On this episode of Start Making Sense, Katha Pollitt on JD Vance and John Powers on summer reading.
Republican presidential candidate former president Donald Trump and Republican vice presidential candidate Senator JD Vance of Ohio appear on the first day of the Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum, on July 15, 2024, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.(Win McNamee / Getty Images)
JD Vance’s remark about “childless cat ladies” who “want to make the rest of the country miserable” continues to reverberate in the news. Katha Pollitt has our analysis, and rebuts Vance’s argument that people who don’t have children don’t have a stake in the country’s future.
Also: It’s August—and that means it’s time for summer beach reading. We asked John Powers, critic at large for Fresh Air with Terry Gross, for suggestions. His pick is Antonio Scurati’s M: Son of the Century, a 750-page novel about the rise of Mussolini.
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Tuesday night’s debate showed what Kamala can do – and what Trump can’t. John Nichols has our analysis.
Also: homeless vets have been trying for years to get the VA to build housing for them in LA on land dedicated to that purpose. Now, a federal judge has finally ruled: the vets win, and the VA loses. Mark Rosenbaum, lead attorney in the vets’ class action suit, explain.
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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.