America’s Affordability Crisis and How MAGA is Making it Worse

Summary

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Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams

Episode 72: America’s Affordability Crisis and How MAGA is Making it Worse

Date: February 17, 2026
Host: Stacey Abrams
Notable Guests: Rep. Pramila Jayapal, Talmon Smith (New York Times economic reporter)

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Episode Overview

In this powerful episode of Assembly Required, Stacey Abrams tackles America’s worsening affordability crisis and how MAGA Republican (Trump-centric) policies are exacerbating economic pain for millions. Through in-depth conversations with Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal and economic reporter Talmon Smith, Abrams explores how policy failures—particularly those engineered or enabled by the current Republican administration—fuel both personal and systemic hardship. The episode connects themes of economic justice, democracy, and collective resistance, offering listeners both sobering analysis and actionable steps.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

I. Setting the Context – Weaponizing Mindsets (02:24-07:52)

• Abrams reflects on a discussion with Nat Kendall-Taylor about three damaging mindsets dominating American politics and society:
  • Individualism – Problems blamed on personal choices, ignoring broader systems.
  • Fatalism – Believing nothing can change, entrenching despair.
  • Otherism – Dividing resources through “us vs. them” thinking.

“They want us to be so convinced that we are alone and losing...to believe that the other is at fault for what we face. But I’m here to tell you, from Minneapolis to Memphis, from Charlotte to Chicago, we are watching Americans make a very different choice.”
—Stacey Abrams (06:08)

• Highlights Republican policy attacks: funding ICE over health care, gutting the Dept. of Education, erasing LGBTQ symbols, fomenting division.
• Stresses the importance of rejecting all three mindsets and embracing collective action.

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II. The Epstein Files as a Microcosm of State Failures: Interview with Rep. Pramila Jayapal

(14:47-23:59)

A. DOJ’s Mishandling of Survivor Information

• Jayapal recounts challenging AG Pam Bondi for failing to redact Epstein survivors’ identities while protecting predators.

“Personal information, contact information, address, phone number, and even nude photos in some cases were all released. And it was clearly not a mistake because one person was redacted and the other 31 were not.”
—Pramila Jayapal (16:52)

• Bondi refused to apologize; survivors remain retraumatized.

B. Systemic Implications

• The Epstein files illustrate a larger pattern: an administration weaponizing federal agencies (DOJ, DHS, ICE, CBP) for political retribution, not justice or public service.
• Congressional checks and balances have broken down—GOP legislators refuse to hold Trump accountable, undermining the Constitution and public protection.

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III. Affordability Crisis Detailed

A. Congressional Role in Addressing (or Harming) the Economy (23:59-29:51)

• Abrams cites Pew Research: majority of Americans (52%) believe Trump’s economic policies worsen their lives.
• Jayapal explains Congress’s Article I power and how GOP lawmakers abdicate oversight in favor of Trump, e.g. enabling cuts to Medicaid, blocking ACA tax credits, refusing disaster and research funds.
• Courts as a check are also weakened by politicization and corruption scandals.

“What we’re seeing is that these Republicans in Congress are refusing to stand up and fight back against anything that Donald Trump is doing. They really are a cult party, and they’re following their cult leader blindly off the cliff, even if it means it’s not good for their constituents.”
—Jayapal (25:52)

• Civic resistance and grassroots action are the last—sometimes only—barrier to authoritarian rule.

B. Housing, Childcare, and Cost of Living (29:51-48:57)

• Gen Z/Millennials: home buying out of reach—average first-time buyer age now 40.
• Current legislative efforts (bipartisan House housing bill) are stopgaps—true relief will take massive investment.
• The Child Care for Every Community Act would cap costs at 7% of family income—progress blocked by Senate opposition.
• Universal programs (housing, childcare, health care) are both morally and economically essential.

“If you look at housing...we need affordable rental units, we need more public housing, we need investments in those public housing buildings, and we need to actually build more housing across the board.”
—Jayapal (43:10)

• Poverty is a policy choice, compounded by wage stagnation and outmoded poverty lines. Social shame prevents needed reform.

• Abrams underscores the unique burdens on BIPOC and “genteel poor” families: supporting extended kin, not represented in official statistics.

C. Homework for Listeners [(48:57-52:42)]

• Recognize your power—vote, demand more from candidates, insist that they address inequality with universal solutions.
• Don’t accept incrementalism or defeatism.

“Hopelessness and powerlessness are tools of the oppressor... Demand more of the people you support. Tell them that you think that America, as the richest country in the world, should have a tax system that makes the wealthiest pay their fair share, that makes sure that people have universal childcare and universal housing and universal health care.”
—Jayapal (50:10)

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IV. Explaining the Data: Interview with Talmon Smith (NYT)

(55:01-83:55)

A. What “Affordability” Means (55:01-56:21)

• Core test: Can households pay bills, save, and get ahead?

B. Disconnect Between Data and Lived Reality (56:21-73:47)

• Despite low official unemployment (4.3%), job growth nearly flat in 2025, with serious downward revisions.
• Unemployment rate masks discouraged workers, underemployment, and doesn’t reveal wage stagnation or inequity.
• Economic “growth” is confined to the top 20%—the rest see stagnation or backsliding.

“With all that being said, think about the top 20%. Okay, so now we’re talking about 68 million people. If 68 million people are still doing pretty well...that’s like having a little richistan within the broader economy.”
—Talmon Smith (66:28)

• 74% of Americans call the economy “only fair or poor” (Pew). Wealth data and consumer optimism do not match.

• Smith pushes back hard against pundits blaming people for their “bad moods”:

“I do get worked up seeing...commentariat taking a lot of what we’ve talked about and dismissing it, making the case that...people are essentially not being grateful enough for the good data... I think whether it’s from a political perspective or...trying to be an earnest investigator, we should assume that when the data...tells us things are fine but people are telling us they are not, that we should listen.”
(71:46)

C. Specific Policy Case: Tariffs (73:47-79:27)

• Trump’s tariffs have cost trillions, but about 70% of those costs land on consumers, the rest on businesses (CBO).
• Promised benefits—restarting manufacturing—haven’t materialized; small businesses/farmers have been especially hard-hit:

“It’s really this lose, lose, lose situation where tariffs have not, it seems so far, been great for economic growth...It’s been a loser, obviously, for small businesses... and then consumers. It’s pretty straightforward.”
—Talmon Smith (77:21)

D. Homework/Policy Solution

• Build more affordable housing, through market mechanisms, inclusionary zoning, and public investments—at all levels.

“We need to massively expand affordable housing, whether it’s through market rate housing or through inclusionary zoning...if we all say, ‘build it somewhere else,’ then it just never gets built.”
—Talmon Smith (80:26)

• Shout out to the Center for Public Enterprise for innovative housing policy work.

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Notable & Memorable Quotes with Timestamps

• “The world changes according to the way people see it, and if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way people look at reality, then you can change it.” - Stacey Abrams invoking James Baldwin (13:34)
• “Poverty is a policy choice. It is a moral failure in my view as well, because this is not, you know, it benefits us to make sure that we don’t have people who can’t afford to live.” - Pramila Jayapal (41:31)
• “Hopelessness and powerlessness are tools of the oppressor.” - Rep. Jayapal (49:59)
• “If people had a ton of retirement savings and the housing market was great, and AI was not around the corner threatening to disemploy tons of white collar workers, then I’m positive people would be in a better mood. But they’re not. And they have reasons not [to] be in a better mood.” - Talmon Smith (72:25)

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Actionable Homework & Tangible Next Steps

As emphasized throughout:

• Vote, and demand bold policies from your representatives.
• Support and call for universal childcare and affordable housing.
  • Ask representatives to back the Child Care for Every Community Act.
  • Advocate for zoning and policy changes to allow more housing construction.
• Volunteer or donate to organizations supporting affordable housing (Habitat for Humanity, local initiatives).
• Challenge the retreat to fatalism or accepting only incremental change.

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Structured Episode Timeline

| Timestamp | Segment/Topic | |-----------|--------------| | 02:24–07:52 | Abrams on mindsets (individualism, fatalism, otherism) and current regime’s strategy | | 14:47–23:59 | Jayapal on Epstein files, DOJ failures, pattern of authoritarianism | | 23:59–34:35 | Congressional GOP complicity; housing costs, legislative attempts | | 34:35–48:57 | Childcare, homelessness, "genteel poverty," frameworks for policy and poverty | | 48:57–52:42 | Jayapal’s “homework”—demand more, assert voter power | | 55:01–83:55 | Talmon Smith: defining affordability, jobs data, who benefits, tariffs’ costs, actionable homework | | 83:55–End | Abrams’ final actions: call for collective action, highlight Habitat, urge volunteering/donations |

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Tone and Language

The episode is forthright, urgent, deeply compassionate, and analytically rigorous. Abrams and her guests blend accessible explanations with moral clarity, always oriented toward action and hope.

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For anyone who hasn’t listened:
This episode is a must for anyone seeking to truly understand why “affordability” is more than a buzzword and how economic hardship and autocracy now go hand in hand. You come away not just with knowledge, but with concrete steps to demand, advocate, and vote for a more just, inclusive future.

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Transcript

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[A]

Welcome to Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams from Crooked Media. I'm your host, Stacey Abrams. Yesterday we held our very first 10 steps campaign partner call, where we were joined by groups who work with young people, with mothers, with families, all galvanized about the fight against authoritarianism and Autocracy in pursuit of freedom and power. One group that joined us supports hyperlocal journalism. Another one focuses on immigrants. Yet another one counts millions among their membership. And our inaugural guest speaker was Nat Kendall Taylor of the Framework Institute. He opened his talk with us by sharing a video that asked a fairly innocuous question about what it takes to be healthy. The respondents, who varied by race and age and region and economic status, they all gave very eerily similar answers that, without exception, put responsibility for being healthy squarely on the shoulders of the individual. There was no conversation about the environment, about access to healthcare. It was as though they'd all been trained to believe that your health is an individual responsibility and that there is no structural impact. And yet we know that one's health cannot be divorced from socioeconomic issues like access to fresh food, the ability to exercise in a neighborhood without sidewalks, or the absence of health care or even health insurance. I'm not going to do Nate's talk, adequate justice, and I'm not even going to try to. But the reason we wanted him as our first conversationalist was that the work he and his colleagues are doing is a helpful tool in today's chaotic national crisis. In particular, he spoke of three mindsets. How do we think about the world we are a part of? How do we process information? And they've identified three mindsets. Individualism, fatalism, and otherism. Stick with me. Individualism is this idea that the problems we face come down to the choices that. That we individually make. That I choose right or you picked wrong. That fundamentally we're in this alone. If we are all together. Fatalism. That second mindset says that it doesn't matter what we do. The outcome is already decided. Why bother fighting if the system is rigged? And then the third otherism, and that's the zero sum race for resources and survival, us versus them. Whether it's immigrants or women or the working class or insert group here. One group's success requires another one's failure. That's otherism. Now, the genius of this attack on our nation's psyche by this regime is how effectively Republicans leading this charge have weaponized these mindsets. I'm gonna go through a few of their greatest hits. You know, we've got the omnibus tax bill that gave more money to ICE than to health care for millions of Americans. We have the dismantling of the Department of Education, something that is gutting the ability of our nation to protect poor kids and children with disabilities at the prime of their educational lives. Then we've got the stripping of the Pride flag from the Stonewall National Monument, and one of the pettiest acts I've seen. And that's saying a lot. You see, they want us to be so convinced that we are alone and losing. They want us to know that only by destroying those who are different from us will we survive. They want us to believe that the other is at fault for what we face. But I'm here to tell you, from Minneapolis to Memphis, from Charlotte to Chicago, where we are watching Americans make a very different choice about their mindset, opting for a mindset of collective action, being more powerful than personal suffering, exercising our constitutional rights and responsibility as citizens via cell phone videos to hold power accountable, even if it cost us our lives. We see folks organizing an immigrant relief fund for those who can't afford to leave the house and go to work lest they never return. We see people refusing individualism, rejecting fatalism, and denying otherism. But even more, we are notching victories like citizen journalists shining a light on stories about how communities are fighting back because those victories matter. Those victories lift us up. Those victories remind us that we can win. And we are celebrating cultural milestones despite being told from the very first day of this administration that culture no longer matters if it's not a proto natalist, ethno fascist, Christian nationalist culture. But in this month, we are celebrating black history, even as the leader of what used to be described as the free world posts vile memes about the nation's first black first family. But Black History Month is just the beginning of what we're gonna do, because in March, we are going to turn our attention to Women's History Month. Then we are going to look at Pride Month, and we are going to celebrate what it means to operate in defiance, to support what will happen when we look at who we are and love who we are. When we look at Women's History Month, we will do so while the Epstein files continue to hold up a mirror to the depravity and injustice of this Justice Department. And in June, when we celebrate Pride Month, it will be in defiance of this administration's efforts to erase the LGBTQ community and its integral role in leading transformative protests. In May and September and November, we will recognize the ways in which Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, the Latino community and Native Americans have embodied what it means to be American by leading the way and building collective power and defining what freedom looks like when it is finally seized. And we will refuse. Across these months and across these days, we are going to refuse to allow those markers of our pluralism to be weaponized in order to make us less than the sum of our multicultural, multiracial parts. We are going to reject otherism. We are going to reject individualism. We are going to say no to fatalism because fatalism is a luxury our communities have long refused because we refuse to be defeated. Otherism is an invitation to link our shame and to learn from our different fights. We are going to say that we are other, but we are together. And yes, we are individuals. But individualism is not a stopping place. It is a way station for us to recognize how we are connected and what more we can have when we pool our power and pool our resources and pool our dreams. As Black History Month enters itself third week in the calendar, shortest month, and we learn anew the contributions of a community that have defied erasure and underestimation and fascism for more than 400 years, I am of the mindset of James Baldwin. He said the world changes according to the way people see it. And if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way people look at reality, then you can change it. Well, America, what are we going to show them? Joining me this week on Assembly Required is Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal. And joining me later we will have economic reporter for the New York Times and author of the upcoming book Clout and Capital, Mr. Talman Smith. Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams is brought to you by Quince. Quince is all about elevated essentials that feel effortless. Designed for layering and mixing, each piece helps build a timeless wardrobe made to last with versatile silhouettes and thoughtful details. They're the kind of styles you wear again and again. 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[B]

Thank you for having me, Stacy. Always great to see you.

[A]

Okay, well before we dive into our main topic, which is affordability, you made headlines yesterday, February 11, for a different kind of confrontation. You took on Attorney General Pam Bondi over her handling or mishandling of the Epstein files. And what was so important was that you demanded an apology to survivors and you gave very clear details about her failure to properly redact the names of survivors. The failure that she has made for her entire department to bring any indictments. Can you walk us through that moment and talk about why it is so important that we keep talking about the Epstein files and what it means for accountability in this country?

[B]

Yeah, absolutely. Jamie Raskin, our ranking member on the Democratic side, yielded to me first. So I was the first member to question her. And that was really important because we knew that the survivors were gonna be in the. I've been talking with them over many months now, had the privilege of spending a lot of time with them. And the release of the Epstein files by the Department of Justice and the lack of redacting of their personal information, which was part of the law, and then the protecting redacting of the pedophiles and the predators, was also violated. And. And so I think that it was really important to them to be able to confront her directly or have her address them directly, I would say. And so I started by showing how she's violated the law, both in terms of the Epstein victims. List was the example I put up. This was an email that had 32 names on it of victims. One of them was redacted. The other 31 were not. Personal information, contact information, address, phone number, and even nude photos in some cases were all released. And it was clearly not a mistake because one person was redacted and the other 31 were not. On the other hand, I showed an email that was from Jeffrey Epstein to somebody whose name was redacted. And Jeffrey Epstein, in that email, said, I loved the torture video. And it turned out that that person that Jeffrey Epstein was sending it to, whose name was redacted, was a sultan who has financial ties to Donald Trump and personal ties to Steve Bannon. And so I put both of them up and said, there is such harm that's been caused by your Department of Justice violating the law in both these instances, which. Will you turn around and apologize to the survivors who are standing right behind you? I had asked them to stand if they were willing, and they all stood and apologized to them. And, Stacey, it could have been an incredibly powerful moment for her and for the country if she had chosen to do that. Of course, she did not, and she refused to do that. She immediately. I think she was flustered by the question. She immediately tried to attack me for not questioning Merrick Garland before. And I said, this is not about Merrick Garland. This is about you taking responsibility on a human level. And as the head of DOJ and apologizing to the survivors. She had no interest in taking ownership for any of this. And it's real harm that these survivors have experienced. Not just those 32, but a number of Jane does that had kept their identities concealed over 20, 30 years, in some cases, all those identities revealed in these documents, survivors who were having to tell their families for the first time that they were part of this trafficking ring. And it was absolutely disgusting to me that she refused to even acknowledge the survivors. And I think for many of them, the re traumatization that they have gone through over and over again, including by her refusing to. To redact their names and keeping the names of predators and pedophiles protected and then refusing to even acknowledge them, was again, another example of how this is what they've been experiencing. They keep being told to sit down, shut up, move on, be silent, and they're not having it anymore. And I'm just so grateful for their courage and their resilience and their bravery in coming there and sitting through that entire hearing where she refused to take any accountability.

[A]

Representative, when you were on the show last, you came and spoke with us about the rise of this authoritarian regime, the work you were doing to help people prepare to resist. And I want to link it back to what you just talked about, which is we have the individual personal tragedies that are being visited upon women who've been victimized first by these horrific men and then by a system that is refusing to get them justice. But then there's the broader narrative about an administration and a Republican regime writ large that seems to have no sense of accountability. And as I watched the hearing, with one or two exceptions, it was mostly apologia or. Or celebration of the wrong that the administration is doing, and nothing about the victims who are facing this harm, both those individuals, but also the larger American victimization of our system. Can you talk a bit about how you see the Epstein files as a microcosm of this larger dynamic that's playing out in our country?

[B]

Yeah, it's such a great question. And it links back both to the role of the Department of Justice and the way it's being used by Donald Trump, but also the role of all of these government agencies and how they are all being used, whether it's the Department of Homeland Security and ICE and cbp, whether it's the getting rid of agencies like Housing and Education, or whether it is the turning of the Department of Justice, which is supposed to be the people's lawyer. That's what the Attorney General is supposed to be, but. But in fact, it's turned into Donald Trump's personal retribution agency. And all of these are tactics of an authoritarian leader who wants to use every piece of power that he has Every point of leverage that he has to actually work for himself and his interests versus for the American people. And so the Epstein files are one example, very important example of that, because here's the Attorney General of the United States who should be prosecuting every single one of these people and instead has participated in a massive cover up that has been going on, to be fair, through several administrations. But certainly Donald Trump used that because he thought it was going to be in his political interest to raise the Epstein files during his campaign. And then once he found out he was all over those files and his rich and powerful billionaire buddies were all over these files, he then moved into cover up mode. And Pam Bondi became his agent of COVID up. That is the same pattern of what he is doing when it comes to the Department of Homeland Security and the lawlessness of ICE and CBP in violating the constitutional rights of U.S. citizens, of legal permanent residents, of undocumented immigrants who have been here for 20, 30 years and committed no crime. That is the same weaponizing, to use their word, of the Department of Homeland Security against the American people. It's not about immigration. It's about violation of constitutional rights of everybody. And that is also the same way that he's interacted with, with every piece of power he has, whether it's imposing tariffs on Americans or on different countries that raise the price of everyday groceries for Americans or whether it is taking away the Civil rights division within any of these departments and trying to steal elections. He's continuing to try to say that the 2020 election was stolen and he's preparing for, for the midterms. And obviously, being from Georgia, you know all about this. He's preparing for the midterms with additional ways that he's trying to influence those elections and make sure that he wins.

[A]

And I appreciate you tying those together because part of what I want to talk about with you today is affordability and what it means in the broader construct of how we fight for our country. And one thing you just said, you talked about how Trump has personally benefited and tried to accrete power. But I also want to invite you to talk about the role and responsibility of your colleagues that too often, I would argue we focus all of our attention, our invective and our venom on Trump. But he is not just supported by, but he is championed by members of Congress who have the authority to take him to task, to defend victims, to actually address affordability. And I would love for you to talk about the influence that Congress has on the economy. And I want to touch on the fact that more than half of Americans, 52%, have said that the economic policies of this regime have made the economy worse. And this is according to a Pew Research poll. They don't use the term regime. I do. But you are talking to constituents every day. You are sitting in the halls, walking through the halls of Congress every day. What role do your colleagues have in this economy and this affordability crisis?

[B]

No, this is really important because we thought that there were checks and balances built into the system. Right. And when I was on your show last time, I was talking about this. Those checks and balances are clear, clearly not working. And if you look at why one of the checks and balances is supposed to be Congress, our Article one powers, which Jamie Raskin always points out, it's not co equal branches of government. We're Article one. It's much thicker and bigger than Article two. And so this is a very serious check and balance that the framing founders put into the Constitution with the idea that no matter which party you were in, that members of the majority party would fight for those very authorities that are granted in Article 1 to Congress. Right. We're the authorizing force. We have specific Article 1 Powers of the Constitution. We're supposed to stand up to the president to protect those powers and to fight back against an authoritarian leader. But that does require the majority party to be willing to do that. And what we're seeing is that these Republicans in Congress are refusing to. To stand up and fight back against anything that Donald Trump is doing. They really are a cult party, and they're following their cult leader blindly off the cliff, even if it means that it's not good for their constituents. And so one example of that is how he stripped healthcare away from 15 million Americans through the slashing of Medicaid. $1.5 trillion in cuts to Medicaid, but then also how he stripped it away from an additional 20 million Americans by not extending the Affordable Care act tax credits. And in both of these cases, Republicans stand to lose as much or more than Democrats. If you look at Mike Johnson's home state of Louisiana, 60% of births in Louisiana are funded through Medicaid. And so if you strip away Medicaid, those constituents will lose their health care. But these Republicans went along until very recently when we got 17 Republicans who realized we're losing, you know, they are losing this battle on health care and affordability around health care. And suddenly they crossed over with us to extend the ACA tax credits. But they all voted for that big, bad betrayal bill that slashed Medicaid. And so I think that in this situation, what we're seeing over and over again is that these Republicans refused to stand up to Trump. They refused to exercise their Article 1 powers around rescinding and impounding of funds. No FEMA funds have gone out, Stacey. You know, there are science and research grants that never went out that were authorized by Republicans and Democrats in Congress. But, but Trump proposes a rescissions package. The Republicans pass it. Trump proposes impounding funds. The Republicans do nothing about it. Trump proposes tariffs that are unconstitutional. I think we'll see. And the Republicans do nothing about it. And so in every one of these cases, that check on the power of an authoritarian president doesn't work if Republicans are not willing to stand, stand up. And so you're starting to see some cracks in this a little bit. But the reality is that has been a massive issue. And the courts are another. That's another check. But again, while the lower courts have been doing a pretty good job of pushing back, the reality is a lot of things are being decided in a shadow docket without even a decision at the Supreme Court, which is, you know, which is really at the mercy of the bribes and the lobbyists that come, you know, that come and buy them a luxury RV for some of these justices. And so at every level, I think we're seeing cracks. And it's why it goes back to, I think when I was on your show last time, I talked about Resistance Lab, the power of the people. And that's why the Epstein survivors, to bring it back to them, their voices, their stories, their organizing, and to stand up and fight back. That's why the Minnesota, all the Minnesotans who are standing up and fighting back. That's why the power of the people becomes so important, because it is the last and frankly, the only final check on an authoritarian president.

[A]

I think that's not only so salient, I think it also raises for me the question of why affordability fits into how we fight authoritarianism. And that is that when people believe that democracy can deliver for them, they're going to be more willing to resist, to fight, to engage. And you've articulated very clearly the failures we've seen from this administration and this regime when it comes to issues of justice, housing, healthcare, science. But I want to stick with housing for a second because most Americans, particularly Gen Z and millennials, they feel like buying a house is now out of reach. And they might be right because we know that the average age of a first time home buyer in the US has now risen to 40 years old. And Representative, last week the House passed the bipartisan housing for the 21st century Act. Can you talk about that package? Does it actually help make housing more affordable and does it stand a chance of making it through the Senate?

[B]

Well, I mean, I think that it is important. We're trying to do whatever we can. But remember, in Build Back Better under Joe Biden, that was the moment when we proposed a massive new investment in housing. We also proposed, by the way, universal childcare. We passed it through the House and both of those got blocked in the Senate by a couple of senators who are no longer there that were on the Democratic side. We could have passed that. That would have been very, very important because I do think that we are in this moment where particularly as you said, young people across the country do not feel any hope. And you can see this reflected in all the polling about being able to own a home. I know in, in my home district of Seattle, the median housing price for a first time home buyer is something like almost a million dollars. Nobody is even thinking about owning a home as a young person, whereas I know that there are a lot of people, you know, in their 50s, 60s, 70s who did own a home when they were maybe in their late 20s. It was not out of reach. You could actually hope for that, but that's not the case. I mean, across the country, you can't pay the rent for a family of four on our current minimum wage, our current federal minimum wage, which is still seven bucks and 25 cents. So I think it really is about the lack of affordability of everything and the lack of hope. And I'm gonna add another word that's come up a lot in the healthcare fight as we've done polling across the country. The lack of control. People don't feel like they have any control over their lives. They can't afford their groceries, they can't afford their pharmaceutical drugs, they can't afford their housing, they can't afford a vacation. How about just taking your kids to the movie? People can't even afford that. I saw polling that says that something like 30 plus percent of people don't even have 400 bucks in their bank account for an emergency. That means your car breaks down and you can't get to your job, you can't fix your car and you might lose your job and you get nothing there. Right? All of the medical debt that people have. So the housing package is important. I don't know if it'll make it through the Senate. It's very hard to know what is going to make it through any of these bodies anymore. We are finding some success with discharge petitions, which is a way to bring a bill to the floor without the Speaker's consent by getting a certain number of Republicans to sign on to get to a majority of 218 in the House. The Senate has the filibuster, though, as you know, Stacey, I think we've talked about this many times and it means that 40% of the Senate, the United States Senate, can block anything from moving forward or even being debated. So we'll see what happens with that package. But I think the more important thing is to recognize that all of housing needs a massive investment, really a massive investment that is both into owning a home as well as into rents and how to make housing affordable for people across the country.

[A]

More from my conversation after the break. This episode is brought to you by Freedom From Religion Foundation. A strong democracy doesn't happen by accident. It's built deliberately through laws that protect everyone's freedom, not just those with power. One of those protections is is the separation of church and state. The First Amendment ensures that government serves all people equally, regardless of faith, background or belief, and that no one is forced to live under someone else's theology. Today, that principle is under threat from movements that want to blur the line between religion and government, narrowing who truly belongs in our democracy. The Freedom From Religion foundation works to defend that boundary in schools, courts and public institutions. So freedom of conscience remains a right, not a privilege. This is about fairness, it's about inclusion, and it's about building a democracy that works for everyone. Visit FFRF US NewYear or text my first name S T A C E Y to 511511 and support the work of protecting our shared freedoms. To learn more, go to FFRF us newyear or text my first name, Stacy to five one one and help protect a country that belongs to all of us. Message and Data Rates. I want to go back to your mention of universal childcare and how close we actually came as a country to having it. Because we know that childcare is not just a financial burden. It is a worry that weighs on parents when they're at work. It weighs on communities as they try to build stronger neighborhoods and stronger families. And we know that New Mexico recently became the first state in the nation to offer universal childcare. And I think what was so important about what you raised is that we almost got it done. And so this isn't pie in the sky. This was imminent and we had two Democratic senators block it. But we also know that there is a bill, Elizabeth Warren's Childcare for Every Community act, and you've signed onto it. Can you talk a bit about what this bill would do and why universal childcare is something we should actually be talking about this year before the midterms, not next year or waiting until 2028?

[B]

Yeah, another one of my favorite topics, because we did get so close and the bill basically says, and I was chair of the Progressive Caucus at the time, we were the ones that held the line in the House to say we are not moving anything forward without these investments in housing and childcare. And Stacey, not that I like to say I told you so, because I'd prefer to get the things done than be right, but had we gotten that done, I think we might have been in a very different place. The bill just basically Elizabeth Warren's, and I've been a co sponsor of it since it was introduced and pushed it very hard. It basically says that no family is going to pay more than 7% of their income in child care. And I know in Seattle that childcare is now $2900 a month per child. And if you look at that and you look at rent, there is no way you can make it on whatever the median salary is, much less, even if you're sort of seen as a middle class family. And that's why we need to make sure that this is a universal benefit. The richest people are not going to use it because their 7% is going to be a lot of money, right? So they're not going to get free child care, which is what a lot of the critics try to point to as a flaw. It's not a flaw. They won't use it. They'll have their private nannies. That's fine. But for all of the other people that you would know that you're only going to spend a certain amount on child care and that it leaves open the rest of your budget for housing, for the other things, and you're still paying your fair share. You're paying up to 7% of your income. And of course, if you're low income, that means that you get that hand up too, because the investment in childcare is an investment in all of us. And we saw this when we passed an infrastructure package, but no childcare. What happened? A lot of my tradespeople who benefited from the job said, guess what? We can't go to work because we don't have childcare. We can't afford child care. Our healthcare workers I had numerous constituents and people across the country tell me stories about how if there were two healthcare workers in a family, one had to quit because they couldn't afford childcare otherwise. And it was cheaper for them for somebody to give up their job than to stay in a desperately needed industry where we need workers in the healthcare profession, but people can't afford childcare. So this is an incredibly popular policy. It's also, it would put us in line with every other, you know, similar country in the world, right, that has universal child care, universal health care, and all of these other things that we simply don't have. It makes it very difficult for any business to compete because they have to find workers who can afford their own childcare or they have to pay much higher salaries in order to get workers to be able to come and still be able to afford child care or housing. So on every level, it disadvantages us and our competitiveness. But it's also a moral failure in my mind to not provide universal childcare.

[A]

Well, Congresswoman, one of the reasons I love talking to you and we've been friends for a while, is that you understand this broader context of what's happening. And in particular, when politicians usually discuss affordability, they typically focus on middle income families and they often ignore the poor. We know that according to the national alliance to End Homelessness, the lack of, quote, deeply affordable housing is the primary cause of homelessness. And there's a 2025 report that noted that homelessness increased 18% from 2023 to 2024. Only 35 affordable housing units exist for every 100 extremely low income renter households. Meaning even if we filled every one of those rooms, there just aren't enough units. So what kind of solutions do you think we should be considering and advocating for when it comes to reining in the cost of rent long term, but also supporting families who need assistance in the short term?

[B]

Well, I always say that poverty is a policy choice. It is a moral failure in my view as well, because this is not, you know, it benefits us to make sure that we don't have people who can't afford to live. And that investment early on into working poor and poor people who are taking care of their families, who are doing all of the things but need a hand up, I think is really, really important. And that's why I have a resolution around this that I've worked on with the Poor People's campaign and that I had co led with Barbara Lee and now I lead in Congress myself because I just think that we're looking at poverty completely in the wrong way. It doesn't need to exist. And we have to be really clear that our responsibility to people who are living in poverty comes out of policy failures. We can fix it. We can invest in long term solutions for housing as well as short term assistance for housing. Right. We can invest in upgrading the public housing stock that we have across the country that causes all kinds of health problems for poor people. We can invest in universal health care, because guess what, it's not just about access. It's actually about people utilizing all of the different pieces of the healthcare system and leveling the playing field from the very beginning. And so that's why I've always been a champion of Medicare for all, which by the way, is at the highest popularity ever, because Republicans have now destroyed whatever used to exist of a health care system that had many things that also needed to be fixed, but was still taking care of a lot of people. So for me, I think if you look at housing as an example, we need affordable rental units, we need more public housing, we need investments in those public housing buildings, and we need to actually build more housing across the board. So it's multiple different things. And I think around homelessness, what we need is a housing first policy. That's why I have a housing as a human Right bill, because it invests significantly into housing. Housing is the very first thing that you need if people don't think about this. But if you don't have a place to live, you don't have a place to shower, you don't have an address to get mail at, there's so many different ways in which you are disadvantaged from the get go. So how about if we think about housing as the first human right and we invest in everyone being able to afford that housing, whether it's renting or owning, and we will see that the benefit from that accrues to all of us. Because poverty of an individual or of the nature that we have at the enormous percentage of people that live below the poverty line or even above the poverty line, but are still poor. 130 million people in the United States of America, the richest country in the world. Stacey, to me it's an abomination. And it's why I have always insisted in talking about poor people and not just middle class.

[A]

I mean, look, my mom used to call us the genteel poor. It's exactly what you described. My mom had a master's degree in library science. She was the head librarian at the college where she worked, but sometimes made Less money than the janitor who cleaned the college. My dad was a shipyard worker, but because there were no labor programs protections, they could underpay him. And one of the most important conversations that I had as a legislator was around kinship. And you and I both know that, especially for upwardly mobile people of color, although this is true across the board, there are a lot of those who are technically not impoverished, but who have financial responsibilities that aren't necessarily reflected in the traditional nuclear economic frameworks, those nuclear family economic frameworks. My mom used to call it genteel poverty. We didn't have much money, but we watched PBS when we had pbs and we read books. But the other part of what she was describing was the obligation that she and my father felt sometimes to support their siblings, their cousins, their nieces and nephews, A responsibility I've had myself. And when we think about the. The economic frameworks that guide our policymaking, how do we push legislators to be more mindful of the affordability needs for those who are helping support parents and siblings and extended families and broader communities?

[B]

Well, I think there's so many different things that we have to do to answer that question. But one thing is we've created a stigma of shame around even the word poor. Right. And poverty. And we've created these cutoffs that, by the way, you know, the poverty line hasn't been adjusted in. In decades. And so we're working off of a number that is very, very old, has not been adjusted for inflation or the cost of living, much less the obligations of a community. And, you know, and I think for a lot of us folks of color, we have a very different sense of community, and we do take care of extended families. Immigrants, for example, are constant. You're responsible to your other generations. And a lot of people live in the same home. And so you can't have even a housing unit that only has two bedrooms, because what about grandma and what about. You know, and so you have different needs. And I think we really have to adjust all of our measures, and we also have to adjust the way we think about poverty. We should not shame people for not having money, because if we raised the wage, if your mom was getting paid what she should have gotten paid. Right, Right. Then she would have had enough money. Why do we not pay school teachers who are the people that look after our kids? And yet, you know, in my district, the median wage of a schoolteacher is only like, $82,000. There's no way you can live in Seattle on 82,000. So these jobs are really important jobs. And if we actually paid people what they were worth, then we would be able to have people afford to live. And if we actually change the frameworks of how we think about poverty and. And who deserves what right? Because the idea of universal programs is that everybody deserves it. And you don't have this. Well, you have to be below a certain line, a certain income level in order to qualify for this. Because that's part of the shaming. Why don't we do what Europe and so many other countries do and say, yeah, everybody gets parental leave, everybody gets universal childcare, everybody gets universal healthcare. Those are the investments that a society makes in its people and in the worthiness of every human being.

[A]

So, Congresswoman, we like to give everyone homework. And you've done this before. This time we are having a conversation as we're heading into primaries and then into midterm general elections. People who are listening, who agree aggressively, are going to sit there and then think, well, but we can't get these things done. Universal childcare, housing first, actually treating the poor like they matter. Those are things that we can't talk about in America. And yet we have seen election after election in 25 and heading into 26, that says something different. So what's the homework that you would give to voters who are going to be talking to candidates who want their votes, but also talking to family members and friends? What should they be saying to help people make the connection between their economic struggles and the people in power, and what should they be demanding as a condition for their vote this year?

[B]

Well, I think the first thing is know your power and use it. The vote is your power. And what I think our opposition wants, what Donald Trump. But also people who, you know, who want to. Who want to keep the spoils to the few billionaires that are out there. What they want is for you to feel hopeless and powerless, because hopelessness and powerlessness are tools of the oppressor. So I think the first thing is for people to really understand that, yes, we can make change. And we're seeing, even if it's just in the races, political races that are happening in deep red Texas, where a very red Republican district just was won by a Democrat by double digits, because people want somebody who's gonna fight for them. And I think that's the second thing is demand more of the people you support. Please don't give in. And look, I'm a progressive. I led the Progressive Caucus. I always say being a progressive just means you're the first to the best. And Most just idea. And then everyone else runs to catch up with us and claim it later, which is fine. I don't mind people taking credit for our good ideas if they're actually going to mean that you get something done for people, but demand more of the people that you elect. Tell them that you think that America, as the richest country in the world, should have a tax system that makes the wealthiest pay their fair share, that makes sure that people have universal childcare and universal housing and universal health care. These are all critically important. Important. And we can demand more from the people who represent us. And we're seeing these bold populist ideas win in districts across the country. There are people who have told us for years, Stacy, that you can't win on these ideas in Republican districts. Well, I got news for you. We are winning on them. And what we need to do is really make sure that the people we elect are people who are gonna fight for us and not cower and not tell us to be practical and not tell us to just accept incremental change, but are actually going to fight for the country we deserve, because that can be achieved. I really believe that. Otherwise I wouldn't be here doing this work. I really believe that if people demand it, we can get it. And that requires, of course, voting as part of it. But that is really important. So let's go get this done, because we need to take back the House in November, and we need to take back all of the opportunities we have to protect our democracy, to protect our Constitution, and to create a world where people can actually thrive, not just survive.

[A]

Congressman Jayapal, thank you as always, for being with us on Assembly Required.

[B]

Thank you, Stacey. Thank you. So great to talk to you.

[A]

You too. Okay, much more when we come back from the break. If you're listening to Assembly Required, you probably already believe that systems aren't sacred. They're made and they can be remade. That's exactly the spirit behind the new season of Democracy Decoded, a podcast by Campaign Legal Center. This latest season explores the foundational cracks in our democracy, from dark money to gerrymandering. And it asks, how do we get here and what can we do to fix things? You'll hear real stories from real people alongside expert voices who are working towards solutions. The show is about naming the problems, tracing their origins, and offering actionable steps to restore a more representative and accountable democracy. If you believe systems can be redesigned and rebuilt, start with this. Listen to Democracy Decoded [e-mail] or on your podcast app of choice.

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[A]

Talman Smith, welcome to Assembly Required. Thank you for joining us.

[C]

Very glad to be here. Very glad to be here.

[A]

Okay, so I'd like to start with a big picture question, and this is really simple, straightforward, and shouldn't require too much definition. But how do you think about affordability? What does that mean and who is it for?

[C]

That is a very good question. The simplest way to think about affordability for me is can a given economic actor and I think for our case, right, how you think about things, and certainly how I think about things. As an economics reporter that spends a lot of time thinking about the labor market and how it affects people, I care about how households and families are doing. And affordability to me in that context means can they achieve in the near term the things and pay the bills that acquire them to be able to be able to go to sleep a bit easy at night, save for the future and bring in more than they have to put out in order to get along and hopefully get ahead? Of course, there are all sorts of different forces and dynamics that either lead to life being less or more affordable. And I'm sure we'll get into all of that. But that's what I think of when I think of that mix.

[A]

We are hearing that word used over and over again and it's now become a bit of a term of art that I Worry can be divorced from people's real lives. When you hear politicians in particular using the term affordability, do you think they mean what you think it means?

[C]

You know, it depends. We've seen that the President, unfortunately, in my opinion, has called at times this notion of affordability and there being an affordability crisis a hoax. Clearly, we can see both in the economic data, but also in the lives that we know from friends and family and that I see in my reporting across the country that this is something that people are really struggling with. But I do think the affordability crisis, which credit to Annie Lowery, who used to work for the Times like I do and now is at the Atlantic. She's a staff writer there, and she coined this essentially. Not that she was the first person to come up with it, but she. She had a really catchy story pre pandemic that actually pointed out how even as things like goods knickknacks from China, among other things, were getting cheaper, as corporate America had become more and more efficient at production, the key sort of turnstiles of socially mobile and affordable life were becoming more expensive, and especially in the context of wage stagnation for many Americans, were turning into a real pressure cooker. I think it was a real problem pre pandemic, which is why in the 2020 primary for the Democrats, it was an issue even though inflation, based on all the data we had there, was relatively low. And then the pandemic just brought so many different strains to the economy. Like the rest of the globe, the American economy experienced a lot of inflation. The price level in general, according to CPI, moved up by about 25%. A couple other indexes are a little bit above or below that, but it just turned what I think was a simmering problem into a boiling one. And so even if you're a politician that isn't actually necessarily geared towards trying to do the best for the public. And of course, I know there are plenty of elected officials that are earnestly trying to do their jobs as best as they can. I'm also not naive, and I think there are a lot of politicians that are just looking out for themselves and are power grabbers or whatever insult you might like to use, whether you're one or the other. The problem has gotten so bad. Right. The pot is boiling to where we're at the point where I don't think policymakers can ignore it. If they do ignore it, their own jobs are in peril. And I think as we approach the midterms this year, they all know that.

[A]

Let's talk about jobs, because one of the metrics that we use in the United States to measure the economy. And as someone who grew up in a family that was often termed either working class or working poor, the jobs that you have are really the predicate for almost everything else that affordability affects. And we're prerecording this conversation. On Thursday, February 12 and yesterday, jobs numbers were released for the month of January. According to those numbers, 130, 30,000 jobs were added and unemployment sits at 4.3%. But there was a revision to last year's numbers that showed that there was almost zero job growth in 2025 with only 181,000 jobs added. And in comparison, 1.46 million jobs were added in the last year of the Biden administration. And so I want to talk a bit about why we use job numbers to talk about the economy and why it matters when people are listening to the news, when they're hearing the reports, when they're hearing the revisionist history. So I'm going to ask you a few questions. And first, can you just talk about the jobs report, like how it works and why this is such an important metric in how we think about the economy.

[C]

Sure. So most people pay their bills and live their lives working a job, especially if you are in what economists think of as the prime age cohort. So that's people age 25 to about 54, how those people are doing or not, it's going to determine a lot of whether your economy is thriving, whether people are materially flourishing. And it also is a big determinative of the momentum of the economy. So the jobs report, which comes out on the first Friday of every month, usually now, we've had a government shutdown which limited the collection agencies by civil servants in our government to carry out their jobs. So we've had a series of delayed data release reports, or prints, as we kind of call them in the business. So this delayed print for the month of January, which also covered revisions, as you mentioned, from 2025, was a really important pulse check for where we are one year into the Trump administration and halfway through this decade, which is kind of insane. It's, it's been a blur. Yeah. But I think obviously that big headline takeaway was that we had an upside surprise on the jobs added for the month of January. I think people were expecting, you know, don't quote me on this, but somewhere around 50,000 jobs added. In terms of the Wall street consensus that's covered by Bloomberg, we got 130,000 jobs so that is good. And unemployment, which people were worried about ticking up last year, and it did tick up a bit by a couple tenths or a few tenths, now it's ticked back down by a couple ten. So that is unambiguous good news. You don't have to be supportive of this president or his policies to find relief in the fact that despite everything going on, all the things that people are validly concerned about, all that withstanding, that's good. Now, it is also true that These revisions to 2025 job growth were enormous, the largest that we've seen since 2009, which generally is not a good sign, because usually when you have large revisions, as we just got, that is typically a sign that the economy is a much more tough place than you, than you would have previously expected. So rather than the half a million jobs or so that we got in 2025, which was our previous understanding, the civil servants within the government have done their work and actually found out that, as you just mentioned, we got around 180,000 jobs for the entire year. And to your point about previous years, I believe in 2024 and one month under that last year of the Biden administration, I think we were averaging about 200k. So to get 180k for an entire year shows that for a number of reasons, the economy is experiencing serious drag, even if we are not in a recession.

[A]

And so I appreciate you raising the unemployment rate, because I want to probe there a minute. There is the conversation of what the unemployment rate is, but I also would love for you to talk about what does that number reveal, but also what does it mask? What right is embedded in that conversation? Because often there's a caveat. Yes, this is the unemployment rate, but then there's a question of how many people are actually in the job market who just decided and gave up. How many people are undercounted or underemployed. So can you talk a little bit about what the unemployment rate actually tells us, especially in the context of what you just said, which is we haven't really added many new jobs, and even though we added more than we expected, the unemployment rate still sits about 4.3%. So what does that number actually tell us?

[C]

Right. So the unemployment rate is a measure of the amount of people who are looking for a job that do not have a job. So it doesn't include, for example, people that have entirely left the labor force for a number of reasons. Sometimes it's an individual choice, child rearing, things like that. Oftentimes it's because they've been so discouraged that they've taken a break from trying to look for a job. And, you know, maybe they're doing family care, maybe they've returned to school, but it does not cover them. So it's not a perfect. As you just pointed out, it's not a perfect way to capture all the momentum of the economy. So that's why there's actually a separate set of reports that civil servants at the government run through and collect over the course of each month as well. For example, the job openings, labor and turnover survey. And we've seen how weak the economy has become in terms of the rate of hiring and some other rates. For example, there's also the quits rate, which measures how many people that have jobs are leaving their jobs, presumably for other better jobs. The quits rate is very, very low. The hiring rate is very, very low. The hiring rate is back at rates that we saw back also in the very early 2010s. So there's been a lot of cheerleading out of this administration about the economy. And to be clear, it's my job to call balls and strikes, so to speak, there are positives that we see right now in the economy. For one, the fact that we still have a low unemployment rate is historically an anomaly because typically when you have an unemployment rate below 4%, which was amazing, which is what we got under the Biden White House, and it ticks up, whether it's the lowest level is 4, whether the lowest level is 5, or whether the lowest level is below 4, which is what we got in the Biden years, once it ticks up, it typically doesn't just settle out, it tends to surge. So the fact that rather than surging back upward almost like a sine wave, we seem to just be muddling along. Mudding along is not. Or muddling through is not satisfying and we should not be satisfied with it. But it is something to take as a good piece of context. And on top of that, we are still seeing growth, almost shockingly and surprisingly good growth in light of the lack of jobs growth that we've seen in 2025, we're. We're growing at a rate of 3 to 4%. Now, the problem is, and this gets to another aspect about what the unemployment rate does not cover. That growth is not necessarily shared. In fact, we can see in the data that the top 20% and the top 20% are essentially almost on an island of their own in this economy. Now, the top 10 and 20%, if you think about our nation as a pie chart. Right. Top 10%, certainly top 1%. But even the top 20%, it looks like a pretty small sliver. But in the context of an economy that's at, you know, 30, 340 million people now. Okay, we'll do the math. 10%, it's 34 million extended out to the top 20%, which, again, there are a lot of people in the bottom half of the top 20% which are being affected by the affordability crisis. But we can see in the data that they are doing much better than, say, the bottom half of the country, which we should not dismiss, because that is an entire half. Those are our fellow countrymen, and it's the entire half of the country. And of course, I'm talking about the bottom half in terms of income and wealth, not in terms of human worthiness. But with all that being said, think about the top 20%. Okay, so now we're talking about 68 million people. If 6, 8 million people are still doing pretty well, or if you're talking about the top 10% and the 1%, great. Well, that's like having a little richistan within the broader economy. I mean, 68 million people is like the size of France. It's bigger than Spain. Right. It's basically a major European country. So this richistan, so to speak, that we have within America is skewing the data upwards because their consumption and 70% of the US economy essentially is consumption, is making things like retail sales appear like they're doing just fine. But we know, and I know you've been covering this throughout the past year. We know people aren't doing fine, and that's real too.

[A]

Well, I want to pull on the thread you just raised because you wrote an article about how America has never been wealthier, but it doesn't feel that way to everyone. And that 74% of Americans, according to a Pew Research study, described economic conditions as only fair or poor. And using the math you just laid out, we're talking about 170 million people that are in the bottom half of this economy. And these are the folks who are struggling to pay their bills. They are trying to figure out can they afford rent and food. And now they've lost access to the ACA subsidies. And at this same time, they're hearing elected leaders and business people tout this booming stock market or high home prices, or as you pointed out, the fact that retail is doing well. And you get this dichotomy and this disconnect in how we understand what's happening in America. Can you talk about how you think the average person is experiencing what looks on the one hand like success for millions, but for so many feels like they're slipping behind?

[C]

Yeah, I mean, that's spot on. And it's, it's sobering and it's, it's also been a real source of vertigo for me because, you know, I sort of live this barbelled life as a reporter where, you know, I'm. I'm down here in New Orleans right now, which is where I'm from. But, you know, I am based in New York at New York Times headquarters, and I spent a lot of my time tracking sort of the movements of interest rates in corporate America, walking or taking the subway downtown or going across midtown to meet with people who are portfolio managers in the bond market to talk about how this sort of business investment or this level of interest rates may trickle through to broader macroeconomic outcomes? And it's this set of people that are worried about the big picture, or they're worried about their wealth management clients, or they're worried about understandably how their businesses are doing. But the other half of my work is making sure that essentially every month or in the case of this past year where I've been working on a book, I spend my time in the country on the road, trying to get into every nook and cranny of every community in every region that I plausibly can. And the pain that people are experiencing that you laid out is real. And while trying to keep in mind that my job first and foremost is to be a news reporter and focus on the who, what, where, and when. Right. But I do get worked up seeing a lot of people, I guess, in my sphere of elite economic commentary and whatnot, whether they're at think tanks or their just broadly in the commentariat, taking a lot of what we've talked about and dismissing it, making the case that the problem is not the economy. The problem is that people are essentially not being grateful enough for the good data that we can see in the aggregate numbers, the overall numbers, and that the source of that big problem, that consumers sense of a disconnect. Right. I guess. And I don't really know where you go from there. The problem is that people just are too stupid to understand that they should be more happy than one. That doesn't really seem like a healthy way to view your fellow citizens. But I would see a disconnect, or I try to see the disconnect between consumer sentiment and good overall data and treat it as an experiment of, okay, well, what is the data missing? And I think whether it's from a political perspective or whether it's just from trying to do the right thing and trying to be an earnest investigator perspective, we should assume that when the data we're using tells us things are fine, but people, whether it's through surveys or whether it's through reporting, are telling us desperately that they are not fine, that we should listen to people. Because it is true that sometimes some people lie to themselves. But in my experience, people are at least experts of their own personal economic experience. If people had a ton of retirement savings and the housing market was great, and AI was not around the corner threatening to disemploy tons of white collar workers, then I'm positive people would be in a better mood. But they're not. And they have reasons not be in a better mood. So excuse the brief rant there, but, like, you just touched on a very, like, it's okay, personal, personal nerve for me. And, you know, I'm happy to get into, like, any different aspect of that, whether it's, you know, you know, tariffs or whether it's AI or whether it's the housing market. But yeah, there's a lot of things that are a real challenge and it's not fake. And it's not just the phones or Instagram.

[A]

Well, let's talk about tariffs. Yesterday, as we pointed out, we're recording this on Tuesday. So on Wednesday, the House of Representatives passed a bill, all the Democrats plus six Republicans agreed to block the tariffs on Canada. And it's now gonna head to the Senate. We're not sure what's gonna happen. And the reason I wanna talk about tariffs is that we know that tariffs have generated trillions of dollars. But we also know, according to a report that came out of the cbo, that the Congressional Budget Office, that those tariffs are largely paid by Americans. And last year on the show, we had a small business owner, her name is Beth Benneke, and she was a guest. And she recently wrote me describing the impact of Trump's tariffs. Like this. She said, quote, I lost my target contract, my warehouse went into forbearance, and I had to end contracts with fellow small businesses I'd been supporting. Tal, I'd love for you to talk about the real life impact of tariffs and to your point earlier, about the difference between what the numbers say and what people feel, we do talk a little bit about this impact of tariffs on entrepreneurs like Beth and on farmers and others who are really paying the price of this Trillions of dollars that are pouring into our economy.

[C]

Yeah. So the nice thing about this is, I mean, it's not nice, but the nice thing for economics reporters like me is that this is actually a space where the data and the anecdotes have been lining up in pretty decent alignment. It's been really remarkable to see how, as one economist put it, the American economy had been running throughout 2025, sprinting with a parachute on its back. Right. I just listed all the reasons earlier in this conversation of why and how there is still some momentum in the economy. But there is a counterfactual in which, according to the economic experts that I spend time talking to and the business leaders and small business people I've been talking to, things could be better, according to them, but they're having to deal with the chaos and uncertainty and the increased costs of tariffs, which are taxes. And as most sort of business leaders and academic, nonpartisan economists see it, they are, especially when used as broadly and sort of chaotically as they have been, not the good kind of taxes, not, for example, the sort of progressive taxes that can be used to heal inequalities, things like that. They're quite disruptive, especially when they've been used as unilaterally and unpredictably as this president has seemed to use them. We've seen that soybean farmers have really had. Have been negatively impacted as China retaliated against the United States by cutting back on its soybean orders. The president and his administration has had to scramble under sometimes legally questionable circumstances, scramble to then get aid to the farmers. We've seen how corporate America has really done the gymnastics quite spectacularly to still manage the chaos of the supply chain entanglements that the trade wars that got kicked off in spring. Right. They were able to manage around it, but there's also a situation in which they didn't have to manage around it, and they could have been hiring more, investing more. So the general expert consensus is relatively uncontroversial, which is that it is for those who care about tax revenue, and there's a reason to care about tax revenue. Tariffs, I guess, have been a net positive, but for the macro economy, they have been a drag. And as you just said, there's really useful CBO analysis that just came out showing that I think about 70% of the cost of tariffs have been passed on to consumers and 30% have been absorbed by businesses. And luckily for businesses, their profit margins coming out of the pandemic throughout the early 2000s, they use the opportunity of that inflation to push their margin so high, which is one of the reasons they've been able to absorb the cost hit. But Even still, only 30% absorption, 70% gets passed on right to the consumers. So it's really this lose, lose, lose situation where tariffs have not, it seems so far been great for economic growth, even though, again, economic growth has still been strong, even though it's not been jobs growth, but economic growth overall has still been strong. It's been a loser, obviously, for small businesses that don't have fleets of lawyers and supply chain managers to be able to effectively and efficiently manage these increased costs, it hits small businesses much harder and then consumers. It's pretty straightforward. A big part of the tariff push initially, what we were sold on is that this would spark an immediate reshoring of manufacturing jobs, which absolutely did decline. And Democrats and Republicans and the global business elite, whoever you want to blame, it did happen on their watch. And Donald Trump's whole pitch was that, oh, especially my second time around, those jobs are surging back. Don't you worry about. It doesn't have to be personal. It's not my opinion. We can look at the data. The country has been losing manufacturing jobs for the entire past year. The numbers speak for themselves in this case.

[A]

Talman, your forthcoming book, Clout and Capital, examines how power, influence and wealth really shape economic outcomes in America. And you've, I think, done a very good job of giving us examples of that. But now I want you to give our audience homework, because what we do here on Assembly Required is we ask our guests to tell our audience something that they can do. And I would love for you to tell our audience if they can advocate for a single policy that would help make the country more affordable for a majority of Americans, especially at the state and local level, what would you say?

[C]

So I'll answer the question, but through the sort of news reporter cop out of saying that a lot of other people say this is a good idea. So a lot of people say this is a good idea. And I think they may have a point. And that idea is we need to massively expand affordable housing, whether it's through market rate housing or whether it's through inclusionary zoning, where in exchange for building a certain amount of units in, let's say, a multifamily apartment complex, you set aside a certain amount so that people that are in that bottom 50%, which again is half the country, are able to afford homes too, so that they can save for their futures, for their families, God forbid, maybe to have a family and so on and so on. It's just there, there's so many things that our economy needs. It needs more competition. It needs more fairness. And that fairness and competition could also help bring down the price level by making sure that people can't be price gouged. That's also important. But it does seem clear and obviously my colleague Ezra Klein has done a lot of great work on this, that we need to build more housing. And the one thing I'd just encourage people to do besides taking, taking the points of gimbys. Yes. In my backyard folks, seriously, that hey, please don't oppose a new housing development in your neighborhood because if we all say, hey, build it somewhere else, then it just never gets built. Besides heeding that, I think fair point, we also need to keep in mind, and I know this is also your systemic way of thinking, what happens after that? Because one of the things I'm worried about in my reporting is I've seen some places in America that are quite yimby. But it's not just zoning or whether communities allow housing to be built that determines how much housing gets built. Housing is business. And if I'm a developer and I've seen, oh wow, this, you know, this community, this booming part of South Carolina or Texas, well, looks like, looks like this market is pretty well covered. If I build this next development, this marginal development I'm thinking about, I might make less money. But of course, in order for housing to keep getting more affordable, we need to encourage not for developers of housing of all types, whether affordable or market rate, to stop right when rent inflation goes down. We need them to keep building even when rent inflation goes down. So that rent inflation shelter inflation, home prices can be modestly increasing, not increasing at the sort of egregious levels of the that they have. And there's a lot of great ideas there. For example, I'll give a shout out to the center for Public Enterprise. There's some homework. The center for Public Enterprise is a.

[A]

Great organization.

[C]

That does a lot of work here about how we can creatively get around that catch 22, where a buyer's market and a seller's market and housing and rents are constantly in tension. Let's try to find some ways to cut that Gordian knot. There's a lot of smart people doing really smart homework about how to cut that Gordian knot. So for people that want to nerd out on housing economics, check out cpe, the center for Public Enterprise. They're a nonpartisan sort of think Tank and Development Corporation, and they do good stuff.

[A]

Tom and Smith, thank you so much for joining us today on Assembly Required. Appreciate you.

[C]

Yeah, hey, have me back anytime. This is great.

[A]

Assembly Required is here to help us understand what's happening and then take action where we are, because every decision to resist adds up. So first, let's be curious if you enjoyed my conversation with Talman Smith, check out his work at the New York Times, and keep an eye out for his upcoming book, Clout and Capital, published by Simon and Schuster when it's released later this year. Number two solve problems. 70% of Americans say raising children is too expensive. But there is legislation out there, the Child Care for Every Community act, and this would lower child care cost. As the Congresswoman told us. We came close before and we can get it done. Call your members of Congress to ask them to support this legislation and call your state local representatives to ask them to support state legislation that would secure universal childcare in your state. New Mexico did it. So can we third do good? This year is the 50th anniversary of Habitat for Humanity, a nonprofit with roots here in my home state of Georgia, an organization that works to build safe, affordable housing around the world. So consider volunteering or donating to help families in your community who who lack affordable housing. And it's the most wonderful time of the year, at least early on the Girl Scout cookie season. Girl Scouts of Greater New York Troop 6000 is a first of its kind program designed to serve families in temporary housing in the New York City shelter system and help them as they transition to permanent housing. Visit www.girlscoutsnyc.org troop63 to purchase cookies from their digital store. I recommend Samoas. Assembly Required continues to grow its audience, but we need your help. We reach more people when you tell others all about us and when you add us to your feed and share your favorite episode. Make sure you actually subscribe on all of your favorite platforms, not just one. So boost our visibility by rating the show and leaving a comment. You can find us on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, and wherever you get your podcasts. And also please check out my substack Assembly Notes where we dive deep and where I share more of my thoughts on how we understand and then fight back against the authoritarian regime. And thank you to the thousands of you who have signed up for the 10 Steps campaign at 10StepsCampaign.org well, that wraps up this episode of Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams. Do good out there and I'll meet you here next time week. Assembly Required is a crooked media production. Our lead show producer is Lacey Roberts and our associate producer is Farrah Safari. Kiril Palaviv is our video produce. This episode was recorded and mixed by Charlotte Landis. Our theme song is by Vasilis Fotopoulos. Thank you to Matt de Groat, Kyle Seglin, Tyler Boozer, Ben Hethcote and Priyanka Muntha for production support. Our executive producers are Katie Long and me, Stacey Abrams. Cox Internet the Tresintas megas tiene las velocidades rapidas e com fiables que buscas perfecto para streaming e gaming y TRA bajardes de casaquipo de wifi y guarantia deposit precio de dos sanyos en tu plan nues cambia te hoy a Cox the Kiera Cops Mobile Gig Unlimited Guaranteed.

[B]

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