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Faith-Based Failures

Matthew Schmitz

On January 24, 2025, Mukhtar Mohamed Shariff was sentenced to seventeen years in prison for his role in a $250 million fraud scheme. Along with other members of the...

How Kanye Went Nazi 

Matthew Schmitz

Last year, Kanye West—sometimes known as Ye—released a song titled “Nigga Heil Hitler.” The music video featured rows of black men bathed in blue light fiercely intoning the title...

How Hipsters Gave Us Trump

Matthew Schmitz

Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign was powered by its embrace of the white working class. It also drew energy from its rejection of feminist conceits. While critics charged Trump...

The Theology of Roe

Matthew Schmitz

A controversial abortion case reaches the Supreme Court, and men in black robes impose their religious views on the country. Counter to the justices’ expectation, a diverse movement rises up in protest...

Taming the Tongue

Matthew Schmitz

On October 14, Politico reported on a group chat in which leaders of various Young Republicans groups seemed to vie with one another to see who could say the...

The Romanticism of Jean Raspail

Matthew Schmitz

One day, the French writer Jean Raspail looked out over the Mediterranean Sea and asked, “What if they came?” He answered the question with his 1973 novel The Camp...

The Epstein Myth

Matthew Schmitz

In March 2005, the Palm Beach police began to investigate whether a fourteen-year-old girl had been molested by a wealthy man named Jeffrey Epstein. When police interviewed the girl...

The Post-Californian Ideology

Matthew Schmitz

On November 6, 1996, Al Gore called Peter Navarro to express his sympathy. Navarro, a left-leaning economics professor at the University of California, Irvine, and Democratic congressional hopeful, had...

How Obergefell Failed

Matthew Schmitz

On June 26, 2015, the Supreme Court handed down its ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, announcing a constitutional right to same-sex marriage. The opinion, written by Justice ­Anthony Kennedy,...

Elon’s Family Values

Matthew Schmitz

A battle has broken out on the American right. Two visions of what it means to have children are contending for supremacy. On one side stands the genetic-determinist right, which...

Biden Is the New Francis

Matthew Schmitz

Early in 2016, articles began to appear noting similarities between Pope Francis and Donald Trump. Trump’s promise to “drain the swamp” corresponded to Francis’s mandate for Vatican reform. Trump...

Declaring Independence

Matthew Schmitz

American Heretics:Religious Adversaries of Liberal Orderby jerome e. copulskyyale, 384 pages, $40 In the summer of 1775, amidst the heat of revolution, two hundred armed men gathered in Prince...

Middlebrow Protestantism

Matthew Schmitz

In 1979, a player for the Baltimore Orioles named Pat Kelly hit a home run and raised a finger in the air. A reporter later asked whether Kelly had...

Tulsi Gabbard’s Culture Wars

Matthew Schmitz

Tulsi Gabbard’s public career began with opposition to same-sex marriage. It’s a fact about the former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii (who recently endorsed Donald Trump and joined his transition...

Clint Eastwood’s Law

Matthew Schmitz

In the course of his seven-decade career, Clint Eastwood has come to be identified with a single striking proposition. Appearing as a hard-bitten detective, a nondescript pilot, or an...