I want more shyt built by more people in more areas where it’s legal to build more shyt.
Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson on the abundance agenda and liberals - Housing 🏠, Energy ⚡️, Infrastructure 🚊, Transportation 🛣️, etc
- Thread starter ☑︎#VoteDemocrat
- Start date
Piff Perkins
Veteran
Mamdani's actual policy positions are terrible and built entirely on magic dust.
Whether people agree with "abundance" or not it's very hard to deny the principle that progress cannot continue being blocked by a minority of fringe locality figures and decades-old ideologies that don't matter anymore. But on the flip side we need to also acknowledge that the vast majority of abundance focuses on problems in two states that don't really exist elsewhere - California and New York. Minnesota isn't having problems with housing capacity - they are building. Same with much of the midwest. Same with Texas.
To me a better argument for the public is that CA and NY are the biggest liberal states, they dictate a lot of public perception about liberals...and it would be nice if normal people could afford housing there by making some changes that other states made long ago. NY making a big deal about plastic garbage cans with tops is a good example of how behind the times they are.
Whether people agree with "abundance" or not it's very hard to deny the principle that progress cannot continue being blocked by a minority of fringe locality figures and decades-old ideologies that don't matter anymore. But on the flip side we need to also acknowledge that the vast majority of abundance focuses on problems in two states that don't really exist elsewhere - California and New York. Minnesota isn't having problems with housing capacity - they are building. Same with much of the midwest. Same with Texas.
To me a better argument for the public is that CA and NY are the biggest liberal states, they dictate a lot of public perception about liberals...and it would be nice if normal people could afford housing there by making some changes that other states made long ago. NY making a big deal about plastic garbage cans with tops is a good example of how behind the times they are.
The Future of Abundance and the Left
Left-wing commentators say abundance is their opposition. Left-wing politicians say it’s a credit to the Democratic Party. What if they're both right?
derekthompson.substack.com
The Future of Abundance and the Left
Left-wing commentators say abundance is their opposition. Left-wing politicians say it’s a credit to the Democratic Party. What if they're both right?
Derek Thompson
In the last three months, I’ve watched the reaction to Abundance play out in two arenas.
The first venue is the war zone of online discourse, where critics have amassed in impressive numbers. The Nation said abundance could "sink the Democratic Party." The Bad Faith podcast told the left to "reject" abundance as a dangerous “conspiracy." The left-wing journal Current Affairs called it a “disaster.” The typical social media criticism has made this language seem tame, and almost polite, by comparison. The book has generated enough critiques, defenses, and counter-critiques that New York Magazine’s Approval Matrix, a grid of the cultural zeitgeist, placed “The Over-abundance of Abundance Discourse” in its Highbrow/Despicable quadrant last week.
One should never mistake online discourse for reality. A Yiddish proverb comes to mind: “To a worm in horseradish, the world is horseradish.” To a person who over-marinates in social media, social media feels like the whole world. But if one manages to slither one’s way out of this digital sludge, a different picture comes into focus: abundance as a unifying principle rather than a dividing line.
The second arena that I’ve been watching is the commentary of elected officials and politicians seeking elected office. Many have endorsed or name-checked the book and its ideas, including New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, and New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker. Rep. Ritchie Torres of New York has called it “the best framework that I've heard for reimagining Democratic governance.” Rep. Jake Auchincloss of Massachusetts has quoted the book to promote government acting as a “bottleneck detective.”
Part 2:
Some on the left might write off the above paragraph as a tepid parade of centrists. But this is where it gets interesting: In many cases, the politicians endorsing abundance represent the most progressive wings of the party:
The Divided Soul of “Left Abundance”
What the critics understand is that abundance represents a form of liberalism that differs in key aspects from socialism and left-wing populism. Unlike socialism, it seeks to regulate and guide the market rather than replace it with public ownership or forever expand the state at its expense. Unlike left-wing populism, which regards corporate power as a chief nemesis, liberalism believes that the enemies of progress are diverse and situational. As Ezra Klein wrote in the New York Times, the abuse of power can emerge wherever power accumulates. When a corporate monopoly uses its leverage to raise prices and crush competition, that is power. When a homeowners group acts as a cartel by organizing to block new housing construction, that is power. When one city’s public sector union negotiates obscene staffing levels1 that raise the cost of building public goods, that is power. To see these abuses clearly requires a particular way of looking at the world. It demands an ideological flexibility that does not pre-determine that certain groups are intrinsically innocent or guilty. A Democratic Party that embraces the ideas in Abundance—about NIMBYism, and zoning, and permitting reform, and strategies to de-risk private investment in clean energy, science, and biotech—will be different than a party that rejects them. If we’re fighting over these ideas, it might be, in part, because these are ideas worth fighting over.
But the politicians understand another thing that is core to abundance. They know that if Democrats are to be the party of government, they have to become the party of making government work; and too often, it simply doesn’t. In the last few weeks, I’ve spoken with several progressive state and local politicians across the country about what they got out of the book. Many of these chats were off the record, so that they could speak freely, and the conversations sometimes took on the character of talk therapy. Idealistic reformers were shocked to discover, upon their arrival in office, how progressive rules undermined the outcomes they were designed to achieve. Rather than build houses, fix roads, or open childcare centers, they told me, the Democratic fetish for legalistic procedure has in so many places made it impossible to get stuff done. These politicians have seen the face of government up close. They know its wrinkles and its warts. When they read our descriptions of well-meaning policies gone awry, they feel the shock of recognition.
Some on the left might write off the above paragraph as a tepid parade of centrists. But this is where it gets interesting: In many cases, the politicians endorsing abundance represent the most progressive wings of the party:
- Bernie Sanders devotees have bashed abundance in numerous settings. But Rep. Ro Khanna, an outspoken advocate of Bernie’s signature policy proposal Medicare For All, has announced his support for abundance on manyoccasions.
- Left-wing populists, who often regard corporate greed as America’s most important problem, have assailed the book online, while some have marshaled polling evidence to prove abundance is a political loser. But Sen. Chris Murphy, a self-described economic populist, publicly disagreed with this line of attack. He pointed out that the virtues of reducing “concentrated corporate power” and fixing “bottlenecks [to] build more stuff” aren’t incompatible at all, but rather two tastes that go great together.
- Several people have accused the book of throwing welfare to the side. But Wes Moore, the progressive Maryland governor who spent much of his private-sector career fighting poverty, delivered a rousing May speech, in which he said Democrats have to change from being the party of “no and slow” to the party of “yes and now.”
The Divided Soul of “Left Abundance”
What the critics understand is that abundance represents a form of liberalism that differs in key aspects from socialism and left-wing populism. Unlike socialism, it seeks to regulate and guide the market rather than replace it with public ownership or forever expand the state at its expense. Unlike left-wing populism, which regards corporate power as a chief nemesis, liberalism believes that the enemies of progress are diverse and situational. As Ezra Klein wrote in the New York Times, the abuse of power can emerge wherever power accumulates. When a corporate monopoly uses its leverage to raise prices and crush competition, that is power. When a homeowners group acts as a cartel by organizing to block new housing construction, that is power. When one city’s public sector union negotiates obscene staffing levels1 that raise the cost of building public goods, that is power. To see these abuses clearly requires a particular way of looking at the world. It demands an ideological flexibility that does not pre-determine that certain groups are intrinsically innocent or guilty. A Democratic Party that embraces the ideas in Abundance—about NIMBYism, and zoning, and permitting reform, and strategies to de-risk private investment in clean energy, science, and biotech—will be different than a party that rejects them. If we’re fighting over these ideas, it might be, in part, because these are ideas worth fighting over.
But the politicians understand another thing that is core to abundance. They know that if Democrats are to be the party of government, they have to become the party of making government work; and too often, it simply doesn’t. In the last few weeks, I’ve spoken with several progressive state and local politicians across the country about what they got out of the book. Many of these chats were off the record, so that they could speak freely, and the conversations sometimes took on the character of talk therapy. Idealistic reformers were shocked to discover, upon their arrival in office, how progressive rules undermined the outcomes they were designed to achieve. Rather than build houses, fix roads, or open childcare centers, they told me, the Democratic fetish for legalistic procedure has in so many places made it impossible to get stuff done. These politicians have seen the face of government up close. They know its wrinkles and its warts. When they read our descriptions of well-meaning policies gone awry, they feel the shock of recognition.
Part 3:
One especially interesting conversation was not off the record. This past weekend, I spoke with Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic Socialist candidate for mayor of New York City and a rising star on the far left. Several of Mamdani’s supporters, like the anti-monopoly advocate Zephyr Teachout, are fierce critics of ours. But Mamdani told Pod Save America that despite the “simplified and caricatured” conversation around the book, “Abundance is really interesting.” In a recent speech, he hailed an “agenda of abundance.”
Mamdani and I do not agree about many things, including but not limited to: housing policy, education policy, the role of public sector unions in raising the cost of urban-transit construction, and the need for significantly higher levels of local and state spending in New York. But we agree that politicians who seek to create more government functions had damn well better prove that the government can function, in the first place. “As someone who is very passionate about public goods, about public service, I think that we on the left have to be equally passionate about public excellence,” Mamdani told me. “One of the most compelling things that I think abundance has brought into the larger conversation is how we can make government more effective, how we can actually deliver on the very ideas that we are so passionate about.” As we spoke about his plans to prove government excellence, the words that kept coming up were outcomes, efficiency, and an openness to government innovation—all themes of the book. “I clearly have ideas and politics, but ultimately beyond all of those things, I care most about outcomes,” he said. “The way that I would approach running the city is to be wedded to outcomes, not wedded to the means by which we get to those outcomes.”
I can judge Mamdani only by the words he said to me. I cannot judge the degree to which he means them, or his ability to translate words into policies, or policies into outcomes, such as accelerated housing construction or reduced per-mile building costs for the subway.2 I’m well aware that if political leaders master the marketing-speak of abundance—outcomes over process! public goods demand public excellence!—without committing to the hard tradeoffs necessary to actually improve outcomes and public excellence, it could lead to a false consensus around abundance, which would be even more unproductive than honest disagreement.
Nevertheless, my conversation with Mamdani made me optimistic. It showed how some ideas from Abundance that are currently coded as “centrist, and thus anti-left” don’t have to be so ghettoized. A left-populist leader who removes barriers to physical-world construction to make it easier to build public goods doesn’t transform into a nefarious neoliberal. They just become a better populist leader. A Democratic Socialist mayor who takes a page from Jersey City and makes it easier and faster for private developers to add housing units won’t be a traitor to the middle class. They’ll simply be a better mayor.
In sum, the confrontational posters and the coalition-building politicians have clearly identified two distinct truths. The liberalism offered by abundance challenges some of the traditional assumptions and comfortable narratives of the left. But many of our themes, especially in the realm of making government work, ought to be seen as a binding agent that bridges political factions rather than divides them.
One especially interesting conversation was not off the record. This past weekend, I spoke with Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic Socialist candidate for mayor of New York City and a rising star on the far left. Several of Mamdani’s supporters, like the anti-monopoly advocate Zephyr Teachout, are fierce critics of ours. But Mamdani told Pod Save America that despite the “simplified and caricatured” conversation around the book, “Abundance is really interesting.” In a recent speech, he hailed an “agenda of abundance.”
Mamdani and I do not agree about many things, including but not limited to: housing policy, education policy, the role of public sector unions in raising the cost of urban-transit construction, and the need for significantly higher levels of local and state spending in New York. But we agree that politicians who seek to create more government functions had damn well better prove that the government can function, in the first place. “As someone who is very passionate about public goods, about public service, I think that we on the left have to be equally passionate about public excellence,” Mamdani told me. “One of the most compelling things that I think abundance has brought into the larger conversation is how we can make government more effective, how we can actually deliver on the very ideas that we are so passionate about.” As we spoke about his plans to prove government excellence, the words that kept coming up were outcomes, efficiency, and an openness to government innovation—all themes of the book. “I clearly have ideas and politics, but ultimately beyond all of those things, I care most about outcomes,” he said. “The way that I would approach running the city is to be wedded to outcomes, not wedded to the means by which we get to those outcomes.”
I can judge Mamdani only by the words he said to me. I cannot judge the degree to which he means them, or his ability to translate words into policies, or policies into outcomes, such as accelerated housing construction or reduced per-mile building costs for the subway.2 I’m well aware that if political leaders master the marketing-speak of abundance—outcomes over process! public goods demand public excellence!—without committing to the hard tradeoffs necessary to actually improve outcomes and public excellence, it could lead to a false consensus around abundance, which would be even more unproductive than honest disagreement.
Nevertheless, my conversation with Mamdani made me optimistic. It showed how some ideas from Abundance that are currently coded as “centrist, and thus anti-left” don’t have to be so ghettoized. A left-populist leader who removes barriers to physical-world construction to make it easier to build public goods doesn’t transform into a nefarious neoliberal. They just become a better populist leader. A Democratic Socialist mayor who takes a page from Jersey City and makes it easier and faster for private developers to add housing units won’t be a traitor to the middle class. They’ll simply be a better mayor.
In sum, the confrontational posters and the coalition-building politicians have clearly identified two distinct truths. The liberalism offered by abundance challenges some of the traditional assumptions and comfortable narratives of the left. But many of our themes, especially in the realm of making government work, ought to be seen as a binding agent that bridges political factions rather than divides them.
Part 4:
This newsletter will be a project of both confrontation and coalition-building.
Some of the most important work here will be about defining how I disagree with critics of the book. I’ll explain why corporate power isn’t a big factor in many industries where the anti-monopoly folks are most fixated; how I think science and tech policy needs to evolve; and why paying for the welfare state in an age of high debts and high interest rates requires an aggressive pro-growth strategy that might strike some leftists as too corporate-friendly.
But I also want to make the case that something bigger and better is possible in our politics. I believe that abundance can help create a new, larger liberal coalition that can govern effectively at the local level and defeat the forces of anti-growth kleptocracy at the national level. I want our critics to see that there is room for them in this tent. I want anti-monopolists to recognize how organized homeowners can capture housing markets the same way that oligopolistic cartels do. I want leftists to see how a combination of pro-developer policies and affordability regulations can help people live where they want to live and even moderate housing inflation for the middle class. I want Democratic Socialists, who believe in expanding government bureaucracy, to see how the government can encumber itself with inefficient bureaucracy. I even want moderate conservatives to see that the virtues of science and technology and growth can have a real political home in this country, and it’s not going to be the tent pitched upon the shoulders of Donald Trump.
Abundance was written to start a bit of a fight. But the goal is what comes after the fight: a party that wins power by showing what it can do with power; a coalition that binds urban progressives and national moderates; a more popular “popular front.” The aim of the book was never to carve the Democratic coalition into ever finer slices. Rather, you might say the politics of abundance are hiding right there inside the meaning of the word itself. The goal is to build something bigger.
1
From the 2017 New York Times article "The Most Expensive Mile of Subway Track on Earth": “Trade unions, which have closely aligned themselves with Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and other politicians, have secured deals requiring underground construction work to be staffed by as many as four times more laborers than elsewhere in the world, documents show.”
2
When I asked Mamdani whether he was prepared to confront the role of public sector unions in raising the cost of transit construction, he told me, “I will have to work with public sector unions [but] I think I come to a different conclusion than you” on their centrality to higher construction costs. As you might guess from the first footnote above, I disagree with this interpretation. While I didn’t expect a NYC mayoral candidate to throw unions under the bus just hours before election day, I think it’s fair to say this sort of answer does not indicate a deep interest in confronting Democratic allies who can use their power to extract goods from the public. However, I think that sort of courage is something abundance politics will often require.
This newsletter will be a project of both confrontation and coalition-building.
Some of the most important work here will be about defining how I disagree with critics of the book. I’ll explain why corporate power isn’t a big factor in many industries where the anti-monopoly folks are most fixated; how I think science and tech policy needs to evolve; and why paying for the welfare state in an age of high debts and high interest rates requires an aggressive pro-growth strategy that might strike some leftists as too corporate-friendly.
But I also want to make the case that something bigger and better is possible in our politics. I believe that abundance can help create a new, larger liberal coalition that can govern effectively at the local level and defeat the forces of anti-growth kleptocracy at the national level. I want our critics to see that there is room for them in this tent. I want anti-monopolists to recognize how organized homeowners can capture housing markets the same way that oligopolistic cartels do. I want leftists to see how a combination of pro-developer policies and affordability regulations can help people live where they want to live and even moderate housing inflation for the middle class. I want Democratic Socialists, who believe in expanding government bureaucracy, to see how the government can encumber itself with inefficient bureaucracy. I even want moderate conservatives to see that the virtues of science and technology and growth can have a real political home in this country, and it’s not going to be the tent pitched upon the shoulders of Donald Trump.
Abundance was written to start a bit of a fight. But the goal is what comes after the fight: a party that wins power by showing what it can do with power; a coalition that binds urban progressives and national moderates; a more popular “popular front.” The aim of the book was never to carve the Democratic coalition into ever finer slices. Rather, you might say the politics of abundance are hiding right there inside the meaning of the word itself. The goal is to build something bigger.
1
From the 2017 New York Times article "The Most Expensive Mile of Subway Track on Earth": “Trade unions, which have closely aligned themselves with Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and other politicians, have secured deals requiring underground construction work to be staffed by as many as four times more laborers than elsewhere in the world, documents show.”
2
When I asked Mamdani whether he was prepared to confront the role of public sector unions in raising the cost of transit construction, he told me, “I will have to work with public sector unions [but] I think I come to a different conclusion than you” on their centrality to higher construction costs. As you might guess from the first footnote above, I disagree with this interpretation. While I didn’t expect a NYC mayoral candidate to throw unions under the bus just hours before election day, I think it’s fair to say this sort of answer does not indicate a deep interest in confronting Democratic allies who can use their power to extract goods from the public. However, I think that sort of courage is something abundance politics will often require.
Mamdani reinforces my fear of progressive marketing in the modern world. But I think people need to touch the stove and get burned… but the problem is NYC is gonna elect a republican if these goddamn progressives keep fukking around.
Zohran Mamdani's policies will (mostly) not bring abundance to NYC
Progressive ideas still try to defy economic realities.
www.noahpinion.blog
This is what anti-abundance people dont get. @Loose @AquaCityBoy
Its DEMOCRATS causing this bullshyt with stupid complaints.
Gov. Gavin Newsom's bid to include housing legislation as part of the state's budget agreement is drawing pushback from his own party. | Rich Pedroncelli/AP
By ERIC HE, JEREMY B. WHITE and RACHEL BLUTH
06/25/2025 10:23 PM EDT
SACRAMENTO, California — Gavin Newsom thought he could push an ambitious housing proposal through California’s Democratic-controlled Legislature. Instead, he ran into a wall of resistance from should-be allies angrily comparing his plans to Jim Crow, slavery and immigration raids.
Hours of explosive state budget hearings on Wednesday revealed deepening rifts within the Legislature’s Democratic supermajority over how to ease California’s prohibitively high cost of living. Labor advocates determined to sink one of Newsom’s proposals over wage standards for construction workers filled a hearing room at the state Capitol mocking, yelling, and storming out at points while lawmakers went over the details of Newsom’s plan to address the state’s affordability crisis and sew up a $12 billion budget deficit.
Lawmakers for months have been bracing for a fight with Newsom over his proposed cuts to safety net programs in the state budget. Instead, Democrats are throwing up heavy resistance to his last-minute stand on housing development — a proposal that has drawn outrage from labor and environmental groups in heavily-Democratic California.
“Anyone who believed this would not cause a giant explosion — they were living in la-la-land,” said Todd David, a San Francisco political consultant who has worked for state Sen. Scott Wiener and housing-focused groups.
For Newsom, a potential 2028 presidential contender, it was a striking show of resistance from a flank of his own party over housing. A priority of the Democratic governor, Newsom had put his political capital behind an attempt to strong-arm the Legislature by making the entire state budget contingent on passing a bill to speed housing development by relaxing environmental protection rules.
A spokesperson for Newsom pointed to a statement Tuesday night emphasizing partnership with lawmakers in reaching a budget deal while noting that “it is contingent on finalizing legislation to cut red tape and unleash housing and infrastructure development across the state — to build more, faster.”
The fault lines on display this week run deep. Construction unions and the statewide California Labor Federation have long resisted housing bills they see as eroding wage standards, often packing hearing rooms with members who urge lawmakers to vote no. Democrats have at times decried their union allies’ hardball tactics.
But Newsom’s unprecedented intervention — and the forceful response from union foes — pushed the conflict into a whole new realm.
“To have legislation that is this large and this significant be forced through at the 11th hour … seems pretty absurd to me,” Democratic state Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez said at the hearing. “I just cannot begin to explain how incredibly inappropriate and hurtful this is.”
Scott Wetch, a lobbyist representing the trade unions, contended that this could be the first time since the Jim Crow era that California is “contemplating a law to suppress wages.” Pérez,
who represents a Los Angeles district, said the proposal was “incredibly insensitive” amid immigration raids targeting mostly “blue-collar workers who are Latino.” And Kevin Ferreira, executive director of the Sacramento-Sierra’s Building and Construction Trades Council, told lawmakers the bill “will compel our workers to be shackled and start singing chain gang songs.”
In a sign of the stakes, the fight quickly spilled beyond California as North America’s Building Trades Unions — an umbrella group covering millions of workers across the United States in Canada that rarely intercedes in state politics — sent Newsom a blistering letter warning the bill would “create a race to the bottom.”
Environmental groups piled on late Wednesday, with around 60 of them, including the Sierra Club and Earthjustice, blasting the proposal in a letter as a “backroom Budget Trailer Bill deal that would kill community and environmental protections
, even as the people of California are faced with unprecedented federal attacks to their lives and livelihoods.”
Unions warned the governor was betraying his Democratic base. Gretchen Newsom, a representative of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, said Newsom’s stance was baffling to people “looking at the Democratic Party and wondering what comes next for the governor.”
“I see this as a complete debacle and devastating to workers all across California,” said Newsom, who is not related to the governor.
Labor leaders were once again at one another’s throats, with many opponents faulting carpenters’ unions who have backed streamlining efforts. Danny Curtin, director of the California Conference of Carpenters, said the scale of housing woes in California, where the price for the median home now tops $900,000, demanded an aggressive solution.
“The housing crisis is the most politically, socially, economically destabilizing crisis in California,” Curtin said. “I would give the governor credit for trying to cut through another year of arguing.”
In the broader budget negotiations, Newsom had largely capitulated to pushback from lawmakers over the steepest cuts he had proposed making to the state’s Medicaid program, particularly for undocumented immigrants. Now, he is putting his political capital behind affordability proposals.
But in a sign that Newsom’s influence may be waning, lawmakers on Wednesday delayed a vote over wage provisions tucked into a separate budget bill. The proposal would allow developers to set a minimum wage standard for construction workers on certain affordable housing projects that could be lower than what union workers currently command.
“It’s not a simple thing around the edges,” said state Sen. Maria Elena Durazo, a Los Angeles Democrat. “It is a massive change. It challenges the role of collective bargaining in this state that has never been done before.”
Wiener, a state budget negotiator who for years has fought to remove obstacles to denser housing development in California, defended the proposal at the hearing as setting a “floor, not a ceiling” for wages. But he admitted that the swift and ferocious opposition led him to delay the vote.
“It’s always appropriate for people to say, ‘This needs to be changed, that needs to be changed. This wage is too low, that wage is too low,” Wiener said. “That’s always appropriate.”
The governor was markedly less aggressive this year in his efforts to wring a budget deal out of lawmakers. Newsom did not attend caucus meetings in person to make his case for the housing legislation, as he has with previous proposals, although he has been in touch with some lawmakers via text message.
Some of that was a matter of timing: Newsom has been preoccupied by the White House launching sweeping immigration raids and then deploying federal troops to Los Angeles, fomenting a standoff that overlapped with budget negotiations.
Corey Jackson, a Democrat from Southern California who chairs an Assembly budget committee on human services, said that while he wasn’t privy to Newsom’s involvement in discussions, California needs a governor who is “24/7 going to be focused” on the state.
“Because our issues are that complicated,” Jackson said. “And the number of crises that come up in California, as you’ve seen, will continue to happen every year.”
@Black Magisterialness @the cac mamba @voiture @Creflo ½ Dollar @invalid @Pressure @wire28 @ADevilYouKhow @88m3 @MeachTheMonster @Wargames @Tair @Da_Eggman @Mister Terrific @Ciggavelli
Its DEMOCRATS causing this bullshyt with stupid complaints.
California Democrats wage internal war over Gavin Newsom’s late push to build more housing
Governor is drawing heavy resistance to his housing development proposal.
Gov. Gavin Newsom's bid to include housing legislation as part of the state's budget agreement is drawing pushback from his own party. | Rich Pedroncelli/AP
By ERIC HE, JEREMY B. WHITE and RACHEL BLUTH
06/25/2025 10:23 PM EDT
SACRAMENTO, California — Gavin Newsom thought he could push an ambitious housing proposal through California’s Democratic-controlled Legislature. Instead, he ran into a wall of resistance from should-be allies angrily comparing his plans to Jim Crow, slavery and immigration raids.
Hours of explosive state budget hearings on Wednesday revealed deepening rifts within the Legislature’s Democratic supermajority over how to ease California’s prohibitively high cost of living. Labor advocates determined to sink one of Newsom’s proposals over wage standards for construction workers filled a hearing room at the state Capitol mocking, yelling, and storming out at points while lawmakers went over the details of Newsom’s plan to address the state’s affordability crisis and sew up a $12 billion budget deficit.
Lawmakers for months have been bracing for a fight with Newsom over his proposed cuts to safety net programs in the state budget. Instead, Democrats are throwing up heavy resistance to his last-minute stand on housing development — a proposal that has drawn outrage from labor and environmental groups in heavily-Democratic California.
“Anyone who believed this would not cause a giant explosion — they were living in la-la-land,” said Todd David, a San Francisco political consultant who has worked for state Sen. Scott Wiener and housing-focused groups.
For Newsom, a potential 2028 presidential contender, it was a striking show of resistance from a flank of his own party over housing. A priority of the Democratic governor, Newsom had put his political capital behind an attempt to strong-arm the Legislature by making the entire state budget contingent on passing a bill to speed housing development by relaxing environmental protection rules.
A spokesperson for Newsom pointed to a statement Tuesday night emphasizing partnership with lawmakers in reaching a budget deal while noting that “it is contingent on finalizing legislation to cut red tape and unleash housing and infrastructure development across the state — to build more, faster.”
The fault lines on display this week run deep. Construction unions and the statewide California Labor Federation have long resisted housing bills they see as eroding wage standards, often packing hearing rooms with members who urge lawmakers to vote no. Democrats have at times decried their union allies’ hardball tactics.
But Newsom’s unprecedented intervention — and the forceful response from union foes — pushed the conflict into a whole new realm.
“To have legislation that is this large and this significant be forced through at the 11th hour … seems pretty absurd to me,” Democratic state Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez said at the hearing. “I just cannot begin to explain how incredibly inappropriate and hurtful this is.”
Scott Wetch, a lobbyist representing the trade unions, contended that this could be the first time since the Jim Crow era that California is “contemplating a law to suppress wages.” Pérez,
who represents a Los Angeles district, said the proposal was “incredibly insensitive” amid immigration raids targeting mostly “blue-collar workers who are Latino.” And Kevin Ferreira, executive director of the Sacramento-Sierra’s Building and Construction Trades Council, told lawmakers the bill “will compel our workers to be shackled and start singing chain gang songs.” In a sign of the stakes, the fight quickly spilled beyond California as North America’s Building Trades Unions — an umbrella group covering millions of workers across the United States in Canada that rarely intercedes in state politics — sent Newsom a blistering letter warning the bill would “create a race to the bottom.”
Environmental groups piled on late Wednesday, with around 60 of them, including the Sierra Club and Earthjustice, blasting the proposal in a letter as a “backroom Budget Trailer Bill deal that would kill community and environmental protections
, even as the people of California are faced with unprecedented federal attacks to their lives and livelihoods.”Unions warned the governor was betraying his Democratic base. Gretchen Newsom, a representative of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, said Newsom’s stance was baffling to people “looking at the Democratic Party and wondering what comes next for the governor.”
“I see this as a complete debacle and devastating to workers all across California,” said Newsom, who is not related to the governor.
Labor leaders were once again at one another’s throats, with many opponents faulting carpenters’ unions who have backed streamlining efforts. Danny Curtin, director of the California Conference of Carpenters, said the scale of housing woes in California, where the price for the median home now tops $900,000, demanded an aggressive solution.
“The housing crisis is the most politically, socially, economically destabilizing crisis in California,” Curtin said. “I would give the governor credit for trying to cut through another year of arguing.”
In the broader budget negotiations, Newsom had largely capitulated to pushback from lawmakers over the steepest cuts he had proposed making to the state’s Medicaid program, particularly for undocumented immigrants. Now, he is putting his political capital behind affordability proposals.
But in a sign that Newsom’s influence may be waning, lawmakers on Wednesday delayed a vote over wage provisions tucked into a separate budget bill. The proposal would allow developers to set a minimum wage standard for construction workers on certain affordable housing projects that could be lower than what union workers currently command.
“It’s not a simple thing around the edges,” said state Sen. Maria Elena Durazo, a Los Angeles Democrat. “It is a massive change. It challenges the role of collective bargaining in this state that has never been done before.”
Wiener, a state budget negotiator who for years has fought to remove obstacles to denser housing development in California, defended the proposal at the hearing as setting a “floor, not a ceiling” for wages. But he admitted that the swift and ferocious opposition led him to delay the vote.
“It’s always appropriate for people to say, ‘This needs to be changed, that needs to be changed. This wage is too low, that wage is too low,” Wiener said. “That’s always appropriate.”
The governor was markedly less aggressive this year in his efforts to wring a budget deal out of lawmakers. Newsom did not attend caucus meetings in person to make his case for the housing legislation, as he has with previous proposals, although he has been in touch with some lawmakers via text message.
Some of that was a matter of timing: Newsom has been preoccupied by the White House launching sweeping immigration raids and then deploying federal troops to Los Angeles, fomenting a standoff that overlapped with budget negotiations.
Corey Jackson, a Democrat from Southern California who chairs an Assembly budget committee on human services, said that while he wasn’t privy to Newsom’s involvement in discussions, California needs a governor who is “24/7 going to be focused” on the state.
“Because our issues are that complicated,” Jackson said. “And the number of crises that come up in California, as you’ve seen, will continue to happen every year.”
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40 Percent of the Buildings in Manhattan Could Not Be Built Today (Published 2016).
www.nytimes.com
Which Buildings in Manhattan Couldn't Be Built Again Today? (Published 2016)
Over the last century, changes in zoning have created a unique predicament for nearly 40 percent of buildings in Manhattan. Find out which of Manhattan's 43,000 buildings defy their zoning restrictions.
www.nytimes.com