Chris Lehmann on GOP Plans for 2023 and Patrick Leahy on January 6

Chris Lehmann on GOP Plans for 2023 and Patrick Leahy on January 6

On this week’s episode of Start Making Sense, a discussion of Republicans’ plans for next year and a look back at the Capitol riots from a senator’s POV.

Copy Link
Facebook
X (Twitter)
Bluesky
Pocket
Email

Republicans are making plans if they win control of the House in November. Chris Lehmann, The Nation’s new DC bureau chief, reports that their top targets include the National Labor Relations Board and the Department of Labor.

Also on this week’s show, Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy joins us to share how on January 6, when senators took refuge from the mob attacking the Capitol, they prepared to complete the work of counting the electoral votes in their underground bunker, until he insisted they should wait until they could return to the Senate chamber. Leahy’s new book is The Road Taken.

Subscribe to The Nation to support all of our podcasts: thenation.com/podcastsubscribe.

Disobey authoritarians, support The Nation

Over the past year you’ve read Nation writers like Elie Mystal, Kaveh Akbar, John Nichols, Joan Walsh, Bryce Covert, Dave Zirin, Jeet Heer, Michael T. Klare, Katha Pollitt, Amy Littlefield, Gregg Gonsalves, and Sasha Abramsky take on the Trump family’s corruption, set the record straight about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s catastrophic Make America Healthy Again movement, survey the fallout and human cost of the DOGE wrecking ball, anticipate the Supreme Court’s dangerous antidemocratic rulings, and amplify successful tactics of resistance on the streets and in Congress.

We publish these stories because when members of our communities are being abducted, household debt is climbing, and AI data centers are causing water and electricity shortages, we have a duty as journalists to do all we can to inform the public.

In 2026, our aim is to do more than ever before—but we need your support to make that happen. 

Through December 31, a generous donor will match all donations up to $75,000. That means that your contribution will be doubled, dollar for dollar. If we hit the full match, we’ll be starting 2026 with $150,000 to invest in the stories that impact real people’s lives—the kinds of stories that billionaire-owned, corporate-backed outlets aren’t covering. 

With your support, our team will publish major stories that the president and his allies won’t want you to read. We’ll cover the emerging military-tech industrial complex and matters of war, peace, and surveillance, as well as the affordability crisis, hunger, housing, healthcare, the environment, attacks on reproductive rights, and much more. At the same time, we’ll imagine alternatives to Trumpian rule and uplift efforts to create a better world, here and now. 

While your gift has twice the impact, I’m asking you to support The Nation with a donation today. You’ll empower the journalists, editors, and fact-checkers best equipped to hold this authoritarian administration to account. 

I hope you won’t miss this moment—donate to The Nation today.

Onward,

Katrina vanden Heuvel 

Editor and publisher, The Nation

x