As we inch toward the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, let me share a couple of reflections on the background of how this extraordinary, unprecedented and daring event succeeded.
A president orders the onset of hostilities -- war -- without authorization of Congress and without much in the way of making a case with the public. His troops win important victories and decapitate large parts of the government of the enemy. But in the enemy capital, no one surrenders or will even negotiate seriously.
The sudden death of the historian Gordon Wood, just weeks before the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, is one more mark of the closure of a golden age of the historiography of the Revolutionary era. It's an occasion to reflect on the uniqueness, indeed the idiosyncrasy, of the emergence of the primacy of this United States among the nations of the world.
Tuesday saw the usual first-week-of-June gaggle of state primary elections. It's a feature of the American federal system that states choose when to hold primary and local elections.
Many years ago, sometime after Ronald Reagan replaced Pat Brown as governor of California, I was driving up the coast from Los Angeles to San Francisco and visited Hearst Castle, William Randolph Hearst's epic mansion in San Simeon. It was state property then, donated by the Hearst family, and the uniformed guide struck me as knowledgeable, competent and proud of her work.
Ten years ago this month, Donald Trump clinched the Republican nomination for president, with a platform that was vastly different on trade and foreign policy from other recent presidents, Republican and Democratic alike.
As President Donald Trump's job approval sinks to or below 40% (depending on which poll you're looking at), betting markets and political conventional wisdom are that his Republican Party is not necessarily doomed to lose its narrow House majority, nor is it at serious risk of losing its Senate majority.
Knowingly or not, President Donald Trump, in his decision to attack Iran, has embarked on a foreign policy that has been, on and off, both persistent and controversial in the great English-speaking nations. You can trace it back at least to the Glorious Revolution of 1688-89: the ouster of King James II of England and his replacement by his son-in-law and nephew William, Prince of Orange, and his daughter Mary, as William III and Mary II.
You have to be awfully smart to believe something this stupid. In a Manhattan Institute survey of Democratic voters, 46% said they believed it was definitely or probably true that "the assassination attempt against Donald Trump in July 2024 was orchestrated by his supporters to increase sympathy for him."
Hypocrisy was triumphant, as it usually is in arguments over redistricting, in Virginia this week, as voters approved a "fairness" constitutional amendment allowing the Democratic-majority legislature to enact a congressional districting plan that is expected to increase Democrats' edge in its congressional delegation from 6-5 to 10-1. This is a state that former Vice President Kamala Harris carried over then-candidate Donald Trump by a 52% to 46% margin.
What's the big deal about Hungary? It's a central European country with 9.5 million people -- slightly less in population and area than the Lower Peninsula of Michigan. But it's been the subject of more care, attention and debate in America than any other country in Europe or the Western Hemisphere.
"White House deploys Marco Rubio to clarify messaging about Iran conflict." So reads the headline on the front page of the Washington Examiner's website in the early hours of April 1, the third month of U.S. military operations against Iran, which have been taking place since Feb. 28.
Former President Barack Obama liked to quote the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s line that "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." Of course, what was an expression of optimism for the moral reformer King was more in the nature of a victory spike of the football for a competitor in a zero-sum electoral contest like Obama.
Four years and 25 days. Twenty days. There's a huge difference between those two numbers. The first number -- 1,486 days altogether -- is the length of time since Russian troops crossed the Ukraine border on Feb. 22, 2022, and headed for Kyiv. The second number -- just 20 days -- is the number of days since U.S. and Israeli forces on Feb. 28 began bombing strategic targets in Iran.
As Donald Trump's Republicans look askance as he launches what looks to some like another long-term war in the Middle East, and as the anti-Trump Democrats hold up Homeland Security funding in what looks to some like prioritizing illegal immigrants over U.S. citizens, one is tempted to ask, what's going on with America's political parties?
History doesn't always repeat itself, or even rhyme. People sometimes learn from experience, their own or others'.
So much for the notion that the Supreme Court, with its 6-3 majority of justices appointed by Republican presidents, was going to be a rubber stamp for Donald Trump. That is a frequently voiced charge by partisan Democrats, and a fear of many ambivalent voters who find many of Trump's policies agreeable but worry about his overreach on policy and personnel.
My first reaction to Secretary of State Marco Rubio's speech, delivered on Valentine's Day, at the Munich Security Conference, was, "Last year, President Donald Trump sent the bad cop, Vice President JD Vance. This year, he sent the good cop, Rubio. Progress." In February 2025, the audience at Munich took Vance's comments as insults. In February 2026, the audience, as evidenced by its standing ovation, took Rubio's as compliments.
As British Prime Minister Keir Starmer faces calls to resign for his appointment of Epstein-tied Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the United States, one is struck by the sudden instability of British governments. In the 28 years between 1979 and 2007, Britain had only three prime ministers, while in the 19 years since 2007, it has had seven, and may soon have eight. Only one of those, David Cameron, carried his party to a reelection victory, and he resigned a year after being beaten in the Brexit referendum.
George Orwell was on to it almost 80 years ago -- the problem of below-replacement level birth rates. In a short book written for the Britain in Pictures series in 1947, written just as Britain was emerging from wartime rigors into an uncharted postwar future, Orwell noted that despite an upward blip in birth rates during the war, "the general curve is downward. The position is not quite so dangerous as it is sometimes said to be, but can only be put right if the curve not only rises sharply but does so within ten or at most twenty years."
