The Realignment

The Realignment at WelcomeFest 2026 | The Difference Between Good and Bad Moderation with Steve Teles 03.06.2026 51min

The Realignment host Marshall Kosloff and Niskanen Center Senior Fellow Steve Teles are set to appear at WelcomeFest 2026 today in Washington, DC. WelcomeFest is known as the biggest annual gathering of the political center. Steve will appear on a panel titled, "Building Centrist Abundance." Marshall will interview Senator Ruben Gallego and San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins on the center's lack of a broad story and worldview that can respond to an anti-status quo moment. Ahead of their appearances, Marshall and Steve discuss their problems with "moderation," an approach to politics associated with gatherings like WelcomeFest. While defending moderation as a personality and instinct, they differentiate between "higher" and "lower" forms of moderation and offer alternative approaches for politicians, organizations, and movements associated with the idea.

How the U.S. Can Deter China from Invading Taiwan in 2027 with Eyck Freymann 28.05.2026 59min

After President Trump's visit to China with his summit with President Xi Jinping, Eyck Freymann, Hoover Fellow at Stanford University and author of Defending Taiwan: A Strategy to Prevent War with China, joins The Realignment. Eyck and Marshall to unpack the Taiwan question, America's interests in the island's fate, the One China policy, and the future of U.S.-China competition. They discuss Taiwan’s domestic politics, deterrence, semiconductors, gray-zone conflict, and what the coming years could mean for peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific.

How to Bring Back National Ambition - Inside the Build America Caucus with Rep. Josh Harder 26.05.2026 58min

Congressman Josh Harder joins The Realignment to discuss why Americans increasingly feel the country has stopped working—and what it would take to rebuild trust in government. Harder explains the mission of the bipartisan “Build America Caucus,” why housing affordability has become a generational crisis, and how bottlenecks in permitting, infrastructure, and public administration undermine growth and optimism. Marshall and Josh debate abundance politics, private equity and housing, education reform, USAID, AI-era energy demand, and whether America needs to stop managing decline and start governing for outcomes again. Is the problem ideology—or competence? And can a politics of building restore a sense that the future will be better than the present?

Season Finale | Danielle Lee Tomson: Why the Future is Fusion 15.04.2026 1t 21min

Danielle Lee Tomson, author of the forthcoming Under the Influence What's Real When America Feels Fake, returns to The Realignment. Wrapping-up this season of The Realignment, Marshall begins with an opening monologue summing up his takeaways from the post-2024 election period and what they mean for the future of American politics. Danielle then interviews Marshall about his Missing Liberal Story essay in the States Forum Journal. They discuss how Danielle's "authenticity gap" and book project sync with the need for the political center to tell a coherent story about the country's past, present, and future, why the left-liberal fusion is the path forward, and where the project needs to go next.

601 | Noam Scheiber: How the Revolt of the College-Educated Working Class Could Reshape America 07.04.2026 56min

Noam Scheiber, New York Times reporter and author of Mutiny: The Rise and Revolt of the College-Educated Working Class, joins The Realignment. Marshall and Noam discuss how the rise and fall of the "college-for-all" economic model has left a generation of graduates (and non-graduates) feeling betrayed by the system, how downwardly-mobile college graduates are swinging to the economic left, which universities and government policies are responsible for the student debt crisis, and why the Biden administration's debt forgiveness program wasn't a political winner.

600 | Hannah Garden-Monheit: Why Voters Feel Government Doesn't Deliver - Lessons from the Biden Administration 02.04.2026 1t 5min

Hannah Garden-Monheit, former Director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and co-author (with Tresa Joseph, of the Roosevelt Institute's report, Building a More Effective, Responsive Government: Lessons Learned from the Biden-Harris Administration, joins The Realignment. Marshall and Hannah discuss her interviews with 45 former Biden officials on their struggles with state capacity during the administration, why Marshall believes better "central casting" would better illustrate succesful governance, top recommendations for enhancing the federal governments ability to effectively deliver services and accomplish its goals, and the lessons for future state capacity efforts.

599 | Henry Tonks: The Realignments Comes for the Democrats - Lessons from Liberalism's 1970s-1990s Wilderness Years 31.03.2026 1t 26min

Henry Tonks, Postdoctoral Fellow at Kenyon College's Center for the Study of American Democracy, joins The Realignment. Marshall and Henry discuss why the post-2024 election Trump realignment failed to materialize, why opposition to the Trump presidency wins elections, but isn't a sufficient governing strategy, the fall of liberal ideology since the Reagan presidency, the lessons of the Democratic Party and American liberalism's wilderness years from the 1970s to the 1990s, and why the future of the liberal project looks more like "fusion" rather than "faction."

598 | Madeline Hart: How to Mobilize the American Industrial Base, Embrace Heretics, and Deter WWIII 24.03.2026 55min

Madeline Hart, Co-Founder of Palantir First Breakfast publication and co-author (with Shyam Sankar) of Mobilization: How to Reboot the American Industrial Base and Stop World War III, joins The Realignment. Marshall and Madeline discuss the need for embracing “heretics” in government, the case for “mobilization” as a means of deterring great power conflict and World War III, the roots of defense industry dysfunction in post-Cold War consolidation, and how the American people could materially benefit from investment in national defense.

597 | Michael Laskawy: Why States Are the Real Center of American Politics 10.03.2026 51min

Michael Laskawy, Editor-in-Chief of The States Forum Journal, joins The Realignment. Marshall and Michael discuss why Americans are increasingly looking to the states for solutions to their problems, how The States Forum's belief in the "American Promise" as a worldview provides a means for addressing the factional fights within liberalism, and explore the implications of Marshall's States Forum Journal essay on "The Missing Liberal Story."

596 | Saagar Enjeti: What the Iran War Means for MAGA, the New Right, and the America First Movement 09.03.2026 1t 4min

Saagar Enjeti, Co-Host of Breaking Points, returns to The Realignment. Marshall and Saagar discuss what the escalating conflict between the U.S., Israel, and Iran means for an "America First" movement and MAGA Republican Party that campaigned on promises to end the past two decades of American intervention in the Middle East.

States Forum Journal | Audio Essay: Marshall Kosloff on "The Missing Liberal Story" 24.02.2026 20min

Today's episode is an audio essay adapted from Marshall's States Forum Journal piece: The Missing Liberal Story. In the essay, Marshall lays out his case for why he believes liberalism’s most urgent task is to craft a compelling story that resonates with the electorate if there is any hope for changing our politics. The broader States Forum Journal issue focused on "Double Security" and features fourteen essays on federalism, democracy, and the role of states in safeguarding American governance.

595 | Ned Resnikoff: One Year In - Taking Abundance Back to Its Fundamentals 19.02.2026 57min

Ned Resnikoff, Roosevelt Institute and author of Lessons from YIMBYism: Taking “Abundance” Back to Its Fundamentals, joins The Realignment. Marshall and Ned discuss the history of how YIMBY housing activism led to the broader abundance movement, how Abundance supporters should think about bipartisanship and navigating the various political factions on the left of right who find the ideas relevant, and the relevance of abundance/YIMBY policy tools like regulatory reform and public investment to the goal of increasing supply of vital goods like housing, medical care, and childcare.

594 | Steve Teles: Hard Lessons for Centrists Trying to Overcome the Mediocrity Challenge + Last Call for Niskanen Summer Institute Applications 17.02.2026 1t 1min

Steve Teles, Niskanen Center Senior Fellow, returns to The Realignment. Marshall and Steve discuss how moderates, centrists, and the Abundance movement can navigate the anti-status quo/economic populist moment, why the modern center naturally trends towards milquetoast, aesthetic moderation, instead of boldly picking fights, and how the fights over school reform in the 2000s and 2010s (regardless of one's opinion of charter schools and unions) offer a better model. Plus, Marshall reminds undergraduates in the class of 2026 and later that Niskanen Summer Institute applications are due February 27th.

593 | Austin Ahlman and Ben Winsor: Seven Hard Lessons on Economic Populism 12.02.2026 1t 43min

The Open Market Institute's Austin Ahlman and Ben Winsor join The Realignment. Marshall, Austin, and Ben discuss their recommendations on how to effectively wield economic populism in an anti-status quo moment, when polling is and isn't useful, the complicated realities behind the terms "centrist" and "moderate," populist critiques of the abundance agenda, lessons from FDR's campaigns and presidency, and why the center isn't meeting the moment.

592 | Laura Field: How the MAGA New Right Took Power - From the Flight 93 Essay to Trump 2024 05.02.2026 1t 23min

Laura Field, author of Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right, joins The Realignment. Marshall and Laura discuss the intellectual movement behind Trumpism and the rise of the MAGA New Right, the intellectual branches of the movement: the Claremont Institute, Postliberals, and the National Conservatives, how cultural conflict became the engine of New Right movement-building, the future of higher education, and why the center-left's obsession with "policy" leaves it vulnerable to populist movements with ideas and language that speak to deeper questions of meaning in 21st century America.

591 | Saikat Chakrabarti: Building a New Consensus - How to Move America from "Failure Mode" to "Mission Mode" 29.01.2026 56min

Saikat Chakrabarti, President and co-founder of New Consensus, joins The Realignment. Marshall and Saikat discuss why an anti-status-quo moment requires more from government and politics than "making the DMV work better," his framework for moving government from "failure mode" to "mission mode," the politics of immigration after ICE's crackdown in Minnesota and the killing of two American citizens, the return of ideology to Democratic Party circles, and why the center needs to start believing in big goals, and the left needs to embrace pragmatism.

590 | Brink Lindsey: How the 21st Century Mugged a Libertarian 22.01.2026 1t 2min

Brink Lindsey, Niskanen Center Senior Vice President and author of The Permanent Problem: The Uncertain Transition from Mass Plenty to Mass Flourishing, joins The Realignment. Marshall and Brink discuss how an intellectual "mugging" from the 21st century drove his evolution from "professional libertarian" to what he calls a "brokeness liberal," why liberal democratic capitalism is in the middle of a legitimacy crisis, how his "captured economy" thesis from 2017 offers an anti-status quo frame for the center-left and center-right, the different interpretations of the word "liberal," the next frontiers of the abundance debate, and the looming challenges and opportunities posed by the rise of AI.

589 | Danielle Lee Tomson: When the Story Breaks: MAGA, Liberalism, and the Battle to Define Reality 08.01.2026 1t 15min

Dr. Danielle Lee Tomson, author of the Failure to Communicate Substack and the forthcoming Under the Influence: What's Real When America Feels Fake, returns to The Realignment. Marshall and Danielle revisit her concept of the "authenticity gap": the growing mismatch between our expectations and lived reality, and its defining role in America's turn to populism, why technocratic campaigning and politics crowds out meaning, culture, and first-order questions, why effective storytelling is a critical candidate and movement skillset, and why the next phase of left-liberal politics will require fusion between feuding camps, not factional warfare.

588 | George M. Dougherty: Beyond "Unmanned": How Drones Are (and Aren't) Rewriting Warfare 06.01.2026 1t 8min

George M. Dougherty, author of Beast in the Machine: How Robotics and AI Will Transform Warfare and the Future of Human Conflict, joins The Realignment. Marshall and George discuss how robotics and AI are triggering a military revolution as consequential as mechanization a century ago, why the real story isn't "drones" but "universal precision: a 100-1000x leap in lethality on the battlefield, the need to rethink offense, defense, and initiative, how small states and non-state actors are innovating faster than the U.S. and legacy defense ecosystems, and what today's equivalent of the outmoded WWII battleship is.

587 | Mike Konczal: What’s Actually Driving the Affordability Crisis + Announcing the Niskanen Summer Institute for Undergrads 19.12.2025 42min

Mike Konczal, Senior Director of Policy and Research at the Economic Security Project and co-author of The Affordability Framework, joins The Realignment. Marshall and Mike discuss the why the affordability crisis is rooted in "broken markets" and "broken incomes," why two administrations in a row have struggled to handle the affordability issue, and how the Economic Security Project's long-term framework can inform future policy decisions. Plus, Marshall introduces the Niskanen Center Summer Institute for undergraduates, launching this summer.