ISSUES

Explore Nicole’s stance on the important issues affecting our community.

Animal Welfare

Nicole is an animal lover and owner of adopted dogs. In the State Assembly, she sponsored legislation that would protect those without a voice and worked to improve conditions at animal shelters. Nicole holds an annual pet adoption event with P.L.U.T.O. Rescue and works to encourage the adoption of pets before they are euthanized. Nicole also sponsored new state laws preventing animal cruelty and sponsored free veterinary care for local pets following Superstorm Sandy. In Congress, Nicole sponsored HR 1448 and HR 1022 to provide therapy dogs for veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and other eligible veterans, as well as HR 2840 to provide stringent regulations and prevent inhumane conditions by commercial dog breeders.

Education

Nicole was a leading voice to reopen New York City’s schools during the pandemic and ensure parents have a strong role in their children’s education. She led the fight against Mayor de Blasio’s plan to lower the admission standards for New York City’s specialized high schools and close Gifted and Talented schools.

Nicole has worked to ensure that New York students have the resources they need to succeed in the classroom and life. She also wrote the state law responsible for preventing the closure of a local teen intervention center and she successfully intervened to protect traditional activities like the Father-Daughter Dance and cursive writing education when New York City sought to eliminate them from our schools. Nicole regularly meets with schoolchildren to promote initiatives like anti-littering and encourage a return to discipline and civility in the classroom.

To ensure student safety, Nicole is working to equip every school with a trained police officer and security equipment and provide immediate access to crisis mental health care services. \Nicole has cosponsored HR 3661 Alyssa’s Legacy Youth in Schools Safety Alert Act and HR 6056 the Parents Bill of Right Act.

In Congress, Nicole is sponsoring the Parents’ Bill of Rights to provide transparency and more parental input in school curriculum and she supports expanding parental school choice so over a million more students can receive the education their parents know is best.

Election Integrity

Nicole believes that reforms are required that make it easier to vote and harder to cheat. This includes voter identification, regular maintenance of state voter rolls, stringent safeguards to prevent manipulation and abuse of absentee ballot voting and a streamlined process to ensure that credible claims of election fraud receive a thorough hearing before a judge. In Congress, Nicole has cosponsored the HR 322 the Save Our Democracy Act. She is also a leading plaintiff in the pending lawsuit to stop New York City from allowing non-citizens to vote in our municipal elections.

Emergency Response

When the COVID pandemic hit, Nicole delivered over 100,000 PPE, collected food and raised money to help those in need and led the effort to help New York City’s small businesses and their employees after they were forced to close their doors. Nicole’s hands-on approach and her commitment to serving her constituents was no surprise. After Superstorm Sandy hit the shores of New York, taking lives and devastating neighborhoods a decade ago, Nicole immediately began delivering foods, water and clothing, and she organized clean-up efforts. She helped hundreds of families through the rebuilding process and earned national praise for her project restoring and returning recovered family photos. In Congress, Nicole was appointed to the House Select Committee on the Coronavirus Crisis.

Environment

Nicole is a leader in environmental protection who has worked in Albany and Washington, D.C. to protect her constituents on Staten Island and in Southern Brooklyn. During her first term in the House of Representatives, she secured the funds necessary and is helping cut bureaucratic red tape to complete the East Shore Sea Wall project, which experienced delays and funding deficiencies under her predecessor Max Rose. Previously, Nicole led the effort as a State Assemblywoman to secure $151 million in state funding to fund the project’s state share.

After Nicole’s State Assembly district was the hardest hit by Superstorm Sandy on October 29, 2012, Nicole worked to combat beach erosion and prevent residential development in sensitive area wetlands, wrote a law requiring some neighborhoods destroyed by the storm to be returned to their natural state and supported a new law requiring state agencies to consider future climate risk due to rising sea levels and storm flooding. In the State Assembly, she also voted to establish goals for New York to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and expand the use of renewable energy.

Foreign Affairs

Nicole is a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on International Development, International Organizations and Global Corporate Social Impact. She is also a member of the Subcommittee on Europe, Energy, the Environment and Cyber.

As a State Assemblywoman, Nicole stood with Israel and sponsored anti-Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions legislation, opposed the Obama Administration’s failed Iran Nuclear Deal and visited Israel, including Yad Vashem. In Congress, she cosponsored HR 1479 which would prevent the Biden Administration from reentering the Iran Nuclear Deal and impose sanctions on Hamas.

Nicole also sponsored HR 529 to stand with the Cuban people against the communist government, HR 377 condemning the human rights atrocities committed by the Maduro regime in Venezuela, HR 376 opposing the illegal occupation of Cyprus and HR 4129 to authorize bilateral and multilateral engagement between the U.S., Greece, Israel, and Cyprus to promote strategy and defense cooperation.

Immigration

As the daughter of immigrants, Nicole understands the promise of the American Dream and has advocated for Washington to fix the broken immigration system that has left so many in the shadows. Nicole strongly supports strengthening our border security to stem the tide of illegal immigration, as well as increased investment in U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement. She has also helped dozens of law-abiding New Yorkers, who followed the rules but got stuck in bureaucratic red tape, become American citizens.

In the New York State Assembly, Nicole vocally opposed sanctuary city policies and laws providing state tuition assistance and drivers licenses to undocumented immigrants. Nicole successfully led the effort to block legislation allowing illegal immigrants to register to vote in New York State and sued New York City to prevent the destruction of background documents and other records associated with the IDNYC program, which provides New York City-issued identification cards to undocumented immigrants.

In Congress, Nicole has taken a strong stand against illegal immigration cosponsoring HR 4828 requiring the federal government to secure our nation’s international borders, HR 1259 the Remain in Mexico Act and legislation to protect American taxpayers from being used to pay illegal immigrants in lawsuits against the United States government.

Public Safety

Nicole is an ardent supporter of law enforcement and earned the endorsement of every NYPD union during her first congressional campaign.

In the State Legislature, she voted against the state’s cashless bail law and opposed efforts to close Rikers Island and defund the police.

As a Member of Congress, Nicole drafted and introduced legislation requiring municipalities to certify that they have not defunded their police departments before qualifying for federal funding. She also sponsored federal legislation to withhold federal funding from local governments that operate drug injection sites and cosponsored a bill providing financial incentives to states that require courts to consider the danger and individual poses to the community when setting bail and invest in law enforcement retention. She most recently introduced the “Prosecutors Need To Prosecute Act” to expose and hold accountable left wing district attorneys who refuse to prosecute criminal activity.

Taxes and Economy

In the State Assembly, Nicole proudly voted against tax increases 336 times and, in her campaign for New York City Mayor, she fought against inequity in city property taxes—leading to the creation of a property tax commission to review the entire system. She was a strong supporter of President Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and, in Congress, Nicole has opposed efforts by House Democrats to repeal it.

Nicole is a founding member of the Congressional SALT Caucus and a cosponsor of HR 613 to restore the State and Local Tax deduction and she has sponsored HR 5933 and 5985 to create inspectors general to root out waste, fraud and abuse in state spending and the budgets of major cities, like New York.

Nicole is widely credited with defeating Joe Biden’s massive $3.5 trillion socialist Build Back Better socialist spending plan. To help ensure that BBB’s provision enabling the Internal Revenue Service to track the financial transactions of every American from separately becoming law, she cosponsored the HR 5451 known as the Protecting Financial Privacy Act and HR 4485 the Prohibiting IRS Financial Surveillance Act.

Transportation

Nicole has been a passionate advocate for the unique transportation needs confronting her constituents on Staten Island and in Southern Brooklyn. As a State Assemblywoman, she successfully fought to restore local bus service, including continuous X1 express service and the restoration of B37 and S93 and weekend service on S76 and X27, and she has been a leader in the effort to upgrade MTA subway signals to Communication Based Train Control to was overcrowding and end service delays. Nicole sued the Port Authority to require the transparency that led to the multi-trip discount on the Port Authority’s three Staten Island bridges and also waged a public fight with Governor Cuomo regarding the Verrazzano Bridget discount for Staten Island.

In Congress, Nicole successfully led the effort to erase decades of systemic underfunding for New York’s transit needs, which led to New York receiving only 16% of federal mass transit funding while having over 30% of national ridership. Through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, New York will receive a significant portion of this funding for mass transit, road and bridge repair, ferries, rail stations, and airports and sewer and water systems. This includes more than $10 billion for the MTA, which it announced would prevent planned toll and fare increases.

Veterans

Nicole believes that we must do more to assist the brave men and women who have honorably served our country. In the State Assembly, she successfully fought to restore funding for peer-to-peer counseling and mental health programs for veterans and led the effort to provide free college tuition to the children of military parents who died or were disabled in the line of duty. She also passed legislation requiring a portion of state contracts to be awarded to service-disabled veterans.

In Congress, Nicole has built upon this record by sponsoring HR 2475 to allow disabled veterans to use HOV lanes and cosponsoring HR 1476 to require the Department of Veterans Affairs to establish the PFC Joseph P. Dwyer Peer Support Program making grants to eligible entities for peer-to-peer mental health services for veterans. She has also led the effort to stop the Biden Administration from closing the VA’s Brooklyn Medical Center in Fort Hamilton and linking the VA’s Staten Island clinic with New Jersey. She voted to provide medical coverage for Afghanistan and Iraq Veterans suffering from burn pit toxicity and expand the GI program for education.

Nicole strongly supports President Trump’s reforms to provide veterans with community care and she believes it’s vital to improve mental health services to combat homelessness, addiction and suicide among veterans. Currently, Nicole is leading the fight against the Biden Administration’s proposal to close the Brooklyn Veterans Affairs’ hospital.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

Nicole Malliotakis has always fought for Staten Island and Brooklyn. Here are a few of the many accomplishments Nicole achieved for her constituents:

In Congress:

  • In her first term in Congress, Nicole secured over $36 million in funding for local organizations including the NYPD, the Staten Island Ferry, St. George’s Theatre and three local hospitals.
  • Nicole’s language securing catch-up payments for 9/11 widows and children through the United States Victims of State Sponsored Terrorism Fund passed the House on September 30, 2022.
  • Successfully stopped House Democrats from passing legislation to pack the U.S. Supreme Court.
  • Joined successful legal efforts to stop New York City’s law allowing non-citizens to vote, end New York City’s vaccine passports, and overturn Biden’s private-sector vaccine mandate.
  • Helped pass bipartisan infrastructure legislation that will deliver billions to New York State every year that city and state can use to expand our sewer system, finish the Staten Island expressway HoV lane and replace the Outerbridge Crossing.
  • As a member of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, Nicole was able to get the East Shore Seawall project back on track and ensure it will be fully funded to completion after years of delays and cost increases under her predecessor.
  • Helped deliver $48 million federal grant to fund a dredging project in Staten Island’s Arthur Kill Terminal to make way for an offshore wind staging and assembly facility that will created thousands of jobs.
  • Nicole secured $1.2 million for U.S. Coast Guard Sector New York to make repairs to the base’s waterfront, including its concrete pier and seawall.
  • Nicole led the fight to save New York City’s VA Medical Centers after the Biden Administration proposed the closure or consolidation of several facilities across the United States.
  • Nicole introduced legislation to hold states with lax bail laws accountable and give judges the ability to consider dangerousness when setting bail.
  • Helped 7,500 constituents resolve complex cases and cut through red tape at city, state and federal government.
  • She is leading a bipartisan federal effort to halt the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s (MTA) Congestion Pricing Program and push for a federal audit of the mismanaged agency.

In the State Assembly:

  • Helped countless families recover after Superstorm Sandy
  • Delivered over 100,000 PPE during the COVID epidemic
  • Stopped Mayor de Blasio from putting heroin injection centers throughout our city
  • Got the Mayor to agree to deport illegal immigrant convicted of sex crimes from our city
  • After bringing up the issue of high property taxes, she got the Mayor to agree to set up a Property Tax Commission that is still analyzing our taxes and working to make them equitable
  • Helped deliver 151 Million Dollars in State funding for the East Shore Seawall
  • In her first term in the Assembly, Nicole restored local and express bus service that was lost under her predecessor
  • She was a leader in the public fight to get the Verrazano toll to $5.50 for residents in 2015 and it hasn’t increased since
  • She sued the Port Authority to force them to release records that showed they were greatly profiting from our 3 Staten Island Bridges, leading to a permanent discount plan which eventually led to the 3 trip discount plan
  • Successfully pushed back Mayor de Blasio when he tried to dismantle Specialty High Schools and Gifted and Talented Programs
  • At different times she fought to fight the closing of various Senior Centers and Fire Houses
  • Led the fight that eventually led to stripping the pensions of Elected Officials convicted of crimes
  • Fought for the permanent elimination of sales tax on clothing under $100.00 and won
STAND WITH NICOLE