The First 100 Days of an Arshia Papari Presidency: What the Record Suggests

Photo: Daniel Schwen/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

01 The record and the scenario

Arshia Papari is the Green Party candidate for Texas House District 49 in the November 3, 2026 general election — a state legislative race centered on Austin, the district around the University of Texas campus where he is a student. He advanced to the general-election ballot from the Green Party convention on March 14, 2026. At 21, he is a junior at the University of Texas at Austin studying Government and Middle Eastern Studies, a second-generation Iranian-American, and — since his election in August 2025 — the youngest-ever national co-chair of the Green Party of the United States. His campaign has been endorsed by the Green Party of Texas, the Young Democratic Socialists of America chapter named Mac YDSA, and the Student Victory Fund.

His political record is short but unusually concentrated. He served two stints as a legislative aide in the Texas House, held the advocacy policy director role in UT Austin's student government, served as vice president of the Austin chapter of Students for a Democratic Society, and organized the 2024 Jill Stein / Butch Ware campaign in Austin. The formative episode his own platform returns to is the spring of 2024, when he and classmates joined campus protests in solidarity with students elsewhere and, in his campaign's words, “met a militarized state and local police response which left many scarred and traumatized.” That experience surfaces throughout his published platform in the sections on free speech and protest rights.

The platform itself is a state-legislative program with a declared throughline: as state representative he would “fight for the people, protect our planet, and advocate for peace.” Its detailed planks — a statewide rent freeze, state-funded grocery stores and expanded food subsidies, universal childcare and paid parental leave, an end to mass incarceration and the bail system, an end to qualified immunity, and an explicit free-speech and protest-rights section — are followed by a closing frame that treats Texas as a policy laboratory for the national right: the platform argues the state has “proven time and again” that its most oppressive policies are “tested out” in Texas “before exporting it nationwide,” citing abortion, “immigration injustice” and “the school voucher scam.”

The honest caveat shapes everything below: Papari's public record is thin. He is 21 years old, has never held or run for federal office, and his platform is written for the Texas House — every mechanism in it is a state mechanism. He has published no federal program, no position papers on defense, health care, taxes or technology, and no questionnaire record beyond the platform. The Green Party of the United States national platform is his party's document, not his; this analysis attributes it to the party, never to him. Where his record does not reach, this article says so.

This article does not predict that Arshia Papari will become president. It examines how the individual's documented positions and record could translate into executive priorities if placed in presidential office.

Analysis — not prediction. N43 and Hermes AI grounds every scenario in the documented record as of September 21, 2026; where evidence is incomplete we say so.

02 Day One: what a president could do alone

The office Papari is actually seeking explains the shape of any Day One. A state representative writes and votes on state law; a president executes federal law. Almost every detailed plank in his platform — the rent freeze, state-funded grocery stores, Texas prison spending, the Texas bail system, mental health specialists in the Texas Department of Public Safety — names instruments a president does not hold. What survives the translation to a presidency is narrower: the civil-liberties planks, the anti-incarceration philosophy, and the posture toward corporate power.

Likely Day-One Actions (unilateral)

• A Justice Department civil-rights posture on protest and speech. His platform's most detailed federal-adjacent section — students “beaten, brutalized, and falsely arrested,” free speech as “our sacred right” — converts most plausibly into DOJ directives: civil-rights investigations into protest-related arrests and campus policing, and enforcement priorities protecting First Amendment activity. This is N43's inference from his platform language, not a published federal policy.
• Constraints on federal surveillance of protest. The same plank implies limits on how FBI, DHS and campus-partnership programs monitor dissent — a directive-level tool a president controls. He has not published any surveillance policy; the inference is from the protest-rights language only.
• A clemency and compassionate-release initiative. “Rehabilitation over incarceration” is his stated philosophy on imprisonment; the federal instrument a president alone holds is clemency for federal defendants. He has never addressed federal clemency, so the link is philosophical, not documented.
• Law-enforcement misconduct standards within federal reach. His call to end qualified immunity for law-enforcement misconduct cannot be executed against state officers by executive order — the doctrine is judge-made — but a president can direct federal agencies' own conduct and consent-decree posture. The federal translation is labeled inference.
• The bully pulpit on the “Texas exports its policies” thesis. His core political argument — that state-level repression is a testing ground for national policy — is a communication strategy a president can deploy on Day One without any branch's permission.

Actions the Candidate Could Not Do Alone

• Freeze rents nationally — rent control is state and local law; there is no federal rent-control statute for a president to enforce.
• Create state-funded grocery stores or expand state food programs — his food plank is expressly a Texas proposal; federal nutrition programs are Congress's to fund.
• Enact universal childcare or national paid parental leave — both are legislation and appropriations.
• End the Texas bail system or cut Texas prison spending — a president has no authority over state criminal justice; the platform's numbers ($2.5 billion, a 30.7% recidivism rate) describe the state system he is running to change as a state legislator.
• End qualified immunity by fiat — the doctrine is a court-made rule; changing it for state officers takes Congress or the courts.
• Fund any new priority — every dollar is an appropriation.

03 Days 2-30: reorienting the executive branch

Only a few corners of the federal bureaucracy map onto anything in Papari's documented record. The Justice Department is the clearest: his platform's speech, protest and policing sections are, in substance, positions about how law enforcement treats dissent, and a president sets DOJ's civil-rights enforcement posture. Housing and Urban Development is the second: the rent freeze is a state proposal, but a federal department that administers housing assistance and enforces the Fair Housing Act is where a housing-affordability philosophy would live in the executive branch. The Department of Education is the third, weakly: his only education position on the record is the attack on “the school voucher scam” in the platform's closing section, which implies scrutiny of federal voucher-style programs, an inference this analysis labels as such.

Beyond those three, there is not enough public evidence to determine Papari's position on the Departments of Defense, State, Homeland Security, Energy, Health and Human Services, Labor or Transportation; on the intelligence agencies; or on the financial and environmental regulators. No personnel philosophy is documented — he has said nothing on the record about how he would appoint, vet or staff an administration — and none is invented here. His two stints as a Texas House legislative aide are the only staff-adjacent experience in the record, and they describe experience of state government, not of running a federal executive.

04 Days 30-60: the first legislative package

No documented federal legislative program exists to translate, so the honest package is short and its labels do the work. Every item below is N43's translation of an explicit platform plank into the federal bill it implies; nothing is padded, and nothing qualifies for the high-evidence tier because Papari has not publicly detailed any federal legislative proposal.

Moderate evidence

• Nutrition-program restoration and expansion. The groceries plank opens by attacking “the federal government” for cutting “food stamps and subsidies” — an explicit federal critique, and the one place his platform names a federal actor. The implied bill restores and expands SNAP and farm-sector supports. Moderate because the target is named; the mechanism is not.
• Qualified-immunity repeal. “Ending qualified immunity for law enforcement misconduct” is a named, specific legal reform with an established federal bill tradition. Moderate because he endorses the reform without addressing its federal pathway.
• Housing supply and social-housing investment. The platform calls for “new development and social housing” alongside its rent freeze; the federal analogue is funding, not price control. Moderate because the goal is explicit, the federal vehicle inferred.
• Childcare and paid-leave legislation. Universal childcare and “universal and extended paid parental leave” are stated goals; at the federal level both are bills Congress would have to write and fund.

Low evidence

• Wrongful-conviction and court-process funding. The platform's “speedier justice” and wrongful-conviction language implies grants and court reform — low evidence because the plank is written about Texas courts.

Papari has not publicly detailed a federal policy on defense spending, taxation, health care, immigration or surveillance, and no legislative item is inferred in any of those areas.

05 Days 60-100: where governing meets reality

The central fact of a Papari scenario is federalism. His platform is a catalog of state powers: rent regulation, state criminal law, state prisons, state agencies, state grocery and childcare programs. A president can advocate for all of it and execute essentially none of it. The one explicitly federal target in his published program — the cuts to “food stamps and subsidies” he wants reversed — lands in the agricultural and appropriations committees of a Congress in which a Green president would have no caucus of his own, and the Senate filibuster would stand in front of every major bill listed above.

What is genuinely available is small but real: a Justice Department civil-rights posture on protest, clemency powers that are the presidency's alone, executive guidance limiting federal agencies' own surveillance of dissent, and the loudest instrument in his documented repertoire — the argument that what is tested in the states gets exported to the nation, now delivered from the platform the argument itself describes. What is years-long or never is nearly everything with a dollar sign attached: nutrition expansion, childcare, leave, housing and any criminal-justice statute. Between those poles sits persuasion, tested under the least favorable arithmetic in this series by a 21-year-old with two state-house aide stints and no federal record.

06 The policy record in detail

Housing and Affordability

The rent-freeze plank is his most detailed economic position: “bad landlords have squeezed tenants for higher rents”; what is needed is “pricing controls, more market regulation, new development and social housing.” As a federal translation, the pricing-control half has no federal lever — rent control is state and local law — while the supply and social-housing half maps onto HUD programs and Congress's appropriations. He has published no federal housing mechanism.

Food and Anti-Poverty Policy

The groceries plank is the platform's only federal-facing statement: with “the federal government” continuing “to cut food stamps and subsidies,” “it's time for Texas to pick up the slack.” His remedies are state remedies — state-funded grocery stores, state-subsidized food programs — which means a President Papari's version would be restoring the federal programs the platform says are being cut. That version is N43's inference, labeled as such.

Childcare and Family Policy

Universal childcare and “universal and extended paid parental leave” are stated goals aimed at helping “working parents.” Both are established federal legislative territories (childcare block grants, the FAMILY Act tradition); his platform commits to the outcomes, not to any federal mechanism.

Criminal Justice, Policing and Mental Health

This is the platform's most evidence-dense section: $2.5 billion in annual Texas corrections spending against a 30.7% recidivism rate, a call for “rehabilitation over incarceration,” an end to the bail system, more court funding, wrongful-conviction diligence, mental-health specialists in the state police, limiting “usage of police forces to violent crime,” ending qualified immunity, and mental-health workers on transit. Every instrument named is a state instrument. The federal translations — clemency, DOJ consent-decree posture, grant conditions, a qualified-immunity repeal bill — are this article's inferences, not his stated policies.

Civil Liberties: Speech, Protest and Student Rights

The platform's free-speech and protest sections are its most personal: students “beaten, brutalized, and falsely arrested,” the spring 2024 UT Austin protest response, and a pledge to “uphold the first amendment” and “actively work against any harm to these rights.” At the federal level this is DOJ civil-rights enforcement, protest-surveillance limits and constitutional litigation posture — the closest thing in his record to a genuinely presidential portfolio.

Climate and Environment

“Protect our planet” appears in the campaign's banner language, and the groceries plank mentions “sustainability.” No climate policy, energy position or environmental mechanism is documented beyond that. The Green Party of the United States platform contains extensive climate policy, but that is his party's position — this series does not attribute it to him.

Education

The only education statement on the record is the platform's reference to “the school voucher scam” among the Texas policies it says are exported nationwide. That implies opposition to federal voucher-style programs — an inference from one phrase.

The areas the record does not reach

Papari has not publicly detailed a federal policy on health care. The Green Party's national platform favors a single-payer, publicly funded health system, but that should not automatically be interpreted as his personal position — this series attributes party platforms to parties, never to candidates.

The same holds elsewhere: his platform's mentions of “immigration injustice” and “advocate for peace” are frames, not policies, and there is not enough public evidence to determine his position on immigration law, foreign policy, defense, technology and surveillance, or taxes and the federal budget. He is a party co-chair, not a party platform: his office obliges him to administer the Green Party of the United States, not to have endorsed each of its positions.

07 What could not happen alone — and what could

What President Papari Could Not Do Alone

• Freeze rents or cap rents anywhere in the country — rent regulation is state and local law.
• Restore cut “food stamps and subsidies” — SNAP benefit levels are set by the farm bill and appropriations, both Congress's work.
• Enact universal childcare or national paid parental leave — both are statutes with price tags, filibuster-exposed in practice.
• End qualified immunity — a court-made doctrine; change requires Congress or the courts, not an order.
• End mass incarceration, the bail system or Texas prison spending — state criminal justice is the state's; federal sentencing reform is legislation.
• Stop the “testing out” of oppressive state policies he describes — a president cannot veto a state law; the federal levers that exist (civil-rights statutes, litigation) are ones Congress wrote and the courts adjudicate.
• Fund mental-health specialists in any state police or transit agency — federal grants can encourage; they cannot staff.

What Could Change Within 100 Days

• A Justice Department civil-rights posture centered on protest, speech and campus policing — the platform's most documented theme.
• Executive limits on federal agencies' surveillance of protest activity — inference from the same plank.
• A clemency-review initiative consistent with “rehabilitation over incarceration” — the one incarceration lever a president holds alone.
• Federal law-enforcement misconduct standards for the agencies a president directly controls — partial translation of the qualified-immunity plank.
• The bully pulpit: the “Texas tests, then the nation adopts” argument, delivered from the presidency whose behavior the argument is about.

Potential Coalition Partners

The record offers themes, not allies, and this section reports that. His protest-rights and anti-fascism framing overlaps with civil-libertarian members of both parties who have criticized protest policing; his qualified-immunity plank overlaps with criminal-justice-reform Democrats; his anti-corporate section header (“End Corporate Power”) with the party's left. His Mac YDSA endorsement and SDS background suggest a natural left coalition. But he has published no coalition strategy and has no record of cross-party legislative work, so this analysis names convergence points rather than partners he has claimed.

Areas of Likely Conflict

By his own framing, conflict is the premise: the platform's closing section says Texas politicians “sell out our people in support of party politics” and describes a “rapid political decline into fascism” “whether at the national level or here at home.” A president who describes the opposing direction in those terms, carrying a third-party's legislative agenda into a Congress with no Green caucus, would face the appropriations committees on anything funded, the Judiciary committees on anything criminal-justice, and both parties' leadership on anything structural. The record gives no reason to expect anything other than a confrontation presidency.

08 The 100-day scorecard and what the record tells us

The scorecard's shape is the finding: five moderate rows where a genuinely detailed platform speaks, four limited rows built on a slogan or a single phrase, three unknown rows this analysis declines to fill. Papari's record is thin in years — he is 21 — but unusually specific where it exists: his platform quotes corrections budget figures and recidivism rates, names qualified immunity by name, and dates its free-speech politics to a specific semester on a specific campus. The temptation this analysis has resisted is reading the Green Party's national platform — which he helps administer as co-chair — into the personal program of a candidate who has not endorsed it.

The clearest priorities are nonetheless legible, because the platform ranks itself: affordability (rent, food, childcare), an end to mass incarceration as Texas practices it, and the protection of protest and speech rights. In presidential translation, only the third lands in executive hands. The first two are state powers and congressional appropriations, respectively — a president can request, litigate and argue about them, and sign whatever Congress sends.

What moves fast in a Papari hundred days: a DOJ civil-rights posture on protest, clemency review, federal surveillance limits, and the argument itself. What is years-long or never: rent control, state criminal justice, and every funded program in the platform. Where the record is thin this article says so: health care, taxes, immigration, defense and technology carry nothing at all.

How he differs from both major parties on the available evidence is less a matter of policy detail than of diagnosis: where major-party candidates argue about how federal institutions should act, Papari's platform argues that the federal direction itself is being set by state-level experiments he calls oppressive and by “politicians in this state who sell out our people.” The honest conclusion of a Papari scenario is that the first hundred days would be defined by confrontation — unilateral, largely rhetorical, aimed at the police powers a president does control and the national narrative he says already exists — and that the platform he actually published is addressed, brick by brick, to an office other than the one this article examines.