Journalism

Ro Khanna Is Doing More Than Voting “No”

The Silicon Valley progressive talks about the short-term and long-term strategies for defeating Trump and Trumpism.

Ro Khanna represents Silicon Valley in the House, where he’s a member of the Progressive Caucus. He’s a key strategist for the Democrats. We asked him about the immediate task of protecting democracy, and then the longer-term project of winning back working-class voters who have abandoned the Democratic Party and helped make Trump president.

This interview has been edited and condensed—you can listen to the full interview here.

Jon Wiener: Last week the House narrowly passed a preliminary budget. What’s in this bill?

Ro Khanna: Well, look, the Republican budget is a cruel, atrocious budget—$2 trillion of Medicaid cuts. They’re basically going to put a per capita cap on every state. What does that mean? If you live in California, my state, or you live in Ohio, your state’s going to get less money for Medicaid. That means millions of people will not be covered who were covered, particularly under the Affordable Care Act that expanded coverage. It means rural hospitals will shut down. It means outpatient services for mental health, behavioral therapy will shut down…

… continued at The Nation, HERE 3-3-2025

How the Courts Can Stop Trump

The former national legal director of the ACLU analyzes recent efforts to block the president’s executive orders.

Dozens of lawsuits have been filed to block Trump’s executive orders, and he has lost virtually every case thus far. Courts have enjoined his freezing of funds, enjoined his efforts to shut down USAID, enjoined his efforts to buy off government officials by paying them till September to do nothing, enjoined his orders barring transgender women from being put in women’s prisons for their safety, enjoined his effort to overturn birthright citizenship. Basically, the courts are doing their job—thus far. But what if he defies them? Or what if the Supreme Court reverses all the lower court actions? We asked David Cole, who recently stepped down as National Legal Director of the ACLU to return to teaching law at Georgetown. He writes for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The New York Review of Books, and he’s legal affairs correspondent for The Nation.

… continued at The Nation, HERE 2-18-2025

Chris Hayes on the Fight for Our Attention

In this interview, the MSNBC host discusses Trump’s mastery of our age of attention, and his new book, The Sirens’ Call.

Chris Hayes was The Nation’s Washington editor from 2007 to 2011. He started out writing for the Chicago Reader, then In These Times. He went from The Nation to MSNBC, and became host of All In with Chris Hayes, which won an Emmy. His new book is The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource. This interview has been edited and condensed—read the full transcript here.

Jon Wiener: I have a friend who refuses to watch Trump on TV. Why not? “Because,” he says, “Your attention is the most valuable thing you have.” In your new book you describe your own struggle to pay attention to what is most valuable—especially in the morning, when you sit on the couch…

Chris Hayes: “In the morning, I sit on the couch with my precious younger daughter. She’s six years old, and her sweet soft breath is on my cheek as she cuddles up with a book asking me to read to her before we walk to school. Her attention is uncorrupted and pure…

… continued at The Nation, HERE 1-3-2025

The Courts, Trump, and Us: A Q&A With David Cole

Last time, the courts were an essential checking force on the Trump administration. This time around, they may again provide a check—if we push.

We shouldn’t underestimate the threats that Trump poses, but we shouldn’t underestimate the headwinds he’s likely to face if people oppose his initiatives. Remember, autocracy takes time. It’s hard work. Trump is not good at that. Let’s be realistic about our goal: We can probably limit the damage; we can prepare the ground for future victories. But how much can we limit the damage? Really, nobody knows, and the only way to find out is to try. We do know the writers of the Constitution did a lot to try to prevent one-man rule—by creating the famous checks and balances, including the courts as a check on the president.

But most of our friends think this Supreme Court will not stop Trump. To discuss, we are joined by David Cole, legal affairs correspondent for The Nation. Cole recently stepped down as national legal director of the ACLU to return to teaching law at Georgetown. He writes for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The New York Review of Books.

… continued at The Nation, HERE 12-10-2024

Can We Build a Shared Homeland for Israelis And Palestinians?

In this conversation, Jon Wiener and May Pundak of A Land For All discuss a better two-state solution.

Jon Wiener: We want to look beyond the daily news of Israel’s destruction of Gaza and talk about a political solution that will bring real equality and justice to Palestinians as well as Israelis. It’s been clear from the beginning of this war that Netanyahu had no goal beyond what he called “complete victory over Hamas.” But what should happen after the war? The US policy for decades has been to support a two-state solution. But today that seems problematic or obsolete.

May Pundak: The reality is so, so, so bleak today. The war on Gaza, and on the Palestinian people well beyond Gaza, in the West Bank, and in East Jerusalem, and within Israel itself, is continuous and continuing. And children are starving today in Gaza. In a way, it is fair to say that we are all complicit in this. I think it’s important to start there, and not make this a conversation that is on another, higher level that is disconnected from where we are. But I honestly believe that a political vision and a political horizon can be a mechanism to end this war faster.

… continued at The Nation, HERE 4-29-2024

Report From the Rafah Crossing: An Interview With Jeff Merkley – THE NATION

The Oregon senator who tried to get into Gaza explains what he saw and learned.

Jon Wiener: Recently you went to the Rafah border crossing, between Gaza and Egypt—it’s one of the very few ways for anyone to get into or out of Gaza, and is the principal route for delivery of humanitarian aid. Why did you go, and what did you see?

Jeff Merkley: Senator Chris Van Hollen and I felt like we should try to understand the humanitarian issues, and the best way to do that was to go to Gaza. We tried to get into Gaza. We tried every possible strategy. But quite frankly, none of the governments wanted to risk letting two senators in. We were the only two members of Congress, I believe, who have made it to Rafah Gate…

… continued at The Nation, HERE 2-9-2024

The Israeli Left Today – THE NATION

A Q& A with David Myers, Distinguished Professor and Kahn Professor of Jewish History at UCLA. He’s written for the Los Angeles Times Op-Ed page, The Forward, and The Atlantic.

Jon Wiener: The Netanyahu government has no plan for what happens after its war in Gaza. We know we need a genuine political solution to what Edward Said called “the Question of Palestine.”

David Myers: The existing paradigms seem to be two states or one state, both of which have been widely discredited. This is a time when we have to push towards greater political imagination in thinking about what exists between two and one…

… continued at The Nation, HERE 12-14-2023

Drew Faust on Growing Up in the Sixties – THE NATION

Drew Faust was the first woman president of Harvard, from 2007 to 2018. Before that, she was the founding dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and before that, she was the Annenberg professor of history at Penn. Now, she’s a member of the history department at Harvard. She’s the author of six books, including This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War. Her new book is Necessary Trouble: Growing up at Mid-Century. This interview has been condensed and edited.

JON WIENER: I’ve read a lot of memoirs written by sixties people and virtually all trace the origins of their activism to the same moment: the sit-in movement in the spring of 1960. But your epiphany, as you call it, the shock of recognition that spurred you to take your first political act, came well before 1960…

… continued at The Nation, HERE 5-30-2023

Sowing the Future – LARB Quarterly

“Sowing the Future” (co-authored by Mike Davis), LARB Quarterly 37 (Spring 2023), pp. 37-44. Excerpt from “Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties,” with a new introduction.

… continued in LARB Quarterly, HERE 6-10-2023

Are the Risk Managers Running Planned Parenthood? – The Nation

Eyal Press on courage and caution among abortion providers.

JON WIENER: When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, a lot of our friends immediately sent a check to Planned Parenthood—because Planned Parenthood is known to all as the organization that provides abortion services and defends abortion rights. But it turns out some of the affiliates are less willing to provide abortion services than others. And in many places, independent abortion clinics do a lot of the work, and face a lot of the threats from violent anti-abortion activists: for example, in Montana.