John Nichols on Politics in 2024 and Amy Wilentz on Reparations for Haiti

John Nichols on Politics in 2024 and Amy Wilentz on Reparations for Haiti

On this week’s episode of Start Making Sense, a discussion about Pennsylvania’s gubernatorial race and an investigation into Haiti’s forced payments to France.

Jon Wiener and Start Making Sense
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The next six 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, rather than voters, to pick electors for the Electoral College. 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 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 a slave rebellion that achieved Haiti’s independence and the establishment of the world’s first Black republic. Nation contributor Amy Wilentz joins the show to discuss the findings.

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With the midterm elections now firmly upon us, the question is whether Democratic candidates will do more than merely occupy ballot lines as mild alternatives to the red-hot crisis that is Donald Trump.

As Trump spends over $1 billion a day on a globally destabilizing war on Iran and admits that he doesn’t “think about Americans’ financial situation,” millions across the country are struggling with the surging costs of essentials. Democrats must seize this moment and advance bold, small-“d” populist ideas—not settle for cynical caution that once again snatches defeat from the jaws of victory.

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Onward,

Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editor and Publisher, The Nation

Jon Wiener Jon Wiener is a contributing editor of The Nation and co-author (with Mike Davis) of Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties.


Start Making Sense Start Making Sense is The Nation’s podcast, hosted by Jon Wiener and coproduced by the Los Angeles Review of Books. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts for new episodes each Thursday.  


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