THE FEDERALIST TELLS EZRA KLEIN WHERE HE CAN STICK HIS OLIVE BRANCH

In recent weeks, Ezra Klein has said nice things about Charlie Kirk and has championed the idea that the Democratic Party should run candidates with right-wing positions on issues like abortion and trans rights. These are the thanks he gets from one of the most prominent Republican opinion outlets, The Federalist:

Yes, that's Klein talking to Ta-Nehisi Coates.

The piece, by Federalist senior editor John Daniel Davidson, isn't primarily about Klein's work. It's mostly about the cancellation of a Federalist Society event at NYU Law School and an alleged assault on a right-wing reporter in Portland that the reporter said was ignored by the police. All of this, Davidson tells us, is evidence of a conspiracy to silence and brutalize right-wingers that apparently involves literally every leftist and liberal.

Ezra Klein too? Yes, Ezra Klein too. Davidson writes:

A clip from a recent Ezra Klein podcast with Ta-Nehisi Coates has gone viral in part for laying bare the seething intolerance and intellectual hubris of the left.

At one point in their exchange, Klein notes that a majority of Americans disagree with transgenderism. They don’t think men should compete in women’s sports or use women’s bathrooms, and they don’t think anyone should be compelled to use preferred pronouns or affirm that men can become women. Klein says that he and Coates both know that those people are “fundamentally and morally wrong,” but asks what can be done about them, given that they are a majority in America. Klein knows that this majority will never be convinced to adopt his and Coates’ views, and he recognizes, to his credit, that this presents a dilemma: these people must be negotiated with or suppressed by force.

Neither Klein nor Coates ever entertains the notion that anti-trans bigots should be "suppressed by force," of course -- that's a grotesque lie. But go on, John:

Coates, who says Kirk was a “hatemonger” unworthy of mourning, has no real answer. He is not concerned about the dilemma Klein is trying to get him to recognize.

Coates, in fact, is "concerned about the dilemma Klein is trying to get him to recognize." He just doesn't want to focus on what Klein cares most about, which is increasing the number of elected Democrats in Washington.

On the question of transgenderism, Coates believes the conservative view is dehumanizing. “If you think it is OK to dehumanize people,” he says, “then conversation between you and me is probably not possible.” That’s the line he draws.

And that’s where the left is now. Conversation, in their view, is probably not possible with the opposing side. Kirk thought it was, and he dedicated his life to it. Perhaps he was wrong. We’ll see. But for now, it’s not too much to say that Kirk’s assassin and Coates are on the same side of this question. They share the same view on civil discourse. They are not really interested in talking.

Wow, that escalated fast. Ta-Nehisi Coates is on the same side as a political assassin? Because he believes in the full humanity of trans people and regards that belief as non-negotiable?

Let's take a look at this allegedly inflammatory, illiberal call for jackbooted thuggery. It's ... um, shockingly mild-mannered, in both the words and the tone.

Ezra Klein calls the belief that women have a right to single-sex sports & spaces “fundamentally and morally wrong.”

He admits most Americans disagree, yet lacks the theory of mind to imagine that millions might support single-sex spaces for reasons other than hatred or… pic.twitter.com/hohXX2cjXD

— WomenAreReal (@WomenAreReals) September 29, 2025

Here's a transcript, with Klein in bold:

... a majority of the country, believes things about trans people, about what policy should be toward trans people, about what language is acceptable to trans people, that we would see as fundamentally and morally wrong.

And what politically — not in a column or something, but politically — should our relationship with those people be? Do we win them over? Do we compromise with them?

This feels like a very salient question. The Republican Party is going to make sure this is a relentlessly salient question.

Right. I agree with that.

Where does that approach leave us? Where do we go on that?

I think that’s a great question. I think a couple of things.

Again, my tradition is the only thing I have a reference point for, so I’m sorry to keep going back to this. But when I look at the times that we have lost, if I think specifically about the Black tradition, for instance, it’s hard for me to say that politically they did something wrong. You know what I mean? Reconstruction falls. What was the thing that should have been done?

That's it. That, according to Davidson, is Klein and Coates summoning the thugs. It's Coates arguing that Reconstruction was correct because Black people unquestionably should have remained legally equal and able to wield democratic power in the South, and offering that as an analogy to the full civil and human rights trans people unquestionably deserve now.

It's no surprise that Davidson equates Coates with a murderer -- that's how right-wingers prefer to talk about Black people who aren't Republicans. But Klein -- who clearly wants Democrats to run anti-trans candidates if that's what it takes to save other parts of the Democratic agenda -- isn't spared. Davidson concludes:

Coates and Klein and other prominent liberals can formally disavow violence all they want, but it has become impossible to deny that they belong to a political project that has no theory of mind for the right and is unable to grasp why conservatives believe the things they believe. They have arrived at epistemic closure, which is going to involve all of us. Here at the end of the line, erstwhile liberals once so proud of their open-mindedness to rational inquiry are taking refuge in the only thing they have left: the brute application of force.

And there you have it. If liberals or leftists have principles they won't compromise -- or even if they themselves are willing to compomise but have a polite dialogue with someone who'd rather not -- that's "the brute application of force."

Sorry, Ezra -- you can't appease these bastards. They'll still hate you and want you politically silenced, all while lying to their allies that you're the real authoritarian.