Start Making Sense

Bernie is back on Page One of the New York Times, but their report last weekend was not about his new plan to save public schools–the most progressive education program in modern American history–or his proposal to end all subsidies for oil and gas companies.  Instead, it was about a trip he made to Nicaragua in 1985, more than 30 years ago.  They didn’t like it.   How do we explain the New York Times’s coverage of Bernie Sanders?  Amy Wilentz comments. Also: 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. Plus: There are 1,000 redactions in the 448 pages of the Muller 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 G

Joe Biden has one thing in common with Donald Trump: a campaign promising “restoration” of a lost past, rather than the kind of transformation we need to deal with our current problems--  That’s what Harold Meyerson says.  Of course the past Biden wants to restore is not the white man’s 1950s, but rather the pre-Trump America of the Clintons and Obama.  Harold is Executive Editor of The American Prospect and a regular contributor to the LA Times op-ed page. Also: 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.” And we’ll also talk about immigrants, with Nation columnist

For the 2020 election, we’ve been focusing mostly on the candidates who want to challenge Trump – but we also need to consider the voters, and the changes in the electorate since 2016.  Especially significant: young people of color.  Steve Phillips explains – he’s the author of the  best-seller "Brown Is the New White: How a Demographic Revolution Has Created a New American Majority." Also: 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. Plus: 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.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: h

When Joe Biden finally declared his candidacy, he immediately pulled way out in front in the polls of Democratic candidates. The polls also show him the one most likely to beat Trump. Joan Walsh points to some of the problems with Biden, and considers the alternatives. Also: should the House Democrats open impeachment hearings? 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. Plus: we take a trip back back to the darkest days of 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 explains—his new book is American Prophet: The Life and Work of Carey McWilliams.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle

What can we do to reduce the speed of climate change?  Bill McKibben argues that we're at a bleak moment in human history -- and we'll either confront that bleakness, or watch the civilization our forebears built slip away.  Bill was one of the first people to warn of the dangers of global warming, 30 years ago with his book The End of Nature.  Then he founded the environmental organization 350.org, the first truly global citizens movement to combat climate change.  It offers some possible ways out of the trap.  His new book is FALTER: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? Also: 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 expl

The chair of the House Ways and Means Committee formally requested six years of Trump’s personal & business tax returns earlier this month. Trump has said he won’t do it—and that the law is “100 per cent” on his side.  He’s 100 per cent wrong about that. David Cay Johnston explains why the IRS Director is required to hand over the returns—or face 5 years in jail—and also what we’re likely to find in Trump’s tax returns—about his tax cheating and his money laundering for Russian oligarchs.  David is a Pulitzer-Prize winning investigative reporter who is founder and editor of DCReport.org. Also: 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. Plus: 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 pu

Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, and Elizabeth Warren are the women in the Senate who have announced campaigns for the Democratic nomination—and Gillibrand is running on Medicare for All and a Green New Deal.  She started out in Congress as more of a centrist Democrat—how authentic has her transformation been?  Joan Walsh reports. Also: ‘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. Plus: 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 J

* When Stacey Abrams ran for governor of Georgia last November as the first African-American and the first woman candidate, she got more votes than any Democrat in Georgia history, including Obama and Hillary Clinton.  She tripled Latino turnout; she increased the youth turnout by 139 per cent and black turnout by 40 per cent.  But because of Republican vote suppression she was not elected.  In 2020 she could run for the Senate, or even for president.  In our interview, she talks about her campaign strategy and the centrality of the fight for the right to vote.  Her new book is "Leading from Outside." Also: The Trouble with Beto--he’s got 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.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Op

Nobody should be satisfied with Attorney General William Barr’s account of the Mueller report, says John Nichols.  We had assumed that the independent counsel’s investigation into obstruction of justice would conclude one way or the other. Instead we have Barr making exactly the kind of political decision by a Trump appointee that the independent counsel’s office was created to prevent.  There’s no substitute for seeing the full Mueller report, Nichols concludes. Also: 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.” Plus: Trump’s Wall has become a powerful symbol of a radically new idea about what America stands

50 people in six states were accused by the Justice Department last week of taking part in a major college admission scandal. They include Hollywood stars and business leaders, who paid bribes to elite college coaches.  But that’s not the way Jared Kushner got in to Harvard—his father paid the university directly.  Amy Wilentz comments on the legal, and the illegal, ways wealthy people get their unqualified children into elite schools. Also: 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. Plus: Mississippi has only one place you can get an abortion--it’s in Jackson,  and the state also has a

The Democrats’ picking Milwaukee for their convention in 2020 indicates how that Wisconsin is a key battleground the party must win in order to recapture the White House.  John Nichols talks about what it going to take for the Democrats to carry Wisconsin—and Michigan and Pennsylvania—and about the far-reaching tasks that face the party after four years of Trump.  Also: 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. Plus: 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 po

To replace coal and oil, do we need nuclear power?  Is switching from coal powered electric plants to natural gas a step in the right direction?  And what lessons can we draw from the recent victories—and setbacks--for the climate movement in California?  Bill McKibben comments--and talks how to get to a Green New Deal.  Bill’s new book, “Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?”, will be published on April 16. Plus: 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. Also: 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 redu

Trump’s presidency is not the end of Democracy, as some of our friends have suggested.  Instead we are seeing the end of a political cycle, the one that began in 1980 with Reagan.  And now, it’s time for something new—and that could be a Green New Deal.  New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg comments. Also: 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 has our report. And we’ll talk about movement politics with Michael Walzer--about strategies and tactics and issues and candidates.  His new book is “Political Action: A Practical Guide to Movement Politics.”Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Naomi Klein says the Green New Deal needs to follow the example of the New Deal of the 1930s, when nothing would have happened without “massive pressure from social movements” that “changed the calculus of what was possible.”  Naomi is a contributing editor at The Nation and author of several number one bestsellers, including “This Changes Everything.” Plus Dahlia Lithwick talks about the national challenge 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.’ And we’ll also look at California’s resistance to Donald Trump: Manuel Pastor will explain the past, the present, and the future of the fights over climate justice and immigration between the biggest state and the worst president.  Manuel’s new book is “State of Resistance.”Advertising Inquiries: https://re

Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, free college tuition, a $15 minimum wage – and how about adding Child care for all to the Progressive agenda?  That’s Katha Pollitt’s proposal—she argues it will help huge numbers of people. Also: Bernie’s foreign policy: in 2016 he 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. Plus: 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.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

John Nichols says Trump’s State of the Union speech Tuesday night was "cynical and crude." Also: 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. Plus: Elizabeth Kolbert of The New Yorker on Trump, climate change and species extinction – she says “we need courage, not hope.”  Her book “The Sixth Extinction” won the Pulitzer Prize.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The battle between Democrats and Trump over a border wall was a disagreement about symbolism, not policy, Atossa Araxia Abrahamian argues; the borders of the future won’t be as easy to spot as the wall that Trump is proposing. And the new borders going up around us—digital ones—are already taking away our freedom.  Also: how the progressives in the House will fight Trump: 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 Re

What will 2019 be like for Trump? Will it be like Nixon in 1974—the Watergate year, which ended with his resignation? Or more like Clinton in 1998—the Monica year, which culminated with an impeachment trial in the Senate in 1999? He won that vote easily and came out more popular than before. John Nichols looks at the investigations coming up in the House, leading us to conclude that 2019 will be the worst year of Donald Trump’s life. Also: The LA teachers’ strike is, 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 reports. And Americans have always struggled over the place of black people in America, starting at the beginning, with the Constitution. Was the Constitution a pro-slavery document? Or, as Lincoln argued, did it point toward abolition? We ask Sean Wilentz—his new book is No Property in Man. Subscribe to Start Making Sense wherever you get your podcasts fo

A political movement combining a left-wing economic program with anti-immigrant initiatives: it’s developing right now in Germany and France – could it happen here? David Adler explains: he’s the Policy Coordinator for the European Spring — Europe’s first transnational party, led by Yanis Varoufakis. He writing has appeared in the New York Times, Foreign Affairs, The Guardian, and Jacobin—and now he has the cover story in the new issue of The Nation. Also: 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. Plus: 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 cons

Now that the Democrats are in charge in the House of Representatives, Harold Meyerson says, we can learn a lot about progressive political opportunities by studying “the Republican dogs that didn’t bark in the night” – the political issues Republicans didn’t attack in the recent elections--because they have widespread public support.  Harold is executive editor of The American Prospect and a regular contributor to the LA Times op-ed page. Also: 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. Plus: 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 a