On this episode of Start Making Sense: John Nichols on recent special elections, and Randi Weingarten on Why Fascists Fear Teachers.
JD Vance hosts a podcast episode of Charlie Kirk’s show at the White House on September 15, 2025.(Doug Mills-Pool via Getty Images)
Here's where to find podcasts from The Nation. Political talk without the boring parts, featuring the writers, activists and artists who shape the news, from a progressive perspective.
In suburban DC, southern Pennsylvania and Iowa, Democrats have won special elections by significant margins – and the polls for this year’s upcoming elections for mayor in New York City, governor in Virginia, and redistricting in California show Democrats well ahead. Also: J.D. Vance attacks The Nation. John Nichols comments.
Also: Randi Weingarten, president of the AFT and one of our leading progressives, explains “Why Fascists Fear Teachers” – the title of her new book.
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In suburban DC, southern Pennsylvania, and small-town Iowa, Democrats have won special elections by significant margins—and the polls for this year’s upcoming elections for mayor in New York City, governor in Virginia, and redistricting in California show Democrats well ahead. Also: JD Vance attacks The Nation. John Nichols comments.
Also: Randi Weingarten, president of the AFT and one of our leading progressives, explains Why Fascists Hate Teachers—the title of her new book.
Subscribe to The Nation to support all of our podcasts: thenation.com/podcastsubscribe.
Here's where to find podcasts from The Nation. Political talk without the boring parts, featuring the writers, activists and artists who shape the news, from a progressive perspective.
Last week was one of the roughest for Democrats since Trump won the election in 2024 – the Supreme Court ended Black congressional representation in most of the South and opened the door to the creation of several more Republican House seats – and then the Virginia Supreme Court ruled that the state’s initiative that created four more Democratic House seats was invalid. Nevertheless Trump is so unpopular that Democrats remain strong favorites to retake the House in November. Harold Meyerson comments.
Also: During the first part of the 20th century, 100,000 Eastern European Jews joined a socialist organization that opposed Zionism. Their organization we call the Bund, and they believed that Jews should fight for full rights wherever they were, not for a new homeland somewhere else. Their motto was “here, where we live, is our country”–that's the title of a new book by Molly Crabapple. Adam Hochschild comments.
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Jon WienerTwitterJon 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.