SUMMARY:
Scott sits down with Joseph Trost, a concrete worker and Democratic candidate for Indiana State House District 52 (DeKalb County plus parts of Noble and Steuben counties), for a wide-ranging conversation built around a single question: why does the working class, and working-class men in particular, keep voting against its own economic interests? Trost — a former aspiring lobbyist turned foundation-wall crew member — talks about the politics he hears on the job site, from lingering RFK-style vaccine conspiracy theories to genuine, bipartisan disillusionment with a rigged system. He and Scott trace the Democratic Party’s decline with working-class voters back through Carter’s OPEC crisis, Clinton’s NAFTA, and the neoliberal turn, then through Obama’s watered-down Affordable Care Act and red-state Medicaid expansion refusal. Trost lays out his own core issue — dark money and campaign finance corruption — using Indiana’s liquor lobby cold-beer monopoly as a case study in legislative capture, then pivots to policy: legalizing cannabis to help plug the $3.1 billion-a-year hole blown into Indiana’s Medicaid budget by federal cuts, reining in corporate tax abatements for data centers, and passing right-to-repair laws to protect rural Hoosiers who depend on their own vehicles and equipment. The two also dig into the data center boom’s toll on utility costs, water, and organized labor, and what AI and automation could mean for workers if the value they create isn’t shared equitably.
Progressive Indiana Network: https://progressiveindiana.net
HoosLeft: https://hoosleft.us
Joseph Trost: https://www.trostfordistrict52.com/
WHAT’S INSIDE:
00:00:21 — Introduction: The Left’s Working-Class Man Problem
Scott frames tonight’s topic: why working-class men, especially white working-class men, have trended conservative even though conservative policy has historically hurt the working class.
Introduces guest Joseph Trost, a fellow blue-collar worker running for Indiana State House District 52 (DeKalb, plus parts of Noble and Steuben counties).
00:03:28 — Welcoming Joseph Trost
Trost’s bio: originally from LaGrange, Indiana; got a Republican legislator to speak at his high school as a senior project; attended Hoosier Boys State and ran (unsuccessfully) for governor there.
Went into IUPUI for political science planning to become a lobbyist, but grew disillusioned watching “legalized bribery” up close.
Learned the meaning of “statesman” — someone who puts public good over personal gain and party — while paging for the Indiana House in middle school, and says that ideal has stuck with him.
Left politics for concrete work rather than take a job he felt might hurt people; says the pay is decent (median income) and the work is honorable.
00:07:15 — The Concrete Trade: Pouring Foundation Walls
Trost specializes in foundation and retaining walls, not flatwork like driveways or sidewalks.
Describes the process: pouring footings (16”x8” with two rows of rebar), then setting aluminum wall forms the next day — walls up to 14 feet tall.
Talks about the physical risk of walking on top of wall forms, using a concrete pump for hard-to-reach pours, and working through brutal heat and humidity.
Scott shares a story about helping lift a house off a cracked, improperly poured foundation.
Trost’s crew: about 13-15 guys total, split into footing crews and one main wall crew; most have worked together six to eight years.
00:12:44 — Talking Politics on the Job Site
Scott asks whether Trost talks politics with his crew; Trost says yes, often directly, and tries to read across the political spectrum to avoid blind spots.
Says much of his crew abandoned Trump well before this term.
Both push back on the stereotype that tradesmen are uniformly MAGA-coded, suggesting it depends heavily on people’s information environment/algorithm.
00:15:38 — Vaccine Conspiracy Theories Among the Crew
Trost describes lingering COVID-era vaccine skepticism and RFK-style claims still circulating among some crew members, including concerns about infant vaccine schedules and the (long-discredited) autism-vaccine link.
Discussion of how sensational headlines spread faster than the corrections that follow them — Trost’s mom has made the same point for years, and Scott brings up the old “a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth gets its boots on” line.
00:19:11 — Why the Left Lost the Working Class: Carter, NAFTA, and Offshoring
Trost traces working-class disaffection back to Carter’s OPEC oil crisis, then Clinton-era NAFTA and offshoring.
Argues American companies, not just policy, chose to send jobs overseas in pursuit of fiduciary duty to shareholders — calling that “a bit of a religion.”
Scott’s line: “Capital has no allegiance” — it owes no loyalty to any country, so it has to be regulated rather than trusted.
Both note Clinton inherited NAFTA’s groundwork from Reagan/Bush but still “put pen to paper,” and discuss how the party’s post-Reagan neoliberal turn (”Republican diet”) cost Democrats working-class trust.
00:26:04 — Obama, the ACA, and Broken Promises
Trost connects the 2008 financial crisis and the private-equity buyout of foreclosed housing stock to lasting working-class distrust.
Discusses Obama’s ACA as a retreat from a public option to subsidized private insurance, and how Republican-led sabotage plus red-state refusal of Medicaid expansion (the John Oliver “dump truck full of cash” analogy) kept many from ever seeing what the ACA could have been.
Scott notes broad working-class enthusiasm for Obama that curdled when systemic change didn’t materialize, feeding resentment that helped pave the way for Trump.
00:29:46 — Winning Back the Working Class: Campaign Finance and Dark Money
Scott asks how Democrats and the left can win working-class voters back; Trost says door-knocking in his red district and being upfront about his top issue: campaign finance corruption.
Argues most politicians take money from dark-money groups that shapes their votes against constituents’ interests, and flags concern about foreign dark money (naming Saudi Arabia specifically) flowing into US elections post-Citizens United.
Scott adds Israel and Russia to the list of suspected foreign sources, and explains Indiana has essentially no individual campaign contribution limits (corporations/unions capped around $5,000; individuals uncapped).
00:33:04 — Case Study: The Liquor Lobby’s Cold Beer Monopoly
Trost uses Indiana’s liquor-store monopoly on cold beer sales — unlike neighboring Ohio and Michigan, which allow cold beer in gas stations and grocery stores — as a concrete example of money buying legislative outcomes.
Calls out the hypocrisy of free-market rhetoric from industries that simultaneously lobby the state to protect their own monopolies.
Scott connects this to why cannabis remains illegal in Indiana, arguing the alcohol industry shares blame with pharma for blocking it.
00:36:09 — Cannabis Legalization and the Medicaid Budget Hole
Trost estimates Indiana is losing $300-500 million a year in tax revenue by not legalizing marijuana, especially given its prevalence and proximity to legal markets in Ohio and Michigan.
Says federal “big beautiful bill” Medicaid cuts have blown a $3.1 billion-a-year hole ($31 billion over 10 years) in Indiana’s budget, and legalizing cannabis is one of the easier ways to help fill it.
Also floats a progressive income tax that keeps rates low for most workers while rising for higher earners.
Shares a story from a constituent caring for a disabled family member for under $12/hour, now being pushed toward institutionalization — which Trost says costs the state three times as much.
Notes Indiana has few billionaires, unlike New York, so a wealth tax alone won’t fill the gap; new revenue sources will be needed regardless.
00:42:02 — Corporate Tax Breaks and the Data Center Boom
Scott raises Indiana’s aggressive tax abatements to large corporations — Amazon, Meta, Google, Microsoft — through the IEDC, noting Indiana leads the nation in tax revenue given away for data centers.
Trost points out Indiana doesn’t even charge sales tax on the equipment these companies buy to build here, calling the whole strategy short-term: a brief construction boom followed by very few permanent jobs relative to the land, energy, and water they consume.
Raises concerns about closed-loop cooling systems needing periodic draining, and argues any state incentives should come with real requirements, like lined retention ponds, to protect the aquifer from contamination.
00:47:04 — Threading the Needle: Data Centers and Organized Labor
Scott recaps a debate within the state Democratic Party (raised at the June convention) over whether to call for a moratorium on data centers, complicated by the fact that organized labor — a key Democratic constituency — often supports the construction jobs data centers bring.
Trost describes individual electricians (not union leadership) calling it “traitorous” for IBEW members to build data centers that may ultimately displace workers, especially as AI leaders predict it could eliminate a large share of jobs.
Both raise the specter of AI paired with advanced robotics accelerating job losses.
00:50:32 — AI, Automation, and Who Actually Benefits
Scott argues automation could be liberating — freeing people for art, caregiving, and community — but only if AI’s value is shared equitably, which isn’t happening now.
Trost counters that much of AI’s current “value creation” is really just job losses and the cheapening of labor, and floats redirecting land and labor toward big greenhouses to grow more human-edible food domestically.
Scott connects this to a conversation with Dr. Cinde Wirth, the Democratic candidate for Indiana’s 6th Congressional District, about giving organized labor good jobs — infrastructure, rural hospitals and schools, climate mitigation, high-speed rail — instead of ceding that labor to a “handful of tech weirdos.”
00:53:46 — Right to Repair
Trost raises right-to-repair as a major issue: automakers, appliance makers, and ag-equipment companies like John Deere use intellectual property claims to block farmers and independent mechanics from repairing their own equipment without costly proprietary tools.
Cites Oregon’s right-to-repair law as a model, though it hasn’t yet been extended to automobiles.
Frames this as core to his working-class economic agenda in a rural district with no mass transit, where car ownership is a necessity — and plugs Hostetler Tire in LaGrange as an example of the independent mechanics he wants to protect.
00:56:48 — Closing: Where to Find Trost, Show Outro
Trost’s contact info: email trustingtrost@gmail.com, website trostfordistrict52.com, Facebook “Joseph Trost for District 52,” TikTok @trust_trost.
Plugs his “Jobsite Talks” video series, filmed at work in his concrete gear.
Scott closes with standard outro: full show notes and podcast version at progressiveindiana.net; support via paid subscription; social handles (Progressive Indiana Network on Facebook/Instagram/Threads/YouTube, pinindiana on Bluesky/TikTok); previews Sunday’s HoosLeft This Week panel with candidates Candy Greer (HD-64, Evansville area) and James Coogle (Harrison County Council); sign-off “Love each other, Indiana.”
