Who’s leading Congress in political peacemaking (and division) this week? Check out the top 10 list

One of the lesser-appreciated threats to civility in America today, according to Village Square national director Liz Joyner, is that related encouragement can feel boring — like some never-ending civic lecture finger-wagging to “be nice.” How is any of that supposed to compete with the kind of dopamine-spiking, political mud-wrestling we see all around us?
Maybe it can after all. This week marks the official launch of the new “Builders Power Rankings” — billed as “Football Fever Comes to Election Season” through “a weekly rundown of the top (and bottom) players in America’s most popular full-contact sport: politics.”
These rankings are currently focused on incumbent congressional representatives at the federal level, with plans to expand them to other elected officials in the future, including executive officials and state officials like governors. (So, they won’t have anything to say about the bruising campaign for the Presidency).
Unlike metrics that often score media points — whether a leader say something “outlandish” or culturally popular — these rankings are based on four criteria: (1) Healthy policy discussion, (2) Constructive debate and (3) Legislative efficacy (advancing bills and working across the aisle) and (4) Personal attacks.
Drawing on data from the Polarization Research Lab, a non-profit, non-partisan initiative of Dartmouth, Stanford, and UPenn, an AI-powered data analysis identifies the top five Democrats and top five Republican peacebuilders of the week — as well as those who acted in a more divisive way.
Like in sports, these rankings will be updated weekly, with an emphasis on communications during the past 14 days, including social media posts, speeches and press releases, alongside legislative details of how many bills were introduced, sponsored, and passed by a legislator (with additional points for collaborative efforts).
Out of all that comes a composite “builders score”, the higher the better, billed as a “comprehensive evaluation of a legislator’s attempts to contribute positively to the legislative process and to achieve meaningful outcomes on behalf of more than just their own party.”
Leveraging the energy of the 2021 Starts with Us initiative, Builders was founded in 2024 by over 200 cross-industry leaders, many involved in the as a “global movement to overcome toxic polarization to solve our toughest problems together.” According to an interview with Deseret News, they aim to encourage replacing an “us vs. them” attitude in our national conversation with “flexible thinking and constructive problem-solving.”
So, what about this week in politics? In its inaugural rankings, 10 elected congressional leaders were identified for positive recognition, alongside 10 who struggled this week:
The idea is not to “brand anybody,” said Builders CEO, Tom Fishman. “There’s always next week. You’re not stuck there forever.”
But ultimately, he said, “we do think it’s important as we think about incentives.” Expressing hope the rankings can guide citizens planning to vote and can spark a more productive conversation nationally.
“We’re trying to show a different spectrum upon which to evaluate these folks. And emphasize the path that there’s growth,” Fishman said. “There’s the opportunity to go from ‘divider’ one week, to a ‘builder’ in subsequent weeks, through behavior change.”
Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-AR), earned the #3 ranking on the Republican Builders list this week, following a “moment of camaraderie” when he expressed gratitude for his Democratic colleague, Sen. Katie Porter (D-CA), for working on his legislation, even though she ultimately decided to vote against it.
After acknowledging his colleague’s ultimate opposition to the bill, Westerman made sure to add, “I do recognize, commend, and support Representative Porter for her work on this legislation.”
On the other side of the aisle, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) earned a #5 ranking on the Democratic Builders list for her collaborative work with Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) to reintroduce the United States Pharmaceutical Supply Chain Review Act and lead another bipartisan initiative to streamline Pentagon spending.
This ranking surprised some observers, since Warren has a reputation for being pretty combative.
In the other direction, despite earning a reputation as a problem-solver over the years, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) ranked #3 on this week’s Dividers list after releasing a blistering statement about remarks by Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA) widely condemned as discriminatory — earning him the top spot among “Republican Dividers” this week.
To the Louisiana representative’s credit, after getting some feedback from House Speaker Mike Johnson and deciding to pray about what he had said, Higgins felt new regret and pulled down his comments. “We move forward,” Johnson said. “We believe in redemption around here.”
Similar to those who await Stephen A. Smith or Skip Bayless’s help to unpack the latest sports news, Builders is planning a weekly panel of cross-partisan commentators “across a spectrum of politics and beliefs” to share their analysis and model respectful disagreement about challenging moments. That includes exploring “what could this person have done that better?” and breaking down the positive highlight reel of the week.
That will include Andrew Yang, Aaron Parnas, Benji Backer, Heather Nauert, Jessica Yellin, Kara Swisher, Karl Rove, Malynda Hale, Garry Kasparov, Joe Lonsdale, Kimberly Atkins Stohr, and others.
“Most of us regard Hakeem Jeffries as a good principal, even-handed rational type of leader,” said Andrew Yang, Founder, Forward Party, this week before citing both the heated pre-election rhetoric and the possibility of constituent concerns. “(Jeffries) went very, very hard at those comments in part because there are a lot of Haitians in Brooklyn. He was probably getting a lot of folks in his district who were saying: ‘Hey, you have to go up to 11 on this.’”
It was the encouraging exchange between California and Arkansas legislators that was the most striking moment to Karl Rove. This Former Deputy Chief of Staff and Senior Advisor to President George W. Bush suggested this moment demonstrated the Arkansas Republican “was listening to somebody on the other side who basically at the end of the day said, ‘I’m not going to be able to vote for the bill, but will you listen to me about my concerns about it and do something about them?’”
“It’s the responsibility of leaders to do exactly that,” Rove suggested, calling this “the most powerful lesson” he learned working in the White House.
“We the people” are supposed to be leading the way in America. But those leading this initiative seem especially motivated by the fatigue of normal citizens throwing up their hands in defeat, whether weary of all the bickering politically or being unsure of what’s going on at all.
Adviser Ciaran O’Connor, a Deseret News contributor who works with Braver Angels, said this “exhausted majority” of citizens too often lacks solid information with “any sort of objective criteria” for how people are acting in Congress. “I don’t think there’s yet been something this systematic and sophisticated.”
The algorithm involved in these builder scores draws upon “a very finely tuned version of GPT-4″ which has been “finally tuned” according to Fishman “to minimize partisan bias” as it reviews all the public messaging and speeches of congressional representatives. In the future, people will be able to look up the builder score for anyone, including their own representative, whether or not they make the “top 10″ for better or worse.
The organizers saw a “unique information gap in the congressional space,” with available news skewed towards the “dividers” since “lawmakers who tend to make headlines are often the most divisive,” according to Kristin Schneider, VP of Communications and co-founder of the initiative. That leaves “the constructive actions of Builders buried” she said. (“Builders” are defined by the group as “flexible thinkers and constructive problem solvers who respect the dignity of all people.”).
With meager 13% approval ratings for Congress, why are more than 90% of incumbents getting re-elected? Schneider asks. By essentially trying to “crunch all the numbers” around key moments in the week’s congressional politics, the hope is to give citizens a starting point for getting back in the driver seat, and perhaps make divisive behavior a little more politically costly for reelection, rather than the other way around.
“Just like football power rankings, the Builders Power Rankings are meant to be both defensible and debatable,” said Builders Movement Co-Founder, Daniel Lubetzky.
To those still skeptical of whether they can trust the ranking’s fairness, Fishman emphasizes their effort to “layer” ideologically diverse “human intelligence” on top of the weekly rankings — with panelists who will do a regular “gut check” on the rankings: Does this really make sense?
The decision to select five on each side of the political spectrum reflects their attempt at fairness, since they could have taken another approach and selected the “top 10 builders” (and dividers) irrespective of party. By awarding an “equal number of spots to Republicans and Democrats,” leaders of the initiative are attempting to make the tool “partisan agnostic.”
Fishman argues what should perhaps be obvious, that “builders tend to be evenly distributed throughout the country” and not exclusive to any party. This again seems central to what they hope to achieve, highlighting that “different spectrum” and “dimension” on which elected officials can be evaluated.
“Considering our elective representatives based solely on their partisan affiliations,” said Yang, “can blind us to how well those officials are actually serving us.”
Instead, Fishman asks, are elected leaders “doing their jobs” in the sense of not only “having substantive policy discussions,” but also: “Are they debating constructively to get to consensus and actually advanced solutions? Are they having legislative efficacy from doing that?” And lastly, he said, “how much time is getting spent on the ad hominems and the personal attacks that tend to incentivize people to become social media stars, as opposed to problem solvers?”
Those four dimensions, again, drive the various “builder scores.” So far so good, but some may still wonder whether the rankings will still skew against conservatives, like other well-intentioned efforts. For instance, if a legislator is working hard to “protect women’s sports” or “defend the constitution” or “protect religious freedom”, with certain activists making a fuss about these efforts being “hateful” … would that cause a leader to be evaluated as a “divider” in this ranking system?
Schneider told the Deseret News that they are evaluating less of “the what” (the substance of representatives’ policies and positions) and looking more critically at “the how” (the manner in which representatives engage with difficult subject matter, with their political opponents, with their peers, and with the American people).
Therefore, if a leader was advocating for a certain policy position in a way that “welcomed constructive debate” and stayed focus on the issue itself, she explains, especially if they “championed civility instead of making personal attacks” and remained open and proactive about the possibility of “bipartisan support,” that leader would be evaluated as “builderly.”
You won’t find that in the official dictionary yet, but if this group has their way, you’re going to see it a lot more in the days ahead.