Transcript of Democrat Ro Khanna’s 2028 pitch: tax the rich, regulate tech | NPR's Newsmakers New

I tell people all the time, I'm 49 years old. I'm about to turn 50. I'm the nice guy. I just want a new social contract. Have you met these folks in their 30s? They want pitchforks and torches. They want your scalp.

Should Democrats nominate a more progressive candidate in 2028 than they have in the past?

Yes. I'm tired of the platitudes. Affordability. Renew the American dream. Have a good job. Like, branding is not an agenda. And if you don't have enemies, people who dislike you, you probably aren't saying anything substantive.

Hey, this is Steve Inskeep with a special episode, a conversation from our sister show, Newsmakers, home of NPR's biggest interviews, including a familiar voice— me. I have a conversation with Congressman Ro Khanna. For more interviews like this one, follow or subscribe to Newsmakers on Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you watch or listen. You can also find us on the NPR app. Many Democrats are considering a run for president in 2028, and one of them is Ro Khanna, California congressman best known for his efforts to disclose the Epstein files, for his progressive economics, and for representing Silicon Valley, the richest part of the U.S. economy. We sat down here at NPR at a moment when Khanna's Democratic Party is trying to decide what it stands for. Ro Khanna, welcome to NPR.

Thank you for having me.

I want to begin with the kind of question I might normally have asked at the end. It's about your ambitions. What are you thinking about when you think about 2028?

Well, you know, they said Lincoln had an engine of ambition that knew no rest. So I don't apologize for ambition. The question is, is it ambition for a public purpose? And for me, the two central questions in our country are the economy. Right now it's working for my district, $20 trillion, one-third of the nation's wealth in my district. But it's not working for the people I grew up with in places like Bucks County, Pennsylvania, especially Lower Bucks, where the steel factory shut down. And do I have an economic roadmap, an economic vision that can deliver prosperity not just for the billionaires, but for every American?

Okay, do you?

I'm going around the country and we were just in Pennsylvania, 5 days in Pennsylvania, Erie County, Washington County, Philadelphia, and testing out some of the ideas.

Just to note, you were born there and also presidential swing state. So you're thinking seriously about this?

Yes, I'm thinking seriously about it. I was born in Philadelphia and I grew up in Bucks County, which is a swing county. But beyond Bucks, it was in counties where there was deindustrialization and I saw it in my hometown. Uh, Fearless Works shut down, uh, steel shut down. My father was an engineer. He would go to Bristol, uh, and of course more of the state was impacted. And the problem is we didn't do anything. We urged these folks to go to financial centers, get technology jobs. Johnstown still hollowed out, Farrell hollowed out. Uh, I believe we need a, uh, next New Deal for America, an industrial investment bank. 1,000 trade schools, tech centers, care economy, childcare, eldercare. China has $1.5 trillion of an investment bank that they're investing on industries and sector after sector. You know how much we put in an industrial bank? We don't have one. I mean, so we have never had a strategy for economic development in this country since FDR's New Deal.

The Biden administration had what was called an industrial policy. It sounds like you would have that, or maybe even more so.

I would add that I think they took some good steps towards that, but there are broader things I would do. First, they didn't target deindustrialized communities. It was a broad-based tax credits and the CHIPS Act, which I helped write. But I would actually target places like Warren, Ohio, Johnstown, Downriver, Michigan.

You're naming places where there were steel mills, auto plants.

Steel mills, auto plants that went away. Second, I would ask them what they want. I mean, did we ever ask them what they want? I mean, I wrote the CHIPS Act. You can't put a semiconductor plant in Johnstown. You know what they want? They want a modern steel plant. And they— because I was just there— and they want a tech center for young people to get technology jobs. So let's listen to them and ask them what they want. Third, we need to involve the private sector as well. FDR, before he did the New Deal, actually mobilized a lot of the business leaders to be invested investing in communities. Bill Nutson, the CEO of General Motors, led the industrialization of America. So I would get faith leaders, business leaders, community leaders saying, this is our mission, economic patriotism. How are we going to invest in these communities?

Should Democrats nominate a more progressive candidate in 2028 than they have in the past?

Yes. And but what does that mean? It means we need America's next New Deal. I am believe we need an economic realignment in this country. What does that look like specifically? Tax billionaire wealth. You could raise $4 trillion if you taxed the billionaires. You know, say we have 900 billionaires in this country and they're worth 22% of the economy GDP. 900 people. We're not talking about the 1%. We're not talking about the 0.1%. We're not talking about the 0.01%. We're talking about the 0.001%. 19 billionaires— I know many of them, they're in my district— are worth 12% of the GDP. That is 3 times the wealth concentration of the Gilded Age. We're in a second Gilded Age. We can tax them. We tax them, we raise $4 trillion over 10 years. Let me tell you what that would get us. It would get us free childcare. It would get us free public college and free trade schools. It would get us a sizable industrial investment bank that can start a manufacturing renaissance in this country. It would get us 1,000 new trade schools. It would be able to extend Medicare to 50. It's $180 billion a year to be able to extend Medicare to 50.

I'm for Medicare for All, free universal healthcare, but you can at least start just by this tax on the billionaires. And we should end these foreign wars. You know, $200 billion that we are putting in a foreign war, uh, an increased Pentagon budget, could get healthcare for everyone over 50.

Don't you think billionaires would be able to evade any tax you pass the way that they avoid many taxes now? They have the money, it's mobile, they can move around the world.

Here's the, here's the reason. First of all, they'd have to renounce American citizenship. That's like giving up Roman citizenship. If they're dumb enough to do that, they deserve their fate. Secondly, they still get an estate tax at that point if they renounce their citizenship. They'd be taxed at 40%. We tax if you leave American citizenship. Third, wealth taxes haven't worked in other countries for two reasons. One, that most other countries don't tax based on nationality, they tax based on territory. So you can leave France, you could leave other places, and you can avoid the tax. We chase you down. If you're leaving and you keep your American citizenship, you still have to pay tax. And finally, where are they going to invest? Are they going to— I mean, America is still the best place for capital and investment. You know how I know this? In California, when we came out with a 5% wealth tax, which there's a difference of the governor and I, I support it. He doesn't.

There's a ballot measure to run on that this fall.

Right. 5% tax. They said, oh, this is going to be capital flight in California. You know how much venture capital is coming to California since that has been proposed? 85% of venture capital is still coming to California. There hasn't been capital flight. Anyone who thinks that Silicon Valley is not going to produce trillions of dollars doesn't know what they're talking about.

Maybe they don't think it's going to pass.

Well, they do, because some of the billionaires themselves are leaving. They, they are leaving now, and— but their money is not leaving. And that's because the AI revolution is enriching these technology companies and billionaires. But the question is, is that the country we want? That one-third of the nation's wealth is in my district.

So if the proposition on the table is that a more progressive candidate should be nominated by Democrats in 2028, do we have a test case this fall in 2026? Abdul El-Sayed, who is seen as more progressive than other Democrats, is the Democratic nominee in a swing state, Michigan. Is that a test for your idea? If he wins, that means a progressive can win a swing state. If he loses, it would mean something else.

I love Abdul's candidacy. I've endorsed him. I don't think any statewide race is a test on national prospects. By that logic, we would have had President Jeb Bush or President DeSantis. What matters—

But it's a state the Democrats must win.

Yes.

If he can't carry it, that might say something.

Well, but, you know, I do think he's going to win. But I believe what we need is Abdul's clarity on Medicare for All. Abdul's clarity on, uh, not having, uh, foreign wars, but also what I call economic patriotism, a strategy of industrial economic development, a strategy of new trade schools. Those are things, frankly, that Haley Stevens worked on in the, uh, in the Obama administration.

So the candidate that he—

the candidate he beat. So a broad economic patriotism agenda, I am confident, uh, will win in Michigan. And I do believe that Abdul will win that race. But I don't— even if he wins that race, that doesn't mean, okay, a progressive is going to, to be the nominee. The American people will look at a number of great candidates and they'll say, who can lead this country for the future? Who's going to deliver economic prosperity? Who can lead us around the world? And that's a very personal, deep bar that someone has to cross that is not the ChatGPT calculus of what swing state someone is winning.

You also endorsed Graham Plantner, another left candidate who flamed out in the end, to say the least, amid scandals. What did you learn from that experience?

I should have listened to my wife. She's almost never made me do an interview. She said, you make it clear on the record that I was opposed to you endorsing him. But on a, on a deeper level, the— there were signs of toxicity that, uh, other groups, uh, had picked up, and I needed to be more sensitive to it. I said I got that call wrong, I made a mistake, and it means being more reflective. What makes a perfect cover song? One that's so good it completely eclipses the original? On the latest All Songs Considered from NPR Music, we make a case for the greatest of all time. That is what I want out of a great cover, something that picks at the thing that was in the song but that was not made explicit. Check out new episodes of All Songs Considered in the NPR Music Podcast every Tuesday.

This week on Here and Now Anytime, why older siblings may be more financially successful.

It has to do with germs. Second-born children exposed to more respiratory illness early in life were less likely to finish high school or college.

All that and more on Here Now Anytime on the NPR app and anywhere you listen to podcasts. There's been an interesting evolution in President Trump's rhetoric about his opposition. For a while, he was calling Democrats socialists, which in some cases is literally true. But recently he's moved on to calling you all communists, which may sound absurd, to you, but Republicans have often picked out a label like that and repeated it and repeated it and repeated it, and then it turned out to stick. Are you concerned about that?

Labels usually don't matter in American politics, in my view. Are you kidding me? We've been calling the guy a fascist for 10 years and he's won 2 terms. I mean, you know, I mean, communist, fascist. Here's what people care about. What are you going to do for them? Are you going to help them with their healthcare bills? Are you going to help them with their jobs? Are you going to help them with childcare? Do you get where they're for? Are you on their side? I mean, yeah, people throw out all kinds of labels in American politics. I think what matters is how compelling your vision is and whether people fundamentally think, is this person on our side? And then secondly, does this person have a real affirmative agenda to change our views?

Let me—

our lives.

Let me push back with a specific story about labels. I think about the 2024 election. Several years before that election, Republicans started talking about trans people. Democrats dismissed this as a minor issue that doesn't actually affect that many people. Republicans repeated their message, repeated it and repeated it. And I recall in the fall of 2024 interviewing voters in Pennsylvania, a state that matters a lot to you, and sitting with a gentleman. He was a person of color. He was generally liberal. He's a steelworker. And he was talking about things that bothered him. And the trans issue came up in this conversation. He brought it up and it was a thing that bothered him. And I realized this message that Republicans had repeated again and again and again and that Democrats had dismissed had really resonated with people who might otherwise be with him. And that is why I ask why you would dismiss the idea that calling everyone a communist might not work in the end.

Well, I would distinguish between your example and just calling someone communist. Calling someone a communist is not believable, especially in my case, where I represent a district that's $20 trillion and literally one-third of the nation's wealth. A lot of things you could call me, But calling me a communist just—

Well, they'll find some aide to Mom Donahue or Sanders or someone who said something that sounded communist.

And they'll just use that. It's just not believable to voters. I think on the trans issue, there were two things. One, people thought we weren't prioritizing their economic needs. The famous ad, "She's for they/them. He's for us." It will not work, in my view, if an American politician, political leader is talking about jobs and talking about health care and saying, their first priority is going to be the economic renewal of the country.

Didn't Kamala Harris say those things?

I don't think— I don't think the economic message came out as her core reason for being and running, is that she was going to revitalize these communities, that she was going to bring a modern economic prosperity. I don't think that's what people saw her reason for running as. So one is that. Secondly, and I have supported and I'm a supporter of trans rights, but to have a conversation with people based on respect on that issue. But that is an issue like abortion or gay rights where people have a moral view on it, a particular philosophy on it. And it's not wrong if they want to vote against me because I'm a supporter of trans rights and they don't support that. Fine. That's their right. It would be wrong and foolish for someone to vote against me if they thought I was a communist. Right? I mean, and I, I think voters are smart enough to make that distinction. So the communism stuff just isn't going to fly. Whether our values are aligned with Americans' values, I think, is a case we have to make. And voters have to judge whether they're comfortable with my defense of trans rights and LGBT rights.

And I'll say, look, I grew up in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where people were pretty decent and accepting about it. But if they reject me on that ground, that's fine. That's, that's a democracy. If they reject me in my district or other places because I'm— they think I'm a communist, that's just silly, and I don't think it'll work.

I want to understand something of the story of Silicon Valley, a good part of which you represent, and you know so many of the leading figures in Silicon Valley. 10 years ago, 20 years ago, it would have been taken as a given that it was an overwhelmingly democratic place, an overwhelmingly liberal or socially conscious place, uh, and that has changed in the last few years. And it turns out there's a substantial part of Silicon Valley leadership who are more conservative, you might even say reactionary, even anti-democratic. And I'd like to hear what you think happened. Why did it change? Or was it always that and we didn't realize it?

Well, first of all, I won my election in the primary 63% to 6%. I came out for a billionaire tax of 5% on these billionaires. There are more billionaires living in and around my district than anywhere in the world. They poured $1 million into a candidate who was running against me, and that candidate got less votes than candidates who have run against me in the past with no money. So I showed that you can stand up to these billionaires in the heart of Silicon Valley and win. Now, some of the loudest voices and the wealthiest voices have gone to the extreme right. There are a number of reasons for that. First, they want no regulation on AI. They want no regulation on cryptocurrencies. They want to be seen as the founders of civilization, carrying civilization on their back, where they're trying for immortality and think of themselves almost as demigods, the Peter Thiels and the Elon Musks. It's an arrogance. And, you know, Musk is threatening to sue me because I pointed out that he was unconstitutional and Doge, and it could have led to the deaths of millions of children, according to the Lancet study.

But those folks are not the broad range of Silicon Valley. Obviously, the voters voted for me. Turns out a lot of the tech employees who live in my district don't like the billionaires and how they're acting. And there are a lot of thoughtful people like Jensen Huang and Jeff Dean. And so it's a, it's a broader brush than the media paints it.

If you think about someone like Mark Zuckerberg or some other tech executives who showed up at the president's inauguration, Do you think they're just blowing with the wind?

Yes, I think there is opportunism. They—

Meaning if the wind blows differently, they will be different for the next president?

Yes. Now, whether the next president wants them or not is a different question. But my view is what we should mobilize these technology leaders to do is to invest in America. What we should mobilize is to have actual federal regulation on AI. And 3 things I'll tell you very briefly. Let's have a tax on agentic AI. If you want to hire someone at NPR, your assistant, and you hire a human being, you got to pay health insurance and you've got to pay a payroll tax. You want agentic AI to do it, you don't have to pay a tax. We're actually incentivizing AI. Second, let's, let's make sure that we have a federal jobs program. If you're a young person graduating high school or college and you're having difficulty getting a job, why don't we hire people for 4 years to rebuild communities, rebuild this country? Build not just the physical infrastructure for America, but the social infrastructure for America. It's a derivative idea from FDR. And when I proposed it, someone said, "Well, Ro, FDR did the Works Progress Administration when there was 30% unemployment." Hired a bunch of people to do public works. To do it all over America.

And that's where boondoggle, by the way, comes from, because they said it was a boondoggle, it wasn't a real job. But I said, look, the transformation we're going is very similar. Talk to a young person. They are afraid of whether they can get a good job. They can't buy a house. So have a federal jobs program. So tax AI, federal jobs program, and then defend employee jobs with bargaining. We need truck drivers on trucks. The idea of just having self-driving trucks with no truck drivers or planes without pilots is the wrong way to develop an economy. We want to be improving worker productivity, not displacing it.

Is there any Silicon Valley leader or billionaire whose move to the right actually surprised you? You were genuinely shocked that they were willing to go as far as they did.

Elon. I mean, Elon Musk blurbed my first book. We— when I came out of the Obama administration, I've known him for years and we always disagreed because I thought the grant to Tesla should have been linked to labor neutrality and unionization. And I always would talk to Elon about unionization, but He praised me when the Twitter Files came out. I don't want to go into all of that, but basically I had defended the New York Post's First Amendment rights on the Hunter Biden story and had a private email to Twitter saying, don't censor the New York Post. That came out. He said, Kanna is great on free speech. We had a relationship on— he was very for student visas and he had defended some of the immigration. But the extent to which he was radicalized His anti-immigration views, his actions at DOJ that were totally unconstitutional, his now unleashing and saying he's going to sue me because I said to subpoena him. And that's the extent of it.

What do you think happened to him?

One, I think the power got to his head. I mean, he was basically— he helped Trump buy the election and then Trump gave him the keys to do whatever he wanted for a year. He was treated as a celebrity on the right, and he got radicalized on the right. I know that some people say his trans child had some impact on him, but seeing what he— how extreme he's gone on immigration is deeply upsetting, especially given his companies are filled with immigrants.

Do you think it's just the incentives of social media, of attention? That drew him in a direction? Maybe he always had some feelings, but it drew them out.

I would say it's the affirmation of the MAGA base. I mean, they upheld him. He felt a sense of belonging. He felt a sense of celebration. And it's this lack of social obligation. You know, I was in New York. I saw the Rockefeller Center. Whatever else you think about Rockefeller, You know, he funded the university I went to, University of Chicago. He funded all of these public libraries and museums. So did Carnegie.

He believed in giving something like 6% of his income to charity from an early age. I know that.

And you look at his plaque that was in the sort of Rockefeller Center, and he talks about how he's just a custodian of the money and he really will be judged by his public impact. And you don't have today's founders creating libraries and universities. I mean, they're— trying for their own immortality. They're trying to get to Mars. There's not a sense that they need to care about what happens in Lordstown, Ohio.

Elon Musk has actively said, "There is no effective way for me to give away my money for the public good." He doesn't think that that's really practical.

Well, he doesn't think that it's necessary. In other words, these people— someone said to me, which was such an insight, they said, "These folks would have been the conquerors in a different era." They kind of think of themselves as above you and I, and they think they're better allocators of capital. They think that Elon Musk having this money, Zuckerberg having this money, Peter Thiel having this money, that they're going to carry American civilization on their backs. And it's dangerous. And when I'm actually most inclined to run, I think I know these people, I understand the economic future, and I will have the guts to stand up to them and the direction to make sure that this future economy works for everyone in America, because if it continues to go the way it is, we will have the biggest wealth divide this country has ever had.

As we're talking, you have just proposed a Data Center Bill of Rights. There's a lot in it. I have a couple of questions, but first, like, what is the one or two sentence definition of what you're going for?

No community should have a data center shoved down their throat. Right now you have all these states that are basically expediting data centers in local communities like Plymouth, Pennsylvania, have no say. 6 data centers coming there near Conshohocken and King of Prussia Mall, where I, where I grew up, and they have no say. They should have the right to say no. And there should be no data centers in residential communities or in farmland. If you are going to have a data center, why not put it in a brownfield? The reason they don't want to do it there is because it costs a lot more.

Brownfield, meaning a former industrial site that may already be—

And then there are other things you'd have to do.

I read the proposal and there were some things that raised questions for me. For example, you very early on raised the concern about data centers using water. Yeah. Which is a thing that progressives and liberals believe and are really concerned about, the use of water by data centers. Except, as you may know, a lot of the information about the use of water by data centers turns out to have been overblown. There's a popular book that turned out to have a factual error. It turns out that a lot of the water that they use is just recycled by the plant and it's still water. Should you still be raising that concern when it doesn't seem to be that real?

Yes, you should have to disclose what the water use is. You should have to get the communities buy-in. I mean, it's not for me or you to say whether Plymouth Township believes that their water is going to be impacted, right? The local community should have to decide. And are they using recycled water? Is it going to drive up local water rates? And if not, they can make the case to local community. I'm not saying don't have these data centers at all.

So you're acknowledging they may not overuse water. You're saying you just want to know.

Transparency and local control. So you make the case, you tell people what the water— what the water usage is, how you're going to use it, is it going to impact local rates? And then if you're— if you don't have anything to hide, the local community would support it.

This is another question that I have. You push for provisions allowing a local community to reject a data center if they don't want it. You don't want to have a statewide mandate on data centers. You want to make it easy for the community through a transparent process to reject data centers, which all sounds really good as we're sitting here in this interview. But I'm aware, as I'm sure you are, that a lot of liberals and progressives have grown concerned about how easy it is for someone to stop a project in their backyard, that they're actually— that we've set up the government in such a way that people can prevent the government from doing anything, prevent the economy from growing because it's too easy to protest against a project. I think you're concerned about that, aren't you?

It's a great question and a good point. I mean, the nimbyism on housing has really hurt, in my view.

Well, that's what this is, is nimbyism.

Yeah, but I think there's a huge difference between building affordable housing so young kids can have a home or building an industrial plant so someone in the building trades can get a good job. And building data centers. You know, I talked to a guy in Pennsylvania. The reason I keep mentioning Pennsylvania is I was just there for a week and he also happens to be a swing state.

We'll just mention again, but please continue.

No, no, but it's on the top of my mind or something. And he was an electrician. He said, I feel kind of guilty about it because data centers give me a long-term job and that's something that I want. But all these my neighbors are upset about it. And I'm conflicted. But what I don't understand is why is that my only option? Why can't we be building steel? Why can't we building automobile plants? Why can't we building chips plants, ships plants, other parts of industry? And so, yes, we need to have reform on permitting in ways that are environmentally sustainable. But data centers aren't the first thing that comes to mind. I would be focused on housing. I would be focused on critical industrial plants.

I don't think the steel mill is going to employ that many people anymore either, is it? It's going to be highly automated.

It will— it won't. It will employ— you know, we have about 12 million people in manufacturing and maybe it will employ 1,000 people. But a 1,000-person direct reduction iron steel plant in Johnstown with the multiplier effect would make a big difference. And but I don't— I don't have a view. Let's just build. You know, 4 to 8 steel plants and suddenly we're going to solve America's problem.

You don't want to have a 5-year plan like China does.

But, but if we do, uh, cross-sector steel, ships, auto parts, machine tools, drones, robotics, if we have a policy that if you're a manufacturer that are making something that we're currently importing, we're going to help you, the small and medium-sized manufacturers, and we're targeting deindustrialized areas That's one part of it. Second, we're going to invest in the care economy—childcare jobs, home care jobs, elder care jobs. Third, we're going to have trade schools, 1,000 new trade schools across America. That's such a small investment, from $1.7 billion to $5 billion, and we would have construction jobs, trade jobs. Fourth, we're going to have these tech institutes so people can actually do some of the new technology jobs, not just maintain a data center, actually 6-figure jobs, about 10 million of them. And, uh, fifth, we're going to have capital, so it's not sitting all in my district, but capital for Main Street and small businesses. I want an economic development strategy for America. We've done it with Hamilton, we've done it with Lincoln, we've done it with FDR. It's time to do it now. And that's what Trump promised but never filled in the details.

"The working class." It's a term politicians throw around a lot these days, but do we know what it actually means? Midterm elections are coming up, and on It's Been a Minute, we discuss who these candidates are really talking about. Watch the full It's Been a Minute episode on YouTube or listen in the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

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I want to ask about corruption. Yes. You have, if I'm not mistaken, proposed that members of Congress like yourself should be banned from trading stocks. Correct.

How would that work? It would— members of Congress would be required under the Trust Act to be in a trust and they would not be able to trade any stocks.

Does that mean a blind trust, meaning they don't even know where their own investments are?

It's a trust that is either a blind trust or a diversified trust, means it has to be over— Oh, like an index fund. Index fund or over 30 different percent or so of different sectors. And I led— I was a co-sponsor of the Trust Act and led on that and have led the call. But it's not just about banning stock trading. And by the way, Donald Trump has traded more stocks than the entire Congress combined.

And his remarks move the market up and down almost daily.

Sure. It is about not having PAC and lobbyist money, overturning Citizens United, having term limits for members of Congress, banning members of Congress from ever becoming a lobbyist, making sure that we are getting money out of politics. That's the corrupting influence. I mean, You basically have PACs spending millions of dollars so we can't get Medicare for All, so we can't get free childcare, so we can't have tax on billionaires. And to me, that is the biggest issue. And I believe we need a constitutional convention, have the states do it. There are already 25 states that have an amendment saying to regulate private money. And if you can get to two-thirds, you could have an Article V convention. We've never done that before, but for the direct election of senators, we got to about 30 states and then Congress moved. And my view is if we can get to about 30, 31 states, we could force an amendment to end PAC money.

To end PAC money, to limit the influence of money in politics, which the Supreme Court has made impossible almost. Right now you basically have people being bought.

I mean, you've got literally millions of dollars coming in into these House and Senate races. And they don't need to buy everyone. They should just buy 1 or 2 people on the regular committees to prevent consequential reform. I am, I am less concerned about can a progressive win, and I'm more concerned about once a progressive wins, can they actually enact an American Next New Deal?

Do your personal investments conform to the legislation on stock trading that you've proposed?

Absolutely. Yes, it's under the Trust Act.

You have a family trust, if I'm not mistaken, with tens of millions of dollars, or I don't know what the amount— I don't know the amount, but yes. Okay. And you have no knowledge of where that money is? No, it's not.

It's— no, I mean, I grew up—

Is it a blind trust? Is it set up in some way? Diversified. It's diversified? Yes. Meaning you could go find out, but if you went and found out, there would be no overwhelming percentage in this or that stock?

Correct. And I find out when we disclose it.

So you believe you yourself would not have to change anything if you— if that became law?

Correct. I mean, obviously there would be rules under the interpretation of that. And I've complied with every rule since I've been in Congress.

Are you prepared for that moment? You're running for president. It's 2028. It's maybe even just the primaries, not even the general. And someone goes through your entire family investment and finds the embarrassing stock, that you want. Have you actually done the research yourself?

Well, I think that there's so much out there, but I think what people ultimately care about is where do you stand. And when they look at my record, they will see that I have stood up to billionaires and a 5% tax. I have been a consistent voice for Medicare for All. I have been a consistent voice in standing up to the defense contractors and voting against a defense budget, often one— the only person on the Armed Services Committee I stood up for truck drivers and Teamsters over Big Tech. I proposed legislation to break up monopolies and for an Internet Bill of Rights. So I think people will see that I have been willing to actually take on structures of power. I grew up middle class. I took out a lot of loans. Obviously, there's no secret that, you know, I've done well. My family's done well, but I don't hide that. But what I say is, is that I am willing and have shown guts to take on the economic class to make sure it's working for every American.

You have also proposed further legislation relating to Jeffrey Epstein, which I'd like to summarize as a follow-up on the previous legislation, saying that the first legislation having to do with disclosure should actually be enacted. What do you think is still out there that we don't know, that is not disclosed?

We don't have 3 million of these files still in the Epstein files. And those are large numbers of survivors talking to FBI agents and telling them who the men were who raped them or abused them. Those were scrubbed by the FBI, uh, and they've been redacted and we still don't have them released.

Um, obviously I'm asking you here to make assumptions about things that we don't know, but there seems to be a couple of categories of what might be out there. One might be more information like we already know— more victims, a few more offenders, uh, the same pattern that we've already seen. But there's also the idea that there is an even deeper conspiracy. That someone as yet unnamed in the U.S. government was protecting Epstein, working with Epstein, using Epstein, that there may have been a foreign government involved with Epstein. Um, do you assume that there is some bigger conspiracy out there?

I have been very careful not to speculate because one of the reasons we've been so successful is we've stuck to the facts. And what I say is, I don't know. But I do know there are a lot of unanswered questions. Julia Brown, who is one of the best reporters on this, believes that there are important questions about whether Epstein did have connections to our intelligence agencies or foreign intelligence agencies.

You don't rule it out?

I don't rule it out, but I don't speculate about it. But what I do know is that the American president should issue a report about who Epstein was and what his connections were. Either by declassifying that information or having a commission that looks at the classified information and puts out a public report. And I don't understand why J.D. Vance isn't calling for that. I mean, he, he's the one who was speaking all the time about the Epstein files, Epstein files. He still says, oh, I think that there are important questions about Jeffrey Epstein. Well, if you think that, you're vice president, you're not a pundit. Call for a report to explain to the American people.

Have you seen any evidence or facts that we do know that would point toward U.S. intelligence agencies or to a specific foreign intelligence agency?

I have not seen some specific, uh, evidence. I have just seen the, the things in the files where there are questions about who was paying Epstein, uh, why did he have access to so many powerful people, uh, how had he built this network. But I, I don't— there's no smoking gun where I've seen something in the files that says, okay, this person was meeting with the CIA or a foreign intelligence agency.

I was thinking about this scandal. It's obviously monstrous and huge, and yet there's also the reality that it would be hard to prove to many people that we've ever gotten to the bottom of it. Some people will just never trust or believe that the government has disclosed everything. And then I realized, if you run for president, if you become president, in 2029, suddenly you'll be the guy that people assume is not telling all the truth. Are you— have you thought about that possibility? What would you do about it?

I actually have thought about the possibility that the next president is going to have a huge burden on this. And what I would say is that the anger is that wealthy and powerful people did not get justice, that they were above the law, that you and I have to get justice if we run a traffic light. But these folks were part of a network where they were either engaged in sexual abuse or covering it up, and they skate it. And so the next administration needs to do 3 things. First, they need to release the remaining files in consultation with the survivors. I would have the president appoint someone from the survivor community, a lawyer representing them. To take charge of that so that they have credibility. Here, they aren't even meeting with the survivors.

But you would go to the survivors and say, who should I appoint?

Yes, who would be at least as a co-equal or someone from the survivor community, someone like a Bradley Edwards, etc., to co-lead this process. So you have trust in the process. Second, I would have a review of that evidence by people again who have connections with survivors to see where investigations need to happen and prosecutions need to happen. I believe in due process, so I don't believe that an American president should just be saying, okay, go prosecute someone. But there needs to be a look at where there should be investigations and prosecutions, and that should come from people who really have a sympathy, uh, with survivors. And third, I would have this report on Epstein. Now, I'm not saying that's me. I'm saying whoever the next president is.

You represent a part of the country that has a huge economic growth, as you mentioned, that also terrifies a lot of people. And I think even including some people in the tech world themselves wonder about the end of humanity or the end of democracy, the end of human autonomy. I don't know if you have those fears or not, but I'd like to ask in the biggest way possible, what terrifies you? What keeps you up at night?

That we're at a breaking point in America and that if we don't do something dramatically different, we may break. The American Revolution was not the French or Russian Revolution. It was a revolution on political liberty, not of massive economic transformation. And I tell people all the time, I'm 49 years old. I'm about to turn 50. I'm the nice guy. I just want a new social contract. Have you met these folks in their 30s? They want pitchforks and torches. They want your scalps in terms of politically. And my fear is that if we don't have an ambitious, transformative agenda that gets this country working again, for people who feel they don't have healthcare, they don't have jobs, they don't have a home, then we really could break as a nation. We could break this greatest nation to be a multiracial democracy. And while some tech folks are worried about Terminators and AI messing things up, I'm not saying that we don't discount— we discount that. Of course, we need AI regulation. I'm worried about the American political project breaking apart at the seams. And ultimately, someone had asked, who are the great presidents that someone would interview?

And it's like so obvious to me, it's Washington, Lincoln, and FDR. But ultimately, I'm motivated by Lincoln's fundamental sentiment to preserve the Union. We're not going to preserve the Union if we do not have economic transformation.

Are you saying you want to be something like Franklin Roosevelt, who was hated by capitalists but said he was saving capitalism?

Well, it would be highly arrogant for a member of Congress who's at 1 or 2% in the polls to be comparing themselves in any way.

And yet you would not be the only one ever to do that in Congress.

Please go on. To be comparing themselves to the greatest modern president. I would say this, I would say FDR's agenda. He was someone who was from wealth. Of course, I grew up middle class and working class, but I've come from a place of success in Silicon Valley, and he was willing to take on that capital class to make the economy work for everyone, is a model for our time with an important correction. He excluded a lot of the Black South where domestic workers, agricultural workers didn't get a chance. He purposely set Social Security at 65, knowing that Black life expectancy was 59.

That was the only way he was going to get Southern support for his social reforms.

That's it. Social. He excluded, of course, Japanese Americans and interned them. But a multiracial New Deal, in my view, is what is needed. And it will probably be one of America's greatest moments because what we can do and will do in America— I don't know if it'll be my generation or the next generation— we will become the world's first cohesive multiracial democracy. We are 60% white and non-Hispanic. Canada is 80-some percent. Britain is 80-some percent. Australia is 80-some percent. We're trying to do something extraordinary. And if we can create the economic conditions across America to give people what I had, a shot, a fair shot to have a good job, to be able to buy a home, to make a life, then we can start to heal the wounds of this country and be a multiracial democracy that is a civilizational achievement. We're not one now? We're— we've done— we are a multiracial democracy. We're not a cohesive multiracial democracy. We're a multiracial democracy that is breaking apart and that is angry. But, you know, who would have thought that you could just have a glide path to doing something that's never been done in the history of the world?

So we have— this is our challenge as a as a generation, our challenge is as severe as FDR's challenge. We have people who are left out of an economy who don't feel seen, who don't feel heard. They're left out based on factory towns, rural America, based on race. And if we can solve that and offer a vision forward with massive transformative change, then, then we can achieve something that no civil nation has ever achieved in history. The one thing I will say is we need to be specific. I'm tired of the platitudes. Affordability, renew the American dream, have a good job. Like, you know, branding is not an agenda. Boldness cannot just be branding. We need to say we're going to tax billionaire wealth. We're going to say we're going to have free health care with Medicare for All, free child care, We're going to increase the living wage. We're going to increase union density by linking federal contracts to that. And we're going to stop the foreign wars. And if you don't have enemies, people who dislike you, you probably aren't saying anything substantive. I've got a lot of people who dislike me, not just Elon Musk and these tech billionaires, AIPAC, a lot of people who say, hey, kind of wants transformation.

Because I do, because I think that that's what's going to really give people a shot in this country.

Ro Khanna, thanks. It's been a pleasure talking with you. Thank you. Enjoyed it. Thanks for listening. New episodes of Newsmakers drop as soon as they're available, and we share them right here on Up First when we can. But the best way to stay caught up is to follow or subscribe to the show on Spotify. I, on YouTube, or anywhere. Of course, you can also find it in the NPR app. And remember, newsmakers like Up First relies on supporters who value independent journalism and a free press. Join NPR+ today if you can to support our work and get perks from the podcasts you trust. Go to plus.npr.org. I'm Steve Inskeep. Thanks for listening to Up First from NPR News.

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Weylan, it seems like everything is being called a recession indicator these days. Yeah, like the box of Hamburger Helper in my pantry. Or the new Apple NeoBook. Or the resurgence of press-on nails, or lipstick, or no lipstick. I've lost track. There is only one way to know if these are actual economic warning signs, though. Listen to The Indicator from Planet Money on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.