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In this episode of “The Argument,” recorded on April 10 before an audience at TheTimesCenter in New York, the columnists talk immigration in the Trump era. Michelle Goldberg makes the case for shunning administration officials who carried out the president’s cruel policies at the southern border. Ross Douthat thinks liberals need to reckon more fully with Barack Obama’s mixed legacy on immigration. And David Leonhardt worries that the Democratic Party lacks a clear and convincing agenda on legal and illegal immigration.

Then, which of the lesser-known Democratic candidates are mounting the most credible campaigns for the highest office in the land? The columnists discuss Mayor Pete Buttigieg’s fresh face, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand’s “resistance” candidacy, Andrew Yang’s guaranteed-income proposal, Senator Cory Booker’s mass appeal and Senator Amy Klobuchar’s “Minnesota nice.”

Background Reading:

Ross on the Trump administration’s immigration approach and centrist Democratic candidates

Michelle on boycotting Kirstjen Nielsen, Trump’s family separation policy and women running for president.

David on Democrats and immigration policy, Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar’s candidacy

David Frum, “If Liberals Won’t Enforce Borders, Fascists Will” (The Atlantic)

Ross Douthat

I’ve been an Op-Ed columnist since 2009, and I write about politics, religion, pop culture, sociology and the places where they all intersect. I’m a Catholic and a conservative, in that order, which means that I’m against abortion and critical of the sexual revolution, but I tend to agree with liberals that the Republican Party is too friendly to the rich. I was against Donald Trump in 2016 for reasons specific to Donald Trump, but in general I think the populist movements in Europe and America have legitimate grievances and I often prefer the populists to the “reasonable” elites. I’ve written books about Harvard, the G.O.P., American Christianity and Pope Francis; I’m working on one about decadence. Benedict XVI was my favorite pope. I review movies for National Review and have strong opinions about many prestige television shows. I have three small children, two girls and a boy, and I live in New Haven with my wife.

Michelle Goldberg

I’ve been an Op-Ed columnist at The New York Times since 2017, writing mainly about politics, ideology and gender. These days people on the right and the left both use “liberal” as an epithet, but that’s basically what I am, though the nightmare of Donald Trump’s presidency has radicalized me and pushed me leftward. I’ve written three books, including one, in 2006, about the danger of right-wing populism in its religious fundamentalist guise. (My other two were about the global battle over reproductive rights and, in a brief detour from politics, about an adventurous Russian émigré who helped bring yoga to the West.) I love to travel; a long time ago, after my husband and I eloped, we spent a year backpacking through Asia. Now we live in Brooklyn with our son and daughter.

David Leonhardt

I’ve worked at The Times since 1999 and have been an Op-Ed columnist since 2016. I caught the journalism bug a very long time ago — first as a little kid in the late 1970s who loved reading the Boston Globe sports section and later as a teenager working on my high school and college newspapers. I discovered that when my classmates and I put a complaint in print, for everyone to see, school administrators actually paid attention. I’ve since worked as a metro reporter at The Washington Post and a writer at BusinessWeek magazine. At The Times, I started as a reporter in the business section and have also been a Times Magazine staff writer, the Washington bureau chief and the founding editor of The Upshot.

My politics are left of center. But I’m also to the right of many Times readers. I think education reform has accomplished a lot. I think two-parent families are good for society. I think progressives should be realistic about the cultural conservatism that dominates much of this country. Most of all, however, I worry deeply about today’s Republican Party, which has become dangerously extreme. This country faces some huge challenges — inequality, climate change, the rise of China — and they’ll be very hard to solve without having both parties committed to the basic functioning of American democracy.

How do I listen?

Tune in on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Stitcher or wherever you listen to podcasts. Tell us what you think at [email protected]. Follow Michelle Goldberg (@michelleinbklyn), Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT) and David Leonhardt (@DLeonhardt) on Twitter.

This week’s show is produced by Alex Laughlin for Transmitter Media and edited by Lacy Roberts. Our executive producer is Gretta Cohn. We had help from Tyson Evans, Phoebe Lett, Ian Prasad Philbrick and Wynton Wong. Our theme is composed by Allison Leyton-Brown.

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