On this episode of Start Making Sense, Harold Meyerson argues Democrats remain likely to win the House in November, and Adam Hochschild talks about the Bund in prewar Europe.
House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) speaks at a press conference with other members of the Congressional Black Caucus on the Supreme Court decision in Louisiana v. Callais, at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, on April 29, 2026.(Nathan Posner / Anadolu via Getty Images)
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 about them by Molly Crabapple. Adam Hochschild comments.
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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.