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.
Republicans are spending hundreds of millions on the midterms, but their money hasn’t been able to counter the crisis of affordability, the disgust with Trump’s corruption, and the quality of many of the Democratic candidates. Harold Meyerson comments – he’s editor at large of The American Prospect.
Also: Katha Pollit argues that the gang rape at a Cornell fraternity party could have been stopped–if someone had bothered to intervene. But no one did. “Where were the good guys?” She asks.
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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.