Check out these recent articles from around the web:

What Mitt Romney Saw in the Senate by McKay Coppins: “One Republican congressman confided to Romney that he wanted to vote for Trump’s second impeachment, but chose not to out of fear for his family’s safety. The congressman reasoned that Trump would be impeached by House Democrats with or without him—why put his wife and children at risk if it wouldn’t change the outcome? Later, during the Senate trial, Romney heard the same calculation while talking with a small group of Republican colleagues. When one senator, a member of leadership, said he was leaning toward voting to convict, the others urged him to reconsider. You can’t do that, Romney recalled someone saying. Think of your personal safety, said another. Think of your children. The senator eventually decided they were right.”

We let child poverty soar last year. We could choose differently. by Catherine Rampell: “Five million more American kids fell into poverty last year. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say they were pushed.The child poverty rate more than doubled in 2022, the U.S. Census Bureau reported Tuesday, in the largest annual increase in child poverty on record. For the most part, these kids didn’t become poor because the economy is lousy, or their parents were fired, or they were newly orphaned. Most fell below the poverty threshold because, as a country, we chose to make them poor. Specifically, we chose to make them poor again, by snatching a short-lived safety-net program away.”

We disagree on abortion. Here’s a pro-family agenda both parties can support. by Marc A. Thiessen and Alyssa Rosenberg: “We hail from opposite ends of the political spectrum. One of us is a pro-choice liberal who believes pregnancy and parenting are so momentous that no one should be forced to take them on. The other is a pro-life conservative who believes unborn life is sacred and that the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade was a godsend. But we agree that the high court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization guarantees more babies will be born, many of them in challenging circumstances. And we are united in our belief that Republicans and Democrats must come together to better support these children and their families.”

Is the Hispanic Catholic hope slipping through the Church’s fingers? by Hosffman Ospino: “It also reveals that our Catholic community has been rather slow, perhaps unwilling, to develop models of evangelization to evangelize and support the spiritual journey of U.S. born and U.S. raised Hispanic Catholics, and invest the necessary resources. We continue to invest significant resources to ministry in Spanish with largely immigrant communities in thousands of parishes throughout the country — rightly so, and we should continue to do that — but it is not clear how those same parishes should be developing ministries to accompany intergenerational and intercultural families, and Hispanic families that are fully integrated into the U.S. culture.”

Flapper Economics by Philip Jeffery: “If the 1920s tell us anything, it’s that allowing political leaders and economic institutions to treat us as mere consumers, rather than as workers and citizens, is unlikely to end well.”

We Know the Cure for Loneliness. So Why Do We Suffer? by Nicholas Kristof: “Loneliness is as deadly as smoking 15 cigarettes a day and more lethal than consuming six alcoholic drinks a day, according to the surgeon general of the United States, Dr. Vivek Murthy. Loneliness is more dangerous for health than obesity, he says — and, alas, we have been growing more lonely. A majority of Americans now report experiencing loneliness, based on a widely used scale that asks questions such as whether people lack companionship or feel left out.”

Leonard Leo: Judicial activist and aspiring plutocrat by MSW: “Our nation cannot be allowed to become a plutocracy. Those who serve it, in office or by promoting what they think are its highest ideals, muddy their own cause when they appear to cash in personally. It creates cynicism in the public, cynicism that can then be exploited by ideologues of both the left and the right.”

How Not to Defend Liberalism by Alexander Stern: “These defenses also tend, implicitly or explicitly, to equate liberalism with technocracy, or rule by expertise. In the end, they suggest that we must settle for an undemocratic, technocratic form of liberalism that leaves power in the hands of the few in order to forestall the most illiberal outcomes. This line of argument threatens to exacerbate the crisis of liberalism, widen the fissures in our society, and provoke the very outcomes it seeks to prevent.”

At last, a Labor Day when workers can celebrate their power by EJ Dionne: “Workers and organized labor are cool again. Young Americans are the country’s most pro-union generation. Labor has poll ratings most politicians only dream about, and the Biden administration is making workers’ pay, benefits and rights its calling card.”

How Xi Returned China to One-Man Rule by Weiyi Cai, Aaron Byrd, Chris Buckley and Pablo Robles: “Ultimately, Xi’s dominance may come back to haunt China. It could encourage a herd mentality among officials, deterring them from sharing bad news or admitting mistakes. And when Xi steps down or passes on, can a successor hold together the pyramid of power that he has built?”

What Really Happens When Americans Stop Going to Church by Daniel K. Williams: “Denominations and church commitments once preserved a set of broadly shared Christian moral values that transcended the right-left divide, but now that some of the loudest supporters of Christian nationalism have left these denominations behind, there is little to stop them from refashioning the Christian faith in their own image, with potentially heretical results. And in contrast to the days when both Republicans and Democrats—and northerners and southerners—shared a common religious language despite their differences, little common ground is now left between the post-Christians of the urban North and the post-churched Christian nationalists of the rural South. The decline of churchgoing in America, it seems, has not eviscerated Christianity; it has simply distorted it. And that distortion will have politically unpleasant implications that go far beyond church walls.”

The One Privilege Liberals Ignore by Nicholas Kristof: “The breakdown of family primarily among low-income Americans may be uncomfortable to talk about, but it is part of the apparatus of inequality in the United States. It doesn’t help when we avert our eyes, ignore the data and deny the existence of two-parent privilege.”

Samuel Moyn Can’t Stop Blaming Trumpism on Liberals by Jonathan Chait: “In 2017, Samuel Moyn, a left-wing Yale professor of law and history, co-wrote a New York Times op-ed headlined, “Trump Isn’t a Threat to Our Democracy. Hysteria Is.” In the essay, Moyn diagnosed American liberals as afflicted with what he called “tyrannophobia,” confidently proclaiming, “There is no real evidence that Mr. Trump wants to seize power unconstitutionally, and there is no reason to think he could succeed.” Well, we all make mistakes from time to time. But rather than acknowledge his misjudgment, or at least back away quietly, Moyn has instead expanded the argument to book length.”