Pete Buttigieg's Substack

Nevada is one of the fastest-growing states in America. It’s also one of the hardest for people to afford to live in.

Someone decided to hurt our family this week. I’m furious, and I want to share what happened. You’ve probably heard of “swatting.” It’s a cruel and dangerous kind of hoax that has started happening more frequently in recent years. Someone anonymously calls 911 with a false report of imminent danger, such as a hostage situation, at the home of a public figure.

As usual, this week has brought a barrage of news to compete for your attention. One thing that continues to unfold, and that will matter deeply in all of our lives, is the "beautiful" Trump budget and spending bill, which could get through Congress and reach the president’s desk in a matter of days. I’ve already had a lot to say about this bill - the harms it will do, and the possibility of stopping those harms now.

Over the last few weeks, I have been spending more time studying artificial intelligence, the people working on it, and the activity around it. As I’ve done so, it has become clear to me that—even with all of the media attention and public interest in this topic—we are still profoundly underreacting, and we are dangerously underprepared. By “we,” I mean American society in general, but also the political and policy world in particular, certainly including the Democratic Party.

I’m here in Cedar Rapids today, getting ready for a town hall with VoteVets. But before heading over, I had the chance to sit down with Anand Giridharadas for a Substack Live. With so much happening in the news right now, I often think about what I’ll want to tell my kids - and maybe even my grandkids one day - about how we met this moment. If we get this right, I’ll be able to tell them how, when the American experiment was on the brink, each of us did our part to help turn things around.

This moment demands more than just good ideas - it demands that those of us who oppose the chaos and cruelty coming from Washington are showing up consistently in spaces where not everyone shares our views, or has even heard them directly from us at all. That’s why I sat down for a two-and-a-half-hour conversation on the podcast Flagrant - a show that hosted Donald Trump during the presidential campaign last year.

In the weeks since I left office in January, I’ve been committing my time and attention to the kinds of things that inevitably get shorted when you serve in public office, no matter how much you try to do right by them.