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Pamela Paul’s last New York Times column
I’ve enjoyed her work these past couple of years. I hate to see her go. A taste: This is my final column for The Times. In the memo I wrote three years ago when applying for this job after 11 […]
Evangelicals and politics roundup: Wisconsin, Cory Booker, spiritual warfare, refugees, and more.
What is happening in the world of evangelicals and politics: On Corey Booker’s 25 hour speech: On Trump’s tariffs: On free speech: On the Wisconsin Supreme Court election: Of course it was rigged, Lance: On immigration and refugees: Myanmar earthquake […]
Goodbye to a Four-Year Labor of Love
We can now rest easy, knowing we gave it a shot
Wisconsin sends Trump-Musk a message
Here is CNN.COM: Wisconsin voters on Tuesday delivered Democrats their biggest boost since President Donald Trump returned to power, handing liberals a state Supreme Court majority and defying Elon Musk’s record-shattering effort to bolster a conservative Trump acolyte. Liberal Susan Crawford defeated conservative Brad […]
“Would you want your doctors not to be revisionists?”
We covered Trump’s executive order on American history here. Today at The New York Times, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David Blight offers his thoughts. A taste: According to the president, “objective facts” have been replaced with a “distorted narrative driven by […]
All four #1 seeds made the Final Four this year. What happened to Cinderella?
All four #1 seeds made the NCAA Division One Men’s Basketball Final Four this year. The last time that happened was in 2008. Malachi Van Tassell, the president of St. Francis University in Loretto, Pennsylvania, a team that made the […]
It’s the last week of CURRENT
Our little magazine closes-up shop at the end of the week, but not before our editors have a final say. Managing editor Nadya Williams started us off today with “Writing for the Public Good in a Democracy in Crisis.” Here’s […]
Sunday night odds and ends
A few things online that caught my attention this week: What happened to lectures? In the age of NIL there are no Cinderellas Take George Will’s 2025 Opening Day quiz. A Marxist theory of DOGE What’s in the Joan Didion […]
Trump’s executive order on American history has little to do with history
Donald Trump recently released a new executive order titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” Let’s break it down. Trump writes: By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States […]
Should Jeffrey Goldberg have “left the room?”
MAGA conservatives are attacking Jeffrey Goldberg for being in the chat now known as “Signalgate.” But some are wondering why he left the chat. Here is Stephen Prager at Current Affairs: …As Goldberg watched these deliberations unfold, he was understandably […]
What an ending!
“You can’t hold onto anything in this world. That doesn’t mean you can’t squeeze it all so tightly to your heart that it hurts.”
I recently put Will Bardenwerper’s book Homestand: Small Town Baseball and the Fight for the Soul of America on my reading list. After reading Timothy Carney’s review of the book at the Washington Free Beacon I moved it to the […]
Is Trump capitulation “on the way out?”
It’s probably wishful thinking, but The Wall Street Journal, Fox News, and some Republican members of the Congress may be waking up. Here is Dana Milbank at The Washington Post: Wednesday found White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt doing what […]
Did Patrick Henry really say “Give me liberty or give me death?”
Here is Gregory Schneider at The Washington Post: Here’s what we know: On March 23, 1775 — probably in the afternoon — a self-taught lawyer named Patrick Henry arose in a little white church in Richmond and unleashed a scorching, […]
Hey Silicon Valley, “Christianity…is not a religion that can reliably deliver socially desirable outcomes, nor is it intended to be.”
Over at The Atlantic, Elizabeth Bruenig reviews ZoĂ« Bernard’s Vanity Fair essay on Silicon Valley tech workers converting to Christianity. A taste of Bruenig’s piece: American Christianity has a tendency to produce forms of belief and practice that are facially […]
The second Trump presidency is two months old. What are evangelical saying?
Let’s check-in on the world of evangelicals and politics. Several high-ranking Trump officials, including Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, shared military strike plans on an unsecure Signal channel. Military strike […]
We need more democrats
Over at his Substack “Americana,” historian Jim Cullen explains the difference between republicans, populists, and democrats. Here is a taste: There is, however, a stratum in our political culture between the republican and the populist: the democrat. Democrats in effect […]
“What if the Mets are actually good now?”
Longtime readers of this blog know that I bleed Mets blue and orange. That’s why I resonate so much with Devin Gordon’s piece today at The New York Times: “Who Am I if the Mets Are Good?” I love this […]