The Ezra Klein Show - How a Red-District Democrat Is Navigating Trump

Episode Date: May 6, 2025

Representative Marie Gluesenkamp Perez is one of just 13 Democrats to represent a district that Donald Trump won. Her distinctive economic message, and a willingness to buck her own party, helped her win re-election. But now the reality of the Trump era is coming home.Gluesenkamp Perez faced raucous crowds at town halls in Washington State recently, with some of her more liberal constituents furious that she isn’t opposing the administration more forcefully. At the same time, the White House has started making economic arguments that sound very similar to ones that she’s made – that we should consume less, produce more and import less stuff from abroad.So I wanted to talk to her about how she’s navigating this moment. What does she think of Trump’s economic agenda? What reactions is she seeing across her district? How does a Democrat now represent both terrified liberals and loyal Trump voters?This episode contains strong language.Book Recommendations:The Wheelwright’s Shop by George SturtExperiences in Visual Thinking by Robert H. McKimChildren’s poetry anthologies from Jack PrelutskyThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [e-mail] can find the transcript and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.htmlThis episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Jack McCordick. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Aman Sahota. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Annie Galvin, Rollin Hu, Elias Isquith, Marina King, Jan Kobal and Kristin Lin. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Switch and Board Podcast Studio. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

So, thank you for watching. You go back a couple of decades in American politics and it is extremely common to have members of the House who represent a district that was won at the presidential level by the other party. But year by year, election by election, it's becoming a lot less common. At this point, only a handful of Democrats represent districts that Donald Trump won. But one of them is Marie-Gloucester Perez

from Washington's third district. And Gloucester Perez doesn't sound like other Democrats. She's a pretty different economic philosophy they do, one built around the right to repair, built around, I would say, a moral critique of what our economics has come to look like, who we value, what we value, the way we have lost respect for those who work with

their hands and the economy has become profoundly imbalanced towards a consumerism away from a producerism, which makes her particularly interesting in this moment. Because all of a sudden, people in the Trump administration began saying kind of similar things. That we should be making so much more at home, that we're addicted to cheap stuff from abroad, that we're on a sugar-high economy, that we need to detox. So let's talk a little bit about what we believe in the Republican Party. We believe that a million cheap knockoff toasters aren't worth the price of a single American manufacturing

job. If they had a choice between a doll from China that is not as well constructed as a doll made in America, and those two products are both on Amazon, that yes, you probably would be willing to pay more for a better made American product. The market and the economy have just become hooked. We've become addicted to this government spending and there's going to be a detox period.

Tariffs are about making America rich again and making America great again and it's happening and it will happen rather quickly. There'll be a little disturbance, but we're okay with that. For a lot of Democrats, this is a pretty easy moment in economic policy for them. The terrorists are causing all this upheaval. Donald Trump is less popular than he was when he was elected by a lot. Simply opposing him is enough. But if you're someone like Lucenca Perez and your marginal voter is a Trump voter,

well, how does this look to you? How has it changed your politics? I was curious to see how she was absorbing it. Things have gotten a little bit weirder in her district. There have been some very raucous town halls. So how is she thinking about what Donald Trump represents and the broader economic arguments she's been making as the politics of this begin to come into direct conflict with reality. So here's my email, azraklanshow.nytimes.com.

Congresswoman Marie-Gloucester, welcome to the show. Thank you. Glad to be here. So I wanted to start with a clip of President Donald Trump from Wednesday, talking about China and his tariffs. When will you speak to President Xi of China? When we get a lot of this. Look, right now, and I told you before, they're having tremendous difficulty because they're

factories that are not doing business. They made a trillion dollars with Biden, a trillion dollars, even a trillion won with Biden selling this stuff. Much of it we don't need. Somebody said, oh, the shelves are going to be open. Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, and maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally. What did you think of that? Well, you're talking to a lady that, like, doesn't give my child toys. Like, I'm a big believer in dirt and string and sticks, you know? But at a broader level, you know, tariffs are a tool.

A tool can be used destructively or it can be used productively. And it depends on how it's wielded. You know, talking to folks back home who really don't care at all about most politics, you know, they have very sophisticated views on Canadian lumber dumping practice. We've lost seven mills in my area last year. I think it's about seven. We want domestic manufacturing. We want self-sufficiency. We want the ability to make things ourselves. I think it's a mistake to sort of defend our identity around being just consumers and not producers as well.

But these reciprocal trade deals, it's a backroom deal for multinationals. How it's used is what matters. It's one of the reasons I'd want to talk to you about the tariffs, because in a way, members of the Trump administration have moved to making a critique that I think of as something that you've argued at times and that many people argue, which is that over decades, we became somewhat addicted to cheap stuff from China, that we lost values that we should have had in terms of what we want in the economy, in terms of what we value in the people who participate in the economy.

And on the other hand, it's yoked to this sometimes almost random seeming set of economic policies. And so I've just been curious how you're processing this. Do these feel like people sort of allied in thinking about where we've gone wrong? Do they feel like people who are like hijacked arguments you make for something completely different? Like when you think about that economic philosophy that you've been trying to push in Washington, how have you processed both the sort of overlaps and the contradictions? Well, I'm pretty focused on my community and what we want and what we believe.

And yeah, I think people have pretty nuanced views. I mean, the specifics really matter. One thing that's weird is watching the Democratic Party suddenly become the defenders of the stock market and like NASDAQ. That's a weird thing to me. And I think the question is not like what the nominal picture of wealth in these terms are, but how much economic agency and self-determination we have. Do you have the power to stay home and spend time with your family? Or are you working three jobs? Are you able to own a home, to own land, own farmland?

Or are you stuck in a cycle of perpetual running that you don't want to be in? Do you have the right to make your own stuff? Do you have a level playing field to start your own business? Those are the questions. And so that's kind of the lens that I think about these bigger international arguments on trade through. It's like, what is worth having at the end of the day? What do people really want? Well, maybe we want contradictory things. I think on the economy specifically, I think we want plentiful, cheap goods. And I think we want the self-determination, the resilience,

an economy that values and rewards production in exactly the way you say. And I always think of one of the real problems for politics as being the collision of those two things. People want policies that will get us to that self-determination and sovereignty. But then, I mean, we saw this a bit during the Biden administration. If you begin to seeing the price of things at the grocery store go up, people get pissed real quick. Yeah. I mean, I think that under NAFTA, there's this argument presented to the American public

of like, well, you're not going to have jobs anymore, but you have a bunch of cheap crap. And then when people don't have the cheap stuff and they don't have the jobs, it accelerates into a really profound anger. And I think kind of a righteous anger. And so one point is like, we don't just want cheap stuff. We want stuff that will last. I mean, I think that was one of the issues

with the CHIPS Act is it's like, well, what's driving the CHIPS shortage? Like, do I want a washing machine that can play Tchaikovsky or do I want a washing machine that will last more than three years? My washing machine's from 1997. My stove is from 1954, and I think about how many times that has been bought and sold on Craigslist, like how much

durable wealth that's created in the middle class. Not just because people were paid a living wage in America to make those things, but because then they held value and created value for the household who owned them, and then they were sold and bought and sold and bought and sold. And so like the durable wealth, people kind of belittle this argument about like washing machines and dishwashers, but it's real. And I think particularly for people who are in the trades, like, you know, it's like, shit, it's got 0.5% lower energy consumption or whatever, but they put the control panel

right underneath the drip line. So of course it's going to blitz. The marriage not just of the technical, but of the applied. Like I used to kind of run this bike shop and I'll never forget teaching a physics major how to hold a wrench. Move your hand back. You know, this is a full, you know, it is this over-specialization that has sort of deprived the underlying value itself. One thing that I think always is challenging this discussion is, is what people buy the signal for what they want? Or is what they will say in a deeper conversation the signal for what they want? Or is what they will say in a deeper conversation the signal for what they want? You know, that's one of the things is that like,

we've replaced the idea of like, freedom as the freedom to consume, you know? And I would argue that like, we're not just consumers, we're stewards, we are producers. And so it's not just what you can buy, but it's what you can make and how you can make things last and your values, your inner values manifest in the world around you. So I have a bill that would require manufacturers of household appliances to put on the sticker

the average life expectancy of that washing machine, along with the annual maintenance cost. So I think like, you know, the persistence of Speed Queen or something like that does show that people will pay more, but having a class of buyers who has that information available,

I think changes consumption habits. Do you think of these as economic policy arguments or arguments that are almost more moral and spiritual in nature? They're both. You know, my dad used to say you can talk about your values all day long, but you see somebody's tax returns and you know what they really think. One of the de-powering of the environmental movement has been supplanting real environmentalism with a consumption habit. True environmentalism is not just buying a matte package at Target.

It's not a consumer good. It is a way of being in the world. It's a relationship to the natural world around you. It is the way that you spend your life developing skills and allocating your time to live in relationship to the world around you. One of the things I really love about where I live in rural Schemania is that we don't have trash service. So I have to look at all the trash.

And, you know, of course I'm not gonna buy a single serving yogurt cup, because I'm gonna have to smell that for two or three months before we go to the dump and load up the truck and take everything. You have to see it. And I think it enforces the reality that there is nowhere else. You can't export emissions.

The climate is global. And your relationship to the world around you, not just as a terrarium, but as a dependence and as like something that informs your life daily. Like I think that really matters to informing what trade-offs people will make. So I take that point, but I mean most people want trash pickup, right? I want trash pickup. And when you think of the cities and you represent partially a city, like they're not going to work without trash pickup. You know, I'm not necessarily here to defend single cup yogurt servings.

But some of this is a kind of marvel of modernity that does have remarkable benefits and has allowed us to live in different ways and ways that are look like I have this sort of distinction of sometimes make booting green and gray environmentalism and there's ways of living deeply in harmony with the world around you and Then there's ways of living that are very unharmonious with the world around you aesthetically, but they're actually quite light footprint Living in a pretty tall high-rise is in many ways quite good for the environment because you just have a lot more economies of scale in the heating and a bunch of other things. Yes, there are economies of scale, but often they can exclude the fuller reality.

Like yes, like there is a modern convenience, but like is the climate better? Are we happier? Are we healthier? Do we have what we actually want? Or has it been supplanted? And yes, like I would like to have trash service, but would I like to have trash service enough to move to a city?

No. I very much take the point that you don't want trash service to move to a city. And I think that that's totally fair. But what do you think and how do you talk to your constituents who do? Oh, that's great. Like if you want to live in a city, like you should live, you should, yeah.

It's also true. Like you could put an apartment building in a rural town and a lot of people would get a lot of utility out of that. But I think one of the things that is missed frequently in this discussion is that like the shift to a service economy or a knowledge economy means that now your barber has to move to a city where they are not able to afford housing. When you have domestic manufacturing, if you're a mill in a rural community, you're able to own land, you're able to spend time with your

family. I'm not trying to like slight the urban issue, but I think it's that divorce from the farms you rely on, from the water that you drink, from being able to ship your garbage somewhere else and not have to smell it yourself. It changes your relationship to the natural world around you. And if you're not clear about that and those relationships, you're losing something necessary. I think you're losing something profound. Something that you've been involved in recently is the revival of the Blue Dog Democrats. And I think for my younger audience, who sort of doesn't remember the blue dogs of the the 90s, that was sort of traditionally the more moderate Democratic coalition. And it may still be that now. But the argument you all made, and I thought this was interesting, is that what you

really want to bring back is localism. That politics has become too nationalized. Tell me a bit about that. I feel this is actually pretty important to your politics, a sense that nationalization is maybe broken the way politics is supposed to work, and one answer is going to be bringing back a localism that we've lost. Yeah, my American, like my mom's side of the family, my dad's from Mexico, my mom's family's been in Washington state for five generations, pre-statehood. The last time that people in my gene pool were Democrats is when they were Blue Dog Democrats.

That still means something to people. When Blue Dogs were a large caucus, because we were holding seats that we have lost and not regained. So, it is a clear urgency of having a gavel and having the ability to govern, but it's also the question of on whose behalf and towards what end. I think having loyalty to your soil and to your community and not something that's been focus grouped in DC or that came from a think tank, but like what matters to people at home. That is what is fun.

It's like, I don't want to be a mouthpiece for any agenda besides my communities, like, because it matters to me. Like this is where I'm trying to die. You know, it's where I got married. It's where I really try to give birth. And like that loyalty and the lens that if you can build a political body that is bringing that local lens together, fierce loyalty to the specifics of our community, that is how you build the Venn diagram of what is a useful federal policy.

That's I think how we break the stranglehold that this duopoly, you know, it's being useful and relevant and building good policy out of the urgent specific realities of our community. I think something that you have correctly criticized the Democratic Party for is a sort of politics of dignity and indignity, where things that you value are not well-valued by the party, but I think by cultural elites more broadly. When you talk about the physics major, you're to show how to hold a wrench. There is a valuing of office work and a devaluing of shop work.

One thing I hear you saying is that in some ways, we should reverse the moral hierarchy. That it's actually bad to have this trash service that alienates you from your trash, right? It's kind of, it's okay for people to live in cities, but you gotta understand that we've probably got an off track in a pretty profound way in modernity.

There are a lot of people in politics who I hear like, their critique is very surface level, we should like change the dials on the tax code a little bit. When I listen to you, I hear something much more fundamental, a sense that we've gone off course in terms of what and who we value and the correction, I mean, stickers on home appliances is a good start to sort of tell people how long they last

and what they cost. But there's something that has gone wrong to you, it seems to me, morally here. Is that fair, or would you say I'm over-reading you? I think that, you know, like telling a child that what they're interested in isn't interesting or what they're good at isn't good enough is deeply toxic.

I think that there are a lot of forms of intelligence, I mean, there's millions, you know, and exactly one of them is academic intelligence. And to your point, it's like, well, you know, we're going to shut your mill down, we're going to stop harvesting timber. But hey, here's a grant that you could apply for if you're nice to me. Maybe I'll give you money. That's not what people want. People want self-determination agency.

And I think it presupposes a hierarchy that's pretty offensive to a lot of people I know, that you're gonna tell me I have a problem and that you're the one that knows how to fix it. It's this masturbatory interest in like policy without a reality of like implementation or local, localism. You know, you can't be all brain and no muscle. They're equally necessary to have a healthy body.

And there is also a false dichotomy, like, you know, not everything worth knowing you can learn in a book. Like, we don't all want to go to college. Like, don't tell me we need to go to college to be useful and to be self-realized, self-actualization or whatever. Like, we can know things and be in the world in a way that is not strictly capturable by a, or a, capturable at all by like a spreadsheet, right? So this is why I started in this Trump quote, because something to me really interesting and strange is happening in politics and economic politics right now.

Look, Donald Trump has been for decades, the living breathing embodiment of materialist excess. And Republicans probably have been quite free trade and very excited about cheap stuff from all over the world. Democrats have been a little bit more, generally speaking, pro-tariff and a little bit more skeptical. And even during the campaign, Trump is running aggressively on the cost of living, how much everything costs, how much things would be at the Walmart. And as he's sort of layered on these tariffs, you've begun seeing this other argument that was sort of

burbling around the edges of, I would call it the new right for a while, get more central. And all of a sudden, Donald Trump is talking about how we have too much cheap stuff in this country and kids shouldn't have all these dolls and we're too materialistic and we're not valuing the right things. And the Democratic Party and liberals in the Democratic Party become very pro-free trade, which is not their traditional stance. And you're watching this thing reorient really fast. And I mean, Trump is good at that.

He sort of reorients politics around him. But when you watch this and you talk about the Democratic Party becoming the party that is defensive of the line on the stock market, how have you just experienced this? Do you feel like your allies are changing? Do you feel, I guess I asked this in a way before, but do you feel like your critique is being hijacked for something that doesn't really serve it? There's something changing around you. I don't think you're changing that much,

but something is changing around you. And people are talking in a way they didn't speak before. How do you take it? Things have moved and shrunk. And you've got like 8% hyper-focused on the left and 8% hyper-on the right. And it's like they're talking and they have the mic and 8% on the right. And it's like, they're talking and they have the mic and like, it's leading this.

But I think to your point, like, yeah, my community, people in my community, their experience in the economy hasn't changed that much. Like, still can't afford rent or can't get a loan from the bank to get a house, still working three jobs, still worried about their truck getting repossessed. People's experience hasn't changed that much. It is kind of wild to me to see the same playbook getting picked up again from Trump's first

term to today, where it's like reflexive resistance. And I would argue that the urgency here is to have a positive policy agenda that is relevant to more people. If you're somebody that has the ability to go to a protest every day, like it is not reflective of the average American experience, you know, and thinking about how do you build an agenda that is more useful to your neighbors that is relevant. If you want to bring more people, like you have to present a policy position that is more popular than the policy positions Trump's proposing. And it's like, I think he has done a good job of amplifying and echoing broad dissatisfaction

with the way things are going. And we can't put ourselves in a position of just negating and refuting everything he said. It's about presenting an actual policy agenda that will address those concerns and that rage that people are feeling about their loss of agency in the world. Sometimes there are critiques about like, you know, the world's on fire and she's talking about bananas and washing machines and the right to repair. But like talking to people about the things they care about and fighting for the agenda and priorities of my community, like that is the job of a representative. I held a lot of round tables with farmers in my community when we were working on the

farm bill, and not a damn one of them said antitrust. But farmer after farmer was telling me that, yeah, I used to be able to sell my chickens to 12 different buyers, and now I can sell them to two. That matters to people. Having a level playing field for their business, having economic self-determination matters to people. I guess what I'm asking you on this, though, because I don't buy, I'm not sure if this

is what you're saying, but the tariffs are going to matter to people. This is not some elite Washington fixation. I mean, your community is going to feel them. Like, is not some elite Washington fixation. I mean, your community is going to feel them. Like, you know this much better than me. But we don't know that they're staying is the other thing. And so just being the anti-Trump... But you have to treat policy that he is proposing like it will...

I mean, it might not stay if it is opposed in a certain way, but I think I'm asking... Like, he is making an argument for these things that sounds... It's always similar. Like, I take the stylized policy here as we should dramatically raise the price of every single good that comes into this country and really dramatically raise the price of goods from China. So we wean ourselves off a lot of cheap crap

and we make it here. And if that means things cost more, and if that means you can't have things, good. Like it's time for you to like pick up, start making things here again, and like get over this neoliberal delusion that we can have, you know, everything shipped in from another continent at half price.

I mean, the tariffs will go up and they'll go down, but like, is that right? Is he right about, is he going about it wrong? Is he right on half of it? I mean, this is will go up and they'll go down, but like, is that right? Is he right about, is he going about it wrong? Is he right on half of it? I mean, this is a big policy, right? This is not weirdo Washington stuff. Like, we're all gonna feel this. Like, it's going to affect every store in the country.

I think most of us in my community share a lot of those sentiments. You know, like when they shut down the paper mills, congratulations, now we're packaging everything in plastic, disposable plastic from Saudi Arabia. And we got wildfires at home because there's no value in the residual, you know, in the slash piles. And so I would say like, the policy position can't just be anti anti anti anti but saying, all right, like, what is it gonna take to build manufacturing?

It's gonna take permitting reform. It's gonna take some antitrust work. Like, it's going to take shop class and junior high. It's gonna take the elite re-evaluating and acknowledging the nobility of people in the trades and the reality of dirty hands, clean money. So, I think it would be a mistake to just be anti, anti, anti, but instead saying, all right, if this is the thing they're going to do, how do we harness it in a way that

is productive in the long term for having the things that we actually want? Tell me a bit more about what that looks like. I hear you on permitting reform. I mean, the argument the Biden administration used to make was we are trying to compete with China by building our capacity here. We'll put tariffs on a limited number of things from China, electric vehicles, batteries, solar panels, things like that.

And we will invest a bunch in domestic manufacturing capacity and infrastructure. And that's going to get us where we need to go. Many of Trump, he says, no, what we need to do is actually just make the things unaffordable. And that's what's going to get us where we need to go. What would you keep from the two approaches or would you keep nothing from them? When you say it should be a positive agenda, what should that agenda look like? Well, I mean, a reevaluation that like, there's been this like obsession with technology

and the next like whatever lobbyist is in your office, like shilling, you know, triple glazed, argon filled windows and a blindness to the actual skilled trades of like, yeah, you know what? You get a shit ton of you put the long side of your house facing south. You put an eave on it. You know, if you put a skirt around a mobile home,

like it's a metal sheet that connects the bottom of the mobile home to the ground, creates an air gap, saves a shit ton of energy. And now those folks who have a lot of them on fixed income, living in a mobile home, like their energy bill just went way down. You don't put a hip in valleys in your roof line, you're going to need a roof that lasts for 50 years.

We ignored all of the things that we know in the trades are the kind of low-hanging fruit of energy efficiency and utility and a progressive tax system. That's one of the things that bothers me is that it's like, you know, the electric vehicle tax credits, the heat pump tax credits, like, those were profoundly regressive tax strategies. Let me ask you about the electric vehicle tax credits for a second, because let me try

to give the best version of that argument as I understand it. People will buy many, many, many new cars over the next 10, 20, 30 years. Like that's just baseline. We want there to be a big electric vehicle transition. We also want a lot of those electric vehicles to be made here. So when the Biden administration does this, they put pretty heavy tariffs. I mean, 100% as I remember it, on Chinese electric vehicles, which are our major competitor. And they do a lot of investment in domestic supply chain on that. This sort of sounds to me in broad strokes

like a policy you would like. It's not the only policy. It doesn't take away from the question, you know, of a million things we could do to weatherize homes and make homes more efficient. But if we want to make it here, if we sort of want these cars that people buy and we expect on the margin, there's going

to be a decision people make between combustion engines and electric wheels. We want them to be electric. And we want to accelerate this technology so it gets cheaper more quickly. So it's not a decision only richer people can make. That's sort of how I map that policy out in my mind. What's sort of wrong with that logic to you? I mean, I've never bought a new car in my mind. What's sort of wrong with that logic to you? I mean, I've never bought a new car in my life. But most people do eventually. I mean, that's not a rare thing in this country for people

to buy new cars. Yeah. I mean, I think first there's a priority on being a steward, a good steward of what you already have. Like that manifest environmentalism is getting your rig to make it to 500,000 miles. It is making what you have last longer and wanting less. You know, I think that there's been a lack of pragmatism a bit, like a Tesla Plaid with like a 300 mile radius, like uses 10 times as much battery minerals as it would take to have a hybrid on the road. That's one side of it. I think the other side of it is a selection bias. My colleagues and I, like, we fly a shit ton. Like, we're always on the road.

We're always seeing consumer transportation. And so that's what gets echoed. But in reality, like if you prioritize stationary electrification first, then you're not moving that heavy battery everywhere with you. You're not wearing roads out. So like port infrastructure being electrified, things like that. That is, I think, a much better bargain. That is where things should look first if you're trying to decrease the carbon footprint

of the American basket of goods. It's not just like what feels good or what's like a virtue signaling, but like what is the actual absolute value you can get. Tell me about some of the divisions over sort of these ideas are trumping your district right now. You've had some very raucous town halls recently and you've got these voters who are both the voters that Democrats win reliably and the voters that Republicans win reliably. Like you have a like a very you have a bigger coalition and a more complicated coalition behind you than most Democrats have and you have urban and rural voters in your district. So how are the different constituents you come into contact with experiencing this moment

differently? Yeah. So six out of seven counties are highly rural. You have Vancouver is kind of the big city. Vancouver, Washington is the big city in my district. And it's voted for Trump three times in a row. I performed Trump and Harris in the last election. And so yeah, I have a unique coalition.

I have a very independent community. So I think, like I was saying before, where it's like 8% here and 8% on the other side, but like most of us feel like it's all sound and fury and nobody actually gives a shit about our lives. The kind of unglamorous, like deep, bitter erosion of fentanyl addiction and farm consolidation and job loss. I really believe in showing up. I do town halls in all my counties. I've done 15 now. I think it's really important that people know that you're available and accountable

and present and meeting them where they are. When I'm talking to people, I kind of of in my head, I have these two buckets of like, was this person paid to talk to me? Or do they have to get a babysitter to come here? And I weight the input proportional to reflect like how many people in my community are paid to engage in politics. What do you mean by paid to engage in politics? Like a lobbyist or somebody that's a director, you know, they're paid to be in government relations.

They're paid, they're on the clock when they show up in my office. And if somebody had to like take time off work to come talk to me, I take that really seriously and I try to spend my time going out and talking to them, like going to where they're at to be available. That's one of the reasons like believe in town halls. At its best, it's a really powerful forum for civic dialogue. And I think at its worst, it turns into a mob where you have folks who are spending a lot of time reading news articles and they have the income to come out. And it's not reflective of most people's experience. And

it's also a valid experience, and it's also a valid opinion that I do take into consideration. But you still have to account for the fullness of your community and whether or not people have time to respond to a survey or make a public comment on some agency's website, their opinion still matters. I mean, your position now is tricky. It's like there are a lot of Democrats who their marginal voter right now is absolutely furious.

Their marginal voter is a Democrat, is somebody who might read the New York Times or listen to my podcast. And they just hate Trump. They hate what's going on. They don't see any good in it. And all that person has to do is show up and tell them how bad everything is and they're good. And your marginal voter is somebody who is at least open to this.

Your marginal voter is somebody who maybe voted for Donald Trump. And who definitely voted for Donald Trump. So put aside the people paid to talk to you, right? I agree that the lobbyists and the government affairs class are different. How are the two sides of, of the people who just vote for you, where do they diverge and where in your experience of, of your own constituency do they converge? So for a while I was getting a shit ton of letters about Hunter Biden's laptop. And I think it's easy, from people who are mad he wasn't being investigated.

And I think it's easy to kind of like dismiss that as like silly. But I think if you lift the hood up on that, what a lot of those folks are saying is that they feel like there's a legal system that works better for you if you have a different last name or you have the right lawyer. And so if we offhandedly dismiss these concerns as silly or biased, we miss an opportunity to build a coalition of people who are actually all quite unified in wanting reform of our judicial system. I think that's the intersection of

trying to like, delete the proper nouns out of the argument, figure out how terms are being used differently, what things mean to people, and what's the path to building an agenda that is more popular than what Trump is offering. Is that true though about the Hunter Biden laptop issue? I mean, I take your point that there are people all over the spectrum, because they're right, this is true, who see a judicial system that works for some people very differently than it works for others. But you've got Donald Trump offering out

pardons left and right. He is making God knows how much money off of what certainly seemed to me to be incredibly corrupt crypto schemes. I wrote a book about political polarization. To me, some of this just reflects very different news sources and the tendency we all have to believe that the people on the other team are fundamentally corrupt, even evil. And the people on our team, it's understandable.

These are old relationships. Maybe it's not as bad as you think. I guess I wonder if deleting the proper nouns from that can actually mislead. I think if you had gone from, you know from the Clinton email security fights in 2015, I guess it was, to where we are now with digital security under the Trump administration and the accessing of all these internal government databases and doing war plans on messaging apps, I don't think that's going to be a consistent line. I think that's just partisanship reshaping people's brains.

I guess what's the consequence of me being wrong about that and finding common ground and common cause for things that we all believe are worth having at the end of the day? I think it's, you're probably right for a certain segment, but like it's very easy to over account and say that that's all those people who are pissed about the laptop. And the truth is like yeah like most people they're not thinking about it at all. They're they're handling their lives day to day. But those same people still you know they know that some kids at their high school can get out of a Dewey and others can't because their parents can pay for a lawyer.

And that's going to set them off on a different track. I agree with you on that. The Hunter Biden story, I think I'm scarred by past email security debates. But I think that's why I was asking about this moment with the economy because, look, so much in politics has no visible ground truth to people. We're arguing about these bizarre complex systems that are far away or stories we don't really know. What's ground truth?

That you can't go and you can't feel it around you. And that's why I'm sort of interested in some of the debates about the economy because I do think people have common ground in the economy. They might want a lot of things all at once, but they want, I think, a lot of what you're describing. They want to be able to have a good job. They want to have autonomy in that job. They want their children to be able to do well.

They want things to be affordable in the store and also for them to have good wages and for the factories to be open and the goods, but also to be plentiful. And so I guess one question I've had is that, do you feel people shifting in one direction or another? Like are things splitting apart for you in your district? Or are they actually, as this becomes something real, you know, and people either worry about the tariffs or get excited about the tariffs, does it become more of one thing that you can work with and that you know as contours?

Yeah. I mean, I think you're right about this sort of fracture. Like I think I've talked to folks from home who like used to be a part of the Democratic Party and left. They're like, yeah, we can never be correct enough for you. And the Republicans are having a kegger. So I think that it's become quite loud, folks not seeing the reform they want, and this frustration, just saying it know? And also kind of a decay of social institutions. Like I was talking to a friend that runs

a veterans assistance nonprofit, and they told me that like volunteer rates have fallen through the floor since January. Why? Well, for one, I mean, some folks are like more in politics. You know, some people, well, you know, the cuts to food assistance programs mean that more veterans are coming in for food.

And so the volume has gone up, but the availability of people to do that work is declining. I think it's, I mean, political activism can feel really glamorous and correct. And it's like, how could you worry about these small things when the world's on fire? But I'd argue the way you put the fire out is by actually going and building community Like I don't think that democracy is something that you buy with a binary vote and one election. It is the muscle of community. It is your relationships with your neighbor

and like knowing the name of your male carrier and like talking to folks at daycare drop off and having the time to do that. And so there's that acceleration. But I was talking to somebody that's like, they're going to protest Tesla every day. A lot of their family are Trump voters, but they don't want to talk to their family. They're like, that's not the forum for that. But man, it feels good to get flicked off by guys driving F-350s. You know, it's that muscle of community and like relationships, I think, is the kind of the path out of here.

What do you tell people works within community, within that kind of local democracy? I heard something said at a town hall was that quote, being angry, being loud feels good, but is it productive? My assumption is you feel it's not loud feels good, but is it productive? By some issues you feel it's not productive. So what to you is productive? Yeah, I mean, the part of your brain that is angry is not the part of your brain

that you think strategically about with. Those are different muscles. And I think it can feel condescending to a lot of people when somebody's like, the world's on fire, everything's going to hell and I'm the only one who sees it. Like, you guys all need to wake up, you know? And it's like, I don't think people can hear that, you know? I think that curiosity and humility and relationships,

like, are very powerful tools, profoundly powerful tools. I kind of think that, like that when you have all of your wants and needs met, it's easier to empathize with someone somewhere else or a fuzzy animal than it is to have compassion for your neighbor who's got a fentanyl addiction or your neighbor that's got rolling coal or that has the wrong lawn sign up. You know, there's a reason, it's like the greatest commandment is to love your neighbor. Let me ask you something.

Sometimes I hear you say things and you seem really frustrated with, I think it's Democrats specifically. I mean, I take the point that sometimes it can be easier to empathize with, you know, I think you're saying sort of like a panda rolled away than the person right next to you. I don't know. We're disappearing people at El Salvador in terrorist prisons with no due process. Like, the terrorists will hurt a lot of these people, the same people you're talking about.

I would not say the Trump administration has been, like, amazing on fentanyl, or even strategic about it, more to the point. And there's a lot of, I think that there is a lot of fear. I mean, the way I often put it to people when I've heard the argument, look, we should be worrying about, you know, the people next door, not, you know, people being shipped off to El Salvador in prisons. Is it, I don't know, when, like, I'm Jewish, and I think I bring my own kind of assumptions to this conversation, but I look at history and I look at other countries,

and I feel like when the disappearance machine begins running, if people don't stop it, it can start going really far. Like if regimes begin to realize they can use disappearance as a tool, who that eventually comes for is not clear. So, I mean, I was asking you sort of about common ground among your constituents and what you sort of said is like, look, a lot of these people are sort of maybe sympathizing

or empathizing with the wrong folks. But I mean, is there a part of you that takes the other side of that argument that feels that Trump is trying to really fundamentally change the character of this country and its institutions and how it works, and the people who are scared as shit and like don't know what to do because they don't really have any power over it? And you know, they don't know how to get listened to, that there's a righteousness to the way they feel too. Yeah, like people are valid in their anger

and it is a fool's errand to try to talk somebody out of their feelings. That is not, that's not a good idea. But you can affirm the validity of their feelings and also present a productive strategy for resolving some of those drivers of that anger or that fear. You know, on your point about El Salvador, my dad was the pastor of a Spanish language church growing up. And you want to meet somebody that really fucking hates gangs.

You talk to an immigrant who gave up a profound amount to leave a country that was corrupt and run by gangs. That same person cares passionately about due process. They understand that the only inoculant against a corrupt regime is fidelity to due process. If we had had due process in these cases, we would be in a position to evaluate a judge's decision about whether or not that person was involved in human trafficking or whatever the claim is.

But the point is that we don't have it. And it's a deep strategic mistake to accept that we have to choose between really hating gangs and really loving due process. When you have experienced truly being afraid of being kidnapped or having your business exploited or human trafficking, like you take quite seriously, that feeling is real and valid. And the productive strategy is due process,

fidelity to due process. And I think it's kind of a yes and like, yes, it makes sense to be scared. And if you're really believing that we are entering a totalitarian state is the point here. If you're really worried that we're never going to have elections again, why is the second bullet point on your agenda primaring Democrats? That's not what people do in real scenarios like that. This has been, to me, one of the very frustrating things about the Trump administration. I also hate gangs. I don't want MS-13 operating in America.

I don't want them operating anywhere. But we have due process. That's a good way to find out if people are part of MS-13. I find sometimes it's like a political blackmail that's applied. It's like, and I'm not saying you are, but I've seen that I've heard this from other people where it's like, is your politics really to be on the side of people who might be in a gang? It's like, no, my politics is to be on the side of processes

to protect everyone and also are perfectly good at figuring out if people are in a gang. We can cross examine some witnesses, right? This is not like a thing that's going to endanger anybody. So when you're dealing with some of those issues, it's become the cleavages. I mean, for you, is it reminding people that due process is a question that goes across the immigration divide?

What do you find works for navigating that? Yeah. You know, where I live, like, we believe that countries have a right and an obligation to know who and what is coming across a border. I don't think that's crazy. And one of the, I guess, failures or weaknesses is that words mean different things all over the place. Some people talking about immigration, they're talking about drug trafficking.

And whether or not you're mad about that conflation, you do have to hear and try to get at what is the strategy, the productive strategy to address it. And not just like policing the conflation, but saying like, yeah, it fucking sucks to have a family member addicted to fentanyl. It's been frustrating for me at times, you know, in this new world I'm in, it's like, it's not hitting. They're insulated. They're not hearing these horrifying stories about industrial accidents. It's not their play date that's getting in a car wreck because daddy's on fentanyl. It's not their cousins who are robbing grandma because they've got a fentanyl. And treating that with an urgency of like, how do we stop the flow of fentanyl? How do we build resilience against foreign actors

that would like to see, you know, the entire middle class being addicted and unproductive? Do you feel that there are fentanyl policies that we know how to do that really work? Every time I've really tried to write a report this out, the level of frustration I hear from the people really working on it is, it's almost unimaginable because it is so hard, it is so concentrated, it has become so much easier than heroin was before it to transport.

Is there something you feel that if we did, it would make a big difference? That we're not doing right now that neither Biden or Trump has put their weight behind? A few things. I mean, cartels don't operate under political boundaries. And so I think multi-jurisdictional interdiction, like that works, ensuring law enforcement has the tools to be able to, you know, communicate and cooperate. Like I have issues where like some of my departments, they transition to digital radios and some of them are still on radio towers

and they can't talk to each other. They have to relay through a 911 responder, you know? Like there are issues like that. There's the geopolitical question of these Chinese produced precursor chemicals. I was talking to my dad and one of his buddies from high school was running a factory in Mexico and figured out they were bringing

in fentanyl precursors on the weekends. He went to the cops in Mexico and they were like, yeah, we fucking know. You can shut up or you can move to Canada. He moved to Canada. It's all of the supply chain going into it. There are also some, I think the GLP3s, the, is that right?

The- Yeah, the GLP1s. GLP1s. Unless there's more of that I don't know about, but there might be. It's a- But yeah, they seem to have a real effect there. They have promising studies on reducing fentanyl addiction

and helping people break that chain, but it's long work, you know. And there's other drugs that are promising, it's like, rather than having to go in and getting a dose, like, if you're living where I live, like, you can't have a job and be in recovery. You have to go drive into Vancouver, you know, an hour and a half, whatever, every day to get a treatment, to get the drugs to help you get off. There's another drug that's emergent that's like a 30-day release, things like that. There's the long work of addressing

the appetite and why people are vulnerable to these drugs. It's like interdiction of fentanyl and treatment and better options for people. If you know that you can run your own business, you can buy a log truck, you can you can do whatever you want with your life, you really do have latitude to make things in life, you're a lot less vulnerable to a cheap high. Then also a final question. What are three books you'd recommend to the audience? So there's a book my grandpa gave me, The Wheelwright Shop, is written in the 1920s by George Strute, whose family had been building

wooden wheels in England for 200 years. And like the specifics of it are just beautiful. Like he's like, you know, you had to know that that grove, the elm grows too rich. It's not good for specific uses to build a wheel that will last and that your name is attached to and that's useful to your community. You have to know how the sap is running that year. You have to know when to quarter and split.

It's a really beautiful book. There's another one, Experiences and Visual Thinking. It's like kind of a hippie, like, you know, 70s, but it is really brilliant at helping exercise the other parts of your brain that analyze problems, like drawing and using your fingers. Like it's, I think, does it a necessary part of rebuilding parts of your brain that are not just the rote correct answer, but like how to create a caricature out of your idea and then like enlarge certain parts, reduce it. It's a really useful, tangible tool. And then the other thing, you know, I've got a three and a half year old son at home and he's like, we cloned his father.

He's like a really smart, gifted little mechanic and fun, but he also really loves poetry. So any of the children's poetry anthologies from Jack Proletzky, just that reading and language is fun. It's not academic. It is not forgetting a good grade. It is joy and like the rhythm and the cadence and like moving it from a strictly like absolute like rote ABCs to like the pleasure of rhyming things and just like having fun and it is so fun to have a toddler, you're running around your house,

like making up silly rhymes. I can't recommend it enough. Congresswoman Marie-Gloucester Cabperas, thank you very much. This was fun. Thank you, Ezra. This episode of the Ezra Klein Show is produced by Jack McCordick. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris with Kate Sinclair. Our senior engineer is Jeff Gell with additional mixing by Amin Sahota. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show's production team also includes Marie Cassione, Annie Galvin, Roland Hu, Elias

Isquith, Marina King, Jan Kobel, and Kristin Lin. We have original music by Pat McCusker, audience strategy by Christina Semelewski and Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie Rose Strasser, and special thanks to Switch and Bored Podcast Studio.