Mckayla Wilkes' Issue Positions (Political Courage Test)
Key
Official Position: Candidate addressed this issue directly by taking the Political Courage Test.
Inferred Position: Candidate refused to address this issue, but Vote Smart inferred this issue based on the candidate's public record, including statements, voting record, and special interest group endorsements.
Unknown Position: Candidate refused to address this issue, or we could not infer an answer for this candidate despite exhaustive research of their public record.
Additional Information: Click on this icon to reveal more information about this candidate's position, from their answers or Vote Smart's research.
Other or Expanded Principles & Legislative Priorities are entered exactly as candidates submit them. Vote Smart does not edit for misspelled words, punctuation or grammar.
Mckayla Wilkes has failed to provide voters with positions on key issues covered by the 2024 Political Courage Test, despite repeated requests from Vote Smart and voters like you.
Issue Positions
For Presidential and Congressional candidates who refuse to provide voters with their positions, Vote Smart has researched their public records to determine their likely responses. These issue positions are from 2024.
- Despite exhaustive research, Vote Smart was unable to find information about this candidate's position.
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- Despite exhaustive research, Vote Smart was unable to find information about this candidate's position.
- Despite exhaustive research, Vote Smart was unable to find information about this candidate's position.
- Despite exhaustive research, Vote Smart was unable to find information about this candidate's position.
- Despite exhaustive research, Vote Smart was unable to find information about this candidate's position.
- Despite exhaustive research, Vote Smart was unable to find information about this candidate's position.
- Despite exhaustive research, Vote Smart was unable to find information about this candidate's position.
- Despite exhaustive research, Vote Smart was unable to find information about this candidate's position.
- "For the richest country in the world, homelessness, evictions, dilapidation, and gentrification have always been policy choices. This crisis is the result of politicians like Steny Hoyer consistently favoring the interests of investors, developers, and the wealthy over tenants and the vulnerable. And as Covid-19 has made us acutely aware, housing insecurity has severe public health consequences. Housing is a human right. Beyond addressing the immediate housing crisis, our vision of guaranteeing housing for all will create millions of good-paying jobs, tackle the climate crisis, and address at the root the racism that has prevented Black Americans from building generational wealth. I support a Homes Guarantee, a comprehensive framework for enshrining housing as a right for all." (mckaylawilkes.com)
- Despite exhaustive research, Vote Smart was unable to find information about this candidate's position.
- "A one-time cancellation of all remaining student debt." (mckaylawilkes.com)
- Despite exhaustive research, Vote Smart was unable to find information about this candidate's position.
- "The climate crisis, which threatens Southern Maryland with rising sea levels, extreme weather events, and severe economic disruption, is the context for all the social and economic challenges we face in the coming decades. Recent research suggests we are currently on track for the worst case climate scenarios. We are currently projected to reach 1.5 degrees Celsius global warming by 2030 â a decade ahead of what the 2018 U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report predicted â and 2 degrees Celsius before 2050, way ahead of the Paris Agreementâs goal of averting 2 degree rise by 2100. This challenge demands the kind of society-wide mobilization unseen in American history since World War II. Given the United States' historic and ongoing role as the largest greenhouse gas emitter, we have a special obligation to the Global South and the rest of the planet to lead an unprecedented transformation toward a decarbonized global economy. We can win a Green New Deal that decarbonizes the US economy by 2030, repairs the generational harms of racism, and guarantees economic security for all." (mckaylawilkes.com)
- Despite exhaustive research, Vote Smart was unable to find information about this candidate's position.
- "In a country where death-by-guns claim more than 39,000 lives every year, our political leaders' failure to take on gun violence is a national disgrace. Common-sense gun reforms are popular; it's time to take the will of the people to the halls of Congress. The crisis, of course, doesn't affect Americans evenly: gun violence disproportionately plagues low-income and minorities communities, including many in Maryland's 5th district. We cannot become numb to the magnitude of this problem. It's time to enact comprehensive universal background checks, enact a two week waiting period for the purchase of all firearms, ending the sale of guns that enable the killing of a large number of people, and demilitarize law enforcement." (mckaylawilkes.com)
- "A better future is possible. Medicare for All would ensure that Americans can go to their doctor without worrying about high bills or red tape. It would mean that individuals, families, and even the state and federal governments would save millions of dollars on health care by reducing administrative waste, investing in prevention and early medical intervention, and bringing stability to the health service industry." (mckaylawilkes.com)
- Despite exhaustive research, Vote Smart was unable to find information about this candidate's position.
- "Mandating that Medicare cover prescription drugs, primary care, maternity care, vision and dental care, reproductive healthcare (including abortion), doctors' visits, and lab services." (mckaylawilkes.com)
- Despite exhaustive research, Vote Smart was unable to find information about this candidate's position.
- "Immigrant communities should be able to live, work, and attend school free of fear. That reality is impossible as long as ICE roams our communities tearing families apart, border officials put young children in cages, and millions of undocumented Americans are forced to live in the shadows. For decades, cruelty toward immigrants has been a matter of bipartisan consensus. Mckayla believes that consensus must end â now. That's why she is calling for the abolition of ICE, a moratorium on deportations, the decriminalization of border crossing, and a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants and holders of Temporary Protected Status." (mckaylawilkes.com)
- Despite exhaustive research, Vote Smart was unable to find information about this candidate's position.
- Despite exhaustive research, Vote Smart was unable to find information about this candidate's position.
This candidate has responded to a Political Courage Test in a previous election. As a continued effort to provide the American public with factual information on candidates running for public office, these archived responses are made available here.
| Pro-choice | Do you generally support pro-choice or pro-life legislation? | ||
| I support women's reproductive rights to control their own bodies. I would fight against any efforts to overturn Roe v. Wade or infringe upon these rights. | |||
| Yes | In order to balance the budget, do you support an income tax increase on any tax bracket? | ||
| Yes | Do you support expanding federal funding to support entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare? | ||
| We support increasing taxes on the wealthiest Americans. That means creating a new tax bracket for people making more than $10 million, as well as taxing the value of estates that are larger than $1 billion. We should also be spending the tax dollars that we are already paying on things that help regular everyday people. That means rerouting our money away from wars and toward education, Social Security, housing, healthcare and infrastructure. In addition, we must ensure that we close tax loopholes that allow billion dollar corporations and the ultra-wealthy to avoid paying their fare share of taxes. | |||
| Yes | Do you support the regulation of indirect campaign contributions from corporations and unions? | ||
| We support a constitutional amendment to repeal the Citizens United decision, which allows for unlimited indirect campaign contributions. We also support the nomination of judges who will vote to repeal Citizens United. | |||
| No | Do you support increasing defense spending? | ||
| We have called for cutting at least $200 billion in wasteful defense spending. However, we do support massive increases in foreign aid for struggling countries, especially countries which have been the victim of unjust American interventions. Our Green New Deal plank will devote billions of dollars providing well-paying, union jobs for many folks who currently work in the defense industry. | |||
| Yes | Do you support federal spending as a means of promoting economic growth? | ||
| No | Do you support lowering corporate taxes as a means of promoting economic growth? | ||
| Time and again we have seen that trickle down economics leads to stock buy-backs for the rich and stagnant wages for the working poor. It is time that we invest in regular working-class people not just because it is the morally right thing to do but because it is also the best way to stimulate the economy leading to lasting economic growth. | |||
| Yes | Do you support requiring states to adopt federal education standards? | ||
| We do, but education reform cannot stop at unfunded mandates that poorer states and districts can't comply with. We must revolutionize K-12 education through reforms which federalize education funding, thereby reducing school districts' reliance on local property taxes. That way, federalized standards actually have a shot at being met, and aren't just a way to punish poor districts and their teachers. | |||
| Yes | Do you support government funding for the development of renewable energy (e.g. solar, wind, geo-thermal)? | ||
| Yes | Do you support the federal regulation of greenhouse gas emissions? | ||
| I support a Green New Deal because it can tackle two pressing and deeply intertwined crises: an environmental crisis of rising global temperatures, and an economic crisis of gross inequality and stagnant wages. We need a ten-year national economic mobilization that would decarbonize the economy, put millions of Americans to work building the energy infrastructure of the future, and ensure equity and fairness. | |||
| Yes | Do you generally support gun-control legislation? | ||
| Every day, over 100 people are killed by guns in the United States of America, while hundreds more are injured. It is passed time to act and end senseless gun deaths in the United States through evidence-based violence prevention methods likes universal background checks; requiring training for safe use and storage; and ending the creation, marketing and sale of guns that enable the killing of staggering numbers of people. While we cannot get back all of the lives we have lost, we have a chance to act now to make sure more people are not effected. | |||
| Yes | Do you support repealing the 2010 Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare")? | ||
| I support replacing the ACA with a Medicare for All system. Medicare For All would insure every single American, no matter their economic status, restore justice to health care delivery, and even save us money over the long run. A single payer system expands health care to anyone not covered by the Veterans Health Administration or Indian Health Service onto one Medicare insurance plan over the course of two years. It also expands Medicare to include dental, vision, primary care, and long term care. This means every doctor is in network and free at the point of service. | |||
| No | Do you support the construction of a wall along the Mexican border? | ||
| No | Do you support requiring immigrants who are unlawfully present to return to their country of origin before they are eligible for citizenship? | ||
| The wall is not a serious immigration proposal. It is a symbol of racism and xenophobia. We should be bringing undocumented out of the shadows so they can enjoy all the privileges of American citizenship. Requiring undocumented immigrants to return to their country of origin will destroy families and devastate the lives of immigrant children. It will also pose a severe threat to the lives of many undocumented folks, as many flee to the United States for fear of domestic or gang violence. | |||
| No | Should the United States use military force to prevent governments hostile to the U.S. from possessing a weapon of mass destruction (for example: nuclear, biological, chemical)? | ||
| Yes | Do you support reducing military intervention in Middle East conflicts? | ||
| Most of the time, calls to invade a nation to prevent them from acquiring WMDs are just superficial post-hoc justifications for American power politics. We now know that the Bush administration's evidence for Iraq's WMD program was overblown, if not entirely fabricated. We need to stop rushing into Middle East wars that end up causing far more damage and anti-American sentiment than they were designed to prevent. Let's build up the region through reparative foreign aid instead. | |||
| Yes | Do you generally support removing barriers to international trade (for example: tariffs, quotas, etc.)? | ||
| It's difficult to speak on this issue generally. We don't support a nationalistic retreat from the international economy, but we also don't support trade deals like NAFTA which are written by and for large financial interests. Our trade policy needs to be geared toward helping those at the bottom of the economic ladder, both in the United States and abroad. In the past few decades, America has failed mightily at that task. | |||
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