Illinoisans face some of the highest combined state and local tax rates in the nation, squeezing the middle class and driving people out of the state. We will fix our broken fiscal climate by abandoning top-down corporate subsidies and shifting toward local wealth-building.

• Implement a Strong Towns Approach to Infrastructure: Stop spending billions on massive, high-maintenance highway expansions that trap our municipalities in long-term debt. We will pivot state infrastructure funding toward fixing existing roads, investing in walkable town centers, and supporting low-cost, high-return local improvements. This keeps infrastructure liabilities low, protecting your local property tax base from skyrocketing.

• Embrace an Ownership Economy: True economic freedom means everyday citizens—not just mega-corporations—own a piece of the pie. We will cut red tape and restructure state tax incentives to favor small family businesses, local farms, and worker-owned cooperatives. By keeping wealth local, we build a resilient economy that doesn't require a constant cycle of new state taxes to survive.

Illinois has a deeply rooted reputation for political insider deals. To break the gridlock and bypass special-interest lobbyists, we need to hand real decision-making power back to the people.

• Institutionalize Deliberative Democracy: Following proven global frameworks from the OECD, we will establish Citizen Assemblies to address our most complex, polarizing state issues (like pension reform and budgetary structural deficits). These are panels of everyday Illinoisans, selected by civic lottery to match the exact demographics of our state. They will be given the time, access to independent experts, and resources to deliberate deeply and deliver binding policy recommendations to the legislature—putting the public back in control of the government.

Rents and mortgages are eating up far too much of the average Illinoisan's paycheck. We need to treat housing as a fundamental social foundation for strong families, not a speculative asset for Wall Street hedge funds.

• Expand Social Housing and Community Land Trusts: We will pioneer state-backed financing programs to help municipalities and non-profits build social housing—high-quality, mixed-income developments owned by the public or the community rather than private landlords. We will incentivize the creation of Community Land Trusts (CLTs) to take residential land off the speculative market permanently, keeping homeownership affordable for working-class families across generations.

• Modernizing Property Wealth with a Land Value Tax: Illinois does not currently have a standalone Land Value Tax. Instead, our real estate market relies on a traditional, unified property tax system that taxes both the raw land and the improvements (buildings and structures) together. This legacy model effectively penalizes people who build or maintain housing while rewarding speculative land hoarders. We will champion a shift toward an LVT model—which taxes the unimproved value of land while reducing the tax burden on actual buildings—to encourage development and limit real estate speculation.

For decades, political campaigns have treated the abortion debate as a zero-sum wedge issue designed to polarize voters. It is time for a new way forward that moves past the single-issue trap and focuses on common-ground, pro-family, and pro-woman policies. We need to embrace a consistent ethic of life—historically championed right here in Illinois by Cardinal Joseph Bernardin—which recognizes that every human being is worthy of dignity and respect from conception to natural death.

• Eliminate the Economic Push Factors: True advocacy for life means making sure no woman ever feels forced into an abortion due to financial desperation, lack of healthcare, or career instability. We will protect society's most vulnerable by opposing actions that undermine human life—including abortion, assisted suicide, and the death penalty—while simultaneously building a robust social safety net that empowers women to choose life.

• Make Birth Free and Support Parenting Students: We will champion the "Make Birth Free" initiative, creating a state framework to eliminate the cost burden of prenatal, childbirth, and postnatal care for families. Furthermore, we will establish comprehensive state protections and resource networks for pregnant and parenting students and workers, ensuring they never have to choose between welcoming a child and finishing their education or keeping their job.

Every person carries the inherent image of God, a principle that calls us to stand in true human fraternity. We acknowledge that historic and ongoing discrimination based on race, ethnicity, religion, disability, and sex continues to prevent many Illinoisans from fully flourishing. To build a unified state, our policy must eliminate the artificial barriers erected to disenfranchise and disinherit minority communities from the freedom, prosperity, and dignity promised by the American Dream.

• Targeted Reinvestment and Common Prosperity: True healing means moving beyond symbolic gestures to secure long-denied ownership of our common prosperity. We support the ongoing work of the state's African Descent-Citizens Reparations Commission (ADCRC)—which recently detailed structural generational disparities in its Taking Account harms report—as well as localized municipal efforts. We will prioritize state infrastructure investments and community development grants for historically marginalized neighborhoods that have suffered from systemic disinvestment, ensuring local residents own the resulting wealth.

• Expanding "Land Back" and Honoring Native Sovereignty: True justice requires honoring historic agreements and correcting past misdeeds. We celebrate the historic legislative return of the 1,500-acre Shabbona Lake State Park to the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation, reversing an illegal 1849 land sale by the state. We will champion future subsidies for voluntary indigenous land restoration projects, uphold all treaty obligations, and establish collaborative land-management agreements that put resources back into the hands of tribal members while preserving public access to recreation.

• Inclusive, Full-Depth History Education: We believe that the teaching of American and Illinois history must fully weave together the diverse stories of racial, ethnic, and religious minorities. These are American stories; they do not compete with our existing historical narrative but enrich it with the nuance, fullness, and depth required to cultivate empathy and understanding among all citizens.

• Defending Equal Civic Access: We will vigorously enforce and strengthen protections ensuring equal access to the voting booth, the courts, housing, and education so that individuals with disabilities, minorities, and marginalized communities face zero institutional barriers to participation.

The scriptural and moral mandate to "welcome the stranger" calls us to recognize the core human dignity of migrants and refugees. God abhors cruelty to the vulnerable, yet our current political landscape treats human beings as geopolitical chess pieces. While the federal government has ultimate jurisdiction over immigration, Illinoisans have proven we will not stand idly by while our neighbors are facing attacks. This independent administration will work with other governors and legislators to confidently reconcile the legitimate interest of a secure, orderly society with an unyielding commitment to human rights.

• Standing Firm Against Militarized Federal Raids: In the wake of the Trump administration's aggressive federal immigration crackdown—specifically Operation Midway Blitz, which brought high-profile, military-style multi-agency raids, warrant-less building entries, and arbitrary family separations to neighborhoods like Chicago's South Shore and heavily Latine suburbs like Cicero, Berwyn, Aurora, and Elgin—Illinois must draw a firm line against federal overreach. We will vigorously uphold and defend state protections like the Welcoming City Ordinance, and ensure state and local resources are never weaponized to terrorize families, detain citizens by mistake, or leave local communities traumatized.

• Abolishing Exploitative Detention and Funding Legal Dignity: We demand the permanent abolition of for-profit detention centers, which monetize human suffering. We will actively push federal partners to properly resource the backlogged immigration court system to rapidly evaluate asylum and visa claims fairly, ending the mental and legal limbo of our new neighbors. Furthermore, we will mandate strict state oversight of short-term federal staging facilities, such as the Broadview ICE Facility, ensuring human rights standards are met and preventing the inhumane conditions that have triggered recent civil rights complaints.

• Extending Complete Workplace Protections: To eliminate underground economies and protect all labor, we will extend full state labor and wage protections to all workers, regardless of legal status. Exploiting undocumented workers drives down wages and worsens working conditions for native-born citizens. We will champion a policy shift that prioritizes severe penalties for illegal, predatory corporate hiring practices over the mass deportation of working families, while reforming temporary skilled visa frameworks so corporations can no longer exploit foreign workers or disadvantage local labor.

• A Compassionate Path to Integration: True security comes through community cohesion. We advocate for a clear path to citizenship for "Dreamers" brought here as children, and reasonable accommodations for long-term unauthorized immigrants without a criminal record who seek permanent residency. Illinois will fund grassroots, community-led bridge-building efforts—including accessible English language and civics integration courses—while maintaining a generous, welcoming policy of asylum for those fleeing political, racial, or religious persecution.

Safety and educational success don't happen in a vacuum—they are the natural results of strong, interconnected communities and stable families.

• Whole-Life Family Support: A healthy state starts with healthy homes. We will champion pro-family economic policies, including localized childcare networks, workplace flexibilities, and community-based health initiatives to support parents and children at every stage of life.

• Safety Through Built Environments: Drawing again from Strong Towns principles, we will design our communities to be inherently safer. Speed-calming street designs, vibrant public squares, and walkable neighborhood layouts naturally reduce crime by putting more "eyes on the street" and fostering deep neighborhood connections.

Stewarding Creation & Defending Children’s Health

Caring for our environment shouldn't be a partisan battleground. It is a profound moral and ethical obligation to protect the world we inhabit and preserve it for future generations. True advocacy for families and a consistent culture of life must include defending the vulnerable—especially the unborn, infants, and children—from the toxic effects of pollution and environmental degradation.

• Defending Health by Eliminating Environmental Toxins: Safe families require clean air and drinkable water. We will fast-track the replacement of toxic lead service lines that still contaminate drinking water in communities across Illinois, from urban neighborhoods to legacy industrial and rural towns. By strictly enforcing water and air quality standards, we can drastically reduce the triggers for childhood asthma, developmental delays, and prenatal health complications.

• A Just, Community-Led Energy Transition: As we transition toward a cleaner energy economy, we must reject top-down corporate mandates that leave working-class communities behind. We will support localized, decentralized energy projects—such as community solar and regional clean energy cooperatives—that keep utility wealth inside Illinois towns rather than siphoning it off to Wall Street energy conglomerates.

• Supporting Legacy Energy Workers: True stewardship means honoring the dignity of labor. We will dedicate state resources to ensure that workers in legacy energy sectors (such as coal and natural gas) receive robust training, placement, and prevailing-wage guarantees in modern infrastructure, brownfield reclamation, and clean energy manufacturing fields.