Dan Koh: Have you ever forgotten to pay your credit card bill and then all of a sudden you're hit with a late fee? Well how about those mysterious processing fees tacked on your auto loan payments or student loan payments? These unexpected, often hidden charges drive us nuts and take a real chunk out of our paycheck. But Donald Trump fired the guy trying to stop them. Rohit Chopra was director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or CFP, an agency designed to protect American consumers. Director Chopra joins us to talk about how people are getting scammed, how it could make it worse, and how we can all fight back. As a note to listeners, since the recording of this interview, Donald Trump has tried to fire 1500 workers at the CFP, or 90% of the workforce. Let's swear into the People's Cabinet, Rohit Chopra. Dr. Chopra, welcome to the People's Cabinet.

Rohit Chopra: Thanks for having me.

Dan Koh: So what's it like to get fired by Donald Trump?

Rohit Chopra: You know what, in some ways I wanted it to be very clear that we were not going to just surrender. But the historical record shows that he removed me and some others, I think, from some really important work.

Dan Koh: Because you had a five-year appointment, right?

Rohit Chopra: That's right. So unlike other cabinet agency heads, I'm confirmed for five years. I was supposed to go until October 2026. And while he has that right, he didn't really explain why he was firing. And I think we're starting to learn why he did.

Dan Koh: So tell me a little bit about your path, because you were Harvard undergrad, president of the student body. You went to Wharton, and you were at McKinsey for a while, right? What was the moment in which you decided this very impressive business path was not the right one for you?

Rohit Chopra: Yeah, I actually really do think business, commerce, is such a major pathway for a society to prosper. But I think we are certainly in some dark times right now, and I like us to think about the dark times we've been in throughout our country. And certainly, Dan, during our lifetimes, a massive moment that shaped me and I know so many others was the financial crash of 2008. I think it really shook me to see how much government regulators and law enforcement completely failed. And the impact of that was that individual families' lives were essentially destroyed. So for me, that was a big moment of how much we have to do to make sure that our government is accountable to people rather than just Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and other powerful people.

Dan Koh: And where were you at the time? You were at McKinsey at the time?

Rohit Chopra: Oh, I was in several places throughout the whole collapse of the economy and the aftermath. But certainly, working at a place like McKinsey gave me a front-row seat on how companies rigged the rules in their favor rather than investing to create great products and services. Sometimes they say, "Let's buy a company that is threatening our turf," or "How can we structure prices so that we can extract more from people without offering any additional value?" That's actually how a lot of commerce and business is incentivized right now, and we should understand whether that's good or bad. That's part of the reason we have rules to make sure that it's not exploiting people.

Dan Koh: And this is something you've championed your entire career. But I think for the average person listening, they may not realize the extent to which companies are using all means at their disposal to get someone to spend that incremental dollar. And they may not even know; the person on the receiving end of this may not even realize it day to day. And so I think seeing the perspective that you had from being in the business world was probably incredibly eye-opening for you. Why see so much about how, if you look at what people are dealing with today, just one small thing, it's a tiny thing: everything seems to be a subscription now. You used to be able to buy something, and you got it. Now, often, even when you're purchasing a car, there are subscriptions involved. Everything with media, there's a subscription involved. So you have talented people out there not necessarily creating new technology but focusing their time on how to make subscriptions hard to cancel because they know that if you forget about it, that is big money.

Rohit Chopra: We know that lots of companies focus on how they can structure fees to collect billions of dollars extra. And to me, I don't see that as innovation. I see that as shortcutting. And that's part of why places like the Federal Trade Commission, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, are there to keep those markets honest.

Dan Koh: And the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was created in many ways because of what you just said, right? There wasn't an agency that existed to be fighting for the people for those kinds of issues that are touching everyday life. So what is a good version of the CFP? How does it function, and how does it help people? How did it function under President Biden, under your leadership, that people could get help if they were noticing that they were being screwed?

Rohit Chopra: Yeah, I think a big emphasis we had was understanding individual families' experiences. So, for example, every day, and it dramatically increased, we would get thousands of individual Americans filing their story or complaint with us, and literally online, you could do it literally online. And it didn't go into just some suggestion box. We required banks and companies to respond. And over time, that was the brains of the operation. We would sometimes find a small number of those complaints, and then we'd look under the hood and find that maybe there were 14 people affected by it, but in reality, 140,000 people were affected by it. We would find it, we would often prosecute it, and that is how we returned billions of dollars. And it wasn't just hearing from people of their experience. We were also looking to how the market was changing in ways that might create new problems for people in their financial life too.

Dan Koh: So it's interesting that you, you know, finding under the hood who incrementally is being affected by this. But how do you reach the people who don't even know the CFP existed and were also falling prey to what you were seeing from the people who actually knew where the portal was? Because I'm sure there's a ton of people who didn't know where to go.

Rohit Chopra: Yeah, well, that's why we do these inspections of big financial firms to see what they are doing to treat their customers. It's why we did so much individual investigations of new products like Buy Now, Pay Later, and other types of credit cards. We also wanted to make sure that you didn't need to know the name or the acronym of the CFP, but that we were sharing everything with state attorneys general and local organizations too. So I really feel that I don't think Americans should have to learn about every single agency. But what I want all of them to feel and to speak about is we need our law enforcement and regulators doing their damn job. And that means being a watchdog against the practices that are harming people and not simply being a lapdog for those firms.

Dan Koh: It's interesting because, you know, some voices out there, and you know this from being in the business world, you probably still have many friends who are still in that world, who are partners at McKinsey or leading their own organizations. They will throw up and say, "Well, you're overregulating. If you have to register with the CFPB, and I have to hire all these people to intake all the requests that I'm getting, it's going to cause too much mayhem, and you're going to get in the way of jobs." What was your counter to that? And how do we fight back against this, partisan, candidly, mostly Republican narrative that the CFP and organizations like it are just anti-capitalist?

Rohit Chopra: Well, it's funny because a lot of the people who had come to us are businesses saying, "I'm trying to operate honestly, and I have to compete with somebody who is just obviously lying, and you need to do something about it." I used to hear all the time from dry cleaners, from convenience store franchisees, about how the credit card industry was treating them. So I think part of what we always have to do is separate what is really just a lobbyist’s talking point and be able to explain we want business and banking to work in connection with the American dream, not in opposition to it. I want a society and an economy where people can start something without getting a permission slip from some big company or gatekeeper and be able to challenge them by offering better products, better services at great prices. But unfortunately, I just don't think that's the economy we live in. We see it in the pharmaceutical industry. We see it in the big technology conglomerates where they see a way to grow their profits, often by rigging the system in their favor. And also, they just have pressure from outside investors, right? They want to see quarterly growth, sure, a quarter of their public companies and even private companies.

Dan Koh: I want to touch on what this current administration is doing, especially with the CFP. But before that, you did some work on junk fees that I think is really important to lift up. I think every American knows and understands that when they're looking at receipts for anything that they're paying for, they're seeing more and more shit that they think is an injustice. And it is. So I'm curious about your approach on that, what you enacted, and how an American listening right now can fight for making junk fees less in the future despite the administration.

Rohit Chopra: Yeah, I think that there is so much price gouging that occurs. And I think we often like to think that we work in this completely competitive market. In reality, like I mentioned earlier, there are people who think about how to present products in ways that beat us in, but then we find out the real cost later. So one of the things we launched, and President Biden ordered many of the agencies to join in this, is an attack on all of the fees that were creeping through the economy. Some of them were fees for services people don't even want or can't even explain what it is. Some of them were fees for services that never actually were delivered. And some of them were just fees pushed on people because they were trapped. And we did a lot of these investigations. We found, for example, paper statement fees charged by banks that they didn't even print or mail. We found that big bonanzas of junk fees were pushed by banks on things like overdraft, where if you overdraw your account $0.35, they might charge you $35. We found banks reordering payments so that instead of one overdraft fee, you were getting three or four in a day. We found late fee pyramid schemes. We found so many of these, and our work reduced this by billions and billions of dollars across so much of people's lives. And I'll tell you, I think these fees, for some people, might seem like an annoyance, but for a lot of people, that extra hundred, $200 in fees, that can put them on a treadmill of debt that just gets faster and faster and ultimately can ruin their financial future.

Dan Koh: Let me take you now to today, and I'm sure for you, as someone who cares so deeply about this, it must be incredibly emotional and troubling to see what's happening under President Trump. But tell me about the actions that we are witnessing today. And just give us some color on what you're hearing from people in the CFP.

Rohit Chopra: Well, it was really strange. You might remember I was not fired on day one, right? It took them two weeks, but it's not like they forgot about it.

Dan Koh: And you got a letter? Was there a tweet?

Rohit Chopra: There was no tweet, but there was a letter. And as soon as I got it, I announced that I was—did you get an email, or did you get everything instantly?

Dan Koh: It's like an attached letter?

Rohit Chopra: Those few weeks where I still was director, there was clearly a debate about what should be the future of the CFP and financial watchdogs because, at his speech at Davos, he—Trump videoed into Davos. He called out Jamie Dimon and Brian Moynihan, the CEOs of JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America, for their practices. And many people were wondering, are they going to get tough on some of these firms that have been taking advantage of people? But here was what was interesting: after I was fired, one of the first things they did was to fire the core of technologists that we hired. These were the employees that were going to be looking at tech companies that were getting into banking, payments, and lending, and around it.

Dan Koh: How many were there?

Rohit Chopra: A few dozen. They were the ones that were looking at all these new tech payment platforms, all the new ways that people were using technology for borrowing. And immediately, everyone was thinking about Elon Musk's tweet from before that was "delete the CFPB."

Dan Koh: And what was it like for you when you read that?

Rohit Chopra: I think everyone was pretty well aware that Twitter or X had aspirations to become a financial conglomerate. And in fact, I was fired just a few days after X announced a major new partnership with Visa. They have wanted a world where tech companies are controlling more currency because I think they see what is going on in China and are drooling over it.

Dan Koh: Do you think Elon has a clear profit motive to do what he did?

Rohit Chopra: I think there are massive conflicts of interest throughout this, but the fact that the tech companies have become fixated with the CFP—we saw Mark Zuckerberg on Joe Rogan's podcast saying, "I don't know why the CFP is looking, cares about us. We're just a social media company." And I wanted to say, is Rogan going to tell Zuckerberg, "Wait a second, you tried to start a currency in 2019. You have tried to worm your way into this for years." Of course, when you are involved in payments and lending, you're subject to financial privacy laws, consumer protection laws. And if you're violating it, really one of the only agencies that can do anything about it is the CFP. So I thought that was really instructive. The image of those tech CEOs at the inauguration, ultimately, I think that carried the day, having better seats than members of Congress and other people.

Dan Koh: Well, it showed that there was going to be that level of influence and to potentially bulldoze any agencies that had any speed bumps for them or had any modicum of trying to hold them accountable. Okay, so since the inauguration in the last couple of months, what have you seen in terms of how they're proceeding, you know, in terms of DOGE access to systems, etc.? I really want people to understand the implications of DOGE having access to that data.

Rohit Chopra: Well, here's the first part, which is they told all the employees—there’s about 1800 employees—almost all of them were told, "Go home." The acting director of the CFP, first it was the Treasury secretary, now it is the OMB director, Russ Vought. He ordered all the employees to halt doing any work tasks the following week or two. They started the process of issuing corporate pardons. They pardoned Wells Fargo. They pardoned JPMorgan Chase. They pardoned one of the biggest mortgage companies in America, Rocket. They pardoned predatory lenders and just kept going. And when I say pardoned, they went to the court and dismissed lawsuits with prejudice, meaning we're not going to file it. Game over. All the investigations have stopped. All of the work to refund money and hold those firms accountable for cheating people has essentially stopped. So I don't think this is efficient at all, given the huge return on investment. And on top of that, Dan, you raise there, peeping inside the systems. The CFPB has information on those big financial players in terms of what they're doing to consumers. I think for many people, and I'm hearing this from the financial industry, are they just these peeping toms on their competitors? Are they going to take this information and use it for purposes totally unrelated to the CFP? No one really knows. And there's no—in Washington, and I don't—I can't say that they are, right? But I think I would never allow that type of intrusion. And when you combine that with the extraordinary access they have into Treasury's payment systems, I understand they're interested in Social Security systems. You really have to wonder what type of surveillance are they doing.

Dan Koh: You're saying that whoever it is, Eli and someone else, with all of this information from disparate sources, could do a lot of damage to the country and to—and I'm not saying that they're going to steal it, but we have safeguards in place to stop that. So what I want everyone to be thinking about is really, what are we thinking when we're defunding the police that look after Wall Street and big tech and handing some of them who have financial interests the keys to all of the information that is used by law enforcement? It just seems like a recipe for rigging the system.

Rohit Chopra: Well, I'm interested in your thoughts on this because, you know, we can debate about the authenticity behind it. But President Trump tried to present himself as fighting for the little guy, right? These actions do not represent a guy who's fighting for the little guy. And then I found interesting, and I'm sure you saw this too, you know, Steve Bannon on Gavin Newsom's podcast was praising Lina Khan, who obviously is not a friend to many Wall Street Republicans. So I'm curious, well, first of all, I'm curious about your thoughts on Steve Bannon's comments, and then I'm also curious about your thoughts on the politics behind this, right? Because one would think that dropping lawsuits against big banks is not the way to working-class people's hearts. So I'm curious how you see this approach and how you see the dichotomy in the party right now in the Republican Party with what you're seeing out of the White House and what Steve Bannon is saying.

Dan Koh: Well, it is, it's tricky sometimes. Certainly, the work the CFP did, you would get a lot of calls from Republican members of Congress saying, "I'm not allowed to praise you publicly, but what you did is awesome." So there is clearly a strain that has a populist streak. There's no question about that. The challenge is that it does feel like that wing is completely overwhelmed by the CEOs sitting in those front rows at the inauguration, that there are others who are calling the shots. And I really do think that we are not going to have an economy that really works if there is so much power concentrated in a small clique of companies. That is just not how America—America has always beat out Europe, not because we have these massive conglomerates. It's because people are starting biotech companies that become big drug discoveries, small startups that are a revolution in how the digital world works, and the list goes on and on. But it now feels like we are crowning a set of corporate royalty who will write the rules and call the shots.

Rohit Chopra: So that brings us to the alternative vision. If you were still director, if you were still chair of the FTC—and I'd love for you to also just explain what the Federal Trade Commission is as a former commissioner yourself and your interactions with Chair Khan—but what would the alternative vision be right now if you were still there, Lina were still chair of the FTC? What didn't you get done in the time that you were there, and what are some of the icebergs you see in the future?

Dan Koh: Well, there's a long, long list. I think when I got to the Federal Trade Commission in 2018, I found an agency that was completely moribund. It was allowing massive corporate fraud to occur, and it was missing most of the major crises, from opioids to some of the financial crises. So we sought to revive the core words in the laws of our land to prosecute anti-competitive conduct, to prosecute crimes against consumers. But there was a lot more to do. There was a lot more at the FTC to really meaningfully lower drug prices, where we have found so much cheating rather than competing. There is so much when it comes to people's credit card bills, where you had big credit card issuers jacking up interest rates north of 30%, even far more increases than the Fed had raised rates. You saw places where our farmers were not even able to repair their own tractor or to be able to competitively sell their chickens and beef. So there was so much more to make sure that those corporate royalty were not unaccountable. And I think that there was a lot of work we needed to be thinking about: what is the future of our digital economy? You know, are we going to let five or six companies control the future of AI? Are we going to allow America to not have a vibrant ecosystem but really just concentrate so much power in a few players? And there was a lot more to do to make sure that people could afford their rent, afford their groceries. And I know President Trump campaigned on a lot of this. I think Americans aren't seeing any results yet.

Rohit Chopra: And I do want to talk a little bit more about AI, but can you, for the sake of our viewers, tell us about Lina Khan? If you just tell us a little bit about what the Federal Trade Commission is and how they work with you, you know, as in-depth as you like, but I think it would be helpful for everyone.

Dan Koh: Well, it's really good because the FTC is just one of these acronyms that people know exists but don't know what it is. And I think it's so important to realize that many of the core problems we are dealing with in our economy, whether it comes to big corporate power, concentrations of corporate power, or privacy intrusions, the list just is so long. The FTC is at the root of a lot of it. And in fact, a lot of the problems exist because the FTC was essentially a dead fish for so long. So you really had a new energy come when Lina Khan arrives and starts saying, "Maybe we should be blocking some of these gigantic mergers." And she blocked the mega-merger of Kroger and Albertsons, which could have raised the price of groceries so much if that merger went through.

Rohit Chopra: And for people, remember, Kroger and Albertsons, that's just the conglomerate name. Their brand name, Local Harvest, is all over the country. And I saw during the pandemic how much you were walking down the aisle and seeing cereal prices, diaper prices, all go up. But there may look like there's 50 brands, but sometimes there's just two or three companies behind it. So to combat some of this excessive price gouging, to combat a lot of this requires a strong FTC. And we saw how Lina Khan and her team really prosecuted so much of that and also got some great results.

Dan Koh: That's a great example. And could you also just give an overview of just that's one bucket, but the other areas the FTC—I just want to make sure listeners understand what falls under the FTC's store?

Rohit Chopra: Yeah, I think basically think about it as all the mergers and anti-competitive conduct. So whether it's a big oil and gas merger, whether it's a grocery store merger, a gas station merger, they're the ones who review and often challenge them to block. They also are in charge of so many key privacy laws, including children's online privacy, where they went after video game manufacturers and places like Google and Facebook for children's privacy. They also have everything related to deceptive practices, deceptive advertising. An area that I really cared about quite a bit was "Made in USA" fraud. The long-standing policy of the FTC before I arrived is that "Made in USA" fraud should not be penalized. So now the FTC is going after companies like Williams-Sonoma and Pyrex, big brands who said maybe they're importing their goods from China or Mexico but slapping on a "Made in USA" label. And that is just completely unfair to every manufacturer who makes their goods here.

Dan Koh: What's the most egregious "Made in USA" thing you saw?

Rohit Chopra: I saw a manufacturer who was marketing bags to service members, to members of the military, and using all sorts of patriotic imagery. But in reality, they were importing those bags, taking off the label, and putting on a new one. And let me just explain why: it is true, it harms consumers for sure. I think "Made in USA" is often a mark of higher quality. It's a mark of certain expertise, depending on the goods. Often it's a mark of safety. Many people care about their child's mattress not wanting it to be poisonous. But I think it also hurts all of those players who are just trying to produce here. I remember a manufacturer, a small manufacturer in Detroit, who was making boots. And those boots were—they were not cheap, you know, they were manufacturing U.S.-made boots. And they told me how harmful it was to them to see their own boot almost copied, and they're claiming it to be "Made in USA," and that just makes it totally impossible to compete. And I think that is a key place where the FTC's failure had real impacts on U.S. business in a negative way.

Dan Koh: And recently, the president fired two FTC commissioners. And so the things that you're talking about, that I think every American should and I think do care deeply about, aren't going to be able to have the kind of justice that you were able to bring. So you talk a little about your reaction when you read about that.

Rohit Chopra: Well, I don't get it. Why? First of all, the FTC, they operate in a way that usually has three of the majority party to the committee. Were you technically nominated by—

Dan Koh: I was, yeah. And but that's how it works, is a majority and a minority. So why fire them? Why did they fire Commissioner Bedoya and Slaughter? Because they were pushing on cracking down on subscription scams, because they were doing work to crack down on junk fees. They were the ones who were very involved in charging Amazon with misconduct related to Prime cancellations, canceling your Prime subscription. Other big tech firms, pharma companies—what is the reason? Why were they an obstacle? And I think the only conclusion we can reach is that they just don't want to hear, they don't want to work on those things anymore. And I'm waiting for the FTC to prove me wrong because we need the FTC to actually do its job, or else we will feel as consumers, and our country will feel the pain of that.

Rohit Chopra: One of the things we heard at the Department of Labor a lot when we first came in in 2021 was a lot of inspectors just weren't hired, right? They, when people left for whatever reason, they didn't hire more. And so how do you think that the future of the FTC—obviously some sort of small group of people—will they just not nominate someone else? What is your—who knows?

Dan Koh: And I think that's a big worry across the board, which is that when you have—and I'm all about making government more streamlined, more agile, that's part of why we recruited a lot of these technologists to just make government work better and more efficient. But their version of efficiency seems like it's to fire the cops, to fire the inspectors, to fire the people who are going to potentially find wrongdoing by some of these big business actors. And I just feel like that is wrong, and that we will pay a dear price for it. And we need business to succeed, but we need honest, law-abiding business to feel like it makes sense to follow the law. That is the point of law enforcement, that the costs of violating it are higher than following it. And if we create a situation where the inspectors and the cops are not going to look at certain players, that's just a big giveaway, a big wet kiss to those companies with political connections. It sends a very clear message from the very top, right? This is okay.

Rohit Chopra: Back to artificial intelligence, I think a lot of people listening probably have noticed, maybe used it as a substitute for Google, etc. But can you give a couple of examples of how people should think about how AI might affect them in the context of consumer protection that they may not even realize that they should keep top of mind, and what we would be doing if Democrats were still in office right now?

Dan Koh: Yeah, I think it is good to make sure that technology is always something that is making our life meaningfully better. But often, things that can make it better can also be used as a weapon to cause harm. I'm really worried about when artificial intelligence or technology can copy people's voices or steal their, in many ways, physical identity by impersonating them in video. I know that people are getting calls by people who sound like their family members and taking advantage of older adults and seniors in our country. We all are experiencing chatbots that are using certain techniques to make it seem more human. We did a study of chatbots used by banks, and what was so funny and scary a little bit is that they were actually showing an ellipsis, a dot dot dot, that is simulating that they are thinking or typing when we know that they are not typing or thinking, they are just producing. So we want to make sure that if you are interacting with a chatbot, that if the chatbot is giving you wrong information, the company can be accountable. We need people to be able, in a serious incident—maybe their identity has been stolen, their credit card has been misused—that they can talk to a human being. The list really goes on and on with this type of technology. But I think there's some basics we have to have: we have to not allow these algorithms to be a mystery. When you are denied a loan, you're required to get a statement of reasons as to why. If these firms can't complete that statement of reasons, they shouldn't, they shouldn't use their algorithm. You should be able to dispute information that is embedded in some of these algorithms and background reports and data broker files on you. The list really goes on and on, but we have to make sure that an algorithm cannot really screw up your financial future, your job search, your housing search, without some iota of accountability.

Rohit Chopra: So I think what people have learned a lot from this conversation, and one of the things that we're trying to do here is make sure that people who are listening not only learn but also can take action. Obviously, this is a very scary time for a lot of people. And with technology advancing the way it is, I think people have a right to be even more scared in the future. What advice would you give to people in their communities, both for themselves in terms of staying protected, but also for friends or neighbors they know who may have voted for Donald Trump, who may not have known a lot of the things that you talked about today? How can they take action and make a difference right now? Because I think there's a lot of hunger out there to do something.

Dan Koh: Yeah, I'll start by saying I think a lot of people also, Dan, almost feel like they don't even want to read the news. I think they feel the weight of everything, and I know that that can feel overpowering sometimes. But it is so important to not disconnect, to not stop using your voice, and as you say, to act locally with their neighbors, with friends and family, while also keeping themselves sane. So here's a couple of things that I really encourage people to be talking about, which is: help people who are struggling. And this is what's dear to me, in their financial life. There are so many people right now who are in a tailspin about the latest actions on student loans. We need people to speak up and act. We need people to file complaints with the CFP and demand that they act. We need people to tell their state attorney general and to make sure that states are flexing muscles. We have states now passing laws to put into state law key CFP protections. We need people also to run for office and show that they want to be able to help their neighborhoods, city, community, town. And I do think it's going to require people to talk a lot about how they think things need to change. At the end of the day, I think this moment is showing us that we need to return a lot more power to people. The politicians and some of the big corporate actors that are funding them are not really accountable. And I think we need to hold those people accountable with our voices and our votes. I think that there's a lot of people out there who want to get active and involved.

Rohit Chopra: My last question to you is a two-part question, which is: how do Democrats win again, and what gives you hope for the future?

Dan Koh: Well, I think that there are many Democrats—not all—who are using a playbook that is not about solving people's daily problems, not about lowering the cost of getting by, about dealing with exploitation, whether it's in line at the grocery store or when paying rent to your landlord or when paying your credit card bill. If we do not energetically solve those problems, then what is the point of all of this? So I think refocusing how we can actually give workers, consumers, more power in our market is just so key. Now, I'm not a kind of political expert; I focus on regulating and enforcing the law. But everywhere I go, when we talk about the work of the CFP, the interest from people is so deep because it feels like a sense of shame about their financial life when they can't get by. People feel like a failure sometimes to their own family when they are struggling to meet the expenses of their children. So really sharpening how we solve real problems for people is so key. But I would say what gives me hope is that history really does show that there can be very, very dark times. We went through a very deep financial crisis. We went through COVID, which in many ways was an awful, awful experience for the globe to go through. And I think the way we keep getting through it is to know that if we are a dead fish and do nothing, it will get worse. But when we speak up, when we speak out, we can actually emerge through it. And there are plenty of problems to solve, but surrendering just can't be an item on our menu.

Rohit Chopra: Rohit Chopra, thank you for coming on the People's Cabinet.

Dan Koh: Thanks so much to you. I'm Dan Koh and that's it for the People's Cabinet today. Follow us on social media, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and see you on Tuesdays for new episodes. Let's go.