The Constitutional Solution to the Debt Limit Crisis, Plus Victor Navasky Remembered

The Constitutional Solution to the Debt Limit Crisis, Plus Victor Navasky Remembered

In this episode of the Start Making Sense podcast, historian Eric Foner talks about the 14th Amendment, and we listen to an interview with Victor Navasky from 2006.

Jon Wiener and Start Making Sense
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House Republicans are refusing to raise the debt limit, threatening that the United States will default on its bond payments. But the Constitution has the solution for President Biden—that’s what historian Eric Foner says. He joins the podcast to shed light on a little-known section of the 14th Amendment.

Also on this episode, we’re still thinking about Victor Navasky, who died on January 23. He was editor or publisher of The Nation for 27 years, starting in 1978, and author of several books, including one about his life in magazines, titled A Matter of Opinion. We’ll listen to our conversation about that book, recorded in 2006.

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Even before February 28, the reasons for Donald Trump’s imploding approval rating were abundantly clear: untrammeled corruption and personal enrichment to the tune of billions of dollars during an affordability crisis, a foreign policy guided only by his own derelict sense of morality, and the deployment of a murderous campaign of occupation, detention, and deportation on American streets. 

Now an undeclared, unauthorized, unpopular, and unconstitutional war of aggression against Iran has spread like wildfire through the region and into Europe. A new “forever war”—with an ever-increasing likelihood of American troops on the ground—may very well be upon us.  

As we’ve seen over and over, this administration uses lies, misdirection, and attempts to flood the zone to justify its abuses of power at home and abroad. Just as Trump, Marco Rubio, and Pete Hegseth offer erratic and contradictory rationales for the attacks on Iran, the administration is also spreading the lie that the upcoming midterm elections are under threat from noncitizens on voter rolls. When these lies go unchecked, they become the basis for further authoritarian encroachment and war. 

In these dark times, independent journalism is uniquely able to uncover the falsehoods that threaten our republic—and civilians around the world—and shine a bright light on the truth. 

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Jon Wiener Jon 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.


Start Making Sense Start Making Sense is The Nation’s podcast, hosted by Jon Wiener and coproduced by the Los Angeles Review of Books. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts for new episodes each Thursday.  


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