RCP Podcast: Supreme Court Weighs Trans Athletes, Dems Debate Economic Populism, Bob Weir and the Spirit of the Grateful Dead

Tuesday on the RealClearPolitics podcast, Tom Bevan, Andrew Walworth, and Mary Katharine Ham discuss the political implications of the Supreme Court hearing cases on transgender athletes competing in girls' sports, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren's warning to fellow Democrats that the party must embrace economic populism to win future elections.

After that, New Yorker writer Nick Paumgarten joins the show to discuss the legacy of Grateful Dead co-founder Bob Weir, who passed away this weekend at 78.

You can listen to the show live each day at 11:00 a.m. on SiriusXM's Megyn Kelly Channel 111 and then on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and here on our website.


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The program opens with the Supreme Court hearing arguments today over Idaho and West Virginia laws banning transgender athletes from participating in girls' school sports, setting up a decision on how Title IX applies to gender identity and biological sex. How far will the cultural pendulum swing back on this issue?

"The normie vote is on the side of biological sex distinctions being what these things were meant to embody, and that it is unfair, particularly in sports, to have post-pubescent guys biologically competing with women," Mary Katharine Ham commented. "The Biden administration sort of preempted everyone by just saying that Title IX covers gender identity. This is actually an attempt to correct for that, and now we will get a better legal consensus on what that is."

"It is ironic that the plaintiffs are arguing that Title IX, which was set up to protect women in sports to begin with, is a basis to effectively displace women in sports," Bevan said. "We're seeing the pendulum swinging back in the other direction—in all of these corporations, academia, everywhere—on woke in general, on DEI, but also on this transgender stuff."

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After that, at minute 19, the group discusses Sen. Elizabeth Warren's speech yesterday making the case to her fellow Democrats that they need to credibly embrace economic populism if they want to win elections.

"The question is, what exactly is she proposing?" Bevan commented. "On the extreme end of the spectrum is Democratic Socialism, the Mamdani program of freezing rent and offering all these goodies. That might entice voters who want a free ride, but at the end of the day, it will come with some adverse consequences."

"California is a great example, where the answer is free everything," Mary Katharine Ham added. "That message is just simple enough that the billionaires also hear it. California passed a ballot initiative to enact this wealth tax in January, so the billionaires are leaving in December."

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About 36 minutes into the program, the group welcomes Nick Paumgarten, a longtime Grateful Dead chronicler from The New Yorker, to discuss the legacy of band co-founder Bob Weir, who died this weekend at 78.

"The Grateful Dead were sort of ridiculous," Paumgarten said. "I take them very seriously as musicians and cultural figures and cosmic cowboys—but they were also pretty silly. Bob embodied that. His dancing around, his rock star routine, his cowboy songs, his absurdist take on things."

"When he met Garcia at 16, I think he’d already been kicked out of about a dozen prep schools. He was just not cut out for a square life, or a life of deference to authority, so he found the right tribe, becoming the little bro," he said. "By the end, he was this grand old man. You see him in his Birkenstocks and his clam diggers and his poncho, uttering these sort of gnomic, short cowboy pronouncements."

"This music is going to last. It’s organic. Other people can play it. The songs are built to last. I expect it to be around for hundreds of years," he added.

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