Peter Wehner
Senior Fellow, @trinityforum. Writing for @nytimes & @TheAtlantic. Worked in Reagan/Bush41 administrations and Bush43 White House. Bluesky: Peter-Wehner
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Articles by Peter Wehner
A Good Night for the Christian Faith
THE MIDTERM ELECTIONS delivered a crushing, across-the-board defeat to Donald Trump, the Republican Party, and the MAGA movement. The dimensions are staggering. But even on a night filled with remarkable results, the victories of James Talarico in Texas and Adam Hamilton in Kansas stood apart. It’s not simply that a Texas Senate seat went Democratic for the first time since 1988, or that Kansas Democrats broke a 94-year losing streak, having last won a Senate race in 1932.
The MAGA Reckoning Arrives
In the first months of Donald Trump’s first term, as one moral outrage followed another, I often found myself repeating, in conversation, a seven-word phrase: Where there’s no bottom, there’s no bottom. However bad things got, they were bound to get worse. That applied above all to Trump, but also to his party, which was fusing with him. We’ve since seen endless examples of what “no bottom” looks like. The latest is an ad from Vivek Ramaswamy, who is running for governor of Ohio.
The MAGA Reckoning Arrives
Pop star calls Donald Trump a baby in new song, rips president on Epstein files Bryan Adams is not a fan of Donald Trump, and if anyone doubts it, all they have to do is check out the pop star’s newest song. Adams released “Lake …
The Issues Christian Voters Are Neglecting
Earlier this month the president of the Southern Baptist Convention, Willy Rice, called on pastors to “step up” their political activism as the midterm elections draw near.
‘I Shall Be Very Surprised if There Isn’t a Next Chapter’: A Q&A With Sarah Coakley
‘I Shall Be Very Surprised if There Isn’t a Next Chapter’: A Q&A With Sarah Coakley Oct. 18, 2026, 6:00 a.m. ET Credit...Diana Sosnowska Mr. Wehner, a senior fellow at the Trinity Forum, is a contributing Opinion writer. He attends McLean Presbyterian Church in McLean, Va. The Rev. Dr. Sarah Coakley is one of the most original and consequential theologians in the world.
What If AI Is the End of the World?
Our sense that life is meaningful depends, perhaps more than we realize, on our confidence that humanity will go on after we die. If we came to believe that humanity had no future, the philosopher Samuel Scheffler argues, much of what we value would lose its meaning or motivating force. What would follow would be widespread “apathy, anomie and despair.” That is one reason why the threat of artificial intelligence feels so different and disorienting.
What If AI Is the End of the World?
Cops Not Happy When Man Creates Flock-Style Camera That Only Collects Police Plates "Two police officers walked up my driveway and knocked on my door to question me about it." When police showed up to Anthony Sistilli’s front door in …
Germany
German corporate governance rests on a combination of mandatory statutory law (“hard law”) and the German Corporate Governance Code (Deutscher Corporate Governance Kodex, DCGK) as “soft law”.
Trump Has Finally Lost the Plot
The frantic pace of the Trump presidency makes days seem like weeks and weeks like months — if not years. Finding rhyme or reason amid President Trump’s erratic conduct is impossible. Even so, while 2026 has not brought calm, it has brought more clarity. Twenty months into his second term, Mr. Trump has remade the presidency and changed what Americans will tolerate from their government and from one another.
Trump finalmente ha perdido el rumbo
You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load. Trump finalmente ha perdido el rumbo 28 de septiembre de 2026 a las 02:00 ET Credit...Cleon Peterson Rauch es investigador sénior en la Brookings Institution. Wehner, investigador sénior en el Trinity Forum, es colaborador de la sección de Opinión.
Trump Has Finally Lost the Plot
Trump Has Finally Lost the Plot Credit...Cleon Peterson Mr. Rauch is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Mr. Wehner, a senior fellow at the Trinity Forum, is a contributing Opinion writer. The frantic pace of the Trump presidency makes days seem like weeks and weeks like months — if not years. Finding rhyme or reason amid President Trump’s erratic conduct is impossible. Even so, while 2026 has not brought calm, it has brought more clarity.
The Wrath of MAGA
MAGA world is angry. Again. The target this time is Jon Ossoff, the Democratic senator from Georgia. At a reelection rally in Atlanta on August 16, Ossoff was attacking President Trump over the Iran war when he pivoted to a more personal attack on the commander in chief. “The president sleeps through his meetings,” Ossoff said. “He golfs and trades stocks. See, he doesn’t want to do the job.
The Wrath of MAGA
A former Mike Collins staffer posted KKK and Nazi images. Some Republicans see a pattern. Rep. Mike Collins (R-Georgia) is challenging Sen. Jon Ossoff (D). The former Collins staffer posted a swastika and shared an image of himself in what appear to be KKK robes. A former staffer for Rep. Mike Collins (R-Georgia) shared images in June and July on his X account of a swastika and one that …
Why MAGA Is So Obsessed With Fauci
Half a dozen years ago, Anthony Fauci was as popular as he would ever be. A respected physician and researcher for decades, he became in 2020 the public face of the pandemic response—calm, confident, and reassuring, a symbol of scientific authority. And the country turned him into a folk hero. He was on the cover of Time, named one of People magazine’s People of the Year, and played by Brad Pitt on Saturday Night Live. Vendors sold Fauci votive candles and bobbleheads.
Why MAGA Really Hates Fauci Original
Half a dozen years ago, Anthony Fauci was as popular as he would ever be. A respected physician and researcher for decades, he became in 2020 the public face of the pandemic response—calm, confident, and reassuring, a symbol of scientific authority. And the country turned him into a folk hero. He was on the cover of Time, named one of People magazine’s People of the Year, and played by Brad Pitt on Saturday Night Live. Vendors sold Fauci votive candles and bobbleheads.
Why MAGA Is So Obsessed With Fauci
Now Shannon Taylor, now the Democratic nominee in the race for Virginia’s First Congressional district, once endorsed progressive prosecutorial blueprints, advocating for less incarceration and more diversity as a Henrico County commonwealth attorney — some of the same "Democratic values" that ended in …
The War That Must Not Be Named
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the day’s biggest stories, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Register here. Last week, the Pentagon quietly lowered the death toll from the war against Iran from 18 to 14. This was not good news because of an initial counting error but a crude accounting trick.
An Odyssey for Our Own Time
“A war. A man. A trick. A trick to break the walls of Troy. And burn it—screaming—to the ground.” Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey opens in the great hall of Ithaca, with a bard singing a hymn about the cunning of Odysseus, the hero of the tale, to the men who have overrun his house—courting his wife, menacing his son—while he is absent. A feast has been turned into a desecration. The law these men broke was the most sacred in the ancient world: “xenia,” the law of hospitality.
An Odyssey for Our Own Time
2 hours ago Acting Director of National Intelligence William Pulte announced Sunday that his office has completed a fourth batch of layoffs. "Since becoming Acting Director of National Intelligence, our team has been smartly, and carefully, reducing the size of [the Office of the Director of National …
What J. D. Vance Once Knew
Ten years ago, the vice president wrote that one day, voters would realize the truth about Donald Trump. That day has now arrived. First published in The Atlantic on July 4, 2026. by Peter Wehner, The Atlantic July 9, 2026 | reading time: 6 Min.
What J. D. Vance Once Knew
TEN YEARS AGO TODAY, in the middle of the presidential campaign, an essay in The Atlantic set out to explain the appeal of Donald Trump. Its author traced that appeal to the social decline and cultural trauma he had known firsthand, in an impoverished childhood. The author, J. D. Vance, had only days earlier published Hillbilly Elegy, which went on to sell roughly 3 million copies and made him, almost overnight, the country’s designated interpreter of working-class grievances.
Germany’s Pension Reform 2026: What The Commission's Recommendations Mean For HR And Restructuring Practice
A&O Shearman are most popular: within Insolvency/Bankruptcy/Re-Structuring, Consumer Protection and Law Department Performance topic(s) Germany’s Pension Commission has set the wheels in motion—and for employers, the action points are already taking shape: retirement-age clauses, restructuring frameworks (including the related social plan templates), and pension plan rules are all moving onto the strategic agenda.
Germany’s Pension Reform 2026: What the Commission's recommendations mean for HR and restructuring practice
Germany’s Pension Commission has set the wheels in motion—and for employers, the action points are already taking shape: retirement-age clauses, restructuring frameworks (including the related social plan templates), and pension plan rules are all moving onto the strategic agenda. One important caveat: these are, for now, only recommendations rather than settled law.
American Christians Face a Choice
The faithful can still repair the wreckage they have wrought. First published in The Atlantic on June 10, 2026.
‘There Was Love and Then There Was Suffering’: A Q&A With Christian Wiman
‘There Was Love and Then There Was Suffering’: A Q&A With Christian Wiman June 21, 2026, 6:00 a.m. ET Credit...Lucero Alomía Mr. Wehner, a senior fellow at the Trinity Forum, is a contributing Opinion writer. He attends McLean Presbyterian Church in McLean, Va. Christian Wiman is both a magnificent poet and one of the foremost poets of the Christian faith. For 10 years he edited Poetry magazine.
The Apotheosis of Donald Trump
It took 250 years and 45 presidents, but cage fighting has finally come to the White House. Donald Trump’s 80th birthday was in many ways the apotheosis of the Trump administration—the Ultimate Fighting Championship held a seven-fight card on the South Lawn of the White House, with the president and members of his family in attendance. The event was garish, lurid, and crass—perfectly calibrated to appeal to the president. A massive military flyover.
The Spectacle of Trump at 80
The Spectacle of Trump at 80 An octogenarian president for a 250-year-old republic. VideoThe Spectacle of Trump at 80 An octogenarian president for a 250-year-old republic.CreditCredit...Illustration by The New York Times; photo by Roberto Schmidt/Getty What does it say about President Trump — and America — that the soon-to-be octogenarian plans to celebrate his 80th birthday with a series of U.F.C. matches on the White House lawn?
American Christians Face a Choice Original
ROBERT JEFFRESS, the pastor of the First Baptist Church in Dallas, has long been one of Donald Trump’s most fawning supporters. By his own account, one reason for his loyalty is that Trump embodies an ethic—cruel, vengeful, and mendacious—that Jeffress and many millions of evangelicals and fundamentalists not only tolerate but welcome. In an NPR interview in 2016, Jeffress explained, “I don’t want some meek and mild leader or somebody who’s going to turn the other cheek.
Suppose the EU gave a Pay Transparency Directive and (almost) nobody ratified it
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The questions companies are asking us, from what counts as "pay" to how expats and Employer of Record workers fit in, reveal just how operationally demanding this Directive is, even before national legislators have finished their work. For multinational employers, this is the worst of all worlds.
By Sebastian Schulz, Peter Wehner, Thomas Hohe, Anne Pelzer, Arnold Keizer, Hanneke Bennaars, Sarah Henchoz, Kate Pumfrey, Gilles DallAgnol, Maurice Macchi, Christian Bayart, Inge Vanderreken, Claire Toumieux, Olivier Picquerey, Livio Bossotto, Paz De la Iglesia, Kamil Jabloński, Marketa Cisarova, Balazs Sahin-Toth
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The American Pope vs. the American President
American presidents and popes have clashed before, but the battle of words and wills between Donald Trump and Pope Leo XIV is unprecedented. The distinctiveness of their clash is not due mainly to the fact that Robert Francis Prevost is the first American-born pope, though that is significant. After all, Leo can’t be dismissed as a foreigner who is speaking about a country and culture he doesn’t understand.
Hegseth’s Unholy War Original
“The devil,” William Shakespeare wrote in The Merchant of Venice, “can cite Scripture for his purpose.” As we’ve seen in recent weeks, so can Pete Hegseth. Late last month, during the first Christian worship service at the Pentagon since the Iran war began, the secretary of defense cast the conflict as essentially religious and spiritual in nature.
‘A Light That’s Both Historical and Eternal’ Original
David Bentley Hart is one of the world’s most formidable and provocative theological minds. He is an Eastern Orthodox scholar of religion, a philosopher, a cultural commentator and a fiction writer. Dr. Hart is the author of more than 30 books spanning theology and metaphysics, philosophy, biblical scholarship and translation, political theology and linguistics, as well as his fiction and children’s novels.
The Trump Administration Is in a Psychotic State
It has been clear for a long time that President Trump is a person with a disorganized mind and a disordered personality. What the past few months and especially the past few weeks have brought into focus is how his pathologies have cascaded downward and outward through his administration. They have become institutionalized. The reason the administration so often does not act coherently is that it cannot.
A Word for Our Troubled Times
Too many people are living fragmented lives. First published in The Atlantic on March 8, 2026. by Peter Wehner, The Atlantic April 9, 2026 | reading time: 7 Min.
Advising insolvency administrator on transfer of DOMO Caproleuna to rescue vehicle
Going forward, the company will operate under the name LEUNA-Polyamid GmbH. The acquiring entity is taking over the operations and the real estate in Leuna as well as 436 of the most recently approximately 500 employees. The insolvency administrator reached an agreement with the works council on a reconciliation of interests including a social compensation plan.
Sturz beim Kaffeeholen am Arbeitsplatz: Arbeitsunfall oder privat?
Nach § 8 Abs. 1 Satz 1 SGB VII sind Arbeitsunfälle Unfälle von Versicherten infolge einer versicherten nach §§ 2, 3 oder 6 SGB VII versicherten Tätigkeit. Für die Anerkennung eines Arbeitsunfalls ist nach ständigen Rechtsprechung des BSG (siehe zuletzt etwa Urt. v. 27.06.2024 – B 2 U 3/22 R m.w.N.) ein innerer Zusammenhang zwischen der zum Unfall führenden Verrichtung und der versicherten Tätigkeit erforderlich. Nach ebenfalls st. Rspr. des BSG (siehe etwa Urt. v.
Global perspectives on AI in employment law
AI is transforming how organizations recruit, manage and support their people, bringing new possibilities as well as new risks. Our recent webinar takes a cross‑border look at the evolving HR and legal landscape and sets out practical ways for employers to balance innovation with responsible oversight. The session explores how AI is being used across the employee lifecycle and the regulatory regimes that govern its use, including the EU AI Act, GDPR and local requirements.
Germany’s Defense Sector Is Entering A New Era – With Major Employment Implications
A&O Shearman are most popular: within Law Department Performance, Insolvency/Bankruptcy/Re-Structuring and Criminal Law topic(s) in European Union Against the backdrop of the ongoing war in Ukraine and fundamentally shifting geopolitical alliances, Germany's defense sector is experiencing unprecedented growth—with the Bundeswehr special fund and recent spending reforms set to create around 200,000 new jobs.
How Trump Killed Conservatism
The “Make America Great Again” movement is the beating heart of the GOP, the dominant political party in America—which makes MAGA the most important political movement in the world. And that is why some recent developments within the MAGA movement are so disquieting. Earlier this month, the College Republicans of America, one of oldest youth organizations affiliated with the Republican Party, hired Kai Schwemmer as the group’s political director.
How Trump Killed Conservatism
1 day ago The comedian has previously said he supports Trump’s decision to attack Iran as long as there aren’t “boots on the ground.” Bill Maher weighed in on the rift within MAGA over the war in Iran on Friday’s episode of “Real Time.” “You know, if I have to be on one side of this MAGA thing, either Trump, …
Germany’s defense sector is entering a new era – with major employment implications
Against the backdrop of the ongoing war in Ukraine and fundamentally shifting geopolitical alliances, Germany's defense sector is experiencing unprecedented growth – with the Bundeswehr special fund and recent spending reforms set to create around 200,000 new jobs. For companies looking to enter or expand their business in this market, this opens up significant opportunities – but also poses a host of employment law complexities and considerable implications for HR departments.
A New Era For UK Collective And Trade Union Rights: What Employers Need To Know
Sarah Henchoz’s articles from A&O Shearman are most popular: within Employment and HR topic(s) with Senior Company Executives, HR and Inhouse Counsel with readers working within the Retail & Leisure industries UK employers are on the cusp of the most significant changes to collective and trade union law in a generation, with the potential to reshape workforce engagement. Whether or not you currently recognise a trade union, early preparation is essential.
A new era for UK collective and trade union rights: what employers need to know
UK employers are on the cusp of the most significant changes to collective and trade union law in a generation, with the potential to reshape workforce engagement. Whether or not you currently recognise a trade union, early preparation is essential. These reforms will affect every material restructuring and change management programme and could lead to new recognition requests, broader workplace access rights, and increased collective action.
A Word for Our Troubled Times
IN HIS 2024 book The Age of Grievance, Frank Bruni argues that America is suffering from a cultural sickness. We are angry, acrimonious, and indignant, he observes, consumed by resentments and committed to retaliation. Plenty of empirical data supports Bruni’s assessment. A record high of adults—80 percent—believes that Americans are divided on the most important values. National pride, trust in government, and confidence in institutions are near record lows.
Pete Hegseth's Troubled Soul
CERTAIN MOMENTS are worth paying attention to because they reveal something essential about a person. They act as windows into an individual’s psychological state, their ethics, the orders of their loves and their hates. Such occasions are crystallizing. That’s been true of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon briefings since the war against Iran began. We haven’t learned anything we didn’t already know about Hegseth in these briefings.
The Evangelicals Who See Trump’s Viciousness As a Virtue Original
The National Prayer Breakfast was founded in 1953, when President Dwight Eisenhower accepted an invitation to join members of Congress to break bread together. Every president since has participated, regardless of party or religious persuasion.
The Evangelicals Who See Trump’s Viciousness As a Virtue
1 day ago Donald Trump addressed members of Congress and faith leaders for over an hour on Thursday (5 February), where he claimed that he believes he will make it to heaven. In a lengthy 77-minute speech, where he frequently drifted from his prepared remarks, the president claimed that he has brought religion and Christianity back to the center of American life. But that wasn’t all he discussed.
The Streets of Minneapolis
The events in Minneapolis, especially the horrifying killing of two Americans, reconfirmed one awful thing and taught us two encouraging things. What was reconfirmed was the sheer malevolence and cruelty of the Trump administration. It encouraged federal agents to act lawlessly and in ways that led to an innocent woman, Renee Good, being shot, including in the head at point-blank range, and an innocent man, Alex Pretti, being shot 10 times within five seconds, according to forensic experts.
MAGA Jesus Is Not the Real Jesus
Kristi Noem, the secretary of homeland security, has become an evangelist of a certain sort. During her tenure, her department has on multiple occasions released slick social-media recruitment videos in which scripture verses feature prominently. One video quotes from Isaiah 6:8 (“Then I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, ‘Whom shall I send and who will go for us?’ I said, ‘Here I am.
MAGA Jesus Is Not the Real Jesus
5 hours ago President Donald Trump has made very clear his desire to “acquire” Greenland from Denmark, no matter the damage to NATO or to the US alliance with Europe. What the White House has not done is spell out how Trump’s acquisition would take place. While Trump has not ruled out using the military, it …
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