Week of June 19, 2025

From the editor’s desk

This week on the Ezra Klein Show—the longform, New York Times-produced politics and culture podcast—Klein interviewed Rep. Sarah McBride from Delaware, the nation’s first openly transgender member of Congress.

Over 95 minutes, McBride expressed her take on some of the political and social dynamics that have driven the widespread demonization of trans people in recent years. She didn’t sound angry; she didn’t sound defensive. A large part of her case is that the left has made a mistake in quickly and belligerently alienating trans-rights detractors, rather than seeking to persuade them.

Here are two of McBride’s comments: 

“(W)e created this ‘all-on’ or ‘all-off’ mentality, that you had to be perfect on trans rights across the board, use exactly the right language, and unless you do that, you are a bigot; you’re an enemy. 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.”

“We got into this rabbit hole of academic intellectual discourse that doesn’t actually matter in people’s lives. We got into this performative fighting to show our bona fides to our own in-group, and we lost the fundamental truth that all of those things are only even possible once you’ve done the basic legwork of allowing people to see trans people as people.”

McBride advocated relentlessly for grace in politics—for not taking the bait when your adversaries are mean, and for choosing your battles. The word “grace” appears in the podcast transcript 57 times. 

Personally, I found her take refreshing. I’ve felt cornered by the rigidity of liberal dogma plenty of times, and I think it’s a widespread phenomenon that needs to be addressed.

Not everyone sees it that way, though. Long comment threads abound on Reddit and Bluesky by people with trans flags next to their names who say that McBride is selling them out, and too eager to compromise. Here’s one take from a Reddit user: “This is one of the main problems democracies are facing currently: the right slings bullshit till something sticks and shifts the Overton window, while the other political parties largely just concentrate on appealing to voters who have shifted to the right, instead of trying to change minds themselves.”

I consider the matter open for discussion. What do you think?

Take care,

—Kris Vagner, managing editor