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Abortion Politics and Republican Power

Rick Perlstein on the Texas law, plus Eric Foner on Tulsa.

Start Making Sense and Jon Wiener

September 9, 2021

Pro-choice protesters march outside the Texas State Capitol on Wednesday, September 1, 2021, in Austin, Tex. (Sergio Flores for The Washington Post via Getty Images)

In Texas, the Republicans are empowering vigilantes to go after people helping women who seek abortions, turning the state’s citizens into bounty hunters. Rick Perlstein explains the long history of how the GOP adopted abortion as a key issue—Rick’s latest book is Reaganland: America’s Right Turn 1976-1980, out now in paperback.

Also: We’re still thinking about Tulsa, about the massacre of Black people there in 1921, probably the deadliest instance of racial violence in the country’s history. It was covered up for a hundred years—how was that possible? Historian Eric Foner comments.

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Start Making SenseTwitterStart 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.  


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.


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