On this episode of The Time of Monsters, Moira Donegan on Joe Biden’s need to embrace pro-choice politics.
Demonstrators in front of the Supreme Court Building as the justices hear arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.(Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)
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.
We don’t have whatever they were giving JFK to power through the Cuban Missile Crisis, but we’re keeping up here. This week’s news: in the Iran War, the U.S. prepares to use Kurdish proxy forces against the Islamic Republic (1:26) while offering shifting timelines and contradictory explanations for the war (6:32), plus Iran searches for a new supreme leader (11:54); Hezbollah launches rockets into Israel after months of being bombarded, so Israel escalates its strikes across Lebanon (16:24); Afghanistan and Pakistan exchange airstrikes and artillery fire as fighting along their border displaces tens of thousands (19:26); Turkey considers reentering the F-35 program as part of new energy negotiations with the U.S. (22:56); Nepal holds a major election following last year’s protests (26:40); fighting intensifies in Sudan’s Kordofan and Blue Nile regions (28:05); M23 launches drone strikes deeper into the Democratic Republic of the Congo as the United States sanctions Rwandan military officials (31:56); a Russian LNG tanker is sunk in the Mediterranean amid suspicions of Ukrainian involvement (34:40); France proposes expanding its nuclear umbrella over Europe (38:01); the U.S. launches a new military operation targeting drug cartels in Ecuador (40:20); Congress strikes down legislation that would halt the Iran war (41:46); and the Trump administration moves ahead with new global tariffs while the courts order billions in refunds for the last batch that were struck down (44:41).
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Abortion will be one of the top issues in the 2024 presidential race and will also be crucial for control of the Senate and House of Representatives. The good news for Democrats is that the public is four-square pro-choice. The battle over abortion has energized Democratic voters and helped the party consistently outperform for the last two years. The bad news for Democrats is that Joe Biden is, at best, a reluctant warrior on the issue.
Writing in The Guardian, Moira Donegan looked at Biden’s history on reproductive freedom and his continued preference for a nonconfrontational approach to the issue.
I spoke to Moira about this and we had a wide-ranging conversation on how the politics of abortion have changed and about the dangers of having a party leader who doesn’t voice the passion of the base. A columnist for the Guardian, Moira is a frequent guest of the podcast. As always, she brings a fierce clarity to the topic on hand.
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.
Writing in Foreign Policy, Matt Duss argues that Donald Trump’s rush to war is both
stupid and illegal. It is also wildly unpopular with the public. But he also observes that
congress has been reluctant to challenge Trump’s policy, although some progressives
have now forced the issue to a vote. Matt is a frequent guest of the show and foreign
policy expert. I talked to him about the dangers of a new war and also the larger
systematic problems of the imperial presidency.
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Jeet HeerTwitterJeet Heer is a national affairs correspondent for The Nation and host of the weekly Nation podcast, The Time of Monsters. He also pens the monthly column “Morbid Symptoms.” The author of In Love with Art: Francoise Mouly’s Adventures in Comics with Art Spiegelman (2013) and Sweet Lechery: Reviews, Essays and Profiles (2014), Heer has written for numerous publications, including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The American Prospect, The Guardian, The New Republic, and The Boston Globe.