John W. Farrell

Author @BasicBooks, @Prometheusbks, @SHB_books, Contributor @commonwealmag @WSJ @aeonmag @NautilusMag @USCatholic @ChristianCent

[John W. Farrell @JohnWFarrell]

My latest for @commonwealmag : https://t.co/IYNuzZTJmG

[John W. Farrell @JohnWFarrell]

"Yesterday afternoon, President Donald J. Trump officially nominated acting attorney general Todd Blanche to become the attorney general of the United States." Richardson for June 9, 2026 https://t.co/GoAyV92QSU

[Kate from Kharkiv @BohuslavskaKate]

VON DER LEYEN: We propose, for the first time, to ban from entry into the European Union anyone who has served in Russian armed forces since the beginning of the war.

Europe stays off-limits for anyone who has participated in the invasion of Ukraine. As simple as that.

[John W. Farrell @JohnWFarrell]

Excellent article.

[Ethan Siegel @StartsWithABang]

The scientific value, and limits, of the Anthropic Principle

Just from the fact that we exist, there's much we can rightfully conclude about the Universe.

That's the core of the Anthropic Principle: powerful to use, but all too easy to abuse.

https://t.co/ymYUiLNwP3

[Anne Applebaum @anneapplebaum]

The details about the Tate brothers in this @newyorker profile are as sick as anything you will ever read. They are rapists, pornographers, traffickers - and heroes to the "conservative" MAGA movement
https://t.co/Zv2l52b9Id

[John W. Farrell @JohnWFarrell]

"With the wounds of religious persecution both in Europe and in the colonies still fresh, Madison cared deeply about keeping the government away from religion." Richardson for June 8, 2026 https://t.co/LweEuNcfir

[John W. Farrell @JohnWFarrell]

Outstanding.

[Gandalv @Microinteracti1]

Europe Wins Again. Obviously.

Armenia went to the polls yesterday. And the results are exactly what you’d expect if you’d been paying attention for the past five years, rather than wallowing in Kremlin nostalgia like a damp sock.

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan declared victory on Monday, with his Civil Contract Party leading with 52.5% of the vote.  Armenia, a landlocked country the size of Belgium that Russia has spent decades treating as a vassal state, has looked at its options and made a decision that required roughly the same level of intellectual effort as choosing between a Michelin-starred restaurant and a skip fire.

They chose Europe.

This election was less a routine vote than a referendum on Pashinyan’s post-2020 course reducing dependence on Russia and moving toward an explicit European orientation. And Russia, naturally, did everything in its power to stop it. According to Reuters, citing Western intelligence officials, the election faced heavy Russian covert interference, including disinformation campaigns and a plan to transport Russian Armenians into Armenia to sway the vote. One analyst collective described it as one of the largest state-backed disinformation campaigns in modern European history. And Armenia still told them to get lost.

Putin had already warned Armenia it would face economic consequences for drifting westward, and introduced restrictions on Armenian agricultural exports in the weeks before the vote.  Threats, propaganda, economic blackmail. The full Russian toolkit. Result: irrelevant.

Now, Trump, Tucker Carlson and JD Vance would like you to believe that Russia represents some superior civilisational model. A proud, white, Christian fortress holding the line against the Muslim hordes supposedly swamping Europe. It is a compelling narrative, in the same way that flat earth theory is compelling if you ignore every single fact available to you.

Here is one such fact: between 10 and 15 percent of Russia’s own population is Muslim. Tatars, Bashkirs, Chechens, Ingush, Dagestanis. Millions of them. Russia is, by its own demographic reality, a multi-ethnic, multi-faith state with a larger Muslim population than most of Western Europe. But you’re not supposed to know that. It complicates the story.

Meanwhile, the Muslim share of the EU population sits at around 5 percent. But the Tucker Carlsons of the world need you frightened, so the numbers get quietly shuffled off stage.

So Armenia joins the queue. Behind Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova, and every Eastern European country that isn’t currently run by a Slovak who seems to have wandered in from a Moscow focus group. The pattern is not subtle. Every country that has actually experienced Russian influence in practice is sprinting in the opposite direction. The only nation currently moving toward Russia’s orbit is the United States, which managed to elect a man whose foreign policy instincts were apparently shaped by a property developer’s admiration for strongmen with good buildings.

The world watches America and hopes it finds its way back. Most people think it will. Eventually. The damage, however, is already considerable, and democracy, like a soufflé, does not always survive rough handling.

Armenia made its choice. The right one. Obviously.

Gandalv / @Microinteracti1

[Anne Applebaum @anneapplebaum]

He cannot bear being confronted with the truth. And he is surrounded by sycophants so it rarely happens

[John W. Farrell @JohnWFarrell]

"Weirdly, [Trump] kept referring to the U.S. as “your” country when he was speaking to Welker, and to “your” elections. It was almost as if he was a foreign observer offering criticism of the U.S." Richardson for June 7, 2026 https://t.co/Sw7jt0ruqj

[David French @DavidAFrench]

This is unhinged. If a family member behaved this way, you'd worry about them. If a CEO behaved like this, the board would meet. He's living in an alternate reality and furious when a person won't indulge his fantasies.

[Niall Stanage @NiallStanage]

This is a devastating interview.

Scott Pelley tells the NYT that Bari Weiss directly put a “thumb on the scale” for Trump over the killing of Renee Good.

Here’s his explanation of exactly what happened.

[Anne Applebaum @anneapplebaum]

Ukraine is not losing. And for Russia, that's a major defeat.
https://t.co/O9he74xiEL

[John W. Farrell @JohnWFarrell]

Good: 'Vatican Confirms: Pope Leo XIV to Meet Abuse Victims in Opus Dei’s Birthplace' https://t.co/ajLsKYbFwp

[John W. Farrell @JohnWFarrell]

Good.

[Christopher Hale @ChristopherHale]

NEW: The Vatican confirmed on Friday that Pope Leo XIV will meet privately with victims of clergy sexual abuse during his weeklong visit to Spain.

The encounter will bring the pope face-to-face with survivors in the country where Opus Dei was founded.

It comes less than three months after he granted a rare audience to Gareth Gore, the journalist whose investigation of the organization has fueled expectations of sweeping Vatican reforms. https://t.co/B9FKuVnnAJ

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

This is really stupid, and it’s not getting enough attention.

The Trump administration is pulling a working $368 million ocean monitoring system out of the water, equipment taxpayers already bought, built, and sank into the deep ocean.

And they are doing it right when the oceans are behaving in ways that alarm the scientists who study them.

Record-breaking temperatures.

A system of Atlantic currents that may be lurching toward collapse.

The response?

Yank out the instruments and walk away.

That is not budgeting. That is smashing the gauges while the engine is on fire and calling it efficiency.

For what? The Trump administration dressed it up as a “nimbler approach” and “smart lifecycle management,” which is fancy nonsense for “we shut it off and hoped nobody would ask why.” There is no return-on-investment analysis. They cannot show taxpayers save a dime, because the gear is already paid for and the science it produces protects real money and real lives.

The kicker: the same people killing the monitors want to mine the deep sea for minerals. So they are destroying the only tools that could measure what that mining does. That is not an accident.

That is the point. You cannot see the damage if you break the instruments first.
https://t.co/MzE4AW1QBv

[John W. Farrell @JohnWFarrell]

"Putting more billions behind ICE and CBP now will mean those agencies are funded through the rest of Trump’s term." Richardson for June 6, 2026 https://t.co/AdnXDVxW6i

[John W. Farrell @JohnWFarrell]

@tcboyle Halloween? What are your pumpkins made of?

[John W. Farrell @JohnWFarrell]

I love his sense of humor.

[Christopher Lamb @ctrlamb]

On board the papal plane from Rome to Madrid:

I asked the pope about what he thought about number of young people showing an interest in faith/conversions. He referenced that Bad Bunny has a concert tonight in Madrid.

“If they are confronted with the question: do they want to see Bad Bunny or do they want to see the Pope, I think many will see Bad Bunny. But I think there will also be a few here to see the pope. And that says something, you know.”

[Jay in Kyiv @JayinKyiv]

Incredible night for Ukraine, taking out Russian oil infrastructure and military targets from St Petersburg to the Urals.

2000km from Ukraine, in Tyumen, the Antipinsky Oil Refinery, capacity 9 million tons/year burns after early morning strikes.

[Anne Applebaum @anneapplebaum]

From 2024

[Ethan Siegel @StartsWithABang]

Starts With A Bang podcast #130 – the initial mass function of stars

Give the Universe a massive enough cold cloud of gas, and it'll give you a spectrum of stars of all different masses.

But that spectrum isn't universal, and we finally understand why.
https://t.co/wgtDu8fWpe