Latest news with #TheEzraKleinShow
Yahoo
18-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
McBride: Democrats have ‘lost the art of persuasion'
Rep. Sarah McBride (D-Del.), the first openly transgender member of Congress, says the Democratic Party must create space for disagreement on trans rights and welcome 'imperfect allies' to the conversation to facilitate meaningful and lasting change. Since taking office in January, President Trump, who made policies and rhetoric targeting trans people a focus of his reelection campaign, has aggressively targeted transgender rights through policies and executive orders that more than half the nation has said it supports. A February poll from the Pew Research Center found that, across the political spectrum, Americans have grown more supportive of policies restricting trans rights, with support for laws requiring transgender athletes to compete on athletic teams that match their birth sex and making it illegal for health care providers to administer gender-affirming medical care to minors up roughly 10 percentage points from 2022. Two-thirds of respondents to a recent Gallup poll said trans people shouldn't be allowed to change their sex on government-issued identity documents, one of Trump's policy priorities relating to trans Americans. 'Candidly, I think we lost the art of persuasion. We lost the art of changemaking over the last couple of years,' McBride said of Democrats in a wide-ranging interview published Tuesday with The New York Times's Ezra Klein. 'We're not in this position because of trans people — there was a very clear, well-coordinated, well-funded effort to demonize trans people, to stake out positions on fertile ground for anti-trans politics and to have those be the battlegrounds rather than some of the areas where there's more public support,' McBride told Klein on his podcast, 'The Ezra Klein Show.' 'We're not in this position because of the movement or the community, but clearly, what we've been doing over the last several years has not been working to stave it off or continue the progress that we were making eight, nine, 10 years ago.' Democrats, she said, must extend more 'grace' to those who may disagree with them on some specific policies but who hold the same overarching belief that transgender people deserve respect and safety and the ability to live as their authentic selves. 'We created this all-on or all-off mentality that you had to be perfect on trans rights across the board, using the right language. And unless you do that, you're a bigot; you're an enemy,' she said. 'And when you create a binary all-on or all-off option for people, you're going to have a lot of imperfect allies who are going to inevitably choose the all-off option.' Klein questioned McBride on the Democratic Party's response to comments made by Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) on transgender athletes as the dust settled on Democrats' crushing 2024 election losses, which saw Republicans retake control of the presidency and the House and Senate. Moulton, who had previously backed legislation protecting trans athletes' right to compete on teams that match their gender identity and voted against a bill that would have prohibited them from doing so, told The New York Times in November that Democrats 'spend way too much time trying not to offend anyone rather than being brutally honest about the challenges many Americans face.' 'I have two little girls, I don't want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat I'm supposed to be afraid to say that,' he said. 'It wasn't the language that I would use,' McBride said Tuesday, responding to Moulton's remarks. 'But I think it came from a larger belief that the Democratic Party needed to start to have an open conversation about our illiberalism, that we needed to recognize that we were talking to ourselves.' 'I think the sports conversation is a good one,' she added, 'because I think there's a big difference between banning trans young people from extracurricular programs consistent with their gender identity and recognizing that there's room for nuance in this conversation.' Other elected Democrats, including Rep. Tom Suozzi (N.Y.), Sen. Ruben Gallego (Ariz.) and California Gov. Gavin Newsom, have openly expressed some opposition to allowing transgender girls to compete against cisgender girls in sports. In January, Reps. Vicente Gonzalez and Henry Cuellar, both of Texas, voted with Republicans to advance legislation that sought to ban trans student-athletes nationwide from competing on girls' and women's sports teams. 'I think the best thing for trans people in this moment is for all of us to wake up to the fact that we have to grapple with the world as it is, that we have to grapple with where public opinion is right now and that we need all of the allies that we can get,' McBride said, noting that Moulton, whose comments received considerable backlash, ultimately voted against the bill that Gonzalez and Cuellar supported. 'If we are going to defend some of the basic fundamental rights of trans people, we are going to need those individuals in our coalition,' she said. McBride pointed to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and '60s, which yielded legislation to end segregation, Black voter suppression and discriminatory housing and employment practices, albeit not all at once. 'That movement was disciplined, it was strategic, it picked its battles, it picked its fights and it compromised to move the ball forward,' McBride said. 'Right now, that compromise would be deemed unprincipled, weak, and throwing everyone under the bus, and that is so counterproductive, it is so harmful and it completely betrays the lessons of every single social movement and civil rights movement in our country's history.' 'You can't foster social change if you don't have a conversation — you can't change people if you exclude them,' McBride said Tuesday. 'And I will just say, you can't have absolutism, on the left or the right, without authoritarianism. The fact that we have real disagreements, the fact that we have difficult conversations, the fact that we have painful conversations, is not a bug of democracy; it's a feature of democracy, and that is hard and difficult. But how can we expect that the process of overcoming marginalization is going to be fair?' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Hill
17-06-2025
- Politics
- The Hill
McBride: Democrats have ‘lost the art of persuasion'
Rep. Sarah McBride (D-Del.), the first openly transgender member of Congress, says the Democratic Party must create space for disagreement on trans rights and welcome 'imperfect allies' to the conversation to facilitate meaningful and lasting change. Since taking office in January, President Trump, who made policies and rhetoric targeting trans people a focus of his reelection campaign, has aggressively targeted transgender rights through policies and executive orders that more than half the nation has said they support. A February poll from the Pew Research Center found that, across the political spectrum, Americans have grown more supportive of policies restricting trans rights, with support for laws requiring transgender athletes to compete on athletic teams that match their birth sex and making it illegal for health care providers to administer gender-affirming medical care to minors up roughly 10 percentage points from 2022. Two-thirds of respondents to a recent Gallup poll said trans people shouldn't be allowed to change their sex on government-issued identity documents, one of Trump's policy priorities relating to trans Americans. 'Candidly, I think we lost the art of persuasion. We lost the art of changemaking over the last couple of years,' McBride said of Democrats in a wide-ranging interview published Tuesday with The New York Times's Ezra Klein. 'We're not in this position because of trans people — there was a very clear, well-coordinated, well-funded effort to demonize trans people, to stake out positions on fertile ground for anti-trans politics and to have those be the battlegrounds rather than some of the areas where there's more public support,' McBride told Klein on his podcast, 'The Ezra Klein Show.' 'We're not in this position because of the movement or the community, but clearly, what we've been doing over the last several years has not been working to stave it off or continue the progress that we were making eight, nine, ten years ago.' Democrats, she said, must extend more 'grace' to those who may disagree with them on some specific policies but who hold the same overarching belief that transgender people deserve respect and safety and the ability to live as their authentic selves. 'We created this all-on or all-off mentality that you had to be perfect on trans rights across the board, using the right language. And unless you do that, you're a bigot; you're an enemy,' she said. 'And when you create a binary all-on or all-off option for people, you're gonna have a lot of imperfect allies who are going to inevitably choose the all-off option.' Klein questioned McBride on the Democratic Party's response to comments made by Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) on transgender athletes as the dust settled on Democrats' crushing 2024 election losses, which saw Republicans retake control of the presidency and the House and Senate. Moulton, who had previously backed legislation protecting trans athletes' right to compete on teams that match their gender identity and voted against a bill that would have prohibited them from doing so, told The New York Times in November that Democrats 'spend way too much time trying not to offend anyone rather than being brutally honest about the challenges many Americans face.' 'I have two little girls, I don't want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat I'm supposed to be afraid to say that,' he said. 'It wasn't the language that I would use,' McBride said Tuesday, responding to Moulton's remarks. 'But I think it came from a larger belief that the Democratic Party needed to start to have an open conversation about our illiberalism, that we needed to recognize that we were talking to ourselves.' 'I think the sports conversation is a good one,' she added, 'because I think there's a big difference between banning trans young people from extracurricular programs consistent with their gender identity and recognizing that there's room for nuance in this conversation.' Other elected Democrats, including Reps. Tom Suozzi (N.Y)., Sen. Ruben Gallego (Ariz.) and California Gov. Gavin Newsom, have openly expressed some opposition to allowing transgender girls to compete against cisgender girls in sports. In January, Reps. Vicente Gonzalez and Henry Cuellar, both of Texas, voted with Republicans to advance legislation that sought to ban trans student-athletes nationwide from competing on girls' and women's sports teams. 'I think the best thing for trans people in this moment is for all of us to wake up to the fact that we have to grapple with the world as it is, that we have to grapple with where public opinion is right now and that we need all of the allies that we can get,' McBride said, noting that Moulton, whose comments received considerable backlash, ultimately voted against the bill that Gonzalez and Cuellar supported. 'If we are going to defend some of the basic fundamental rights of trans people, we are going to need those individuals in our coalition,' she said. McBride pointed to the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and '60s, which yielded legislation to end segregation, Black voter suppression and discriminatory housing and employment practices, albeit not all at once. 'That movement was disciplined, it was strategic, it picked its battles, it picked its fights and it compromised to move the ball forward,' McBride said. 'Right now, that compromise would be deemed unprincipled, weak, and throwing everyone under the bus, and that is so counterproductive, it is so harmful and it completely betrays the lessons of every single social movement and civil rights movement in our country's history.' 'You can't foster social change if you don't have a conversation — you can't change people if you exclude them,' McBride said Tuesday. 'And I will just say, you can't have absolutism, on the left or the right, without authoritarianism. The fact that we have real disagreements, the fact that we have difficult conversations, the fact that we have painful conversations, is not a bug of democracy; it's a feature of democracy, and that is hard and difficult. But how can we expect that the process of overcoming marginalization is going to be fair?'
New York Times
23-04-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
The Very American Roots of Trumpism
This is an edited transcript of an episode of 'The Ezra Klein Show.' You can listen to the conversation by following or subscribing to the show on the NYT Audio App, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts. A number of people I respect and often agree with have been making different versions of the same point: Immigration is one of Trump's best issues — and one of the worst issues for Democrats. The economy is where Trump is now weak. So if you really care about the dangers Donald Trump poses, you need to beat him. And that means focusing the country's attention on his worst issues, the places where he is most beatable. Nate Silver has made a version of this argument, and so did California governor Gavin Newsom: Archived clip of Gavin Newsom: 'This is the distraction of the day — the art of distraction. Don't get distracted by distractions, we say. And here we zig and zag. This is the debate they want. This is their 80-20 issue, as they've described it.' I want to give this argument its due. It's not without merit. Optimal political strategy is usually to keep the focus on your opponent's worst issues. For Donald Trump right now, it's his decision to light the global economy on fire. From that perspective, focusing on the wrongful deportation and detainment of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia is a distraction. Trump's meeting with President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador is a distraction. And getting distracted is bad politics. Focus on the tariffs. Focus on the stock market chaos. Focus. But I think there are two things wrong with this. One is that the polling here isn't clear. Yes, Democrats have become afraid of the issue of immigration. They see that as a winner for Donald Trump. But the Abrego Garcia case is actually about rule of law and due process. That's how it is, and should be, framed. And on those issues, Democrats are in a much better position: People do not want the Trump administration to be able to randomly disappear people living in this country without due process. But I think this argument reflects a generalized collapse of roles and time across the political system. If this were October 2026 and you were running a congressional campaign, then what you focus on is a hard question. And you should pay pretty damn close attention to the pulse. If you're choosing how to write and spend money on ads, same thing. I wish you luck figuring it out. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
New York Times
05-04-2025
- Business
- New York Times
Paul Krugman on the ‘Biggest Trade Shock in History'
This is an edited transcript of an episode of 'The Ezra Klein Show.' You can listen to the conversation by following or subscribing to the show on the NYT Audio App, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts. On a scale of 1 to 10, how liberated are you feeling? We just had Donald Trump's big 'Liberation Day,' when he announced a huge package of tariffs. They were larger, by far, than markets were expecting — which led markets to lose a lot of value in the hours right after. The tariffs were also more confusing than people were expecting. Trump suggested during his campaign a flat tariff of 10 to 20 percent on all imported goods, and maybe something bigger on China. But the tariff package he unveiled was very different: There were different numbers for basically every country. And then there was a column listing the tariffs that they had on us, and that column was simply wrong. So what is going on here? Why is Donald Trump absorbing this much economic pain? Why is he risking a domestic recession — and a global recession — for this package of policies that almost every economist would tell you does not really make sense? I wanted to talk with my former colleague Paul Krugman about this. Paul is a Nobel Prize-winning economist with a focus on trade. He was a columnist here at The New York Times for 25 years. And he's been writing an excellent Substack, where he has been tearing into the theory behind this kind of tariff policy, as well as the very strange reality that has now been announced, and trying to understand: What led to this package instead of one that might have more cleanly accomplished the goals that Donald Trump and the people around him say they are seeking? Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
New York Times
28-03-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
The Last 2 Months — and Next 2 Years — of U.S. Politics
This is an edited transcript of an episode of 'The Ezra Klein Show.' You can listen to the conversation by following or subscribing to the show on the NYT Audio App, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts. Ezra Klein: Welcome to the second-ever 'Ask Me Anything' for subscribers. If you're here, that means you have subscribed and linked your subscription. We are doubly grateful. We received a truly astonishing number of amazing questions — of which we will not get through even the most minute fraction. But we will do what we can. I'm joined today — as I am so often, both in front of the mic and behind the scenes — by our wonderful executive producer, Claire Gordon. Claire Gordon: Great to be here again, Ezra, for our first A.M.A. of the Trump era. Reading through the questions, I would say the temperature of the audience right now is quite high. There were a lot of questions about whether we will have fair elections in 2028. Klein: Will we? Gordon: That's my first question. Klein: That's where we're starting? Gordon: How high is your internal temperature on this? What is the right temperature? Klein: Your internal temperature should be feverish. I think we're going to have elections. But I also think we're very likely going to have a constitutional crisis. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
