Overview of What I Learned in 2025
This end-of-year Ask Me Anything episode from New York Times Opinion features host Ezra Klein in conversation with executive producer Claire Gordon. They review Klein’s columns and podcast themes from 2025, reflect on American politics (Trump’s second inauguration and its aftermath), the reception of Klein’s books and ideas (Why We’re Polarized; Abundance, co‑authored with Derek Thompson), Democratic strategy and governance, cultural and social concerns (young men, civic formation, tech harms), and the personal/ professional pressures of public-facing journalism.
Key themes and main takeaways
- Don’t equate “don’t normalize” with “ignore.” Klein’s advice in early 2025 was “Don’t believe him” — a call to contest power, not to pretend it doesn’t exist.
- Institutions and civil society that initially bowed to the new administration have begun to push back; law firms, universities and other actors have shown more resistance over time.
- The Supreme Court has expanded executive power in response to Trump-era assertions, giving the administration more practical authority than many expected.
- Party sorting remains central: educational and ideological polarization have become as — or more — consequential than racial polarization in recent elections.
- Abundance (Klein & Thompson) is best read as a left‑leaning project: it centers state capacity (housing, clean energy, infrastructure) and pragmatic governance rather than pure anti‑corporate populism.
- Democrats face an “emergency” that requires hard, tactical choices: broadening the party’s tent to win in more places may make some on the left uncomfortable, but is argued as necessary to prevent worse outcomes.
- Political messaging that lands now: affordability is resonant; governing to deliver tangible results (e.g., housing, healthcare, cost-of-living relief) is crucial to hold voters.
- Beyond policy, politics must address civic and moral formation: young people (and young men in particular) are adrift politically and culturally, and the progressive project lacks a compelling civic language of flourishing.
- Tech and attention-economy harms are not easily handled by traditional antitrust frameworks; the problem has spiritual/social dimensions as well as economic ones.
- Public-facing intellectuals must balance engagement and independence: listen to criticism but avoid allowing online heat to reprogram work defensively.
Topics discussed (high-level)
Trump, institutions, and the shape of power
- Early collaboration from tech and law elites (inaugural gestures, law firm behavior) will look bad historically, but pushback grew over months.
- Legal opposition did strong work, but the Supreme Court enlarged executive authority more than expected — Trump gained more of the powers he asserted.
- Republican restiveness and 2025 elections suggest political constraints may grow on the administration over time.
Congress and checks on power
- Klein argues Congress has been too passive; the Republican Congress’s abdication is a structural problem for constitutional checks.
- Some Republicans began to question extreme actions (example cited: investigation into alleged wartime misconduct).
Why We’re Polarized — relevance in 2025
- Klein: the book’s thesis (party sorting into ideologically coherent groups) remains relevant and has “roared back” into focus.
- Missing emphasis in the original book: educational polarization — the Democrats clustering among the highly educated and Republicans among the less‑educated — became decisive in recent years.
- Question now: can parties (esp. Democrats) broaden enough to win enduring majorities in a place‑based U.S. system?
Abundance — politics of capacity vs. anti‑oligarchy populism
- Klein defends Abundance as largely left‑wing: it foregrounds public capacity to build housing, clean energy, infrastructure.
- Critics on the populist left argue Abundance underplays breaking corporate/billionaire power; Klein responds that corporations will be central actors in building big public projects and must be regulated and incentivized wisely.
- The book has attracted pushback partly because coalitions that span unusual allies can be read as ideological betrayal.
Democrats’ strategy in 2025 (affordability, big tent, governing)
- Affordability (cost of living, healthcare, housing) has been an effective political frame for Democrats in midterm contests and local races.
- Klein warns: making affordability the message requires a credible governing agenda — taking power and failing to deliver will produce boomerang effects.
- Bigger tent: a Democrat should believe in government capacity, fairness for working/middle class, and pluralistic civic politics — not a single ideological purity.
Social/cultural questions: young men, civic formation, and tech harms
- Policy solutions: housing affordability, labor/AI policy, and safety nets — but these may not be enough.
- Cultural solutions: politics must reintroduce a public language about flourishing, virtue, and civic formation; religious and community structures (noted Christian/Catholic discourse) currently engage these questions more effectively.
- Tech harms: competition from TikTok and algorithmic vertical video increased engagement/addiction; antitrust alone is a thin remedy — need frameworks that capture social/attention harms.
Personal & editorial pressures
- Klein has faced increased scrutiny and “heat” as his profile grew and as he tackled divisive topics. He tries to:
- Hear criticism without becoming reactive.
- Avoid programming from defensiveness.
- Maintain distance from social media to preserve independent judgment.
- Re-emphasize positions (e.g., he supports wealth taxes) when misread.
Notable quotes and lines
- “Power is contested.” — the piece’s central premise: you cannot assume institutions will check power without contest.
- “If you really believe the emergency is here… you have to get very disciplined and cold-eyed about what it would mean for the coalition that wants to end the emergency to wield power.” — on Democratic strategy.
- “Democrats are the people who make government work for you.” (suggested slogan variant: “Government that works for you.”)
- “Abundance is best understood as a fairly left‑wing project.” — on the book’s political positioning.
- “We’ve lost a language for what it means to live well.” — on civic formation and cultural deficits.
Action items / recommendations Klein signals
- For Democrats and progressives:
- Build credible governing programs around affordability (housing, healthcare, cost of living) that can actually be implemented and felt by voters.
- Be willing to broaden the coalition (ideological and geographic diversity) to win and wield power.
- Reintroduce civic language about flourishing and public virtues; engage with cultural institutions that shape young people.
- For regulators and policymakers:
- Recognize the limits of antitrust frameworks for attention-economy harms; develop remedies that address social and psychological effects of algorithmic platforms.
- Invest in state capacity — faster permitting, modular housing, clean-energy buildouts — paired with regulation and taxation of concentrated wealth.
- For public intellectuals and media-makers:
- Engage criticisms charitably, resist reactive branding/defensive programming, and maintain distance from social-media-driven reputation dynamics.
Rapid-fire highlights
- Splenda packs per day: 4–6
- Time travel: leaning toward past (fascination with 1960s–70s America)
- Surprise cultural love: Anne McCaffrey’s Dragon Riders of Pern trilogy
- Favorite lesser-known reading: theology (Christian, Buddhist, Jewish)
- Democratic billboard slogan (five words/less): “Government that works for you.”
- 2025 in one word: “Rough.”
Production & episode notes
- Host: Ezra Klein; guest/hosting partner: Claire Gordon.
- Discussed works: Why We’re Polarized (Ezra Klein), Abundance (Ezra Klein & Derek Thompson).
- Referenced guests and interlocutors: Derek Thompson, Kate Shaw, Ta-Nehisi Coates (guested at times), John Haidt, Brian Eno (episode referred to as a cool-down example).
- Credits: episode produced by Claire Gordon, Kristen Lynn, Marie Cassione; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; senior audio engineer Jeff Geld; plus a large production team. Sponsors and partner notes appear throughout (Bank of America Private Bank, MS Now, GiveWell, Betterment).
Short and practical: the year’s central argument is that the political moment is urgent (an “emergency”), that contesting power requires both institutional struggle and a pragmatic strategy to win and govern (policy capacity + broadened coalitions), and that culture and civic formation matter as much as technocratic fixes.