Start Making Sense Clips

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’Rou...

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 political representation, legal equality, and recent reports of discrimination and violence.  Katha Pollitt surveys the good news, and the bad news. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com...

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 reduction, and especially on the creation of safe injection sites.  Philadelphia may be the first US city to follow the example of Vancouver and many West European cities. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.c...

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 r...

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, The Nation's Washington editor, has our report. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt...

Michael Walzer talks about the movement politics we need: about strategies and tactics and issues and candidates; about meetings and canvassing and demonstrating.  His new book is “Political Action: A Practical Guide to Movement Politics.” Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

California’s resistance to Donald Trump: USC Professor Manuel Pastor explains the past, the present, and the future of the fights over climate justice and immigration between the biggest state and the worst president.  His new book is “State of Resistance: What California's Dizzying Descent and Remarkable Resurgence Mean for America's Future.” Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/b...

Dahlia Lithwick talks about the numerous challenges 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.’ Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/br...

In 2016 Bernie 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. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

'Elizabeth Kolbert of The New Yorker says “we need courage, not hope” if we are to slow climate change and resist Trump's initiatives.  Her book “The Sixth Extinction” won the Pulitzer Prize. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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 Republican president.  Harold...

The LA Teachers’ strike was, 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 has our report. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Americans have always struggled over the place of black people in America, starting at the beginning, with the Constitution. Was it a pro-slavery document, as the South Carolinian states-man, John C. Calhoun believed? Or, as Abraham Lincoln argued, did it point toward abolition?  We ask Sean Wilentz -- his new book is “No Property in Man: Slavery and Antislavery at the Nation's Founding.” Adve...

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 consensus shaped by the right and build a political and intellectual infrastructure that can match theirs. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Priv...

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. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcir...

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. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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 an assistant editor at Jacobin. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com...

Amos Oz died on Dec 28 --He was an Israeli novelist and unyielding critic of the occupation of the West Bank and a campaigner for a two state solution.  His novels were translated into dozens of languages, and he also wrote for The Nation.  Here we revisit an interview we did with him in 2004, about mideast politics. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://re...

Barbara Ehrenreich is a hero of ours-- the author of more than a dozen books, including the unforgettable “Nickel and Dimed.”  Now she has a new book out, a bestseller, and it’s terrific: it’s called “Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainly of Dying, and killing ourselves to live longer.” Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/pr...

The biggest story of the year, for all of humanity, has been catastrophic climate change --Bill McKibben says “it’s not just an environmental issue”--among other things, it's a national security issue. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

In a lot of ways, Trump himself was the biggest story in 2018--we ask Amy Wilentz the key question: “is Trump crazy?”  She discusses the mental and emotional status of the president, as analyzed by 27 psychiatrists in ‘The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump,’ a book edited by Bandy X. Lee. The book was number four on the New York Times bestseller list. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/bran...

Right-wing authoritarians have been coordinating political campaigns and disrupting elections across national boundaries – a project masterminded by Donald Trump’s former chief strategist, Steve Bannon. It’s time now for the left, especially the American left, to go on the offensive and reclaim its tradition of internationalism. Atossa Araxia Abrahamian reports on the project of Yanis Varoufakis—s...