Liccardo looks to counter Trump with ‘innovation agenda’

When Sam Liccardo ran to succeed Anna Eshoo in the House of Representatives last fall, he campaigned on bipartisanship and pragmatism, eager to pass legislation on housing, climate change and other issues of concern to his Silicon Valley constituents. Now, the former San Jose mayor finds himself in the Democratic opposition as he tries to curtail the actions of the Trump Administration and its allies in Congress. Weekly Editor Gennady Sheyner sat down with Liccardo on April 15 to discuss how things are going so far. This interview was edited for clarity and length.

PAW: What have your first few months in the House been like? Have there been any surprises as you went from campaign to reality?

SL: For anyone in elected office, the immediate focus has to be on building a team and I feel very confident we built a great team, both here in the district as well as in Washington. You know, those are the nuts and bolts I know that don’t ever make the headlines that are really essential for serving the community. And in Washington, there was a strong bias for me to make sure I had people who understood the Beltway and can navigate the world on the Hill.

PAW: But what do you do with this team when you’re in a minority and you’re dealing with what every Democrat is dealing with?

SL: So, the environment is a unique one. My focus is to identify those tools that a first-term member of Congress can employ to actually have an impact in an environment where my party does not control either house of Congress or the White House … and where my party has not been responsible for the majority of the Supreme Court appointees. As I look at the daily outrages which cause enormous amounts of frustration and fear and anger throughout our community of the country, as I see it, there are really three areas where I can have an impact. One is to legislate. The other is to litigate. The third is to communicate, because we’re in a world in which we’re the minority and we can’t get people anything passed without a lot of help from the other side.

My efforts at legislation come in really two forms. One is those areas where I do believe I can work across the aisle. For example, I co-sponsored a stablecoin bill. We desperately need regulations to ensure enforcement of U.S. fraud statutes and consumer protections on stablecoin. So, I was a co-sponsor of that bill, and it’s now gone through the committee, and it’s going on to the floor for vote. … There’s a lot of issues around housing … and we’re drafting three pieces of legislation to attempt to address this housing crisis that’s felt in so many metros, in a way that I believe we can get Republicans on board focusing on housing supply (and) tax credits.

PAW: During your campaign, you mentioned that you wanted to kind of reach across the aisle, find consensus areas. How has that been going? Has it been as you expected?

SL: It’s obviously several times harder. When Trump is in the White House, there is a palpable fear Republicans have of stepping out of line. That fear is demonstrated daily, but I’ve had many conversations with other colleagues at the gym at 9 p.m. or the elevator where they’ve expressed very serious concerns about whatever’s happening, but are not willing, ultimately, to put their name on a bill. And so a lot of the stuff I’ve been working on across the aisle is literally to take on what we’re seeing. For example, one bill I’m working on with several colleagues is to create what’s called a private right of action. I know that’s not very interesting, but essentially it would enable fired federal workers or beneficiaries of federal benefits to sue federal decision makers and have them be personally liable for violating the 1974 Impoundment Act, which is a tool that Congress passed in 1974 to enforce Article 1 of the Constitution – the power of the purse, the separation of powers with Congress. So the problem with that ’74 law is that it can only be implemented with criminal sanction. And right now, Trump controls the Department of Justice in a way that no other president has in history. And so we need to empower Americans throughout the country to be able to take initiative and to be able to hold Elon Musk and DOGE accountable. And by that, I mean having them be personally liable.

PAW: What do you see as the biggest outrage from your perspective, and the one that you think is most worthy of Congress’s attention and your own attention, as far as responding to federal actions?

SL: The president, like all this, took a vow to follow the constitution. So let’s start there. And I think the most recent apparent violations of the Supreme Court order about returning Abrego Garcia gives rise to a constitutional crisis if the court ultimately issues a contempt order that is not complied with. So we’re clearly on that path.

PAW: Do you think we’re not yet at the constitutional crisis?

SL: Well, we’re in the zone. I mean, on Day 1, we have a president who attempted to eviscerate the Fourteenth Amendment granting citizenship to Americans born here. We have a complete violation of Article 1 of the Constitution with congressional capitulation about both the spending power and the power to impose duties and tariffs. You know, the list goes on and on, but the No. 1 concern has to be, are we going to be a nation in which there is a rule of law, and that starts with the Constitution? We can all identify many decisions by this president that have been far more impactful in terms of the ability of people to pay bills and survive day-to-day, like the tariff decision, which is going to put a lot of people out of work and create a lot of suffering. But what I think about it in terms of what is most disconcerting to me, it’s undermining constitutional order, because once that gets broken, it’s awfully hard to put back together. The arsonists can move a lot faster than the home builders can.

PAW: So what should the Democratic strategy be? We’ve seen two approaches, with the most visible division coming over the continuing resolution. The House did one thing (with almost all the Democrats voting against it) and the Senate did another (with several Democratic senators joining Republicans to pass the bill).

SL: I identify three things that I’m doing and I think we can do, and it’s to legislate, litigate and communicate. On the litigation front, I’m part of a rapid response task force with Democratic leadership …and we’re providing information, we’re helping with strategy, we’re writing amicus briefs. … We’re in a support role, but I think an important support role. … As we’ve seen, more than 60 injunctions have now taken hold to stall the worst of the abuses, the worst of the violations, the Constitution violations, and hold them up. In some cases, we may be able to stop them completely. In some other cases, we’re just going to stall them for a few months and buy time. And buying time does just two things. It gets us closer to the 2026 election. And the second thing it does is it gives Trump more time to alienate his friends. And he’s been working pretty hard at that.

PAW: During the Democratic division over the continuing resolution, Sen. Chuck Schumer’s position was kind of, ‘Let’s let him fall on his own sword.’ … … So do you kind of agree with Schumer that one of the strategies should be just to let him do his thing and let the voters respond in 2026?

SL: Let me be clear that I thought the vote that Schumer took on the budget resolution was… political malpractice. You know, I do agree with the notion that I think Napoleon, which I’ll paraphrase: ‘You know, when your opponent is shooting themselves in their foot. Don’t interrupt them.” But we have to do more. Democrats have to demonstrate more than just that they are the lesser of two evils. We have to show we can affirmatively fight to reduce the cost of living that is choking millions of American families, and that’s critical for us to win in the next election. … I think for Democrats, it’s also important that we focus not on just winning in 2026 or 2028. which we have to win. We have to enable America to win the next century, and that requires us to lean in on what I would call an Innovation Agenda. … We don’t have to betray our values and principles. This is about ensuring that early-stage, one-molecule companies can get the financing they need to get to a clinical trial, which could have extraordinary impacts for millions of people.

PAW: Have you been surprised by Silicon Valley’s response to everything’s been happening in Washington, and I mean that both at the Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk level and at the level of the constituents you’ve been talking to in telephone town halls and the people you’ve been meeting?

SL: So this distinction between innovators and oligarchs is an important one. This is a Valley that was built on relatively libertarian principles…. That includes many recent innovators, and for example, in the fintech and cryptocurrency space. Not all of them, by the way, are on board with my beliefs, but that strong libertarian streak is an important one for us to tap into again, because I think it’s still very much here. I think as we look at the actions of Musk and the capitulation of some companies and individuals to Trump – it runs counter to Silicon Valley character. So I think we need to make Silicon Valley Silicon Valley again. 

I think there’s a lot of people in this Valley who are pretty frustrated about what they’re seeing, and we certainly saw that in the vote in November. We know where the residents are overwhelmingly. Those are residents for whom I am doing my best to find ways to make it harder for people to capitulate. For example, there’s a letter that’s going to managing partners at several law firms that I believe engaged in bribery with this administration. And our next step is to go to the state bars and get those managing partners disbarred. Let’s end their careers and make sure that people know that when they capitulate to an authoritarian that there’s a price to pay, and that price should be with their career.