This Evangelical Pastor Wants to Replace Women’s Right to Vote; The New York Times, August 14, 2025

 David French, The New York Times ; This Evangelical Pastor Wants to Replace Women’s Right to Vote

"There are many reasons for Wilson’s rise, but one of them is squarely rooted in politics. When Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016, he inherited a recent Republican tradition: The Republican president isn’t just a political leader — he’s a de facto religious leader as well.

Leaders inspire imitators, and all too many people are open to pastors exhibiting the same values as the president they admire so much. Or to put it another way, when George W. Bush was in office, “compassionate conservatism” was en vogue. And now? When Trump runs an administration where it often appears that cruelty is the point, well then, empathy is a sin. It’s not that men like Wilson had no audience before Trump; it’s that there is a new demand for Wilson’s message because it matches the Trumpist spirit of this evangelical age.

Trump is a profane, authoritarian man who delights in attacking his critics. Wilson is also a profane, authoritarian man who similarly delights in personal attacks. He created something he calls “No Quarter November,” a month when he grants Christians the right to “hoist the Jolly Roger and just go to war with the world.” His aggression is referred to as the “Moscow mood.”"

Further Into the Muck With Mr. Trump; New York Times, 8/9/16

Editorial Board, New York Times; Further Into the Muck With Mr. Trump:

"Just eight years ago, Senator John McCain of Arizona, then the Republican presidential nominee, told a man at a town hall session who said he was “scared” of an Obama presidency that Mr. Obama “is a decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared as president of the United States.”

Twenty minutes later, a woman told Mr. McCain that she couldn’t trust Mr. Obama because “he’s an Arab.” “No ma’am,” Mr. McCain replied. “He’s a decent family man, a citizen, that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues. And that’s what this campaign is all about.”

Republicans would do well to summon the integrity that Mr. McCain showed in 2008, and not just to give some sense of decency to this ugly campaign. The time has come for Republicans — including Mr. McCain — to repudiate Mr. Trump once and for all."

Across the world minds are narrowing. We must fight back.; Guardian, 6/27/16

Molly Crabapple, Guardian; Across the world minds are narrowing. We must fight back. :

"If there’s one note of hope, its this. History keeps moving. Tomorrow always comes, and we help shape what that tomorrow will be. An MP and a singer made the world larger just by living. We build the world by living too. In spaces large and small, we can fight for universal ethics, cosmopolitanism, art, solidarity. On the beaches of Lesbos, across the mud of borders, in the streets of Chicago, against our lovers’ lips."

Bonfire of the Assets, With Trump Lighting Matches; New York Times, 8/26/15

Thomas Friedman, New York Times; Bonfire of the Assets, With Trump Lighting Matches:

"Normally, when your main geopolitical rivals are shooting themselves in both feet, the military manual says step back and enjoy the show. But I take little comfort in watching China burning money and Russia burning food, because in today’s interdependent world we’re all affected.

I also find no joy in it because we Americans, too, have started burning our most important source of competitive advantage — our pluralism. One of our two political parties has gone nuts and started following a pied piper of intolerance, named Donald Trump...

This is not funny anymore. This is not entertaining. Donald Trump is not cute. His ugly nativism shamefully plays on people’s fears and ignorance. It ignores bipartisan solutions already on the table, undermines the civic ideals that make our melting pot work in ways no European or Asian country can match (try to become a Japanese) and tampers with the very secret of our sauce — pluralism, that out of many we make one.

Every era spews up a Joe McCarthy type who tries to thrive by dividing and frightening us, and today his name is Donald Trump."