TLP Weekend Edition (December 6-7, 2025)
What we're reading and checking out.
📚 The War on Science: Thirty-Nine Renowned Scientists and Scholars Speak Out About Current Threats to Free Speech, Open Inquiry, and the Scientific Process, edited by Lawrence Krauss. Trump is doing his own number on science these days, but it’s important to remember—or to know—what had been happening in science before his second term began. And it’s not good. This is a terrific essay collection that will get you up to speed on all the different ways in which science has been undermined in the recent past in the name of “social justice.”
From assaults on merit-based hiring to the policing of language and replacing well-established, disciplinary scholarship by ideological mantras, current science and scholarship is under threat throughout western institutions. As this group of prominent scholars ranging across many different disciplines and political leanings detail, the very future of free inquiry and scientific progress is at risk. Many who have spoken up against this threat have lost their positions, and a climate of fear has arisen that strikes at the heart of modern education and research. Banding together to finally speak out, this brave and unprecedented group of scholars issues a clarion call for change.
Topics include: Free speech, victimhood, ideology, corruption of academic disciplines, cancel culture, DEI, gender, and race, and what we can do.
🎙️ “The Shifting Politics of Transgender Rights,” by Ross Douthat. For arguably the past five years—perhaps even longer—one set of issues that has set the culture wars aflame is those related to “gender identity,” and specifically transgender identity. TLP has written about this on more than one occasion, and since the 2024 election, advocacy groups seem to have realized the necessity of moving the topic more into the public sphere for a long overdue dialogue. This week, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat sat down with Chase Strangio, a lawyer for the ACLU who earlier this year argued before the Supreme Court in the case of United States v. Skrmetti and who once called the Times’ coverage of transgender issues “insidious” and “absolutely terrible.” In a wide-ranging conversation, Douthat and Strangio cover numerous topics that until recently many have considered taboo. Here is how Douthat teed up the interview:
My guest this week, Chase Strangio, has been at the forefront of the activist push on these issues—for instance, as the first openly transgender American to argue before the Supreme Court. Our conversation is about legal strategy, political backlash, the Trump administration, and where this cultural fight might go. But it’s also an experiment in arguing about these issues directly, looking for common ground and understanding but also fruitful disagreement, across a divide that’s likely to be with us for some time.
📔 “The Left’s Project Has Just Begun,” by John B. Judis. In Compact, Ruy’s longstanding co-author and friend John Judis takes issue with one of his recent pieces about the failures of the left. John says Ruy is being too harsh on the left, and despite its manifest deficiencies tied mainly to cultural radicalism and geographic and demographic concentration among urban professionals, the contemporary left of Bernie Sanders and Zohran Mamdani should not be written off so fast.
The democratic socialists and left-wing progressives who have gotten elected have steered clear of the most extreme stances, but as Sanders’s own trajectory on immigration from skeptic in 2016 to booster in 2020 demonstrates, they still end up with positions that put them at odds with much of the electorate. If the left wants to expand its reach beyond what could be called “greater Brooklyn,” it will have to rethink its insularity on cultural issues.
Of course, so, too, will its counterpart on the populist right. If the left is saddled with defunding the police or open borders, the populist right has limited its appeal by its opposition or grudging support for government healthcare and childcare programs, its opposition to abortion, and its unforgiving stance against long-settled law-abiding illegal immigrants and genuine asylum seekers. It also has had to contend with the anti-semitism and racism of the extremists in its midst.
Whether either left or right can transcend its own cultural and social limitations will depend on whether leaders arise who can craft a politics that does so. In the last century, Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan were able to do that for their fractious following. Trump is unlikely to succeed in doing the same. His version of populism is corroded by corruption and cultural extremism as well as by compromise with market liberalism. The battle will begin after he leaves office. The populist right will have a head start, but it is far too early to write off the left.
It’s a good piece, and we encourage you to read it along with Ruy’s original TLP post, “The Left’s 21st Century Project Has Failed,” and make up your own mind.
⚽️ MLS Cup Final, Inter Miami vs. Vancouver, from Chase Stadium, Fort Lauderdale. The MLS is planning to align its schedule with the summer-to-spring one used in the rest of world starting in 2027. Until then, we’ll get two more December Cup finals before it moves to May after the shift. And this year’s Cup should be a banger as Lionel Messi and Inter Miami take on Thomas Müller and the Whitecaps, a team on an incredible late season run to make their first MLS Cup. The match is taking place about as far away from Vancouver as possible and is sure to be loaded with Miami fans. But Vancouver beat Miami back in April so they can’t afford to take their points-awarded home-field advantage for granted.
Kick-off starts Saturday at 2:30 PM EST on Fox.
🎸 The Universe Smiles Upon You ii, by Khruangbin. In a mere decade, the Houston-based trio Khruangbin went from a niche indie club act to a global phenomenon. It all started with this first full-length record, reimagined for its tenth anniversary. If you haven’t seen them yet, do yourself a favor and catch one of their live shows. Mesmerizing guitar tones, silky bass, and tight drum beats make for an untroubled evening full of grins.