Pete Buttigieg on the issues, in under 500 words

Key facts

• Age: 37
• Born: South Bend
• Undergraduate: Harvard University, Oxford University
• Date candidacy announced: April 14
• Previous roles: Mayor. Began service in U.S. Navy Reserve in 2009, deployed to Afghanistan in 2014. Worked for McKinsey & Company.

Stance on key issues

• College costs: Says college is too expensive for "too many people." He supports expanding the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program that clears loans in exchange for public service.
• Climate change: Supports the Paris climate agreement and Green New Deal. Wants net-zero emissions by 2050, double clean electricity by 2025, zero emissions in electricity generation by 2035, and net-zero emissions from industrial vehicles by 2040.
• Believes climate change is a national security threat and supports government-subsidized solar panels.
• Wants to create a Disaster Commission to oversee state, local, and volunteer organizations involved in natural disaster response.
• Guns: Member of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, and supports universal background checks and banning guns in schools.
• Health care: Released a plan to expand Medicare coverage and keep private health insurance plans. Also wants to tackle how to manage surprise billing and introduce an out-of-pocket spending cap for Medicare.
• Introduced a $300 billion plan to bolster mental health and addiction support by increasing access.
• Released a leftward-middle proposal to reduce drug prices.
• Immigration: Supports providing a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers.
• Discrimination: Supports updating the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to apply non-discrimination protections to the LGBTQ community.
• Abortion: Has considered codifying Roe v. Wade, per AP. If elected, he would repeal the Hyde Amendment.
• Supreme Court: Proposed a 15-justice court with 5 Democratic appointees, 5 Republicans and 5 selected by agreement of the other justices.
• Electoral college: Supports abolishing it.
• Vaccines: Initially said he believes in personal exemptions to vaccines when there is no public health crisis. Following criticism, his campaign walked the position back.
• Foreign policy: Wouldn't move the U.S. embassy in Israel back from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv.
• National service programs: Wants new national service programs with a network of 1 million members by 2026.
• Gig economy: Plans to protect gig-economy workers.
• The Douglass Plan: A series of reforms aimed at the "dismantling of racist structures and systems."

Key criticisms

• Accepted donations from lobbyists: After criticism, Buttigieg announced he would return donations he received.
• Police recordings: Buttigieg demoted the South Bend police chief and fired the police communications director for illegally recording officers' calls that allegedly revealed racist comments.
• Police diversity: Suspended campaign to address a fatal shooting in South Bend of a black man by a white police officer. He received criticism for the lack of diversity in his city's police force.

1 fun thing

• Buttigieg speaks 8 languages: English, Dari, Norwegian, Italian, French, Maltese, Arabic, and Spanish.

Go deeper:

• Everything you need to know about the other 2020 candidates
• Mayor Pete as commander-in-chief