After the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, New York Times columnist Ezra Klein wrote a piece that many saw as too sympathetic to Kirk's legacy. Ta-Nehisi Coates responded with a piece in Vanity Fair criticizing Klein's take, comparing it to the whitewashing of the Confederate cause after the Civil War. Let's talk about it.

• Ta-Nehisi Coates and Ezra Klein Hash Out Their Charlie Kirk Disagreement (The Ezra Klein Show, 9/28/25)
• Charlie Kirk Was Practicing Politics the Right Way by Ezra Klein (NYT, 9/11/25)
• Charlie Kirk, Redeemed: A Political Class Finds Its Lost Cause by Ta-Nehisi Coates (Vanity Fair, 9/16/25)

We’d love to hear from you! Email Charles at [email protected]