Planning to Win
Trump is not serious. We have to be.
On Friday, the Trump Administration unexpectedly announced a $100,000 fee for H-1B visas. These visas are the way high-skilled immigrants—engineers, scientists, doctors—come to America, and the fee would make the move prohibitive for many applicants. At minimum, it would benefit large companies who could afford the fee, while startups would be frozen out. The order also allowed for exemptions at the discretion of the administration, a loophole designed to extract concessions from companies: do what the administration wants and get an exemption.
I called it a tariff on talent, and made the point that it was yet another attack on America’s competitiveness:
There are bright, talented, driven people all over the world, and the United States is fortunate that a lot of them want to be here. Our choice is simple: let them come and make our economy more competitive, or keep them out so they compete against us.
Over the weekend, as immigrants and their employers and attorneys panicked—Could they afford to pay this fee annually? If they left the country to visit family, could they get back in?—the administration released a “clarification” that contradicted the original announcement.
This policy is ridiculous on its merits, but the disorganized, rushed, and confusing way that it was rolled out is a problem in itself. Companies have to make long-term decisions based on policy, and they can’t under this much uncertainty. Should a company invest in hiring a talented individual whose visa might be revoked? Should that individual choose to bring their abilities to the United States? Would they all be better off outsourcing the job to a country whose government takes its work more seriously?
I’ve been thinking about this idea—seriousness—frequently during the second Trump Administration. Seriousness means understanding context, having clear goals, making plans that will actually achieve those goals, and executing on those plans with persistence and discipline.
It’s not a moral judgment; there are kind-hearted people who can’t get anything done, and ruthlessly efficient tyrants. It’s not a political judgment; there are serious (and unserious) people at every point on the political spectrum. It’s a judgment of whether someone is capable of and committed to accomplishing something, or whether they’re more interested in posturing and performance.
When it comes to governing, it’s plain that President Trump and his administration are not serious people. They announce major initiatives without thinking them through. They elevate unqualified ideologues and harass experts. They actively undermine America’s strength even as they claim to bolster it. The visa mess is just a recent example of their sloppiness (though by the time I publish this, it’s not even the most recent). Consider the arbitrary tariff rates, including an attack on a major democracy that will go down as one of the greatest diplomatic blunders in American history; or the summit with Vladimir Putin that accomplished nothing except giving a hostile autocrat a triumphant photo op on American soil; or the FBI director and author of bizarre children’s books announcing prematurely that a suspect had been taken into custody for Charlie Kirk’s murder; or a major White House address that ended up being a rambling monologue advising pregnant women not to take Tylenol, based on what the President “feels.” These are just a few top-of-mind examples from the last few weeks.
It takes serious people to build something, to have the clarity and discipline to see an opportunity and do the hard work, year-in and year-out, of bringing a vision to life. Everything that makes this country great, from civil rights to scientific progress to our economy to our artistic and cultural heritage and democracy itself, was built that way across generations.
But unserious people can destroy. Institutions, norms, and trust that take generations to build can be thoughtlessly smashed in a moment. Each day this administration is in office, the list of what we’ll need to rebuild over decades grows.
When it comes to power, however, they are deadly serious. They executed a winning strategy to retake the White House, purged their party and the entire executive branch of dissent, and have been extraordinarily resourceful in using the powers they have to intimidate their way into ones they don’t. And, they’re now laying the groundwork to root out opponents and disrupt elections in order to entrench their position. This is not an agenda for a term in office. It is a long-term, generational project.
But Democrats aren’t serious either. We used to be—I became a Democrat because of my values but also because, in the first campaign I followed closely, the Republican candidate was proudly unprepared and dismissed inconvenient truths as “fuzzy math.” That didn’t sit well with a studious seventeen-year-old. In the years since, I was glad to be in a party that, win or lose, took seriously both governing and the political work needed to get in office.
At some point in recent years, we lost it. After losing in 2024, and losing voters for many years before that, we quickly coalesced around a platform that’s a new label slapped on everything we’ve already been doing. We’re making plans for what to do in office that are completely divorced from reality. We’re gravitating to candidates because they’re good at grabbing our attention, regardless of their ability to effect any of the change we need. Our national strategy for 2026 is crossing our fingers and for 2028 is TBD.
This campaign was born out of deep frustration. I’ve spent my career happily out of the spotlight and working with serious people, from outstanding veteran teachers to committed public advocates to brilliant product makers. To see my party approach beating the Trump Administration as haphazardly as the administration approaches governing was too much to stand.
So let’s get serious.
Our context is a rampaging political machine that is freezing out Congress, silencing dissent, and planning to stick around. Our agenda is on hold until we push past this moment.
Our primary goal must be to remove them from office, not for a term but for a generation, by winning the next presidential election decisively. That’s the fight.
Our plan must be to define a platform that wins a commanding national majority. 2026 is a chance to win seats in the House, but even more importantly to start turning around the public’s negative view of the party.
Our path is to start campaigning on that platform now, across the country and in every seat. The race for 2028 began November 6, 2024, and it’s happening everywhere.
We can win, but not until we stop mistaking wishful thinking for a plan and making noise for fighting. If we are serious—in vision, in strategy, and in execution—we can build the majority we need and get past this.
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