Start Making Sense

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James Comey’s monster best-seller, A Higher Loyalty, is “a plea for exculpation,” says Jonathan Friedland, but its self-justifications are “not good enough.” Jonathan is a columnist for The Guardian and a best-selling author.
Also: 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.
Plus: 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 first season’s premiere).  TheNation.com 4/26/18

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Trump is the most unpopular president in history—but could he be reelected in 2020? Thomas Frank says it wouldn’t be hard—if the economy continues to boom and wages go up, even a little. But the Democrats can stop him—if they change their ways.
Also: Adam Hochschild on guns in Trump’s America after the Parkland shootings. He talks about armed militias, 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.
Also: Gary Younge returns to Muncie, Indiana, to talk to Trump supporters—and opponents—a year after Trump took office. He found supporters stillenthusiastic, and opponents mobilized as never before. Gary spent the month leading up to the 2016 election in that rust belt city.  4/20/2018

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How progressives should think about Russia: Katrina vanden Heuvel talks about Putin and his history, the democratic opposition inside Russia, and assuring American election integrity in the face of threats from both Russians and Republicans.
Plus: 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.
Also: How women will turn the House from red to blue: 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.  4/4/2018

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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 Sifrey 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.”
3/29/2018

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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.
3-22-18

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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.
The Nation Podcast, 3/14/2018

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“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.”
And Michael Walzer argues that a foreign policy for the left has to begin with internationalism, and with the choice of comrades. His new book is “A Foreign Policy for the Left.” He wrote about “A Solidarity of Leftists” for The Nation. 3/8/18

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The mass shooting at that high school in Parkland, Florida is still in the news, because of the brilliant political work by those students. George Zornick analyzes the big picture.
Plus: This week the supreme court heard a case that could cripple public-sector unions. 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. 3/1/2018

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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 has made them unenforceable; the rest of the states should do the same.
Plus: 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.” 2/21/2018