First Things

Spring is here and so is the new print issue! May 2026 out now.

Why Portico? (ft. Micah Mattix) @micahmattix In this episode, Micah Mattix joins R. R. Reno on The Editor’s Desk to talk about Portico, a new literary quarterly published by the Institute on Religion and Public Life. firstthings.com/why-portico-ft…

“Every assertion simmers with moral objection. How can it be otherwise when ‘practices that seek to disenfranchise our communities’ are on the rise, as the Learning for Justice ‘About’ page declares? This is a matter of ‘resisting hate.’ Is there anyone who wishes to dispute the matter? Any haters in the room?” @mark_bauerlein

“Let us hope that, if the SPLC is found guilty, legislators take action to remove these insidious catechisms in resentment. SPLC wishes to get them while they’re young—lawmakers can stop it.” @mark_bauerlein

How the SPLC Got into America’s Classrooms by Mark Bauerlein @mark_bauerlein firstthings.com/how-the-splc-g…

“What we have here isn’t a both-sides problem: It’s the rapid and terrifying descent of one political party and its satellite institutions into a state of boundless bloodlust, which is why we’ve had three attempts on the president’s life.” @liel

“Allen is a different breed. As his manifesto and curriculum vitae both make clear, he’s neither a lunatic nor a hardened ideologue. He’s simply a young man from a good family with a great education who became convinced that storming into a ballroom, guns blazing, with the purpose of killing the commander in chief is a perfectly normal, even commendable, thing to do.”@liel

The Education of Cole Tomas Allen by Liel Leibovitz @liel firstthings.com/the-education-…

“His prescriptions may well free men from the tyranny of globalists and agribusiness, but The Last Men is silent on how to free men from a far more sinister form of servitude: slavery to themselves and their insatiable desire for worldly recognition.”

“Where The Last Men breaks with its classical and modern sources is in its unabashed materialism. It equates the desire for recognition with hormone levels in the blood ‘[b]ecause thymos is, for all intents and purposes, testosterone.’ While there is merit in this approach, especially from the point of view of health, the moral and theological significance of thymos is elided.”

“The Last Men catalogues a modern-day scientific Ten Plagues of Egypt that, according to Cornish-Dale, will end with either permanent slavery or the remaking of the ossified liberal-democratic order.”

Microplastics in Our Souls A review of Charles Cornish-Dale's The Last Men: Liberalism and the Death of Masculinity by Sean Skedzielewski firstthings.com/microplastics-…

“Amid rampant speculation about what King Charles would say and do on his state visit to the United States, and what outrages Donald Trump might cause, few commentators took much interest in the relationship that exists between the two men.” @alexlarman

“What Charles has done, ably and tactfully, is show Trump both friendship and international unity—while making it clear that he has reciprocal expectations of the White House. It remains to be seen whether this most mercurial of presidents keeps up his end of the bargain.” @alexlarman

Charles and Trump’s Very Special Relationship by Alexander Larman @alexlarman firstthings.com/charles-and-tr…

“A truly humane education affirms that truth is not a mere construct, that beauty is not reducible to private sentiment or self-expression, and that goodness is not simply a function of power or consensus. It assures students that their desire to understand is both real and just, and that to take this desire seriously is not naivete but the beginning of wisdom.” @BishopBarron

“When education is subordinated to self-­invention rather than ordered to the pursuit of truth, the notion that students ought to submit their minds to an inherited body of knowledge and pedagogical tradition becomes untenable.” @BishopBarron

Recovering the University’s Soul by Robert Barron @BishopBarron ° This essay was delivered as the First Things 2026 Neuhaus Lecture at the New College of Florida. firstthings.com/recovering-the…

“A recent report from the Public Religion Research Institute found that 43 percent of women under the age of thirty now identify as having no religious affiliation... Meanwhile, a recent Gallup poll shows that 42 percent of young men consider religion very important to their lives, compared to only 29 percent of young women in the same age group.”

“#MeToo put masculinity itself on trial... Young men, told that their instincts and ambitions were inherently suspect, either accepted the verdict and retreated, or they rejected it and searched for an alternative.”

“What’s driving the gender divergence? My suspicion is that the very thing pushing young women away from church is drawing young men toward it: community founded on countercultural moral strictures.”