On this episode of Start Making Sense, Katha Pollitt on JD Vance and John Powers on summer reading.
Republican presidential candidate former president Donald Trump and Republican vice presidential candidate Senator JD Vance of Ohio appear on the first day of the Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum, on July 15, 2024, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.(Win McNamee / Getty Images)
JD Vance’s remark about “childless cat ladies” who “want to make the rest of the country miserable” continues to reverberate in the news. Katha Pollitt has our analysis, and rebuts Vance’s argument that people who don’t have children don’t have a stake in the country’s future.
Also: It’s August—and that means it’s time for summer beach reading. We asked John Powers, critic at large for Fresh Air with Terry Gross, for suggestions. His pick is Antonio Scurati’s M: Son of the Century, a 750-page novel about the rise of Mussolini.
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The year in politics: Harold Meyerson of The American Prospect comments on Trump’s collapsing support in 2025, and the rise of the resistance—in both the unprecendented national mobilizations culminating in the second No Kings Day, and the Democratic triumph in virtually all elections in 2025.
Also: the year in court: David Cole, who stepped down this year as national legal director of the ACLU, reviews the 149 rulings against Trump in federal courts this past year, and the 21 times the Supreme Court has supported his attacks on democracy.
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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.