Commentary by Michael Barone

Most Recent Releases

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                
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                            March 6, 2026Trump Avoiding Repeating History in Iran By Michael Barone
        History doesn't always repeat itself, or even rhyme. People sometimes learn from experience, their own or others'.

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                            February 27, 2026Supreme Court Throws Out Trump Tariffs and Upholds Constitution By Michael Barone
        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.

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                            February 20, 2026Marco Rubio: More Than Just the Good Cop By Michael Barone
        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.

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                            February 13, 2026Immigration Is Shaking Up Political Parties in Britain, Europe and the US By Michael Barone
        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.

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                            February 6, 2026Will Falling Birth Rates Mean a More Conservative World? By Michael Barone
   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."

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                            January 30, 2026Big Surprises in the 2030 Census Estimates By Michael Barone
        About a month late, presumably due to last fall's government shutdown, the Census Bureau has released its estimates of the populations of the 50 states and the District of Columbia for July 1, 2025.

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                            January 23, 2026Trump's Outrageous Threats Get Practical Results By Michael Barone
        Think about it. Heads of government do not normally reveal the texts of private communications from other heads of state. Yet that is what Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store of Norway did Sunday, on the first weekend of the World Economic Forum in Davos, where the international press would have no difficulty finding appalled foreign leaders to comment.

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                            January 16, 2026What's the Matter With Minnesota? By Michael Barone
   Minnesota? Somalis? Nine billion dollars in alleged welfare fraud?

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                            January 2, 2026On Immigration and Citizenship, Listen to George Washington By Michael Barone
        As news reports proliferate of multimillion-dollar -- and possibly billion-dollar -- fraudulent diversions of government funds involving Minnesota's Somali immigrant community, it may be time at one year's end and the next one's beginning to take a longer look at America's experience with immigration, and to seek the guidance of the first and one of its two greatest presidents.

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                            December 19, 2025We Have Reached the Emily Litella Moment on Climate Change By Michael Barone
   It's been a cold winter so far in the Midwest and much of the Northeast, early-in-the-season snow even in Washington, D.C., and temperatures falling to freezing and below in much of the South. Come to think of it, North America's 2024-25 winter was pretty cold too. It's gotten to the point that "polar vortex" is a phrase on just about everyone's lips.

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                            December 5, 2025Closing the Door on Immigration? Not Yet. By Michael Barone
   Can the United States come up with an immigration policy that will prove sustainable? Two writers whom I respect and take delight in reading, despite their widely differing views, Tyler Cowen, who favors more immigration, and Christopher Caldwell, who favors less, have their doubts. Both, incidentally, are writing for The Free Press, Bari Weiss' eclectic startup.

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                            November 27, 2025Dick Cheney: Always Unintimidated By Michael Barone
        The word that best describes how former Vice President Dick Cheney, who wielded the responsibilities he undertook in public affairs over a long career, began improbably early in life and extended into years of repudiation by his fellow partisans, is "unintimidated."

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                            November 21, 2025Enforcing Immigration Laws Is Not the Moral Equivalent of the Holocaust By Michael Barone
        Whence cometh the conviction, in America and even more in Britain and Europe, that open borders is the only moral immigration policy? Of course, not everyone believes that, and many who do stop short of saying so. But the contrast between the rhetoric and policies of the first two decades of the century and those that have prevailed since President Donald Trump's election is unmistakable.

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                            November 14, 2025The Threat of an Overproduced Elite By Michael Barone
   Success breeds failure. Policies and practices well suited to society at one juncture in history are often poorly suited to the world they have beneficially transformed. If you carry a good thing too far, it can turn out not to be a good thing anymore.

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                            November 7, 2025Bad News for Republicans, Warnings for Both Parties By Michael Barone
        Virginia and New Jersey, the two states that voted for governor in 2025, both voted for then-Vice President Kamala Harris over then-candidate Donald Trump by 52%-46% margins in 2024. Democrats ran significantly better in both states on Tuesday. One reason is that Trump Republicans, as an increasingly downscale party, see their turnout sag in off years than when the presidency is up. But that wasn't their only problem this time.

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                            October 31, 2025Democrats Want Open Borders; Most Americans Don't By Michael Barone
        Who said this? "If you don't have any borders, you don't have a nation." The speaker went on, "Trump did a better job. I don't like Trump, but we should have a secure border. It ain't that hard to do. Biden didn't do it."

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                            October 24, 2025The Trends in New Jersey and Virginia By Michael Barone
        No two states voted more alike and closer to the national average in last year's presidential election than the two states that have gubernatorial elections in this odd-numbered year: New Jersey and Virginia. New Jersey voted 51.8% for Kamala Harris and 45.9% for Donald Trump. Virginia voted 51.8% for Harris and 46.1% for Trump. Aside from the seven target states and Democratic underperformance in New Hampshire and Minnesota, these were the two closest states in the country.

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                            October 17, 2025Trump Defies Conventional Wisdom ... So Far By Michael Barone
        "What all the wise men promised has not happened, and what all the damned fools said would happen has come to pass." That was the mordant comment of Lord Melbourne, Queen Victoria's first prime minister, on the failure of a liberal reform to achieve the results promised with great assurance by the articulate liberal eminences of the day.

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                            October 10, 2025Are Democrats the Party of Murder? By Michael Barone
        Why are so many Democrats fond of wishing death on their opponents? That's a question raised by two astonishing developments early this month. On Oct. 3, National Review's Audrey Fahlberg revealed texts Jay Jones had sent, perhaps mistakenly, to Virginia state Del. Carrie Coyner, bemoaning the cordial remarks then-Virginia House Speaker Todd Gilbert, a Republican, was delivering after the death of a Democrat.

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                            October 3, 2025Donald Trump: Energy in the Executive By Michael Barone
        Whatever else you want to say about him, President Donald Trump has what Alexander Hamilton in Federalist No. 70 called "energy in the executive." Announcing a peace plan for Israel and Hamas, ordering the dispatch of federal troops to protect immigration enforcement personnel in "sanctuary" states, authorizing his budget director to use reorganization powers available after Senate Democrats shut down the government, and announcing a pediatric cancer initiative.