Discover video-sourced quotes by politicians

Ezra Klein: “California is the frontier of the future. It always has…”

Featuring: Ezra Klein, Liberal | New York Times Columnist and Podcast Host | National

In-Studio Discussion with Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom on 'Abundance' and Democratic Governance

Published March 26, 2025 | Video Starts at 49:12

A lot of love in this book, man. A lot of love in this book. But. And then this is, I think, always the great paradox of California. California is the frontier of the future. It always has been. And technique technologically, as you said, but also culture, right? You go to Northern California, we're inventing everybody's technology. You go to Southern, we're given the whole world its culture, right? (49:12–49:17)

CLAIM

Asserts that California has historically been a leader in future developments.

This is an excerpt from a raw transcript. The assertions have not been audited or verified. Tap the video to view the source footage and understand the context.

Discover more from

Ezra Klein

“Of the 56 states and jurisdictions that were trying to apply for the money, three had made it through.”
In-Studio Discussion with Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom on 'Abundance' and Democratic Governance | Uploaded March 26, 2025 | 15:26-15:32
“It took the Affordable Care act four years to begin delivering actual insurance.”
In-Studio Discussion with Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom on 'Abundance' and Democratic Governance | Uploaded March 26, 2025 | 36:11-36:16
“We built the Empire State Building in a year.”
In-Studio Discussion with Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom on 'Abundance' and Democratic Governance | Uploaded March 26, 2025 | 36:27-36:30
“The average environmental review takes four and a half years.”
In-Studio Discussion with Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom on 'Abundance' and Democratic Governance | Uploaded March 26, 2025 | 36:29-36:33
“By the end of 2024, functionally, nobody is hooked up to [rural] broadband.”
In-Studio Discussion with Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom on 'Abundance' and Democratic Governance | Uploaded March 26, 2025 | 37:18-37:21
“Every major company [Elon Musk] has done is built on government subsidies, government loan guarantees, over 3 billion government demand.”
In-Studio Discussion with Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom on 'Abundance' and Democratic Governance | Uploaded March 26, 2025 | 1:08:34-1:08:42
“We could see the housing crisis had metastasized into something that was genuinely now a crisis.”
In-Studio Discussion with Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom on 'Abundance' and Democratic Governance | Uploaded March 26, 2025 | 03:33-03:39
“California high speed rail has always lit me on fire.”
In-Studio Discussion with Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom on 'Abundance' and Democratic Governance | Uploaded March 26, 2025 | 03:40-03:43
“We have to build faster than we have ever built and the laws don't really permit that.”
In-Studio Discussion with Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom on 'Abundance' and Democratic Governance | Uploaded March 26, 2025 | 03:59-04:06
“There is something liberalism is good at and knows how to look for, which is where can we subsidize something that people need?”
In-Studio Discussion with Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom on 'Abundance' and Democratic Governance | Uploaded March 26, 2025 | 04:08-04:15
“There's something liberalism is bad at because it doesn't know how to look for it, which is how do we create more?”
In-Studio Discussion with Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom on 'Abundance' and Democratic Governance | Uploaded March 26, 2025 | 04:14-04:21
“Not only are we not good at pursuing that, we don't even realize how often we are getting in the way of it.”
In-Studio Discussion with Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom on 'Abundance' and Democratic Governance | Uploaded March 26, 2025 | 04:23-04:30
“The cost of living crisis is worse in blue states.”
In-Studio Discussion with Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom on 'Abundance' and Democratic Governance | Uploaded March 26, 2025 | 07:55-07:58
“All these fast track bills required me to take on a bunch of new standards and requirements.”
In-Studio Discussion with Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom on 'Abundance' and Democratic Governance | Uploaded March 26, 2025 | 12:54-13:02
“One of the big headline pieces of it is $42 billion for [rural] broadband 2021.”
In-Studio Discussion with Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom on 'Abundance' and Democratic Governance | Uploaded March 26, 2025 | 15:01-15:07
“The stimulus bill under Obama that had three big headline projects for reinvestment, it had high speed rail, it had smart grid, and it had a…”
In-Studio Discussion with Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom on 'Abundance' and Democratic Governance | Uploaded March 26, 2025 | 16:14-16:28
“0 for 3.”
In-Studio Discussion with Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom on 'Abundance' and Democratic Governance | Uploaded March 26, 2025 | 16:29-16:31
“Europe builds trains better than we do. They just do. And they have governments, I checked. And they have unions more than we do.”
In-Studio Discussion with Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom on 'Abundance' and Democratic Governance | Uploaded March 26, 2025 | 20:35-20:43
“We do government different in this country than they do in Europe. There's a qualitative difference between it, which is they run government…”
In-Studio Discussion with Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom on 'Abundance' and Democratic Governance | Uploaded March 26, 2025 | 20:52-21:04
“There are two major liberal movements that happen in the 20th century. The one we think about a lot is New Deal liberalism.”
In-Studio Discussion with Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom on 'Abundance' and Democratic Governance | Uploaded March 26, 2025 | 24:02-24:12
“In the 60s, 70s, 80s, you have real problems that have emerged from this New Deal order.”
In-Studio Discussion with Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom on 'Abundance' and Democratic Governance | Uploaded March 26, 2025 | 24:29-24:36
“We are cutting highways all across the country, many of them, though not all of them through marginalized communities.”
In-Studio Discussion with Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom on 'Abundance' and Democratic Governance | Uploaded March 26, 2025 | 24:40-24:46
“There is a genuine despoiling of the environment.”
In-Studio Discussion with Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom on 'Abundance' and Democratic Governance | Uploaded March 26, 2025 | 24:51-24:58
“It's Reagan who signs the California Environmental Quality Act.”
In-Studio Discussion with Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom on 'Abundance' and Democratic Governance | Uploaded March 26, 2025 | 25:40-25:45
“Initially cea, it just says, look, when the government does stuff, it's got to produce a report on, you know, what the likely consequences…”
In-Studio Discussion with Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom on 'Abundance' and Democratic Governance | Uploaded March 26, 2025 | 26:03-26:11
“The Supreme Court rules. No, no, no, no. Public development is anything that requires a permit by the state of California.”
In-Studio Discussion with Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom on 'Abundance' and Democratic Governance | Uploaded March 26, 2025 | 27:00-27:08
“CEQA's power is amplified a lot by courts that interpreted it in a way that was very different than anybody initially.”
In-Studio Discussion with Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom on 'Abundance' and Democratic Governance | Uploaded March 26, 2025 | 27:33-27:43
“This is part of a period in liberalism where you have this rise of an environmental movement that has legal dimensions and political…”
In-Studio Discussion with Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom on 'Abundance' and Democratic Governance | Uploaded March 26, 2025 | 27:43-27:54
“The key thing about this period of liberalism, the New Left period of liberalism, is that it is fundamentally skeptical of government…”
In-Studio Discussion with Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom on 'Abundance' and Democratic Governance | Uploaded March 26, 2025 | 27:55-28:03
“The New Deal is this alliance between the government, the unions, and the corporations to build, to put people to work, to industrialize…”
In-Studio Discussion with Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom on 'Abundance' and Democratic Governance | Uploaded March 26, 2025 | 28:03-28:16
“The New Left comes in and says, we are destroying this place. We are turning this country conformist.”
In-Studio Discussion with Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom on 'Abundance' and Democratic Governance | Uploaded March 26, 2025 | 28:16-28:24
“The way it tries to square it is create a million different ways that individuals or individuals represented by nonprofit groups typically…”
In-Studio Discussion with Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom on 'Abundance' and Democratic Governance | Uploaded March 26, 2025 | 28:57-29:11
“It did not used to take this long to deliver Medicare. Medicare delivered Medicare cards a year after they passed that bill.”
In-Studio Discussion with Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom on 'Abundance' and Democratic Governance | Uploaded March 26, 2025 | 36:03-36:12
“It took on the Inflation Reduction act, which is doing the much smaller job of just beginning to negotiate prices on some drugs, three years…”
In-Studio Discussion with Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom on 'Abundance' and Democratic Governance | Uploaded March 26, 2025 | 36:15-36:23
“You are not going to hold the people you need to hold. If your answer in every term is you can't feel what I did because the government…”
In-Studio Discussion with Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom on 'Abundance' and Democratic Governance | Uploaded March 26, 2025 | 36:50-37:03
“But they would build fast in a lot of cases if we let them build fast. I mean, they're not why we didn't get rural broadband on.”
In-Studio Discussion with Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom on 'Abundance' and Democratic Governance | Uploaded March 26, 2025 | 37:14-37:21
“The difference between places that construct apartment buildings quickly and that don't is that's us 100%.”
In-Studio Discussion with Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom on 'Abundance' and Democratic Governance | Uploaded March 26, 2025 | 39:59-40:08
“If these emergency declarations and people are celebrating it, if emergency structures work better, then why is it not making the normal…”
In-Studio Discussion with Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom on 'Abundance' and Democratic Governance | Uploaded March 26, 2025 | 40:44-40:50
“The policy feedback loops are broken because people don't know who did the policy.”
In-Studio Discussion with Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom on 'Abundance' and Democratic Governance | Uploaded March 26, 2025 | 43:30-43:35
“That is a breakdown of the way the voters can maintain accountability.”
In-Studio Discussion with Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom on 'Abundance' and Democratic Governance | Uploaded March 26, 2025 | 43:43-43:49
“You can avoid short term pain in a way that ultimately creates almost unsolvable long term pain.”
In-Studio Discussion with Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom on 'Abundance' and Democratic Governance | Uploaded March 26, 2025 | 44:03-44:10
“People are furious about the homelessness problem there. And that's in large part a housing problem.”
In-Studio Discussion with Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom on 'Abundance' and Democratic Governance | Uploaded March 26, 2025 | 44:22-44:29
“In Oakland, they recalled the mayor.”
In-Studio Discussion with Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom on 'Abundance' and Democratic Governance | Uploaded March 26, 2025 | 44:32-44:35
“It is very hard to be successful when people are angry about problems that maybe you didn't cause.”
In-Studio Discussion with Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom on 'Abundance' and Democratic Governance | Uploaded March 26, 2025 | 44:56-45:03
“The reason the housing thing matters here... is that you need to make it possible for people to be [in California].”
In-Studio Discussion with Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom on 'Abundance' and Democratic Governance | Uploaded March 26, 2025 | 49:30-50:03
“The point of California's riches is that they should be shared... through the ability of people to go live in these super high productivity…”
In-Studio Discussion with Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom on 'Abundance' and Democratic Governance | Uploaded March 26, 2025 | 49:58-50:10
“In making these cities so expensive, we did the real gating. We really closed the frontier, because the true frontier isn't land, it's…”
In-Studio Discussion with Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom on 'Abundance' and Democratic Governance | Uploaded March 26, 2025 | 50:22-50:30
“The Merced Bakersfield leg, which is the leg that is currently being tried... had line of sight on something like it was in the range of 11…”
In-Studio Discussion with Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom on 'Abundance' and Democratic Governance | Uploaded March 26, 2025 | 51:43-51:56
“The estimate on finishing [Merced to Bakersfield] was 36 billion.”
In-Studio Discussion with Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom on 'Abundance' and Democratic Governance | Uploaded March 26, 2025 | 52:03-52:07
“For this to really work, it needs to be L A to San Francisco and that would cost $110 billion.”
In-Studio Discussion with Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom on 'Abundance' and Democratic Governance | Uploaded March 26, 2025 | 52:42-52:47
“There is not a line of sight on that 36 to 110 billion. Right. That, that doesn't exist.”
In-Studio Discussion with Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom on 'Abundance' and Democratic Governance | Uploaded March 26, 2025 | 53:59-54:04
“The ridership in those quarters, as fast growing as they may be, is not enough to throw off money. It's not even enough to handle that…”
In-Studio Discussion with Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom on 'Abundance' and Democratic Governance | Uploaded March 26, 2025 | 54:44-54:51
“It wasn't exempted from CEQA in the first place. It's a pro environmental project.”
In-Studio Discussion with Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom on 'Abundance' and Democratic Governance | Uploaded March 26, 2025 | 55:30-55:34
“The federal program wasn't just for high speed rail. It was to start where you had air pollution for marginalized communities.”
In-Studio Discussion with Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom on 'Abundance' and Democratic Governance | Uploaded March 26, 2025 | 56:14-56:22
“People have no fucking idea what is happening in these regulatory processes.”
In-Studio Discussion with Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom on 'Abundance' and Democratic Governance | Uploaded March 26, 2025 | 57:56-58:01
“Even those of us covering the stimulus bill were not looking at the precise requirements in the notice of funding opportunity in the grant…”
In-Studio Discussion with Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom on 'Abundance' and Democratic Governance | Uploaded March 26, 2025 | 58:24-58:34
“The Democratic Party is very legalistic. It's got a lot of lawyers in it.”
In-Studio Discussion with Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom on 'Abundance' and Democratic Governance | Uploaded March 26, 2025 | 1:00:41-1:00:45
“What really connects government to people is outcome, is a lived experience of government acting in their life.”
In-Studio Discussion with Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom on 'Abundance' and Democratic Governance | Uploaded March 26, 2025 | 1:01:58-1:02:05
“The culture of liberal governance has actually been to try to generate political support by giving things to interest groups in the middle…”
In-Studio Discussion with Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom on 'Abundance' and Democratic Governance | Uploaded March 26, 2025 | 1:02:57-1:03:06
“Democrats have developed a dysfunctional relationship with technology and in way the future.”
In-Studio Discussion with Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom on 'Abundance' and Democratic Governance | Uploaded March 26, 2025 | 1:06:34-1:06:39
“The harms of social media became really salient to people [around 2016].”
In-Studio Discussion with Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom on 'Abundance' and Democratic Governance | Uploaded March 26, 2025 | 1:06:38-1:06:48
“A huge amount of social progress...is not just new social insurance programs...it's technology.”
In-Studio Discussion with Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom on 'Abundance' and Democratic Governance | Uploaded March 26, 2025 | 1:07:15-1:07:29
“For the people who have health insurance, which is most people, what really matters is when you get sick, is there a cure?”
In-Studio Discussion with Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom on 'Abundance' and Democratic Governance | Uploaded March 26, 2025 | 1:09:21-1:09:28
“If we could do more modular housing, it would change what is possible in housing policy.”
In-Studio Discussion with Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom on 'Abundance' and Democratic Governance | Uploaded March 26, 2025 | 1:12:15-1:12:19
“Trump and [his supporters] are trying to destroy wind and solar.”
In-Studio Discussion with Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom on 'Abundance' and Democratic Governance | Uploaded March 26, 2025 | 1:12:33-1:12:36
“They don't want more trade. They don't want more people.”
In-Studio Discussion with Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom on 'Abundance' and Democratic Governance | Uploaded March 26, 2025 | 1:12:36-1:12:39