The Idiot Index for housing, 412 pages of science funding guidance, and state abundance agendas
What we're reading, June 3, 2026
Here’s what caught our attention this week:
Joe Lonsdale’s FDA reform agenda — Dylan Matthews
OMB’s proposed changes to federal science funding — Jordan Dworkin
Brian Potter on housing construction productivity — Matt Clancy
Energy scarcity and heavy industry — Willow Latham-Proenca
Massachusetts’ starter homes ballot measure and the single-stair code win — Alex Armlovich
State abundance agendas — Nisha Austin
We’re also planning to post a separate What we’re reading spotlight by Saloni later this week. Stay tuned!
Joe Lonsdale’s FDA reform agenda — Dylan Matthews
Joe Lonsdale’s recent Substack post, “What America Needs from a New FDA Commissioner,” is notable as much for who’s saying it as for what it says. Lonsdale is a Palantir cofounder turned venture capitalist who is closely connected with the Trump administration and tech right. That means his comments on regulatory policy have a decent shot at being heard by people who can act on them. The good news is that Lonsdale is pushing a lot of promising ideas to remove unnecessary red tape holding back clinical trials. That includes investigating and approving new “surrogate endpoints” that drug studies can use as outcomes to measure; adopting an expedited Australian-style approach to Phase 1 trials; and trying to eliminate wasted time between trial phases. These are paired with a focus on beating China and encouraging companies to test in the US. That framing wasn’t enough to get much done on these topics under former Commissioner Marty Makary, but maybe they will be under his successor.
OMB’s proposed changes to federal science funding — Jordan Dworkin
Last week the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) published a proposed revision to the Guidance for Federal Financial Assistance. It runs 412 pages, and carries significant implications for federally funded science in the US.
Many of the proposed changes are concerning: the guidance would be classified as a binding regulation, requiring agencies to implement it directly unless changes are approved by OMB;
a new pre-award review would require political appointees to assess awards to ensure they “demonstrably advance the President’s policy priorities”;
discretionary termination clauses would become mandatory in all discretionary awards (unless prohibited by statute), making it easier for agencies to terminate grants on policy or topical grounds;
and sweeping restrictions would be introduced on foreign collaborations, prohibiting the use of federal funds across all agencies to support collaboration with “covered foreign countries” likely including China, Russia, and Iran (the related Wolf Amendment has been around since 2011 but only applied to NASA and OSTP, and specifically restricted certain collaboration with China).
One positive note is that the document explicitly declines to propose changes to the indirect costs system – a possibility that we previously flagged. And one to keep an eye on is the proposed prohibition on publication costs, like article processing charges (APCs) and open access fees, unless expressly approved by the agency on a case-by-case basis (this could be a big deal, but it’s possible that including an APC line within the itemized budget of an approved grant would be sufficient). Instructions for commenting can be found here, and comments can be submitted at this link until July 13.
Brian Potter on housing construction productivity — Matt Clancy
One factor in the high cost of housing is that we’re not better at building houses; construction productivity is relatively flat (not only in the US, but in many countries). It’s often presumed that this is because housing construction has mostly failed to move inside the factory (this piece by Arpit Gupta and Steve Teles, which we’ve covered before, gives some reasons why that might be). But in a new blog post, Brian Potter is skeptical of this explanation.
Brian reminds us that factory built housing is actually a thing, in the manufactured home industry, and it’s telling that this sector has often not found it worth centralizing production in large automated factories. He also suggests there might be a low ceiling on how much automation can reduce the cost of housing, by looking at the so-called Idiot Index: the cost of a good divided by the cost of its raw materials. In housing, Brian argues this is roughly 2, compared to 1.8 in the highly automated car manufacturing sector. Maybe the reason construction productivity is flat here and around the world, is that it’s already near a local maximum? And yet, and yet - other work finds manufactured homes cost substantially less to build than comparable site-built homes.
Energy scarcity and heavy industry — Willow Latham-Proenca
There’s been so much focus on energy for data centers that it’s possible to forget that they’re not the only new large loads. A short report this week highlights a potential challenge for heavy industry – access to increasingly scarce affordable generation resources.
Industrial users have historically paid below-residential rates as a result of essentially “buying in bulk,” since their high, predictable demand and direct grid connection made them easier to serve. As data centers increasingly offer (at least the spectre of) prices above residential rates, new large loads in metallurgical or manufacturing industries - including sectors targeted for strategic reshoring - are increasingly concerned they’ll be outbid. Aluminum could seem like a straw man - it’s famously energy-intensive enough to earn the nickname of “congealed electricity,” but so are many other upstream commodities in the electro-tech stack, argues Seaver Wang of the Breakthrough Institute. Given the long timelines from investment to production - an aluminum facility takes about 5 years to build and bring online - it’s plausible that uncertainty now could cast a long shadow over what capital investments firms are willing to risk.
Massachusetts’ starter homes ballot measure and the single-stair code win — Alex Armlovich
The NYT editorial board endorsed the Massachusetts “Legalize Starter Homes” ballot measure, which would require localities to allow homes on small lots in areas served by public water and sewer. The endorsement lands alongside a volunteer-driven signature push to secure the November ballot slot. That combination bodes well for MA YIMBYs: contested ballot measures are expensive, since building name and message recognition with paid media costs real money. Ballot measures can also be risky in that a win can convince a legislature that they’ve mentally overindexed on NIMBYs in the electorate, while a loss could make reform radioactive. Fortunately, no organized opposition has yet appeared, and organic volunteer energy and platinum earned media like a Times endorsement are both free in dollars…and probably signal strong underlying voter support.
Stephen Smith just landed a stunning, albeit incremental, single-stair win: his proposal to raise America’s “International” Building Code single-stair apartment height limit from three stories to four passed its final membership vote and will officially make the 2027 IBC. The political dynamics here are understudied: this is "private politics," the work of lobbying and advocating inside the International Code Council, a private, nongovernmental body that drafts the model building codes later adopted into state and local law. The simplest early lesson might be the old Gretzky adage about missing 100% of the shots you don't take: YIMBYs walked into the room at ICC for the first time ever, and good things happened. (The burst of state and local-level single stair code wins across the US and Canada since 2021 were key points of leverage as well).
State abundance agendas — Nisha Austin
One thing we’ve been tracking is the proliferation of state and local abundance agendas. In the last year, we’ve seen Abundance New York publish a detailed policy roadmap across housing, transit, energy, and governance; Governor Newsom sign a package of housing and permitting reforms under the banner of the “California Abundance Agenda”; Abundant Housing Massachusetts put together a legislative agenda for the current session; Utah’s Office of Energy Development launch Operation Gigawatt, a statewide plan to address growing energy demand; and a recent ChinaTalk episode covered what an abundance playbook looks like for semiconductor reshoring. Finally, Inclusive Abundance is accepting proposals for their federal abundance agenda through June 18.
These vary a lot in scope, specificity, and political orientation, and we’re not endorsing every item in any of them, but the pattern itself is notable: “abundance” is becoming a shared vocabulary across very different political contexts, and concrete policy agendas are starting to follow. Are there other state or local abundance agendas in development that we should know about? We’re thinking about keeping a running directory, and we’d love to hear what we’re missing!
A few grantee and team shoutouts and other announcements worth sharing:
Matt worked with IFP and the Market Shaping Accelerator to launch the Atlas of Innovation this week, an interactive guide to innovation funding mechanisms for policymakers and philanthropies.
Alex joined the Gotham Gazette podcast to discuss Mayor Mamdani’s new affordable housing plan.
Dylan published How do states share ideas? this week, a deep dive into the political science of policy diffusion and what it means for spreading growth-promoting reforms across states.
The FDA recently began releasing its drug rejection letters, but the law firm Covington & Burling has petitioned to stop it, arguing the letters are too useful to competitors to not be considered confidential. Adam Kroetsch explains in a new blogpost that this gets it backwards.
Alex and Reed Schwartz published a piece at the Niskanen Center on New York State’s newly authorized land value tax for transit investment.