Nicole is an animal lover and owner of adopted dogs. In Congress, Nicole wrote and introduced HR 1788 Goldie’s Act, which has more than 80 sponsors, requiring the US Department of Agriculture to crack down on abusive practices by commercial dog breeders and confiscate suffering animals. She also 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, the Puppy Protection Act, to require the human handling, care and treatment of animals by dog breeders. This continued Nicole’s working the State Assembly to prevent animal cruelty and 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 free veterinary care for local pets following Superstorm Sandy.

Nicole is a strong proponent of educational freedom and student safety. She wrote the HR 8914, the University Accountability Act, and passed it in the House. This legislation would impose significant fines on colleges and universities that violate students’ civil rights under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. To combat the rise in antisemitism on college campuses, Nicole introduced HR 7232, the No Visas for Anti-Semitic Students Act.

Nicole is also working to equip every school with a trained police officer and security equipment and provide immediate access to crisis mental health care services. As a sponsor of HR 6056, the Parents’ Bill of Rights, Nicole is working to provide transparency and more parental input in school curriculum. She supports expanding parental school choice so over a million more students can receive the education their parents know is best.

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 New York City’s attempt to lower the admission standards for New York City’s specialized high schools and close Gifted and Talented schools.

As a State Legislator, Nicole 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.

As a co-founder of the House Election Integrity Caucus, 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 introduced HR 8314, the No Foreign Election Interference Act, and cosponsored HR 8281, the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act to prevent illegal aliens from voting in our elections and she cosponsored the HR 322 the Save Our Democracy Act. Nicole was the lead plaintiff in the successful litigation preventing New York City from allowing non-citizens to vote in our municipal elections.

Nicole is a member of the House Select Committee on the Coronavirus Crisis and used this platform to hold Dr. Anthony Fauci and NIH staff accountable for their actions during the COVID pandemic.

When the 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.

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.

As a member of Congress, she secured the funds necessary to complete the East Shore Sea Wall and successfully worked to eliminate the bureaucratic impediments to the project. Now, the first phase of construction has begun and the project is back on track. In the State Assembly, Nicole led the effort 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. As a state legislator, she also voted to establish goals for New York to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and expand the use of renewable energy.

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

She has traveled to Israel several times and met with key Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and cosponsored HR 1479 which would prevent the Biden Administration from reentering the Iran Nuclear Deal and impose sanctions on Hamas. This continued Nicole’s work in the State Assembly, where she sponsored anti-Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions legislation, opposed the Obama Administration’s failed Iran Nuclear Deal and visited Israel, including Yad Vashem.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.