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."
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.
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.
