Ever since the Supreme Court abolished the constitutional protection for abortion, activists have been fighting in the states -- to protect abortion rights where possible, and to expand them where that’s possible. They’ve had some remarkable success, at least in the short run. Katha Pollitt reports. Also: the attack on Salman Rushdie. Plus: The Organization of American States released a statement admitting, finally, that the international community was responsible for the crisis ravaging Haiti t...
Aug 17, 2022•39 min
Liz Cheney is way behind in the polls leading up to next week’s Wyoming primary. John Nichols went to Wyoming to see her in action, and reports that she’s “fighting to outlast and replace Trump as the manager of the right-wing franchise in American politics.” Also on this week's show, a deep dive into Orange County, California. Ronald Reagan once called it “the place all good Republicans go to die.” But there’s another history of Orange County. LA Times columnist and author of the new book “A Pe...
Aug 10, 2022•38 min
Pramila Jayapal is head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and represents Seattle in the House. She will explain how, as a young immigrant from India, she went from being an investment banker to a lifelong organizer. Her book, “Use the Power You Have: A Brown Woman's Guide to Politics and Political Change,” is out now. Also historian Eric Foner talks about about voting rights and voter suppression, about who gets to be a citizen, the rights of undocumented immigrants, and about the roots of...
Aug 03, 2022•32 min
Jordan Peterson’s books of advice for men have sold five million copies – he says men should work hard, be responsible, demand more of themselves—and make their beds.” Katha Pollitt joins the Start Making Sense podcast to discuss. Also: The synergy between politics and popular culture has never been clearer or stronger than in the Age of Reagan. J. Hoberman, author of “Make My Day: Film Culture in the Age of Reagan," explains how this came to be. Hoberman was a legendary film critic for the Vill...
Jul 27, 2022•34 min
The Supreme Court next term will take up a case that could make Trump’s fake electors scheme the law of the land. Daniel Squadron explains the situation – and how winning majorities in state legislatures in swing states is the key to preserving democracy in 2024. Squadron is the co-founder and executive director of The States Project . Also: Ivana Trump, the mother of Ivanka, Don Junior and Little Eric, died last week – Amy Wilentz comments on her memoir, “Raising Trump,” first broadcast in 2017...
Jul 20, 2022•38 min
On Tuesday the January 6 committee held yet another dramatic hearing, this one on the origins of the ‘Stop the Steal” rally and the events that provoked that 1:30 am tweet of Trump’s urging supporters to come to Washington, where it “will be wild.” John Nichols has our analysis. Also on this week's episode, Rebecca Solnit and Thelma Young Lutunatabua say it’s not too late to act to slow climate change. Their new project, Not Too Late , invites newcomers to join the climate movement, and guides p...
Jul 13, 2022•37 min
What is to be done about The Supreme Court? David Cole , national legal director of the ACLU, and legal affairs correspondent for the Nation, has the best answer: organize, and vote. Also: the people who say “America is a Christian Nation” had some big victories at the Supreme Court last week, on school prayer, and on taxpayer funding of religious schools. Sarah Posner comments on the endgame of the Christian Nationalists; she’s the author of Unholy: How White Christian Nationalists Powered the ...
Jul 06, 2022•33 min
The end of abortion in 26 states will be deadly for many poor women, especially poor women of color. Law professor Michele Goodwin explains, reviewing the history of forced pregnancy under the slave regime in antebellum America, and how it was banned by the 13th Amendment’s prohibition of “involuntary servitude.” Also: How will the war in Ukraine end? The Russians have failed to install a puppet government there but the Ukrainians are not going to recover the territory Russia seized in 2014. So ...
Jun 29, 2022•38 min
In understanding the January 6 insurrection, much of the focus has been on white nationalist militias like the Proud Boys. But white evangelicals also played a big part on January 6. Sarah Posner, author of Unholy: How White Christian Nationalists Powered the Trump Presidency, and the Devastating Legacy They Left Behind , joins the podcast to discuss religion's role in the riots. Also: Republicans have opened another front in the culture war with the slogan “parental rights." Joan Walsh joins th...
Jun 22, 2022•38 min
The January 6 committee hearings have been powerful and devastating, explains John Nichols . We’re also still thinking about Chesa Boudin's recall in San Francisco. Pundits everywhere are saying it means Democrats need to abandon their commitment to reforming the police and the criminal justice system. Peter Dreier doesn’t agree, explains why this week's on the podcast. Subscribe to The Nation to support all of our podcasts: thenation.com/podcastsubscribe . Advertising Inquiries: https://redcirc...
Jun 15, 2022•35 min
The results of Tuesday’s primaries in L.A. and San Francisco, according to the New York Times, were “a stark warning to the Democratic Party about the potency of law and order as a political message in 2022.” John Nichols disagrees. Also: our preview of the live TV hearings of the House committee on the January 6 insurrection . Plus: sex, politics, and the Southern Baptists: Southern Baptists have been at the center of the Trump movement, but now the denomination has been rocked to its core by a...
Jun 08, 2022•40 min
The coming repeal of constitutional protection for abortion leaves us with a lot of work to do--to protect and expand abortion rights in the states where it will remain legal, and to help women in states where it will be banned. Katha Pollitt joins the Start Making Sense podcast to explain what we need to do now – in politics, health care, and funding. Plus: “Bad Mexicans” – that what the revolutionaries of 1910 were called as they fought on both sides of the US-Mexico border against the robber ...
Jun 02, 2022•38 min
The next 6 months will be crucial in determining what happens to American democracy in 2024. Republicans are preparing to challenge the popular vote in many of the states they control by empowering state legislatures to pick electors for the electoral college rather than voters. To do that, they also need to elect Republican governors. The Nation's national affairs correspondent, John Nichols, joins this week's show to discuss how the most crucial battlefield for those efforts right now is in Pe...
May 25, 2022•39 min
Tuesday’s Democratic primaries for the House were flooded with money from pro-Israel groups seeking to defeat progressive candidates. It worked in North Carolina, but not Pennsylvania, where Summer Lee won. John Nichols has our analysis. Also in this week's show, a discussion with Lynn Garafola about Bronislava Nijinska, the ballet dancer, choreographer, and long-neglected sister of the legendary dancer Vaslav Nijinsky. Garafola , author of the new biography, La Nijinska, Choreographer of the Mo...
May 18, 2022•42 min
It’s all up to the states now, where activists are fighting to elect pro-choice candidates and strengthen laws protecting abortion rights, and grassroots groups are preparing an enormous logistics operation to move people across entire regions of the country that are about to go dark on abortion access. Amy Littlefield , The Nation ’s abortion access correspondent, weighs in. We also have the elected District Attorney of San Francisco, Chesa Boudin , on progressive prosecutors and their opponent...
May 11, 2022•40 min
Why did we stop believing that people can change? Don’t we want people who did bad things to understand the damage they caused? Don't we want them to acknowledge it and make reparations? Bestselling author, Rebecca Solnit explains. Also on this week's show, Historian Eric Foner comments on the ways Republicans have made the teaching of American history a key battleground in their culture war against Democrats in the upcoming elections —especially the history of the American revolution. Advertisi...
May 04, 2022•39 min
Biden’s “new and improved” procedure for admitting Ukrainian refugees to the U.S. is “disgraceful." Historian and Nation contributor , David Nasaw joins us to discuss the shortcomings of the policy, and how it excludes all asylum-seekers who aren’t white and European. Also: Abortion and its opponents. Do opponents of abortion really believe abortion providers are “baby-killers”? There’s some new research about that that found opponents help family members and friends get abortions. Katha Pollitt...
Apr 27, 2022•31 min
The Amazon workers on Staten Island have won a historic victory—but now they must prepare to strike, and to win support for their strike from the community power structure. The Nation’s Strikes Correspondent, Jane McAlevey explains why, and how Also on this week's show, we have a conversation with Margo Jefferson about her new memoir, “ Constructing a Nervous System. ” Her earlier memoir, “ Negroland ,” won the National Book Critics Circle Award, and before that she won a Pulitzer Prize for crit...
Apr 20, 2022•45 min
The sheriff of Los Angeles County: he’s got 10,000 deputies, in America’s biggest county, with 10 million people - and he’s become LA’s biggest political problem as he faces reelection. LA Times columnist Gustavo Arellano , recently interviewed the LA sheriff, Alex Villanueva, and is on the show to talk about the LAPD's war on L.A.'s black community. Also: Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson won’t be seated on the Supreme Court until late June, but we’re still thinking about the significance of her conf...
Apr 13, 2022•37 min
How could the war in Ukraine end? Anatol Lieven says Russia could gain control of the entire Donbass region and then declare a cease-fire – but if we want Russia to withdraw, we’ve got to give it incentives to do so. Lieven is a senior fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and a contributor to The Nation . Also: What if everybody voted? What if voting was a duty, not just a right, an obligation, something like jury duty? E.J. Dionne and Miles Rapoport explain; their new book ...
Apr 06, 2022•38 min
Ginni Thomas , the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, will be called to testify before the House Committee investigating the January 6 insurrection. Joan Walsh has our analysis of the text messages she sent supporting the riot, and of their significance for the court ––as well as our politics. Also: Monday April 4 is the Day Of Action to Abolish Student Debt, when thousands of young people will gather in Washington D.C. to say "Pick Up the Pen, Joe" -- and abolish student debt via ex...
Mar 30, 2022•32 min
The Senate confirmation hearings for Biden’s Supreme Court nominee, Ketanji Brown Jackson, have been following a familiar script: opponents look for scandal, and nominees say very little about how they’ll decide cases. Progressives instead should be arguing—inside and outside the hearings—that the Constitution requires protecting our “republican form of government” from becoming a “moneyed aristocracy” or “oligarchy,” Joseph Fishkin and William E. Forbath explain. Their new book is called The An...
Mar 23, 2022•34 min
Bhaskar Sunkara, the founder of Jacobin, has become President of The Nation . He joins us to talk about what independent media can and should do during wartime. Also: “the Left in Purgatory”-- at the end of a period of rapid politicization, settling into either gradual decline or slow advance. Plus: the changing politics of comic books, from WWII to today: critic J. Hoberman explains how comics served as wartime propaganda in the 1940s, how they were condemned as causing juvenile delinquency in ...
Mar 16, 2022•38 min
Jamie Raskin , member of the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 insurrection, talks about the committee’s evidence against Trump –and the committee’s future if Republicans prevail in the midterms. He represents Maryland’s 8th District in the House, and was manager of Trump’s second impeachment trial. His new book is “ Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of American Democracy .” Also: Historian Michael Kazin joins us to explain what the Democrats have done wrong ––and what ...
Mar 09, 2022•37 min
Putin’s indefensible invasion of Ukraine has revived the Cold War, and renewed militarism and nuclear threats. We need Russia to negotiate a ceasefire—but we also can’t forget about fighting pandemics and climate change, editorial director Katrina vanden Heuvel says. Also on this episode, our justice correspondent Elie Mystal talks about his new book, Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution . “Our constitution is not good. It urgently needs to be reimagined if we want justice...
Mar 02, 2022•30 min
Now that Canada's "Freedom Convoy" has come to an end, we're wondering: was this protest really a working-class movement? As Jeet Heer explains on this week's episode, the leadership and funding for the protest came from right-wing networks, and the “truckers” were mostly owners of trucking firms rather than drivers. Nevertheless, it was a movement that gained significant support, and something left-wing political activists should pay attention to, Heer says. Also this week, Amy Wilentz remember...
Feb 23, 2022•31 min
Mitch McConnell thinks Republicans are going to lose the Senate in November if Trump's candidates and issues dominate the election. Is McConnell right? Our national affairs correspondent John Nichols weighs in. Also this week, Peter Richardson discusses Hunter S. Thompson, the writer credited for inventing “Gonzo Journalism." Thompson wrote a classic book about Richard Nixon, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, ‘72 . Richardson, author of Savage Journey: Hunter S. Thompson , explains how he...
Feb 16, 2022•33 min
When Biden took office, progressives looked forward to a dramatic transformation of Trump’s anti-immigrant policies—and Biden’s initial moves were promising. But since then, many people have been disappointed. Ahilan Arulanantham, a professor at UCLA Law School and co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy comments on the topic. Before working at UCLA, Arulanantham litigated a number of cases involving immigrants’ rights at the ACLU of Southern California. Also this week, Amy Wile...
Feb 09, 2022•39 min
The Democrats are not doomed to defeat in the midterms, says Ro Khanna . Politics can turn around in the next few months. Khanna represents Silicon Valley in Congress, where he’s a prominent figure in the Progressive Caucus. His new book is Dignity in a Digital Age: Making Tech Work for All of Us . Additionally, Katha Pollitt comments on The Right to Sex , a provocative title by the feminist philosopher Amia Srinivasan. Does anyone have a right to sex? Who does? Who doesn't? Subscribe to The Nat...
Feb 02, 2022•30 min
Donald Trump is responsible for about 100,000 unnecessary deaths from Covid-19 during his presidency, according to scientists at The Lancet . John Nichols explains who in his administration made which of the deadly decisions, and who made money off of the pandemic: a topic he delves into in his new book, Coronavirus Criminals and Pandemic Profiteers . This episode also covers slavery and its political legacy in Congress: More than 1,700 congressmen owned Black slaves, according to The Washington...
Jan 26, 2022•37 min
