David French

My friend @davidlat.bsky.social just published an email Paul Weiss chair Brad Karp sent to the firm. This excerpt is the most chilling. This is how constitutional republics die -- when rivals see a violation of fundamental rights not as an injustice, but as a business opportunity:

Stocks are soaring because it's always great when someone just stops hitting you with a hammer. But when they stop, the next step is to take the hammer out of their hands. Congress needs to take back its tariff authority. And we need to keep saying it until it happens, in this Congress or the next.

Dear authoritarian adviser: "Process" is how we find out if someone is actually here illegally:

"How do we know what courage is? When we see a man risk himself to care for another person, that’s courage. The legal judgment may be uncertain, but the moral verdict is already in. On the most traumatic night in a young woman’s life, a good man could not be found." www.nytimes.com/2026/10/11/o...

"Here’s one way to think of Paxton — he possesses all of Donald Trump’s corruption and none of Trump’s charisma." My dispatch from the most important Senate race in America: www.nytimes.com/2026/10/04/o...

Transparency is part of the process of democratic governance. It’s irritating for leaders, but indispensable for democracies. It’s what permits the electorate to understand the truth about the wars they’re asked to support and to fight. And it’s what binds the people to the armies that serve them.

Gratitude, humility, responsibility: Those are the virtues our overlapping histories should instill. But the new right turns that upside-down. It replaces gratitude with a sense of entitlement, humility with arrogance, and a sense of duty with the will to power and the right to dominate.

The new right calls conservatives like me "supine beautiful losers." But when I look at the picture Bo French hates, I see something beautiful. I do not see anyone losing. I see a nation created by an idea — that all men are created equal — that serves as a magnet for people all over the world.

"The corrupt machinations of the Missouri case reveal that MAGA’s perfidy is limited only by its creativity. And while we keep dodging MAGA’s legal bullets, I fear that it is only a matter of time before one hits." www.nytimes.com/2026/09/13/o...

To the post-9/11 vets: You fought with honor. You defended the innocent. Time and again you confronted and defeated an opponent that could be every bit as evil as the Nazis your grandfathers vanquished. And you accomplished the one mission that is core to your identity — you kept America safe.

It is difficult to fathom the damage President Trump is doing to America’s national security. He is making our nation more vulnerable than it has been at any time since the cloudiest days of the Cold War. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/06/o...

"The idea that protecting provocative speech by visitors and immigrants renders the Constitution a “suicide pact” might be one of the most absurd examples of snowflakery I’ve ever seen in my life." www.nytimes.com/2026/09/03/o...

Why Dolly's death hit so hard: "It’s not because she was famous and successful and this was her home. Nashville is used to fame. It’s not because she never forgot her roots. A central theme of country music is “Don’t forget your roots.” It’s because she loved us. Unconditionally. Extravagantly."