The Rebuild Conversations

Affordability is the top issue in American politics, and almost everyone talking about it is describing two different problems at once. That is the argument David Dagan, who directs academic and editorial affairs at the Niskanen Center and edits its journal Hypertext, and Matthew Meyers, Niskanen’s Abundance Coordinator, make in their new playbook, Affordability, Fast and Slow. Fast affordability...

This week we sat down with Bale Dalton, the Democratic nominee in Florida’s 7th, a Navy helicopter pilot who went on to run a 16,000-person workforce as NASA’s chief of staff. We recorded a couple of days after Republican primary voters fired Cory Mills, and Bale’s theory of the general election against Ryan Elijah is simple: nobody in this district cares about labels. They care that 45,000 famili...

This week we sat down with New York State Senator Andrew Gounardes, who represents the 26th District in Brooklyn and chairs the Senate’s Budget and Revenue Committee. What stuck with us is his diagnosis of the diagnosis. Every politician has learned to say “affordability.” It’s been poll tested, it passed every focus group, and as Andrew puts it, tattoo it on your forehead. Almost nobody has done...

This week we did something a little different and brought on two guests: Vice Mayor Kesha Hodge Washington of Phoenix and Louisiana State Senator Royce Duplessis of New Orleans. They co-chair the NewDEAL Forum Housing Task Force , which just released its culminating report on what state and local leaders are actually doing about housing costs. Not white-paper theater, actual programs with budgets...

Hi everyone, this week Gary and I talked with Matthew Lewis, communications director at California YIMBY , about why the hard part of the housing fight isn’t the economics but getting people to believe things that are true. We get into why housing and transportation are really one fight, why he thinks AARP were the original YIMBYs, and how bad-faith actors on both the left and right exploit the co...

California just had the biggest year for housing reform in its modern history. On this episode of The Rebuild, Tahra Hoops and Gary Winslett talk with Nolan Gray of California YIMBY about what actually changed: a full CEQA exemption for infill housing and SB 79's statewide upzoning near transit. Gray, a city planner and the author of Arbitrary Lines , argues that the hard part now is feasibility,...

This week Gary and I sat down with two amazing housing wonks: Muhammad Alameldin, Senior Policy Advisor at California YIMBY, and Eduardo Mendoza, Policy Director at the Livable Communities Initiative. I rent a condo in LA, and if I opened Zillow tomorrow I could not find anything close to my square footage at my price. There’s a reason for that. California builds about 3,000 condos a year, out of...

This week Gary and I sat down with Congressman Mike Levin, who represents California’s 49th, the district that runs from Camp Pendleton up through north San Diego and into a slice of Orange County. Levin is one of the few members who pairs a seat on House Appropriations with a real decade of clean-energy work before he ever ran for office, the exact reason why we wanted him on. We talk primarily a...

The biggest barrier to cheap energy in America isn’t technology, cost, or even politics in the abstract, it’s that utilities get to decide who competes with them. That’s the throughline of this week’s conversation with Rep. Sean Casten (D-IL-06), a clean-energy engineer turned Financial Services Democrat who has spent four years co-authoring the Energy Bills Relief Act with Rep. Mike Levin. The nu...

This week on The Rebuild, Gary and I sat down with Rep. Josh Harder for a second time, and I’m so glad we did. Rep. Harder chairs the Bipartisan Build America Caucus and has been one of the loudest voices in Congress pushing the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, a bill that, if passed cleanly, would be the most significant federal housing legislation in 50 years. The catch: an 11th-hour amendment...

California’s affordability crisis isn’t slowing down — so we brought on Tom Steyer to talk about what it would actually take to fix it. In this episode, we dig into his plan to build a million homes in four years, why your electricity bill is so high and who profits from it, and whether California can lead a clean energy revolution that’s already underway around the world. Housing, energy, food co...

In a landmark ruling, the Supreme Court struck down the Trump Administration’s use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose tariffs — a decision with sweeping implications for trade policy, consumer costs, and the balance of power between the executive and legislative branches. In this episode of The Rebuild Conversations, Tahra Hoops is joined by co-host Gary Winslett...

This week on The Rebuild , Gary and I talked with Representatives Nikki Budzinski of Illinois and Amelia Sykes of Ohio to talk about something that’s affecting every family in America: affordability. From housing supply and grocery prices to energy costs, childcare, elder care, and even tariffs, we dug into the New Democrat Coalition’s newly released Affordability Agenda and what it would actually...

In this episode of The Rebuild , hosts Tahra Hoops and Gary Winslett sit down with Aaron Shroyer, former Special Assistant to President Biden for Housing Policy on the White House National Economic Council. Shroyer shares insights from his journey through city government, the Urban Institute, HUD, and the White House — revealing how local, research, and federal perspectives shape better housing po...

In this episode of The Rebuild , we spoke with Congresswoman Brittany Pettersen of Colorado’s Seventh District about the economic and structural challenges facing young families today and what it will take to make America more family-friendly. Our conversation explored how rising costs of childcare, housing, and everyday necessities are shaping family decisions, why stronger federal support for wo...

In this episode of 'The Rebuild,' hosts Tahra Hoops and Gary Winslett are joined by Representative Laura Friedman to discuss her bipartisan bill, the Cut Red Tape for Housing Act, which aims to reduce housing costs by removing outdated federal hurdles. The conversation delves into the specifics of the bill, the need for streamlining approvals for housing projects on infill properties, and the broa...

Tahra Hoops: Hi everyone. Welcome to The Rebuild. I'm one of your hosts, Tahra Hoops, joined by Gary Winslett and today we have a very special guest joining us: Representative Josh Harder. He is a Democrat from California, serving Modesto and parts of the Central Valley. Harder has served in Congress since 2019 and has become a key voice in the abundance conversation. We're very excited he's joini...

In this episode of The Rebuild , Tahra Hoops and Gary Winslett sit down with Congressman Ritchie Torres to unpack what “abundance politics” really means in practice. From dismantling self-inflicted scarcities in housing, energy, and infrastructure to rethinking outdated policies like the Jones Act, Torres argues for a progressivism that actually delivers progress. The conversation spans the import...

In this episode of The Rebuild, Matt Yglesias joins Gary Winslett and Tahra Hoops for a wide-ranging conversation on the future of abundance politics, the tensions between environmentalism and economic populism, and what a pragmatic Democratic agenda should look like post-2024. They explore how Democrats can better connect with working-class voters, the underrated value of the social safety net, a...

Prof. Gary Winslett: Congressman Peters, it is so nice to have you here on The Rebuild. We're really excited to talk to you. Rep. Scott Peters: Thanks for having me. Prof. Gary Winslett: Yeah, love to do it. Let's dive right in. So I was reading in the Wall Street Journal just on Sunday that consumers should expect electricity prices to go up this Summer. And yet I was also reading a few weeks ago...