SUMMARY:
In his fourth virtual town hall with Progressive Indiana Network, 9th District Democratic Congressional candidate Brad Meyer covers a wide range of policy ground with host Scott Aaron Rogers ahead of the May 5th primary. Meyer opens with an unscripted personal statement about why he got off the sideline and into the race, framing his progressive candidacy as a rejection of the Democratic Party’s rightward drift. The conversation spans climate and energy policy, the dual-edged threat of AI and data centers, US-China relations and the prospect of war, gun violence, drug policy, mass incarceration, neurodiversity and disability education funding, executive power and the Iran war, and the political disillusionment of ordinary voters. Throughout, Meyer draws on his 35-year background as an engineering manager to ground his policy positions in practical terms, while Scott pushes him on structural questions about wealth concentration, federal job guarantees, and the courage required to go on offense rather than play permanent defense.
IN DEPTH:
00:00:00 Opening Remarks
- Scott opens the stream, notes technical difficulties with ProgressiveIndiana.net, and invites Brad Meyer to begin while Scott troubleshoots
- Meyer speaks off the cuff, describing how he and his wife were heading into a quiet retirement before Project 2025 and the Democratic Party’s drift rightward pulled him into the race
- Meyer argues Democrats must stand on their values and bring voters to their side rather than softening positions to blend in with the opposition
00:03:29 Environmental Policy, the Green New Deal, and Net Zero
- Scott notes it is “criminal” that they have not yet discussed the environment in this series and asks Meyer about his policy positions, including the Green New Deal and a carbon tax
- Meyer frames the issue in two parts: global warming, where he calls out climate denial as the same playbook used by the tobacco industry, and ecology, where he cites Indiana’s severely polluted waterways and the need for point source pollution controls
- Meyer says he still has more listening to do before committing to a definitive climate platform, but expressed interest in carbon swap mechanisms as an economic tool
00:06:43 Nuclear Energy and Small Modular Reactors
- Scott presses Meyer on how to achieve net zero by 2035 and raises nuclear — particularly small modular reactors being developed in Indiana partly to power AI data centers — as a potential clean energy option
- Meyer says he cannot support nuclear today as an engineer, citing the recurring pattern of unforeseen combinations of failures in past plants and the impossibility of trusting regulatory oversight under the current science-denying administration
- Meyer draws a distinction between next-generation reactor technology and the regulatory and scientific environment required to deploy it responsibly
00:09:43 Viewer Question from @2Tows (YouTube): AI and Data Centers
- @2Tows asks how Meyer approaches the looming threat of AI and data centers on the working class
- Meyer breaks the question in two: on AI, he says the transformation will be faster and more disruptive than the PC revolution, hitting white-collar workers who have never faced this kind of displacement before — comparable to what automation and deindustrialization did to blue-collar manufacturing
- On data centers, Meyer argues the core problem is companies using NDAs to lock out local communities from decisions that directly affect them, calling the practice unethical and a red flag about corporate intentions as a community partner
00:14:03 Distributing AI’s Economic Value
- Scott asks how we ensure AI’s productivity gains are distributed more equitably rather than captured entirely by a handful of tech overlords
- Meyer confirms the hype is real — describing a personal engineering project he completed in two weeks with AI that he estimated would have taken 52 weeks alone — and says the question is not if but how
- Meyer advocates for a $20 federal minimum wage and higher taxation on corporations and high-net-worth individuals, while expressing a preference for policies that break up monopolies and enable small business formation over direct wealth transfers
00:19:00 Federal Jobs Guarantee and the Care Economy
- Scott pushes back: if AI eliminates jobs wholesale, what do the idle masses do, and does the federal government need to step in with a jobs guarantee or something like a climate corps?
- Meyer prioritizes breaking up monopolies, restoring the Small Business Administration, banning anti-competitive non-compete agreements, and implementing Medicare for All to free workers from job-lock
- Meyer says done right, the AI boom produces more small business owners; done wrong, it produces the economic conditions of the 1880s
00:22:23 US-China Relations and Foreign Policy
- Scott notes it is equally “criminal” that a federal candidate has not been asked about foreign policy, and raises the US-China relationship: Cold War redux or something else?
- Meyer says the better analogy is pre-World War II, citing publicly available congressional testimony about China’s plans to take Taiwan in 2027 and Trump’s requested 40% military budget increase as alarming signals
- Meyer argues America First is really America Alone, and that the diplomatic failures surrounding the Iran war — including leaving European allies out of the picture — have left the US dangerously isolated at the moment it most needs partners
00:26:55 Scott Pushes Back: American Imperialism and the China Threat
- Scott challenges the framing as an anti-war lefty, noting the US has spent 80 years “swinging its thing” around the globe — Iran, Cuba, Greenland, Central America, Iraq, Vietnam — and questions the moral authority to cast China as the threat
- Meyer acknowledges the critique but argues the relative peace of the post-WWII era, underwritten by US power and trade alliances, has been genuine — and that China’s rise to preeminence, particularly a Taiwan seizure, would trigger a regional realignment with severe economic consequences for the US
- The two agree to disagree philosophically and Meyer reframes the goal as preserving a stable world economy where all nations can grow without the US having to suffer
00:32:24 Gun Violence Policy
- Scott pivots to gun violence, noting weapons of war are proliferating on American streets and schools, and asks what Meyer’s policy is and whether it involves banning anything
- Meyer calls for common-sense measures with broad support — disarming people on terrorist watch lists, and those in mental health crisis or threatening others through court-reviewed red flag processes — while acknowledging the political sensitivity in southern Indiana and his need to be explicitly on the record
- Meyer highlights the Dickey Amendment-style research prohibitions Congress has imposed and calls for lifting them, arguing the population cannot be moved faster than it is willing to go but that time in the district and sustained persuasion can shift that
00:37:28 Viewer Question from Patrick (Facebook): Schumer or Ro Khanna?
- Patrick on Facebook asks whether Meyer aligns more with Chuck Schumer or Ro Khanna for the direction of the Democratic Party
- Meyer says he is a progressive, plans to join the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and is not a Schumer fan — Scott informs him Khanna is a fellow Progressive Caucus member
- Meyer’s response: “Groovy.”
00:38:35 Drug Policy: Marijuana Legalization and Beyond
- Scott uses the gun prohibition discussion as a bridge to drug prohibition, noting Meyer has been outspoken for marijuana legalization, and asks how far he would go — psilocybin, ibogaine, the Portugal decriminalization model?
- Meyer supports full recreational marijuana legalization with controls mirroring alcohol — taxed, regulated, no impaired driving — but says his enthusiasm for going further is “really low,” supporting only tightly restricted medical research into psychedelics with no path toward normalization
- Meyer says he always believed medicinal marijuana was a foot in the door toward legalization, which he now supports outright, but draws the line there
00:42:05 Mass Incarceration
- Scott argues the war on drugs has failed and produced a mass incarceration crisis, and asks how Meyer would address it
- Meyer identifies three root causes he wants to attack: mental illness, addiction, and poverty — noting that the US has been almost entirely punitive rather than curative, and that the people most likely to be locked up are also the poorest
- Meyer flags the high recidivism rate as evidence that longer sentences are counterproductive, severing inmates from the community ties that reduce reoffending
00:47:04 Private Prisons
- Scott cuts to the chase: private prison corporations profit from incarceration — would Meyer ban them?
- Meyer says he is inclined to ban private prisons as a government function, but hedges by saying if a private prison demonstrably lowered recidivism, that would be worth considering
- Meyer’s core argument: remove the profit motive from the entire prison system, public or private, and tie advancement to outcomes after release
00:48:29 Neurodiversity, Disability, and the IDEA Act
- Scott notes that many people in the carceral system are undiagnosed and untreated neurodiverse individuals who fell through the cracks, and asks how Meyer would address the autism and neurodiversity community specifically
- Meyer says he has held roundtable discussions with disability experts and advocates to inform his thinking rather than imposing his own precepts, and centers his answer on the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act — which the federal government committed to fund at 40% but has never exceeded 14%, and which the current administration is actively gutting
- Meyer argues every dollar invested in early education for people with disabilities returns four to six dollars, and that society is already paying the cost through incarceration, homelessness, and lost productivity
00:52:09 Viewer Question from Katy (Facebook): Limits on Presidential Executive Orders
- Katy on Facebook asks whether Meyer has plans to impose limits on presidential executive orders
- Meyer says the limits already exist on paper — the real problem is Congress abdicating its oversight responsibility, and the specific abuse Meyer highlights is the use of emergency powers, citing Trump’s conduct around the Iran war as an example requiring impeachment rather than new legislation
- Meyer says he wants the social norms built over 250 years enforced, not new laws written, and that a president who violates those norms needs to be removed — legally
00:54:00 The White House Correspondents’ Dinner Incident
- Scott asks Meyer’s reaction to whatever happened the previous night at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner
- Meyer says there is no place for violence in American politics — regardless of how strongly he opposes Trump — and that the answer is the ballot box, starting with May 5th
00:54:48 Viewer Question from @2Tows (YouTube): How to Help the Campaign
- Scott returns to a question he had been holding from @2Tows, who is a newly converted Meyer supporter, asking what they and others can do to help in the final days
- Meyer says: vote, and tell your friends one-on-one — peer-to-peer persuasion is more powerful than door-knocking and will matter even more in the general
- Meyer says person-to-person contact is what will make the difference
00:56:09 Message to Disillusioned Voters
- Scott asks what Meyer says to voters who are over it — fed up with both parties
- Meyer validates the disillusionment completely, saying voters are not looking at it wrong, and argues that the party’s strategy of moving right and sounding more Republican has never produced real solutions
- Meyer uses the gerrymandering fight as a case study in defensive politics: Democrats stopped Indiana from making an already-horrible gerrymander worse and called it their biggest victory — while nothing got done on streams, childcare, coal, the grid, or education; he says it is time to go on offense
01:00:06 Brad’s Closing Remarks
- Meyer directs viewers to bradmeyer.org and the Brad Meyer for Indiana Facebook page to contact, volunteer, or donate
- Meyer closes with a direct ask: vote May 5th, tell your friends, and remember that more timid policies will not get us where we need to go
Thanks again to Brad Meyer for joining us. For more information and to get involved, visit his campaign website at https://www.bradmeyer.org. You can also find him on Facebook and across approximately eight social media platforms linked from the campaign site.
The last in our virtual town hall this primary season is Sunday, May 3 at 7pm ET with another 9th District Democrat, Dr. Tim Peck.
