Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, continued to push for the Senate to pass the SAVE America Act.
In a TV interview Sunday, Lee called on his colleagues to do the “hard work” necessary to pass the SAVE America Act, which would require proof of citizenship to register to vote.
Lee touted the bill, saying it makes “it easy to vote, hard to cheat.”
The Senate needs to be willing to do the hard work to make sure that that happens,” Lee said.
“If we put it on the floor tomorrow and we announce that we’re going to debate it until it passes, I’m confident that we can get there,” Lee added.
While the bill passed the GOP-controlled House, it has stalled in the Senate because Republicans lack the 60 votes needed to overcome a Democrat filibuster.
But Lee remains undeterred, saying there are multiple ways to secure passage of the legislation.
“We’re 10 votes shy of cloture, of forcing debate to a close; that doesn’t mean that we couldn’t pass it,” Lee said.
“There are a couple ways to get there. One would be nuking the filibuster; as you pointed out, that appears not likely to happen,” Lee added. “But the other way is to exhaust the other side, to continue to debate the bill until it passes.”
Lee said the SAVE America Act is worth tying up the Senate floor until it is passed.
We haven’t tried what I believe it takes to get the SAVE America Act passed, which is to put it on the floor and to say we’re going to debate this for weeks,” Lee said.
“And we’ll stay through weekends. We’ll stay through previously scheduled recesses if necessary, but we’re going to stay on this bill until it passes,” Lee added.
President Donald Trump has made passage of the SAVE America Act one of his top priorities, vowing not to sign legislation reauthorizing Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which allows the warrantless collection of communications involving targeted foreigners located outside the U.S., until SAVE passes.
Trump is playing a very long game with Iran. He has until 2028 to get the job done, and he is prepared to take as much time as is needed to make it happen.
I’m just a guy out there watching the news. I don’t have any inside information, contacts, or bona fides that make me any smarter than anyone else. I come to opinions by trying to separate the signal from the noise, the facts from the fancy. I’d say over 98% of what we get is noise. People in the media must write things to get paid, so a lot of what we get is baloney they cook up to meet deadlines. I’m guessing that a lot of the time, they know it’s baloney, but they serve it up anyway because they must write something. The news that recurs over time, from multiple sources and perspectives, is the coherent, consistent signal. The rest is noise.
So, I’d say this is the signal of where Trump stands on Iran: He is a very shrewd and patient man. He is also very smart and intuitive, and he picks up on things quickly, which explains why he has evolved into a prescient politician.
Trump must pull his party through the midterms. As the leader of his party, he must do it to remain its leader. As the executive, he must do it to retain control of Congress, if for no other reason than to avoid the relentless assault and sabotage that would be his life if the Democrats take over.
Trump is playing a very long game with Iran. He has until 2028 to get the job done, and he is prepared to take as much time as is needed to make it happen.
He’s going to rope-a-dope with them until the midterms are over. He needs to get gas prices down, get the economy in general up, and starve the Democrats and their media co-conspirators of events that can be used against him. He’ll navigate Iran bad news like he navigated ICE bad news—not just get it off the front burner but get it off the stove entirely by letting as little as possible happen until after the midterms. He not only expects Iranian perfidy but also hopes for it to keep the rope-a-dope going. He also knows things we don’t know about the power struggle within Iran. You must wonder if a lot of guns are being smuggled to the Iranian people as we speak.
Once past the midterms, the final solution for Iran—internally orchestrated permanent regime change—will begin in earnest. It wouldn’t be a surprise to learn that he and Netanyahu have already agreed to this, but have decided to appear divided before the world to throw the dogs off the scent. Once the Iranian government is pro-USA, the Middle East Arab states will cascade like falling dominoes into a rich economic union with Israel. They already know that it’s in their best interests and inevitable, but feel they must wait until the political environment makes it safe to move.
Trump is methodically, relentlessly, tirelessly inching his way toward making that happen.
Donald Trump will go down in history as one of the great leaders and statesmen of all time. He will almost single-handedly reshape the interactions of nations around the globe and, consequently, the world order, with the USA dominant. And like the other greats, he will do it to the constant noise of the deafening cacophony coming from the yaps of thousands of little mutts who are paid to hector and subvert him.
How do Americans respond to the economic and political system known as socialism? For a decade or two after the collapse of socialism in Eastern Europe countries and other nations, the idea became untenable. Now, however, socialism has regained popularity among many, in particular Democrats, as the June I&I/TIPP Poll demonstrates.
In the latest online national poll, taken from May 26 through May 28, 1,589 voting-age respondents were asked the following question: “In general, do you have a favorable or unfavorable view of socialism?”
Those answering the poll, which has a margin of error of +/-2.7 percentage points, were surprisingly sanguine in their views: 33% said they were either “very favorable” (12%) or “somewhat favorable” (21%) toward socialism, compared to just 44% who said they were “somewhat unfavorable” (19%) or “very unfavorable” (25%) toward socialism.
Another 23% said they were “unsure.”
So one out of three voters in America thinks socialism is a good system.
But who are they? Mostly, Democrats. Among members of the Democratic Party, a plurality of 46% find socialism favorable, versus 32% unfavorable. Independents are slightly less, at 27% favorable, 44% not favorable, a plurality but not a majority.
Only among Republicans does an actual majority not like socialism: 26% favorable versus 58% unfavorable. But note also that even among GOP members, the conservative party of our tripartite system, one in four find socialism favorable.
It goes beyond party affiliation, with sharp splits by age (18 to 24 years, 44% favorable, and 25 to 44 years, 42% favorable), dropping with advancing age (45 to 64 years, 27% favorable and 65 years-plus, down to 21% favorable).
Men and women also split: Men (38% favorable) lean more toward socialism than women (28% favorable), though a plurality of both still find socialism unfavorable. Similarly, white Americans (29% favorable) are somewhat less pro-socialism than African-Americans and Hispanics (39% favorable).
A bigger shock: 44% of investors feel favorably toward socialism, but just 28% of non-investors do.
This wasn’t the only question. I&I/TIPP also asked: “Which economic system do you believe offers Americans a better future?”
Once again the answer surprised: only a third (33%) responded “capitalism,” while 16% said “socialism” and 26% opined “both equally.” Nearly a quarter (24%) said “not sure.”
How could this be? Again, Democrats. That party’s members picked socialism (21%) over capitalism (20%), with 35% saying both equally. By comparison, independents chose capitalism (32%) over socialism (16%) and both equally (26%). Republicans selected capitalism (49%) by a wide margin over socialism (12%) and both equally (20%).
So the only group actually to prefer socialism is the Democratic Party.
But why? We asked Americans: “Which comes closer to your view?”, followed by three choices.
The first possible response, “More Americans support socialism because they believe the economic system is unfair to working people,” won 23% support; the second possible response, “More Americans support socialism because they want greater government benefits and programs,” also won 23% backing.
But the big winner was “Both equally,” at 29%, while “neither” picked up just 11% support.
What does all this say? Perhaps that capitalism needs a new ad agency.
Calling the rise of socialism among Democrats “stunning,” CNN’s poll analyst Harry Enten recently notes, “Capitalism has absolutely fallen through the floor.”
But it should be clear: Even while 46% of Dems in the I&I/TIPP Poll find socialism favorable, 26% of Republicans and 27% of independents do too. That means not just Democrats are cooling on capitalism, but GOP and indie voters are also.
This trend has been developing for a while. A poll by the left-leaning Data for Progress group and reported by Politico found that “more than half of likely Democratic voters prefer socialist-aligned figures like Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Zohran Mamdani to establishment politicians like Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries and Nancy Pelosi.”
While Americans seem unbothered by the prospect of socialism, do they know what it actually is?
Economist Daniel Mitchell, president of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity, notes the traditional economic definition of socialism: 1. “Government ownership of the means of production.” 2. “Central planning to determine the allocation of labor and capital.” 3. “Price controls as a necessary consequence of items #1 and #2.”
Are those what voters mean when they say “socialism”? If so, it is a matter of economic history that none of those policies have ever worked in actual practice. Indeed, they’ve led mainly to poverty and economic decline, as multiple studies have shown.
In its poll, Data for Progress defines Democratic Socialists as those who believe “that the government should take a more active role to improve Americans’ lives. They generally support higher taxes on corporations and high-income earners, support regulations that protect workers and consumers, and want more public ownership of key industries like housing, healthcare and utilities.”
But they believe in a lot more than that.
As the City Journal reported, the Democratic Socialists of America recently passed a “Workers Deserve More!” policy statement platform that “commits DSA to scrapping the U.S. Senate, ‘abolishing the carceral forces of the capitalist state,’ defunding the Department of War, amnesty for all immigrants, and ‘replac[ing] the president and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress.’”
In other words, an end to America as we now know it.
That goes far beyond their economic proposals. Even so, as the latest I&I/TIPP Poll shows, Americans appear to have edged closer to thinking socialism is an acceptable alternative to capitalism — even though the latter has an unmatched record for creating wealth and freedom, unlike socialism.
Which raises a question: Thirty seven years after the collapse of communism and socialism in 1989, have we forgotten how awful socialism was?
And the toxic waste it emits isn’t chemical but intellectual sludge, in the form of racial bigotry, antisemitism and crude Marxism.
“It’s amazing,” constitutional scholar Ilya Shapiro said a few days ago in testimony to a committee of the US Commission for Civil Rights: “The heart of antisemitism in America lies on campus, among the most educated and progressive people in the country.”
This isn’t the workplace bias and schoolyard name-calling that once marked antisemitism in this country — it’s now reached the performance stage.
Like the recent incident in which antisemitic Cornell student Austin Franco rejected a job offer from a Jewish-owned startup with the hateful message “Not interested in working for a Jew” — then raised more than $20,000 from equally antisemitic goons on a crowdfunding site.
Franco attends the same campus where antisemitic students this semester trapped the university’s president in his car, holding him hostage after he hosted a civil debate over Israel.
Violence, threats and taunts have hit Jewish students on campuses across the country, from Columbia and Yale on the East Coast to UCLA on the West.
Why have universities been so limp-wristed in addressing this unvarnished hatred?
One reason is money: Arab sheikdom Qatar has pumped tens of billions of dollars into US universities in recent years — and in the academy, money talks.
But another reason is that our universities have been the Petri dish in which this nasty ideology is cultured.
Law schools and humanities departments have embraced Critical Race Theory, which views everything through the lens of oppressor versus oppressed.
No crime, however vile, is treated as beyond the pale if those committing it are classified as “oppressed.”
Meanwhile, those seen as “oppressors” can do nothing right: Their very existence is an offense.
This worldview got a double shot of espresso during the 2020 George Floyd hysteria.
And the toxic waste it emits isn’t chemical but intellectual sludge, in the form of racial bigotry, antisemitism and crude Marxism.
“It’s amazing,” constitutional scholar Ilya Shapiro said a few days ago in testimony to a committee of the US Commission for Civil Rights: “The heart of antisemitism in America lies on campus, among the most educated and progressive people in the country.”
This isn’t the workplace bias and schoolyard name-calling that once marked antisemitism in this country — it’s now reached the performance stage.
Like the recent incident in which antisemitic Cornell student Austin Franco rejected a job offer from a Jewish-owned startup with the hateful message “Not interested in working for a Jew” — then raised more than $20,000 from equally antisemitic goons on a crowdfunding site.
Franco attends the same campus where antisemitic students this semester trapped the university’s president in his car, holding him hostage after he hosted a civil debate over Israel.
Violence, threats and taunts have hit Jewish students on campuses across the country, from Columbia and Yale on the East Coast to UCLA on the West.
Why have universities been so limp-wristed in addressing this unvarnished hatred?
One reason is money: Arab sheikdom Qatar has pumped tens of billions of dollars into US universities in recent years — and in the academy, money talks.
But another reason is that our universities have been the Petri dish in which this nasty ideology is cultured.
Law schools and humanities departments have embraced Critical Race Theory, which views everything through the lens of oppressor versus oppressed.
No crime, however vile, is treated as beyond the pale if those committing it are classified as “oppressed.”
Meanwhile, those seen as “oppressors” can do nothing right: Their very existence is an offense.
This worldview got a double shot of espresso during the 2020 George Floyd hysteria.
And it’s informed campus thinking — and by extension, all of leftist culture — with a bigoted, frankly racial perspective on everything.
Jews are coded as oppressors — even though Israel was founded as a refuge for victims of the Holocaust — and that justifies rape, torture and murder by “oppressed” Palestinians.
The sickness isn’t limited to race: Academic feminism has divided the sexes and introduced poisonous views of masculinity and femininity as “progressive,” when they’re really just prejudice and hate.
The poison has spread from universities into government and the corporate world through the insidious mechanism of federally enforced “anti-discrimination” rules.
Meanwhile, schools of education turn out teachers who are literally more interested in indoctrinating students in social justice than in teaching them how to read or do math.
Specious academic theories of education have turned out to be far less successful at actually educating children than old-fashioned methods like phonics and drills.
Worse yet, academia has instilled in its graduates an undeserved sense of superiority simply because they attended college.
Yet plenty of smart people don’t have a college degree — and plenty of college graduates didn’t learn much.
Test results confirm that: A major study of 2,300 students not long ago reported that 36% of them showed no improved learning after four years of college.
And much of what students learn isn’t so.
For example Marxism, which has never worked in the real world, remains stylish on campuses — still treated as a hot new concept, though it hasn’t changed much in over a century.
Racism, sexism, antisemitism and destructive economic ignorance, all from a huge and vastly expensive system that was supposed to make our society better.
It’s time for a change.
In this country, we don’t (or at least we’re not supposed to) censor people’s views, however noxious and, frankly, evil they might be.
But as more Americans recoil from higher education’s foul products, taxpayers, legislators and parents will increasingly wonder why they’re supporting it.
No wonder Congress is considering multiple bills to defund colleges and universities that are being undermined by big bucks from adversaries like Qatar and communist China — and no wonder the Trump Justice Department is suing schools like UCLA that let antisemitic violence and discrimination fester.
About time, too: No other industry this toxic would have gotten away with its pollution for this long.
Glenn Harlan Reynolds is a professor of law at the University of Tennessee and founder of the InstaPundit.com blog.
South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said Sunday that President Trump will take military control of the Strait of Hormuz if the U.S.-Iran framework agreement falls apart, escalating the administration’s rhetoric on the same morning Vice President JD Vance landed in Switzerland for talks with Iranian negotiators.
“If this deal fails, Trump is going to take the strait over by force,” Graham said on CBS’s Face the Nation. “The United States will control the strait. We will charge a fee for those who go through.”
The comments came hours after Trump floated the same idea on Truth Social, saying that if the framework collapses, the U.S. itself would impose tolls on shipping through the strait. There would be no tolls during the 60-day negotiating window, Trump said, and none after — unless the deal fell through, in which case the U.S. would charge for “services rendered as the Guardian Angel to the countries of the Middle East.”
Iran showed no signs of backing down Sunday. The Revolutionary Guard navy still had not issued permission for any vessels to transit the strait, a military source told Iran’s Fars news agency, a day after Tehran’s initial closure announcement. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei warned Saturday that “the memorandum of understanding as a whole will be jeopardized” if Israel’s strikes in Lebanon continue.
Graham also issued a direct warning to Tehran over Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militant group whose recent strikes inside Lebanon have rattled the week-old ceasefire.
“To the Iranians, if you are listening, when you use Hezbollah to attack Israel, the new policy will be, we will attack Iran,” Graham said.
National security adviser Mike Waltz, appearing on the same network, said Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium — long a sticking point — has been “shipped to Russia,” a disclosure that, if confirmed by the administration, would represent one of the most concrete steps yet taken under the framework signed last week.
“We’re going to keep their nuclear program destroyed and have it permanently destroyed, as opposed to the past where it was ongoing and we were basically bribing them to not continue,” Waltz said. “It’s a totally different negotiation dynamic.”
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, in a Sunday address to a banking conference in Tehran, said Iran would “never back down” from its right to enrich uranium, complicating the technical talks getting underway in Switzerland.
The Strait of Hormuz is a narrow waterway between Iran and Oman that connects the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea, serving as the only sea route for oil tankers leaving the Gulf. Roughly 20% of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas passes through it each day, making any disruption to traffic an immediate shock to global energy markets.
The U.S. and Iran signed a framework agreement on June 17 at the Palace of Versailles, ending nearly four months of war. The deal lifted the U.S. naval blockade and reopened the waterway but began fraying within days as Israel and the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah exchanged fire across the Lebanese border — prompting Iran to announce Saturday that it was re-closing the strait.
Vance arrived in Switzerland on Sunday morning, joining special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner at a mountainside resort near Lake Lucerne. Mediators from Pakistan and Qatar were also at the table. Speaking before the session, Vance struck an optimistic tone: “The question before us now is how much more can we accomplish together? Can we turn over a new leaf?”
Israelis overwhelmingly view the war with Iran and the subsequent deal between Tehran and the United States in a negative light, with 92.1 percent of Israelis believing the Islamic Republic to have won, according to a survey published Sunday.
The poll of 3,644 respondents, conducted between June 17 and 20 by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in collaboration with the Agam Institute, paints a stark picture of public sentiment following the US-Iran deal.
The survey found that even among voters who support the right-wing bloc led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, 93.1% believed Iran had won.
Furthermore, 82.9% of respondents believe the six-week campaign against Iran weakened Israel’s long-term security, and 86% have a negative attitude toward the outcome of the fighting and the deal forged by the US and Iran without input from Jerusalem.
The poll also found 87.8% of Israelis believe that the country failed to achieve the objectives it launched the offensive to achieve, or fulfilled only some of them. Israel and the US has said they aimed to eradicate Iran’s nuclear program and missile threat, and bring down the regime.
The findings pointed to a broader crisis of confidence in Israel’s leadership, with nearly three-quarters of those surveyed, 72.5 percent, saying they did not believe Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s assertion that Israel achieved significant gains and removed an existential threat, and 56.4% rating his management of the war as “failed” or “poor.”
Just 26.5% considered the premier’s management of the offensive “good” or “excellent,” and 17.1% considered it “fair.”
The poll also pointed to the political price paid by Netanyahu, with support for his premiership plummeting from 40.5% in early March to 29.4% in June.
Also apparent in the survey was the depth of the anger over US President Donald Trump’s handling of the war and its aftermath, including the deal with Iran, which is deeply unpopular in Israel.
Among survey respondents, 69.1% rated his management of the war as “failed” or “poor,” compared to just 10.8% who considered it “good” or “excellent.”
At the same time, however, the poll found ongoing support for military action against Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Asked whether Israel should renew major military action against Hezbollah, including strikes in Beirut, even at the risk of a clash with Trump, who has voiced displeasure over the fighting in Lebanon, 48.2% of respondents said it should, compared to 20.9% who disagreed with this option and 30.9% who said they were unsure.
Finally, respondents were asked whether Israel’s wars against Hamas and Hezbollah had fulfilled the goal of “total victory” espoused by Netanyahu and his government for the past 31 months since the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack sparked the war in Gaza and beyond.
Just 12.2% of respondents said they believe Israel achieved most of the goals encompassed in the claim of “total victory,” which the survey described as “among other things, toppling Hamas rule in Gaza, freeing the hostages, and later removing the Hezbollah threat in Lebanon.”
Another 61.3% said Israel did not achieve these goals “at all,” while 26.5% assessed that Israel had achieved “some” of its goals.
The poll was conducted between June 17 and 20. The survey questioned 3,644 Israelis aged 17 and over in a weighted sample to reflect the population. The maximum sampling error is 2.2% at a 99% confidence level, the pollsters said.
On June 21, 1776, Thomas Jefferson presented Benjamin Franklin and John Adams with his first complete draft of the Declaration of Independence. Franklin’s role at that critical hour — which marked his return to the deliberations in Philadelphia after arduous months away on a journey that nearly killed him — reflected the great prestige that he brought to the cause of independence. In 1776, at 70 years old, Franklin was the most famous man in America, and the most prominent and respected American in the world. And by now, he was a rebel against his king.
A man of status and reputation elevates such an endeavor. That was true in the Civil War of Robert E. Lee, who lent a dignity to perceptions of the Confederate cause that it would otherwise have lacked, given the contrast between Lee’s gravitas, family name, and long service in the national army and the quality or pedigree of many of the other Confederate leaders. For Franklin, long esteemed in England, France, and the German states and with a son in the king’s service as a royal governor, the decision of a man so wise to put so much at risk was a public symbol of the seriousness of the patriot cause.
In understanding Franklin’s career in and after the American Revolution, it is useful to recall how much of his life was already behind him as a subject of the British kings before the Revolution came. In 1754, when 22-year-old George Washington touched off the conflict that became the Seven Years’ War (known here as the French and Indian War), Franklin was already 48 years old, a substantial age in an era when even the wealthy and prominent often died in their thirties or forties. He was already retired from his primary career as a newspaperman, and already well-known enough in Europe for his scientific experiments that King Louis XV of France ordered a test of Franklin’s investigations into lightning.
Self-Made in America
Born in Boston in 1706 — the year before the United Kingdom was formed under Queen Anne by the Act of Union between England and Scotland — Franklin was 32 years older than King George III, and was 21 when the king’s grandfather George II ascended the throne. In 1706, Louis XIV still ruled France, and Peter the Great still ruled Russia. The Glorious Revolution, which supplanted King James II and established the principle that the king ruled with the consent of Parliament, concluded 17 years before Franklin’s birth. Franklin was 13 when Robinson Crusoe (arguably the first English-language novel) was published, and 21 when Isaac Newton died. He came of age in the golden age of pirates and wrote an early poem about the death of Blackbeard.
Franklin’s father Josiah came to Boston from England in 1683 seeking safe haven for religious dissent. Benjamin was the 15th of Josiah’s children and the eighth of ten children of Josiah and his second wife. He was never given a full grade-school education (although he was precocious, later writing that “I do not remember when I could not read”), but by the end of his life, he would be arguably the most respected intellectual on earth.
Franklin was apprenticed to his older brother as a printer, which made him legally an indentured servant for nine years. Franklin never liked servitude, and that experience may have gnawed at him later in life when he turned against slavery, freed his own slaves, and began to campaign against the institution in Pennsylvania (which banned it in 1780 while Franklin was in France) and nationally (his last public act was an anti-slavery petition to the new federal government in 1790 as head of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society).
The heavy hand of government helped free Franklin. In 1723, his brother’s publication got in hot water with Cotton Mather and the Massachusetts authorities in part for denouncing Mather’s promotion of inoculation for smallpox — and to prove that the paper was under new, independent management, it was handed over to Ben (then 17 and already experienced at writing under pseudonyms), and his indenture was torn up. While a second, private indenture was redrawn, it would be hard to enforce, and taking no chances, Ben slipped out of town, bribing a sea captain, and made his way to Philadelphia to become his own man.
While most of our images of Franklin come from his old age, he was a tall, broad-shouldered man of great strength in his youth, a strong swimmer accustomed to lifting and carrying heavy sets of type. He would need strength of character as well. Like George Washington, another largely self-educated man who had to make his way in the world young, Franklin wrote himself up a series of rules, setting goals and virtues to which he aspired. By 1730, the 24-year-old Franklin was sole proprietor of the Pennsylvania Gazette, which he built into the colony’s most popular newspaper. Two years later, he launched his highly popular annual Poor Richard’s Almanack; one of his readers was John Peter Zenger, the New York free-press pioneer. His newspaper published sermons by the Great Awakening preacher George Whitefield, although the skeptical Franklin gravitated to the Quakers.
Franklin was a polymath, never truly satisfied to confine his energies to just one field. In the 1740s and 1750s, he was especially active, particularly after retiring from the newspaper business in 1748. He started the American Philosophical Society, one of the earliest inter-colonial organizations, to promote scientific discussion. He was the founder and innovator of Philadelphia’s firefighting companies, the first president of the University of Pennsylvania, and a postmaster responsible for inter-colonial mail. He invented a stove that revolutionized home heating, as well as bifocal glasses, a urinary catheter, a new musical instrument, and more than a dozen other devices. He made news across the scientific world for his experiments connecting lightning and electricity, and he pioneered theories about ocean currents and even the size of molecules that were decades ahead of his time. His theories of population growth later influenced Malthus, except that Franklin drew from them optimistic rather than gloomy conclusions.
Affairs of State
Politics was never Franklin’s chief concern, but neither was he a man to be confined. He fought the Penn family’s control of the colony. He entered the Pennsylvania Assembly, was briefly a colonel of militia, and in 1754, presented an early plan for a defensive union of the colonies as war with France loomed. Independence was on nobody’s mind yet, but even within the structure of British rule, Franklin was already thinking big.
really think big, he needed to be in the capital: London. Franklin first visited the city in 1724, and between 1759 and 1774, he spent most of his time there as an agent for Pennsylvania and other American colonies. He appeared before the House of Commons to make the case against the Stamp Act, even as his wife was defending the family home from anti-Stamp Act rioters with the family firearm. He corresponded with Hume, Kant, and Burke and wrote a pioneering autobiography, crafting his self-made image as a son of the imperial frontier. Much like Washington and John Adams, Franklin in these years suffered a thousand cuts both to his personal standing and to the interests of the colonies, and he radicalized only gradually and in stages to the conclusion that American rights would never gain equal respect. https://6de3a2ced07116514291ea4219c24df6.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-45/html/container.html?n=0
The climactic breaking point came in January 1774. In the immediate aftermath of the Boston Tea Party the prior month — which, like the Stamp Act riots, shocked Franklin in its disorder — it came out that Franklin had been involved in leaking controversial letters written by the governor of Massachusetts to the British government. Worse, he had stayed silent while a duel was fought over accusations that someone else was the leaker. Franklin was hauled before a Privy Council inquiry that was basically just one-sided abuse, with accusations leveled against him that were so slanderous the London papers wouldn’t print them. He came away convinced that no fair hearing could be had in London. After a last-ditch scheme to help the Whigs take power and reverse the British course — a doomed effort, given the remaining power of the king in the system — Franklin went home. His wife had died while he was in England, and his best friend in London noted tears in Franklin’s eyes as they talked of revolution on his last day in the city. Franklin was reluctant and mournful — but decided.
The Wise Man of the Revolution
Given the scope and variety of Franklin’s talents, it is unsurprising that his contributions to the nation’s founding were equally varied. Returning to America in May 1775, a few weeks after Lexington and Concord, he was immediately selected to serve in the Second Continental Congress. He would be the oldest man there. The average age of the signers of the Declaration the following year was 44. Only 13 of the 56 signers were over 50. While the Continental Congress and later the Constitutional Convention (at which he also served as a delegate) were full of men too strong-willed to be led, everyone looked to Franklin’s wit and wisdom, which as often as not was deployed to defuse tensions and avoid dissension. https://6de3a2ced07116514291ea4219c24df6.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-45/html/container.html?n=0
That spirit was necessary in 1775–76. John Dickinson, his fellow Pennsylvania delegate, was insistent that the rebellion should aim for a better deal with Britain rather than independence, and he was a personal adversary of Franklin who even refused to put a lightning rod on his house. Franklin went along, for the sake of a unified front, with Dickinson’s “Olive Branch Petition” in mid-1775, the last effort to reach a negotiated end. Its conspicuous failure left no realistic alternative to independence. https://6de3a2ced07116514291ea4219c24df6.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-45/html/container.html?n=0
In July 1775, Franklin proposed an “Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union” that took some of the general outlines of his 1754 defensive league of colonies loyal to the Crown and revised it into a federal governing structure — the starting point of our first federal constitution, the Articles of Confederation, which was adopted two years later. He also organized the new national postal service before there was even a national government. In the summer of 1776, shortly after signing the Declaration, he went to work helping draft a constitution for Pennsylvania. There as in his other constitution-writing roles, Franklin insisted on popular self-government.
He also played an indirect role in the most explosive publication of the Revolution: Thomas Paine’s pamphlet Common Sense, which relative to the population of the day is rivaled only by Uncle Tom’s Cabin as the most widely read tract published in American history. It was Franklin who had spotted the penniless Paine’s talents, arranged for his passage from England to America in 1774, and secured him a job with a printer. https://6de3a2ced07116514291ea4219c24df6.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-45/html/container.html?n=0
Franklin had to endure his share of hardships for the cause. He fell out bitterly and permanently with his son William, who as royal governor of New Jersey remained loyal to the king. In March 1776, after the initial invasion of Quebec had already gone disastrously wrong, Franklin was dispatched to head a congressional fact-finding expedition that made it to Montreal, where he personally handed £53 of his own money to Benedict Arnold but could offer little more, and recommended that the invasion and efforts to induce Quebec to join the rebellion both be abandoned. He was so exhausted and ill from the travel that he was barely able to leave his bed for a month upon his return in May. But a visit from Washington and news that there was a draft declaration to review roused him back to action.
Even in drafting the Declaration, Franklin’s role was less about perfecting the language than about sustaining Jefferson’s morale in enduring edits to his prose. It was Jefferson who recorded in his memoirs Franklin’s anecdote about a man who proposed a sign for his hat-making shop that read “‘John Thompson, Hatter, makes and sells hats for ready money,’ with a figure of a hat subjoined,” and through a series of suggested edits wound up with nothing left on the sign but his name and a picture of a hat. Every writer who has been edited by a committee can share the pain; its effect on Jefferson can be deduced from how he retold it years later. https://6de3a2ced07116514291ea4219c24df6.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-45/html/container.html?n=0
Franklin was also a master of intrigue. Already skilled in the art of intelligence gathering (as was illustrated by the purloined letters that got him hauled before the Privy Council), Franklin founded Congress’s Committee on Secret Correspondence, putting him in charge of establishing an American intelligence network. (Less auspiciously, he employed a secretary in Paris who was actually a British double agent). Franklin also put his technological know-how to use, promoting the first experimental submarine, the Turtle (it was used once in October 1776, but sank). David Bushnell, the submarine’s inventor, consulted Franklin on how to provide lighting by phosphorus inside the one-man sub, given that candles would consume the oxygen supply.
France and Back to Philadelphia
Franklin’s flurry of activity in 1775–76 was set aside when he was summoned again for a new task: traveling to France in October 1776, where he remained for a decade. Franklin mustered French support for the American war effort, signed the treaty of alliance with France in 1778, ran an expanded network of spies abroad, negotiated a trade treaty with Sweden, and ultimately represented the United States (along with John Adams and John Jay) in negotiating the Treaty of Paris that resolved the war, formally recognized American independence, and let us walk away with extensive Western possessions beyond the original 13 colonies. Franklin, being Franklin, also found time in Paris to meet Voltaire and witness the first hot-air balloon flight in 1783.
Franklin was 81 and in failing health when he attended the Constitutional Convention in 1787. Some of the moving forces at the convention, such as Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, were still young and establishing their reputations, but once again it was the presence of Washington and Franklin at the convention that lent it prestige and public confidence. It was Franklin who quipped at the close of the final session that he had watched the sun carved on Washington’s chair and wondered whether the sun was rising or setting, “but now at length I have the happiness to know that it is a rising and not a setting sun.” It was Franklin, as Maryland delegate James McHenry recorded, who was immediately accosted outside the hall by a woman who asked what type of government Franklin and his fellow delegates had given them, prompting a reply that is one of his most storied: “a republic, madam, if you can keep it.”
Inside the hall, Franklin’s closing remarks reflect his insistence on putting unity and compromise above anyone standing on their own principles — and that included his late-in-life abolitionist convictions, upon which the new Constitution made delicate compromises:
Every possible objection has been combated. With so many different and contending interests it is impossible that any one can obtain every object of their wishes. We have met to make mutual sacrifices for the general good, and we have at last come fully to understand each other, and settle the terms. Delay is as unnecessary as the adoption is important.
I confess [the Constitution] does not fully accord with my sentiments. But I have lived long enough to have often experienced that we ought not to rely too much on our own judgments. I have often found I was mistaken in my most favorite ideas. I have upon the present occasion given up, upon mature reflection, many points which at the beginning, I thought myself immovably and decidedly in favor of . . . These objections shall never escape me without doors; as, upon the whole, I esteem the constitution to be the best possible, that could have been formed under present circumstances; and that it ought to go abroad with one united signature, and receive every support and countenance from us. I trust none will refuse to sign it.
Anyone standing on their objections, Franklin added with characteristic humor, would “put me in mind of the French girl who was always quarrelling and finding fault with every one around her, and told her sister that she thought it very extraordinary, but that really she had never found a person who was always in the right but herself.” https://6de3a2ced07116514291ea4219c24df6.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-45/html/container.html?n=0
We were fortunate to have men of genius such as Franklin at the Founding of the country. And we were fortunate to have men of his virtues, too. Any serious book on the American founding will not omit the flaws, foibles, and sins of Franklin and his contemporaries. Yet, in an inversion of the line that Shakespeare gives to Marc Antony, it is their virtues that have endured. Over and over, Franklin put his own good name and accumulated respect and goodwill on the line in service of his country — and not the other way around. He set his considerable ego aside to make compromises, secure a united front, and make room for dissenting views to be reconciled. It is not only Franklin’s inventiveness and vision that contributed so much to the making of America, but also his wisdom, humility, unselfishness, and congeniality.
At this point, everyone is familiar with the 14 points of the Memorandum of Understanding between President Trump and remnants of Iran’s power structure. The document appears to use careful, ambiguous diplomatic language, but it actually serves as a raw political instrument. To decipher its true meaning, one must strip away the mannerly phrasing and read it in the plain political lexicon — the language of power, elections, and survival.
Article 1 states that midterm elections in America will take place in November 2026.
Article 2 specifies that they will occur on November 3, 2026.
Article 3 notes that these elections are nearly four months away.
Article 4 calculates the remaining time as approximately 20 weeks.
Articles 5 through 14 continue in the same vein: They emphasize the narrowing window and the need for visible results before voters go to the polls. They manifest the importance of avoiding distractions that could shift media focus. Finally, they raised the requirement that any international agreements produce measurable domestic benefits in time for Election Day.
The document never says these things directly. Instead, it speaks of “regional de-escalation,” “energy market stabilization,” and “confidence-building measures.” Translated into the realpolitik domain, however, every clause points to one overriding objective: securing a conservative majority in Congress on November 3, 2026.
Basically, these articles make the metric explicit. To win those elections, the average price of gasoline across the United States must remain below $4 per gallon — roughly less than $1 per liter. That single number has become the administration’s key performance indicator for the next four months.
This translation reveals the central truth the Memorandum aimed to obscure: The primary threat to American national security at this moment is not Iran. On the contrary, it is the possibility that the Democrat party regains control of Congress.
Basically, these articles make the metric explicit. To win those elections, the average price of gasoline across the United States must remain below $4 per gallon — roughly less than $1 per liter. That single number has become the administration’s key performance indicator for the next four months.
This translation reveals the central truth the Memorandum aimed to obscure: The primary threat to American national security at this moment is not Iran. On the contrary, it is the possibility that the Democrat party regains control of
Losing the Republicans’ congressional majorities in 20 weeks will weaken, or even turn off, the legislative and oversight tools Trump’s administration has used to pursue the “America First” agenda. Investigations and impeachments will multiply, and funding for border security and military modernization will face constant resistance. Most likely, Democrats will pull foreign policy back toward the multilateral frameworks they favored in previous administrations. Trump’s signature on the Memorandum with Iran is therefore not primarily about Iran at all. It is about locking in enough momentum and public support so that even a narrowed majority — or the threat of one — cannot easily reverse the structural changes already underway.
The principal perceptible and immediate lever for achieving that momentum is energy prices. American voters feel gasoline costs at the pump every week. When prices rise sharply, approval ratings for the party in power tend to decline, regardless of other economic indicators. Historical patterns (recall 2008, 2012, and particularly 2021–2022) demonstrate how quickly pocketbook pain translates into midterm losses. The $4-per-gallon threshold has emerged as a coarse psychological and political demarcating line. Above it, the narrative of economic competence weakens; below it, the administration can credibly claim that its policies are delivering tangible relief.
The day after they signed the Memorandum, the national average gasoline price fell to $3.99. Oil markets responded with further downward pressure. This was not a coincidence. The agreement signaled that the risk of sudden supply disruptions from the Persian Gulf had decreased, at least for the critical pre-election window. At the same time, the administration accelerated domestic permitting and leasing on federal lands. The combination created the political dividend Trump required: noticeable, pocketbook-level proof that his approach to the Middle East produces lower costs for American families.
If the oil-price game is relatively easy for attentive pundits to follow, the information arena is more opaque. Public disagreements between President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu have generated headlines suggesting a serious rift. Those who recall last year’s public friction between Trump — the most powerful man on the planet — and Elon Musk — the richest man on the planet — will identify the pattern. At the time, many interpreted the exchanges as genuine estrangement. In reality, they served a tactical purpose: allowing each side to speak to different audiences while preserving the underlying alliance. The same dynamic is now unmistakable between Washington and Jerusalem.
The current posture is a classic “good cop, bad cop” arrangement. Trump projects reasonableness and restraint to international audiences and to American voters who prefer stability during an election season. Netanyahu continues to cling to a hard line, conducting operations against Hezb’allah infrastructure in Lebanon and signaling that Israel will not be constrained by external timetables. Both leaders comprehend that calm on the international stage between present and November benefits their respective domestic positions. China must not create a crisis over Taiwan. Gulf Arab states, recently unified by Trump’s pressure on Iran, must avoid provocative moves. Iran itself must absorb the recent setbacks without launching major retaliation that could spike oil prices or monopolize American news cycles. Quiet serves everyone’s electoral calendar.
This arrangement has forced a hard realization in parts of the Israeli political establishment: A superpower’s domestic political needs will always take precedence over the preferences of even its closest allies. The observation is harsh, yet it reflects the structural reality of great-power politics. No American president can afford to let foreign crises dictate the domestic narrative in the months before a midterm election, especially one that will determine whether his agenda survives the remainder of his term.
The 250th anniversary of American independence on July 4, 2026 adds another layer of calculation. National milestones of this scale are carefully stage-managed. The administration does not want global headlines on that date postulating that the United States is “trampling the independence” of another country. By empowering Israel to handle immediate threats in Lebanon during the spring and summer, the United States creates space for its citizens to celebrate the anniversary without the overlay of fresh Middle East escalation. Israeli operations that degrade Hezb’allah’s capabilities reduce the chance of a major attack that could force American involvement or dominate the news. In that narrow but important sense, Israeli soldiers are helping ensure that American families can mark the semi-quincentennial in peace. Such contributions are rarely acknowledged publicly, but they are remembered in the corridors of power. Moreover, ordinary Americans will never forget that.
The Memorandum, stripped of diplomatic language, is therefore a timetable and a scorecard. It establishes a 20-week timeline and defines success in terms that voters can effortlessly grasp: reduced gas prices, the absence of foreign crises, and a political climate stable enough to render the administration’s core reforms difficult to reverse.
Whether one views the Memorandum as cynical or merely realistic depends on how much weight one assigns to the domestic political survival of elected leaders in democratic systems. In either case, the document makes explicit what experienced spectators have long understood: in the final analysis, the most consequential battles for both America and Israel are still being fought inside the American political system.
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Former Vice President Kamala Harris offered podcast host Don Lemon her own definition of the word “hope” on Friday, resulting in a clip that has since gone viral on social media as a “word salad” response.
“I really, truly believe this,” Harris said. “We each have light inside of us. And we need to know that that is what inspires our hope as much as anything external to ourselves.”
The former vice president and 2026 presidential candidate continued her long-winded response, imploring Americans not to lose sight of their vision of the future when faced with political or personal loss.
“And when we feel that and and and not allow an election or an individual to dampen that light, and instead light, let that light kind of carry us in particular through moments of darkness, that that we not only act on that hope, but we inspire that hope in each other,” Harris added.
“And, in particular, at this moment, it is so important that we not only have hope, but that we understand that that should be a verb.”
Harris’ seemingly meandering answer quickly gained traction on social media, with critics blasting the former vice president.
“Good word salad answer that can be summed up in two words: stay positive,” one user wrote on X.
“When the teacher told you to write a 300-word essay but you could only think of 100 words,” another poster said.
Others pointed out that the word is already defined as both a verb and a noun.
Good word salad answer that can be summed up in two words: stay positive,” one user wrote on X.
“When the teacher told you to write a 300-word essay but you could only think of 100 words,” another poster said.
Others pointed out that the word is already defined as both a verb and a noun.
It’s a noun: ‘I have hope that she never runs for any government office again,’” a user posted to X. “And it is a verb: ‘I hope she never runs for any government office again.’”
Lemon asked Harris whether she is planning to run for the country’s highest office again in 2028.
“I have not decided, to be honest with you,” Harris replied, notably not ruling out a potential run.
I’ve been spending a lot of time traveling the country [and] listening to folks,” she continued. “I think that people want a leader who is willing to take risks, as opposed to just doing what is popular.
“I think people want to know that they are being seen and heard, and that their leaders — whether they’re at the local, state, federal level or in the White House — are looking first at the people. You know, not looking at themselves in the mirror.”
How did we get to a place in this country where we’ve decided that the humane approach to severe mental illness is to just leave people alone and let them fend for themselves?
If someone is living on a sidewalk, talking to invisible people, wandering through traffic, or spiraling deeper into psychosis, government intervention is now treated like the “evil” thing to do. Activists, disability-rights groups, and this massive network of NGOs have spent decades arguing mental institutions should be used only in the rarest circumstances.
And the results of that disastrous agenda speak for themselves.
Cities all over America are drowning in homelessness, tent cities, violence, addiction, untreated mental illness, and public chaos. All while billions of taxpayer dollars flood into programs that “manage” the crisis rather than solve it.
It’s one big giant grift.
But help is on the way.
It appears the Trump administration is ready to challenge one of the legal foundations behind this scam system.
In a new memorandum, the DOJ claims that federal disability laws have been stretched way beyond what Congress intended, and this is creating restrictions that make it harder for states to step in and help when people are suffering with severe mental illness.
If that argument holds, it could be one of the biggest shifts in mental health policy in decades.
Devon Kurtz:
Today, DOJ broke with 35 years of bad law.
Regarding the integration mandates of section 504 and Title II of the ADA, “the regulations are unlawful.”
This is a shot across the bow for Olmstead and P&A groups that have weaponized it against state programs for the mentally ill.
So, activist groups and regulators are using disability laws to block states from giving needy people treatment so they can keep their grift going.
This is a battle to allow states to implement safety and treatment. It’s also a battle to end this vicious, heartless scam.
Joe Lonsdale:
For decades, the fed govt has been more focused on a psychotic person’s “right” to die on the street than a state’s right to intervene and help them get care. Now, the Trump DOJ is signaling that it will end DC’s incursion on psychiatric care, and let states decide what best helps their people. This is a disaster for the corrupt NGO-grift complex that feeds off permanent misery; it’s great for people in need of help, and those who want safe cities.
Meanwhile, the left is terrified that the mental illness situation could be solved. Left-wing publications like Mother Jones are sounding the alarm bells.
Mother Jones:
On Thursday, the Department of Justice quietly released a memo pertaining to the landmark 1999 disability civil rights case Olmstead v. L.C., which curtailed states’ power to institutionalize people diagnosed with mental illnesses, and related federal civil rights laws. That precedent, the Trump administration memo argues—in conjunction with federal civil rights and disability rights statutes—increases homelessness, a claim that likely signals a push to expand institutionalization in restrictive psychiatric facilities.
The administration’s claims, according to University of Michigan law professor Sam Bagenstos, are not rooted in fact.
“It’s just absurd,” says Bagenstos, general counsel for the Department of Health and Human Services and the Office of Management and Budget during the Biden administration, calling the Olmstead decision “one of the most effective tools in combating homelessness” by encouraging states to augment mental health and housing services outside institutions.
More concerning is the fact that the White House instructed the Justice Department to produce the document, which Bagenstos says “suggests we might potentially be seeing an executive order” directing DOJ and the Department of Health and Human Services to roll back rules meant to avoid institutionalization. The memo, however, does not change laws itself.
“This administration is trying to take away one of the most fundamental rights that people with disabilities have fought for,” said George Washington University law professor Alison Barkoff.
In December, for instance, the Department of Justice reached an agreement with South Carolina to expand supportive services for people with psychiatric disabilities to reduce rates of institutionalization.
Mother Jones is acting like the real crisis is Trump trying to fix the system, not the fact that the system is clearly broken and human beings are suffering.
Americans can see what’s happening on the streets. They see people in obvious mental distress living on sidewalks, wandering through traffic, screaming in public, and cycling through the same failed NGO programs over and over again.
And that’s why the left is protecting it. They don’t want to lose their government money and their “mail-in” ballot scam.
Roy Rogue:
My jaw literally dropped listening to this
Homeless woman in Los Angeles says NGOs come to them and register them to vote 5 TIMES PER YEAR and pay them $25
Multiple people all confirm they register the homeless 4-5x A YEAR EACH and pay them
This is why Democrats made ballot harvesting by 3rd party networks in California legal
They are registering the homeless to vote 5x each, providing the fake name and address information, and then ballot harvesting hundreds of thousands of ballots
America can’t move forward and be great again while homeless and mentally ill people are being held hostage by left-wing NGOs that have no interest in solving the problem. It’s in their financial and political interest to keep the mentally ill in a state of perpetual crisis.
Let’s hope President Trump can pull off another win and reopen the mental institutions.
THE ARTFUL DILETTANTE 