Oren Cass ’05 talks conservative realignment, economic policy, J.D. Vance

After former president Donald Trump won the presidential election and Republicans gained control of the Senate last Tuesday, the future of our nation may seem uncertain. But Oren Cass ’05, the founder and chief economist of the right-wing think tank American Compass, knows where he’d like it to go.

Cass founded American Compass in 2021 in response to what he saw as the Republican Party’s lack of attention to working-class issues — despite the fact that such issues were central to Trump’s election in 2016. 

“Whatever one thinks of Trump, he clearly identified and spoke to a lot of problems that everybody else was ignoring,” Cass told the Record in an interview. “I think most people on the right of center’s reaction to that was, ‘This is stupid. These aren’t problems. Make him go away.’ And my reaction was like, ‘Wow, no, this is really important. These are really big problems, and conservatives are going to have to have something to say about them.’”