Fintan O’Toole

Can the Church Evolve?

The big question for Pope Leo XIV is whether he will complete Pope Francis’s mission to make the Catholic Church less tyrannical.

The Future of Progressive Politics

Forced Amnesia

The metamorphosis of J. D. Vance from economic realist to champion of Trump’s grievance-fueled politics reveals how little Democrats have done to connect with working-class Americans.

Climate Action

Organizing the Opposition

Vanishing Rights

Constitutional Crises

Shredding the Postwar Order

Donald Trump is reshaping relations between Europe and the US more dramatically than at any time since World War II.

From Comedy to Brutality

With his designs on Greenland and Gaza, Trump has signaled that his first term’s outlandish gestures are the second term’s savage demands.

The Second Coming

Disinhibition will be the order of the day in Donald Trump’s America.

A Richer Sense of Humanity

“History is as potent a presence as myth.”

The Protection Racket

For his supporters, Donald Trump’s misogynist attacks against Kamala Harris turn his own history as a predator into an asset.

What If He Wins? A Conversation About Trump and the Law

Playing for Time

With the boisterous energy of direct speech, the novelist Ferdia Lennon takes on both the playfulness and the harsh realism of Euripides.

Not Aristotle’s Fault

Trump’s Old News

The debate showed that the former president faces a new danger: not that his lies are outlandish but that they are getting stale.

Kamala’s Moment

Kamala Harris’s campaign asks: Who is a normal American now?

Dynamism & Discipline

The excitement that radiated through the Democratic National Convention was the other side of what had until recently been a deep despair.

Savior Complexes

The final weeks of Joe Biden’s campaign were most dismaying for the ways he mirrored Trump.

Savior Complex

Biden’s tragedy is that he has come to feel that he alone can rescue America.