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The Atlantic | August 29, 2022 EVER since the U.S. Senate failed to convict Donald Trump for his role in the January 6 insurrection and disqualify him from running for president again, a lot of people, myself included, have been warning that a second Trump term could bring about the extinction of American democracy. Essential features of the system,…
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American Purpose | April 1, 2022 MY friend Giselle Donnelly is the kind of person whose views, these days, are routinely denounced in elite circles as transphobic. She favors reasonable accommodations for trans people in areas like sports and bathrooms, but she rejects what she calls the “biological silliness” of denying the gender binary. She thinks trans…
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National Affairs | Winter 2021 ON June 17, 2017, President Donald Trump directed the White House counsel, Don McGahn, to fire special counsel Robert Mueller. Instead, McGahn packed up his belongings and prepared his letter of resignation, telling the White House chief of staff that the president had told him to “do crazy shit.” Initially, Trump…
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Persuasion | December 13, 2021 “To see what is in front of one’s nose,” George Orwell said, “needs a constant struggle.” Among Donald Trump’s many impressive talents is his gift for obscuring, occluding, and even inverting what is in front of America’s nose. Most notably, he has convinced tens of millions of Americans, including a majority of…
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Deseret News Magazine | May 2021 IT’S not every day that an atheist witnesses a miracle, but I saw one more than five years ago in Salt Lake City. On March 4, 2015, at a downtown press conference, a group including LGBTQ leaders, representatives of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and mostly conservative legislators announced…
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The New Republic | April 30, 2001 IN JUNIOR high school, I was small and got picked on. I thought one of the bigger boys might grab my wallet and run, so I punched an eyelet in the leather and attached the wallet to a loop on my belt by means of a chain. Nerdy,…
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The Atlantic | February 22, 2021 WHEN I step back to look at the legacy of President Donald Trump, a surprising conclusion emerges: He has substantially altered the Constitution. His changes aren’t formal, of course. But his informal amendments are important. If left to stand, they threaten to make Congress an advisory body and give carte…
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The Daily | January 6, 2012 A NUCLEAR-armed Iran? Intolerable. That seems to be the only thing President Obama and his leading Republican opponents agree on, even as the Islamic Republic threatens to close the strategically critical Strait of Hormuz. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta calls Iranian nuclearization “a red line” and hints at military action. Republican…
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Persuasion.community | August 6, 2020 CANCEL culture now poses a real threat to intellectual freedom in the United States. According to a recent poll by the Cato Institute, a third of Americans say that they are personally worried about losing their jobs or missing out on career opportunities if they express their real political opinions. Americans in…
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By Jonathan Rauch and Peter Wehner | New York Times, June 22, 2020 LAST week’s Supreme Court ruling extending employment-discrimination protections to L.G.B.T. Americans — in a 6-to-3 decision, with a conservative justice writing the majority opinion and another conservative, the chief justice, joining it — was a milestone. Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia overjoyed many progressives and…