Start Making Sense

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With tanks rolling down the street in DC on Saturday and troops being deployed to LA, it’s never been more important to come together in nonviolent action to exercise our First Amendment right to peaceful protest. That’s what the organization Indivisible says about Saturday’s National Day of Defiance – the nationwide “No Kings” protests. Ezra Levin will explain; he’s co-founder and co-executive director of Indivisible.

Also: Who, exactly, is being arrested by ICE agents in Los Angeles? Why is the National Guard downtown LA? And What are the 700 marines Trump sent to LA supposed to do? Harold Meyerson will comment – he’s editor at large of The American Prospect.

Transcript HERE  6-12-2025

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Forget the midterms next year, at least for now. The fight against Trump runs through the elections this November—starting with Virginia and New Jersey. The Nation‘s national affairs correspondent John Nichols explains.

Also: J. Hoberman, the long-time film critic for The Village Voice, talks about the happenings, the underground movies, and the radical art and music— from Bob Dylan to Andy Warhol to Yoko Ono. His new book is Everything is Now: The 1960s New York Avant-Garde. 

Transcript HERE  6-4-2025

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Rural America is Trump country. Last November Trump carried 93 percent of rural counties.. How can Democrats change that? Anthony Flaccavento and Erica Etelson, co-founders of the Rural Urban Bridge Initiative, have a strategy to accomplish that.

Also: 20 minutes without Trump: We know a lot about the bad things J. Edgar Hoover did, but it turns out there’s a lot we didn’t know. In this episode from the archives, Historian Beverly Gage will explain. Her award-winning book is “G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover & the Making of the American Century.” (originally aired in December, 2022)

Transcript HERE  5-28-2025

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“A rally a day keeps the fascists away” – that’s what Jamie Raskin says. He’s the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, and he talks about Trump’s “world historical grift,” and why we shouldn’t be pessimistic about defeating his efforts.

Also: 20 minutes without Trump: 1925 is being celebrated this year as the centenary of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzerald — but we’re interested in some of the other books published that year. So we turn to Tom Lutz – his new book is titled “1925: A Literary Encyclopedia.” It’s 800 pages long, and only 7 are on “Gatsby.”

Transcript HERE  5-21-2025

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What obligations do colleges and universities have to protect students from antisemitism and Islamophobia? What obligations do they have to let students speak freely about issues they care about? David Cole just testified before Congress about that—he’s the former National Legal Director of the ACLU, and The Nation’s legal affairs correspondent.

Also: Trump’s partnership in Washington with his biggest donor, Elon Musk, is coming to an end. The richest man in the world, who made the biggest campaign contribution in history, is going home the clear loser in this affair. Historian David Nasaw comments.

Transcript HERE  5-14-2025

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After serving 18 years in the Senate, and losing last November, Sherrod Brown analyzes what it will take for Democrats to recover from the defeats of 2024, and comments on his own political future – he could run for senator or for governor in 2026.

Also on this episode: Dahlia Lithwick explains three key court cases where Trump suffered major defeats, which, she argues, are likely to have an “exponential effect” on other judges. Meanwhile we are seeing a rising tide of activism in the streets. Dahlia writes about the law and the courts for Slate and hosts the ‘Amicus’ podcast.

Transcript HERE  5-7-2025

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Donald Trump is “the greatest threat to American universities since the Red Scare of the 1950s”—that’s what Princeton’s president Christopher Eisgruber said. Others say that what Trump is doing is worse. Beverly Gage comments – she wrote “G-Man,” the award-winning biography of J. Edgar Hoover.

Also on this episode: In 1948, Alger Hiss, a prominent New Deal Democrat, was convicted of perjury for testifying that he had not been a Soviet spy. The conventional wisdom is that he was probably guilty. Now, Jeff Kisseloff says it’s not hard to show that Hiss was innocent; the hard part is figuring out who framed him. Jeff’s new book is “Rewriting Hisstory: A Fifty-Year Journey to Uncover the Truth About Alger Hiss.”

Transcript HERE  4-30-2025

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J D Vance said it most clearly: for the Trump people, “The universities are the enemy.” That’s why Trump is cutting billions of federal funding and making impossible demands that threaten dozens of universities. But universities have begun to resist. Michael Roth comments– he’s president of Wesleyan, and was the first university president to speak out against Trump’s attacks.

Also: Trump is not the worst president when it comes to constitutional rights and civil liberties; Woodrow Wilson was worse. Adam Hochschild explains why – starting with jailing thousands of people whose only crime was speaking out against the president. Adam’s most recent book is ‘American Midnight: The Great War, A Violent Peace, and Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis.’

Transcript HERE  4-23-2025

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While Trump’s attacks on the universities have broadened, and while Columbia is submitting to his requirements, Harvard’s president has declared that Harvard will not comply with Trump’s demands in exchange for keeping its federal funding. David Cole comments – he recently stepped down as National Legal Director of the ACLU to return to teaching law at Georgetown.

Also: Elon Musk’s obsession with rockets and robots sounds futuristic, but “few figures in public life are more shackled to the past” – that’s what Jill Lepore has found. His ideas at DOGE seem to come from his grandfather, a founder of the anti-democratic Technocracy movement of the 1930s. Jill Lepore teaches history and law at Harvard, and writes for The New Yorker.

Transcript HERE  4-16-2025

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Trump’s tariffs are not really about trade, they’re a form of blackmail – but the alternative is not a return to the free trade policies introduced by Clinton and Obama. Lori Wallach of the Rethink Trade program at the American Economic Liberties Project explains what kind of tariffs we need, combined with government support for reindustrialization.

Also on this episode: A major lawsuit challenging Trump over his efforts to deport pro-Gaza campus activists has been brought by faculty members at their universities. Jameel Jaffer reports on the AAUP case; he’s executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and a former deputy legal director of the ACLU.

Transcript HERE  4-9-2025