On this episode of Start Making Sense, John Nichols on the military in the cities, and Adam Hochschild on Mark Twain.
Members of the National Guard from multiple states patrol the National Mall, Washington, DC, on August 25, 2025. (Dominic Gwinn / Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images)
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What is Trump’s strategy in deploying the National Guard to L.A., then D.C., and now probably Chicago and New York? Does he want the military in the street of blue cities for the midterms next year? They will still elect Democrats to the House. John Nichols comments.
Also: ‘Huckleberry Finn’ is America's great anti-slavery novel, but there's a secret behind it: Mark Twain, the author, wasn't always anti-slavery and anti-racist; in fact he fought, briefly, for the Confederacy. Adam Hochschild explains how Twain changed his mind. (Adam reviewed Ron Chernow’s new bio of Twain in the latest issue of The Nation magazine.)
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What is Trump’s strategy in deploying the National Guard to LA, then DC, and now probably Chicago and New York? Does he want the military in the streets of blue cities for the midterms next year? They will still elect Democrats to the House. John Nichols comments.
Also: Huckleberry Finn is America’s great anti-slavery novel, but there’s a secret behind it: Mark Twain, the author, wasn’t always anti-slavery and anti-racist; in fact he fought, briefly, for the Confederacy. Adam Hochschild explains how Twain changed his mind. (Adam reviewed Ron Chernow’s new bio of Twain in the latest issue of The Nation.)
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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.
It’s been only a couple of weeks since the No Kings 3 protests, but we can see now how protest and resistance are changing in America: that one it wasn't just bigger than the previous No Kings. It was different: Deeper and more connected. Rebecca Solnit argues that to understand resistance and change today, we need a much longer perspective than a couple of years. Her new book is The Beginning Comes After the End.
Also: Minneapolis made history with its mobilization against ICE. But what about the rest of the state, where the immigrant population has been growing for a couple of decades? What kind of resistance has developed there? Emma Janssen went to small town Minnesota to find out. She’s a writing fellow at The American Prospect.
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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.