Ro Khanna Calls Out Both Parties: Immigration, Tech & Free Speech

Khanna said H-1B abuse is real and backed prevailing-wage and skilled-job rules, but rejected Trump’s blanket $100,000 fee as especially damaging to startups. He also wants H-1Bs to move faster toward green cards, warning that blunt limits can simply push jobs overseas.

Khanna said Democrats should plainly admit the Biden administration let too many people cross without adequate border security. He opposed Trump’s near-zero asylum approach but said he would work with him on legal status for long-settled, tax-paying undocumented workers without criminal records.

At a Trump tech dinner, one host said Trump asked executives their biggest problem; after Google raised European regulatory pressure, Trump made calls and applied pressure the next day. Khanna said Biden ignored his warning that Silicon Valley allegiance was cultural, not about donations, allowing Trump to claim the pro-innovation future.

Khanna said the shutdown fight is fundamentally about whether Trump can disregard spending Congress already appropriated, not merely a routine budget dispute. He said expiring ACA exchange credits could raise a roughly $7,000 annual premium to about $21,000, making their extension the likely basis for a deal.

Khanna’s sharpest intra-party break is free speech: his leaked email opposed Twitter suppressing the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story. He also opposed arresting a comedian over a transphobic post, arguing Democrats lose credibility when they defend speech only after censorship hits their own side.

Khanna said progressive criminal-justice policy swung too far and supported tougher treatment of repeat retail theft, while rejecting federal troop deployments as the answer. His preferred model is more police, court-ordered treatment for repeatedly unstable offenders, and temporary housing rather than denying voters’ lived safety concerns.

Khanna said Zohran Mamdani broke through because he centered New York’s affordability crisis and opposition to Netanyahu’s Gaza policies, issues rivals failed to own. He supports Mamdani but says governing requires pairing rent freezes with far more housing and avoiding tax-driven capital flight; failure would damage progressives nationally.

Khanna said he supports banning congressional stock trading and does not personally trade stocks; his wife’s inherited assets sit in trusts he says he neither controls nor directs. When told someone tied to the family had made roughly 30,000 trades, he said he had no idea and no involvement.