Regarding Larry Moore’s “Avoiding another 9/11” letter in the Sunday Signal, Sept. 20: I don’t know where he got his information about the Democrats’ platform, but in the Democratic Party materials I reviewed, I found no evidence supporting claims that the party seeks to abolish the presidency, defund all police departments, empty prisons, abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or replace capitalism with total government control.
The Democratic Party’s published priorities emphasize areas including health care, education, climate and energy, economic policy, and protecting individual rights and communities. The party also emphasizes the role of state and local governments in implementing policies.
The policies below should not be confused with the platform of the Democratic Socialists of America, which is a separate political organization with its own goals, policies and electoral strategy. DSA describes itself as a democratic socialist organization and explicitly distinguishes its political program from that of the Democratic Party.
Criminal Justice: The United States incarcerates a larger share of its population than most developed countries and spends tens of billions of dollars each year on corrections. Proposals include redirecting some correctional spending toward mental-health and addiction services, trauma recovery and job training. They also call for eliminating for-profit prisons, ensuring that prisons and jails are publicly operated, and expanding community-based restorative-justice programs. Crimes involving physical or sexual abuse should be prosecuted regardless of the defendant’s wealth or status. Above all, children’s safety and well-being must remain a priority.
Electricity: Regulate the construction of new artificial intelligence data centers while investing in environmentally secure new-generation capacity such as the AP1000 nuclear reactor, solar fields, and wind and offshore generation.
Finance: Establish a wealth tax on annual incomes above $2 million and use the revenue to support community priorities such as affordable housing, public education, health care, infrastructure and workforce development. Regulate credit-card interest rates and raise the federal minimum wage, which has remained at $7.25 per hour since 2009, to a level that reflects the cost of living in different communities.
Food: Ensure that every American has access to nutritious food. Reduce food waste by educating consumers about food-labeling practices, including the difference between “sell-by” dates and actual food-safety concerns. Strengthen hunger-relief organizations and better integrate them with local production and distribution systems. Encourage healthier food choices in schools and public institutions, including appropriate standards for ultra-processed foods.
Health care: Advocate for health care as a government-guaranteed right, as it is in many countries, rather than treating it primarily as a for-profit industry. Ensure that every American has access to primary, specialty and urgent care, including mental-health and addiction-recovery services. Guide health care decisions with scientific evidence rather than political ideology. Address the burden of medical debt by developing programs to reduce or eliminate medical debt for Americans struggling with health care costs.
Housing: Expand access to affordable homeownership by increasing federal support for FHA mortgage programs. Invest in community-owned housing and expand energy-efficiency rebates to help homeowners improve existing homes. Address the impact of private-equity investment in vacant housing through appropriate regulations that encourage more homes to be available for residents.
Immigration: Democratic immigration priorities emphasize stronger border enforcement, legal-system reforms and opposition to mass deportations. Proposals include improving border management, expanding high-skilled visas, providing green cards for certain graduates, protecting Dreamers, establishing processing centers in Latin America for asylum applications and restructuring the immigration court system as an independent Article I court. The proposals also call for additional immigration judges and resources to help reduce the existing case backlog.
National security and foreign policy: Emphasis on repairing relationships with global allies and rejecting foreign policy approaches that alienate international partners or embolden adversaries. Focus on restoring and protecting U.S. military readiness and ensuring proper oversight of defense and intelligence operations. Promote continued support for democratic allies and international partners, including renewing support for Ukraine and applying diplomatic pressure in Middle East conflicts.
Public Education: Invest in and expand regional community colleges to make higher education more affordable. Expand professional certification programs that provide recognized credentials and help learners qualify for new career opportunities. Strengthen Federal Student Aid programs that offer student-loan forgiveness in exchange for qualifying public service. Expand federal investment in “baby bonds” to provide young people with financial resources and greater opportunities as they enter adulthood and the workforce.
Technology and cybersecurity: Target emerging threats by regulating AI, securing government infrastructure against foreign cyberattacks, and restricting adversarial technologies (such as barring high-risk foreign AI models from federal devices).
Worker safety: Build stronger communication and create a shared database between OSHA and labor unions to improve safety regulations and inspections.
The Democratic Socialists of America is a separate organization. DSA reported 120,000 members in July 2026. As of April 2026, approximately 45.4 million voters were registered as Democrats, although party-registration figures are compiled from state-level data and do not cover every state the same way.
DSA currently has two members serving in Congress. After the 2026 Democratic primaries, DSA reported seven endorsed candidates positioned to seek House seats in the November general election. Their status as members of Congress will depend on the general-election results. The U.S. House has 435 voting members, plus six nonvoting delegates.
Recent polling also shows that some policies commonly associated with Democrats have substantial support among Republican voters. For example, surveys have found Republican support for paid family leave, increases in the minimum wage, and some proposals to expand access to health care. Polling also shows substantial Republican concern about the growth of AI data centers and their effects on electricity costs, water use and local communities.
These findings show that individual policy preferences do not always fall neatly along party lines, and specific polling results depend on question wording and the population surveyed.
Judy Taylour
Newhall
