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The January 6 committee hearings have been powerful and devastating, explains John Nichols.

We’re also still thinking about Chesa Boudin’s recall in San Francisco. Pundits everywhere are saying it means Democrats need to abandon their commitment to reforming the police and the criminal justice system. Peter Dreier doesn’t agree, explains why this week’s on the podcast.  6-16-2022

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The results of Tuesday’s primaries in L.A. and San Francisco, according to the New York Times, were “a stark warning to the Democratic Party about the potency of law and order as a political message in 2022.” John Nichols disagrees. Also: our preview of the live TV hearings of the House committee on the January 6 insurrection.

Plus: sex, politics, and the Southern Baptists: 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.  6-9-2022

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The coming repeal of constitutional protection for abortion leaves us with a lot of work to do – to protect and expand abortion rights in the states where it will remain legal, and to help women in states where it will be banned. Katha Pollitt joins the Start Making Sense podcast to explain what we need to do now – in politics, health care, and funding.

Plus: “Bad Mexicans” – that 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, which is the subject of her new book.  6-2-2022

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The next 6 months will be crucial in determining what happens to American democracy in 2024. Republicans are preparing to challenge the popular vote in many of the states they control by empowering state legislatures to pick electors for the electoral college rather than voters. To do that, they also need to elect Republican governors. The Nation’s national affairs correspondent, John Nichols, joins this week’s show to discuss how the most crucial battlefield for those efforts right now is in Pennsylvania.

Also: Haiti is back on the front page—at least in the New York Times— and it’s not because of what’s happening there right now. The Times has published the results of a year-long investigation into the history of Haiti’s forced payments to France following Haiti’s successful slave revolution and the establishment of the world’s first Black Republic. Nation contributor, Amy Wilentz, joins the show to discuss the findings.  5-26-2022

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Tuesday’s Democratic primaries for the House were flooded with money from pro-Israel groups seeking to defeat progressive candidates. It worked in North Carolina, but not Pennsylvania, where Summer Lee won. John Nichols has our analysis.

Also in this week’s show, a discussion with Lynn Garafola about Bronislava Nijinska, the ballet dancer, choreographer, and long-neglected sister of the legendary dancer Vaslav Nijinsky. Garafola, author of the new biography, La Nijinska, Choreographer of the Modern, tells us about how this “amazon of the avant-garde” started out in revolutionary Russia, worked in wartime Kiev, and then came to Hollywood in the thirties.  5-19-2022