Hey John,

I want to tell you about my favorite summer job, ever. I was a seasonal firefighter with the U.S. Forestry Service and a group of my friends in California in the early 1980s.

Don’t believe me? Check it out:

Before I go on, can I ask you to chip in $5 to our campaign? I want to share with you why this photo matters to me. But I also want to make sure we have the resources to fight to keep the House and Senate in 2022. Can you chip in $5?

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I had quite a few summer jobs to help pay for college and law school. And even then, I graduated with a lot of student debt that I paid off over the course of more than a decade. There were some years that my student loan repayments were more than my rent in Los Angeles... and that’s saying a lot.

It’s why I’ve spent so much of my career focused on expanding Pell Grants and making community college free. And it’s why I’ve pushed for President Biden to cancel federal student loan debt.

But this summer job was also formative for me, and one reason that I’ve spent so much of my time focused on wildfires in Congress.

After the Station Fire in 2009 in the Los Angeles Foothills (in the northern part of my district) destroyed hundreds of structures and resulted in the death of two firefighters, I led the charge in Congress to investigate the cause of the fire, get resources to the Forest Service that they desperately needed, make policy changes, and invest in wildfire prevention before the next big one.

By the way – Here’s the “Governator” with me inspecting wreckage, and talking to displaced residents (and yes, after finding the burned remains of a dumbbell, Arnold could not resist a little showing off):

My experience as a seasonal firefighter, and as a Congressman representing residents who lost their homes, has helped guide me a lot in Congress.

It’s why I fought for millions of federal dollars to buy “night-flying” helicopters to drop water on raging wildfires and helped change Forestry Service policy which banned night flights for decades. It’s why I led the charge to stand up and keep running a satellite program to detect wildfires before they get out of control and give real-time notice to firefighters. And it’s why I’ve fought for money to combat climate change – because wildfires are only going to get worse in coming years if we fail to act.

While this type of work might not generate headlines or be something the 24-hour news networks deem important, it keeps people safe and makes our communities better. And it’s the kind of work that is so critically important to me personally.

I want to continue this work for years to come, so I’m asking: Can you chip in $10 to help me keep up this work and defend my seat in Congress against eight challengers this year?