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:

Birthright 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.

The 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...

What 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.

When 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.

"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...

Doomerism 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.

"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...

Fascism 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...

"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:

Trump 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.