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The measure would allow for transit systems to spend federal crime prevention dollars on outreach workers and reduce the use of police in nonviolent situations.

IDEA requires that disabled students have access to public education, discourages segregating disabled kids from their peers, and that qualifying students have access to individualized education plans, more commonly known as IEPs. IDEA does not apply to education in private schools.

“Before our disabled elders secured our rights under the law, disabled kids were locked out of systems and out of their potential,” Rep. Lateefah Simon (D-Ca.), who is blind, told me in a statement.

On the 24th day of the second-longest federal government shutdown, Rep. Lateefah Simon and seven mayors from her congressional district gathered in Oakland on Friday afternoon to urge Republicans to work with Democrats and restore benefits for the East Bay’s most vulnerable residents.

Congresswoman Lateefah Simon gave a fiery speech about Trump and the Republicans who control both houses of Congress: “They smile while children are separated from their homes.”

Rep. Lateefah Simon, D-Oakland, speaks Sunday at Oakland Technical High School during a noncooperation training organized by Bay Resistance. The training presented strategies for resisting President Donald Trump on mass deportations and a possible National Guard deployment in San Francisco and Oakland. 

On Saturday afternoon, East Bay Congresswoman Lateefah Simon held a roundtable discussion with federal and county employees, along with local union representatives, to discuss how the shutdown is impacting working families on the ground.

A letter led by California Rep. Lateefah Simon demands answers from Trump’s labor secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer.

Congresswoman Lateefah Simon recently toured the Port of Oakland and convened a roundtable with labor, small business, and Port of Oakland stakeholders to discuss the impacts of President Donald Trump’s tariff policies.

“I’ll be there in the morning to fight this cruel, ugly, nasty, immoral bill,” Rep. Lateefah Simon, D-Oakland, told KQED while heading to the airport on Tuesday shortly after Senate Republicans passed the bill.

District 12 Congresswoman Lateefah Simon made a stop in Emeryville last night for her ongoing town hall tour.

Simon’s district includes all of Emeryville as well as Berkeley, Alameda, Albany, Piedmont, and most of Oakland and San Leandro.

Oakland Congresswoman Lateefah Simon met with BART officials at Oakland's 19th Street station on Wednesday to see BART stations and other developments for the critical transit agency facing massive deficits and still lingering low ridership. 

About halfway through President Donald Trump’s contentious address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, Lateefah Simon decided she’d heard enough.

Oakland’s Lateefah Simon, following in Barbara Lee’s footsteps, “prebutted” Trump’s creepy Tuesday address.

Newly Elected WFP Champion to Respond to Trump and Musk’s Attacks on Working People.

"...Simon is defying expectations in her first few weeks in Congress, including some of her own. She has had to adjust on the fly to a Washington consumed with disaster relief politics, rapid-fire executive orders, the unchecked power of the Muskocracy, a Republican trifecta of government control and the daily lurch of chaos."

We were impressed by Simon’s pragmatic approach to such divisive issues as crime and homelessness. In addition to pushing for significant raises for BART police officers, she supported an alternative BART ambassador program. And she wants to leverage federal funding to turn empty government buildings, such as Oakland’s old county jail, into emergency shelters for homeless people. 

Today, Congresswoman Barbara Lee (CA-12) endorsed Lateefah Simon’s campaign for Congress, throwing her support behind Simon to succeed her in California's 12th Congressional District. Congresswoman Lee’s U.S. Senate campaign will also be opening a joint campaign headquarters with Simon’s congressional campaign in downtown Oakland.

Only one of the candidates is mounting a substantial campaign. BART Director Lateefah Simon has dwarfed all the others with the depth of her support. We endorse her — not because the seat is essentially hers to lose, although it is, but because she is the best candidate.

Of the candidates running, Lateefah Simon is the most qualified. A strong ally to the LGBTQ community, Simon, currently a director on the BART board, has experience with government agencies such as the transit service, as well as with nonprofits like the Young Women's Freedom Center, which she stated she grew into one of the country's leading juvenile justice reentry youth-run organizations that serves gender nonbinary and trans young people.

“Lateefah is a visionary. But more than a visionary, she is a proven leader who effects the kind of change that makes her vision a reality” said Governor Newsom.

BART Director Lateefah Simon rallied supporters today to officially launch her run for Congress in downtown Oakland. KCBS Radio's Mike DeWald reports, Simon is hoping to replace longtime East Bay Representative Barbara Lee.

Lateefah Simon has been in the business of politics and community organizing for 30 years. The longtime Bay Area advocate announced a run for Congress earlier this year. Today, she has received a major endorsement from EMILYs List— which “is the nation’s largest resource dedicated to electing Democratic pro-choice women to office.”  

Today EMILYs List, the nation’s largest resource for women in politics, endorsed Lateefah Simon for election to California’s 12th Congressional District. Lateefah Simon is the first non-incumbent candidate to be endorsed by EMILYs List for the 2024 cycle. 

Today Lateefah Simon announced she has earned the endorsement of the Building and Construction Trades Council of Alameda County, a coalition of 27 affiliated unions representing East Bay workers in a variety of construction trades.

BART Board Director Lateefah Simon joins KQED's Political Breakdown to discuss growing up in San Francisco, her early work with Kamala Harris, facing threats in office and her run for Congress.

Today Lateefah Simon announced that she raised over $300,000 from over 1,000 individual contributors in the first month of her campaign to represent California’s 12th Congressional District.

Today Lateefah Simon announced she has earned the support of over 40 elected leaders since launching her campaign a month ago. Her early endorsements include Lt. Governor Eleni Kounalakis, Attorney General Rob Bonta, ten members of the State Legislature, and over a dozen current and former elected leaders from CA-12.

Today Lateefah Simon announced she has earned the endorsement of the National Union of Healthcare Workers — her first major labor endorsement in the race for California’s 12th Congressional District.

BART director Lateefah Simon announced her bid to fill U.S. Rep. Lee's seat this week. Simon has been politically active in the Bay Area for two decades and is recognized nationally as a civil rights leader. She joins us in the studio to discuss the transit agency and her run for Congress.

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Today Lateefah Simon, candidate for California’s 12th Congressional district, announced that she raised over $140,000 from individual contributors in the first 24 hours after launching her campaign. Lateefah received contributions from 320 donors. Lateefah does not accept corporate PAC money and is running a people-powered grassroots campaign. 

Lateefah Simon, a BART board director, police reform advocate and former recipient of a MacArthur Foundation genius grant, is the first major candidate to launch a campaign to replace Rep. Barbara Lee as the East Bay’s representative in the House on Tuesday — and she is clearing the field of potential rivals.