Peter Wehner

“.. for those of us who, in our younger years, revered America as a shining city upon a hill, .. this is quite a painful period.

“..’America has lost its moral bearings; as a result, it has also lost its moral standing in the world.”

@peter-wehner.bsky.social
www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...

The Virtue of Integrity The only way out of our wreckage is to rewrite the cultural script, to make excellence in character admired again.

"It’s not so much that we know every ethical line [Christopher] Foyle draws is the exact right one; it’s rather that we know he’s doing the best he can to pursue justice....Foyle’s moral compass can’t be demagnetized."
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

The Virtue of Integrity The only way out of our wreckage is to rewrite the cultural script, to make excellence in character admired again.

"any number of regimes, though they fall short of the German Reich, act in ways that are morally problematic or even wicked. Collaboration and capitulation—the selling of a soul—take many forms, including in America."
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

The Virtue of Integrity The only way out of our wreckage is to rewrite the cultural script, to make excellence in character admired again.

Here's an example of disordered loves: When there are "large swaths of Christian fundamentalists and evangelicals, men and women who worship Jesus with their lips while giving priority to Trump and the MAGA movement in their heart."
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

The Virtue of Integrity The only way out of our wreckage is to rewrite the cultural script, to make excellence in character admired again.

The Virtue of Integrity.
My latest in @theatlantic.com
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

A peacock showing off its art.

Full Moon captured from space

NASA ✨️

Trump Discovers MAGA Has No ‘Off’ Switch For the first time, the president finds himself at odds with his own movement.

"For Trump to get on the wrong side of a MAGA conspiracy is highly unusual, and it explains why, for the first time, his base is upset with him. Trump is on the wrong side of what is, for them, sacred."
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Trump Discovers MAGA Has No ‘Off’ Switch For the first time, the president finds himself at odds with his own movement.

"Trump has lit the flames of dozens of conspiracy theories during his time in politics...His transgressions, his lawlessness, even his cruelty were vivifying to his supporters. Having created that movement, Trump is discovering there’s no 'off' switch."
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Trump Discovers MAGA Has No ‘Off’ Switch For the first time, the president finds himself at odds with his own movement.

Trump Discovers MAGA Has No ‘Off’ Switch
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

I was grateful to be part of this article and for the excellent work @peter-wehner.bsky.social did on it.

Why Evangelicals Turned Their Back on PEPFAR A religious movement that has so often taken public stands has been unusually quiet since Trump gutted the program to combat AIDS in Africa.

By @peter-wehner.bsky.social, an important article. I like to think that, if Americans knew about PEPFAR, they would support it, and even be proud of it. Not all of them, obviously -- but the great majority.
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Why Evangelicals Turned Their Back on PEPFAR A religious movement that has so often taken public stands has been unusually quiet since Trump gutted the program to combat AIDS in Africa.

An important, compelling, and ultimately damning piece by @peter-wehner.bsky.social. The views Wehner attributes to right-leaning evangelicals regrettably apply to many Catholics as well. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

I just read this article. Great work fr @peter-wehner.bsky.social.

Why Evangelicals Turned Their Back on PEPFAR A religious movement that has so often taken public stands has been unusually quiet since Trump gutted the program to combat AIDS in Africa.

Evangelicals in America "have mostly turned their eyes away from what is happening on the African continent" since Trump slashed PEPFAR, Peter Wehner writes. "They have other things to do. They have culture wars to fight":

YouTube video by Faithful Politics Podcast How Trump Dismantled the World’s Most Life-Saving Aid Program with Peter Wehner

In this sobering conversation, @peter-wehner.bsky.social —former Bush advisor and longtime conservative—explains how Trump’s executive orders have effectively dismantled PEPFAR, the lifesaving global AIDS relief program.

🎧 Watch now: youtu.be/Y_srO5k5-Yo

Analysis | Rubio’s claim that it’s ‘a lie’ that people have died from foreign-aid cuts The secretary of state rejected convincing evidence documented in news reports and by disease modelers.

From a week and a half ago: “As of Monday, the model shows, about 96,000 adults and 200,000 children have died because of the administration’s cutbacks to funding for aid groups and support organizations. The overall death count grows by 103 people an hour.” www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

Opinion | Jesus Has ‘More to Say Than Any Human Language Can Carry’: A Q&A With Rowan Williams

"I found recently in the work of a 17th-century Welsh Catholic writer Augustine Baker a wonderful image: the soul without God, the soul cut off from God, is like a whale stuck in a pond. It longs for the ocean, he said. It can’t be in the depths where it belongs."
www.nytimes.com/2025/06/08/o...

Opinion | Jesus Has ‘More to Say Than Any Human Language Can Carry’: A Q&A With Rowan Williams

"But very often the God who’s being attacked and questioned by the Dawkinses and the Graylings and the Pullmans of this world is a God I don’t believe in, either." Rowan Williams in his @nytimes.com with me.
www.nytimes.com/2025/06/08/o...

Opinion | Jesus Has ‘More to Say Than Any Human Language Can Carry’: A Q&A With Rowan Williams

Rowan Williams is among the most important religious thinkers in the world. I spoke to him about his faith journey; why God allows innocents to suffer; the New Atheists & Dostoyevsky; what makes Jesus a compelling figure & what it means to pastor people through grief.
www.nytimes.com/2025/06/08/o...

Opinion | Jesus Has ‘More to Say Than Any Human Language Can Carry’: A Q&A With Rowan Williams

Jesus Has ‘More to Say Than Any Human Language Can Carry’: A Q&A With Rowan Williams
www.nytimes.com/2025/06/08/o...

John Danforth: We must stand up against the bully in the Oval Office | Opinion The longtime Missouri GOP senator knows Donald Trump relishes being called a strongman. That’s the wrong word. | Opinion

"We must stand up against the bully in the Oval Office." By John Danforth, a Republican/former Senator who has maintained his principles and integrity. That makes him a rarity these days.
www.kansascity.com/opinion/read...

They don’t know what they’re doing.

The market-tanking tariffs, the oops-we-screwed-up cuts to nuclear security and infectious disease control, the whoops-did-we-give-the-editor-of-the-Atlantic-our-war-plans episode … and now this.

They’re idiots. They don’t know what they’re doing.

This vibrant Hubble image of the globular cluster Terzan 12 shows how interstellar dust in the Milky Way scatters light, reddening the cluster's stars and highlighting the complex interplay between starlight, age, and cosmic dust

Spectacular 💫😲💫💙💫✨💫

Credit: NASA, ESA, ESA/Hubble, Roger Cohen (RU)

I had a delightful, wide-ranging conversation with @monacharen.bsky.social on her superb podcast The Mona Charen Show. Among other things, we talked about the modern history of conservatism/the GOP and ways to understand evangelicalism and what's gone terribly wrong.

America’s Mad King The president has grown more impulsive, more vindictive, and more anarchic.

An exhausting list, but very useful for specifics about which to phone elected officials. @peter-wehner.bsky.social is very matter of fact.
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Trump Is Gaslighting Us Trump is an agent of chaos, and chaos has a human cost.

After the national-security breach on Signal, Trump’s administration “again wants you to believe that two and two make five,” writes Peter Wehner. “When there is no objective truth, when everyone gets to make up their own reality,” authoritarians thrive.

Trump Is Gaslighting Us Trump is an agent of chaos, and chaos has a human cost.

"As disinformation increases, and as more and more individuals and institutions go silent, it becomes ever more important for truth tellers to speak up, if only to assure those who don’t believe the propaganda that they’re not losing their mind."
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Jeffrey Goldberg and Peter Wehner: What's Going on with Our National Security? Podcast Episode · The Bulwark Podcast · 03/25/2025 · 1h 1m

Today's Pod: Jeffrey Goldberg on the Houthi Small Group heard round the world. Then @peter-wehner.bsky.social on Trump's revenge tour, how American christians have turned to vice in service to Trump, PEPFAR, the White House's anti-immigrant snuff films & more.

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/j...

The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat about upcoming military strikes in Yemen. I didn’t think it could be real. Then the bombs started falling.

This is the kind of competence and wisdom that embodies MAGA world; and especially Trump & Company. Only the best...
www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...