David French
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.
- "A president who doesn’t care about the law, who commands an obedient Congress and is supported by a radicalized base of tens of millions of people who believe his lies, represents a threat to the next election. I fear that millions of citizens are still too complacent."
- Consider this column to be something like a fire drill. "It’s an alarm, one of thousands that should be ringing across the country. MAGA’s acts of aggression are already intimidating. Trump isn’t just trying to “stop the steal” again; another kind of theft might already be underway."
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- Protests make MAGA mad. Journalism makes MAGA mad. Accountability makes MAGA mad. And the anger keeps building until a single sentence starts to spread across the length and breadth of Trump’s base: “Invoke the Insurrection Act.” www.nytimes.com/2026/01/29/o...
- Take off their masks. End their immunities. Limit their jurisdiction. Restrain their tactics. All of this can be done through legislation without inhibiting humane immigration enforcement. If it’s done correctly, legislative reform can lead to greater accountability across the whole of government.
- How do you preserve the free world when America goes Rogue? On Tuesday, Mark Carney provided an answer. He called Donald Trump’s bluff. Trump wants subjects, but he’s getting rivals, and the American people will pay the price. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/22/o...
- President Trump is stress-testing American law, and the law is failing the test. The health of the American experiment rests far more on the integrity of any given American president than we realized. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/18/o...
- If we break our alliances, we are smaller and weaker. If we break them for pride and power and greed, then we don’t just break an alliance, we break our own character. We diminish ourselves in every way that matters, and no amount of newly sovereign frozen ground can obscure our national shame.
- That's well said. Courage should shame the cowards.
- Donald Trump is putting on a clinic about how to break the United States. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/11/o...
- "It was Christ’s humble birth that set the stage. It was the first lesson in a series: to oppress others is to oppress Christ, to hate others is to hate Christ, and to love your enemies can be the most dangerous and revolutionary act of them all." www.nytimes.com/2025/12/21/o...
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- Fundamentalist faiths make religion dangerous to others, but Christianity properly lived is dangerous to Christians. It’s dangerous to people who refuse to hate those they are told to hate, to people who refuse to oppress, to conquer, to exploit — even when they’re told to conquer in the name of God
- Why the heroes of Bondi Beach mattered so much: "The presence of evil doesn’t break people. From a young age, we learn that there are wolves in our midst. It is the absence of courage that plunges us into crisis." www.nytimes.com/2025/12/18/o...
- “Even worse, parents and kids learned together to use their phones. We all experienced these new technologies at the same time, and we often behaved no better than our teenage sons and daughters. Our kids were taking notes as social media broke our brains and hardened our hearts.”
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- "The end of the Trump era is coming into view, and too much attention is focused on what Republicans think of Trump and too little is focused on what Republicans think of one another." www.nytimes.com/2025/12/07/o...
- It was predicted that Ukraine would collapse in hours or days, but it has stood strong for years, inflicting devastating losses on Russia. It would be an intolerable and catastrophic failure if the Trump administration delivers Putin a victory through diplomacy that he could not achieve in war.
- "Trump has put the military in an impossible situation. He’s making its most senior leaders complicit in his unlawful acts, and he’s burdening the consciences of soldiers who serve under his command. " www.nytimes.com/2025/11/23/o...
- "Authoritarians want you to follow their will, not the law; they value personal loyalty over party loyalty ... Competent and conscientious people tend to often shun such an environment, but corrupt opportunists love it. They wallow in it. It is, after, all the best place for them to thrive."
- To quote Pope Leo, “justice, solidarity, and a genuine reverence for life” ought to be the touchstones of our public engagement. There is another spiritual victory to be won — this time over the forces of hatred, division and cruelty in these United States. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/16/o...
- "I shudder to think of the outright criminality that Trump and his allies could resort to during the 2026 midterms, much less the 2028 presidential election. One doesn’t have to imagine wild fantasies of a Trump third term to imagine systemic abuses of power to suppress or miscount dissenting votes"
- "A movement, especially one that verges on an outright cult of personality, is defined by its leader, not by its rank and file. And when the leader is lawless and depraved, then efforts to contain his influence while preserving his power are doomed to fail." www.nytimes.com/2025/11/09/o...
- If there is a word that describes the second Trump administration, it’s brazen. While I certainly hold open the possibility that dark deeds are being done in secret, one thing that is remarkable is how open and obvious he is with his self-dealing. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/02/o...
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- The evidence is now in. The explosive growth in sports gambling is bad for sports, and it has proved to be bad for the millions of Americans who gamble past the point of prudence and directly to the point of pain. The sports gambling revolution needs more regulation. It may even need termination.
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- The new right groans under the weight of its nostalgia for a nation that did not exist. And in writing about a false enemy that destroyed a fake past, Andrews and the many other architects of the right-wing gender wars are committing the very sins they attribute to the enemies they detest.
- What happens when the most successful politician of the last decade is cruel, immoral, and corrupt? It creates a push-pull dynamic that pushes good people out of the party and pulls in new people who share the leader’s ethos. Decency becomes rarer, and decent people feel more isolated.
- True revival begins with the people proclaiming, by word and deed, “I have sinned.” MAGA Christianity has a different message. It looks at American culture and declares, “You have sinned.” www.nytimes.com/2025/10/16/o...
- “Earlier this month, a federal judge appointed by President Trump in 2019, did the worst thing you can do to Trump in a court of law: She took him seriously. She read his words, found them disconnected from reality and acted accordingly.” www.nytimes.com/2025/10/12/o...
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- “Last Sunday, the shadow came for the men, women and children of a church in Michigan. But there is still light and high beauty, and last week the light that flooded America came from people of faith who were determined to demonstrate the character of the Savior they love.”
- Countless Americans are enduring Trump’s vengeance. Far too few experience Christian kindness. It is a great tragedy of our time that so many Christians see Trump’s malice as an instrument of God’s divine plan. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/23/o...
- If our laws depend on Trump’s voluntary compliance — and Congress won’t lift a finger to defend the laws it has passed — then the president is unleashed. We are left to the whims of a man who cares about only himself, a man who is willing to discard any law or standard to satisfy his lust for power.
- This doesn't happen every day. Free speech isn't and shouldn't be a matter of left v. right. It's among the most fundamental of American values.
- We've never seen a comprehensive attack on free speech like this in our lifetimes. The assassin's attack on Charlie Kirk was also an attack on free speech. Thea administration's crackdown on speech is egregious. And more people support political violence. It's all so bad.
- If we accurately understand that America has an immense problem with violent extremism on both sides of the ideological aisle, then the answer lies in reconciliation, not domination. In fact, it’s the will to dominate that magnifies the crisis and radicalizes our opponents.
- "What starts as a political difference becomes a blood feud the instant someone is hurt or killed. And so each act of political violence has a double consequence. It shatters families, and — over time — it breaks nations." www.nytimes.com/2025/09/11/o...
- Political violence is evil. I don't care how angry you are at your opponents. We have a ballot box. We have courts. We have free speech. I'm sick with grief for Charlie and his family. I'm sick with concern for this country.
- Every person who pumped his fist at Trump’s news conference should pause and think very hard about letting him — or any president — expand the definition of war until due process dies, blotted out by the flame and smoke of a missile strike. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/07/o...
- There's lots of nostalgia for Gen X childhoods. I share it! But there's a disconnect. If our childhoods were that wonderful, why didn’t Generation X replicate our own experiences for our children? Why did so many millions of free-range kids grow up to become helicopter parents?
- "Constant outrage is energizing, at least for a while, for partisans and activists. It’s exhausting for everyone else. The more that MAGA tries to bully America, the more resentment it will build. Bullies only win for a while, and when the backlash comes, MAGA will have only itself to blame."
- We are watching Donald Trump break the Department of Justice right before our eyes. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/28/o...
- "A decent society should do all it reasonably can to reduce human suffering. It should not, however, do so by extinguishing the lives of those who suffer or the lives of those whom we believe might suffer in the future." Why we should choose life: www.nytimes.com/2025/08/24/o...
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- Executive power is out of control. Trump is turning our constitutional order upside down -- empowered by a "vague and inexplicit" sentence in the Constitution that is the source of much mischief. Should it be changed? I think so: www.nytimes.com/2025/08/21/o...
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- Donald Trump "isn’t just deploying America’s military into the streets; he’s deploying it into the American culture war." www.nytimes.com/2025/08/17/o...
- “We’re creating a generation of public servants who can’t feel completely secure when they’re out in public, who wonder if they’re safe in their own homes and who fret constantly about their siblings, spouses and children.”
