Michael Barone

BARONE: Uncertainty remains after 20 days of war with Iran

March 27, 2026 Michael Barone

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 […]

BARONE: Trump avoiding repeating history in Iran

March 13, 2026 Michael Barone

History doesn’t always repeat itself, or even rhyme. People sometimes learn from experience, their own or others’. Example: Woodrow Wilson, a stubborn Southerner, refused to involve any Republicans, all Northerners in those days, in treaty […]

BARONE: Supreme Court throws out Trump tariffs and upholds Constitution

March 6, 2026 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 […]

BARONE: Marco Rubio — more than just the good cop

February 28, 2026 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, […]

BARONE: Immigration is shaking up political parties in Britain, Europe and the US

February 20, 2026 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 […]

BARONE: Will falling birth rates mean a more conservative world?

February 13, 2026 Michael Barone

George Orwell was on to it almost 80 years ago — the problem of below-replacement level birth rates. In a short book for the Britain in Pictures series in 1947, written just as Britain was […]

BARONE: Big surprises in the 2030 census estimates

February 6, 2026 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. It […]

BARONE: Trump’s outrageous threats get practical results

January 31, 2026 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 two Sundays ago […]

BARONE: Democrats want open borders; most Americans don’t

November 10, 2025 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 […]

BARONE: Trump defies conventional wisdom … so far

October 24, 2025 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, […]