Greg Casar has a story he can’t let go.

The Texas Democrat was on the road, holding town halls in deep-red congressional districts at a time when Republican lawmakers weren’t holding any events. He had a one-on-one conversation with a plumber who had voted Democratic before but flipped to Donald Trump. He said the man was blunt.

“I voted for Trump,” Casar recalled him saying. “I know he’s a liar. But are Democrats going to make it so that I don’t have to pull 70 hours a week of work in order to just afford child care and housing?”

For Casar, that conversation cuts to the core of what he thinks Democrats got wrong before the November 2024 elections. It’s why the 36-year-old congressman from Austin — who in January became chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus — has spent the past six months promoting what he’s calling a “new affordability agenda.”

It’s a slate of bills targeting utility companies, pharmaceutical giants, surveillance pricing (in which companies use artificial intelligence to set and adjust prices based on consumer data) and oil industry windfall profits. The agenda also targets the super PACs that Casar argues keep politicians beholden to corporate money instead of voters.

“We need to fight to lower the cost of living for everyday Americans if we want to become the party of working-class Americans again,” Casar, who is the youngest-ever CPC leader, told NOTUS in an interview

Casar arrived in Washington in 2023 as a progressive who represents a majority-Latino district that runs from East Austin through San Antonio, in a state that Republicans have dominated for decades.

Where some progressives have leaned into the culture war fights that animate the Democratic base, such as LGBTQ issues, diversity and education, Casar has insisted that winning back a House majority requires focusing on Americans’ pocketbooks. His pitch is essentially that economic populism is the one thing that can unite the party’s warring factions — progressives and moderates alike — and maybe even Republicans and independents.

He points to one of the centerpieces of his new package: a bill cracking down on for-profit utility companies. His co-author is Rep. Josh Riley of New York, who holds one of the most competitive districts in the country.

“Voters are so mad about corporations jacking up their costs that I think the Democratic Party as a whole is shifting,” Casar said. “Populists on the progressive side of the party and populists in more conservative districts … are seizing on the moment to forge a new consensus within the party right now.”

The agenda also includes legislation that could guarantee no family pays more than 7% of its income on child care, a tax on oil companies’ profits that would be returned to consumers as rebate checks, a ban on AI-driven surveillance pricing and a ban on super PACs. Some of these ideas, Casar acknowledged, wouldn’t have received substantial support from most of the Democratic caucus even a few years ago.

“Our party is now headed in the right direction because Donald Trump scapegoated immigrants, scapegoated LGBT people, and he was targeting the wrong villains,” Casar said. “Democrats, I think, need to not be the party of the status quo and target the right villains, the people that are actually jacking up your utility costs — the Wall Street hedge funds that are actually jacking up your housing costs. They’re the villains in this economy.”

One of Casar’s sharpest critiques is aimed not at Republicans, but at Democrats who believe the party should refrain from proposing policy details, collect corporate money and hope Trump implodes on his own.

“There are a lot of forces that want us to just be vague on the campaign trail, to just say the word ‘affordability’ over and over again,” he said. “I would call them the more corporate forces in the party.”

But he praised Democratic leadership, namely Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, for getting behind his ideas, and said he’d back Jeffries for speaker if Democrats take back the House in November.

“I support Hakeem,” Casar said. “My very first meeting with him, when I became CPC chair, was about basically this. He’s been very open to it. It’s no secret that being leader or speaker, you’ve got to manage all different wings of the party. But he was very open to it.”

Not all Democrats are lining up behind Casar’s agenda. Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, a centrist who is fighting to keep his battleground district in South Texas, said he wasn’t sure about Casar’s populist ideas.

“No, I don’t know about that. For sure not in my district,” he told NOTUS. “In some of these more progressive districts, a populist agenda certainly works for folks like Bernie Sanders and [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] but doesn’t necessarily work in districts like mine, middle America.”

He added that Casar “lives in that bubble in Austin, where maybe those populist issues work there, but I don’t think that’s the message that’s going to put us in the majority.”

Casar became a father in December, and he said it has clarified for him why he does this work and how long he intends to do it.

“It has made very clear for me that if I’m going to leave him behind … then it better be so that one day he can say, ‘Yeah, my dad was trying to make the world more free and safe for me and kids like me.’ If not, then what’s the point of being here?”

He paused, then added: “I’ve got better things to do back home unless we’re actually making a difference [here].”

Casar has been one of the most vocal members calling for the U.S. to stop all weapons transfers to the Israeli military, and he says what once felt like a fringe position is moving fast toward the mainstream. A bill to do that has gone from a handful of co-sponsors to more than 50 House Democrats in less than a year, with a parallel effort gaining traction in the Senate.

“I think both the voters have moved on this issue and have spoken up to their representatives,” he said. “A lot of members have told me privately: after everything that’s happened, they just cannot send more money to the Israeli military anymore.”

When asked about whom he’d support in the 2028 presidential race, he sidestepped. But he’s hitting the campaign trail for various races in 2026, including for Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico.

He also made clear he wouldn’t join the dozens of prospective candidates weighing a White House run.

“Of course there are people I would love to see run for president,” he said, laughing. “But I think that’s a conversation for me and my friends over beers.”