Start Making Sense Clips: Recent Episodes
Start Making Sense Clips
After gangs took over most of Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s acting prime minister, Ariel Henry, agreed to step aside. Longtime Haiti observer Amy Wilentz analyzes the forces at work shaping the country’s next steps.
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
You might think Republicans would take a breather after banning abortion in the states they control; but no: they’ve set their sights on a new target: no-fault divorce. Katha Pollitt explains.
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
The Black family under slavery and after -- down to Barack and Michelle and Sasha and Malia. Historian Brenda Stevenson explains; her new history of the enslaved black family is “What Sorrows Labour in My Parent’s Breast.”
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
Climate change is raising sea levels, and soon low-lying coastal areas will be under water. But the most severe threat, the brunt of the suffering, is coming first to low-lying islands around the world -- even though they are least responsible for global warming. Christina Gerhardt comments – her remarkable new book is “Sea Change: An Atlas of Islands in a Rising Ocean.”
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
What does it mean to be a politically committed writer? Adam Shatz talks about that—it’s the focus of his new book, “Writers and Missionaries: Essays on the Radical imagination.” He’s The Nation’s former literary editor and US editor of the LRB.
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
Ron DeSantis is campaigning for president promising to “stop woke history” – stop teaching about slavery and its legacy of institutional racism. Adam Hochschild found the history curriculum DeSantis wants—the Hillsdale College “1776 Curriculum.” He reports on what’s in it—and what’s not.
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
11,500 members of the Writers Union are on strike--against the film, TV and streaming companies--with picket lines up in L.A. and New York. Both sides have prepared for a months-long conflict; award-winning TV writer Josh Gondelman explains the issues.
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
Joe Biden announced that the theme of his reelection campaign will be that the Democrats are the party of “freedom.” But the Republicans claim THEY are the defenders of freedom. Who is right? Eric Foner has the answer -- he's the author of "The Story of American Freedom."
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
A neighborhood in Port-au-Prince fights back against the gangs: Amy Wilentz comments on the news from Haiti.
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
Abortion rights will be a key issue for Democrats in the 2024 election, especially after Republican judges have tried to ban medication abortions. John Nichols comments.
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
Afghan girls who escaped from the Taliban: the story of a boarding school that evacuated its students from Kabul during the chaotic withdrawal of the Americans, and moved -- to Kigali, Rwanda. SOLA, the School of Leadership Afghanistan is the place where Afghan girls study to become members of the generation that will one day lead a peaceful and united Afghanistan. The founder, Shabana Basij-Rasikh, explains.
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
34 felonies - will that change the 2024 election, or has everyone already made up their minds about Trump? Chris Lehman comments.
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
For a century, thousands of young baseball players have lived with low wages, overcrowded housing, and all-night rides in uncomfortable buses in order to play in baseball’s minor leagues, hoping to eventually make it to the majors. Now their lives are changing—because they organized a union. Kelly Candaele and Peter Dreier report.
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
The largest anti-war demonstrations in American history were protests in the fall of 1969--with more than two million people in the streets demanding “End the War in Vietnam.” But did those demonstrations help end the war? Historian Chris Appy comments on the new documentary, “The Movement and the ‘Madman,’” on PBS American Experience March 28.
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
Do masks work -- to help stop the spread of covid? A New York Times columnist recently said that they don’t, and cited an authoritative review of research as his source. But it turns he was wrong about that study. Gregg Gonsalves explains.
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
Sunday is Oscar night in America--and, as usual, we have a lot of complaints about the nominations. So does John Powers - he’s Critic at Large on the NPR show Fresh Air with Terry Gross. We talk about this year’s films we didn’t like – and some we thought were wonderful.
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
The worst thing that happened to Black History during Black History Month was not Ron DeSantis banning critical concepts and approaches - it was the College Board revising its new African American Studies curriculum to meet all of his demands. But now scholars in Black History, Black Studies and related fields are fighting back--Kimberlé Crenshaw will explain. She founded the African American Policy Forum .
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
Covid remains the number 3 cause of death in the US, after heart disease and cancer, with almost 3,000 deaths every week. But Biden and the Democrats are ending the federal covid emergency. Is that really a good idea? Gregg Gonsalves comments—he’s The Nation’s public health correspondent and he teaches epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health.
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
The Royal Family and “The Crown”– you know, Queen Elizabeth and Charles and Diana, and the Netflix series about them. Gary Younge explains why he loathes the monarchy in Britain, but loved “The Crown” on Nexflix.
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
Ireland since the fifties: how a country dominated by a corrupt Catholic church came to legalize gay marriage and abortion -- by referendum. Fintan O'Toole's much-honored ‘personal history’ of Ireland, titled “We Don’t Know Ourselves,” is out now in paperback.
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
We’re still thinking about Victor Navasky, who died on Jan. 23. He was editor or publisher of The Nation for 27 years, starting in 1978, and author of several books, including one about his life in magazines, titled “A Matter of Opinion.” We’ll listen to our conversation about that book, recorded in 2006.
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
What if government provided a basic income to all residents? Something like $1000 a month? How much could that change inequality and poverty? Sasha Abramsky reports on the experiment in Los Angeles with Universal Basic Income.
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
Walmart is the biggest employer in America, and the Walton family, the children of Walmart founder Sam Walton, is the richest family in the world. The company has raised wages and become more socially conscious-but it provides a case study of the limits of socially conscious capitalism. Rick Wartzman will explain – his new book on Walmart and its workers is titled “Still Broke.”
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
Who’d want to see a movie about Harvey Weinstein? But the film “She Said,” about the two New York Times reporters who broke the Harvey Weinstein story, is not about Harvey; it’s about the system that protected him. And it’s really good. Katha Pollitt comments.
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
Andrew Bacevich talks about our “very long war,” going back at least to the sixties, and about the relative insignificance of Donald Trump. His new book is "On Shedding an Obsolete Past: Bidding Farewell to the American Century.”
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
“Bad Mexicans” – that’s what the revolutionaries of 1910 were called as they fought on both sides of the US-Mexico border against the robber barons and their political allies. UCLA historian Kelly Lytle Hernandez tells that story, and talks about her book on race, empire, and revolution in the borderlands.
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
Our Christmas music special: Bob Dylan fans have been puzzled and troubled by his Christmas album, “Christmas in the Heart”, ever since he released it in 2009. To help figure out what Dylan was doing, we turned to Sean Wilentz--he’s the official historian at the official website BobDylan.com, and he also teaches American history at Princeton. (Originally broadcast in 2009)
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
The largest strike in the nation entered its fifth week: 36,000 grad student employees of the University of California, including teaching assistants who are not grading final exams. The union agreed to mediation—which seems unlikely to succeed. Nelson Lichtenstein has our update.
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
The largest strike in the country this year, and the largest in the history of higher education, entered its fourth week at the University of California. Historian Nelson Lichtenstein explains what's happening with grad student Teaching Assistants, Research Assistants, Tutors and Postdocs.
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
Should Supreme Court base its decision on what it can discern about the original intent of the framers? That’s what the “originalists” say – and they dominate today’s court. Erwin Chemerinsky comments; he’s dean of the law school at UC Berkeley and the author most recently of “Worse Than Nothing: The Dangerous Fallacy of Originalism.”
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
The fight against pollution in LA’s port communities, where 300,000 people, mostly Latino, live next door to oil refineries, chemical facilities, and one of the largest oilfields in the nation. For decades they’ve been fighting for basic rights and a cleaner environment. Eliza Moreno has that story.
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
In Los Angeles the terrible sheriff has lost his re-election campaign. Gustavo Arellano, the LA Times columnist, comments, and reports on how the billionaire developer running for mayor campaigned for the Latino vote.
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
A story about Black landownership, starting in Piney Woods, North Carolina, one of the oldest examples of uninterrupted land ownership by Black people, going back to before the Civil War. Cameron Oglesby has that report.
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
Mike Davis, author and activist, radical hero and family man, died on Tuesday, Oct. 25. After talking about his life and work, we play part of an interview with him on this podcast from November, 2016, one week after Trump was elected.
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
The Trump years are not the only time American democracy has been threatened – the World War One years, when Democrat Woodrow Wilson was president, were another. That’s what Adam Hochschild argues –his new book is “American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis.”
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
Greil Marcus talks about Bob Dylan, from “Blowin in the wind” in 1962 to“Murder Most Foul” in 2020. His new book is called “Folk Music: A Bob Dylan Biography in 7 Songs.”
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
Dahlia Lithwick talks about some of the heroes of the Trump years: the women lawyers who fought him on the big issues—the Muslim ban, neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, and voting rights. Her new book is “Lady Justice.”
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
Ken Burns has a new documentary on PBS: “The US and the Holocaust.” it’s the most politically engaged and relevant work of his career. Historian David Nasaw comments.
20 years before the January 6 attack on the capitol, a Republican mob attacked a central hub of government operations claiming the vote count in the presidential election that year was fraudulent, and trying to reverse the results. That was the “Brooks Brothers Riot” in Miami, a Republican effort long before Trump. Chris Lehmann reviews that history; he’s DC Bureau chief for The Nation.
A new episode of “The Children’s Hour”: stories about Ivanka, Jared, Don Junior and Little Eric. This week: Jared writes a book! He called it “Breaking History.” We have comment from our Chief Jared Correspondent, Amy Wilentz
We’re still thinking about Barbara Ehrenreich, who died last week. She was one of our best. We’ll listen to an interview with Ehrenreich from 2002, about “Nickel and Dimed,” her unforgettable book about trying to live on low-wage work which had just been published.
Patrick Leahy of Vermont has been a senator for almost 50 years. He describes how, on January 6, when senators took refuge from the mob attacking the capitol, they prepared to complete the work of counting the electoral votes in their underground bunker--until he insisted they should wait until they could return to the Senate chamber. His new book is ”The Road Taken.”
Dirty work—and the people who do it: the low-income workers who do our most ethically troubled jobs. What does that have to do with the rest of us? Eyal Press explains—his book “Dirty Work” is out now in paperback.
The Organization of American States released a statement admitting, finally, that the international community was responsible for the crisis ravaging Haiti today. But what is to be done now? Amy Wilentz comments.
Orange County, California: Ronald Reagan called it “the place all good Republicans go to die.” But there’s another history of Orange County--a history of white supremacy and right wing power, and of people’s battles to resist—especially immigrants. LA Times columnist Gustavo Arellano will explain--he’s one of the authors of the new book “A People’s Guide to Orange County.”
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 mass incarceration -- --they all relate to the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments, part of the country’s attempt to redefine citizenship after the end of slavery. His book, “The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution,” is out now in paperback.
The synergy between politics and popular culture has never been clearer or stronger than in the Age of Reagan – J. Hoberman will explain, he’s the author of a wonderful book called “Make My Day: Film Culture in the Age of Reagan.” Hoberman was a legendary film critic for the Village Voice for 30 years - now he writes for the New York Review, the New York Times, and The Nation.
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).
It’s not too late to act to slow climate change--that’s what Rebecca Solnit and Thelma Young Lutunatabua say. Their new project invites newcomers to join the climate movement, and guides people from despair to possibilities. Find them at www.NotTooLateClimate.com/; on Facebook at @NotTooLateClimate and on Twitter at @NotTooLate_hope.
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 Trump Presidency, and the Devastating Legacy They Left Behind.
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 some kind of negotiated settlement is necessary - and better sooner than later, for the Ukrainians, for the US, and for the world. Anatol Lieven comments; he wrote the book “Ukraine and Russia.”
Republicans have opened another front in the culture war with the slogan “parental rights”--not just banning the teaching of Critical Race Theory, whatever that is; now they are campaigning to ban comprehensive sex education. Joan Walsh explains.
We’re still thinking about the recall in San Francisco of Chesa Boudin, the progressive prosecutor--pundits everywhere are saying that means Democrats need to abandon their commitment to reforming the police and the criminal justice system. Peter Dreier doesn’t agree – he explains why.
Southern Baptists have been at the center of the Trump movement, But now the denomination has been rocked to its core by a massive sex abuse scandal. Could the sex scandal change the Southern Baptists? Sarah Posner will comment - her book 'Unholy: How White Christian Nationalists Powered the Trump Presidency, and the Devastating Legacy They Left Behind has just been published in paperback with a new afterword about Evangelicals and the Jan. 6 insurrection.
“Bad Mexicans” – that’s what the revolutionaries of 1910 were called as they fought on both sides of the US-Mexico border against the robber barons and their political allies. UCLA historian Kelly Lytle Hernandez tells that story – it’s the subject of her new book with that title.
Haiti is back on the front page–at least in the New York Times, our national newspaper of record–and it’s not because of what’s happening there right now. The Times has published the results of a deep investigation into the history of Haiti’s forced payments to France, starting more than 200 years ago–an immense amount of money, which France said it deserved as compensation for Haiti’s revolution and independence and slave emancipation. Amy Wilentz comments–her most recent book is “Farewell Fred Voodoo.”
“An amazon of the avant-garde”:the ballet dancer and choreographer who started out in revolutionary Russia, worked in wartime Kiev, and then came to Hollywood in the thirties: Bronislava Nijinska, the long-neglected sister of the legendary dancer Vaslav Nijinsky. She had an amazing life. Lynn Garafola will explain; her new book is La Nijinska, Choreographer of the Modern.
Chesa Boudin, the elected district attorney of San Francisco, on progressive prosecutors and their opponents: progressive prosecutors have been pushing for criminal justice reform for a while now, seeking to end mass incarceration and deal with police misconduct, starting with the election of Larry Krasner in Philadelphia in 2017, then Chesa in 2019 and George Gascon in Los Angeles in 2020. Of course the defeated law and order forces pushed back; in San Francisco, opponents have collected enough signatures to force a recall vote on Chesa on June 7.
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--1776 and all that. Historian Eric Foner comments.
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 explains.
Margo Jefferson talks 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 criticism for her work asbook and arts critic for the New York Times. She also has written for The Nation.
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 confirmation as America’s first Black female supreme court justice and of that horrible confirmation hearing she endured. Michele Goodwin comments--she’s Chancellor’s Professor of Law at the University of California, Irvine, and a contributor to The Nation.
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 is “100% Democracy: The Case for Universal Voting.”
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 executive action. Astra Taylor will explain; she’s co-founder of the Debt Collective.
The dangers (and the benefits) of antidepressants: P.E. Moskowitz talks about the science, and about personal experiences. Their report, “Breaking Off My Chemical Romance,” is featured in the magazine’s special issue on drugs.
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 the 1950s, how new kinds of superheroes emerged and then conquered Hollywood, and made billions for the studios--at a time when America was definitely NOT a superhero in the world.
What the Democrats have done wrong--and what they’ve done right; not just last week, but in the last century. Historian Michael Kazin explains; his new book is “What It Took to Win: A History of the Democratic Party.”
Our constitution is not good. It urgently needs to be re-imagined if we want justice and equality for all.” That’s what Elie Mystal, The Nation’s justice correspondent, says in his new book, “Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution.”
One of our heroes died on Monday: Paul Farmer, who brought high-quality health care to some of the poorest people in the world – starting in Haiti. Amy Wilentz was a friend of his – she talks about his work and his life.
Hunter S. Thompson, the man who invented “Gonzo journalism,” wrote the classic book about Nixon, “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, ‘72.” Peter Richardson explains how he did it - his new book is “Savage Journey: Hunter S. Thompson.”
This week Haiti should be inaugurating a new president. They’ve done that every five years on Feb. 7—except for gliches, coups and postponements—ever since Baby Doc Duvalier fled the island 37 years ago. But not this year. Amy Wilentz explains why Haiti can’t get the new beginning in needs—and how it might.
“The Right to Sex” – That’s the provocative title of the new feminist best-seller by Amia Srinivasan. Who has a right to sex? And who doesn’t? Katha Pollitt comments.
More than 1,700 congressmen owned Black slaves, according to the Washingon Post. Even after the abolition of slavery in 1865, hundreds of men who HAD owned slaves were senators and members of the House of Representatives.The last Senator who had owned slaves served in 1922. Eric Foner will comment on the political power of slavery in the American past.
American universities in the ’60s: Was that a golden age destroyed by student radicals who were protesting the war in Vietnam and racism in America? For some answers we turn to historian Ellen Schrecker—her new book is The Lost Promise: American Universities in the 1960s.
New discoveries about America’s atom spies: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed in June, 1953. We know that Julius did not give ‘the secret of the a-bomb’ to the Russians--that was the work of a couple of other people. And the FBI knew it at the time. So: why did the FBI go after the Rosenbergs, instead of the person they knew was the real spy? His name was Ted Hall--a brilliant young physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project and gave the Russians detailed information about the plutonium bomb dropped on Nagasaki. The FBI investigated him, but never charged him with a crime. Now Dave Lindorff of The Nation has found out why.
On the first anniversary of the insurrection of January 6, John Nichols argues that, to defend democracy, we need the Senate to pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act—which requires changing the filibuster rules in the Senate. Also: proposals to expel members of congress who aided or abetted the insurrectionists.
Joan Didion died December 23 – she was 87. She wrote personal essays about California in the sixties and seventies, especially “Slouching Toward Bethlehem” and “The White Album,” and then about politics and history, especially her reports in “Salvador” and “Miami.” We spoke in October, 2003, at KPFK in Los Angeles, when her book about her family's California, Where I was From had just been published.
Tom Lutz is a writer who visits unusual places. he took United flight 155 from Honolulu to Kwajalein, one of the Marshall islands in the Pacific that’s a major US military base. It’s completely paved over, and the only greenery there is the golf course. The runway is one foot above sea level. The island will be under water by about 2035. Tom also describes life in some other places—his new book is “The Kindness of Strangers.”
Eric Foner and Henry Louis Gates talk about W.E.B. DuBois, the Black historian and activist of the first part of the 20th century, and his book Black Reconstruction 1860-1880—published originally in 1935, and out now in a new edition from the Library of America, edited by Foner and Gates.
Mutual aid and racial justice during the year of covid: Kristina Wong will explain how, in the darkest days of the pandemic, she started the Auntie Sewing Squad to make masks for the most vulnerable communities--and how she became, in her words, a sweatshop overlord. Her new co-edited book is The Auntie Sewing Squad Guide to Mask Making, Radical Care, and Racial Justice.
Being Black in America, and being Black in France: Gary Younge talks about Josephine Baker, the Black American dancer who went to Paris in the twenties and later renounced her American citizenship. She’s being interred at the Pantheon, alongside Voltaire and Rousseau, this week.
Racism in America for decades led to strict housing segregation. But historians are now showing that that wasn’t simply the result of white people refusing to live near Blacks--segregated housing was the result of a carefully organized, long-term effort to establish a legal basis for systematic racial discrimination. And the groups that succeeded were not the KKK or White Power groups. It was realtors’ organizations. Eric Foner reviews that history.
Father Greg Boyle is the founder of Homebody Industries, the largest gang-intervention, rehabilitation, and reentry program on the planet. He’s got a new book out now, it’s about “the power of extravagant tenderness” and it’s called “The Whole Language.”
Rebecca Solnit talks about politics and pleasure, about knowing your enemies, and about joy as an act of resistance to authoritarianism--on the right, and on the left. Her new book is “Orwell’s Roses.”
John Coltrane was the tenor player who started out with Miles Davis in the fifties and then in the mid-sixties set out to pursue music as a quest for spiritual enlightenment. His most popular work was “A Love Supreme.” Now, a live performance from 1965 has been discovered and released – and Coltrane people are calling it “nothing short of a revelation.” We’ll talk about Coltrane’s place in Black culture with Adam Shatz.
Colin Kaepernick’s silent protest, taking a knee, became the symbol of resistance to racial injustice in America. Dave Zirin talks about how that political movement has swept through college and high school sports. His new book is “The Kaepernick Effect.”
Richard Wright was America’s most famous Black writer in the 1940s and 50s – with his novel ‘Native Son’ and his character Bigger Thomas. But his place on the throne was shakier than he imagined. Adam Shatz talks Black American writing, and Black America, at mid-century.
The co-founder of Black Lives Matter LA, Melina Abdullah, talks about the LAPD, and how they showed up, in force, at her house twice in the week since she filed a lawsuit over a similar incident last year we call it ‘swatting,’ and we also call it retaliation.
The Nation and the Economic Hardship Reporting Project are launching a new podcast: “Going for Broke,” personal stories about how the pandemic made it a lot harder for working class people to pay the rent, or find a new job. Host Ray Suarez provides a preview—he’s best known for his work on NPR and PBS. The podcast launches on Oct. 18, here.
The murder of Emmett Till in Mississippi in 1955 is probably the most famous lynching in American history. Now, there’s a novel about it that's wild and funny. The author is Percival Everett – it’s called “The Trees.” And it’s really good. How is it possible to write a comic novel about a lynching? John Powers will explain—he’s critic at large on NPR’s Fresh Air.
The low-income workers who do our most ethically troubled jobs: Eyal Press will explain--his new book is “Dirty Work: Essential Jobs and the Hidden Toll of Inequality in America.”
10 years ago this week, a small group of young radicals declared “We are the 99 per cent” and set up camp in Zuccotti Park in Manhattan’s financial district. Instead of a few people protesting for a few days, the movement exploded; hundreds of thousands of people joined Occupy camps in more than 600 U.S. towns and cities. CUNY professors Ruth Milkman and Stephanie Luce comment--they’ve written for The Nation’s special issue on the 10th anniversary of Occupy.
There’s a new comedy/drama on TV about college teachers and campus politics—“The Chair,” on Netflix, starring Sandra Oh as the first Asian American woman chair of an English department. Amy Wilentz comments – she’s a professor in the English Department at UC Irvine, which has some surprising connections to the show.
We’re still thinking about Tulsa, about the massacre of Black people there in 1921, probably the deadliest instance of racial violence in the country’s history. It was covered up for a hundred years – how was that possible? Historian Eric Foner comments.
The story of a Black writer who moved to Paris in the fifties and discovered French racism – aimed at Algerians. Adam Shatz explains-- he was Literary Editor of The Nation, and has now written the introduction to the new edition of a novel called “The Stone Face,” by William Gardner Smith, originally published in 1963 and now republished by New York Review Books.
Black politics and history, from the 1870s to the 1930s to today: Eric Foner talks bout how our understanding of Black politics and history, starting with Reconstruction, has changed--and about the historian-activists who challenged the prevailing racist historians back in the 1930s, starting with W.E.B. DuBois and James S. Allen—his book “Reconstruction: the Battle for Democracy” has just been reissued with a new introduction by Foner.
There’s a documentary out now about Dick Gregory, the Black stand-up comedian and political activist of the sixties and after. it’s called “The One and Only Dick Gregory,” and it’s on Showtime. John Powers comments—he’s critic at large on NPR’s Fresh Air.
The life, and death, of Ethel Rosenberg, the accused “atom spy”: who was she before she was framed by the FBI, before she called their bluff, and went to her execution? Anne Sebba has written a really good book about that—it’s called “Ethel Rosenberg: An American Tragedy.”
The great comics artist Art Spiegelman, who won a Pulitzer Prize for ‘Maus,” has a new book out: “Street Cop,” illustrations for a story by Robert Coover, published by Isolarii.com. He talks about working on that during the pandemic, and about his most controversial drawings – some of which only The Nation would publish
The story of a music festival in a park in Harlem in 1969: the documentary about it, “Summer of Soul,” is a powerful and moving contributions to the history of the sixties. And the story it tells was completely unknown; the footage sat in a basement for nearly 50 years, and no one cared. John Powers, critic at large on NPR’s “Fresh Air,” comments.
A comic novel about Ethel and Julius Rosenberg? Who’d have thought that was possible? Now Francine Prose has written one: it’s called “The Vixen,” and it’s terrific.
Amy Wilentz comments on Haiti after the assassination of its unloved president – and the necessity of following grassroots progressive civil society groups in finding a path forward towards free and fair elections.
the Los Angeles neighborhood of Boyle Heights is known today as the heartland of Chicano culture. Historian George Sanchez explains how its multicultural, interracial past made it a bastion of progressive democracy. His new book is Boyle Heights.
There’s a new book about the sixties--about the heroism, and the disasters, of the movements of that decade: “By the Light of Burning Dreams: The Second American Revolution.” The authors are the brother and sister team David Talbot and Margaret Talbot--David is the founder of Salon.com, and Margaret writes for the New Yorker.
It's a great idea: creating a new Federal Writers Project, hiring a thousand out of work writers and journalists to document American lives during the pandemic year. It’s in a bill proposed in the House by L.A. Representative Ted Lieu and the idea comes from David Kipen, former director of literature for the National Endowment for the Arts.
Most of us think of Jimmy Carter as a failure as president, the Democrat who opened the door to Reagan, and the only president whose work AFTER leaving office was better than his work IN office. Kai Bird says that’s wrong – Carter had more accomplishments, and was more complicated, than people realized. Kai’s new book is called “The Outlier: The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter.”
Amy Wilentz comments on the end of Bibi Netanyahu, after 12 years as Prime Minister, and a new governing coalition that includes for the first time in Israeli history and an Israeli Palestinian Islamist party as part of the government. Amy, who was Jerusalem bureau chief for The New Yorker, talks about what this might mean for Palestinians inside Israel, and on the West Bank and in Gaza.
Katha Pollitt talks about a new book of advice for men – Jordan Peterson’s international best-selling books of “Rules for Life” start with “stand up straight, with your shoulders back.”
It’s probably the most radical show that’s ever been on TV: “Exterminate all the brutes,” the 4-part, 4-hour documentary about colonialism and genocide, by Raoul Peck, playing now on HBO Max. Historian Robin D.G. Kelley comments.
The big TV event of the month--maybe of the year—is “The Underground Railroad,” a ten-part series on Amazon Prime Video, directed by Barry Jenkins and based on the Colson Whitehead novel. It’s being called “the most ambitious take on American slavery since ‘Roots’” --that was on TV almost 40 years ago. Eric Foner comments; he wrote the book on the hidden history of the underground railroad: it’s called “Gateway to Freedom.”
Adam Shatz talks about Edward Said, the leading voice of Palestinians in the US before he died in 2010. Said was also The Nation’s classical music critic, and Adam Shatz, now an editor for the London Review of Books, was The Nation’s literary editor--his work included editing Edward Said’s pieces for the magazine.
Literature, art, and the idea of ‘freedom’ during the cold war – from George Orwell to James Baldwin to “The Famly of Man”: Louis Menand has been thinking about that--His new book is ‘The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War.’ Menand teaches at Harvard and writes for The New Yorker.
Bill Gates, the second richest man in the world, has spent the last 20 years giving away his money – through $50 billion foundation. But who exactly has he been giving that money to? Tim Schwab has some answers–-his three reports in The Nation on the Gates Foundation just won this year’s Izzy Award, named after I.F. Stone and awarded by the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College “for outstanding achievement in independent media” during 2020.
We’re still thinking about how Dr. Seuss Enterprises took six of his books out of print because they contained racist drawings. Right-wing media were pushing this story nonstop; according to a recent poll, more Republicans said they’d heard “a lot” about the move to withdraw some Dr. Seuss books than said the same about Biden’s huge Covid-19 relief bill. Katha Pollitt comments.
Earth Day 2021 is the world’s largest civic event--three days of climate action by millions of people around the world, including Joe Biden hosting a global climate summit on April 22: and pledging to take bold action to slash greenhouse gas emissions in the US in the next ten years. Mark Hertsgaard, The Nation’s environmental correspondent, says that for starters we need to start using the term “climate emergency” rather than “climate issue” or “climate crisis.”
Hunter Biden was the target of a massive Republican attack campaign for more than a year leading up to the election; at the same time, the gossip pages seized on his disastrous private life. They made the most of his decades of alcohol addiction and drug abuse, and his subsequent affair with the widow of his brother. Now he’s written a book – it’s called “Beautiful Things: A Memoir.” Amy Wilentz comments.
Joe Biden and Congress should end our forever wars--and they can--by starting with three key steps: Karen Greenberg explains. She is director of the Center on National Security at Fordham Law School and author, most recently, of Rogue Justice: The Making of the Security State.
Should Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer retire? he’s 82, and apparently healthy and competent--but his retirement would give Biden a chance to nominate a younger person –he’s promised a Black woman - while the Democrats control the Senate. Joan Walsh comments.
Now that Trump is gone, Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson has become the leading Republican voice of conspiracy theories and the leading defender of the attack on the capitol on Jan. 6. But will he run for reelection next year? John Nichols explains.
A new official report in Los Angeles, commissioned by the city council, says the police in LA violated the law by attacking and arresting Black Lives MAtter marchers in last summer’s protests. Civil rights attorney Carol Sobel explains--she's one of the people representing BLM in a lawsuit against the city.
Michelle Obama’s memoir is out now in paperback - It’s called “Becoming,” and it has sold more than 14 million copies worldwide in hardcover, and was named one of the best books of the year by the New York Times, NPR, and a dozen other places. But the book avoids politics—which seems strange for the person the New York Times called "the most outspoken first lady in modern history." Amy Wilentz comments. (originally broadcast in November 2018)
Amy Wilentz reports on the huge protests in Port-au-Prince last Sunday, the biggest in decades, and asks why the Biden Administration is following Trump policies in Haiti. Amy is author of the award-winning report from Haiti, "Farewell Fred Voodoo."
Historian Eric Foner talks about Will Smith’s 6-part series on Netflix on the 14th Amendment, ratified after the Civil War, which established birthright citizenship and guaranteed equal protection to all “persons”—the series, with a stellar cast, is called “Amend.”
Biden and the Democrats need to change things enough to win new supporters --and now that impeachment is finished, his $1.9 trillion pandemic relief bill takes the center of the political stage, including the $15 minimum wage. Alan Minsky comment on that, and on the longer term problem of restoring American manufacturing-he’s Executive Director of Progressive Democrats of America.
We take a step back from this week’s politics and look forward to 2022 and future elections. The Democrats’ victories in Georgia were a decade in the making; can we do it again in another Republican state? Steve Phillips says “Texas is next.”
Rennie Davis, who died on February 2, was probably the New Left's most talented organizer. We spoke with him at a Nation magazine event at the end of September, where he recalled his trip to North Vietnam at the height of the war.
For Black History Month, Gary Younge talks about Barack Obama and his memoir “A Promised Land” – and the refusal of many liberals to critique his policies and decisions.
Faced by the pandemic and economic collapse, Biden Biden knows he has to work harder and faster than any president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt – he doesn’t have a hundred days to launch his initiatives – he’s got to set the tone in ten. John Nichols comments on what Biden has accomplished in his first week – and what his next priorities ought to be.
In Joe Biden’s first speech as president-elect, he promised Black America that he would have their backs. Now he needs to take prompt action to fulfill that pledge. Barbara Ransby comments--she’s a historian, writer, and longtime political activist, a distinguished professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, best known for her award-winning biography Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement.
Gary Younge, the award-winning former columnist for The Guardian and member of The Nation's editorial board, comments on the insurrectionists of January 6. They failed to stop Congress from certifying Biden as the winner of the election -- so what WAS the plan? and what IS their future?
Biden’s first 100 days begin January 20, and his first acts should include an executive order cancelling student debt—that’s what Astra Taylor says, she’s co-founder of the Debt Collective and has published widely. Other forms of debt cancellation can follow—medical debt, consumer debt, the coming bills for deferred rent and mortgage payments.
The PGA is cancelling their longstanding plans to hold its 2022 championship at Trump’s Bedminster golf course in New Jersey. The New York Times reports he is more devastated by this than by impeachment. The legendary sportswriter Robert Lipsyte comments on Trump and Golf. (broadcast originally in August, 2017).
Eric Foner provides historical perspective on Wednesday's attack on the capitol by that Trump mob, trying to stop Congress from declaring Biden the president-elect--and also on the unprecedented victories in the Georgia Senate races.
2020 in review: the political year began with Bernie winning early primaries and losing the rest; then came the summer of Black Lives Matter, with the largest protest movement in American history; and then Election Day, without fighting in the streets or the courts overturning the results. John Nichols comments.
Amy Wilentz reviews what happened in 2020 to Ivanka, Jared, Don Junior and Eric Trump—boy did those kids get into trouble this year! Jared was put in charge of pandemic response, Ivanka carried the bible for that disastrous photo-op, and Don Junior and Eric tried to outdo their father on the campaign trail.
John le Carré died on Saturday—he was 89, and one of the greats, author of two dozen books people called “spy novels,” although they were much more than that. John Powers comments -- he’s critic-at-large on Fresh Air with Terry Gross.
Will Donald Trump pardon Ivanka and Jared – and Don Junior and Eric? What exactly are their crimes? It sounds like another episode of The Children’s Hour – with Amy Wilentz.
On Monday the Supreme Court heard arguments on Trump’s effort to change the way seats in the House of Representatives are apportioned. It has been based on a state’s total population, as the Constitution requires; he wants to exclude the undocumented, which would mean California would lose 2 or 3 seats. David Cole reviews the arguments – he’s The Nation’s legal affairs correspondent and national legal director of the ACLU.
How are the Trump kids dealing with the refusal of their father to admit he lost the election? Amy Wilentz comments – on another episode of “The Children’s Hour,” stories about Ivanka, Jared, Don Junior, Little Eric--and Lara, who wants to be the first of them to run for office. But who IS Lara Trump? Amy Wilentz explains.
The legendary film critic for the late lamented Village Voice, J. Hoberman, talks about Aaron Sorkin’s new film, playing now on Netflix, “The Trial of the Chicago 7.” He asks the question, “is it great courtroom drama – or boomer porn?”
Black Lives Matter had massive victories in the elections in America’s biggest county—L.A., with 10 million people. They elected a progressive D.A. and passed an initiative to re-imagine public safety by moving 10 per cent of the county’s $5 billion unrestricted budget to alternatives to incarceration, to community services, and barring the county from using the money on prisons, jails or law enforcement agencies. Jody Armour explains – his new book is “N*gga Theory: Race, Language, Unequal Justice, and the Law."
Joan Walsh looks at Trump’s support, and finds it shocking that he did about as well as last time, despite everything that he’s done in the last four years, culminating in the disaster of the pandemic response and the highest unemployment rate since the Great Depression. She concludes that too much of our country consists of racists who prefer white supremacy to equality.
Talking politics, and history, with Sherrod Brown. Of course he’s the senior senator from Ohio, first elected in 2006. He was re-elected in 2018- he won by 7 points--in a state Hillary Clinton had lost -- by 8 points -- just 2 years earlier. He talks about how he did that, and how Biden has learned the lessons of that campaign.
Maybe the election next week will have a big enough vote for Biden so that it can’t be challenged in court; maybe the Republicans won’t dispute the outcome. But maybe they will – we’ve had other disputed elections in our history --of course we had the Supreme Court stopping the count in Florida in 2000, and there was another one, much less well known–the election of 1876. Historian Eric Foner explains.
The new Aaron Sorkin film, “Trial of the Chicago 7,” opened on Netflix this past weekend. Of course it’s about the 1969 trial of leaders of the antiwar movement, including Tom Hayden, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and Rennie Davis--and we have Rennie Davis as a guest. He was the New Left’s most talented organizer, and he talks about the film and the real history of those protests--and also politics today.
Cell-phone videos of police killing Black people have had such an immense political impact over the last couple of years. Allissa Richardson comments on the new protest journalism, which is based largely on Twitter. Her new book is “Bearing Witness While Black: African Americans, Smartphones, and the New Protest #Journalism.”
Also: Ari Berman talks about voting rights and Republican vote suppression, about the voter protection efforts of the Biden campaign and the Democratic Party, and their plans to counter Trump’s plans to steal the election, and about recent Supreme Court decisions on voting rights cases.
Remember the days of the hashtag “Free Melania”? Remember how we said she was a hostage in the White House? Now there’s a book that says we were all wrong about that - Katha Pollitt talks about Stephanie Winston Wolkoff’s “tell-not-quite-all,” Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship With the First Lady.
How climate change is forcing migration out of low lying coastal areas: Sonia Shah reports on what happened in the Bahamian island of Abaco after Hurricane Dorian last September—and what we need to do now about migration forced by climate change. Sonia is an award-winning reporter; her new book is The Next Great Migration: The Beauty and Terror of Life on the Move.
In February 1968, Harry Belafonte hosted the Tonight Show, for an entire week - and his guests included Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Also: Aretha Franklin. Joan Walsh, National Affairs Correspondent for The Nation, talks about the new documentary, “Sit-In: Harry Belafonte Hosts the Tonight Show” – it’s streaming now on Peacock.
There’s a huge movement in Europe supporting Black Lives Matter. Gary Younge describes some key examples and comments on the effort to address racism in Britain, France, and elsewhere in Europe – and on the English falling back on the argument that racism there is “better” than in the US. Gary lives in London and is a member of the Editorial Board of The Nation.
Pramila Jayapal, co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus--she represents Seattle in the House--talks about how she went from being an investment banker as a young immigrant to a lifelong organizer. Her new book is "Use the Power You Have: A Brown Woman’s Guide to Politics and Political Change.”
Katie Porter, the new member of Congress who flipped a longtime Republican district in California’s Orange County, talks about the defending the postal service and about ending student loan debt. (Watch her full conversation with Katrina vanden Heuvel HERE: https://www.thenation.com/events/katie-porter-covid-politics/ )
Changing our broken criminal justice system-radically: Jody Armour, who teaches law at USC and is a prominent defender of Black Lives Matter has a new book out, with the provocative title “N*gga Theory: Race, Language, Unequal Justice, and the Law.”
Tom Frank, author of the classic “What’s the Matter with Kansas,” talks about Trump’s phony populist appeal – and whether Joe Biden, the guy from working-class Scranton, can win back the working-class white men who turned to Trump last time around. Tom’s new book is “The People, NO: A Brief History of Anti-Populism.
David Cole, national legal director of the ACLU, says we need less punishment and more justice from the police and the courts. One key way to achieve that is to reduce enforcement of misdemeanors, which currently leads to millions of avoidable arrests, especially of people of color – and many cases of police violence against them.
Trump’s unfortunate childhood: Amy Wilentz talks about Donald, Fred Junior, Marianne, Elizabeth, and little Robert - described in the new blockbuster bestseller by Mary Trump, daughter of Donald’s brother Fred Jr., “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man.”
Zoë Carpenter reports from Portland on the ominous developments there involving federal agents in camouflage in the streets attacking protesters—over the objections of local and state officials—which Trump says he will take to other Democratic cities.
How Roy Cohn gave us Donald Trump: Ivy Meeropol talks about her new documentary on Roy Cohn, “Bully. Coward. Victim.” It’s playing now on HBO on demand.
On July 31 the direct cash payments of the CARES act expire and right now Republicans in Congress are not renewing it or anything like it. That means millions of people won’t be able to pay their rent on August 1. Meagan Day comments -- she’s coauthor of Bigger than Bernie: How We Go from the Sanders Campaign to Democratic Socialism.
Black Lives Matter, and Sandra Bland’s was one of them. This week is the fifth anniversary of the death of Sandra Bland n a Texas jail—July 13, 2015. What happened to Sandra Bland? To understand that, you have to begin way before she died. Debbie Nathan reports on the life, as well as the death, of Sandra Bland. (originally broadcast in April, 2016).
Another episode of The Children’s Hour—Amy Wilentz with stories about Ivanka, Jared, Don Jr., and little Eric. This week, Ivanka is in trouble for wearing a mask—and Don Jr.’s girlfriend tests positive. An another Trump publishes a book: the president's niece, Mary.
It’s time to disarm the police. They didn’t always carry guns, and there are other big cities in the world where most cops are NOT armed – like London. D.D. Guttenplan, editor of The Nation, explains.
Black Lives Matter protests are everywhere, even the most unlikely places: for example, Laramie, Wyoming; Florence, Alabama; and even Vidor, Texas--it’s a former Ku Klux Klan haven that Texas Monthly described as the state’s “most hate-filled town.” Nation contributing writer Zoe Carpenter reports.
In the current mobilization around Black lives, everyone can do something, even if it’s not marching in the streets--Mia Birdsong explains. Her TED talk has been viewed almost two million times; now she has a new book out – it’s called “How We Show Up--Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community.”
The best thing about the protests of the past month is not just that they have been so massive, so sustained, so diverse, so inspiring--the best thing is that they are NOT about Trump. That’s what Dahlia Lithwick says--she hosts Slate’s podcast “Amicus.”
Trump’s disastrous walk across Layfayette Square for that bible photo-op outside St. John's Episcopal Church apparently was Ivanka’s idea – she’s also been tweeting Bible verses. Amy Wilentz, our Chief Ivanka Correspondent, has a report.
John Nichols has been speaking with Minnesota’s attorney general Keith Ellison about what has been happening in Minneapolis, and what is to be done about unending police violence against people of color. Ellison represented south Minneapolis, where George Floyd was killed, in Congress before he was elected the state Attorney General in 2018.
A new episode of The Children’s Hour, stories about Ivanka, Jared, Don Jr. and little Eric, told by Amy Wilentz – today, Jared’s failed effort to procure PPE for FEMA, and some outrageous remarks from Don Jr. and Eric – while Ivanka celebrates “exciting platforms the private sector has created to upskill our workforce!” (her exclamation point)
Christopher Shay talks about The Nation’s special issue on thinking big about the political requirements, and political opportunities, of this historic moment. He’s a senior editor at The Nation.
What to watch, and read, while the stay-at-home orders are in effect: John Powers recommends “The Sleepers,” a Czech spy thriller, on HBO GO, and the 1950s Hollywood noir novels of the amazing Alfred Hayes, from New York Review Classics. John is Critic at Large on Fresh Air with Terry Gross on NPR.
We’ve never forgotten that, in 2016, exit polls showed that 53 percent of white women voted for Donald Trump rather than Hillary Clinton. Now there’s a TV miniseries about beginnings of the political organizing of right-wing women: it stars Cate Blanchett as Phyllis Schafly, and it’s called “Mrs. America.” Katha Pollitt comments.
a new episode of “The Children’s Hour” with Amy Wilenz, stories about Ivanka, Jared, Don Junior, and little Eric--boy are those kids in trouble this week! Amy of course is our Chief Jared Correspondent—and was just awarded a Guggenheim fellowship.
John Powers, critic-at-large for Fresh Air with Terry Gross on NPR, recommends “The Good Fight” and “The Bureau” for virus-time TV watching.
Katrina vanden Heuvel talks about solidarity with the front-line workers fighting the virus—starting in New York, where people cheer hospital workers coming off their shifts at 7pm every night. But it's not just cheering--there's also a wave of action, in New York and across the country.
Barbara Ehrenreich reports on her experiment in trying to survive on low wage work. Her classic essay, “Nickel and Dimed,” is the lead piece in her new book, a collection of essays titled “Had I Known.” We recorded this interview when Nickel and Dimed was published, in 2002.
Jared Kusher has a new job on the White House coronavirus task force. His vast responsibilities include weighing requests from governors for aid and coordinating with private companies to obtain medical equipment. Meanwhile Ivanka is at home, reading “The Odyssey” and playing the guitar. Amy Wilentz comments – she’s our Chief Jared Correspondent.
Nation columnist Laila Lalami talk about her novel “The Other Americans”--it’s about the suspicious death of a Moroccan immigrant in a small town in California. It’s a family saga, a murder mystery, and a love story. And it’s out now in paperback.
Rebecca Solnit talks about how she became a feminist, and a writer—in San Francisco in the eighties, “the queerest city in the world.” She's the author, of course, of Men Explain Things to Me. Her new book, a memoir of sorts, is Recollections of My Nonexistence.
Katha Pollitt has some recommendations about what to watch, and read, during those days at home: starting with the classics. Katha of course is a poet, essayist, and award-winning columnist for The Nation.
How the coronavirus is changing the issues, and the tactics, of Black Lives Matter – a conversation with Melina Abdullah, one of the founders of the LA chapter and a professor of Pan-African Studies at Cal State LA.
Jared Kushner has been working—in unusual ways—on what to do about the Coronavirus. And there's virus news also news about Ivanka and Don Junior. Amy Wilentz, our Chief Jared Correspondent, reports.
Republican senator are saying paid sick leave for people with the coronavirus will “make workers lazy”—that’s what Ron Johnson says, he represents Wisconsin, and we’ll talk about that with our man in Madison, John Nichols. John also examines everything that went wrong with Tuesday’s elections, and talks about what we must do to ensure there’s no postponement of the November election.
Best-selling author Adam Hochschild tells the story of early-2th-century radical Rose Pastor Stokes in his new book "Rebel Cinderella."
Steve Phillips talks about Big Data and what is says about how the Democrats can beat Trump in November.
The Nation has endorsed Bernie Sanders and his movement. Editor D.D. Guttenplan explains why.
Political pundits are supposed to put forward strong opinions – that’s their job. The rest of us may be confused and uncertain and anxious, but the pudits are full of convictions and arguments. Today we depart from that rule and talk to Rick Perlstein – he’s got some doubts of his own about Bernie, while he acknowledges all that Bernie has achieved.
The Cold War was fought in many ways: it was a traditional political and military confrontation, but it was also a cultural contest on a global scale – and one of the most important arenas in the cultural contest was sports. Historian Robert Edelman explains: he’s co-editor of the new book The Whole World Was Watching: Sport in the Cold War.
Bernie has already won the ideas primary in the Democratic Party. That’s what Bob Borosage argues—he sets the agenda for the race and the other candidates define themselves in relations to his positions.
John Sayles has directed two dozen films, including Matewan and Lone Star. Here he talks about his new novel, Yellow Earth—it’s about what happens when shale oil is discovered underneath an Indian reservation in the North Dakota badlands—and outsiders descend.
It time for another episode of The Children’s Hour: stories about Ivanka, Jared, Don Junior, and little Eric. Today: Don Junior writes a best-seller! Just like his father, his mother, and his sister: a family of literati. Amy Wilentz reports.
How the Democrats can win in rural America: Jane Kleeb talks about strategies for winning in red states. She’s a grassroots organizer based in Hastings, Nebraska, and she put together the coalition of ranchers, farmers, Native Americans, and environmentalists that stopped the Keystone XL Pipeline. She’s chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party, and her new book is Harvest the Vote.
Sunday is the Oscars–Hollywood’s own elections-- and the nominees for best director are all men. is that because there are no good women directors? John Powers thinks there are some other explanations--as he reviews the results of the BBC poll of the 100 best films directed by women. John is Critic at Large for Fresh Air with Terry Gross.
There is the incompetence that led to the election meltdown in the Iowa caucuses; and there are many other ways elections can go wrong. For example, we could have a cyberattack on the power grid on election day that could cause blackouts in big cities the Democrats need to win. Rick Hasen explains that and other potential threats—his new book is “Election Meltdown: Dirty Tricks, Distrust, and the Threat to American Democracy.”
The Border Patrol, it turns out, has a youth group – ‘Border Patrol Explorers,’ an extension of the Boy Scouts. Morley Musick went to the Arizona border to find out who signs up and what they do once they’re in the organization.
Plus: This Sunday is the Superbowl, the biggest sports event in America--a hundred million people watch the Superbowl these days. The Superbowl—and all of football—is sort of like Donald Trump: both of them provide mass entertainment that promotes tribalism and toxic masculinity while keeping violence in vogue. Legendary sports writer Robert Lipsyte explains.
Historian Andrew Bacevitch argues that America has squandered its Cold War victory-- by embracing the promise of globalization as a source of unprecedented wealth while embarking on wide-ranging military campaigns to suppress disorder and enforce American values abroad. Trump has been a bit-player in all of this, a consequence more than a cause of American decline. Bacevich's new book is The Age of Illusions.
Climate change –as seen from the perspective of the Pentagon: Trump may deny that the world is getting warmer, fast, but the Pentagon has been preparing for that for several years now—and is making disaster relief part of its mission. Michael Klare reports—his new book is All Hell Breaking Loose.
We have a lot of experts on what to do about poverty -- academics and policy makers. Mia Birdsong has been working with a different sent of experts: poor people themselves. She’s a Senior Fellow of the Economic Security Project, and her TED talk “The Story We Tell About Poverty Isn’t True” has been viewed almost two million times. Now she has a new 4-part podcast at The Nation – it’s called “More Than Enough.”
Kate Aronoff and Michael Kazin talk about socialism in America today—they are co-editors with Peter Drier of the new book We Own the Future, which includes chapters on sports, banks, work, health care, campaign finance, immigration, and families.
Joe McCarthy as a predecessor of Donald Trump: the connections and similarities (“McCarthy was willing to assert things that he knew weren’t true, and did it with aplomb”) are traced by Jelani Cobb of The New Yorker and the Columbia University faculty. He’s a contributor to the new McCarthy episode of the PBS series “American Experience.”
Henry Louis Gates discovers slave-owners – and also slaves—in the family histories of some surprising people--on the PBS series “Finding Your Roots.” On this season’s premiere, Anjelica Houston learned that one of her ancestors, who died in Maryland in 1811, was a slaveowner, and that in his will he acknowledged fathering four slave children. Gates, the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor at Harvard University, also talks about his collaboration with historian Eric Foner on the award-winning PBS documentary on Reconstruction.
Naomi Klein says that, to create a Green New Deal, we need to follow the example of the New Deal era of the 1930s, when nothing would have happened without “massive pressure from social movements” that “changed the calculus of what was possible.” Naomi is the author of several number one bestsellers, including “This Changes Everything.”
The end of the year brings The Nation’s progressive honor roll for 2019 - honoring those who’ve done the steady work of advancing economic, social and racial justice. John Nichols names the elected officials and also activists, organizations, and ideas that are shaping our future--including Ayanna Presley and the Sunrise Movement.
This week India is on fire--with massive protests, and massive repression, of Muslim students saying “no” to the government’s move toward making India a Hindu nation – the great Indian novelist and activist Arundhati Roy explains.
Brett Kavanaugh was not on the list of candidates for the Supreme Court that Trump released during the campaign – how did Kavanaugh end up ahead of everybody else? Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post has that story --her new book is “Supreme Ambition: Brett Kavanaugh and the Conservative Takeover.”
What happens to pregnant women when anti-abortion state legislatures grant legal personhood to fertilized eggs, embryos, and fetuses? What happens when pregnant women’s behavior is criminalized? Katha Pollitt reports.
Bryce Covert has been examining strikes in America over the last couple of years. More workers went on strike last year than at any time since 1986 – more than 20 years ago. They include public sector workers, like teachers and nurses, and corporate employees, like auto and hotel workers – and even low-paid, part-time and temporary people who don’t have unions—like fast food workers and Uber drivers. There's something happening here. . .
Deporting the immigrants called “undesirable” -- now, under Trump, and a hundred years ago. Historian Adam Hochschild notes that it’s the 100th anniversary of the Palmer Raids, where J Edgar Hoover got his start, rounding up and trying to deport radical immigrants—and when one heroic Labor Department official blocked thousands of deportations.
Martin Scorcese’s new film “The Irishman” opens on Netflix this week; it claims to tell the true story of the murder of Jimmy Hoffa, the head of the Teamsters Union, who disappeared in 1974. But nobody who’s studied that history thinks the movie is right about what happened to Hoffa. Does that fact change our judgement about the film? John Powers comments; he’s critic at large for Fresh Air with Terry Gross.
Historian Eric Foner talks about the New York Times’s “1619 Project,” which argues that the legacy of slavery is central to all of the American past and present—including the White House today.
Rick Perlstein says the Nixon impeachment committees limited the charges against the president in order to win a Republican majority in the Senate; since that’s not going to happen with Trump, the Democrats might as well include all his high crimes in their articles of impeachment.
Why Joe Biden is the wrong candidate to take on Donald Trump: D.D. Guttenplan, The Nation’s editor, explains why the magazine has published an “anti-endorsement.”
This week the Supreme Court heard arguments about the fate of DACA residents--whether those young people brought here as small children should be deported. But why should that be decided by the nine justices on the Supreme Court? In a democracy, shouldn’t that be decided democratically? That’s Thom Hartmann’s argument--not just about DACA, but about all of judicial review. His new book is The Hidden History of the Supreme Court.
One of our favorite writers, John le Carré, has a new book out: Agent Running in the Field--they're calling it his "Brexit book." It’s number five on the best seller list. He’s now 88 years old, he’s written twenty-six books, which have been published in over 50 countries and 40 languages. The books are about loyalty and betrayal, and many are about the ambiguities of the Cold War. John Powers comments-–he’s Critic-at-Large on “Fresh Air” with Terry Gross.
More young people have favorable views of socialism than they do of capitalism these days--but what IS socialism'? Paul Adler explains; his new book is The 99 Percent Economy: How Democratic Socialism Can Overcome the Crises of Capitalism.
Republicans in the Senate--we will need 20 of them to vote to convict Trump if he’s going to be removed from office. Is that possible? Elie Mystal runs the numbers--those up for reelection, and those who might have a conscience--and concludes, “maybe—if we the people work really hard.”
Haiti is at the brink of collapse—Amy Wilentz reports on the fruits of "pure capitalism" in one of Trump’s “shithole countries.”
Ilhan Omar has endorsed Bernie for president – how does she deal with Trump’s vicious attacks? David Perry has spent the last few months with her in her Minneapolis district—he says he’s never seen a politician talk as little about themselves as she does in her town halls.
Pico Iyer has lived in Japan part-time for the last 30 years – he says it’s hard to imagine how different that country is from our own. His new book is “A Beginner’s Guide to Japan.”
With the Supreme Court back in session, we turn our attention to the most right-wing and longest-serving Justice, Clarence Thomas. Is he a self-hating sell-out? Corey Robin says he’s something else: a conservative black nationalist. His new book is The Enigma of Clarence Thomas.
Despite the fact that more than 75% of Americans favor Roe v. Wade, abortion rights face increasing jeopardy at the Supreme Court, and the right finally succeed at defunding Planned Parenthood. But there’s one immensely promising factor at work: abortion drugs, especially misoprostol, which is easily obtained on the Internet, despite the FDA’s attempts to prevent online pharmacies from selling them. Katha Pollitt explains.
Republicans and impeachment: in the case of Nixon, it took them until the very end to jump ship--and those who defended him (Reagan and Bush Sr.) had better political futures than those who didn't. Also: today they’re willing to criticize Trump on Turkey, but not on Ukraine—how come? Jeet Heer comments.
A new episode of ‘The Children’s Hour’--stories about Ivanka, Jared, Don Junior, and little Eric. This week: who’s helping Dad fight impeachment? And why has Ivanka left it up to the boys? Amy Wilentz has our story.
Thousands of Muslim women left their homes in the US and Europe to travel to Syria to join ISIS, the Islamic State, especially after it declared a Caliphate in 2013. Many of them were educated and successful – Why did they do it? Azadeh Moaveni wanted to find out—she spent years interviewing former ISIS women in camps in Turkey and Kurdistan. Her new book is Guest House for Young Widows: Among the Women of ISIS.
Also: Afghanistan held elections on Saturday. Trump had declared a couple of weeks ago that negotiations with the Taliban were “dead”-this was after he had promised to end the American war there. How WILL that war end? Andrew Bacevich has been thinking about that—he suggests it will follow the example of the Vietnam war. Bacevich writes for TomDispatch, the LA Times, and The Nation.
In the UAW strike against General Motors, workers are seeking not only higher pay but also ending plant closures and making temporary workers permanent--many of them have been on the job for several years, and yet they are paid less and denied union benefits. Jane McAlevey comments—she’s The Nation’s new Strikes Correspondent.
Historian Eric Foner talks about about voter suppression and the right to vote, about who gets to be a citizen, what rights undocumented immigrants have, and about the history of mass incarceration--and how they all relate to the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments, part of the country’s attempt to redefine citizenship after the end of slavery. His new book is The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution.
What’s really going on while Trump creates chaos: Sasha Abramsky separates what Trump is tweeting from what he's actually doing. For example, this week there are more destructive initiatives on climate change and the environment. Sasha's new column at TheNation.com is “Signal/Noise.”
Edward Snowden published a memoir this week, called Permanent Record, and The Nation magazine features an excerpt--it’s about his youthful enthusiasm for home computers connected to the internet, which had just become available, and the contrast he draws between the internet in those days and what it soon brought: the “identitarian consistency” required by “surveillance capitalism.” Editor D.D. Guttenplan explains.
Thirteen House Republicans have announced their retirements in the past several weeks—they don’t want to run for reelection in 2020. They are a diverse group, and include moderates as well as conservatives, some newcomers and some with decades of seniority (Like Jim Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin), two of the party’s 13 women, and its only African-American Congressman. How much can the Democrats hope to gain from this development? John Nichols comments--he’s National Affairs Correspondent for The Nation and host of the “Next Left” podcast.
It’s hard to keep track of Trump’s outrages—there are new ones virtually every day. But Nation columnist Katha Pollitt remembers; she discusses almost every bad thing Trump did this summer. And she takes up the question, is Trump getting worse? More unhinged, more desperate, perhaps because he sees that his chances of winning reelection are not good?
Indivisible, the big network of local Democratic Party activists that sprang up after Trump’s victory, faces a big challenge: whether to endorse a candidate in the Democratic Primaries. Joan Walsh reports on the conflict between the Washington headquarters of the organization and the hundreds of grassroots groups.
HUAC is history; the heyday of the House Un-American Activities Committee was the 1950s. But we’re still concerned about government attacks on people, and groups--called “Un-American.” David Maaraniss has been thinking about that history – his father was called before HUAC in 1952 and then blacklisted from his job as a newspaper editor. His new book is “A Good American Family: The Red Scare and My Father.”
The synergy between politics and popular culture has never been clearer or stronger than in the Age of Reagan – and now there’s a wonderful new book on “movie culture in the Age of Reagan” – it’s called “Make My Day,” by J. Hoberman; for thirty years he was a film critic for the Village Voice. He talks about Dirty Harry, “Star Wars,” and “Ghostbusters” – and how Trump compares with Reagan, pointing to Howard Beale in "Network" and to Rocky's racist happy ending.
Last week—after the El Paso killings by a white nationalist--Tucker Carlson said on Fox news that white supremacy was “not a real problem in America.” He called it “a hoax, just like the Russia hoax.” John Nichols examines the history of white nationalism in recent American politics, going back to the election of Barack Obama.
Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted pedophile and accused sex trafficker - who surrounded himself with an elite network of political leaders, wannabe billionaire types, and even scientists – and who committed suicide over the weekend. Katha Pollitt considers the people who have been named in court documents as having accepted invitations from Jeffrey Epstein and also had sex with the underage girls he provided.
Last month was the 50th anniversary of Americans walking on the moon. What would it take to get a similar mobilization today of money & effort—and vision–-to combat climate change? D.D. Guttenplan comments – he’s editor of The Nation.
Trump gets worse every week. Two years ago we had massive nationwide protest demonstrations -- so why don’t more people take it to the streets these days? Nation columnist Katha Pollitt has been thinking about that.
Also: Was Al Franken railroaded, when he was forced to resign from the Senate in the face of #MeToo complaints about unwanted sexual touching and kissing? Jane Mayer wrote a long report on the case for The New Yorker and concluded “Yes, he was railroaded,” but our national political correspondent Jeet Heer disagrees.
Paul Krassner, the sixties anarchist activist and editor of “The Realist” – died July 21st – we re-play part of an interview where he talks about how he got Norman Mailer to come out against masturbation.
Travel to Mars--now there’s a way to get away from Donald Trump! Elon Musk, the billionaire who is co-founder of PayPal and Tesla, wants to build a colony on Mars. Katha Pollitt thinks that’s not a good idea. Actually she thinks it’s a terrible idea, but one that tells us something about the world we live in.
Announced in Bahrain to an audience of billionaires and Gulf potentates, Jared Kushner’s Mideast Peace Plan promised $50 billion in economic development funds to Palestinians—if they would abandon their aspirations for an independent state. Neither the Palestinians nor the Israelis participated in the conference. Amy Wilentz, a longtime contributing editor at The Nation, comments – she was Jerusalem correspondent for The New Yorker.
50 years after Stonewall, historian Martin Duberman argues that, despite the obvious and necessary victories, the radical heart of gay liberation has been abandoned. The Gay Liberation Front of the late sixties critiqued monogamy, rather than campaigning for marriage equality, and opposed militarism and imperialism, rather than fighting to get gays into the military. Duberman is a longtime activist and writer on gay politics.
Recently Andrew Basevitch visited the Middle East Conflicts Memorial – it’s like the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, but for all the Americans who fought and died in all of America’s wars in the Mideast. But unlike the Vietnam Memorial and the World War II Memorial, it’s not on the National Mall in Washington DC; instead, it’s in Marseilles, Illinois. That says a lot about the place of our unending mideast wars in our current political debates.
Joe Biden says some of them were segregationist senators – and he thinks that was a good thing, something that made it possible for him to pass important legislation. Jeet Heer says that’s a fantasy—Republicans are not going to work with Biden if he gets the nomination and defeats Trump. Jeet is a new National Affairs Correspondent for The Nation.
One of the great progressive victories last November, along with the mid-term Congressional races, was the vote in Florida to restore voting rights to people who had been convicted of felonies and served their sentences–1.4 million people. But the voting rights news from Florida since then has not been so good--Sasha Abramsky explains.
Trump declared in his State of the Union speech “America will never become a socialist country.” Of course that only makes it seem like maybe it will. Bernie Sanders gave an important speech on socialism last week, connecting it to the unfinished agenda of FDR's New Deal -- and our John Nichols spoke with him about it -- beforehand.
At a time when several states have passed draconian new abortion restrictions, you don’t have to be a woman to stand up for reproductive rights: Katha Pollitt talks about abortion and men.
Rashida Tlaib is one of the two the Muslim women elected to the House. John Nichols spoke with her for the “Next Left” podcast, our sister podcast at The Nation. Tlaib, who represents Detroit, was born there; her parents are Palestinian immigrants, and she a long and deep engagement with progressive politics in that city. In this segment John introduces clips from his interview.
The British should extradite Julian Assange to Sweden for the investigation of rape charges against him, but neither the Swedes nor the Brits should extradite him to the US – because the new “espionage” charges against him are political, a threat to freedom of the press and to all journalists and publishers. Bruce Shapiro explains; he's a longtime contributing editor at The Nation.
Every Democratic primary candidate with more than 1 per cent in the polls has signed the Indivisible Pledge to support the Democratic winner, with one exception: Joe Biden. Why not? Ezra Levin comments—he’s co-founder of Indivisible, the nationwide network of grassroots progressive groups.
Opponents of Medicare for All say it would be impossibly expensive. Exactly how are we going to pay for it? Robert Pollin of U Mass Amherst explains; he’s one of 219 economists who just signed an open letter to Congress urging passage of Medicare for All.
We know the world is getting hotter and the storms are getting bigger and the seas are rising. What we need to know now is not what climate change will do, but rather what we should do—because, for us, climate change is a political problem.
Alyssa Battistoni comments.
There are 1,000 redactions in the 448 pages of the Mueller report, individual names and entire pages that we are not allowed to see. They are part of a larger problem of government secrecy which started long before Trump and which is now threatening to cripple our democracy—Karen Greenberg explains.
John Nichols talks about Justin Amash, the first Republican member of Congress to say that Trump has committed impeachable offenses—and also about The Nation’s new podcast, which he hosts – it’s called “Next Left,” and the premiere episode, out now, features Ilhan Omar.
During the presidential campaign, Donald Trump often talked about an American soldier in Afghanistan who became the longest-held American POW since Vietnam. Trump said he was “a dirty rotten traitor” who should be shot or thrown from a plane. He was talking about Bowe Bergdahl. Michael Ames explains how the Bergdahl story reveals a lot about why the Afghan war has been a disaster. Ames is co-author of the new book, “American Cypher: Bowe Bergdahl and the U.S. Tragedy in Afghanistan.”
Nation columnist Laila Lalami talks about her new novel, “The Other Americans,” about the suspicious death of a Moroccan immigrant in a small town in California. It’s a family saga, a murder mystery, and a love story.
Paris isn’t the only place where a cathedral of Notre Dame is in ruins and awaiting rebuilding – there’s another Notre Dame in Haiti, destroyed in the earthquake of 2010. Amy Wilentz has a modest proposal about a source for the money: reparations -- from France.
Climate change and living in the city, where the health effects of hyrdocarbon production and global trade are felt most intensely: Ben Ehrenreich reports on local organizing in the city of Commerce, California, a transit point for the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.
We take a trip back back to the darkest days in the Cold War, when muckraking journalists, independent Marxists, trade-union rebels, freedom riders, beatniks and peace protesters all found a home at America’s Oldest Weekly, The Nation magazine. That was the work of a great editor—who was also a great historian-- Carey McWilliams. Peter Richardson will explain—his new book is American Prophet: The Life and Work of Carey McWilliams.'
Should the House Democrats begin impeachment proceedings? The politics may be debatable, but congress’s duty is clear. Joshua Holland says impunity always breeds more lawlessness, and there’s plenty of evidence that Trump plans to continue to act without regard for the law.
Eric Hobsbawm was everybody’s favorite Marxist historian. His books, especially "The Age of Revolution," "The Age of Capital," "The Age of Empire," and “The Age of Extremes,” have been translated into 50 languages and sold millions of copies. He was also a lifelong member of the British Communist Party, and his fight against Stalinist orthodoxy in the Party shaped his understanding of the past. Richard J Evans explains – he’s the author of a big new biography: "Eric Hobsbawm: A Life in History."
In Trump’s latest blowup over immigration, Stephen Miller has played the central role — goading him to close the border, warning him of the dangers of looking weak, and encouraging his sudden purge of his homeland security team. But who is this Stephen Miller? He grew up in liberal Santa Monica-- what happened? What went wrong? Laurie Winer will report—she wrote about Stephen Miller for LA Magazine.
Plastics and pollution: the problem isn’t just all the plastic in the oceans; it’s the manufacturing of plastics, a toxic petro-chemical. The Nation’s Zoe Carpenter reports from the Texas and Louisana gulf coasts on the current plastics boom, a byproduct of fracking.
We’re still waiting for the text of the report of the special counsel Robert Muller, but in the meantime we’ve been told he did not recommend bringing charges against Jared Kushner in connection with Russian interference in the 2016 election. But that does not mean Jared is innocent of everything. Amy Wilentz explains.
‘Reconstruction: America After The Civil War’—that’s the new show premiering on TV this week. It’s a four-hour PBS documentary produced and hosted by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., exploring the years after the Civil War, when the defeated South faced revolutionary social change—the world’s first interracial democracy. Eric Foner comments – he was chief historical advisor on the documentary.
Beto O'Rourke has a huge following, but what exactly does he stand for? And what does his narrow defeat in the Texas senate race last year tell us about what kind of campaign he would run if he won the Democratic nomination for president? Harold Meyerson comments—he’s executive editor of The American Prospect.
In the wake of the Barr letter, Trump is calling his opponents “treasonous.” He’s vowing to pursue and punish those responsible for the Russia investigation. What would it be like if he got his way, if there were no way to restrain him? Historian Adam Hochschild says it would be like the three-year period of censorship, mass imprisonment, and deportations during World War I, under Woodrow Wilson. His new book is “Lessons from a Dark Time.”
Trump’s Wall has become a powerful symbol of a radically new idea about what America stands for—replacing the myth of the frontier as a place of possibility, rebirth, and freedom. Historian Greg Grandin talks about the wall, the border, and the frontier--his new book is “The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America.”
Plus: Mississippi has only one place you can get an abortion--it’s in Jackson, and the state also has a wonderful organization based there called the Mississippi Reproductive Freedom Fund. Rebecca Grant reports on the remarkable woman who founded and leads that organization.
In 2017, the Trump administration announced that, for the first time in history, states could impose a work requirement on the low-income people who rely on Medicaid for health nsurance. Arkansas was the first state to implement one, staring last June. A number of other states, including Arizona, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, New Hampshire, and Wisconsin, are chomping at the bit to follow suit. Bryce Covert reports on the impact of the work requirement in Arkansas.
Halfway through Trump’s term, and the week after International Women’s Day, it’s a good time to look at the big picture of where women stand in the US and in the world—where the US ranks in terms of women’s political representation, legal equality, and recent reports of discrimination and violence. Katha Pollitt surveys the good news, and the bad news.
Southern Democrats were an all-white party before the Voting Rights Act of 1965; and then, as LBJ predicted, its members all became Republicans. And yet throughout the 20th century Southern Democrats in Congress supported Progressive legislation—as long as it didn’t help black people. Historian Michael Kazin comments—and talks about the party in the South now, where Stacey Abrams and Betto O’Rourke are building something new.
What can we do to reduce the death toll in the current epidemic of opioid overdoses? Maia Szalavitz suggests our focus should be on harm reduction, and especially on the creation of safe injection sites. Philadelphia may be the first US city to follow the example of Vancouver and many West European cities.
The House Judiciary Committee is moving toward impeachment proceedings, and asking what kind of precedents—and what kind of lessons--can be found in the Republican effort to impeach Bill Clinton 20 years ago. Sean Wilentz comments--he’s an award-winning historian who teaches at Princeton. He writes for the New York Times, the New Republic, Rolling Stone, and the New York Review, where he wrote recently about the Clinton impeachment.
For years Elizabeth Warren has been talking about how the political system is rigged by the rich and powerful. But suddenly her position seems almost mainstream among Democrats--almost every contender for the Democratic nomination is rejecting corporate PAC money. George Zornick, The Nation's Washington editor, has our report.
Michael Walzer talks about the movement politics we need: about strategies and tactics and issues and candidates; about meetings and canvassing and demonstrating. His new book is “Political Action: A Practical Guide to Movement Politics.”
California’s resistance to Donald Trump: USC Professor Manuel Pastor explains the past, the present, and the future of the fights over climate justice and immigration between the biggest state and the worst president. His new book is “State of Resistance: What California's Dizzying Descent and Remarkable Resurgence Mean for America's Future.”
Dahlia Lithwick talks about the numerous challenges to Trump’s “national emergency”—the constitutional issues, the political issues, and the dangers of treating as normal his rambling, fact-free, egomaniacal performance in the Rose Garden announcing his “emergency.” Dahlia writes about the courts and the law for Slate and hosts the podcast ‘Amicus.’
In 2016 Bernie ran on domestic issues almost exclusively. This time around, if he runs—and it looks like he will--he’s going to say more about foreign policy—a lot more. David Klion explains; he’s profiled Bernie’s foreign policy advisor, Matt Duss.
Peace in Afghanistan? Trump says it’s close – and Antony Loewenstein says it will bring massive corruption around mining the minerals of that country—and do nothing to help local communities.
Temporary Protected Status – “TPS” - has allowed immigrants and refugees from half a dozen countries with terrible problems to stay in the US for decades – but now Trump is trying to get rid of all of them. Sasha Abramsky reports on the human toll of this cruel policy.
'Elizabeth Kolbert of The New Yorker says “we need courage, not hope” if we are to slow climate change and resist Trump's initiatives. Her book “The Sixth Extinction” won the Pulitzer Prize.
Joan Walsh reports on the Congressional Progressive Caucus and its co-chair Pramila Jayapal—and their plans for a Green New Deal and Medicare for All. Also: the strange case of the 12 Democrats who joined both the Progressive Caucus and the “centrist” New Democrat Coalition.
Trump’s throwing in the towel on the shutdown after the closure of LaGuardia airport opens a new era of challenge to the president, and also “evened the score” for the air traffic controllers, Harold Meyerson says. That came almost 40 years after Reagan fired striking air traffic controllers, which began a devastating wave of attacks on unions. This time they beat a Republican president. Harold is executive editor of The American Prospect.
The LA Teachers’ strike was, among other things, a battle over the future of the Democratic party: will it embrace austerity and the steady erosion of social services, or will it fund the progressive agenda? Sarah Jaffe has our report.
Americans have always struggled over the place of black people in America, starting at the beginning, with the Constitution. Was it a pro-slavery document, as the South Carolinian states-man, John C. Calhoun believed? Or, as Abraham Lincoln argued, did it point toward abolition? We ask Sean Wilentz -- his new book is “No Property in Man: Slavery and Antislavery at the Nation's Founding.”
Like everybody else on the left, we’re excited about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her proposal for a Green New Deal –but “the Left needs more than good ideas”--that’s what Kate Aronoff says. We need to change the economic and political consensus shaped by the right and build a political and intellectual infrastructure that can match theirs.
31,000 teachers are on strike right now in Los Angeles--it’s the biggest strike in a long time in the second biggest school district in the country, with 600,000 students. And it’s not just about salaries and benefits; the teachers say they want smaller classes, which means more teachers. Pedro Noguera reports.
Aaron Maté says new studies show that Russian social-media involvement in US politics in the recent election was small, amateurish, and mostly unrelated to the candidates—and that pundits have exaggerated the effects of Russian trolls posting on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.
Now that the holidays are over, it’s time to talk about the hundreds of thousands of workers who were Christmas temporaries at Amazon warehouses – Amazon calls them “seasonal associates” and describes the places they work as “fullfillment centers.” Alex Press explains—she’s an assistant editor at Jacobin.
Amos Oz died on Dec 28 --He was an Israeli novelist and unyielding critic of the occupation of the West Bank and a campaigner for a two state solution. His novels were translated into dozens of languages, and he also wrote for The Nation. Here we revisit an interview we did with him in 2004, about mideast politics.
Barbara Ehrenreich is a hero of ours-- the author of more than a dozen books, including the unforgettable “Nickel and Dimed.” Now she has a new book out, a bestseller, and it’s terrific: it’s called “Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainly of Dying, and killing ourselves to live longer.”
The biggest story of the year, for all of humanity, has been catastrophic climate change --Bill McKibben says “it’s not just an environmental issue”--among other things, it's a national security issue.
In a lot of ways, Trump himself was the biggest story in 2018--we ask Amy Wilentz the key question: “is Trump crazy?” She discusses the mental and emotional status of the president, as analyzed by 27 psychiatrists in ‘The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump,’ a book edited by Bandy X. Lee. The book was number four on the New York Times bestseller list.
Right-wing authoritarians have been coordinating political campaigns and disrupting elections across national boundaries – a project masterminded by Donald Trump’s former chief strategist, Steve Bannon. It’s time now for the left, especially the American left, to go on the offensive and reclaim its tradition of internationalism. Atossa Araxia Abrahamian reports on the project of Yanis Varoufakis—supported by Bernie Sanders--to organize a Progressive International.
A federal judge ruled last week that all of Obamacare violates the constitution. If that ruling is upheld by the Supreme Court, 20 million people will lose their insurance coverage. The case has the potent name “Texas versus the United States.” Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the law school at UC Berkeley, explains why that ruling is likely to be rejected at the Supreme Court--by vote of 9-0.
A report on The Nation’s investigation of massive accounting fraud at the Pentagon – Dave Lindorff found that $21 trillion cannot be accounted for. For decades, he says, the Pentagon has been “deliberately cooking the books to mislead Congress.”
The Armenian Revolution offers “a small light of hope and progressive democratic change in a Europe increasingly shadowed by authoritarian and dictatorial forces, especially in most of the former soviet-bloc states of Eastern Europe.” That’s what Marc Cooper says—he’s spent months in Yerevan, where elections on Sunday confirmed the victory of the revolutionaries.
Frederick Douglass, the black abolitionist, was the most famous black American of the 19th century. Historian Eric Foner says Douglass’s political ideas can help us in our struggles today.
Katha Pollitt finds lessons from the midterms about white women who support Trump – she argues that they are unlikely to change their minds, and that we’d do better following the example of Stacey Abrams and mobilizing the nonvoters. Katha is a poet, essayist, and award-winning columnist for The Nation.
The Democrats won the midterms by the largest popular vote margin for either party in the history of midterm elections -- larger than the Watergate midterm after Nixon resigned in 1974, 44 years ago. But there was a deeper and more significant victory hidden behind those numbers, Kai Wright argues: the political mobilization of millions of people of color in the South.
Last week the White House – that is, the Trump White House – released a major scientific report on climate change, with the darkest warnings to date about the consequences of rising temperatures for the United States. Tom Athanasiou explains.
Mass demonstrations in America, from the 1963 March on Washington to the worldwide anti-war protests of 2003 to the 2017 Women’s March: what protests do when they work, and why: L.A. Kauffman explains. Her new book is How to Read a Protest: The Art of Organizing and Resistance.
Cities providing sanctuary for people the federal government is trying to arrest and return to the oppression they had escaped-- today’s battles over Trump’s attacks on undocumented immigrants have some striking parallels with the battles over fugitive slaves in the decade before the Civil War. Andrew Delbanco will comment--his new book is The War Before the War: Fugitive Slaves and the Struggle for America’s Soul, from the Revolution to the Civil War.
A report on that caravan from Central America headed across Mexico toward Tijuana, from Laura Carlsen, who has has been with the caravan. Trump has stopped talking about it, now that the midterms are over and his fear-mongering failed to win key House seats.
Is Trump’s appointment of a new acting attorney general, Matt Whitaker, legal? He hasn’t been confirmed by the Senate – or even nominated. Erwin Chemerinsky comments—he’s dean of the law school at UC Berkeley, and his new book is “We the People: A Progressive Reading of the Constitution for the 21st Century.”
Brazil last week elected Jair Bolsonaro. Our man in Rio, Andy Robinson, says he is “worse than Donald Trump,” and “as close to fascism as you will get in the world today, despite a growing number of contenders.”
@omen won unprecedented victories in the midterms: Joan Walsh analyzes the feminist insurgency that will bring almost a hundred women to the House of Representatives in January—including the first two Muslim women (Michigan’s Rashida Tlaib and Minnesota’s Ilhan Omar); the first Native American women (New Mexico’s Deb Haaland and Kansas’s Sharice Davids), Texas’s first two Latina congresswomen (Veronica Escobar and Sylvia Garcia); plus three young black women (Massachusetts’s Ayanna Pressley, Connecticut’s Jahana Hayes, and Illinois’s Lauren Underwood).
Gary Younge, The Nation columnist, talks about politics in the midwest, the heartland, the rust belt – he’s covering the midterms from Racine, Wisconsin, an old Democratic factory town on Lake Michigan. After so many defeats in the state, Democrats there told him they “can’t afford the luxury of hope.”
While Democrats are focusing now on voter mobilization and turnout, Republicans are at work on voter suppression. How significant will the Republican effort be in this election--and where is it likely to have the biggest impact? Ari Berman reports—he wrote about vote suppression for the New York Times opinion pages.
Trump’s place in American history: Jill Lepore of the Harvard history department and the New Yorker talks about her new book 'These Truths,' which starts in 1492 with Christopher Columbus, and ends in 2016 with Donald Trump.
In the 1968 presidential election, Richard Nixon won, and many of our current problems began. The man who almost defeated Nixon was Hubert Humphrey, the onetime Minnesota senator who had become LBJ’s vice president. Anti-war activists hated Hubert Humphrey in 1968--Michael Kazin will explain.
Arizona is a red state, ground zero for Trump’s anti-immigrant politics, but it’s changing. Sasha Abramsky has returned from Tucson, with a report on how and why the Democrats seem likely to flip a key House seat there.
A historic challenges to the Republicans is underway in Georgia, where Stacey Abrams is campaigning to become the state’s first black governor, and first female governor. The polls have her tied with her opponent, a far-right figure endorsed by Trump. Joan Walsh just got back from Georgia with a report.
David Cay Johnston talks about the “Mountain of Tax Cheating” by Donald Trump, as exposed in the massive New York Times report on where Trump’s money came from, and the violations of tax laws in his past. David is a Pulitzer-prize winning reporter who has written for the New York Times and the L.A. Times and is now editor of DCReport.org.
What the Democrats can do about newly-confirmed Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh when they win the House in November and take control of the House Judiciary Committee in January: John Nichols talks about investigations that could lead to the filing of articles of impeachment.
While the eyes of the nation search for news on the FBI investigation of Brett Kavanaugh, the hard work of fighting for social change goes on -- for example in St. Paul, where a campaign for a $15 minimum wage is being fought right now. Michelle Chen reports.
D.D. Guttenplan talks about some alternatives to those old white Republican men who shouted and pouted at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last week – his new book is “The Next Republic: the Rise of a New Radical Majority.”
Universal basic income – government payments to help keep people out of poverty: is that a better idea than a government job guarantee? Bryce Covert explains the current debate on the left.
Also: Florida will vote in November on restoring voting rights for felons, and polls show the measure is likely to pass. Sasha Abramsky reports on the campaign and its significance.
25 years ago, President Bill Clinton presided over a handshake on the White House grounds between PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, agreeing to the Oslo Accords, which, we were told, laid the foundation for peace between Israel and a Palestinian state. Mouin Rabbani comments—he’s a fellow at the Institute for Palestine Studies and a contributor to the London Review of Books and The Nation.
On the 10th anniversary of the financial crisis, Harold Meyerson argues that the recovery was a disaster all over again – and that we are still suffering from its political consequences. Harold is Executive Editor of The American Prospect.
Atossa Araxia Abrahamian examines the new focus on inequality at the IMF, the Ford Foundation, and other elite institutions, and argues that there’s a big political difference between seeking to reduce inequality, and fighting for a world of equality.
Should Democratic strategy focus on winning the votes of moderate Republicans? Steve Phillips points to one key factor: there aren’t that many of them. Steve is the author of the New York Times best seller, 'Brown Is the New White: How a Demographic Revolution Has Created a New American Majority.'
At the California Global Climate Action Summit, in San Francisco next week, all the world’s major nations will be represented, except for our own government. Mark Hertsgaard reports on how California, under Governor Jerry Brown, has taken the lead in fighting climate change -- and how climate activists have organized at the upcoming summit to demand that the governor end new oil and gas drilling. Mark wrote the cover story for The Nation’s special issue on climate politics.
Some questions for Brett Kavanaugh, Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, from David Cole. The legal director of the ACLU and legal affairs correspondent for The Nation says some questions—about current cases—are inappropriate for Democrats to ask in the current confirmation hearings; but there are other questions—on Kavanaugh’s legal philosophy, and on his past statements and decisions—that he should be required to answer.
Mothers and pregnant women are discriminated against, devalued and punished – here at home, and around the world. Nation columnist Katha Pollitt talks about how that has happened—and why.
As Labor Day approaches, we talk about labor unions and politics with Lee Saunders, president of AFSCME. His union was the target of that decision by the Supreme Court in June, when it ruled, 5-4, that government workers who choose NOT to join unions may NOT be required to help pay for collective bargaining. Saunders explains what unions are doing to fight back – in the November election, and in the long run.
Aretha Franklin, who died last week, was a musical genius who seems unique; but she came out of a specific place and time: Detroit in the 1950s and 1960s. Farah Griffin, Professor of Professor of English and Comparative Literature and African American Studies at Columbia University, comments—and explains the central role Aretha played in Angela Davis’s fight for freedom after facing capital charges in California in 1970. Also: Aretha and Obama—at the beginning of his presidency, at his inauguration, and at the Kennedy Center concert at the end.
In August 1968, 50 years ago this week, young antiwar demonstrators fought the police outside the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, while the whole world was watching. It was the culmination of an overwhelming year for the anti-war movement. But where was young Donald Trump? His inspiration was not Martin Luther King, but rather Hugh Hefner, Todd Gitlin explains–he’s an activist, a sociologist, and author of "The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage."
Anna Deavere Smith talks about the the school-to-prison pipeline—that’s the subject of her one-woman show, called ‘Notes from the Field,’ which dramatizes the real-life accounts of students, parents, & teachers caught in a system where young people of color who live in poverty get pushed out of the classroom and into the criminal justice system. It’s streaming o now at HBO.com and HBO GO.
There are 219,000 women in prison in the United States—Rachel Kushner’s new novel, 'The Mars Room,' is a story about of one of them. We talk about the way she mixed facts and imagination in writing the book.
The Democrats need to retake control of the Senate if they are to have a chance of preventing Trump from transforming the Supreme Court into a right-wing bulwark. Harold Meyerson of The American Prospect analyzes the political battles in key states—and the factors that may weaken Brett Kavanaugh in his confirmation hearings.
Donald Trump has done something genuinely new as president: he specializes in creating uncertainty. Nomi Prins talks about the economic consequences for us, and for our future: the danger of chaos, and entropy.
Left politics can win all over the country, not just in New York City and Chicago and LA – Mike Lux explains how Democrats can do it. He’s a longtime strategist for the progressive movement and Democratic candidates.
Jonathan Gold, who died on July 21, was the first food writer to win the Pulitzer Prize for criticism. He wrote, not about high-end restaurants, but about mom-and-pop places in immigrant neighborhoods of Los Angeles. Harold Meyerson of The American Prospect talks about the significance of Gold’s writing about immigrants and their food in the Age of Trump.
Jimmy Carter is widely regarded as a failed president, despite the fact that he promoted human rights around the world, granted amnesty to Vietnam era draft resisters, and was a dedicated opponent of racism who enforced the Voting Rights Act. Only one woman sat on a federal court when Carter entered the White House, but by the time he left, he had appointed 40 more—including Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Historian Michael Kazin analyzes what went wrong with Carter’s presidency.
David Cole, legal director of the ACLU and legal affairs correspondent for The Nation, says some questions--about current cases--are inappropriate for Democrats to ask in the upcoming confirmation hearings for Trump's Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh; but there are other questions—on Kavanaugh’s legal philosophy, and on his past statements and decisions--that he should be required to answer.
John Nichols, The Nation's National Affairs Correspondent, examines the record of Trump’ Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, and assesses the progress of the effort to block his confirmation by the Senate.
UCLA Law Professor Adam Winkler explores the long and terrible history of how corporations were given rights by the Supreme Court–all the same rights that people have. Adam’s book is ‘We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights.’
E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post argues that Trump has mobilized progressive political forces that can transform America—and he reminds us that Trump never had a majority of voters, and is the most unpopular presidents in our history. E.J. is co-author of 'One Nation After Trump: A Guide to the Perplexed, the Disillusioned, the Desperate, and the Not-Yet-Deported.'
Jane Mayer of The New Yorker takes up the question, 'Would Pence be worse?' In 2017 she interviewed more than 60 people in search of answers, including Pence’s mother and brother. Several say he’s wanted to be president at least since high school.
“Does your job make a meaningful contribution to the world?” David Graeber posted that question on the internet – and a million people clicked on it. A lot of them posted answers. Now his book about those answers is out – it’s called 'Bullshit Jobs,' and it casts dramatic light on our economy and politics.
Just eight years ago Democrats held not only the presidency but both houses of Congress. How did they lose so much in such a short time? Thomas Frank explains the disaster, and how, for millions of people, the recession of 2008 has never ended. His new book is 'Rendezvous with Oblivion: Reports from a Sinking Society.'
Haiti: for Trump, it’s a “shithole country”; for us, it’s the country with the first and only successful slave revolution of the modern era –1791-1804—for which the French exacted a heavy price from the Haitians. Amy Wilentz has just returned from Haiti with a report—on earthquake reconstruction (not much), ongoing street demonstrations for a higher minimum wage (now $4.50/day)—and World Cup fever (high).
Drones have become the centerpiece of America’s war on terror. We are told that drones have turned warfare into a costless and bloodless exercise for Americans, something resembling a video game for the people at the computer screens. But Eyal Press reports that the costs of our drone war include not only the casualties on the ground, including civilians, but also the drone warriors themselves—who suffer, not from PTSD, but from something else – “moral injury.”
Andrew Bacevich notes that Donald Trump, alone among presidents since 9-11, has said our 17 years of war have resulted in “nothing except death and destruction” – a statement that’s “more true than false.” But his actions--in Iran, Afghanistan and Korea--have been contradictory.
The World Cup is a political event not only in Russia but many other countries as well, where issues of right-wing populist nationalism, battles over immigration, and celebrations of diversity have surfaced in many different ways. Sports historian Robert Edelman explains.
The Trump administration’s policy of separating children from their parents seeking asylum at the border is unusually cruel – and also unconstitutional. Ahilan Arulanantham, legal director of the ACLU of Southern California, explains the organization’s recent legal victory—and the need for citizen activism on the issue.
Now that some of the key primaries are over, the Democrats’ chances of retaking the House, and maybe even the Senate, have come into sharper focus. Harold Meyerson of The American Prospect is optimistic.
Nearly half of all renters in America today can’t afford rent, and over half a million Americans are homeless on any given night. The problem is simple: a severe shortage of affordable housing. How did we get here? Bryce Covert reports.
One of the defining features of Trump’s politics has been the way he’s appealed to hatred and fear of refugees and immigrants. Viet Thanh Nguyen talks about refugee lives, and refugee writers. He’s the author of the novel The Sympathizer—it won the Pulitzer prize—and editor of the new book The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives. He’s also the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant—and he’s a refugee himself, arriving from Vietnam with his family in 1975, when he was 4 years old.
During Obama’s last year, about 10,000 Syrian refugees were admitted to the US; so far this year, the number is eleven. Wendy Pearlman explains – she interviewed hundreds of Syrian refugees across the Middle East and Europe. Her new book is “We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria.”
The American military is the most massive, the most technologically advanced, and the best-funded fighting force in the world -- but in the last fifteen years of constant war it has won nothing. Tom Engelhardt comments; he’s the legendary editor who created and runs the TomDispatch website, and his new book is “A Nation Unmade by War.”
Trump versus Europe: He’s threatening European banks and industries with sanctions: if they don’t cut off trade with Iran, they would be barred from American markets and transactions with American banks. We asked Yanis Varoufakis for his analysis—he’s the former finance minister of Greece who led the resistance to European Bankers demanding austerity—now he has co-founded an international grassroots movement that is campaign for the revival of democracy in Europe.
Fifty years ago this month, in May ’68, students in Paris took to the streets calling for a new kind of revolution—over the next year or two, There were student uprisings and revolts around the world in many places. But Paris in May 1968 was the best one, the only one to move beyond the campus, with a general strike involving ten million workers threatening the political system. Arthur Goldhammer, the translator and writer, comments.
More than 4,400 African Americans were murdered by white mobs between 1877 and 1950 – that’s the conclusion of the Equal Justice Initiative, a nonprofit legal center. The new National Memorial for Peace and Justice, in Montgomery, Alabama, is dedicated to the victims – it opened last month. Patricia Williams comments; she’s a longtime columnist for The Nation.
There are 219,000 women in prison in the United States -- Rachel Kushner’s new novel, 'The Mars Room,' is a story about of one of them. She explains the mix of fact and imagination that went into the book, and describes her work with Justice Now, a human rights organization of prisoners.
The coming showdown in Texas between populist Democrats and establishment Democrats: D. D. Guttenplan has returned from the Lone Star State with a report on the political transformation underway there.
It’s the 50th anniversary of the student uprising at Columbia University, against university complicity in the war—setting the path for that students at hundreds of other schools followed during the next few years. Historian Eric Foner explains how it happened, and finds lessons for today’s movements for social justice.
The amazing news from Korea about the prospects for peace and de-nuclearization: historian Bruce Cumings of the Univ. of Chicago comments, warning that the Washington consensus opposes a treaty. Bruce's books include “The Korean War: A History” and “North Korea: Another Country.”
James Comey has tried to justify his announcement about investigating Hillary’s emails 11 days before Election Day – but what the fired FBI Director said on his book tour is different from what’s in his book “A Higher Loyalty.” Elizabeth Drew, the legendary Washington journalist, comments--she's the author of "Washington Journal: Reporting Watergate and Richard Nixon's Downfall."
How long will Texas remain a red state? Lawrence Wright says demographic and political change is underway, and that Betto O’Rourke’s campaign for the senate, challenging Ted Cruz, is a crucial one. Wright’s new book is 'God Bless Texas.'
'The Handmaid’s Tale,' that feminist dystopian novel, is beginning its second season as a TV series on Hulu this week. Margaret Atwood talks about the significance of 'The Handmaid’s Tale' in the Age of Trump (recorded a year ago, just before the TV premiere).
Adam Hochschild talks about guns in Trump’s America after the Parkland shootings—he talks about armed militia groups, about the law in Iowa that permits the carrying of loaded guns in public by people who are blind, and about why the Koch Brothers are major funders of the NRA—even though they are not especially enthusiastic about guns.
Nation columnist Gary Younge reports on his return to Muncie to talk to Trump supporters—and opponents—a year after Trump took office. He found supporters still enthusiastic and opponents mobilized as never before. Gary spent the month leading up to the 2016 election in that Indiana rust belt city.
David Cole explains why the FBI raid on the offices and residences of Michael Cohen was not, as Trump said, “an attack on our country,” but rather an example of the rule of law. David is National Legal Director of the ACLU and Legal Correspondent for The Nation.
Katha Pollitt comments on the recent developments in the legal battle over the payoff to Stormy Daniels by Trump’s attorney and fixer Michael Cohen, and she explains why she likes Stormy, and why she’s sympathetic to Melania.
34,000 women contacted Emily’s List about running for office in the wake of Trump’s election. Stephanie Schriock, the organization’s president, explains the organization’s training and endorsement procedures, and the project of Democrats retaking the House this November.
How big wireless muddied the waters on cell phone safety research: Mark Hertsgaard reports on a special investigation by The Nation—and warns about the lack of testing of G5 technology.
Micah Sifrey says the Cambridge Analytica scandal has drawn attention to Facebook's business model—selling users’ data to advertisers, including political campaigns—and exposed the problem of monopoly power on the internet.
Trump's budget sought to cut federal support for public libraries to zero. What's he got against libraries? Sue Halpern comments; her new novel is “Summer Hours at the Robber’s Library.” (Republicans in Congress rejected Trump's cuts in the budget they adopted last week.)
Trump's budget sought to cut federal support for public libraries to zero. What's he got against libraries? Sue Halpern comments; her new novel is “Summer Hours at the Robber’s Library.” (Republicans in Congress rejected Trump's cuts in the budget they adopted last week.)
Micah Sifry says the Cambridge Analytica scandal has drawn attention to Facebook's model—selling users’ data to advertisers, including political campaigns—and exposed the problem of monopoly power on the internet.
Last Sunday’s Rally for Our Lives shows that having Trump in the White House has made the demands of those wonderful Parkland kids more radical. George Zornick comments on the ways the Parkland students have transformed the fight for gun control. Also: It’s time to break up Facebook: that’s what Micah Sifry says, as Facebook’s business model—selling users’ data to advertisers, including political campaigns—has exposed the problem of monopoly power on the internet. Plus: Why does Trump want to defund libraries? Sue Halpern explains; her new novel is “Summer Hours at the Robber’s Library.”
Anna Deavare Smith talks about the school-to-prison pipeline—that’s the subject of her one-woman show, called “Notes from the Field,” which dramatizes the real-life accounts of students, parents, teachers and administrators caught in a system where young people of color who live in poverty get pushed out of the classroom and into the criminal justice system. It’s playing on HBO through the end of March.
Should Ivanka be indicted? She’s been part of some of the Trump administration’s conspiracies to obstruct justice, including the decision to fire James Comey as FBI director. Amy Wilentz reviews the evidence and considers the arguments.
After years of getting beaten in state legislative races, the Democrats have a new energy and a new wave of candidates—especially after last year’s stunning victories in Virginia. Joan Walsh reports. Plus: Should Ivanka be indicted? She’s been part of some of the Trump administration's conspiracies to obstruct justice, including the decision to fire James Comey as FBI director. Amy Wilentz reviews the evidence and considers the arguments. Also: Anna Deavere Smith talks about the school-to-prison pipeline—that’s the subject of her one-woman show, called Notes from the Field, which dramatizes the real-life accounts of students, parents, teachers and administrators caught in a system where young people of color who live in poverty get pushed out of the classroom and into the criminal justice system. It’s playing on HBO through the end of March.
March 16 is the 50th anniversary of the My Lai massacre. We have an interview with the man who stopped the My Lai massacre, American helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson. The interview was recorded in 2000; Hugh Thompson died in 2006.
Katha Pollitt takes up the central arguments of those on the left who are Russiagate skeptics, who say that focusing on Russian interference in the election means neglecting more important things, and that, so far, nothing proves that Trump and Putin colluded in the election campaign.
Robert Reich says it’s time to turn away from the unbridled greed and selfishness of the Age of Trump and restore the ideal of the common good. Reich was Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Labor; his new book is 'The Common Good.'
Also: Katha Pollitt takes up the central arguments of those on the left who are Russiagate skeptics, who say that focusing on Russian interference in the election means neglecting more important things, and that, so far, nothing proves that Trump and Putin colluded in the election campaign.
Plus: March 16 is the 50th anniversary of the My Lai massacre. We have an interview with the man who stopped the My Lai massacre, American helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson.
Gary Younge explains how the Parkland kids are changing the fight for gun control. He knows a lot about kids and guns—he wrote the award-winning book Another Day in the Death of America: A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives. Gary is a columnist for The Nation.
Michael Walzer argues that a foreign policy for the left has to begin with internationalism, and with the choice of comrades abroad. His new book is A Foreign Policy for the Left. Michael edited Dissent for three decades and is the author of many books, including Just and Unjust Wars. He wrote about “A Solidarity of Leftists” for The Nation.
“For Donald Trump, crime is not a problem to be solved; it is a weapon to be wielded”—against people of color and immigrants: Chris Hayes talks about how Trump has transformed this long-standing weapon of the right. His book A Colony in a Nation is out now in paperback, with a new afterword. Chris is an editor-at-large of The Nation. Plus: Gary Younge explains how the Parkland kids are changing the fight for gun control. He knows a lot about kids and guns—he wrote the award-winning book Another Day in the Death of America: A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives. Gary is a columnist for The Nation. And Michael Walzer argues that a foreign policy for the left has to begin with internationalism, and with the choice of comrades abroad. His new book is A Foreign Policy for the Left. Michael edited Dissent for three decades and is the author of many books, including Just and Unjust Wars. He wrote about “A Solidarity of Leftists” for The Nation.
It's time for another episode of The Children’s Hour: stories from Amy Wilentz—this week, about Ivanka in Korea, Don Junior in India, and Jared in trouble.
This week the Supreme Court heard a case that could hobble public-sector unions, some of the last strong unions in America. Jane McAlevey talks about Janus v. AFSCME and what the unions need to do to recover the ground they have lost.
The mass shooting at that high school in Parkland, Florida, two weeks ago, where 17 kids were killed, is still in the news, because of the brilliant political work being done by the students who survived. George Zornick analyzes the big picture: the decline of the gun industry, the growth in popular support for an assault weapons ban, and campaigns to shame companies that support the NRA and haven't divested from gun manufacturers. Plus: This week the supreme court heard a case that could cripple public-sector unions, some of the last strong unions in America. Jane McAlevey talks about Janus v. AFSCME and what the unions need to do to recover the ground they have lost. And we have another episode of The Children’s Hour: stories from Amy Wilentz—this week, about Ivanka in Korea, Don Junior in India, and Jared in trouble—over his security clearance.
Why have wages stagnated since the seventies? Bryce Covert says one reason is the noncompete and no-poaching agreements that prevent low-wage workers from taking better-paying jobs.
Our Russiagate reporter Bob Dreyfuss explains the indictments of 13 Russians for crimes that involved supporting Trump for president—and talks about the next steps Special Counsel Robert Mueller might take—following the trail left by the Russian hacker group “Cozy Bear.”
Amazon is a radically new kind of monopoly that seeks to control all of online commerce. Stacy Mitchell says it’s time for anti-trust action to separate the Amazon Marketplace from Amazon’s own retail operations.
Also: Why have wages stagnated since the seventies? Bryce Covert says one reason is the mandatory noncompete and no-poaching agreements that prevent low-wage workers from taking better-paying jobs. California, Oklahoma and North Dakota have made them unenforceable; the rest of the states should do the same.
Plus: Our Russiagate reporter Bob Dreyfuss explains the indictments of 13 Russians for crimes that involved supporting Trump for president—and talks about the next steps Special Counsel Robert Mueller might take—following the trail left by the Russian hacker group “Cozy Bear.”
“The sage of Omaha” is America’s favorite tycoon. He supported Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for president; even Bernie Sanders has praised his unselfishness. But David Dayen says Warren Buffett’s wealth has actually been built on monopoly power—and the unfair advantages it provides.
Trump and that white working class woman who voted for him: Is she “stupid,” “gullible,” and “turned on by Trump’s bigotry”? Katha Pollitt comments on Renee Elliott, the laid-off worker at that Carrier plant in Indiana—her recent speech at a labor-group press conference made her the face of the white working class Trump voter.
Senator Elizabeth Warren wants to make the fight against monopoly power in America a key part of the Democrats’ agenda; George Zornick reports on his interview with her for the magazine’s special issue on the topic.
Also, Warren Buffett’s secret: “The sage of Omaha” is America’s favorite tycoon. He supported Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for president; even Bernie Sanders has praised his unselfishness. But David Dayen says Warren Buffett’s wealth has actually been built on monopoly power—and the unfair advantages it provides.
Plus: Trump and that white working class woman who voted for him. Is she “stupid,” “gullible,” and “turned on by Trump’s bigotry”? Katha Pollitt comments on Renee Elliott, the laid-off worker at that Carrier plant in Indiana—her recent speech at a labor-group press conference made her the face of the white working class Trump voter.
Remember when Trump said we should get fewer immigrants from “shithole countries,” and more from places like Norway? Ann Jones lived in Norway for four years; she explains what Norwegians might bring to the US if they did come: a commitment to equality in health care, education, and a dozen other necessities.
Here comes the next financial crisis: maybe not this week, but eventually—and Republican deregulation, undermining the institutions designed to protect us, will make it much worse. Nomi Prins explains.
In a speech in Ohio on Monday, Trump said it was “treason” for the Democrats not to applaud him during his State of the Union speech. Tuesday, his spokesperson said he was just kidding. Joan Walsh says it’s not treason—and he wasn’t kidding. Maybe he was just diverting attention from another issue: what happens if Trump refuses to meet with special prosecutor Robert Mueller?
Also, here comes the next financial crisis: maybe not this week, but eventually—and Republican deregulation, undermining the institutions designed to protect us, will make it much worse. Nomi Prins explains.
Plus: Remember when Trump said we should get fewer immigrants from “shithole countries,” and more from places like Norway? Ann Jones lived in Norway for four years; she explains what Norwegians might bring to the US if they did come: a commitment to equality in health care, education, and a dozen other necessities.
It’s not just the police, it’s also the prosecutors—and their reliance on “forensics”—who create much of the injustice in the American justice system. Despite the portrayal on TV of forensic analysts on the show “CSI” as crime-solving seekers of truth, prominent scientists and criminal justice experts have questioned whether suspects can really be identified by forensic techniques like matching bite marks, hairs, shoeprints, tire tracks, or even fingerprints. According to the Innocence Project, faulty forensic science is a factor in nearly 50 percent of wrongful convictions. Meehan Crist and Tim Requarth explain in their Nation article, “The Crisis of American Forensics,” live on Thursday.
Trump’s Teleprompter reading of his State of the Union speech was reprehensible in so many ways—why bother listening at all? Don’t we already know enough about him? Harold Meyerson of The American Prospect comments on the lies, and the inadvertent truths, in the president’s speech.
Plus, injustice in America: It’s not just the police, it’s also the prosecutors—and their reliance on “forensics”—who create much of the injustice in the American justice system. Despite the portrayal on TV of forensic analysts on the show “CSI” as crime-solving seekers of truth, prominent scientists and criminal justice experts have questioned whether suspects can really be identified by forensic techniques like matching bite marks, hairs, shoeprints, tire tracks, or even fingerprints. According to the Innocence Project, faulty forensic science is a factor in nearly 50 percent of wrongful convictions. Meehan Crist and Tim Requarth explain in their Nation article, “The Crisis of American Forensics.”
The Rev. Dr. William J. Barber talks about white nationalism, patriotism, and Donald Trump—he’s the architect of the Forward Together Moral Monday Movement, president of the North Carolina NAACP and pastor of the Greenleaf Christian Church in Goldsboro, North Carolina.
Fortress America is crumbling—the rise of China started long before Trump, but he’s alienated allies and abandoned alliances in a way that may now make the process irreversible. Alfred McCoy explains.
Trump’s not on the ballot this year, but that’s not stopping Democratic women from running against him in races across the country. John Nichols reports on recent Democratic victories where female candidates in special elections in state races flipped formerly Republican seats—they show how to do it in the mid-term elections in November.
Also: Fortress America is crumbling—the rise of China started long before Trump, but he’s alienated allies and abandoned alliances in a way that may now make the process irreversible. Alfred McCoy explains.
And the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber talks about white nationalism, patriotism, and Donald Trump—he’s the architect of the Forward Together Moral Monday Movement, president of the North Carolina NAACP and pastor of the Greenleaf Christian Church in Goldsboro, North Carolina.
David Bromwich says there are no surprises with Trump: he’s been the same for decades, a “wounded monster” with a history of racism and a contempt for people he considers “losers.” But defeating him requires more than an issue—it has to be a cause.
Bob Dreyfuss explains the secrets behind the creation of the Trump-Russia dossier assembled by Christopher Steele and Fusion GPS—as revealed in Congressional testimony released last week by Diane Feinstein, against the wishes of the Republicans.
Since Trump took office a year ago, Katha Pollitt says, women have been unleashing decades of pent-up anger: starting with the Women’s March, then in some amazing political victories, and in the #MeToo movement. But Trump has also shown how terrible the loss of the White House has been.
Also: David Bromwich says there are no surprises with Trump: he’s been the same for decades, a “wounded monster” with a history of racism and a contempt for people he considers “losers.” But defeating him requires more than an issue—it has to be a cause.
And Bob Dreyfuss explains the secrets behind the creation of the Trump-Russia dossier assembled by Christopher Steele and Fusion GPS—as revealed in Congressional testimony released last week by Diane Feinstein, against the wishes of the Republicans.
Father Greg Boyle of Los Angeles has been doing amazing work with former gang members—he’s the founder and head of Homeboy Industries, the biggest and best job training and reentry program in America for previously incarcerated men and women. His new book is "Barking at the Choir."
Trump has targeted California with his tax bill and his immigration policies—but the state is fighting back, and its vulnerable Republican members of Congress have been resigning—making it more likely that the Democrats will take the House in November. Harold Meyerson of The American Prospect comments.
John Nichols points out the problems with running a celebrity like Oprah for president; plus Harold Meyerson comments on how Trump is attacking California, the biggest blue state, and how California is resisting. Also: Father Greg Boyle of LA's Homeboy Industries talks about his work with ex-gang members.
The KKK of the 1920s had millions of members outside the South. It targeted Catholics and Jews as well as blacks, and had impressive success at electing governors and congressmen. It passed anti-immigrant restrictions that remained in effect until 1965. And Fred Trump, the president’s father, was arrested as a young man at a Klan march in New York City. Historian Linda Gordon explains—her new book is The Second Coming of the KKK: The Ku Klux Klan and the American Political Tradition.
Plus: Nancy MacLean uncovered the deep history of the radical right’s stealth plan for America: the historic connection between the Koch Brothers' anti-government politics, the white South's massive resistance to desegregation, and a Nobel Prize-winning Virginia economist. Nancy is an award-winning historian and the William H. Chafe Professor of history and public policy at Duke University. Her Democracy in Chains was named "most valuable book" of 2017 by John Nichols on The Nation's Progressive Honor Roll.
Nancy MacLean uncovered the deep history of the radical right’s stealth plan for America: the historic connection between the Koch Brothers' anti-government politics, the white South's massive resistance to desegregation, and a Nobel Prize-winning Virginia economist. Nancy is an award-winning historian and the William H. Chafe Professor of history and public policy at Duke University. Her Democracy in Chains was named "most valuable book" of 2017 by John Nichols on The Nation's Progressive Honor Roll.
2017 was the year of The Resistance – beginning with the women’s march the day after Trump’s inauguration.
Plus, John Nichols on The Resistance in 2017 and Howell Raines on Alabama’s amazing year.
Legendary Alabama journalist Howell Raines reviews the many surprises along the way and assesses their significance.
Gary Younge interviews Trump’s white working class supporters; D. D. Guttenplan spends a week reporting on Jackson, Mississippi; Amy Wilentz talks about Ivana.
The poorest state of the union is Mississippi, but its capital city, Jackson, has a mayor, Chokwe Antar Lumumba, who says he wants to make Jackson “the most radical city on the planet.”
What should happen with the “Me Too” campaign to expose sexual harassment now that Al Franken has said he will leave the Senate? Joan Walsh says Franken’s departure should be “a beginning, not an end.”
Net neutrality: the FCC abolished the Obama rule on Thursday. John Nichols says now it's time to take the fight to Congress and the courts.
Alabama voters defeated Roy Moore and elected civil rights hero Doug Jones to the Senate—to take the seat vacated by Jeff Sessions. Howell Raines, the legendary Alabama journalist, explains what happened—and what it means for the future.
Plus: What should happen with the “Me Too” campaign to expose sexual harassment, now that Al Franken has said he will leave the Senate? Joan Walsh says Franken’s departure should be “a beginning, not an end.”
Also, net neutrality: the FCC is planning to bring it to an end on Thursday. John Nichols thinks that’s a terrible idea.
It’s been a big week for the Russiagate special counsel Robert Mueller. Bob Dreyfuss discusses the guilty plea by Trump’s former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, and the subpoena for Trump’s associates' records at the notorious Deutsche Bank—two developments with ominous implications for the president.
From the Alabama hill country to the state’s Black Belt, Roy Moore, the Republican senate candidate accused of sexual assault of a 14-year-old, seems to be losing ground to his Democratic opponent Doug Jones. Howell Raines, the legendary Alabama newsman, reports on the final days of the election campaign.
Also: It’s been a big week for Russiagate special counsel Robert Mueller. Bob Dreyfuss discusses the guilty plea by Trump’s former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, and the subpoena for Trump’s records at Deutsche Bank, notorious for money laundering—two developments with ominous implications for the president.
Plus: Two ways to interview a Nazi: on the one hand, The New York Times recently did a profile of “the Nazi next door,” portraying him as an ordinary guy; on the other, Gary Younge confronted Richard Spencer, America’s leading white supremacist, on video. With Gary’s help, we compare and contrast the two approaches.
How to interview a Nazi: on the one hand, the New York Times recently did a profile of “the Nazi next door,” portraying him as an ordinary guy; on the other, Gary Younge confronted Richard Spencer, America’s leading white supremacist, on video. With Gary’s help, we compare and contrast the two approaches.
Republicans who have stood up to Trump—like Jeff Flake and John McCain—seem like truth-telling heroes to a lot of liberals; but not to Rick Perlstein. The author of the classic political history Nixonland talks about the trouble with anti-Trump Republicans.
What will it take for Republicans to pass “the biggest tax scam in history” (Paul Krugman’s phrase)? George Zornick reports on the obstacles the GOP is facing in the Senate, and the pressure its members are feeling from donors. Still to come, if the bill passes the Senate: problems in the House, where the Tea Party Republicans may be more serious about the deficit and the debt.
Plus: Sexual harassment in Washington—we’ve learned a lot about that in the last week, and about the way Congress deals with complaints against its members. The procedures have been called “flawed.” Joan Walsh comments, starting with the different cases of John Conyers and Al Franken.
Also: Republicans who have stood up to Trump—like Jeff Flake and John McCain—seem like truth-telling heroes to a lot of liberals; but not to Rick Perlstein. The author of the classic political history Nixonland talks about the trouble with anti-Trump Republicans.
Sexual harassment in Washington—we’ve learned a lot about that in the last week, and about the way Congress deals with complaints against its members. The procedures have been called “flawed.” Joan Walsh comments, starting with the different cases of John Conyers and Al Franken.
David Cole on stopping Trump, Lawrence O’Donnell on 1968, and Steven Hahn on “Hillbilly Elegy.”
2016 was a bad year in American politics, but 1968 was worse, says Lawrence O’Donnell, the MSNBC host. That was the year Nixon beat Hubert Humphrey, guaranteeing that the war in Vietnam would continue. O’Donnell’s new book is “Playing with Fire: The 1968 Election and the Transformation of American Politics.”
Hillbilly Elegy, the best-selling memoir by J.D. Vance, is often taken as a good explanation of the white working class rage that led to Trump’s election. But Steven Hahn doesn’t agree—he says the book “has the feel of a college application essay”—a simplistic caricature of family dysfunction and the author’s efforts to escape and achieve.
We’re hoping the generals keep Trump from doing anything crazy, like starting a nuclear war with North Korea—but the system is set up to give the president control over nuclear weapons, rather than the military. Adam Shatz talks about Trump and the bomb.
The legendary journalist Howell Raines reports from Alabama on the continuing Republican support for Roy Moore; Adam Shatz talks about Trump's place in the system to control nuclear weapons; and Corey Robin talks about Trump's place in the tradition of reactionary political thought.
Corey Robin talks about Trump’s place in the tradition of reactionary political thought—his book 'The Reactonary Mind: from Edmund Burke to Donald Trump' is out now in a new paperback edition.
The GOP tax bill faces problems in the House, and may never get to the Senate—where additional obstacles await. George Zornick explains.
Katrina vanden Heuvel reports on Russia's monument to victims of the Gulag and comments on Robert Mueller's investigations and the lessons of Trump's victory. Plus George Zornick discusses the obstacles facing the GOP's tax bill in Congress, and legendary restauranteur Danny Meyer explains why he's against tipping.
Legendary New York restauranteur Danny Meyer talks about why he's against tipping—he spoke at a dinner in honor of The Nation's Food issue, held at his restaurant at the Whitney Museum, "Untitled."
Michelle Goldberg talks about Republicans and Trump, after the indictments. Bob Dreyfuss says the indictments of Paul Manafort are only the beginning of the results of the work of Special Counsel Robert Mueller. And Tony Schwartz, who wrote Trump's monster best-seller, "The Art of the Deal," talks about Trump's personality—and the ominous implications for all of us.
Tony Schwartz knows a lot about Trump—he wrote Trump’s best selling memoir “The Art of the Deal.”
The arrest of Trump’s campaign chief Paul Manafort on Monday on multiple felony charges is only the beginning of the results of the work of Special Counsel Robert Muller. The political implications for Trump are ominous. Bob Dreyfuss explains.
Raj Patel explains how we can get to a more just and equitable food future—he wrote about that for The Nation’s special issue on "The Future of Food." His new book is “A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things.”
Is Trump crazy? Amy Wilentz talks about “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump,” edited by Bandy X. Lee, where 27 psychiatrists and mental health experts give their assessments of the president' narcissism, impulsiveness, and aggression. The book is Number Four on the New York Times bestseller list this week.
Would Pence be worse? Jane Mayer of The New Yorker reports—she interviewed more than 60 people in search of answers, including Pence’s mother. Several say he’s wanted to be president at least since high school. Also: Amy Wilentz on Trump; plus Raj Patel on Cheap Food.
How do we get a more equitable & sustainable food system? Zoë Carpenter discusses The Nation's special issue on the politics of food.
Will the generals save us from Trump’s irrationality, ignorance, impulsiveness, and aggression? John Nichols is skeptical.
In the wake of the Harvey Weinstein revelations of sexual harassment and assault, Joan Walsh talks about the torrent of #metoo stories, which reveal just how much time women spend dealing with male abuse. Plus John Nichols on Trump's Generals and Zoë Carpenter on the Future of Food.
How Ivanka and Don Junior were almost indicted for fraud in 2012 over the failing Trump Soho project--Amy Wilentz reports on the strange story of how the investigation was dropped.
“Human Flow” is Ai Weiwei’s amazing documentary on the global refugee crisis. He’s our greatest political artist—here he talks about his first feature film, shot in 23 countries and dozens of refugee camps.
Joan Walsh sits down with Hillary for a conversation about what happened in the campaign, and her book 'What Happened.'
Ari Berman went to the Supreme Court on Tuesday to hear the arguments about political gerrymandering—he reports on the shocking facts behind the Wisconsin case, and the possibility that Justice Kennedy will join liberals on the bench in setting limits on this undemocratic practice.
E.J. Dionne argues that Trump has mobilized progressive political forces that can transform America. Plus Ari Berman reports on the argument about gerrymandering at the Supreme Court, and Joan Walsh sits down with Hillary Clinton for a conversation about what happened in the campaign.
In Hillary's campaign memoir 'What Happened,' Katha Pollitt says, Hillary acknowledges that she never quite grasped what she was up against until it was too late.
Trumpism is defined by fear—especially fear of Mexicans and fear of Muslims. Sasha Abramsky explains.
Hillary's 'What Happened" is not just a misundertanding of the past, D.D. Guttplan argues; it's also an effort to shape the future of the Democratic Party in the Clintonian mold.
Sasha Abramsky on Trump and fear, plus Katha Pollitt and D.D. Guttenplan on Hillary’s memoir.
Bob Dreyfuss reports the big news in the Russiagate scandal, plus Sarah Leonard on Hillary’s Book and Todd Gitlin on Ken Burns’s Vietnam documentary on PBS.
Hillary’s new campaign memoir has its engaging moments, says Sarah Leonard of The Nation, but she doesn’t really understand the populist political forces responsible for her loss.
Future wars will be fought in space and cyberspace, says Alfred McCoy, and the Chinese are ahead of us in supercomputers and technology that could blind our weapons.
Scott Pruitt, who Trump appointed to head the EPA, says we should be helping victims of the hurricanes in Florida and Texas, and not debating climate change. Mark Hertsgaard has a different view--and John Nichols explains why Scott Pruitt is a disaster. Also, Alfred McCoy talks about the Pentagon's plans for war with China, and why we might lose.
Houston is now facing a toxic soup of chemicals, oil and e-coli bacteria left behind by the flooding brought by Hurricane Harvey. That's a job for the EPA--and the head of Trump's EPA is the terrible Scott Pruitt. John Nichols explains.
Trump could fire Mueller or pardon all of his targets—but that won’t protect him from investigation by the state of New York, and Mueller has formed a partnership with New York’s state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. Elizabeth Holtzman explains.
Why Trump sent Jeff Sessions to announce they were targeting the Dreamers for deportation—John Nichols explains. Plus Elizabeth Holtzman, veteran of the Watergate investigations, on Robert Mueller’s brilliant move against Trump, and Joan Walsh answers the question, would Pence be worse?
Roane Carey, plus Erwin Chemerinsky on Trump’s pardon of Joe Arpaio and Bob Dreyfuss on Seth Rich.
Amy Wilentz on the boy wonder, John Nichols on Trump after Bannon, and Joshua Holland on Russia and democracy.
David Cole, legal director of the ACLU and The Nation’s legal affairs correspondent, argues that Trump would only be talking about pardoning himself if he was desperate—because he knows what the Special Counsel is likely to find—and thus willing to pay a tremendous political price to avoid impeachment. Plus: The Senate GOP healthcare bill is confusing—that’s the way they want it, says George Zornick: it’s their only chance of repealing Obamacare. And Joshua Holland explains why Danes are so much happier than Americans: it’s not just because Donald Trump is NOT their president.
Bob Dreyfuss reports on the lawyers on both sides of the Russia investigations, starting with Mark Kasowicz, Trump’s longtime personal attorney, who is also working for Russian bankers connected to the meeting with Don Jr. at Trump Tower. Also: the deep challenges facing Trump's legal team. Plus: Amy Wilentz with The Children's Hour: news about Don Jr., Jared, Ivanka, and Eric—boy, are those kids in trouble this week! One big question: Why were Jared and Ivanka partying with Chuck Schumer in the Hamptons last week? And Suzanne Gordon argues, in the wake of the Republicans' failure to repeal or replace Obamacare, that the VA provides a strong example of healthcare for America—better in many ways than Medicare for all.
Al Franken talks about the dangers of humor in politics, about the voters who supported Trump, the “deep hole” Attorney General Jeff Sessions has dug for himself, and the need for a public option in health care in America. His new book is Al Franken: Giant of the Senate. Also: Joan Walsh comments on Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with a Russian government representative promising dirt on Hillary: it may make him a criminal, and it certainly made him a liar. And Ari Berman explains what the Russians did to hack voting, and what it would take to make our systems less vulnerable—and why Trump’s commission on “electoral integrity” should be disbanded.
Trump’s presidential reality show is non-stop, Naomi Klein says in Part 2 of our interview—and, as a result, people really die. Naomi’s new book, No Is Not Enough, debuted at number two on the New York Times bestseller list. Also: The Jared Report: Amy Wilentz talks about the most trusted man in the Trump White House—his real estate holdings, his efforts to bring peace to the Middle East, and his first speech as a public official—sad! And we revisit our 2003 interview with Al Franken about his number one bestseller, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them. Now he has a new number one bestseller: Al Franken, Giant of the Senate.
It's not enough to say 'no' to Trump, Naomi Klein argues; we need to transform ourselves and our movement to bring about the change we need. Also: Senate Republicans postponed voting on their "health-care" bill, after the CBO revealed its terrible consequences; Zoë Carpenter comments. And, David Cole, National Legal Director of the ACLU, explains the Supreme Court's decision to hear arguments in October about Trump's travel ban.
Only 17 percent of Americans approve of Republican efforts to repeal and replace Obamacare; George Zornick says maybe that explains the secrecy of Senate Republicans in drafting their bill. Also: Why are young people voting for old socialists? Sarah Leonard comments on the support for Bernie Sanders, Jeremy Corbyn and similar candidates across Europe. And Jedediah Purdy responds to critics of Henry David Thoreau and Walden, outlining the radicalism of his politics and his writing.
John Nichols argues that Trump should be charged by the House with obstruction of justice and abuse of power and put on trial in the Senate. Plus: Amy Wilentz talks about the trouble with Trump's tweets, which the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals cited Monday in their ruling rejecting his travel ban. And: Paul Mason analyzes last week’s elections in Britain, and finds lessons for the American left in the historic campaign led by Labour's Jeremy Corbyn. This episode of Start Making Sense is brought to you by The Dig, a podcast from Jacobin magazine. Check out The Dig on iTunes at https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/jacobin-radio/id791564318?mt=2
Norman Lear, who created "All in the Family," reflects on why it succeeded in the Age of Nixon—and on what is different about political satire in the Age of Trump. Plus: The Nation's Zoë Carpenter reports on Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley, who has taken the lead in fighting for an alternative to the GOP's repeal and replacement of Obamacare. And: Amy Goldstein of the Washington Post discusses what happened when Paul Ryan's hometown lost its GM plant. Her new book is Janesville.
The "new normal" of daily disasters for the White House make Trump more dangerous and irrational, Sasha Abramsky says, and more likely to adopt fascistic tactics. Plus: conservatives argue that the courts have gone too far in rejecting Trump's travel ban as an unconstitutional attack on Muslims—David Cole of the ACLU responds. And Paul Mason analyzes the British elections in the wake of Trump's troubled trip to Europe.
All budgets are political statements—Trump’s, submitted to the House on Tuesday, represents a cruel attack on the weakest and most vulnerable, in order to slash taxes for the wealthiest. And the assumptions behind the claim that it is “balanced” could generously be called “unusual.” George Zornick comments. Plus: The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that two of North Carolina’s congressional districts had been gerrymandered to weaken the black vote in the state. Ari Berman explains. Also: Trump’s weekend visit to Saudi Arabia was an embarrassment in many ways, and sinister in others. Joshua Holland has the details.
Could the Democrats remove Trump from office? Harold Meyerson comments on the politics of impeachment, and the lessons of the Democrats’ successful effort to remove Nixon, and the Republicans’ failed effort to remove Clinton. Also: D.D. Guttenplan reports on the Democrats’ efforts to flip a Republican House seat in the special election in Montana on May 25, where Democrat Rob Quist, a musician, is running against a multi-millionaire. And Amy Wilentz comments on Ivanka’s new book 'Women Who Work'. She calls it “a collated collection of bogus ideas and self-help puffery and platitude.”
The leading histories of the conservative movement don’t account for the Klan enthusiasts and the “tribunes of white rage” that Trump mobilized and that he represents—that’s what Rick Perlstein argues in a mea culpa on behalf of historians of American politics. Also: The rock-star appeal of Modern Monetary Theory for the Sanders generation. Atossa Araxia Abrahamian says that, if money is understood correctly, “debt is not the end.” And Heather Ann Thompson talks about the Attica prison uprising of 1971 and its legacy—her book Blood in the Water won The Nation Institute’s Ridenhour award.
Risk is the new film by Laura Poitras, about Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks. Poitras, who won the Oscar for best documentary for her film about Edward Snowden, Citizenfour, calls Assange “admirable, brilliant, and flawed.” Also: Stephen Cohen says a new cold war is threatening world peace, and a new McCarthyism is undermining American politics. And Eric Foner says it might be possible to impeach Donald Trump—but having Mike Pence as president would probably be worse.
The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel about the US after a right-wing coup has installed a theocratic regime, is now a ten-part series on Hulu. The TV version is shocking, scary, and surprisingly relevant in Trump’s America. In this interview, she recalls how and why she wrote the book—in 1984—and what in the TV version seems most resonant today. Also: Katha Pollit says “It’s not ‘McCarthyism’ to demand answers on Trump, Russia, and the election.” And, for our Ivanka Watch segment, Amy Wilentz comments on Ivanka’s debut on the world stage with her first official foreign trip—to the W20 in Germany, where she was booed.
“We’ll either save, or doom, the planet, during the Trump administration.” That’s what Bill McKibben says—he’s an organizer of the Climate March in Washington on Sunday, April 29. Also: 81 percent of white Evangelicals voted for Trump, despite his obvious failings as a Christian. Frances Fitzgerald examines Evangelicals’ earlier history in politics, including their support for a Democrat—the “born-again” Jimmy Carter. Her new book is The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America. Plus: Andrew Bacevich looks at America’s longest war. Our fight in Afghanistan, which began 15 years ago, shows no sign of ending, despite the recent dropping of “the mother of all bombs.”
In the rust belt, "they hated Hillary" -- that's what Tom Frank found on his recent book tour for the paperback of "Listen, Liberal: Or Whatever Happened to the Party of the People?" Also: Is Ivanka Trump responsible for her father's attack on Syria? Amy Wilentz comments on the president's reliance on his daughter and son-in-law Jared Kushner. Plus: Now that Neil Gorsuch has been sworn in as a Supreme Court justice, Ari Berman reviews the big picture of the battle for voting rights.
How we got from the events in Ferguson to the election of you-know-who: Chris Hayes talks about race, incarceration, and politics in his new book A Colony In a Nation—Salon called it “a dark book for a dark time.” Plus: Although Trump was the least Christian of all the Republican candidates, white Evangelicals voted for him overwhelmingly, despite the work of some prominent Evangelical leaders. Sarah Posner of The Nation Institute analyzes the political deal that Evangelicals made—she wrote about the issue last month for The New Republic. And Gary Younge explains what it’s been like talking about kids killed by guns—on call-in shows on talk-radio. His book Another Day in the Death of America: A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives recently won the Anthony J. Lukas Prize.
Chris Hayes assesses the damage to Trump and to the Republicans caused by the failure of their effort to end Obamacare—and the opportunities the major defeat now opens up for progressives. Plus: The deepening crisis facing Trump over questions about his campaign’s collusion with the Russians. Joan Walsh comments. And Amy Wilentz argues that all the publicity about Ivanka and her children is part of a Trump media campaign to distract the public and delight tabloid readers.
You may not have heard of the hedge-fund magnate Robert Mercer, but he was probably the most important backer of Trump for president. Jane Mayer of The New Yorker has the first in-depth report on this little-known figure and former Breitbart News funder. Also: Is Trump like Nixon? Both won by exploiting the resentments of the white working class; both covered up crimes committed by their campaigns against the Democrats. But Rick Perlstein, author of the classic book Nixonland, says the answer is no: Trump is not like Nixon. Plus: Tom Hayden finished a book on the antiwar movement of the sixties before he died in October: Hell No: The Forgotten Power of the Vietnam Peace Movement. It’s out now from Yale University Press. Steve Wasserman, Tom’s editor and publisher, comments.
Why do many white workers who voted for Trump still support him? The Nation sent D.D. Guttenplan to Ohio to find out—he’s returned now with his report. Also: should the feminist movement welcome people who are anti-abortion? Wouldn’t that make the resistance to Trump stronger? Katha Pollitt doesn't think so. And: Ari Berman reports on a big victory for voting rights in Texas, where a federal court ruled that the state intentionally discriminated against black and Latino voters with its redistricting maps.
Joshua Holland surveys the new grassroots resistance groups that have sprung up since the election—he found more than 75, and that number is likely be growing. Indivisible is the biggest of these groups, with more than 5,000 local groups, at least two in every Congressional district. Jeremy Haile explains—he’s one of the authors of the Indivisible Guide. March 8 was International Women’s Day, and Rebecca Solnit was on strike during it. She talks about about the exciting shape feminist activism has taken over the last few year—she calls it “fearless,” “unapologetic” and “gorgeously transformative.” Rebecca’s new book is The Mother of all Questions.
Harold Meyerson says it’s time for the Democrats to move beyond simply saying “no” to Trump and challenge him with alternative tax proposals that would really help working class people. Harold is executive editor of The American Prospect. Plus: The New York Times has published two articles suggesting that Ivanka will save us from her father. Needless to say, Amy Wilentz doesn’t agree. Also: This week we are celebrating the 90th birthday of Harry Belafonte—he’s been a central figure behind the scenes of the civil rights movement since the 1950s, and he did some amazing things on TV in the crucial year of 1968. Joan Walsh explains.
The Koch brothers, the GOP’s biggest donors, didn’t support Trump for president—but he’s supporting their pro-business and anti-environmental agenda now. Jane Mayer of the New Yorker explains; her book Dark Money is out now in paperback. Plus: What Trump has actually done that matters, not just what he’s tweeted, during his first month: George Zornick reports. Also: Who’s the political figure in our history most different from Donald Trump? The answer is easy: Eleanor Roosevelt. Blanche Wiesen Cook comments—the third and final volume of her biography of Eleanor is out now.
California, Oregon and Washington are leading what could become the largest resistance movement to federal policy in more than a century. Sasha Abramsky reports. Also: Are Evangelical Christians hypocrites for supporting Trump? Katha Pollitt says they understand how politics works: now it’s payback time for the president. Plus: Almost two dozen lawsuits have been filed against Trump’s Muslim travel ban—is that too many? David Cole, National Legal Director of the ACLU, says that lots of judges ruling against the president is a good thing.
The Democrats need to “champion working families and give voters a reason to show up at the polls in 2018 and beyond”—that’s what Representative Keith Ellison says. The Nation has endorsed him for chair of the Democratic National Committee. Also: What can Ivanka possibly do for women who work? Amy Wilentz examines the website of our de facto first lady to find some answers. And historian Eric Foner talks about another time in our past when the federal government was as vicious as Trump wants it to be: the 1850s, when the Fugitive Slave Act was the law of the land.
David Cole, the national legal director of the ACLU, discusses Trump’s nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, and its implications for constitutional rights and liberties in the Trump era and beyond. Cole also says that last weekend’s demonstrations against Trump’s Muslim ban were crucial to the court victories the ACLU has won so far against the executive order. Also, Zoë Carpenter reports on what Trump has actually done in his first days in office, as opposed to what he has tweeted. Plus, John Nichols takes the long view, explaining the significance of recent victories against gerrymandering in Wisconsin.
Matt Taibbi says “Trump made idiots of us all.” He covered the campaign for Rolling Stone—and his new book is Insane Clown President. Also: The Women’s March last Saturday was glorious—what’s the next step? Joan Walsh comments—and responds to David Brooks’s argument that the marchers focused on the “wrong issues”: reproductive rights, equal pay, affordable health care, action on climate change—which, he said, are only “for upper-middle-class voters in university towns and coastal cities.” And Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean of the Law School at UC Irvine, is suing Donald Trump—for violating the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, which prohibits officials from taking money or gifts from foreign governments. To determine whether and how much he has received from foreign governments, the plaintiffs are seeking Trump’s tax returns.
Frances Fox Piven argues that social movements need to “make trouble” to effectively challenge Trump—starting with sanctuary movements that will enlist large numbers of people in resisting his deportation efforts. Plus, David Cole says defending First Amendment freedoms to criticize the president will be a major task in the coming year. And Katha Pollitt talks about the Women’s March on Washington this Saturday, and about the danger of underestimating Trump.
Gary Younge says Trump’s victory shows the weakness of the Republican Party, not its strength—and argues that progressives must avoid despair and channel their anger into an effective resistance. Plus: Obamacare has changed America, and that makes it hard for the Republicans to simply repeal it. David Dayen explains. And Joy Reid of MSNBC talks about Obama’s rhetoric on race and what it suggests for the coming fight against Trump and white nationalism. Her new book is 'We Are The Change We Seek: The Speeches of Barack Obama.'
Obamacare saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of black people, but Obama never mentioned that fact—his rhetoric throughout his presidency was always more “race-neutral” than not. And the Obama years also saw the resurgence of white supremacy. Kai Wright asks whether there’s a connection. Plus: Amy Wilentz comments on Michelle Obama’s White House years—her passion and eloquence in the face of Donald Trump, and also how big food and agribusiness defeated her campaign against childhood obesity. And Harold Meyerson examines what Democratic control of California has achieved this year, and explains the forces that have made Republicans powerless in state politics.
John Nichols says 2016 wasn’t all bad. With this year’s Progressive Honor Roll, we remember some of the people who fought the good fight, and sometimes even won; activists who pointed the way in the resistance to come. Also: David Cole looks back on Obama’s achievements in civil rights, and his mixed record in civil liberties, over the last eight years.
Could Republicans be right when they say taxes on business hurt the economy, and low wages help? Robert Reich says there’s an easy way to find out: compare economic growth in high-tax, high-wage California, with Texas. Also: Legendary attorney Marty Garbus argues that Obama should grant clemency to Leonard Peltier, the Native American activist who’s been in prison for 41 years. And, as the horrible year of 2016 comes to an end, Amy Wilentz talks about some of the year’s worst moments—and some of the best.
How did Obama’s presidency end with the election of Donald Trump? Chris Hayes comments—and talks about his trip to Kenosha, Wisconsin this week with Bernie Sanders to meet with Trump voters. Plus, Joan Walsh says Democrats shouldn’t focus exclusively on the worst of Trump’s cabinet nominees, starting with his Attorney General-designee Jeff Sessions; instead, they should fight ever last one of them. And Andrew Bacevich talks about how Trump’s appointments violate the principle of civilian control of the military—especially his choice for National Security advisor, retired General Michael Flynn, who is “something of a nutcase.”
Naomi Klein reports from Standing Rock on the victory there over the Dakota Pipeline—the lesson, she says, is that resistance and organizing can win. Plus, Rebecca Solnit, author of Hope in the Dark, says “when big dangers arise, you have to think big.” She finds grounds for hope in the Standing Rock story. And Zack Exley, who organized grassroots supporters in the Bernie campaign, talks about the campaign for a Brand New Congress in 2018.
Jill Stein has raised almost $7 million to pay for recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. John Nichols says it won’t make Hillary president, but it is a worthwhile electoral practice. Critics on the left say the real problem is vote suppression, voter disfranchisement, and the electoral college. Also: We’re still thinking about Fidel Castro, who died Saturday—Katrin Hansing, who has studied and written about Cuba for two decades, and served as a leader on The Nation’s Cuba trips, comments. And Walter Mosley, author of the Easy Rawlins mysteries, proposes a “shotgun marriage” between capitalism and socialism.
In 2002, we had Bush and Cheney in the White House with Republican control of the House and the Senate and a Republican majority on the Supreme Court. Nevertheless virtually all of Bush’s most outrageous “national security” initiatives were reversed – because of citizen action and groups like the ACLU. David Cole says the lessons for us as Trump comes to power are clear. Also: We’re still trying to understand exactly how Trump won. Gary Younge spent a month in Muncie, a rust-belt city in the Indiana heartland; he reports that Trump won there not because of Republican enthusiasm for Trump—there wasn’t much of that—but because Democrats lacked enthusiasm for Clinton. And Michelle Chen talks about resettlement programs for Muslim refugees in Minneapolis and elsewhere—how they succeed, and what Trump might do to stop new refugees from entering.
Trumpism is inherently chaotic, Mike Davis argues, and won’t last long, while the emergence of the Bernie Sanders movement has the potential to transform American politics. Plus Joan Walsh looks at how Hillary lost women voters she needed, and what comes next for feminist politics. Also, Kai Wright revisits Trump supporters on Long Island, and reconsiders the place of race in America since Obama’s 2008 Philadelphia speech on race. And Adam Shatz argues the vote in the Rust Belt shows Hillary never should have been the Democratic candidate; but Bernie Sanders couldn’t have beaten Trump either.
Katrina vanden Heuvel says there’s no denying the magnitude of our defeats. We need to mourn our losses—but then we have to resist, and organize. Plus John Nichols analyzes the changes we need in the Democratic Party. And Laila Lalami talks about the most vulnerable group in the Trump era: Muslims in America.
Gary Younge has spent the last several weeks in Muncie, Indiana, reporting on politics in the rust belt. Trump voters there, he says, know his faults, but want “something big” to change their world. Plus, Katha Pollitt asks whether Trump’s misogyny will spark a wave of women’s political action. Also, Tom Frank talks about email: he says the John Podesta emails—released by Wikileaks—tell us much more about how America is run than Hillary’s do. And Adam Shatz argues that Obama’s presidency provoked a white backlash—and rekindled a spirit of black resistance—both of which are prominent features of this year’s campaign.
John Nichols talks about some of our favorite progressive candidates—for the Senate, the House, and state legislatures—who show what good politics look like these days—and who have been endorsed by “Our Revolution,” the Bernie Sanders political group. Also: Tom Hayden, who died on Sunday at 74, meant a lot to a lot of us, including Katrina vanden Heuvel—she comments on his amazing life as an activist and writer. Tom was a long-time member of the Editorial Board of The Nation and a frequent contributor to the magazine’s pages. Plus: The documentary filmmaker, Deia Schlosberg, who was arrested while reporting on a climate-change protest in North Dakota. She is now charged with three counts of felony conspiracy and faces a possible sentence of up to 45 years.
Maybe you heard the news: in the third debate, Donald Trump wouldn’t say he would accept the results of the election if he lost. Clinton called that “horrifying.” Joan Walsh comments—she’s The Nation’s National Affairs Correspondent. Plus: Kai Wright comments on the media that have shaped the world-view of Trump supporters—it explains a lot about their thinking. Kai is host and producer of the podcast “The United States of Anxiety.” And we’re still feeling good about Bob Dylan being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature last week—we’ll talk about it, and listen to some Bob Dylan songs, with Greil Marcus—he’s the author of the book “Bob Dylan by Greil Marcus, Writings 1968-2010”
In this special edition of our podcast, Greil Marcus talks about “Highway 61 Revisited,” “Masters of War,” and “Like a Rolling Stone”—and the way Dylan has changed those songs in live performances over the decades. Greil’s 30 years of writings about Dylan have been collected in the book Bob Dylan by Greil Marcus, 1968-2010.
Katha Pollitt has some words for Trump and his defenders after the groping tape and the second debate, where he argued that ISIS “chopping off heads” was worse than his statements about women who will “let you do it” if you are “a star.” Plus D.D. Guttenplan reports on the campaigns in Ohio—he found a distinct lack of enthusiasm for Clinton among Democrats there. And Nation columnist Gary Younge talks about children killed by gun violence in America—in his new book, Another Day in the Death of America, he profiles ten kids killed by guns on one typical day.
For her new book, sociologist Arlie Hochschild listened to Trump supporters explain their world in their own words. She spent five years in southwestern Louisiana searching for their “deep story,” which she recounts in Strangers in Their Own Land—it’s been longlisted for the National Book Award. Plus: The battle inside Trump’s campaign about whether to take the low road, or the high one. Amy Wilentz analyzes the role of the Trump children—who, we are told, are trying to get their father to campaign on actual political issues. And we’ll also hear a chilling disaster at a Titan II missile complex in Arkansas in September, 1980, where the most powerful nuclear warhead in our arsenal was almost detonated. That’s the subject of the new documentary Command and Control—director Robert Kenner and writer Eric Schlosser explain. The film rolls out this week across the nation.
Feeling unenthusiastic about Hillary Clinton? Katha Pollitt says “If she loses, it’s your fault”—so it’s time to go to work on phone banks and canvassing. Also: Why does Trump appeal to so many voters? Kai Wright went deep into to Trump territory on Long Island to find out – he’s host and producer of The Nation’s new podcast, “The United States of Anxiety.” Plus: The Labour Left won a big victory in Britain with the election of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader. D.D. Guttenplan explains.
The Nation interview with Bernie: John Nichols, who with Katrina vanden Heuvel sat down with the senator, sets the scene and introduces our excerpts. Plus: Edward Snowden explains his motivation for revealing the extent of NSA surveillance, and says he’d be willing to go to jail if he could come home. Amy Wilentz explains Snowden’s appearance via live video from Moscow at a UC Irvine conference and introduces our excerpts. Also: Henry Kissinger, war criminal and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, has announced he will not endorse either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. Greg Grandin talks about Kissinger’s life and crimes—his book Kissinger’s Shadow is out now in paperback.
The film 'Snowden,' which opens this weekend, was turned down by all of the big Hollywood studios. Director Oliver Stone explains what it took to make his film about the NSA whistleblower—and why Snowden deserves a presidential pardon. Plus: Nation Sports Editor Dave Zirin says Colin Kaepernick’s protest against police violence is changing the NFL, which has been a bastion of support for our permanent state of war. And Margo Jefferson talks about what she calls 'Negroland'—the world of the black elite in the fifties, the world in which she grew up. She won the Pulitzer Prize in Criticism; her book Negroland: A Memoir won the National Book Critics Circle award –it’s out now in paperback.
It’s the year of the white working class, and Joan Walsh reports on the Democrats’ efforts to win back the voters they have been losing since the sixties. Plus, the fight over the Clinton Foundation: Amy Wilentz says it’s time for Hillary, Bill, and Chelsea to step aside—immediately, and forever. Also: What is it like to be an abortion provider in an anti-choice state? Dr. Leah Torres describes her work as one of the only doctors providing abortions in Utah.
In this exclusive interview with Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate for president responds to the most common criticisms she hears: Won’t a Green vote make Trump’s victory more likely? Didn’t Bernie show it was better for progressives to work inside the Democratic Party? She also lays out her plan for a “Green New Deal.” Plus: French officials banned the burkini from beaches on the grounds that it was “a symbol of the enslavement of women.” Katha Pollitt has a different view. And as Labor Day weekend approaches, Harold Meyerson analyzes some political victories for the working class, especially in California, where Democrats have complete control of state politics.
The power of independent journalism was demonstrated last week when the Obama Justice Department announced the end of incarceration of federal prisoners in private prisons. Seth Freed Wessler explains what it took to uncover dozens of questionable deaths in his yearlong investigation for The Nation. Also: Who is Jared Kushner, and why does Trump listen to his advice? Amy Wilentz tells the story of Ivanka’s husband—how his father was sent to prison by Chris Christie, how the 2007 crash nearly destroyed his family’s fortune, and how he’s advising the Republican candidate. Plus: Amnesty for Edward Snowden. ACLU Attorney Ben Wizener argues that Obama should do the right thing in view of Snowden’s contributions to freedom and democracy.
The most powerful person in Donald Trump’s campaign is not a political professional but rather his own daughter, Ivanka. Amy Wilentz explains how Ivanka got there, and comments on her personal, and political, history. Also: Rosa Brooks talks about “how everything became war and the military became everything”—the title of her new book. She worked at the Pentagon; now she’s a law professor at Georgetown University. Plus: We’re still thinking about the sixties—and so is Calvin Trillin. He went to Mississippi in 1964 as a young journalist, and in the decades since, he’s written a lot about race in America. His new book is Jackson 1964.
Katha Pollitt explains how women employees’ complaints of sexual harassment forced out Roger Ailes—and examines Donald Trump’s comments about it. Plus: Ari Berman analyses the effect of voting rights victories in court on Trump’s chances in North Carolina and other swing states. And David Zirin reports from the Olympics in Rio—the protests, the displaced people, and the real problem: not the Brazilian government, but the International Olympic Committee.
Trump is everywhere in the news this week, so we decided to do something different: 60 minutes of political talk that is Trump-free. Guaranteed. Instead: The fight to limit government surveillance tactics: Ben Wizner talks about what we have won—and what we need to do next. He’s director of the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project and the lawyer for Edward Snowden. Plus: Susan Faludi tells the story of transgender woman—her father, who transitioned when she was 75. Susan of course is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women. Now she has a new book out: it’s called "In the Darkroom." And Tom Lutz has been traveling a lot – he went to Lhasa to talk about Tibetan resistance to China; he went to Jordan to talk about Iran and America; and he went to Teheran to talk about the Kurds. His new book is "Drinking Mare’s Milk on the Roof of the World."
John Nichols analyzes Hillary Clinton’s big speech and the place of Bernie Sanders supporters in Democrats’ plans to fight Donald Trump. Plus D.D. Guttenplan reports on Bernie and the Bernie people at the convention—the battles, the booing, and the work to keep the movement alive after November. And Amy Wilentz looks at gender in politics today: Donald Trump’s brand of masculinity, Ivanka Trump’s brand of femininity, and all those criticisms of Hillary Clinton’s voice, smile, and more.
Amy Wilentz and Jon Wiener debate Trump’s chances for victory in November: Jon says he won’t win; Amy says ‘don’t be so sure.’ Plus: John Nichols and D.D. Guttenplan analyze the candidate's speech and the aura of violence inside the convention hall, and George Zornick reports on the action in the streets and the conduct of the Cleveland police.
The shooting of police officers in Dallas does not change anything about the shootings of black men in Baton Rouge or St. Paul, Kai Wright argues—he’s Features Editor of The Nation. Also: Donald Trump has changed the Republican Party in fundamental ways, says Harold Meyerson of The American Prospect, and it may never recover. And Clara Bingham talks about how the sixties changed America, starting with young Hillary and young Bernie. She interviewed 100 people for her new book Witness to the Revolution.
Joan Walsh says the FBI director’s blunt criticism of Clinton’s handling of her email provides the presidential hopeful with an opportunity to acknowledge mistakes and make amends. Walsh is The Nation’s National Affairs correspondent. Plus: we found something else to worry about: Cyber attacks on the US paralyzing our electric grid and our water supply. The award-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney has a new documentary about that, called Zero Days—it opens this Friday. Also: Ben Ehrenreich and Amy Wilentz talk about life for Palestinians on the West Bank. Wilentz is a contributing editor at The Nation, and Ehrenreich’s new book is “The Way to the Spring: Life and Death in Palestine.” And “A Prairie Home Companion” is ending its long run on public radio—Garrison Keillor explains that the secret of the show’s success was “no competition.”
The victorious campaign in Britain to leave the European Union has many striking parallels to Donald Trump’s campaign to win the White House. D.D. Guttenplan says “that ought to keep Hillary supporters awake at night.” Also: the Supreme Court issued a sharp rebuke to Texas’s anti-choice laws on Monday in the most sweeping victory for abortion rights in 25 years. Zoë Carpenter comments. Plus: A test case of Republican vs. Democratic rule in two states. Minnesota and Wisconsin have taken opposite approaches to voting rights, and some other things too—and the results are now clear. Ari Berman explains.
The People’s Summit brought organizers and activists to Chicago last weekend for three days of planning about where to go next with the Bernie movement—at the Democratic National Convention, and after. RoseAnn DeMoro, executive director of National Nurses United, weighs in. Also, lessons for the left from the NRA in the wake of the Orlando shootings: David Cole, The Nation’s legal affairs correspondent, argues that gun control advocates can win if they focus on state laws rather than Supreme Court challenges. His new book is Engines of Liberty. Plus: Could Donald Trump really ban Muslims from entering the country if he were president? Sasha Abramsky says the answer is simple: yes.
Orlando was one of the most gay-friendly cities in the South—and still is, says Nadine Smith of Equality Florida. Also: Bernie won the war of ideas in the Democratic party—what does that mean for Hillary now? Harold Meyerson comments. And historian Adam Hochschild talks about the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, American leftists who fought the fascists in the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s.
Everything you need to know about the California primary—John Nichols explains it all to producer Alan Minsky. Also: Andrew Cockburn of Harper’s magazine explains how Obama’s drone “kill list” is approved—and what happens after. Because politics isn’t everything, we talked about the great Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar Wai with John Powers—he’s critic at large on “Fresh Air with Terry Gross.”
Bernie Sanders’s campaign rallies in California have brought out more than 100,000 people—many of whom think he can win the state’s primary next week. Nicky Woolf of Guardian US has been following the campaign; he thinks they may be right. Also: Elizabeth Warren seems to be Donald Trump’s most effective critic—and she seems to enjoy the work. Margaret Talbot of The New Yorker comments. Plus: Can the millions of Bernie supporters become a long-lasting force in American politics? D. D. Guttenplan examines four efforts to organize progressives for the years after November 2016.
Bernie Sanders has stopped his direct attacks on Hillary, and he’s been able to make some strong appointments to the platform committee for the Democratic National Convention. Is the unification of the party underway? Harold Meyerson explains. Plus: Most “independent” voters in fact have long-standing ties to one party or the other—very few swing from one party to the other between elections. Joshua Holland has the facts. And Tom Frank examines the “Hillary Doctrine,” her long-standing commitment to microfinance as the best way to help poor women around the world. It doesn’t work, he argues. Tom’s new book is Listen, Liberal!
Hillary will have to do something different to beat Donald Trump, Bruce Shapiro argues—because appealing to moderates, like the Clintons did in the nineties, is not going to work this year. Also: The #BreakFree climate protests have mobilized tens of thousands in direct actions against coal, oil, and gas companies around the world. Zoë Carpenter reports. Plus: Patrick Cockburn, who Seymour Hersh has called “the best Western journalist at work in Iraq today,” gives us an update on Iraq, Syria, Libya, and ISIS.
Donald Trump’s ideal opponent is a member of the establishment, Steve Fraser argues—the kind that used to be called a “limousine liberal.” Hillary Clinton, he argues, fits the bill perfectly. Also: The only way Trump could win, says Ari Berman, is through suppressing the vote of Democrats in half a dozen swing states. A state-by-state survey suggests he’s unlikely to succeed. And historian Eric Foner takes up the question that has troubled Bernie Sanders’s supporters for months: How did he lose the African-American vote to Clinton?
When Hillary Clinton defeats Donald Trump in November, his millions of supporters will be told that their American birthright has once again been stolen from them. Rick Perlstein talks about the potential for violence in the streets after election day. Plus: What really happened to Sandra Bland? To understand that, you have to begin way before she died in a Texas jail. Debbie Nathan reports.
Trump says he’ll fight for jobs against NAFTA-type trade deals, and he doesn’t take money from Wall Street. Is that enough to win some of Bernie Sanders’s supporters to his side? John Nichols weighs in on this week’s primary results. Plus: The Prince of Sex: Richard Kim explains why Prince is a gay icon today—despite the artist’s lack of support for the gay movement. Also: Challenging “Political Correctness” is a favorite theme of Donald Trump—but what exactly does that mean? Laila Lalami explains.
A Clinton vs. Trump campaign in the fall would be a battle of the negatives, Frank Rich says--and Hillary’s are dangerously high. Plus: Hillary and Haiti—a long relationship, and a revealing one. Amy Wilentz comments. And we speak with Viet Nguyen—his novel "The Sympathizer" just won the Pulitzer Prize. It begins in Saigon on the last day of the Vietnam war, and features a Viet Cong spy inside the Saigon army.
Naomi Klein argues that the problem with Hillary Clinton’s climate policy is not her corporate contributions; it’s her corporate ideology. The climate justice movement, she says, "requires the kind of boldness Bernie Sanders represents." Also: Military historian Andrew Bacevich says America can never win its twenty-year war for the Middle East. Plus: Amy Goodman talks about how she got arrested at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul in 2008—and other highlights from the 20-year history of the show Democracy Now!
John Nichols says that, after the Wisconsin primary, Bernie has momentum on his side. Also: David Cole argues that citizen activists are the real force behind changes in constitutional law—look at how the NRA changed the meaning of the Second Amendment; look at how the gay rights movement changed the meaning of “marriage.” His new book is Engines of Liberty. Plus, Obama’s legacy: Gary Younge contrasts the symbolic victory with the real defeats for the left, especially in the use of US military power in the Mideast.
Sasha Abramsky asks, if Donald Trump were president, would he be a familiar kind of New York deal-maker—or a deluded demagogue? Campaign contributions go mostly to TV ads that don’t work, and consultants who are even more useless, Andrew Cockburn reports—what counts is face-to-face canvassing to build voter turnout. Obama is a “folk hero” in black America, says Erin Aubrey Kaplan—her new book is "I Heart Obama.” And, for opening day of major league baseball, our Dave Zirin talks about the game with Noam Chomsky—who recalls growing up with the hapless Philadelphia Athletics, and going to Little League games with his grandson today.
Bernie Sanders is the leading edge of the historical forces bringing the 40-year Reagan era to an end, says Richard Parker of Harvard’s Kennedy School. Plus: Obama’s legacy for black America is mostly symbolic, Gary Younge argues—the wealth gap between black and white Americans has grown over the last eight years, along with black poverty. Gary writes for The Guardian and The Nation. Also: the real politics of hope—Rebecca Solnit talks about untold histories and wild possibilities—her new book is Hope in the Dark.
John Nichols answers the question, what’s left for Bernie Sanders after Tuesday’s primaries? Quite a bit, he says—he’s The Nation’s National Affairs correspondent. Plus: North Carolina’s new voter ID requirements, the most restrictive in the country, went into effect on Tuesday—Ari Berman explains the problem. He's the author of 'Give Us the Ballot.' And Thomas Frank asks the question, whatever happened to the party of the people? His new book is 'Listen, Liberal.'
Harold Meyerson says Bernie’s victory in Michigan shows he'd be a stronger candidate than Hillary in big industrial states with diverse populations and big problems. Harold is executive editor of The American Prospect. Plus: Donald Trump: fascist, or clown? John Powers says there are clownish aspects to Trump’s performance at his rallies, but also an aura of violence against those who would challenge him. John is critic at large on Fresh Air with Terry Gross, where he has a listening audience of around four million. Also: A different kind of politics: the gay revolution. Lillian Faderman talks about the 50-year fight—the years of outrageous injustice, the early battles, the heart-breaking defeats, and the victories beyond the dreams of the gay rights pioneers. Her new book is The Gay Revolution.
Joan Walsh on panic in the GOP establishment over Trump's triumphs on Super Tuesday; Joan is The Nation’s national affairs correspondent. Plus: What Trump supporters really think. Sasha Abramsky interviewed a bunch of them; he reports regularly on politics for The Nation. Also: Trump says he reviles Muslims and reveres veterans—but some vets have been speaking out in defense of the Muslims they know and work with. Laila Lalami has that story—she’s The Nation’s newest columnist.
John Nichols says it’s hard to see how the Republican Party can stop Trump from winning the nomination—for starters, nobody is trying—and it’s not hard see how his appeal to working class white voters could make him president. Julianne Hing reports from Nevada on what it's like to go to a Trump rally and a Cruz rally—on the same day—and what voters who are not white are saying about the campaigns. And, for something completely different, A.O. Scott, film critic for The New York Times, talks about art, pleasure, beauty, and truth—topics in his new book, Better Living Through Criticism.
Katha Pollitt asks, “Is it wrong for women Democrats to want to vote for a woman Democrat?” In 2008 she voted for Obama rather than Hillary; today she’s a Clinton supporter. Gary Younge looks back on Hillary’s 30-plus years in American politics and argues that “It is easy to forget what a mould-breaking, bad-ass figure Hillary cut when she first appeared on the national stage in 1992.” Award-winning filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer talks about The Look of Silence, his Oscar-nominated documentary on genocide in Indonesia in 1965-66 and its aftermath today—in Indonesia, and in American politics.
Republican disarray deepens after New Hampshire: Rick Perlstein explains the dilemma of the GOP establishment, as their chosen candidates continue to slide. Also: The startling success of Bernie Sanders in New Hampshire. It’s not just that he’s from the state next door, says D. D. Guttenplan. And Hillary’s problem is bigger than “the messaging.” And Jane Mayer of The New Yorker examines the secret efforts of the Koch Brothers and their billionaire friends to move the Republican Party to the right—the far, far right.
Gary Younge says Donald Trump is not a uniquely American phenomenon, but part of a broader Western European phenomenon of white, nativist responses to globalization, immigration and terrorism. Joan Walsh analyzes the Republicans after Trump’s second-place finish—as the party establishment has a chance to reassert itself, John Nichols explains how Bernie went from 50 points behind to tie Hillary in Iowa—and what she is doing to change course. And, as the Superbowl approaches, David Zirin has some unkind words about the NFL’s claims that its “Head Health Initiative” has reduced concussions.
The GOP establishment is moving toward accepting Donald Trump as their candidate, says Frank Rich—they think he will make deals with them, while Ted Cruz won’t. Also: Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, the global climate movement: he says the fight to end the fossil fuel era is happening almost in secret, as local activists battle on thousands of fronts around the world. Plus: Anna Deavere Smith, the actor and playwright, talks about her new work on the school-to-prison pipeline, and performing in her home town of Baltimore after the police killed Freddie Gray.
The Nation magazine has endorsed Bernie Sanders for president; editor and publisher Katrina vanden Heuvel explains why. Also: Dave Zirin, sports editor of The Nation, talks with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar about black politics, Ferguson, John Lewis, Donald Trump, and also Gil Scott-Heron. Plus: The Big Short is probably the best movie Hollywood has ever made about an economic crisis—it’s fun, but it’s also serious. Kenneth Turan explains—he’s film critic for the LA Times.
Katha Pollitt says feminists should vote for Hillary Clinton, who will be good for women, and who is the only Democratic candidate who can win. But Liza Featherstone says feminists should not vote for Clinton—her record is full of attacks on poor women, starting with “welfare reform.” Also, Tavis Smiley talks about Martin Luther King’s last year—the year that began with his speech condemning the war in Vietnam, where he called the US “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.”
Rick Perlstein on Chicago’s mayor; Adam Gopnik and Amy Wilentz on the Charlie Hebdo shooting, one year later; and Rebecca Solnit on climate change in the Himalayas.
The most valuable activist, the biggest ideological comeback, the best newspaper front page, and more: John Nichols presents The Nation’s Progressive Honor Roll for 2015. Also: guns in America. What is to be done? Amy Wilentz weighs in. Plus: The great Gore Vidal: Jay Parini wrote a great biography.
On this week’s podcast, Barbara Ehrenreich talks about the alarming rise in the death rate of middle-aged white working class men, who are committing suicide and dying of drug overdoses and alcoholism. Also: Rebecca Solnit explains the achievements and limitations of the Paris climate agreement, and the tasks facing the environmental movement now. And John Powers reports on Canada’s popular new prime minister, Justin Trudeau, who has already welcomed Syrian refugees—and defended the Alberta tar sands.
Laila Lalami talks about what ISIS wants from American Muslims; Joan Walsh explains the real reason we don’t have gun control; and we remember Chernobyl—Amy Wilentz and Tom Lutz talk about writer Svetlana Alexievich, the new winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Naomi Klein on the Shock Doctrine and the Paris climate protests, Katha Pollitt on Europe’s refugee crisis, Eric Foner on Woodrow Wilson’s racism, and Joan Walsh on the Republicans and the Planned Parenthood killings.
Eric Foner on how Bernie should talk about socialism, Dave Zirin on parents and football, Ari Berman on the battle for the vote, and Julianne Hing on Republicans and refugees.
Laila Lalami talks about the origins of ISIS, and what to do about it now. Laila grew up in Morocco; her novel 'The Moor's Account' was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Also: The New York Times coverage of Bernie Sanders has been condescending, and terrible: journalist Amy Wilentz comments on the recent page one story 'Bernie Sanders Won’t Kiss Your Baby.' Plus: Charles Blow, op-ed columnist for the New York Times, talks about growing up poor and black in rural Louisiana; his book 'Fire Shut Up in My Bones' is out now in paperback; And Terry Gross explains the difference between interviewing Hillary and interviewing Bill. It’s her 40th anniversary hosting 'Fresh Air.'