What Happens to a Law After It Is Signed.
Legislative Intern, Office of Senator Josh Becker · Founder & President, Youth Civic Engagement Initiative
David Liu has worked in a California state senator's office since September 2025, in a county supervisor's office the summer before that, and on a congressional campaign before that. What runs through all three is narrow and specific: how a health problem in one farm town on the San Mateo coast becomes a line in the Health and Safety Code, and what happens to that line after the Governor signs it.
Almost all of his work in the Office of Senator Josh Becker, who represents California's 13th Senate District, is health policy research, and almost all of it comes back to one program and one statute. In April 2024 he started the Youth Civic Engagement Initiative with a co-founder, and runs it as its president. He still packs food at a Half Moon Bay pantry every other week.
In the future, David hopes to study policy evaluation and statistics, and to keep working on the part of lawmaking that starts after the signature, when a program either reaches the people it was written for or does not.
SB 338
SB 338 began as somebody else's idea. The senator's office announced on 11 March 2025 that Aisha Baro, executive director of Life Science Cares Bay Area, had won its 2025 "There Ought to Be a Law" competition, and that her idea had been introduced as SB 338. The bill creates the Virtual Health Hub for Rural Communities Pilot Program: the State Department of Public Health awards grants to partnerships of community-based organizations to deploy virtual health hubs, vehicles or portable facilities with computers, Wi-Fi, cubicles for virtual visits and telemedicine exam rooms, in two rural communities chosen on farmworker population and access to care. The Governor signed it on 3 October 2025 as Chapter 311, Statutes of 2025. Every recorded vote on it was unanimous.
The bill's text was final in July 2025 and David arrived in the office that September, so his work is the part after the drafting: research in the bill's last stage, a letter to the Governor urging him to sign, and, since the signature, how the program gets built. A signed bill is not yet a running program. This one starts only once its fund reaches the balance the statute sets, and the San Mateo Daily Journal reported in October 2025 that the pilot will run on philanthropic donations.
Crystal Springs Uplands School student David Liu is also working through Becker's office on how the bill could be implemented, and said he was impressed by the focus on mental health.San Mateo Daily Journal, "Pair of new laws aim to help ease health care access," 9 October 2025
The law is modeled on something that already exists. Its findings name the Farmworker Health Equity Express, a double-decker bus fitted out as a mobile clinic, run by ALAS (Ayudando Latinos a Soñar) with Life Science Cares Bay Area and funded by the Gilead Foundation, Genentech and AbbVie. It launched in Half Moon Bay in December 2022 and began visiting farms in January 2023. The senator's office put its reach at "approximately 120 people per week." David volunteers on it; the bus predates the bill.
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Senate Bill 338, Chapter 311, Statutes of 2025
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"Pair of new laws aim to help ease health care access"
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The office's announcement, 11 March 2025
A proposal in progress
David is drafting a legislative proposal, with the senator's staff and the Legislative Counsel, for tax credits and state support for small businesses owned by neurodiverse adults, who lose access to structured support once they leave school. It does not have a bill number yet. The work with autistic children that sits behind it is on the Autism & VR page.
The Youth Civic Engagement Initiative
David started the organization in Northern California in April 2024, with a co-founder who is its vice president, and is its president. It describes itself as a national organization for young people in underrepresented and disadvantaged communities, working through online seminars, in-person events and community service, and it counts more than 100 members. Its events since the kickoff:
- June 2024. Kickoff meeting, San Jose and online.
- July 2024. Leadership training camp in Los Gatos for 12 members, with speakers including Andrew Yang and Congressman Ted Lieu; co-hosted the Asian American Women Leaders Retreat.
- September 2024. Policy advocacy seminar for 20 members, with Santa Clara County Supervisors Otto Lee and Margaret Abe-Koga.
- August 2025. Interviews with Governor Gavin Newsom and Congresswoman Judy Chu on youth mental health.
- December 2025. A fundraiser in Hillsborough for a second health bus, to serve farms around Salinas, which raised more than $100,000.
- March 2026. A volunteer day at a Half Moon Bay mushroom farm: mental-health support, lunch with the workers, and the local sheriff's office invited to speak.
- July 2026. The Summer 2026 conference on youth policy advocacy, with Senator Becker, Congresswoman Chu, Congressman Lieu, Assemblymember Patrick Ahrens and Aisha Baro; 113 people signed up.
Offices and campaigns
Office of Supervisor Margaret Abe-Koga
Santa Clara County, June to August 2025
David ran a research project on mental health challenges in the county. He wrote a paper summarizing Governor Newsom's 2022 Master Plan for Kids' Mental Health and presented the findings to the Supervisor.
Evan Low for Congress, CA-16
Campbell and San Jose, 2024
He led a team of fifteen high school students who reached more than a thousand households by phone, at doors and at events they ran themselves. The work began with a recount: the March primary had left Evan Low and Joe Simitian tied for second at 30,249 votes each. David observed the recount at the San Mateo County Election Office, a machine tally of every ballot in a room anyone could watch. It ended with Low ahead by five votes.
On the ground in Half Moon Bay
Half Moon Bay is where the policy stops being paper. What people tell him about on the days he volunteers with ALAS, mostly depression and addiction, is what he goes back to the office and researches: which support systems and which policies already exist for it.
The ALAS food pantry. Every other week during the school year he packs and hands out food. 
The ALAS summer camp. He helped start a full-day camp after learning the children of farmworkers had nowhere to go over the summer, and teaches mathematics and art there to a room of more than 50. Equity Express volunteer days. On the bus since September 2025, supporting mental-health outreach during farm visits. He has also recorded five oral histories with farmworkers there, in their own words.