NYT Columnist, visiting professor at Lipscomb University. Married to @nancyfrench.bsky.social. Iraq vet, Grizzlies fan, born in War Eagle Country and raised in Big Blue Nation.
When many young people look at the church’s embrace of Trump, they’re not rejecting the church because they’re afraid to shed their sin and become better people. They’re rejecting the church because they refuse to embrace sin and become, well, worse people. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/30/o...
Opinion | Gen Z Thinks Religion Got Too PoliticalI wonder why that could be.www.nytimes.comThe 2020 playbook is unfolding now, and I’m concerned, to put it mildly, that Mike Johnson is no Mike Pence. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/23/o...
Opinion | How Trump and His Allies Can Corrupt the MidtermsStop the steal before it starts.www.nytimes.comGOP devotion to the attorney general of Texas, Ken Paxton, is in some ways even more troubling than their continued support for Trump. Their enthusiasm for a another corrupt adulterer shows that Christian moral compromise is metastasizing. They love their corrupt politicians, so long as they fight.
Opinion | Trump’s Corruption Stains, From Texas to MaineSomething is wrong if vice is all them and virtue is all you.www.nytimes.comBirthright citizenship is noxious to MAGA. They scorn it as relying on magic dirt — the idea that there is something inherent in American soil that makes a person an American citizen. Yet the same populists seem to believe in something like magic blood — that one’s lineage can make one superior.
Opinion | MAGA’s Birthright Meltdown Is in Full Effectwww.nytimes.comThe administration’s treatment of Donahue removes any remaining doubt that in Hegseth’s version of a meritocracy, there is no level of excellence that can trump politics, and it is difficult to overstate how much that principle will cripple a military in a democracy. www.nytimes.com/2026/06/28/o...
Opinion | The Purging of General Donahue Is a Breaking Pointwww.nytimes.comWhat if we don’t actually have a competitive two-party system? What if our nation actually has two one-party systems, instead? And if the United States has two one-party systems, then that means voters are constantly confronted with the stagnation and corruption that disfigures single-party rule.
Opinion | Two-Party System, One-Party Rulewww.nytimes.comWhen I’m in my more optimistic moments, I think we’ll look back at last year as the high-water mark of Trumpism, when the combination of arrogance after Trump’s victory and the inherent authoritarianism of the Trumpist project led to a unique period of state violence and legal corruption.
Opinion | A Malicious Chapter in the History of American Justicewww.nytimes.com"In their arrogance, Trump and Netanyahu defied their predecessors in all the worst ways, and now they court a profound defeat when, not long ago, a meaningful victory, however partial, was well within their grasp." www.nytimes.com/2026/06/18/o...
Opinion | Trump and Netanyahu Have Really Stepped in It Nowwww.nytimes.comDoomerism is indispensable to Christian nationalists, because it is only the downfall of democracy that makes the patriarchy palatable. But when you impose patriarchy back onto a society that has already embraced liberalism, you mainly remind people of why they chose liberalism in the first place.
Opinion | Christian Nationalism’s Dark Forebearswww.nytimes.com"When I was in college I learned about the great man theory of history. I didn’t quite buy it. And now, thanks to President Trump, I’d like to modify my objections." www.nytimes.com/2026/06/11/o...
Opinion | The Terrible Man Theory of Historywww.nytimes.comFascism on the right. Communism on the left. Ancient antisemitic conspiracies seemingly everywhere. Tariffs. War in Europe. Gilded Age corruption. So many bad ideas re-emerging all at once. Why? www.nytimes.com/2026/05/31/o...
Opinion | The Fire of Stupidity Cannot Be Containedwww.nytimes.com"At the moment, the United States is negotiating with a regime that President Trump claimed we had already changed, to open a strait that was supposed to be open last month, and to end a nuclear program that we said we had obliterated." No, things are not going well. Here's why:
Opinion | The President Is Giving a Master Class in What Not to Dowww.nytimes.comTrump is circumventing Congress’s power of the purse. He’s circumventing the judiciary. By potentially granting settlements to people who possess no valid legal claim, he’s circumventing civil and criminal law. This is one of the most purely monarchical moments of a monarchical presidency.
Opinion | There Are Scandals. There Is the Law. And Then There’s This.www.nytimes.comHealthy political parties make each other better. To defeat a viable opponent, a party has to rise to the challenge. It has to fix its failures. It has to innovate. Defeating a sclerotic rump of a party is no achievement. Instead, one-party rule enables corruption. It fosters stagnation.
Opinion | The ‘Rabid Partisan’ Republican Who Defied Donald Trumpwww.nytimes.comThe history of political evangelicalism is riddled with the same kind of story: A powerful man gains a following by casting himself as the heroic warrior against the heretical, and when he uses his power to indulge his basest desires, he treats exposure as an attack and justice as persecution.
Opinion | I Don’t Think You Can Even Call This Hypocrisywww.nytimes.com"I don’t want politicians to be 'authentic.' I want them to be decent. I want them to be honest. I want them to be competent. And if they fail those tests, they don’t redeem themselves by opposing Donald Trump." www.nytimes.com/2026/05/10/o...
Opinion | The Platner Trapwww.nytimes.comFrom pardons to prediction markets, the transactional nature of the Trump administration is perhaps its most obvious characteristic. And transactional people often soothe their own consciences with the belief that everyone else is ultimately transactional as well — the only question is their price.
Opinion | The Kind of Men Who Flummox Trumpwww.nytimes.comHuman beings are liable for the actions of the machines they create, and if the machines commit crimes or violate the rights of others, then the humans who built the machines should find themselves in profound trouble with the law.
Opinion | There’s a 900-Year-Old Answer to Our Most Modern Problemwww.nytimes.com"I don’t think Americans fully appreciate the extraordinary cost of Trump’s bluster. It should go without saying, but once you threaten to invade an allied country, you don’t just place the existence of the alliance in jeopardy; you raise the possibility of allies turning into mortal enemies"
Opinion | Meet the New Leader of the Free Worldwww.nytimes.comThe administration’s public prayers and religious memes are meaningless when that administration discards historic Christian teaching and reviles Christian leaders — all to support a brutal, dishonest man, a man who can’t articulate a legitimate basis for the war he launched on his own command."
Opinion | There Is Much More to Pope vs. President Than Meets the Eyewww.nytimes.com