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.
On this episode of Start Making Sense, John Nichols analyzes this week’s primary results in California and elsewhere, and, from the archives, Elmore Leonard talks about where his characters and plots came from.
California’s jungle primary on Tuesday set the stage for the next Democratic governor of the state, and primaries in Iowa, New Jersey and elsewhere tested the strength of progressives in the party. John Nichols has our analysis.
Also: from the archives: Elmore Leonard, who died in 2013 at age 87, was unpretentious about his massive accomplishments: 45 novels, more than a dozen turned into movies, and a reputation as one of the great writers of dialogue. When we spoke in 2000, he had just published Pagan Babies, and his movies Get Shorty, Jackie Brown, and Out of Sight had been hits.
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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.