Jon Wiener: Last week the House narrowly passed a preliminary budget. What’s in this bill?

Ro Khanna: Well, look, the Republican budget is a cruel, atrocious budget—$2 trillion of Medicaid cuts. They’re basically going to put a per capita cap on every state. What does that mean? If you live in California, my state, or you live in Ohio, your state’s going to get less money for Medicaid. That means millions of people will not be covered who were covered, particularly under the Affordable Care Act that expanded coverage. It means rural hospitals will shut down. It means outpatient services for mental health, behavioral therapy will shut down.

And why are they doing all of this? To fund tax breaks for the billionaires, because they believe that the billionaire class is what’s moving civilization forward. That they’re somehow the übermenches of society, and the rest of us don’t really matter. I voted “no.”

JW: A lot of our friends are saying, “It’s great that the Democrats have been united in voting ‘No.’ We thank you for that. But it’s not just enough to vote “no” right now. We need you guys to do everything possible to stop this.” I know you feel the same way. What are you doing beyond voting “no”?

RK: I’ll tell you what I did today other than voting “no”: I convened a press conference on Zoom with 15 federal workers who had been fired. A number of them were Trump voters. They said they voted for Trump just a few months ago, but now, they’re no longer supporting him because their jobs were eliminated. These were veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, people who were helping other veterans with mental health, people who were helping veterans get banking services, and people who were helping in the national parks.

I think our biggest job is to uplift the stories of ordinary Americans who are being hurt by the cruel and irrational policies of this administration. Trump is creating a federal government that is like a private equity firm: cut, cut, cut, ask questions later. That’s what hollowed out the working and middle classes. You can’t be pro-America and “America first” and hate the workers when 99 percent of Americans work for a living.

That in my view, is the most effective form of pushing back. And it’s working. Donald Trump’s numbers have fallen for the first time ever, under 50 percent on the economy. He never was below 50 percent even when Biden beat him in his first term, so we need to do more of that.

JW: Turning to the longer-term project of winning back the working-class: You favor making the renewal of American manufacturing a top priority. And you recently wrote in a New York Times op-ed, “economic empowerment for working people should be not just one of many issues that Democrats are interested in, but our defining cause.” Please explain what that means.

RK: I call it “a new economic patriotism.” It’s pretty simple. First, we have to say is that—to the people acting like we’re the saviors—we need to say, “We screwed up. We’re the ones who have policies that shafted the working and middle class.”

It started, of course, with the Republicans under Reagan, with enormous tax breaks for the very wealthy, and trickle-down economics. But it was also Democrats supporting bad trade deals, NAFTA, the World Trade Organization, the ascension of China. It was Democrats supporting the liquidation of industries with giveaways to private equity, and watching corporate greed hollow out industries. And we did not have any strategy for people who were hurt by globalization and digitization. So now we need to say we are going to make the economic success of every community in America and the economic prosperity of every family our top priority.

JW: What steps, what policies, what new laws do we need to achieve that?

RK: We’re going to create a national economic development council that focuses on deindustrialized places, and get new manufacturing in there—whether that’s a new steel plant, whether it’s new a new aluminum plant, whether it’s new shipbuilding—to become a manufacturing superpower again. But not just manufacturing. We’re going to look at: What are the new service jobs that we can have there? What are the new jobs in technology that we can have there? How do we create economic vitality in places that aren’t thriving today, because they’ve been neglected and abandoned? And then, how do we make sure that every American has healthcare, has childcare, has education without going into debt? Life in America is too expensive and too hard, and we can tax the billionaires in my district in order to do something about that.

JW: We think of Silicon Valley as a base of Trump support, but really the Democrats have carried Silicon Valley every time by huge margins.

RK: I say this again and again: If I can be for taxing the billionaires and have survived nine years of elections in the richest district in the world, I don’t understand how 434 other members of Congress can’t be for it. If I can win elections by 35 points in Silicon Valley being for taxing the rich, you can win in any district on a platform of taxing the rich to pay for the healthcare, education, childcare of every American.

JW: And you have been a Bernie Sanders supporter.

RK: When I was cochair of the Bernie Sanders campaign in the 2020 primary, I delivered my district for Bernie Sanders. There are a lot of people who support Bernie Sanders from very progressive districts. But I think the novelty in my case is that I’m supporting Sanders’s policies—Medicare for all, and free public college, and a living wage, and supporting unions—I’m doing that in the richest district in the country, a district that has $12 trillion of wealth. Income inequality is such a huge issue, but if you can get a district with billionaires in Silicon Valley supporting progressive policies, this can become a majority coalition.

And that’s what we need post-Trump: an economic transformation, not a return to the status quo, not a return to a Democratic administration that failed to deliver on increasing the living wage, that failed to deliver on any policies of childcare, that failed to raise taxes—but a really progressive, transformative, new administration.

JW: This is an agenda for the 2028 elections. Between now and then, what are your priorities?

RK: Well, one, I’m going to be going to red districts in California and then maybe beyond. I was really moved by what Sanders did [a speaking tour of swing districts that elected Republicans to the House in 2024—ed.]. Again, Sanders is showing intellectual leadership for the party, showing up in Omaha last week, then showing up in Iowa City, and on to other red districts, making the case about the cruelty of these cuts.

I’m also going to continue to highlight the stories of people who have been hurt by the mass firings. I call it the “Valentine’s Day Massacre,” because all of these people were notified on Valentine’s Day. It shows the cruelty and indifference of this administration.

And then I am going to be introducing strategic legislation to call out Trump’s hypocrisy. For example, today I introduced a “no gifts for lobbyists” bill. Trump said he was going to drain the swamp, but the first thing he did was reverse Biden’s executive order, saying White House officials could take gifts from lobbyists. We need to be the anti-corruption party.

JW: Finlly, what’s the big picture of where we stand right now?

RK: Look, this is a dark chapter, but I want people to be optimistic about the renewal of this nation and what comes ahead. When we had the Great Depression and that dark chapter in American history, it was followed by FDR; when we had the robber barons from 1870 to 1900s and redemption that undermined Reconstruction and ushered in Jim Crow, it was followed by the progressive era; when we had the Civil War, it was followed by Reconstruction and the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments. In America at times of deep despair and darkness, we have been blessed to reemerge with a transformative, positive vision. And that’s what we have to focus on as progressives—that the end of the Trump administration will mark the beginning of the modern progressive age.