David French
@davidfrenchjag.bsky.social
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.
"when Hegseth cuts off soldiers from reporters, he isn’t just silencing reporters, he’s silencing soldiers. He’s suppressing the stories of the most meaningful and dangerous and traumatic moments of their lives.” @davidfrenchjag.bsky.social
Opinion | What Hegseth Is Hiding
Soldiers want to tell their stories, and we need to hear them.
nytimes.com
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.
Opinion | What Hegseth Is Hiding
Soldiers want to tell their stories, and we need to hear them.
nytimes.com
My father's ancestors are mostly pre-revolutionary, my mother emigrated from the Philippines. Take inspiration from *and* be critical of your ancestors, French argues. The right's call for a kind of Herrenvolk country is against everything we should believe in.
David French@davidfrenchjag.bsky.social · 2w agoGratitude, 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.
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.
Opinion | JD Vance Has a Twisted Idea of What It Means to Be American
I am a “heritage American,” too. How should that guide my life?
nytimes.com
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.
Opinion | When I Look at the Picture Bo French Hates
Watching bigots erupt.
nytimes.com
"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...
Opinion | The Fix Was Almost In
The midterms dodge their first MAGA bullet. It won’t be the last.
nytimes.com
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.
Opinion | The War on Terror Did Not Fail
The U.S. military accomplished more after 9/11 than many Americans realize.
nytimes.com
"The long-term threat is to the character and competence of the armed forces. They are becoming politicized, and the politicization of a military can both destroy its combat effectiveness and turn it into an instrument of domestic oppression.” @davidfrenchjag.bsky.social
Opinion | Pete Hegseth Is a Wrecking Ball (Gift Article)
We are already paying a high price for the defense secretary’s purges and whims.
nytimes.com
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...
Opinion | Pete Hegseth Is a Wrecking Ball (Gift Article)
We are already paying a high price for the defense secretary’s purges and whims.
nytimes.com
"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...
Opinion | Who’s the Snowflake Now?
Marco Rubio is taking the wrong approach to free speech.
nytimes.com
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."
Opinion | What Dolly Did for Tennessee Is What She Did for the World
This is what she did for the written word. And medicine. And …
nytimes.com
KF Senior Fellow @davidfrenchjag.bsky.social thought peak “wokeness” might spark a free-speech renaissance. Instead, he argues, the anti-woke movement embraced many of the same intolerant tactics it opposed. What happened? https://nyti.ms/4hW34fh
Opinion | There Is a Sickness Worse Than Wokeness
The anti-woke movement’s “cure” was more intolerance and more repression.
nytimes.com
A love of liberty cannot cloud our moral judgment. Nazis may have a right to march through Skokie, Ill., but they are still Nazis. Many in the anti-woke movement, however, changed this calculus. Rather than defend principles, they embraced and weaponized extremists. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/27/o...
Opinion | There Is a Sickness Worse Than Wokeness
The anti-woke movement’s “cure” was more intolerance and more repression.
nytimes.com
"I’m convinced that every person — especially those of us who live in the world of ideas — should spend time in a place where he or she is a distinct religious or ideological minority, even when it’s hard. It can be among the most clarifying and rewarding experiences in life."
Opinion | Go Ahead, Sean Duffy. Let Your Daughter Go to Harvard.
Four years at Harvard won’t corrupt your children.
nytimes.com
"JD Vance doesn’t think our nation is Christian enough to be truly free. Your faithlessness has broken the social compact, and now it is time for the government to seize greater control." www.nytimes.com/2026/08/20/o...
Opinion | JD Vance Thinks You Are Not Christian Enough
According to the vice president, we are wasting our freedom.
nytimes.com
My discussion with @davidfrenchjag.bsky.social about why the founders are helpful in combating the New Right is taking off. Check It out! youtu.be/cwMbBHi1kIc
What the New Right Really Wants — with David French
YouTube video by The Oath and the Office
youtu.be
The initial American strategy failed, the war with Iran is consuming the region, Iran and Ukraine are risking a face-off, both Russia and China are escalating their military commitments, American munitions are dwindling and Trump is raging. Other than that, everything is fine.
Opinion | World War Two-and-a-Half Is Breaking Out
Whatever is happening in Iran, it isn’t working.
nytimes.com
New episode! David French joins me on the postliberal right, birthright citizenship, and whether there is a path out of America’s democratic crisis. But first, @johnfugelsang.bsky.social and I look to the ideology behind Trump. @davidfrenchjag.bsky.social podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/w...
What Trump and the New Right Really Believe | David French
Podcast Episode · The Oath and The Office · July 30 · 1h 16m
podcasts.apple.com
When many young people look at the church’s embrace of Trump, they’re not rejecting the church because they’re afraid to shed their sin and become better people. They’re rejecting the church because they refuse to embrace sin and become, well, worse people. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/30/o...
Opinion | Gen Z Thinks Religion Got Too Political
I wonder why that could be.
nytimes.com
The 2020 playbook is unfolding now, and I’m concerned, to put it mildly, that Mike Johnson is no Mike Pence. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/23/o...
Opinion | How Trump and His Allies Can Corrupt the Midterms
Stop the steal before it starts.
nytimes.com
Trump is testing how far unchecked presidential power can go. That's why, at LibCon2026, @davidfrenchjag.bsky.social, Bob Bauer, @lizagoitein.bsky.social, and @protectdemocracy.org's Justin Florence will ask: What would a presidency accountable to voters and the Constitution actually look like?
GOP devotion to the attorney general of Texas, Ken Paxton, is in some ways even more troubling than their continued support for Trump. Their enthusiasm for a another corrupt adulterer shows that Christian moral compromise is metastasizing. They love their corrupt politicians, so long as they fight.
Opinion | Trump’s Corruption Stains, From Texas to Maine
Something is wrong if vice is all them and virtue is all you.
nytimes.com
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.
Opinion | MAGA’s Birthright Meltdown Is in Full Effect
nytimes.com
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...
Opinion | The Purging of General Donahue Is a Breaking Point
nytimes.com
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.
Opinion | Two-Party System, One-Party Rule
nytimes.com
An outstanding piece by @davidfrenchjag.bsky.social in today's @nytimes.com. GIFT LINK: www.nytimes.com/2026/06/21/o...
Opinion | A Malicious Chapter in the History of American Justice
nytimes.com
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.
Opinion | A Malicious Chapter in the History of American Justice
nytimes.com
"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...
Opinion | Trump and Netanyahu Have Really Stepped in It Now
nytimes.com
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.
Opinion | Christian Nationalism’s Dark Forebears
nytimes.com
