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Oct 17, 2024 | 
thebaffler.com | Thomas Geoghegan
The Supreme Court ended its term this summer with several cases that generated a few days’ worth of headlines, sent some shockwaves through the legal system, and then were overtaken by the fast-moving events in the 2024 presidential race. Yet there’s an obvious way the Court’s rulings have raised the stakes of the presidential election in a way that has probably not sunk in for most voters.
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Sep 25, 2024 | 
commonwealmagazine.org | Thomas Geoghegan |Peter Quinn |Alexander Stern |George Scialabba
In a country that prides itself on its tradition of free speech, it should be a shock that so many Americans live in fear of joining a union or even speaking about it at work. The overall unionization rate was just 11.2 percent in 2023, a small drop from the year before. (The rate is about 6.9 percent in the private sector and 36 percent in the public sector.) Surveys show that almost half of non-union workers would like to be in a union. It’s the most economically sensible thing for workers to do.
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Aug 14, 2024 | 
flipboard.com | Thomas Geoghegan
NowCNN — Second gentleman Doug Emhoff criticized the federal judge who oversaw the classified documents case against Donald Trump at a fundraiser in Los Angeles on Tuesday, suggesting Trump would consider appointing her to the Supreme Court to do his “bidding” if he’s reelected. At a private event …
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Aug 14, 2024 | 
newrepublic.com | Thomas Geoghegan
Kamala Harris has been riding ahigh of Democratic enthusiasm since taking over for President Biden as theparty’s presidential nominee. But as the vice president—and we all—falls back toearth, and all eyes turn to next week’s Democratic convention, here comes thehard part: putting forth a clear vision for America, and crafting the policiesthat will get us there. Last week, she took her firststeps in that direction—and they were rather timid.
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Jun 13, 2024 | 
laphamsquarterly.org | Alain de Botton |Peter Stothard |Jackson Lears |Thomas Geoghegan
However powerful our technology and complex our corporations, the most remarkable feature of the modern working world may in the end be the widely held belief that our work should make us happy.
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Jun 4, 2024 | 
catholicoutlook.org | Thomas Geoghegan
How Trump liberated the Religious Right from religion. “God made Trump.” So Trump’s platform, Truth Social, now declares. And He made him for a divinely appointed mission. This is actually the more discreet form of the new blasphemy. Some of the former president’s base now treat him like the son of God. It is a mistake to see Trump only as a political leader.
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May 15, 2024 | 
commonwealmagazine.org | Burke Nixon |Thomas Geoghegan |Beverly Willett |Sharon Mesmer
Every few years, from childhood until my late teens, my granddad would take me along with him to the small Texas town where he grew up—Normangee, population 522—to visit old relatives and even older graves. The drive took us up I-45, beyond the Houston sprawl, past pine forests, and eventually through Huntsville, epicenter of the state prison system.
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May 9, 2024 | 
commonwealmagazine.org | Ariana Orozco |Thomas Geoghegan |Beverly Willett |Sharon Mesmer
“Where you go I will go my friend / Where you go I will go / Your people are my people / Your people are mine…” A nightly song hummed on as hundreds of Columbia University students linked arms on the school’s south lawn to protest the university’s investments in Israel. As some students sang adjusted lyrics from the Book of Ruth in the Hebrew Bible, others performed a Palestinian dabkeh dance, banged Malian djembe drums, and scraped Dominican güiras.
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May 7, 2024 | 
commonwealmagazine.org | Paul Moses |Thomas Geoghegan |Beverly Willett |Sharon Mesmer
When investigators in Henrico County, Virginia searched twenty-three-year-old Xavier Lopez’s bedroom, they photographed a large Nazi flag hanging vertically on the wall, with a crucifix and rosary fastened above the swastika. But that wasn’t what prompted police and federal agents to arrest Lopez in the case that led to what’s been dubbed the FBI’s “anti-Catholic memo.”Rather, the issue was the weapons Lopez had accumulated in violation of federal law.
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May 2, 2024 | 
commonwealmagazine.org | Griffin Oleynick |Thomas Geoghegan |Beverly Willett |Sharon Mesmer
One of the misconceptions about Judaism is that the religion is concerned primarily with justice and the law, not love and grace. That’s precisely backward, argues Rabbi Shai Held, president and dean of the Hadar Institute in New York and author of the new book Judaism Is About Love. Jewish theology, spirituality, and ethics emerge as free responses to a generous, loving God.
