represent the people who sent me there.

That’s how it should work.

But it hasn’t worked that way in a long time.

If we keep sending the same types of candidates into the same system — we’ll keep getting the same results.

It’s time to try something different because we need a new way forward

It’s time to send someone who will actually represent you.

Tuesday is Election Day. Join me.

Thirty-nine trillion dollars.

That is what this country owes as of May 2026. It is not a number that fits easily in the human mind. It is larger than the entire United States economy. It is growing at approximately $7.2 billion every single day. The interest we pay on it — just the interest — now exceeds $1 trillion per year, which means it costs more to carry our debt than we spend on Medicaid, more than we spend on education, and more than the entire defense budget cost twenty years ago.

Nobody in Washington wants to have this conversation honestly. Republicans want to cut spending but refuse to touch the tax cuts that drain revenue. Democrats want to protect programs but resist the structural reforms that would make them sustainable. Both parties have been in charge for decades and the debt has gone one direction the entire time. The result is a fiscal crisis that is no longer theoretical. It is present, compounding, and accelerating — and the people who will spend their lives managing it are the families here at home who had no part in creating it.

I am going to talk about it honestly. The alternative is to keep pretending the problem does not exist until it becomes a catastrophe that no one can manage.

First, let us understand who we actually owe this money to.

The $39 trillion breaks into two categories. About $7.7 trillion is intragovernmental debt — money the federal government borrowed from itself, primarily from the Social Security and Medicare trust funds. Think of it as the government raiding its own savings accounts for decades and leaving IOUs. The remaining $31.3 trillion is held by outside parties.

Of that external debt, roughly half is held by American institutions and investors — banks, pension funds, mutual funds, and individual Americans who own Treasury bonds. When we pay interest on that portion, the money stays in the American economy. The other half is more complicated. Foreign governments and investors hold approximately $9.3 trillion in U.S. debt. Japan holds about $1.2 trillion. The United Kingdom holds nearly $900 billion. China holds approximately $800 billion. Every interest payment to those creditors is money leaving this country. More importantly, that debt gives foreign governments economic leverage over American policy. That is not a hypothetical concern. That is a structural national security vulnerability that neither party has addressed seriously.

The interest problem is the crisis inside the crisis.

At current rates, the United States pays roughly $2.89 billion in interest every single day. That annual $1 trillion-plus interest bill is not buying anything. It is not building roads or funding schools or paying doctors. It is the cost of having borrowed money for decades without ever getting serious about paying it back. The problem compounds. As interest rates rose over the last several years, the cost of carrying existing debt increased automatically. The CBO projects that net interest payments will consume nearly 15 percent of all federal spending through the end of the decade. Every dollar spent on interest is a dollar not spent on the things this country actually needs.

The political class talks about the debt in the abstract. I want to make it concrete. Every working family in America is effectively co-signing a loan they did not take out, for purchases they did not make, at interest rates they cannot control. The debt was built by both parties across four administrations. The families here at home are the ones who will pay it — in the form of reduced services, higher taxes, a weaker dollar, and an economy increasingly constrained by the cost of carrying the past.

The Pentagon is the place this conversation has to start.

The Department of Defense has failed its own financial audit six consecutive times. Not a partial audit. A full audit. The largest single budget item in the federal government cannot account for trillions of dollars in assets and expenditures. Every private company, every nonprofit, every person who has ever applied for a mortgage is held to a higher standard of financial accountability than the Pentagon. Congress has continued to increase its budget anyway.

The reporting on Secretary Hegseth’s tenure made this concrete in a way that should outrage every taxpayer. Approximately $100 billion in spending categorized under defense accounts was allocated to luxury items, non-defense purposes, and expenditures that have nothing to do with national security. Private planes. Lobster dinners. Golden flutes. Meanwhile, the same administration cut food assistance from working families and children. That is not a fiscal policy. That is a moral failure with a budget line.

The use-it-or-lose-it budget culture inside federal agencies makes this worse. When departments do not spend their entire allocation in a fiscal year, their budget is cut the following year. The rational response to this incentive structure is to spend everything, on anything, before the deadline — which is exactly what happens across the federal government every September. Billions of dollars are spent not because the spending is needed but because the budget system punishes efficiency and rewards waste. This is not unique to defense. It runs through every agency. It is a structural problem that both parties have accepted as a cost of doing business for decades.

Fixing it requires changing the incentive. Agencies that return unspent funds should be rewarded, not penalized. Departments that demonstrate savings should receive a portion of those savings for priority investments of their choosing. The system should create a culture of stewardship instead of a culture of consumption.

The revenue side of the equation is equally honest.

The debt was built partly by spending more than we take in. It was built equally by decisions to reduce what we take in without reducing what we spend. The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act added approximately $1.9 trillion to the deficit over ten years. The Big Beautiful Bill made those cuts permanent and added more, pushing the 10-year deficit impact past $3.4 trillion. These were not funded by spending reductions. They were borrowed. Every dollar of tax cut that is not offset by spending reduction is a dollar added to the debt that future generations will service.

The honest fiscal position is this: you cannot solve a $39 trillion debt problem by cutting spending alone. You cannot solve it by raising taxes alone. You need both — intelligent spending discipline and a revenue base that is broad, fair, and adequate to fund what the country has committed to providing. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something.

Here are the solutions I will push for in Congress. They are not theoretical. They are proven, grounded in evidence, and ready for legislative action.

The first is a full, independent Pentagon audit with binding accountability. Every dollar. Every contract. Every asset. Audited by an independent body with the authority to claw back misspent funds and refer cases of fraud for prosecution. The Pentagon’s budget should not be immune from the same accountability standards applied to every other institution in America. Any representative who votes against a defense audit is protecting waste, not national security.

The second is reforming the use-it-or-lose-it budget system across all federal agencies. Departments that return unspent funds should be rewarded with a portion of those savings for priority reinvestment. The current system creates perverse incentives for wasteful spending. Changing it does not require cutting budgets. It requires changing how efficiency is treated.

The third is a United States Sovereign Wealth Fund, modeled on what Norway, Canada, and Singapore have built. The concept is straightforward: instead of paying down debt only through spending cuts and tax increases, the federal government identifies real revenue streams — royalties from federal lands, offshore drilling rights, spectrum license fees, strategic asset monetization — and directs those revenues into a professionally managed, publicly accountable investment fund. Over time, the returns from that fund contribute to debt reduction. Norway’s fund, built on oil revenues, now holds nearly $2 trillion in assets. The United States has the largest balance sheet of federal assets in the world. We are leaving enormous value on the table by not managing it strategically.

The fourth is restructuring how we handle foreign-held debt. Rather than paying pure cash interest to foreign creditors, the United States should negotiate bilateral agreements where interest obligations are credited toward joint infrastructure investment, technology commitments, or trade concessions on American terms. Debt-for-investment swaps exist internationally. The structure is precedented. What has been missing is the political will to pursue it at scale. Converting cash interest outflows to investment obligations reduces the money leaving the country while giving us leverage in the relationship.

The fifth is pay-as-you-go as a binding legislative requirement. Any new spending must identify its funding source before it passes. Any new tax cut must identify what it costs before it is enacted. The era of borrowing for everything and calling it a plan has to end somewhere. A pay-as-you-go rule does not balance the budget overnight. It stops the bleeding while the structural reforms take hold.

The sixth is a serious, nonpartisan review of corporate tax structures. The effective corporate tax rate in the United States, after deductions, loopholes, offshore arrangements, and tax incentives, is significantly below the statutory rate for most large companies. Small businesses — the backbone of this district — do not have the legal and accounting infrastructure to access most of those benefits. They pay closer to full rate. A tax structure that is more favorable to the largest multinationals than to the small business owner in our community is not a competitive advantage for America. It is a transfer of burden from the most powerful to the most vulnerable.

What strong national defense actually requires.

I want to be clear on something that is often misunderstood about this position. Calling for financial accountability in defense spending is not a call to weaken our military. It is the opposite. A military whose budget cannot be audited is a military that cannot be trusted to allocate resources to actual readiness. A defense establishment that spends $100 billion on items unrelated to national security is one that has less money for the training, equipment, and support that the men and women in uniform actually need. Accountability serves national security. Waste undermines it.

We are in a complicated geopolitical moment. Iran, China, Russia, and regional instability across multiple theaters represent real and present threats. This is not the time to weaken our defense posture. It is the time to ensure that every defense dollar is actually spent on defense, and that the institution entrusted with our security is held to the same standards of accountability we apply to everyone else.

The honest bottom line.

America’s fiscal crisis is real, urgent, and structurally worsening. It was built by both parties over decades through a combination of overspending, undertaxing, and a political culture that rewards short-term decisions and defers long-term consequences. The families here at home are the long-term consequence. They did not create this problem. They will absorb it.

An Independent voice in Congress can say what the two parties cannot: every real solution requires spending discipline, structural revenue reform, and smarter financial management — and most likely all three at once. The strategies I have outlined are not radical. They are proven, precedented, and ready for serious legislative action. What they require is a representative willing to put the long-term interest of working families above the short-term interest of donors and political bases.

That is what I am running to do.

The primary is June 2nd. Your ballot is in your hands.

With fiscal honesty and commitment to the long game --
Nina Linh
Independent Candidate, CA-40

They called it the One Big Beautiful Bill.

It was signed on July 4th, 2025, wrapped in the language of patriotism and prosperity. The administration said it would grow the economy, lower costs, and put American families first. Those are the words they used. What the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found when it scored the bill is a different story, and it is one that every family here at home deserves to hear plainly.

The Big Beautiful Bill adds $3.4 trillion to the national deficit over the next ten years. When interest costs are included, that number reaches $4.1 trillion. The people who will spend their working lives paying that debt are the same people the bill was announced to help. The math does not lie even when the marketing does.

Here is what the bill actually does, family by family. First, one thing you need to understand about how it is written. The benefits for working families are almost entirely temporary. The no-tax on overtime, no-tax on tips, the car loan interest deduction, the extra $6,000 senior deduction, all of it expires after 2028. Three years. Then it is gone. The tax cuts for corporations and the wealthiest Americans are permanent. The estate tax exemption raised to $15 million per person is permanent. The capital gains tax breaks for wealthy investors are permanent. That is not an accident. That is the architecture of the bill. Temporary relief for working families. Permanent rewards for the top.

If your family relies on Medicaid, the bill cuts $1 trillion from the program over ten years, the largest single cut to Medicaid in American history. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that 11.8 million people will directly lose their Medicaid coverage as a result. In this district, Medicaid covers low-income seniors in nursing facilities, children in working families who do not qualify for employer insurance, and people with disabilities who have no other option. These are not people who chose to need the government. They are people the government made a promise to. That promise has been broken.

If your family uses SNAP, what most people call food stamps, the bill cuts $186 billion from the program over ten years. The CBO projects that 4.7 million SNAP participants will lose benefits over the decade. Millions more will see their monthly amounts reduced. In a district where grocery costs have risen more than 30 percent since 2019, cutting the one program designed to ensure families can eat is not fiscal responsibility. It is cruelty with a budget line.

If you or someone in your family is approaching retirement and counting on Social Security, the bill accelerates the program toward insolvency. The trust fund was already projected to run short by early 2033. This bill moves that date to late 2032. When the fund depletes, benefits are automatically cut across the board unless Congress acts. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that cut at 24 percent. For a retiree receiving the average monthly benefit of $1,976, a 24 percent reduction means losing approximately $474 every single month. That is seven years away.

If you are a student carrying federal loan debt, the bill eliminates income-driven repayment plans that cap monthly payments based on what borrowers actually earn. Millions of borrowers will see their monthly payments increase significantly, and the protections designed to prevent debt from consuming a disproportionate share of income will be gone.

If you are a working family that relied on the enhanced ACA premium tax credits, those credits were allowed to expire under this bill, contributing to a 21.7 percent increase in marketplace premiums for 2026. Health insurance that was made accessible to working families for several years has become, once again, out of reach for many of them.

Here is what the bill does for people at the top.

The bill makes the 2017 Trump tax cuts permanent. The wealthiest households and the largest corporations receive the most significant long-term benefit. The top 10 percent of earners gain an average of $12,000 per year. The lowest-income households lose an average of $1,600 per year through the safety net cuts. That is not a coincidence. That is a choice. A deliberate, documented, nonpartisan-scored choice about who this government decided to protect when it had to choose.

The net math for a working family is not complicated once you lay it out plainly. The average working family saves an estimated $611 in taxes this year under the bill. That is real. Take it. The other side of the ledger tells a different story. If your family loses Medicaid, the coverage lost is worth between $8,000 and $14,000 per year in actual medical care, not a deduction, gone. If you buy on the ACA marketplace, that 21.7 percent premium increase already cost a typical family roughly $3,120 more this year alone. If your parents are on Social Security, the projected $474 monthly reduction looming in 2032 will hit them harder than any tax saving this bill delivers. If your family uses food assistance, the cuts mean less at the table for families already stretched thin. Add it up honestly and the $611 tax saving does not survive contact with the real numbers. For most working and middle class families, this bill is not a wash. It is a net loss. The temporary provisions expire in three years. The benefit cuts do not.

The bill also pushed the defense budget past $1 trillion for the first time in American history and added $25 billion for a missile defense project the Pentagon had not yet explained or justified. The same bill that accelerated Social Security toward insolvency gave the defense industry a record budget. The same bill that cut food assistance for 3 million Americans continued military financing abroad at billions per year. That is the real budget priority. Written in law. On the record.

Let me be clear about where I stand. A strong national defense matters. A prosperous economy matters. What does not sit right with me is a bill sold to working families as relief that delivered them the cost while delivering the wealthy the benefit. What does not sit right is representatives who voted for it and then went home and told their constituents it was good for them. What does not sit right is a political system so captured by donor interests that a bill this lopsided could pass with a straight face. The families here at home deserved better. They still do.

The families here at home did not write this bill. They did not vote for it. Many of them do not yet know what is in it. That is not an accident either. Complexity protects the powerful. Confusion serves the people who benefit from the status quo. Part of my job as your representative will be to make sure you know exactly what is being done in your name, with your money, and at your expense.

The primary is June 2nd. Your ballot is already in your hands.

With clarity and accountability --
Nina Linh
Independent Candidate, CA-40

Most Americans are not where the noise is.

The noise is at the edges. It is on the cable news panels and the social media feeds and the campaign rallies designed to provoke a reaction. The noise is loud and it is constant and it is very good at making itself feel like the whole story. It is not the whole story. The whole story is the 80 percent of Americans who describe themselves as politically in the middle, who want common sense solutions, who are exhausted by the performance of outrage, and who have been told for so long that their moderation is a character flaw that some of them have started to believe it.

They are not confused. They are not uninformed. They are not too timid to pick a side. They have looked at both sides and decided, correctly, that neither one has been doing the job. That is not apathy. That is an accurate assessment.

In January of this year, Gallup confirmed — a record-high — 45 percent of Americans now identify as political independents, the highest number since Gallup began measuring in 1988. Both parties dropped to just 27 percent each. In the same period, 62 percent of Americans said the two major parties do such a poor job that a third party is needed. The 80 percent are not the problem with American politics. They are telling us, in the clearest possible terms, that the current system is.

I know this because I have been listening to them for months. Door to door, town hall to town hall, conversation to conversation across this district. The young husband who switched parties not out of ideology but out of desperation, looking for someone who would actually address the cost of living. The woman in her mid-fifties who left a party she had given decades of loyalty to because what she watched unfold did not match the values she thought she was voting for. Jason, the lifetime Independent who has never trusted either party and has spent his whole voting life waiting for something to vote for instead of just against. They are all part of the 80 percent. They came from different directions and arrived at the same place.

The political system does not want to talk honestly about this group because the system is not built to serve them. It is built around the 10 to 15 percent on each end who donate, who organize, who turn out reliably, and who demand ideological purity in return. The 80 percent in the middle are treated as a problem to be managed, a demographic to be won over with the right message, turned out on election day and then ignored until the next cycle. A candidate who speaks to common sense and common ground does not generate the outrage that fills campaign coffers. A representative who compromises to get something done does not satisfy the base that wants a warrior. The system runs on division. The 80 percent are what stands in the way of it.

The result is a political class that speaks almost exclusively to its base while pretending to speak for everyone. The speeches are written for the true believers. The policies are designed to satisfy the donors. The rhetoric is calibrated to the most activated voters on each side. The 80 percent in the middle watch all of it and feel, correctly, that none of it is really for them. Then they are blamed for low turnout.

I want to say something directly to the 80 percent, because I think you have been gaslit for long enough. My own family spans the political spectrum — a Vietnamese Democratic nurse mother and an Irish Republican veteran stepfather. I grew up at a table where people on opposite sides of the aisle shared the same core values. I have been living in the 80 percent my whole life.

Your instinct that both parties have failed is correct. Your sense that most problems are complicated and that reasonable people can disagree about solutions is correct. Your belief that the person across the political aisle is not your enemy is correct. Your exhaustion with a system that profits from division rather than solving problems is correct. You have been told that these instincts make you naive, soft, or politically homeless. They do not. They make you the most honest constituency in American politics. The most durable policy solutions in this country’s history did not come from the edges. They came from people willing to find common ground, to compromise without surrendering their principles, and to measure success by whether something actually worked rather than whether it satisfied the base.

Being in the middle is not the absence of conviction. Some of the most deeply principled positions I hold would not fit neatly into either party’s platform. I believe in secure borders and human dignity. I believe in fiscal responsibility and a government that keeps its promises to seniors and veterans. I believe in personal freedom and community accountability. I believe in a strong national defense and an honest accounting of where the money goes. I believe that a child’s zip code should not determine the quality of her education, and that a working family should be able to afford a home and a doctor in the same lifetime. None of these positions are radical. All of them are, in the current environment, somehow controversial. That tells you more about the state of the two parties than it does about the positions themselves.

The 80 percent are not waiting for someone to move them left or right. They are waiting for someone to move forward. They are waiting for a representative who will walk into that building in Washington and ask the simple, honest question: what actually works, and who does it actually serve? They are waiting for someone whose first call after a vote is not to a party strategist or a major donor but to the people who sent them there. They are waiting for the conversation that the current system has been deliberately preventing.

That is the conversation I am running to have. Not on behalf of a party. Not in service of an ideology. On behalf of the 80 percent who have been waiting long enough. There is a saying that where there is a will, there is a way. The solutions to our problems are not mysteries. We know what working healthcare policy looks like. We know how to build housing. We know how to invest in education. We know how to balance a budget and keep promises to seniors and veterans. What has been missing is not the way. It is the will. Neither party has demonstrated the will to put people above politics long enough to actually get it done. That is what a New Way Forward means. Not a new ideology. A new commitment — to the people, to the truth, and to the work of governing instead of performing.

The primary is June 2nd. Early voting is open now.

For the majority that the system forgot --
Nina Linh
Independent Candidate, CA-40

I want to talk to you directly. Not at you. To you.

I know you have heard every version of this before. The candidate who shows up at your campus or your coffee shop, says all the right things about your generation, and then goes to Washington and votes like none of you exist.

I know the cynicism is earned. I know what it feels like to be handed a world shaped entirely by decisions you had no part in making, to be told your voice matters, and then to watch nothing change when you use it. I am not going to pretend that did not happen. It did. Repeatedly. By both parties.

What I want to say to you is something different from what you have been told before. I want to start with the truth about what your generation is actually up against.

You entered adulthood during a pandemic that shut down the economy. You graduated into a job market that had been reshaped by automation and inflation. You are trying to afford rent in a district where the average home costs over a million dollars in parts and where a one-bedroom apartment runs more than most entry-level salaries can carry alone. If you have student debt, you are paying for a degree with money that does not exist yet, for a job market that keeps moving the goalposts.

You are doing all of this while being told by people who bought homes for $180,000 in 1987 that you just need to work harder and stop buying coffee.

That is not a character failure. That is a structural problem. The decisions that created these conditions were made in rooms you were not invited into, by representatives who were not thinking about you when they made them.

The national debt your generation will spend decades managing was built by administrations that never had to live with the consequences. The climate, the housing supply, the healthcare system, the AI disruption coming for entry-level jobs, every one of these was shaped by choices made before many of you could vote. You inherited the bill. You did not write it.

What I see when I look at your generation is not defeat. I see a generation that is critical to our future– and something this country needs right now more than it knows.

There is something else I see clearly that most politicians choose not to address.

Your generation is navigating a mental health crisis that did not happen by accident. Social media algorithms are deliberately engineered to keep you engaged through outrage, comparison, and anxiety. The reason is simple: outrage and anxiety drive engagement, and engagement drives revenue. The result is a generation that has grown up inside a system designed to make you feel inadequate, divided, and overwhelmed, and then been told the problem is your resilience.

It is not your resilience. It is the architecture. Depression, anxiety, and loneliness among young people have risen sharply in direct correlation with the rise of algorithmically driven social media. That is not a coincidence. It is a design outcome.

Congress has been slow to act because the companies profiting from your attention have spent enormous resources making sure it stays that way. I will push for algorithmic transparency requirements, meaningful mental health investment for young people, and the kind of honest reckoning with social media's impact on youth that this generation has deserved for years and has not received.

The good news is that -your generation is the most educated in American history. You are more racially and culturally diverse than any generation before you. You grew up with more information at your fingertips than any human being who ever lived, which means you are also better at detecting when someone is performing versus when someone is telling the truth. You have a finely tuned instinct for authenticity that most politicians underestimate and almost none of them can pass.

You do not need a candidate who uses the right words. You need one who means them.

I came to this country as a refugee with nothing. I sat in a public school classroom as the only person who looked like me and dared to believe this country's promise. I built a nonprofit from the ground up. I worked for almost a decade with young people –who had been written off by every system that was supposed to help them.

I know what it looks like when institutions fail people. I know what it costs. I am running for Congress because someone needs to be in that room who actually remembers what it felt like to need the system to work.

Let me be specific about where I stand on what matters most to you.

On housing, the only real solution is more supply. That means zoning reform that unlock building in high-demand areas, federal investment in middle-income housing tied to real accountability, and down payment support for first-time buyers are not complicated ideas. They are the policies that actually move the needle, and they are the ones I have researched, advocated for, and will push for on the record in Congress.

On student debt and the cost of education, a degree should open doors, not chain you to payments for a decade before your life can begin. Federal investment in community colleges, vocational training pipelines, and income-based repayment structures that actually reflect what people earn are not radical ideas.

They are the minimum a serious country owes to the people it asked to invest in their own future.

On AI and the future of work, your generation will absorb more economic disruption from artificial intelligence than any other, and you deserve representatives who understand what is actually happening rather than ones still debating whether it is real.

Through WonderSeed Foundation, I have worked with technology as a therapeutic and educational tool for years. I know both its power and its limits. The jobs being created by AI will go to people with the right skills and the right support, and Congress must build those pathways now, not after the displacement has already happened.

On climate, the decisions made in the next ten years will determine what the next fifty look like for you and for your children. Federal investment in clean energy infrastructure, climate resilience, and a transition plan that does not simply abandon workers in legacy industries is not optional. It is the most consequential long-term investment this country can make, and I will treat it that way in every vote I cast.
Your ballot arrived May 4th. The primary is June 2nd–and I want to tell you why this particular primary matters more than you may realize.

California uses a Top-Two system, meaning every candidate regardless of party appears on the same ballot and the top two vote-getters advance to November.
That means any young voter, whether registered Republican, Democrat, Independent, or No Party Preference, can vote for me right now.

This primary is not a partisan gate. It is an open door for your generation specifically. This is the moment that determines whether November will bring about CHANGE or more of the same.

If the primary produces two career politicians backed by corrupt party machines and corporate PACs, November is already decided and your choices are already made for you.

Your voice in this primary does not just count—it shapes what choices everyone gets in November. If an INDEPENDENT like me advances, November becomes a real conversation about people over party agenda.

That is a different kind of power than most people don’t realize they have right now, and most campaigns will not tell you about it because they benefit from you not knowing.

I am asking you to vote anyway, not because one election fixes everything, but because the people who benefit most from your absence are counting on it.

Your silence is not neutral. It is a vote for the status quo.

I am asking for your trust. Not blindly. Watch what I do. Hold me accountable. If I go to Washington and forget who sent me there, you have every right to send someone else. That is the deal. I am not asking for your loyalty. I am asking for the chance to earn it.

If you are not yet registered to vote, the deadline to register for the June 2nd primary is May 19th. Register online at registertovote.ca.gov

It takes five minutes. Your voice is worth five minutes.

You deserve a representative who sees you. I do.

With respect and belief in your generation --
Nina Linh
Independent Candidate, CA-40

Something is already happening to the American workforce and almost nobody in Washington is talking about it.

Artificial intelligence is not a future threat. It is a present reality. It is in the logistics software that routes the trucks. It is in the customer service platform that replaced the call center. It is in the diagnostic tools hospitals use, the underwriting systems insurance companies run, the legal research platforms law firms deploy. It is writing first drafts, generating code, processing claims, and screening resumes. It is doing, right now, work that millions of Americans were doing just five years ago. McKinsey projects that 30 percent of current work hours in the United States could be automated by 2030. The World Economic Forum estimates 92 million jobs will be displaced globally in that same window. These are not fringe projections. They are mainstream forecasts from serious institutions. The disruption is not coming. It is here.

The warning and the opportunity are the same story.

AI will also create jobs. New industries, new roles, new categories of work that do not exist yet. Every major technological shift in history has eventually produced more work than it eliminated. The Industrial Revolution. The advent of computers. The internet. Each one displaced workers and ultimately expanded the economy. The honest case for AI is that it can free human beings from repetitive, dangerous, and dehumanizing work and redirect human energy toward things that require creativity, judgment, and empathy. That is a real possibility and it deserves acknowledgment.

The problem is the gap. The gap between the job that disappears today and the new job that exists in five years. The gap between the 54-year-old logistics coordinator whose position was automated and the retraining program that is supposed to prepare her for something new. The gap between what the economy will eventually produce and what the families living through the transition are supposed to do in the meantime. That gap is where people fall. That gap is where communities hollow out.

That gap is what no one in Washington has a serious plan to address.

The tariff argument misses the point entirely.

We have spent the last several years debating tariffs as the solution to American manufacturing job loss. Tariffs address the wrong problem. The primary driver of manufacturing job displacement in this country is not foreign competition. It is automation. A factory that brings production back to American soil and then runs it with robots did not bring the jobs back. It brought the output back. The workers who lost those jobs to overseas facilities are not getting them back from a tariff. They are competing with machines, and no trade policy addresses that. We cannot tariff our way out of a technological transformation.

Through my non-profit work with the WonderSeed Foundation, I have spent years using technology, including virtual reality, inside LA County juvenile probation facilities. Not as a gimmick. As a therapeutic and educational tool that reaches young people who have not responded to traditional approaches. What that work taught me is that technology is only as good as the human intention behind it. VR does not heal a young person. The connection it creates, the empathy it builds, the new perspective it offers, that is what heals. The technology is the vehicle. Humanity is the destination. That principle applies to AI across every sector. The question is never whether to use the technology. The question is who it serves and who gets left behind when it does.

Here is what needs to happen and what I will push for in Congress.
First, AI transparency and accountability legislation. Any company deploying AI systems that make consequential decisions about people, hiring, lending, healthcare, housing, benefits, must be required to explain how those systems work, what data they are trained on, and how errors are identified and corrected. Algorithmic decisions that affect people's lives cannot be a black box. The people affected by those decisions have a right to know how they were made and a path to challenge them.

Second, protecting workers from uncompensated displacement. When a company automates a role that a human being held, that human being deserves more than two weeks of severance and a wish of good luck. A federal workforce transition fund, funded in part by the companies capturing the productivity gains from automation, should provide meaningful retraining, income support during transition, and genuine pathways into the jobs that are actually being created. The companies benefiting most from AI should contribute to the communities absorbing the disruption it causes.

Third, updated education and workforce pipelines built around the skills AI cannot replace. Critical thinking. Emotional intelligence. Complex problem solving. Creative judgment. These are not soft skills. They are the skills that determine who thrives in an AI economy and who does not. Our community colleges, workforce development programs, and K-12 curriculum must be rebuilt around this reality. We cannot prepare people for the economy of 2035 with the training programs of 2005.

Fourth, small business AI access. The productivity gains of AI are currently flowing primarily to large corporations with the resources to deploy it at scale. Small businesses, the backbone of this district, are at risk of being priced out of their own markets by competitors with AI advantages they cannot match. Federal programs that make AI tools accessible and affordable for small businesses are not optional. They are an economic equity issue.

The AI revolution is not waiting for Washington to catch up. It is already reshaping who has economic power and who does not, which jobs survive and which disappear, which communities adapt and which hollow out. The families here at home do not have the luxury of waiting for Congress to finish debating it. They are living it right now.

I am running for Congress because this district deserves a representative who understands that the economy of the next decade will be built by people who are honest about the economy of this one. The disruption is real. The opportunity is real. The gap in between is where policy either steps up or steps aside.

Ballots are in your hands. Primary is June 2nd.

With clarity and purpose --
Nina Linh
Independent Candidate, CA-40

Thirty-six trillion dollars.

That is what this country owes. Not to a foreign government. Not to an enemy. To itself, in the form of borrowed money that has been accumulating for decades while the people in charge told us everything was under control. Thirty-six trillion dollars is not an abstraction. It is the reason interest payments on the national debt now cost more than the entire defense budget did twenty years ago. It is the reason there is never quite enough money for the things that would actually help working families here at home. It is the price of choices made in Washington with someone else’s money.

Let us talk about how we got here.

President Bush launched two wars after September 11th. The decision to go to war had broad support and real justification in the moment. The decision to finance those wars entirely on borrowed money, while simultaneously cutting taxes, did not. The Afghanistan war alone cost over $2 trillion. Iraq cost another $2 trillion. Neither was paid for. Both were charged to the national credit card and handed to the next generation. By the time Bush left office, the national debt had doubled.

President Obama inherited both wars, a financial crisis, and an economy in freefall. He did not raise taxes to pay for the wars he inherited. He borrowed to stabilize the economy, which most economists say was necessary. The debt grew by $9.3 trillion over eight years. President Trump’s first term added $7.8 trillion in four years, driven by tax cuts, defense increases, and COVID relief. President Biden added another $7 trillion. The current administration’s One Big Beautiful Bill pushed the defense budget past $1 trillion for the first time in American history while cutting the programs that working families depend on.

Four presidents. Two parties. One direction. The bill lands on your kitchen table in the form of rising costs, underfunded services, and a government that can never quite find the money for the things that matter most to the people who live here.

The war question is not left or right. It is right and wrong.

This country has spent the last two decades in military engagements that Congress never formally declared as wars. The Constitution is clear: only Congress has the authority to declare war. That provision exists for a reason. It forces accountability. It requires the people’s representatives to stand up and say yes, this is worth the cost in blood and treasure, and be on the record for it. When that step is skipped, wars become easier to start, harder to end, and impossible to fully account for. We have been paying that price ever since.

Foreign aid is not inherently wrong. This country has a long and legitimate history of supporting allies and advancing stability in ways that serve our national interest. The question is whether that aid comes with accountability, clear conditions, and honest assessment of what it is accomplishing. A blank check is not foreign policy. It is an abdication of responsibility to the taxpayers who fund it.

The Pentagon has never passed a full financial audit.

Not once. The Department of Defense has failed its audit five consecutive times. It cannot account for trillions of dollars in assets and expenditures. Every other federal agency is required to pass a financial audit. Every business, every nonprofit, every household that has ever applied for a loan is held to a standard of financial accountability that the largest budget item in the federal government has never been required to meet. We are asked to spend more on defense every year by an institution that cannot tell us where the money already went.

The use-it-or-lose-it culture inside federal agencies means that departments spend frantically at the end of every fiscal year to avoid losing their budget allocation the following year. The result is billions of dollars spent not because it is needed but because it is available and the clock is running. That is not how responsible institutions manage public money. It is how bureaucracies protect themselves.

Here is what I will go to Washington to do.

First, I will support requiring a formal Congressional declaration before any new military commitment abroad. No more wars of choice financed on borrowed money without a vote on the record. The Constitution already requires this. We simply need representatives willing to enforce it.

Second, I will push for foreign aid with accountability and clear conditions. Aid that advances genuine stability and American interests, evaluated honestly, with transparency about what it costs and what it accomplishes. No more unconditional funding without oversight.

Third, I will support a pay-as-you-go requirement for new spending. If Congress wants to spend more, it must identify where the money comes from. The era of charging everything to future generations has to end somewhere. It might as well end here.

Fourth, I will demand a full, independent audit of the Pentagon. Every dollar. Every contract. Every asset. The American people fund that institution. They deserve to know where their money goes. Any representative who votes against a defense audit is protecting waste, not national security.

The thirty-six trillion dollar debt is not an accident. It is the accumulated result of choices made by both parties over decades, choices that prioritized short-term political convenience over long-term responsibility to the people who would have to live with the consequences. We are those people. The families here at home feeling the squeeze at the register, watching their healthcare costs climb, wondering why the government always finds money for everything except them, are living the consequences of those choices right now.

Enough. It is time for representatives who ask the hard questions before the check is written, not after.

Ballots are in your hands. Primary is June 2nd. Vote for true Change. Vote Independent.

With conviction and clarity --
Nina Linh
Independent Candidate, CA-40

Let me tell you about three people I met on the campaign trail.

The first is a young husband. He is a first generation immigrant and a former police officer. He came to this country, built a life, served his community in uniform, and believed in the system. He voted Democrat. Then affordability started breaking his family’s budget and concerns about public safety started weighing on him, and he decided the party he had been with was no longer speaking to what he was living. He switched to Republican. He was not indifferent about it. He was angry. Angry at costs that kept climbing. Angry at feeling like his work and his community did not matter to the people who were supposed to represent him. He thought switching sides would change something. Then this administration came in, and he watched policies roll out that made him feel just as invisible as before, just from a different direction. He is a former law enforcement officer who believes in order and in the rule of law. He was pulled over by ICE because of the way he looks. A man who wore a badge. Who served. Who switched parties in part because he believed in strong public safety, stopped by federal agents because of his face. When I met him, he was not looking for a party. He was looking for someone who would finally see him as a person instead of a political category. He thanked me for talking to him, not at him. I had to gently correct him. I am not a politician. I am a public servant. There is a difference.

The second is a woman in her mid-fifties. She was a lifelong Republican. Not a casual one, the kind who believed in the party’s principles, who voted in every election, who was proud of what she thought the party stood for. Then this administration happened. What she watched, what she heard, what she saw done in the name of the party she had given decades of loyalty to, broke something for her. She is now an Independent. She did not become a Democrat. She did not go somewhere new. She went somewhere honest.

The third is Jason. He has been an Independent his whole voting life. He does not trust either party and has not for years. He has watched both sides take turns holding power, making promises, and delivering the same result: a system that serves itself. When I told him I was running as an Independent, he looked at me for a long moment. Then he said he was glad someone was finally giving him something to vote for instead of just something to vote against.

Three people. Three completely different journeys. One thing in common.

They are exhausted. Not angry, though they have every right to be. Exhausted. Exhausted by the fighting that produces nothing. Exhausted by the rhetoric that explains everything and fixes nothing. Exhausted by the feeling that the people they send to Washington come home two years later with the same talking points and the same enemies and the same excuses while the same problems get worse. They do not want a revolution. They do not want a firebrand. They want someone who listens, understands, and actually cares about solutions. That is all. That is everything.

Here is the honest structural argument for why this keeps happening.

The two-party system is not failing by accident. It is working exactly as it was designed to work, just not for the people it is supposed to serve. Both parties need an enemy to survive. The enemy is what raises money. The enemy is what turns out the base. The enemy is what fills the airtime and dominates the news cycle and keeps voters locked into a team they feel they cannot leave. Without the enemy, the party has to govern, and governing is hard and slow and rarely produces the kind of dramatic wins that fill campaign coffers. It is far easier to run against the other side than to be accountable to the people who sent you there.

The result is a system that has become very efficient at one thing: staying in power. It has become far less efficient at the thing it is supposed to do, which is solve problems. Healthcare has been a crisis for decades and both parties have been in charge for decades. The deficit grows under every administration. Housing affordability has declined for twenty years. These are not Republican failures or Democratic failures. They are the failures of a system that rewards the performance of outrage over the delivery of results.

The record speaks for itself. President Bush doubled the national debt, financed two wars on borrowed money, cut taxes at the same time, and handed the next administration a financial crisis. President Obama inherited those wars and that recession, did not raise taxes to pay for either, and added $9.3 trillion to the debt over eight years. President Trump’s first term added $7.8 trillion in four years, nearly the same pace, through tax cuts, defense spending increases, and COVID relief. President Biden added another $7 trillion. The national debt now stands at more than $36 trillion. Four presidents. Two parties. A quarter century. The debt went one direction the entire time. Through all of it, the cost of living at home kept climbing. Groceries. Healthcare. Housing. Gas. Childcare. The bill for decades of borrowed money and overseas military commitment does not show up in Washington. It shows up at the register. It shows up in the young husband’s bank account. It shows up in the woman who can no longer recognize the party she gave her life to. It shows up in Jason’s face every time someone asks him why he doesn’t just pick a side.

The young husband knows this. He tried switching teams and found the same game with different jerseys. The woman in her mid-fifties knows this. She gave her loyalty to one side for decades and watched it transform into something she did not recognize. Jason has known it his whole life. He never bought the team identity to begin with. All three of them arrived at the same place from different directions: the understanding that the answer is not a better version of the same two choices.

So what does Independent actually mean in practice?

It does not mean splitting the difference between two bad options. It does not mean no principles. It means the opposite. It means the freedom to say what is actually true regardless of which side it makes uncomfortable. It means looking at a problem and asking what works, not which team proposed it. It means being accountable to the people who sent you there instead of to the party that needs you to perform.

The 80 percent of Americans who describe themselves as politically in the middle are not confused. They are not unable to make up their minds. They are the people who understand that most problems are complicated, that real solutions require more than one idea, and that the person across the aisle is not the enemy. They have been told for decades that their pragmatism makes them naive. It does not. It makes them right. The most durable solutions in American history, the ones that actually held, came from people willing to reach across the table rather than perform for their base.

I left the Democratic Party. Not because I stopped believing in the people it claims to represent. I left because the party stopped being the vehicle for getting those people what they need. I am running as an Independent because the voters of this district deserve someone whose first obligation is to them, not to a party apparatus, not to a donor class, not to a national talking point that has nothing to do with the cost of groceries here at home.

The young husband deserves a representative who will actually show up. The woman who left her party deserves to know that leaving did not mean giving up. Jason deserves to finally vote for something instead of just against something.

That is why I am running. That is what Independent means. Not no team. Just the right team. Yours.

With clarity and conviction --
Nina Linh
Independent Candidate, CA-40

Let’s talk about something Washington doesn’t want to talk about honestly:

Foreign intervention.

Specifically — places like Iran.

For decades, both parties have supported policies that keep the U.S. deeply involved in conflicts around the world.

And every time, we’re told the same thing:

It’s necessary.

It’s strategic.

It’s in our interest.

But here’s what you’re not told:

It comes with a cost.

A real cost.

• Trillions in spending

• Growing national debt

• Resources pulled away from problems here at home

While Washington debates strategy overseas — families at home are trying to afford groceries.

While leaders argue about intervention — you’re dealing with rising costs and shrinking stability.

At some point, we have to ask:

Who is this actually serving?

Because it doesn’t feel like it’s serving us.

I believe in a strong America.

But strength doesn’t mean endless involvement in foreign conflicts.

Strength means:

• Prioritizing stability at home

• Protecting American interests responsibly

• Avoiding unnecessary entanglements that drain resources

We can’t keep writing blank checks overseas — while ignoring the people here who are struggling.

And yet, that’s exactly what the system keeps doing.

No matter which party is in charge.

If we keep supporting that system — nothing will change.

It’s time to try something different - a new way forward.

Make Your Plan to Vote

• Vote by mail has already begun!

• Early voting begins: May 23

• Election Day: June 2

I remember the night a police officer came to our house.

I was a child. My mother needed help. We were refugees — Vietnamese, who came here legally and honorably, sponsored by a Catholic church in the Midwest, still learning the language, still learning how things worked here. We had nothing that would have made anyone feel obligated to show up for us. No connections. No power. No history in this country yet.

But he came. He stood at the door and he helped her. He saw a woman who needed protection and he gave it. That is all. That is everything.

I have never forgotten it. Not the uniform at the door. Not the feeling of watching someone choose to show up for my family. Not the quiet understanding, even as a little girl, that this country could be exactly what it claimed to be.

I grew up as the only person who looked like me in my community. That was hard in ways I still carry. But I was also loved. Accepted. Welcomed by people who looked nothing like me and treated me like I belonged. Public school gave me language and opportunity. My brother went on to serve in the reserves and then into law enforcement. My mother became a nurse. We were a working-class family who gave everything we had to a country that had opened its door to us.

That door — and the officer who stood in it — is why I believe in law enforcement. Why I believe in order. Why I believe in secure, lawful borders. And it is exactly why what I am watching right now breaks my heart.

THIS COUNTRY WAS BUILT BY IMMIGRANTS. THAT IS NOT A SENTIMENT. THAT IS HISTORY.

America has always been the shining city on the hill — the dream that people across the world have risked everything to reach. Not because of our geography or our natural resources. Because of our Constitution. Because of the promise that here, you are free to pursue your own happiness. That promise has drawn the hardest-working, most resilient, most determined people on earth to our shores for over two centuries. Immigrants are not a burden on this country. They are its story. They are the reason this country has never stopped growing.

Now I also hear the concern about our stretched resources and our nation's debt — and I take it seriously. People here at home are working hard, costs are rising, and it can feel like there is never enough to go around. That frustration is real and valid. Now some facts tell a different story than the narrative being pushed. Undocumented immigrants are actually NOT eligible for Social Security, Medicare, or food stamps. Emergency room care is the one lawful exception — and it should be. We do not let people die on our streets. Beyond that, did you know that immigrants are paying into systems they can never draw from? In 2022, undocumented workers paid $25.7 billion into Social Security and $6.4 billion into Medicare — programs they are prohibited by law from collecting. In 2023, undocumented households paid $89.8 billion in total taxes and held $299 billion in spending power that flows directly into our economy. Immigrants as a whole account for 18% of total US economic output — $2.1 trillion in 2024. They are not draining this country. They are helping hold it up.

None of this means open borders. None of this means looking the other way. I came here through a legal process. I believe in that process. Enforcing our immigration laws is the government's right and responsibility. I support secure, orderly, lawful borders. National security requires knowing who enters this country. Bad actors must be identified and removed. These are not controversial positions. They are common sense — and they are fully compatible with treating human beings with dignity.

What is not common sense — what is not lawful, and what is not American — is what we are watching unfold right now.

Over 170 US citizens were detained by ICE in 2025, most due to database errors and racial profiling. At least 38 US citizen protesters were arrested in Los Angeles for peacefully assembling. Two American citizens — Renee Good and Alex Pretti — were shot and killed by federal agents during immigration operations in Minneapolis. And rather than answer for any of this, the administration labeled protesters domestic terrorists, signed $25 million in surveillance contracts to monitor citizens who speak out, and had officials declare that even filming a federal agent constitutes violence. That is not border security. That is gaslighting. It is an insult to every American who understands what this country is supposed to stand for.

Protesting is not a radical act. It is an American act — as old as this republic. The Founders wrote the right to peaceful assembly into the Constitution because they had lived under a government that crushed dissent and never wanted that for us. The First Amendment does not have an asterisk. The Fourth Amendment does not have an asterisk. These are the rights my brother put on a uniform to protect. These are the rights law enforcement honored when they shielded my mother. These are the rights that make this country worth coming to — and worth staying to defend.

HERE IS WHAT I BELIEVE — AND WHAT I WILL WORK TO DELIVER.

I believe in secure, orderly, lawful immigration. That means a fully funded, fully staffed immigration court system that can actually process cases — because right now cases wait years, and that backlog is not justice for anyone. It means technology and personnel at ports of entry. It means working with countries of origin to address the root causes that push people to leave in the first place.

I will also say something that needs to be said plainly: those who have arrived unlawfully within the last four years should self-deport and have the genuine opportunity to get back in line — the right way, through the legal process this country has established. My family used that process. It must be respected. But it must also actually work. That means a fully funded immigration court system that processes cases in months, not years. A pathway that is real, not a decade-long trap designed to discourage rather than welcome.

I believe in a compassionate, functional pathway to citizenship for people who have been here for years — those who have paid taxes, raised families, and built their lives here. Get in line, yes. But the line must lead somewhere. Waiting fifteen years for legal status is not a process. It is a broken promise.

And I believe that the Constitution applies to everyone on American soil — citizen and non-citizen alike. Not because it is politically convenient. Because that is what it says. Because that is what we are. Because the moment we decide that constitutional rights only apply to some people, we have begun to dismantle the thing that makes America worth defending.

My family came here through an open door held open by people of faith and goodwill — legally, honorably, through the process this country established. This country kept its promise to us. My brother served it in a uniform. My mother healed people in its hospitals. I am running to serve it in Congress.

The shining city on the hill is not a slogan. It is a standard. And right now, we are falling short of it.

Ballots arrive May 4th. I am asking you to help me hold this country to what it has always claimed to be.

With gratitude and conviction —
Nina Linh
Independent Candidate, CA-40

Voting doesn’t have to be complicated.

In fact, this year, it’s easier than ever.

Starting May 4, you can vote from home.

No lines.

No waiting.

No schedule conflicts.

Just your ballot — and your voice.

Here’s how it works:

1. You receive your ballot in the mail.

2. You fill it out at your convenience.

3. You return it by mail or drop it off.

That’s it.

And yet, so many people wait.

They put it off.

They forget.

They assume their vote won’t matter.

But it does.

Especially in a moment like this — when so many people feel like the system isn’t working.

Voting by mail gives you the chance to take control of your vote.

To make your decision on your time.

To participate without the stress or uncertainty of Election Day.

Important Dates

• Vote by mail begins: May 4

• Early voting begins: May 23

• Election Day: June 2

If you’re ready for a New Way Forward don’t wait.

Fill out your ballot early.

Send it in.

And make your voice heard.

Because if we want different results — we have to start making different choices.

Today your ballot arrives.

Not tomorrow. Not next week. Today. It will come in an envelope that looks easy to set aside. Easy to leave on the counter while you take care of everything else life is asking of you right now. I am asking you not to set it aside. I am asking you to open it, read it, and use it. This one is different from what you may be used to, and what you do with it in the next few weeks genuinely matters.

Let me explain how this primary actually works.

California uses a Top-Two Primary system. That means every candidate running for this seat, regardless of party, appears on the same ballot. Republican, Democrat, Independent, all of us together on one page. Every registered voter receives this ballot and can vote for any candidate they choose, regardless of their own party registration. The two candidates who receive the most votes on June 2nd advance to November. That is it. Party label does not determine who moves forward. Votes do.

This matters more than it might seem. In a district where neither major party has fully served the people who live here, the Top-Two system creates a genuine opening for something different. It means a registered Republican can vote for me without leaving their party. It means a Democrat who is frustrated with the options can vote their conscience. It means an Independent like Jason, who has spent his whole voting life feeling like he has no real choice, finally does. The rule is simple: vote for who you actually believe in. The math takes care of the rest.

The hard reality.

This district has been held by career politicians who have been in Washington longer than some of your children have been alive. The money flowing into this race from party machines and special interest PACs is real and it is significant. I am not going to pretend otherwise. What I have that they do not is this: I am the only candidate in this race whose first obligation is to you. Not to a party apparatus. Not to a donor who wrote a check expecting something in return. Not to a national agenda that has nothing to do with the cost of groceries here at home. I am the only candidate in this race not taking money from AIPAC or corporate PACs. No foreign policy lobby. No corporate interest. No check written with strings attached. What you see is what you get.

I have spent months on this trail listening. The young husband who told me no politician had ever talked to him, not at him. The woman who left her party because she no longer recognized what it had become. The veteran whose home was sold out from under him. The teacher carrying an entire community on her shoulders every single morning. The small business owner watching tariffs eat his margins. Karen, running the numbers on her family’s health insurance and wondering what she is doing wrong. I have sat with all of them. I have heard them. That is not a talking point. That is why I am running.

Here is what I need from you right now.

Fill out your ballot. Sign the envelope. Return it. You can drop it in the mail, take it to any official drop box, or bring it to a vote center on or before June 2nd. If you vote by mail you can track your ballot at California’s official ballot tracker to confirm it was received. Do not assume someone else will carry this. In a primary election, turnout is everything. Low turnout means the loudest, most partisan voices decide who represents everyone. Your vote does not cancel someone else out. It adds your voice to what this community decides it deserves.

If you have already decided you are not going to vote because you do not believe it changes anything, I understand that feeling more than you might expect. I have met enough people at enough doors to know that cynicism about this process is not laziness. It is the earned result of watching the same promises get made and broken by the same system for decades. I am not here to tell you that one vote fixes all of that. I am here to tell you that staying home guarantees it stays exactly the same. The only way anything changes is if the people who want change show up.

This is the moment. Right now. Ballot in hand.

I came to this country with nothing. A refugee who did not speak the language, who sat in a public school classroom and dared to believe the promise this country makes. The promise that here, your voice counts. That here, the kid nobody expected anything from can stand up and ask to serve. That here, the 80 percent of people exhausted by the fighting and the rhetoric and the broken promises can send someone to Washington who actually works for them.

I am asking for the chance to be that person for you. Not because I have all the answers. I will ask the right questions. I will listen. I will show up and take courageous action- and most importantly—--I will never forget who sent me there or why.

Your ballot is in your hands. The decision is too. Vote for Change. Vote Independent.

Primary: June 2, 2026. Vote by mail deadline: June 2nd postmarked. Drop box and vote center: through June 2nd.

With gratitude and determination --
Nina Linh
Independent Candidate, CA-40

Public school was my lifeline.

I came to this country as a refugee. I did not speak the language. What I had was a classroom, a teacher who saw me, and a system that said: you belong here regardless of where you came from or what you have. Public education did not just teach me English. It gave me the tools to think, to question, to build something. It is the reason I am standing here today asking to serve in Congress.

That is why what is happening to our education system keeps me up at night. The system that saved me is failing too many children. The teachers who should be saving them are burning out and leaving. The resources that should be reaching every child are distributed by zip code and tax base, which means where you are born in this country largely determines what you get. That is not the promise of public education. That is the opposite of it.

Let me tell you what I know from the inside.

Before I ran for Congress, I co-founded an education subcommittee for a national think tank. I sat across from some of the finest minds in education policy and economics in this country. I helped draft a federal bill for education reform and walked the halls of Congress advocating for it. That work taught me something no campaign promise can replace: the problems in our education system are structural, they are old, and they will not be solved by a new textbook or another testing mandate. They require honest reckoning with how the system was built and who it was built for.

Here is the honest truth: our education system was designed over 100 years ago for an industrial economy that no longer exists. The school bell, the rigid schedule, the rows of desks, the standardized test, all of it reflects a world that ended before most of our parents were born. The economy our children are entering looks nothing like that. The jobs that will exist in ten years barely exist today. We are preparing children for a world we cannot fully see using a system designed for a world that is gone.

The teacher crisis is real and it is urgent.

On the campaign trail I met a teacher. She has been in the classroom for sixteen years at a public school here at home. She is the kind of teacher children remember for the rest of their lives, the kind who knows every student by name, who notices when something is off, who stays after school not because she is required to but because she cannot bring herself to leave when a child needs her. When I asked what she needed most, she did not say money, though she deserves far more of it. She said: support. Not just inside the classroom, she told me, but around it. She described showing up every morning as the first adult some of her students see. She is the one who notices the child who did not eat, the one whose home situation changed over the weekend, the one who is being bullied and hiding it. She is part teacher, part counselor, part social worker, part first responder. She does all of it because she loves these children. She does all of it largely alone. She told me teachers are not just educators. They are frontline workers. They are the first people in a child’s day who can recognize a crisis, respond to trauma, and make a child feel safe enough to learn. We do not treat them that way. We do not pay them that way. We do not support them that way. That has to change.

Nearly three out of four school districts struggled to fill qualified teacher positions in 2024-25. California has more than 10,000 unfilled positions, with 32,000 more filled by teachers not certified for what they are teaching. Teachers earn 26 percent less than other professionals with similar education. K-12 has the highest burnout rate of any industry. One in three teachers plans to leave within two years, not because they stopped loving children but because the system is asking more than any person can sustain on their own. We need federal loan forgiveness tied to years in high-need schools, competitive salary incentives for teachers in critical shortage fields, and in-classroom and wraparound support so that the teacher is not carrying the weight of an entire community alone.

The AI question is the one nobody in education is answering honestly.

Artificial intelligence is already changing how children learn, whether we plan for it or not. Students are using AI tools to write essays, solve problems, and generate answers. The conversation we should be having is not how to block AI from children. It is how to ensure that children develop the capacities that AI cannot replace.

Critical thinking. Emotional intelligence. The ability to ask the right question and know when an answer does not feel true. The ability to collaborate, adapt, and empathize. In an AI-driven economy, these are not soft skills. They are the only skills that cannot be automated. The children who thrive will be the ones who learned to think alongside AI, not the ones sheltered from it. Our curriculum, our assessments, and our teachers must develop these capacities in every child, not just the ones in well-resourced districts.

On school choice and public education, let me be direct.

School choice sounds like freedom, and for some families it delivers exactly that. A child thriving in a specialized program, a charter with an innovative model, a school aligned with a family’s values, these are real benefits. On the campaign trail I met a mother who home schools her three young children. Her husband works so she can dedicate herself fully to their education. She is organized, devoted, and deeply thoughtful. She made her case and I agreed with her. For her family, school choice is not a political position. It is a loving decision that is working. I told her so.

We can have school choice and strong public schools. The financial model exists. It works when choice means charters, magnets, and within-district options where funding follows the student inside the public system with full accountability. Los Angeles proved this with its own Zones of Choice program, which improved outcomes without draining district budgets. What does not work is unlimited private school vouchers paying for students already in private school. Arizona tried it and created a $1.3 billion budget shortfall. The difference is design and accountability. We can do this right. We just have to be honest about what that means.

Which brings me to why federal education standards are not optional.

Some states have the wealth to generate strong per-student funding on their own. Others do not, and federal education dollars are the difference between an adequately funded classroom and one that cannot afford a certified teacher. When leaders propose eliminating the Department of Education and leaving everything to states, they are describing a system where the accident of your birth state determines the quality of your education as completely as your family’s income once did. That is not freedom. That is geography as destiny. A national floor of standards and resources is not federal overreach. It is the only guarantee that equal opportunity means something in every state, not just the ones that can afford it.

A national floor does not mean a single curriculum imposed on every child. It means every child is guaranteed a certified teacher, a safe building, mental health support, and preparation for the actual world they are entering. States can exceed that floor. No state should be permitted to fall below it.

Education is not a budget line. It is a national investment with a guaranteed return. A better-educated workforce means a stronger economy, lower healthcare costs, stronger national security, and safer communities. Educational attainment is one of the strongest predictors of whether someone ends up in a career or a courtroom. When we underinvest in a child’s education, we do not save money. We pay the cost later, at a much higher rate, in emergency rooms, prisons, and lost human potential. The mother I met on the trail is investing everything she has in her children’s future. This country should match that commitment for every child, not just the ones with a devoted parent and a stable home.

My work in the LA County juvenile probation system showed me exactly what happens when we fail children early. The young people I sat with were not failures. They were the product of a system that did not invest in them soon enough. That is the case for investing in our kids. Every child we lose to that pipeline costs this society far more than the education ever would have. The bill always comes due. The question is whether we pay it in classrooms or in courtrooms.

Public school was my lifeline. Every child in this country deserves the same chance it gave me. That is not a Democratic value or a Republican value. It is an American one. The teacher I met is already giving everything she has every single day. The children in her classroom deserve a government that shows up with the same commitment.

Ballots arrive May 4th.

With belief in what we can be --
Nina Linh
Independent Candidate, CA-40

Verify Your Voter Registration Status

Before anything else — before the ads, before the debates, before Election Day — there’s one simple step that makes all of this possible:

You have to be registered to vote.

And too many people either aren’t registered — or don’t realize their registration is outdated.

If you’ve moved recently, changed your name, or just haven’t checked in a while, it’s worth taking a few minutes to make sure everything is up to date.

Because this election matters.

Not just because of who wins — but because of what it represents.

Right now, millions of people feel like the system isn’t working.

But the only way to change that is to participate in it differently.

That starts with making sure your voice can be heard.

How to Register or Check Your Status

• Visit California’s official voter registration website.

• Confirm your registration is active.

• Update your information if needed.

It only takes a few minutes.

But it gives you a voice in what happens next.

Voting Dates to Remember

• Vote by mail begins: May 4

• Last day to register to vote: May 18

• Early voting begins: May 23

• Election Day: June 2

If we keep sitting out — or assuming nothing will change — then nothing will.

But if we show up differently, we can start to break the cycle.

This is your chance to chart a new way forward.

Verify Your Voter Registration Status

I get asked this question all the time:

“Why not just run as a Republican or a Democrat?”

The answer is simple.

Because I don’t believe the system is working—and I don’t believe it can be fixed from inside the same structure that created the problem.

Right now, politics feels like a constant fight.

Two sides yelling at each other.

Two sides blaming each other.

Two sides asking for your vote — while your life keeps getting harder.

And you’re stuck in the middle.

Most people I talk to don’t feel represented by either party.

They feel exhausted.

They feel unheard.

They feel like no matter who wins, nothing really changes.

That’s why I’m running as an independent.

Because you shouldn’t have to pick a side just to be heard.

You shouldn’t have to choose between two options that both leave you frustrated.

And you shouldn’t have to keep participating in a system that isn’t delivering results.

This campaign isn’t about playing politics.

It’s about being a rebel with a cause — paving a new way forward for standing up for people who feel like the system has left them behind.

If we keep supporting the same two-party system and expecting different results, we’re going to stay stuck.

But if enough people decide to try something different — we can actually change things.

Make Your Plan to Vote

• Vote by mail begins: May 4

• Last day to register to vote: May 18

• Early voting begins: May 23

• Election Day: June 2
  

Verify Your Voter Registration Status

I want to tell you about Karen.

Karen is 52 years old and lives in Mission Viejo. She has worked as a dental office manager for fourteen years. Her husband works in logistics. They own their home. They have done everything the right way -- worked steadily, paid their bills, stayed out of debt, raised their kids. By every measure, they are the people this country is supposed to work for.

Karen told me she has voted for candidates from both parties over the years. She voted for candidates who promised to put Americans first. To lower costs. To bring jobs back. To stop sending money everywhere except here. She believed those promises, not because she is naive, but because they sounded right. They still sound right. The problem is that none of them came true.

Her property insurance increased after the fires. Groceries are still running significantly higher than they were four years ago. She told me she and her husband now have a line item in their budget called the register. That is what they call it. The register. Every time they go to the store it feels like a test they are failing, and they cannot figure out what they are doing wrong.

They are not doing anything wrong. That is the honest answer. The system is.

Here are the facts that nobody in Washington seems to want to say out loud together.

Groceries are up more than 30 percent since 2019. The supply chain disruptions ended years ago. The shelves are full. The trucks are running. Why haven’t prices come down? The answer is that in our economy, prices rise fast and fall slow. When costs go up, companies pass them to consumers immediately. When costs stabilize or drop, the savings rarely make it back to the register. Congress has never required any transparency about why. No major legislation from either party has addressed this structural imbalance. Both parties have accepted it.

The average family health insurance premium reached $27,000 in 2025, up 26 percent in five years. ACA marketplace premiums jumped 21.7 percent for 2026 after enhanced tax credits were allowed to expire. These are not acts of nature. They are the result of a healthcare system with too many middlemen, too little price transparency, and drug pricing that operates without real competition. This has been true for decades. Candidates have campaigned on fixing it for decades. The prices keep rising.

Tariffs were promised as the mechanism to bring manufacturing jobs back home. The reality is that steel is up 13 percent, aluminum up nearly 23 percent, and the cost of building an average American home has risen more than $6,000 because of those tariffs. The costs are paid by American contractors, American builders, and ultimately American families. Meanwhile, the manufacturing jobs that left this country were largely displaced not by foreign workers but by automation. That trend is accelerating. McKinsey projects that 30 percent of current work hours could be automated by 2030. No tariff addresses that. No one in Washington has presented a serious plan for what happens to the people whose jobs change.

Now let us talk about the phrase that was supposed to mean something.

America First. When people heard that phrase, most of them heard something real. They heard: my family comes before foreign commitments. My neighbor’s job matters more than a foreign country’s war. The roads in my community should be fixed before we rebuild someone else’s. That is not a radical idea. That is what most Americans believe. Karen believed it. The veteran I met believed it. The question that nobody wants to answer is: did the policies actually deliver it?

Here is where the money went instead. In 2024, Congress passed a $95 billion foreign aid package covering Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. The United States sends $3.3 billion annually in military financing abroad, and fast-tracked an additional $4 billion to Israel in March 2025 alone. Then came the One Big Beautiful Bill, signed on July 4, 2025. That law added $156 billion in new military spending, pushing the total defense budget past $1 trillion for the first time in American history. It put $25 billion toward the Golden Dome missile defense project, which the House Appropriations Committee itself admitted the Pentagon had not yet explained or proven feasible. The administration said DOGE was cutting waste. Verified savings came to roughly $2 billion. Federal spending went up. The same law that built a $1 trillion defense budget also cut Medicaid, slashed food assistance, accelerated Social Security insolvency, and ended the one program keeping veterans in their homes. That is not America First. That is a budget that chose weapons over people.

I want to tell you what that choice looked like for one man. He served in one of those overseas commitments. He came home, got a job, bought a home on a VA loan, the promise this country made him in exchange for his service. When disability complications took him out of work, he fell behind on his mortgage. There was a program called VASP designed for exactly this moment. It had already pulled 33,000 veterans back from the edge of foreclosure, restructuring their loans at 2.5 percent interest. On May 1, 2025, the same administration that approved $156 billion in new military spending shut that program down. One week’s notice. No replacement. Nobody called Congress. Nobody called the veterans’ organizations. Nobody called the lenders who were in the middle of processing applications. Experts had warned a House committee just two months earlier that ending VASP without a replacement would lead directly to foreclosures. The warning was ignored. More than 10,000 veterans have since lost their homes. The veteran I met was one of them. His home was sold while he was still sleeping in it. This country sent him to war. It could not keep the program that kept his roof. That is the truth of what America First has meant in practice.

Karen does not know his name. He does not know hers. They have never met. They live in the same district, vote in the same elections, and share the same question: why does this government find the money for everything except the people who are right here asking for help? Karen’s health insurance premium went up $400 a month this year. She has not missed a payment in fourteen years of work. She cannot explain why her premium keeps rising any more than that veteran could explain why his home was sold out from under him. Neither of them is asking for charity. Neither of them is asking for something they did not earn. They are asking for a government that sees them with the same urgency it brings to a $1 trillion defense bill.

That is the promise that did not add up. Not left versus right. Not Democrat versus Republican. The simple, verifiable arithmetic of who this government chose when it had to choose. It chose the defense contractor. It chose the overseas commitment. It did not choose Karen. It did not choose the veteran. It did not choose the family standing at the register trying to make the math work. The question I am going to Washington to ask — loudly, on the record, every single day — is why. Why does the system work this way. Who benefits from the fact that it does. What would actually have to change for Karen to feel it.

The root cause problem is this: no one in power is asking why.

Why do prices rise fast and fall slow? Why does the most expensive healthcare system in the world produce worse average outcomes than countries that spend half as much? Why did we build a manufacturing strategy around tariffs that raised costs for American businesses instead of addressing the automation wave that is the actual driver of job displacement? Why does every budget debate in Washington treat overseas commitments as fixed and domestic needs as negotiable?

These are not partisan questions. They are the questions a constituent services representative would ask on behalf of Karen. They are the questions a good accountant would ask looking at the federal ledger. They are the questions that every family at the register is asking in their own way, without the language or the platform to demand an answer from the people who are supposed to be working for them.

I am running for Congress to ask them. On the record. Without apology. America First should start with Karen.

Ballots arrive May 4th.

With honesty and conviction —
Nina Linh
Independent Candidate, CA-40

I want to tell you about two men I met while knocking on doors in this district.

The first is a contractor. He has run a small construction company here for over a decade. He builds homes, renovates kitchens, puts roofs over people’s heads. He is not a corporation. He is a man with a truck, a crew, and a reputation built one job at a time. When I asked him how business was going, he looked at me the way people look at you when they are tired of being polite about something that is genuinely hard. Steel prices are up. Lumber costs more. Aluminum has jumped sharply. Every material he needs to do his job costs significantly more than it did two years ago. He cannot absorb that. His bids go up. He wins fewer jobs. The crew he was planning to add this spring stayed home instead. The community investment he had been talking about for years -- sponsoring a local youth program, hiring an apprentice -- got pushed back again. Not because he stopped caring. The math stopped working.

The second man runs a small landscaping company. He has built something real -- a tight crew, loyal clients, a business his family depends on. Then immigration enforcement changed the reality on the ground. Workers who had been with him for years stopped showing up. Not because they had done anything wrong. They were afraid, and fear does not wait for due process. He went looking for replacements and found something that anyone in this industry will tell you is the plain truth: most Americans do not want this work. The hours are long, the sun is unforgiving, and the pay is not enough to make it competitive with indoor jobs. He lost contracts he could not fulfill. He turned away work he could not staff. He is still standing, but he is standing on thinner ground than he was a year ago.

These two men are the backbone of this district. Not a talking point. Not a photo op. The actual backbone.

There are over 424,000 small businesses in Orange County alone, making up nearly 100 percent of all businesses in the county. The cities of this district -- Mission Viejo, Aliso Viejo, Rancho Santa Margarita, Lake Elsinore, Murrieta, Menifee, Wildomar -- are built on these businesses. The dry cleaner. The landscaper. The contractor. The family restaurant. The plumber. The florist. The woman who does alterations out of a shop she has run for twenty years. These are the people who sponsor Little League teams and donate to school fundraisers and hire neighbors. When they struggle, the whole community feels it. Washington does not.

Let us talk about what is actually hurting them -- and what could actually help.

The tariffs on steel, aluminum, and lumber are not trade policy. They are a hidden tax on every American who builds, repairs, or renovates anything. Steel prices have risen over 13 percent in the past year. Aluminum is up nearly 23 percent. Lumber has climbed almost 5 percent. These costs do not fall on corporations with purchasing departments and hedging strategies. They fall on the contractor with a single truck who has to hand a customer a bid that is higher than last year’s with no good explanation other than Washington decided to start a trade war. Analysts estimate tariffs have raised the cost of building an average home by over $6,000. That is not a corporate problem. That is a small business problem.

The immigration enforcement crisis is just as real. Nationally, there are an estimated 43,000 fewer workers in landscaping since enforcement intensified. One firm lost $50,000 in contracts when workers stopped showing up because of rumors of raids in the area. The construction industry in California -- where 41 percent of construction workers are foreign-born -- is struggling to replace workers with skills that took years to develop. The argument that Americans will take these jobs if immigrants leave has not proven true. Employers across this district are learning that the hard way.

Here is what I would actually do -- not the usual talking points.

First: small businesses deserve tariff relief that corporations already have access to. Large companies have legal teams and trade consultants to navigate exemptions and drawbacks. A contractor in Lake Elsinore does not. I support creating a streamlined tariff exemption process specifically for small businesses, and a material cost stabilization fund that provides short-term purchasing credits to small contractors when input costs spike suddenly due to trade policy changes. If Washington creates the problem, Washington should share the pain.

Second: the federal government spends over one trillion dollars on contracts every year. Small businesses are supposed to receive 23 percent of that by law. That goal is routinely missed. I support strict enforcement of federal small business contracting goals, with specific set-asides for locally owned businesses in districts like ours. A plumber in Murrieta should be able to compete for a federal facilities contract in their own backyard without needing a Washington lobbyist to navigate the paperwork.

Third: workforce development needs to be treated like infrastructure. The skills that built this district -- how to frame a wall, lay pipe, grade a hillside, maintain a landscape -- do not appear overnight. I support federally funded apprenticeship tax credits for small businesses that train workers on the job, paired with community college partnerships in Orange and Riverside Counties that create direct pipelines from classroom to crew. Train people here. Hire people here. Keep the money here.

Fourth: fix the guest worker program. The H-2B visa for temporary non-agricultural workers -- the pathway that landscapers and contractors most need -- is capped, slow, and administratively brutal for small employers. I support expanding H-2B visa numbers for industries with documented labor shortages, simplifying the application process for small businesses, and creating a fast-track renewal for workers who have already been vetted. Secure borders and functional legal work authorization are not opposites. A contractor should not have to choose between following the law and keeping the lights on.

Fifth: give small businesses a seat at the table before policy is made, not after. When tariffs go up, small businesses find out the same way everyone else does -- through the news. When immigration enforcement changes, small business owners wake up to empty job sites. I support requiring a small business economic impact assessment for any federal trade or labor policy change, with input from chambers of commerce and small business associations in affected districts before implementation. The people who feel these decisions first should have a voice in making them.

The contractor I met is not asking for a handout. He is asking for a fair shot. The landscaper I met is not asking for special treatment. He is asking for a workforce policy that reflects how his industry actually operates. These are reasonable requests from people who have built something real in communities they care about.

The politicians who pose with small business owners at ribbon cuttings and then vote for policies that gut their margins owe them better than a photo. This district deserves a representative who has actually sat across the table from these people, listened to what they need, and is willing to say it plainly in Washington.

Ballots arrive May 4th. Small business is not a backdrop. It is our community.

With respect and resolve —
Nina Linh
Independent Candidate, CA-40

Let’s talk about what’s really happening to your wallet.

Something is terribly wrong.

You’re buying the same groceries — but spending more.

You’re driving the same miles — but paying more.

You’re paying your bills — and somehow falling further behind.

This isn’t random.

And it’s not just inflation.

It’s policy.

It’s trade decisions that increase costs instead of lowering them.

It’s energy policies that drive up your monthly bills.

It’s government spending that fuels long-term instability.

And while all of this is happening, Washington keeps doing the same thing — no matter which party is in charge.

That’s the part no one wants to say out loud.

Both parties talk about helping working families.

But if that were true, life wouldn’t feel this hard.

The truth is: the system is working — but not for you.

It’s working for insiders.

It’s working for institutions.

It’s working for the people who benefit from keeping things exactly the way they are.

And you’re left paying the price.

I’m running for Congress because I believe we need to reset the priorities of this country.

We should be focused on:

• Lowering costs for families

• Creating stability in everyday life

• Making it easier — not harder — to get ahead

Not endless political fights.

Not policies that raise prices.

Not a system that ignores the people it’s supposed to serve.

If we keep supporting the same system, we’re going to keep getting the same results.

It’s time to try something different. We need a new way forward.

Make Your Plan to Vote

• Vote by mail begins: May 4

• Early voting begins: May 23

• Election Day: June 2