A member of the American Civil Liberties Union observes a polling station during the presidential election, Las Vegas, Nevada, November 8, 2016. (Reuters / David Becker)
In 2002, we had Bush and Cheney in the White House with Republican control of the House and the Senate and a Republican majority on the Supreme Court. Nevertheless, virtually all of Bush’s most outrageous “national security” initiatives were reversed—because of citizen action and groups like the ACLU. As Trump comes to power, David Cole says the lessons for us are clear.
Start Making Sense is hosted by Jon Wiener and co-produced by the Los Angeles Review of Books.
Also: We’re still trying to understand exactly how Trump won. Gary Younge spent a month in Muncie, a Rust Belt city in the Indiana heartland; he reports that Trump won there not because of Republican enthusiasm for Trump—there wasn’t much of that—but because Democrats lacked enthusiasm for Clinton.
And Michelle Chen talks about resettlement programs for Muslim refugees in Minneapolis and elsewhere—how they succeed, and what Trump might do to stop new refugees from entering.
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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.