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Good morning, Roca Nation. Here are today’s four need-to-know stories:
Three scientists won the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discovery of how the immune system avoids attacking healthy cells (free)
Gold futures surpassed $4,000 per troy ounce, as investors sought safe-haven assets
The FBI fired multiple employees after revelations that Republican lawmakers’ phone records were monitored
The Supreme Court heard arguments on Tuesday about a law reversing bans on conversion therapy for minors (free)
By Max Towey
On September 11, the day after Charlie Kirk was shot, New York Times columnist Ezra Klein published a piece in honor of Kirk.
Klein – a vegan liberal from California who cofounded the left-leaning outlet Vox – is one of the country’s preeminent liberal commentators and shares little in common with Kirk. Nevertheless, his post-Kirk column was entitled, “Charlie Kirk Was Practicing Politics the Right Way.”
Klein wrote:
I did not know Kirk, and I am not the right person to eulogize him. But I envied what he built. A taste for disagreement is a virtue in a democracy. Liberalism could use more of his moxie and fearlessness.
He continued:
American politics has sides. There is no use pretending it doesn’t. But both sides are meant to be on the same side of a larger project… Kirk and I were on different sides of most political arguments. We were on the same side on the continued possibility of American politics. It is supposed to be an argument, not a war; it is supposed to be won with words, not ended with bullets. I wanted Kirk to be safe for his sake, but I also wanted him to be safe for mine and for the sake of our larger shared project.
Many hailed the piece as a beacon of unity and humanity in a tense moment; yet many of Klein’s left-wing compatriots tore it apart.
Matt Bernstein, whose bio describes him as a “friendly queer Jew” in New York City, broadcast this takedown of Klein’s piece to his 2.5M+ followers on Instagram and X:
i find this exhausting and even a little cruel
there is a certain type of liberal (almost always a wealthy, white man) for whom the content of someone's politics is never as important as how ‘civil’ they are in communicating them. for whom politics is an intellectual exercise more than a thing that affects people's material lives
charlie kirk ran modern-day hitler youth camps. you can condemn the gun violence that killed him (and i do, strenuously) without propping him up as some bastion of political civility. he wanted brown people's and trans people's lives destroyed, and now that is happening, thanks in large part to his ‘activism’
A viral post on Bluesky, the liberal alternative to X, read:
If liberals like Ezra are saying that someone who called for Gay people to be stoned, trans people to be lynched, Black people to accept police violence and women to obey did politics “the right way”, that is in some respects more alarming that the bloviation of the far right. Bend that knee, Ezra.
These weren’t just critiques from the fringe. No, they began to overtake the pages of the NYT itself. The most-liked comment on Klein’s piece read:
Charlie Kirk should not have been murdered. But we also need not rehabilitate his image because of the heinous circumstances of his death. Kirk frequently said things that were just plain awful and dehumanizing about racial and religious minorities and the LGBTQ community.
The NYT then published a series of “Letters to the Editor” lambasting Klein and his argument, followed by a piece by Nikole Hannah-Jones – architect of The 1619 Project, which argued that the US was actually founded with the arrival of slaves in 1619 – that labeled Kirk an “extremist” and the veneration of him “unsettling.”
Then came perhaps the biggest takedown, a piece by the influential black writer Ta-Nehisi Coates.
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Editor’s Note
We’re curious to know: Which side are you on? Let us know by replying here.
Lots of replies to yesterday’s article on the two Democrats that are trying to save the party. Sharing a few of those responses below.
Jeff wrote:
Very much reads like "can masculine Christian white men save the Democratic party?" Which is rich given the Democrats have been lecturing the world about how evil that group is for a decade. Americans will see through it as the facade that it is.
Peter said:
I am a 22 year old Gen Z voter. I think Talarico and Platner are a solid step away from the democratic establishment that so many people have grown to despise. But as a young voter, I am skeptical to the extent in which their economic policy has any chance of reducing the biggest looming issue - our national debt.
Promises for increasing spending always sound great to voters, but our issue goes deeper than not taxing billionaires enough. For example, if we were to somehow tax all the assets of billionaires in the US down to a net worth of $999 million each, we could pay for Medicare/Medicaid for 14 months. The sheer scale of government spending on programs that aren’t even successful (our healthcare system is the most expensive but not even close to the most effective in the world) won’t be fixed by just adding more to the budget.
We need leaders with a different vision for the future that can do more than just repudiate the establishment. Talarico seems closer to this. He has an actual moral vision for our country rooted in his faith, and I think that’s great. But I’m skeptical if the shift further left and left of the Democratic Party will be accepted by Gen Z men just because there is a buff guy oyster farmer giving the message now.
And an anonymous reader wrote:
James Talarico is not a real Christian. I'm a 31yo who converted 5 years ago, and I've admittedly binge-read Calvinist theology in the last 3 years, so take my perspective as you will. But his sect of Christianity (PCUSA) is an extremely liberal church that has been shedding members for a half century - basically only boomer women left. It is highly effeminate, earthly focused "christianity" that J. Gresham Machen specifically railed against in his extremely prescient book "Christianity and Liberalism"
Young men (idk if I'm young anymore..?) have been going back to church in record numbers, and gen z guys I talk to at work or church seem to validate this, but they are absolutely NOT going to liberal churches like PCUSA.
To land the plane, Talarico's message only lands with liberal boomer women or already liberal christians, so he's swimming upstream here. The biggest dent I anticipate is hearing some of his lines from some already woke nonchristian unmarried women online
And in case you missed any, find our most recent stories below:
Thanks for reading, and see you tomorrow.
—Max and Max
