Ro Khanna

Rohit "Ro" Khanna (born September 13, 1976) is an American politician and attorney serving as the U.S. representative from California's 17th congressional district since 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, he defeated eight-term incumbent Democratic representative Mike Honda in the general election on November 8, 2016, after first running for the same seat in 2014. Khanna also served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary in the United States Department of Commerce under President Barack Obama from August 8, 2009, to August 2011. Khanna endorsed Bernie Sanders for president of the United States in 2016 and co-chaired Sanders' 2020 presidential campaign.

Khanna was born in Philadelphia to Indian parents. A self-described "progressive capitalist," Khanna has called for a "new economic patriotism" as a governing philosophy. Khanna has championed the abundance agenda.

Khanna is a member of the bipartisan Congressional YIMBY Caucus, which advocates increasing housing supply to address housing affordability challenges. He founded and co-chairs the Congressional Antitrust Caucus, and has advocated stricter antitrust scrutiny of dominant technology firms and major mergers involving the tech sector.

In 2025, and 2026, Khanna drew broader national attention through town halls in Republican-held districts and appearances in early-voting presidential states, leading several national outlets to describe him as a potential contender for the Democratic presidential nomination in the 2028 United States presidential election.

Rohit Khanna was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on September 13, 1976, into an Indian family. His parents immigrated to the United States from the Indian state of Punjab in 1968. His father is a chemical engineer who is a graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology and of the University of Michigan, while his mother is a former schoolteacher.

Raised in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, Khanna has said that his parents impressed on him the obligations of being a first-generation American-born citizen. He has also said that summer visits to New Delhi helped shape his connection to his Indian heritage and that conversations with his maternal grandfather were formative.

Khanna's maternal grandfather, Amarnath Vidyalankar, was a politician, social worker, and journalist. Born in Bhera, in the Shahpur District of British Punjab (later Punjab, Pakistan), he was part of the Indian independence movement and spent two years in jail in the pursuit of Dominion status for India.

Khanna is a graduate of Council Rock High School, a public school in Newtown, in 1994. Later profile coverage described him as the valedictorian of his class. By high school, he had already developed an interest in politics; in a 2022 interview, Khanna said that his first published writing was a letter to the editor of a local Bucks County newspaper opposing U.S. involvement in the Gulf War.