Peggy Noonan

Public opinion on how America does its policing has devolved into two camps. The first is highly progressive, driven by ideological certitudes and made possible by a generally limited experience of life. These are the defund-the-police people, small in number and suffering in public support but effective at pushing their agenda through highly ideological district […]

On Boris Johnson, a bad man met a bad end. He was shallow, frivolous, insincere even for a politician, almost purely cynical, believed in little but himself. Because of this the things he got right had the shadow of the merely performative. He led a Tory Party that no longer seems to believe in anything, […]

Only a woman would have done what Cassidy Hutchinson did because only a woman, in a place of such power and prestige, would have registered everything and taken such close notes instead of spending that time swanning around being important. Here she was, all by herself, 26 years old, in front of the whole country. […]

This is the big political story now: Both parties are rejecting their leaders, Donald Trump and Joe Biden. It’s a continuing tectonic shift and the story underlying every daily political story. It’s building and will only grow. Both parties are starting to scramble for what’s next, who’s next. Both are casting about. I wrote last […]

This is what I tell Trump voters when they ask. It’s my general view on future paths. I start with the obvious. I never meet Americans who love America more than Trump people do. They really love it—its history, what it means in the world, what it’s done. It has not always been a fully […]

San Francisco’s progressive District Attorney Chesa Boudin was recalled this week in a 60-40 landslide. Los Angeles saw a surge of support for a moderate mayoral candidate, Rick Caruso, who campaigned on crime, homelessness and social disorder. None of this necessarily marks a sea change; the people of both cities have long been happy to […]

The great sin in what happened in Texas is that an 18-year-old with murder in his heart walked into a public school and shot to death 19 kids and two teachers. The great shock is what the police did—their incompetence on the scene and apparent lies afterward. This aspect has rocked the American people. Uvalde […]

We’re out of words because we’re out of thoughts because we said them all and spent them all after Columbine and Sandy Hook and Parkland. The shock was the lack of shock you felt when you heard. You indicted yourself: My heart has gotten cold. No, it hasn’t, but the past quarter century it’s been […]

The most heartening thing for Republicans in the past few weeks’ primaries, what carries the most long-term significance, was pointed out by the political scientist Yascha Mounk : A clear majority of GOP primary voters in Pennsylvania supported either a Muslim (Mehmet Oz, who has 31%) or a black woman (Kathy Barnette, 25%). The Republican […]

This goes under the heading “Wouldn’t it be nice.” When I’m on the road the biggest thing I hear about is the frustration of voters. The exact subject matter has evolved over the years (“When will they stop the wars?”) but I detect now a theme that Washington operates with a view only to itself, […]