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

I want you to picture someone.

Her name is Margaret. She is 71 years old and she lives right here in our district. For 40 years, she got up before sunrise and drove to a job she did not always love, because she was building something. Every single paycheck, a little bit came out before she even saw it. Social Security, it said on the stub. She never complained. She figured: that is my retirement. That is the deal this country made with me. I hold up my end, they hold up theirs.

Margaret is retired. Her Social Security check is $1,976 a month. Rent alone in this district runs over $2,500. She shares a small apartment with her adult daughter. The check barely covers her half of the rent and her prescriptions. Groceries come last. She stretches every dollar. She skips things she should not skip. She does not complain, because she is proud. She is one medical bill away from a crisis.

What Margaret does not know — what nobody has sat down and told her plainly — is that if Congress does not act, her check could be cut by nearly $450 a month in as little as seven years. Not because she did anything wrong. The people she sent to Washington kept putting off a problem they knew was coming. It is almost here.
This is not a distant political issue. This is Margaret’s life. And it is the life of tens of thousands of seniors right here at home.

My own parents are Margaret. My mother came to this country as a refugee, worked nursing shifts for decades — on her feet, caring for other people, paying into Social Security with every paycheck. My stepfather Papa Steve is veteran who came from nothing, built himself through honest work and quiet dignity, and paid in his whole career. For both of them, that monthly check is not charity. It is a return on a lifetime of showing up.

When politicians call Social Security an ‘entitlement’ like it is something to be embarrassed about, I think of my mother’s tired feet after a twelve-hour shift. I think of Papa Steve in his uniform. I want to look those politicians in the eye and say: these people are entitled to exactly what they paid for. Every cent of it.

Here is what is actually happening — in plain language.

Social Security works like a relay race. Workers running today hand money forward to retirees who already finished the race. For most of history, there were enough runners to keep the baton moving. That is changing. There are fewer workers for every retiree than there used to be, and the gap keeps growing. The trust fund — the savings account that covers the difference — is running low.

The official government report from 2025 says that The Social Security savings account will be empty by 2033. That’s eight years from now, when today’s 59-year-olds reach retirement age. That’s when Margaret’s youngest neighbor collecting Social Security today turns 70. At that point, the law requires automatic cuts of about 23 percent to every benefit, for every retiree, regardless of how little they have. Margaret’s $1,976 becomes $1,520. That gap does not just hurt her budget—it ends independence for many seniors.

Here is the part that should make you angry. The One Big Beautiful Bill — the tax law Congress just passed — made this problem worse. Independent budget analysts confirmed it cost Social Security an additional $169 billion and pushed the insolvency date closer. The same law that handed corporations and the wealthy trillions in tax cuts also quietly moved the deadline on your parents’ retirement security. Nobody stood at a podium and announced that. However, that is what the numbers show.
There are real solutions. They just require honest leadership.

The first fix is simple and fair. Right now, Social Security taxes stop once a worker earns $184,500. After that, higher earners pay nothing more into the system for the rest of the year.

A firefighter earning $80,000 pays on every dollar all year.

A millionaire stopped paying in March.

In Orange County and the Inland Empire, a household earning $185,000 is often two working parents — a teacher and a nurse — stretched thin. They are not who I am talking about.

The proposal I support creates what is called a donut hole: earnings between $184,500 and $400,000 are fully protected. Nothing changes for those families. Above $400,000 — where a household is solidly upper income even in California — the Social Security tax resumes. That new revenue is real money, not borrowed money, going directly into strengthening the fund.

Here is something most people do not know. Social Security can only invest its money in government bonds, earning about 2.5 percent a year. That is it.

Yet, every major retirement fund in America invests in a mix of stocks, bonds, and real assets and grows far more over time. CalPERS, California's own pension fund, does this. Canada does this. Norway does this. Every one of them except Social Security.
I want to change that law. Let me be clear about what this is not: it is not privatization. Privatization means handing your retirement over to Wall Street and letting each person gamble with their own account. That is not what I am talking about. The fund stays government owned, government managed, and publicly accountable. Every dollar stays in the system. Every benefit is protected. We simply allow Social Security to invest smarter, the same way every major pension fund already does, with independent professionals managing it and no politicians touching it.

The new revenue from earners above $400,000 seeds that fund. The fair trade for those being asked to contribute more is this: those additional contributions should be tax deductible, lowering their income tax bill. When they retire, their Social Security benefits should be tax-free. You paid more in. You get more out. The government does not tax you again on what you earned. That is not a giveaway. That is fairness.

One more thing almost nobody in Washington will say plainly: immigration is a Social Security issue. Social Security depends on workers paying in. The Social Security Trustees’ own report confirms that for every 400,000 fewer immigrants below projected levels, there is an 11 percent shortfall in Social Security revenue. The leaders promising to protect your retirement while pursuing mass deportation are not doing the math. Fewer workers means less money flowing into the fund. It is that direct.

Margaret should not have to worry about her check.

She showed up for forty years. She paid in on time, every time. She trusted the deal. What she deserves is a representative who will walk into that chamber and protect that promise with the same commitment she brought to every shift she ever worked.
My parents deserve that too. So do you.

Ballots arrive May 4th. Let’s not let Margaret down. Make your vote count.

With commitment and care —
Nina Linh
Independent Congressional Candidate, CA-40

I want to tell you something I have never said publicly before.

My son is a beautiful, bright light. He came into this world with a mind that could light up a room and a heart that felt everything deeply.

Trauma, however, has a way of redirecting a life — quietly at first, then unmistakably. What began as pain that went unaddressed became patterns that were harder and harder to break.

What could have been treated early, when the brain is most responsive and the window of intervention is widest, instead progressed year after year into what is now a severe mental health condition that did not have to reach this point.

I am his mother. I watched it happen. I also watched a system that was supposed to help us fail him at every turn — not out of malice, but out of misalignment.

The insurance industry and the mental health industry are not organized around healing. They are organized around managing symptoms, moving patients through, and minimizing short-term cost.

The result is a system that treats the fire alarm instead of the fire. That discharges patients the moment they stabilize and calls it success, even when the root cause has never been touched.

For nine years, I watched continuity of care get severed at the exact moment it mattered most. I watched innovative, proven approaches get denied because they did not fit a predetermined protocol. My son paid the price for that math. So did our family.

That experience broke my heart. It also changed my life. When I looked around, I realized this was not just our story. It was everyone’s story. Nobody in power was being honest about it.

That is why I started the WonderSeed Foundation.

The theory of change is this: unaddressed trauma is the root cause of almost everything we are failing to solve.

Emotional dysregulation — the inability to manage one’s emotional responses because the underlying trauma has never been addressed — is the common thread running through mental illness, addiction, criminal behavior, suicide, chronic unemployment, bullying, domestic violence, and cycles of poverty.

We spend billions treating the end-stage consequences of these conditions. We spend almost nothing addressing the root.

I know this because I spent eight years inside LA County juvenile facilities, sitting across from young people the system had already written off. I sat with kids who had been through more pain by age fourteen than most people experience in a lifetime. Kids who had learned to survive by disconnecting from their own emotions because feeling was too dangerous.

What those young people needed was not punishment. Not processing. Not a checklist. They needed sustained, relational, trauma-informed care — the kind that gives a developing brain the time and safety it needs to build new neural pathways. To literally rewire. To heal.

The science behind this is clear: the brain is neuroplastic. It can change. It can create new pathways. That process, however, requires time, consistency, and continuity of care. You cannot heal a traumatized or an addicted brain in six sessions. You cannot build lasting behavioral change by discharging a patient the moment they show improvement and calling it a success.

That moment of improvement is precisely when the real work begins — when the brain is most ready to consolidate change.

Cutting care at that point does not save money. It creates the revolving door that costs ten times more downstream, and every family that has lived through it knows exactly what I mean.

So why does the system keep doing it?

Insurance companies are optimizing for the wrong thing. They count this quarter’s expenditure rather than next year’s savings. They approve cookie-cutter treatment protocols that fit a billing code rather than evidence-based approaches that fit a human being. They require patients to fail at cheaper interventions before approving what clinicians actually recommend — a practice called step therapy, which sounds efficient but is often cruel. They override clinical judgment with administrative denials. And most of them operate with almost no transparency about their outcomes, their denial rates, or their criteria for what they consider medically necessary.

Meanwhile, the programs that actually work — the ones using proven, innovative, trauma-informed approaches that produce lasting change — are almost entirely cash-pay, out of pocket, and out of reach for most working families in this district.

The best mental healthcare in this country is accessible if you are wealthy. If you are not, you get what the insurance company decides to approve. And what they decide to approve is rarely enough, rarely right, and rarely sustained long enough to matter.

This is not only a compassion argument alone. It is a math argument.

The RAND Corporation’s review of early mental health interventions found that every dollar invested returns between $1.80 and $17 in savings across healthcare costs, criminal justice, and workforce productivity — depending on the program and how early the intervention begins.

The earlier we intervene, the higher the return. The longer we wait, the more expensive the consequences become.

An emergency room visit for a psychiatric crisis costs thousands of dollars. A month of incarceration costs thousands of dollars. A childhood interrupted by untreated trauma costs a lifetime of lost potential — and an enormous public price tag that every taxpayer in this district is already paying.

We are not saving money by underfunding mental health. We are paying for it later, at a much higher rate, in ways that are harder to see and impossible to ignore — in our emergency rooms, our jails, our homeless encampments, our schools, our workplaces, and our families.

What needs to change — and what I am committed to delivering.

Insurance companies must be required to cover mental health care at parity with physical health care — not on paper, but in practice. That means the same coverage limits, the same appeals process, the same standards for medical necessity. And it means real enforcement when they do not comply, not just guidelines that get ignored.

Step therapy must be reformed. A clinician’s recommendation should not be overridden by an insurance algorithm designed to delay approval until a patient gives up or deteriorates. The patient and their doctor should be in charge of their care. Period.

Continuity of care must be protected. When a patient is making progress, that is a reason to continue care — not to end it. Arbitrary session limits that cut off treatment at the moment of breakthrough are not cost management. They are harm.

Hospitals and treatment programs must be held to transparency. If a program is charging thousands of dollars per day, families deserve to know its outcomes. Its success rates. What it actually delivers.

The opacity of the mental health treatment industry is one of the reasons so many families spend everything they have and get so little in return.

We must also close the access gap. That means expanding community mental health centers, funding school-based mental health programs, and building a system where the quality of care is not determined by the size of a family’s bank account.

I built WonderSeed because I believe there is a better way. I have seen, in juvenile halls and in my own family, what happens when we get it right — and what it costs when we do not.

The young people I sat with in those facilities were not lost causes. They were undertreated human beings whose brains were still capable of change, still capable of growth, and still capable of becoming whoever they were meant to be.

Every child, every adult, every family deserves the same chance. That is not radical. That is what healthcare is supposed to mean.

Ballots arrive May 4th and VOTE June 2nd. Let’s build something better.

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

When I was growing up, the American Dream always included a home.

You know the image. The white picket fence. The yard. The front porch. A place that was yours — that no one could take from you. It was not just a house. It was the symbol of everything this country promised. Work hard, play by the rules, and one day you will have a place to plant yourself and build a life.

That image is still real to a lot of people here at home. The desire for it has not gone away. But the ability to reach it? That has become another story entirely. And somewhere between the promise and the price tag, the dream stopped being attainable for a whole generation of working families in this district.

Here is where we actually are.

The median home price in Orange County has crossed $1 million. In Riverside County — the newer part of this district — the median is around $600,000. Neither number is accessible to a working family trying to buy their first home. A 20% down payment on an Orange County home means coming up with $200,000 before you even walk through the door. In Riverside County it means $120,000. And then carrying a mortgage payment that, at current interest rates, runs thousands of dollars a month in either case.

Renters here at home are not doing better. Rental prices have climbed sharply over the past three years. Young families saving toward a down payment are watching that savings consumed by rent increases that arrive every twelve months. The people most squeezed are not the poorest — they have some protections. They are not the wealthiest — they can absorb the cost. They are the teachers, the firefighters, the small business owners, the young couples on dual incomes. The middle class this district was built for is the one being slowly pushed out of it.

And then there is the insurance crisis — which is now our crisis too.

The 2025 wildfires that tore through Southern California were a catastrophe for the entire state — more than 12,000 structures destroyed, billions in losses, communities that may never fully recover. That consequence changed the insurance landscape for every homeowner in California, including right here at home.

In the aftermath, State Farm was approved to raise rates by an average of 17% on roughly one million homeowner policies statewide. In the five years before those fires, more than 100,000 Californians had already lost their home insurance. The FAIR Plan — the insurer of last resort — more than doubled its enrollment in three years. And the Airport Fire in 2024 had already hit Orange and Riverside counties directly, triggering mandatory protections for approximately 580,000 policyholders in our own district. Homeowners here at home are opening renewal notices they didn’t budget for, calling agents who tell them their carrier is leaving California, and turning to a last-resort plan that was never designed to carry this load.

Here is the compounding problem: you cannot get a mortgage without homeowners insurance. When insurance becomes unavailable or unaffordable in a ZIP code, home sales stall, property values destabilize, and the dream of homeownership doesn’t just get harder — it starts to structurally collapse. This is not a warning about what might happen. It is a description of what is happening now.

What is being done — and what still needs to happen.

California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara has taken real steps. His Sustainable Insurance Strategy now requires for the first time that insurers write and maintain coverage in wildfire-distressed areas, covering more than 1.5 million homeowners. New catastrophe modeling rules are bringing some carriers back. Nine new consumer protection laws took effect in January 2026 — faster claim payouts, expanded non-renewal protections, and a wildfire safety grant program. These are meaningful reforms. They are working, slowly.

But state action alone is not enough. And that is where Congress comes in — where I come in.

Congress needs to create a federal wildfire reinsurance backstop — modeled on the National Flood Insurance Program that already exists. When private insurers cannot sustainably price catastrophic risk, a federal backstop stabilizes the market and keeps coverage affordable for homeowners.

Congress should also tie federally-backed mortgages — FHA, VA, USDA — to home hardening standards. Fire-resistant construction lowers risk. Lower risk lowers premiums. That is the market-based lever Congress has and has not used.

And we need federal investment in wildfire mitigation at scale — forest management, controlled burns, community firebreaks — because the single most effective way to lower insurance premiums is to reduce the underlying risk. You cannot regulate your way to affordable insurance if the fire risk keeps growing. You have to address the fire risk.

What about the One Big Beautiful Bill? Let’s be honest about what it actually does.

The bill includes two housing provisions being promoted as wins. Let me tell you what they actually are.

First: the SALT deduction cap raised to $40,000. This sounds like relief for California homeowners. It is not relief for most people reading this. Here is what SALT actually is: a double tax. You earned income. Your state taxed it. Then the federal government taxes that same income again — as if the money you already handed to the state is still sitting in your pocket. For homeowners, it works the same way with property tax. You paid your county to fund local schools, roads, and fire departments. That money is gone. The federal government then taxes you as though you still have it. Same dollar, taxed twice. That is the injustice at the heart of this debate. And it is a real one. But here is what Congress did in 2017: they capped the SALT deduction not to fix that injustice — but to help pay for a $500 billion corporate tax cut. They limited what working homeowners could deduct in order to hand corporations a windfall. The BBB raised that cap slightly, but only about 13 million of 86 million homeowners even itemize enough to benefit — and the truly wealthy found a loophole through pass-through business entities that lets them avoid the cap entirely. The BBB raised the cap and left the loophole open. Renters pay property taxes too, built into their rent, and cannot deduct a dollar. Until this system is reformed honestly — not to benefit corporations, not to favor the wealthy — it remains a broken promise to the people who need relief most.

Second: the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit expansion. The program has built over three million units since 1986 — that is real. But research shows developers capture roughly half the subsidy in profits, units cost 20% more to build than standard construction due to layers of middlemen, and after 30 years the affordability requirements can expire entirely. Private equity firms have been buying these properties and finding loopholes to exit early, leaving tenants with nowhere to go. More units through LIHTC is a start — but without accountability reforms, it is largely a subsidy for developers, not a solution for families. And with current tariffs driving up the cost of lumber, steel, and building materials, every unit is getting more expensive to build before ground is even broken. We cannot expand affordable housing supply while simultaneously making construction costlier.

And none of this touches the most urgent barrier: there is no down payment assistance in this bill. No first-time homebuyer program. No direct help for the working families here at home who can afford a mortgage payment but cannot clear the barrier of $120,000 or $200,000 up front. The people most in need are still entirely on their own.

Meanwhile, the same bill adds $3.4 trillion to the national deficit. Deficit spending keeps upward pressure on interest rates. Mortgage rates do not move in isolation — they move with the cost of federal borrowing. A bill that adds to the deficit while offering modest housing provisions is not a housing solution. The math undermines the mission.

What I would actually do.

First, Congress can use federal infrastructure and transportation dollars to incentivize local zoning reform — rewarding communities that allow more dense, mixed-income, and workforce housing. Zoning decisions happen locally, but federal leverage can accelerate the change. This approach has worked. It can work here.

Second, we need real down payment assistance for working and middle-income families — not tax deductions that only help people who already own, but direct support for people trying to get in the door for the first time. First-generation homeowners, essential workers, young families: these are the people this district was built for, and they deserve a federal partner in this.

The housing dream is not gone. But it will not survive a Congress that passes tax documents and calls them housing policy, or elected officials who own multiple properties and vote against the programs that would help their constituents buy one. I came to this country with nothing. I know what it means to work toward something stable, something permanent, something yours. That is the most American aspiration there is — and it is worth showing up to protect.

Ballots arrive May 4. This is the moment to send someone who actually understands what is at stake.

With purpose and resolve —

Nina Linh

Independent Candidate, CA-40

My mother didn’t ask for much from this country.

She came here as a refugee — legally and honorably — with three small children in her arms and a resilient spirit. No English. No connections. No roadmap. She worked. She stretched every dollar until it apologized. She raised children the way immigrants do: with sacrifice as the love language, with the quiet belief that everything she gave up was an investment in us and in this country’s promise.

In her later years, Medicare is what keeps her going. Not as charity. Not as a handout. As a promise — one this country made to her after decades of contributing to it. She paid into it her whole working life. She earned it the hard way.

And then there is Papa Steve.

My stepfather is a Korean War veteran. He came from nothing, built himself into something through sheer will and honest work, and has lived his entire life by a simple code: do right by others, show up, don’t complain. He is one of the most honorable men I have ever known. The kind of American this country was built on and too often forgets.

Medicare is what makes it possible for Papa Steve to get the care he needs. Because at his age, medical needs don’t ask for your permission or your budget — they arrive. And I remember the times my parents looked at the out-of-pocket cost, weighed how serious it really was, and decided to skip the treatment.

That is not dignity. That is not the promise this country made to the people who built it.

And it is not just the elderly who are caught in this trap.

My niece is a young woman with Type 1 diabetes. She is smart, capable, and ambitious — exactly the kind of person this economy should be rewarding. But she is not free. She cannot leave her job to pursue something better, something that pays more, something that matches who she is and what she can do. Not because she lacks the courage or the talent. Because she cannot afford to lose her health insurance for a single day. Insulin is not optional. Continuous glucose monitoring is not optional. For someone with Type 1 diabetes, these are not lifestyle choices — they are survival. And in this country, survival is attached to your employer.

That is a form of bondage we do not talk about enough. We call it the “job lock” problem, and it quietly suffocates the ambition of millions of Americans — young workers, caregivers, people with chronic conditions — who cannot take a risk on themselves because the system has made their health dependent on staying exactly where they are. My niece should be free to grow. She should be free to build. Instead, she is making the same kind of calculation Papa Steve makes — just from the other end of life.

When I hear politicians talk about cutting Medicare and Medicaid to “reduce the deficit,” I think about my mother. I think about Papa Steve. And then I think about the tens of thousands of Medicare beneficiaries right here in CA-40 — your parents, your neighbors, maybe you — each one doing that same quiet math. Wondering if this time, the cost of getting help is more than they can carry.

What is being proposed right now is not reform. It is reduction. Hundreds of billions in Medicaid cuts over the next decade. In California, Medi-Cal covers one in three residents. These cuts mean fewer nursing home beds, less in-home care for disabled adults, reduced coverage for children in low-income families. The language sounds responsible — “efficiency,” “program integrity,” “fiscal discipline” — but what it means in practice is: less care for more people.

And here is what makes this unconscionable: these cuts are being made at the same time Congress passed the One Big Beautiful Bill — a law the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office confirmed adds $3.4 trillion to the national deficit over ten years, rising to over $4 trillion with interest. The bill slashes tax revenue by $4.5 trillion, overwhelmingly benefiting corporations and the wealthiest Americans, while gutting Medicaid to partially cover the cost. They are taking from my mom’s care, Papa Steve’s care — from your grandmother’s care — to fund a tax cut for a hedge fund. I will say that plainly because no one in Washington will.

The question I hear everywhere I go is always the same: then how do we pay for it without cutting the people who need it most?

That is the right question. And it has real answers.

The first place to look is where the money is already being wasted. There is a broken federal budget rule called “use it or lose it” — agencies must spend their full budget before the fiscal year closes or risk losing those funds the following year. So they spend. Fast. On anything. This past September, the Pentagon spent a record $93.4 billion in a single month. A government watchdog documented the receipts: $6.9 million on lobster tail, $15 million on ribeye steak, $225 million on furniture, a $98,000 Steinway grand piano for an Air Force general’s home. This happens across every department, every year, from both parties. With your help, I plan to reform this — because that money belongs in our parent’s healthcare, not in a piano for someone’s living room.

Medicare also needs the full power to negotiate drug prices. The program already started under the Inflation Reduction Act — and it is working. The first ten negotiated drugs are saving an estimated $6 billion a year. The next fifteen drugs taking effect in 2027 are projected to save $8.5 to $12 billion more per year. This is real money going back into coverage instead of pharmaceutical profit margins. However, the One Big Beautiful Bill has already moved to weaken this program by broadening exemptions for drug companies. That is not fiscal responsibility. That is choosing the pharmaceutical industry over your family.

I also believe we need an honest national conversation about a public healthcare option — a government-administered plan that competes alongside private insurance, giving every American access to affordable care without forcing anyone off coverage they have and value. This is not a radical idea. It is a practical one. It fills the gaps that leave too many people behind — the self-employed, the gig workers, the families one medical crisis away from bankruptcy. The goal is not to dismantle what works. The goal is to stop punishing people for getting sick.

Healthcare is not a political abstraction to me. It is my mother. It is Papa Steve. It is my niece, who deserves to chase her potential without her diagnosis deciding her destiny. It is the quiet, impossible calculation that too many families in this district are making right now — between their health and everything else they were supposed to be able to want.

I am not going to Washington to manage the decline of a promise this country made to its people. I am going to stand for it. The way a daughter stands up for what her mother earned. The way a family shows up for the veteran who answered when his country called. And the way an aunt advocates for a young woman who should be free to become whoever she is meant to be.

(A full breakdown of the One Big Beautiful Bill and what it means for your family is coming in an upcoming article.)

Ballots arrive May 4th. Your vote is a statement about what kind of country we are choosing to be. VOTE INDEPENDENT

With care and commitment —
Nina Linh
Independent Candidate, CA-40

We are living through something that doesn’t feel right.

You feel it at the grocery store.

You feel it when you fill up your tank.

You feel it when you open your utility bill.

You’re doing everything right — and it still feels like you’re falling behind.

That’s not your fault.

It’s the system. It doesn’t work for us.

For years, we’ve been told that if we just elect the right people from one of the two parties, things will get better. But no matter who wins, the results feel the same:

Higher costs.

More uncertainty.

More division.

More finger-pointing.

We keep switching sides, hoping for change — but the system itself never changes.

That’s why nothing gets better.

This isn’t about left versus right.

It’s about a system that protects itself instead of working for you.

I’m running for Congress because I’ve lived this.

I didn’t come from politics.

I come from a working-class family where every dollar mattered.

I understand what it feels like to struggle, to be overlooked, and to fight for something better.

I’m not running to play the same political game.

I’m running as a rebel with a cause — to challenge a broken system and put people first again.

Because if we keep supporting the same two-party system, we’re going to keep getting the same results.

It’s time to try something different.

Make Your Plan to Vote

• Vote by mail begins: May 4

• Early voting begins: May 23

• Election Day: June 2

You have a choice this election.

You can keep doing what we’ve always done.

Or you can pave a new way forward.