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.
Minnesota? Somalis? Nine billion dollars in alleged welfare fraud?
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
"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.
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.
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.
We Americans, it seems, continue to live in two separate countries. Consider two items in the news this week and the inconsistent responses they evoked.
What a difference half a decade makes. This summer's prevailing ethos, zeitgeist, vibe -- call it any fancy name you want -- was sharply different from the summer, just five years ago, of COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter.
When the Irish comedian Graham Linehan arrived at London Heathrow Airport this past weekend, he was greeted by five armed British police officers who arrested him for -- get this -- three rude tweets.
The Constitution of the United States lays out a complex scheme of governance that has mostly worked for the 237 years since it became effective with the ratification of the ninth state, New Hampshire, in 1788.
The extraordinary pair of meetings in the past week -- the Trump-Putin summit in Anchorage, Alaska, on Friday and Donald Trump's hosting of the leaders of Ukraine, Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Finland, as well as the NATO alliance and the European Commission -- were prompted by the latest iteration of a continuing source of instability over hundreds of years.
In assessing the current controversy over Texas Republicans' proposed redistricting of the state's U.S. House seats, two historic facts should be considered.
