In February, one month after President Donald Trump took office, some 400 Democratic leaders convened in Atlanta to assess the damage and elect a new Democratic National Committee chair—a perhaps unenviable job that includes rebuilding a party in disarray. While establishment candidate Tom Perez won the title, he immediately appointed his more progressive runner-up, Keith Ellison, a populist Minnesota congressman and Muslim who leads the Congressional Progressive Caucus, to the newly-created role of deputy party chair. A month later, Ellison is leading the charge against Trump’s travel ban, calling on Republicans to collaborate on infrastructure and tax reform, launching a nationwide “Democratic Turnaround Tour” to bring the party’s message to states it lost in 2016, and, among other things, restarting his podcast. We the People covers how working-class Americans affect the economy. The first episode will focus on women in the age of Trump, and includes an interview with NARAL’s Ilyse Hogue.

“If you look at the podcast in general, it really is about how people outside of the millionaire and billionaire classes experience the economy,” Ellison told me. “It really is about dealing with people who are struggling to get a union or right to work. How people’s faith informs their economic outlook. How money informs politics.” Past episodes have touched on working-class issues such as payday loans and prison phone rates. Here, Ellison talks about the recent health-care debacle, how his party can win back women who voted for Trump, and how to get millennials on board with the Democratic message.

Vanity Fair: You had a front-row seat to the G.O.P.’s health-care debacle. After eight years without the White House, is this Republican Congress incapable of governing?

“The bottom line is that the possibilities are scary and endless. This is what the Republicans are up to.”

Keith Ellison: It’s hard to see how they’re going to get their act together. People tend to do what they’ve been doing. So will they learn? I don’t know. We’ll see. The question is: will we learn? Will we learn that we have to promote unity, stick together, organize the grass-roots and always, always, always be on the side of the average American working person, male or female? Because women don’t get much attention when we talk about how the economy works. We sort of ignore the fact that women live longer, and therefore depend longer on Social Security, but they don’t get to earn as much because of discrimination. Therefore their pensions and retirement funds are lower. This is something the podcast is really going to focus on. We know that if we can correct this economy and make it fair and equal for men and women, America will be better off.

Republicans clearly have a different view, given how the American Health Care Act would have disproportionately raised premiums for women. What's the strategy for Democrats going forward in terms of health care? Will you oppose Trump or try to work with him?

We’re not going to simply obstruct them for political purposes.

So what is the strategy?

Work for the American people. Prioritize the American people’s interests in wages, pay, health care, Internet privacy. Like yesterday, the Republicans just voted to take away privacy rules on the Internet, which to me is outrageous. If this bill gets signed into law, the I.S.P.s will be able to sell your data and information, everything from when you get up in the morning, what sites you visited, all to try to sell you stuff. If they can do it for commercial purposes, they can do it for other purposes. Why not spy on you? Why not sell your data to someone who’s trying to whip up an oppo research file on you? The bottom line is that the possibilities are scary and endless. This is what the Republicans are up to.