Ezra Klein Interviewed Sarah (Tim) McBride on his NYT Podcast

And it’s very revealing

June 17, 2025

First, I had a very fun conversation with Maine resident Cynthia Dill yesterday. You can watch it here, if you’d like. Dill served two terms in the Maine House of Representatives and one term in the Maine Senate, all as a registered Democrat, before losing a bid for Congress. She has since left office and gone into private practice as a lawyer, and re-registered as an Independent because she is sick of the Democrats throwing women and girls under the bus at the altar of “trans.” She shared with me the great news that four Democrats in the Maine House recently crossed the aisle and voted to protect women’s sports in Maine.

I also learned today that Robert Wintemute, a professor of human rights law at King’s College London, has recently published a book titled, Transgender Rights vs. Women's Rights: From Conflicts to Co-Existence. This is the book’s description:

“Trans rights are human rights!” “Women’s rights are human rights!” Yes, but the human rights of two groups often conflict. The only way to resolve these conflicts is through calm, rational, public debate. Freedom of expression protects the right of women to question certain demands by trans rights activists, even if this might offend. Raising conflicts between transgender rights and women’s rights is not “transphobic”, because disagreement is not hatred. The concept of “transphobia” should be defined narrowly as statements or acts indicating hostility or prejudice towards transgender persons. If the right to speak about conflicts is protected, and we start by acknowledging the broad areas of agreement about the human rights of transgender people, we can turn to the substance of these conflicts.

Should it be possible for an individual to change their legal sex? If so, how easy should it be? Should it be changeable only after a diagnosis of gender dysphoria and a waiting period? Or should it be sufficient to “self-identify” as a person of the opposite sex? Or should sex be removed from birth certificates, so that there is nothing to change?

Robert Wintemute carefully examines these conflicts, considers the differences between transgender rights and lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) rights, and proposes ways to achieve co-existence between transgender rights and women’s and children’s rights.

Wintemute was a signatory to the original Yogyakarta Principles, which argued that “gender identity” is “integral to every person’s dignity and humanity.” He later walked back his support for the principles, acknowledging that when he signed onto them, he wasn’t thinking about how they undermined women’s sex-based rights.

In 2023, he was scheduled to give a talk at McGill University in Canada, titled, “The Sex vs. Gender (Identity) Debate In the United Kingdom and the Divorce of LGB from T.” The event was cancelled after a group of angry students threw flour in his face and unplugged his projector.

Now he appears to be seeking compromise. I’m a big fan of calm, rational, public debate, and of freedom of expression. However, I’m very wary of any attempt at compromise that is grounded in the idea that “trans” is a coherent concept. It’s not.

In any event, this post is about an interview that journalist Ezra Klein recently conducted with Representative Sarah (Tim) McBride (D-DE), published in the New York Times earlier today.

Tim McBride decided that he’s a woman named Sarah in 2012, while serving as head of the student government at American University. In 2010, he had served as the personal assistant and driver of Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden (President Biden’s oldest son, who died tragically in 2015). After graduating in 2012, McBride landed an internship at the Obama-Biden White House. He later went on to work at the Human Rights Campaign, and in 2016, spoke at the DNC. He then became a state senator and is now a Representative for Delaware’s at-large congressional district. In 2015, during the annual gala of the Human Rights Campaign, then First Lady Jill Biden gushed about how close the Biden and McBride families are. Malcolm Clark has done a deep dive into McBride’s history of bullying women.

Klein’s interview with McBride is very revealing, and I surprised myself by agreeing with McBride on a lot of what he had to say. Read on to learn more.

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