By Jeff Crouere • Jul. 6, 2026

The midterm election is less than four months away, and Republicans hold majorities in both houses of Congress, yet their track record has been abysmal.

Other than the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” congressional Republicans have delivered little for their supporters. Republican voters are surely wondering why they gave the GOP the majority in both houses of Congress in the 2024 election.

It did produce some cuts in regulations and a smaller government workforce, as 140,000 government workers opted for “deferred resignation.” However, on the major DOGE goal of cutting federal spending, only $215 billion in savings were realized, far below the $2 trillion in cuts needed to balance the federal budget.

Excess congressional spending also includes Planned Parenthood, which began receiving additional funding on July 5. The one-year moratorium on funding the left-wing organization, known as the nation’s largest abortion provider, was not renewed by congressional Republicans.

Planned Parenthood will now be eligible for “hundreds of millions” of dollars in new Medicaid funding, thanks to inaction by the Republican Congress. Despite pressure from pro-life activists, congressional Republicans failed to renew the funding moratorium that was included in the “One Big, Beautiful Bill.”

Now, a key group that will help the GOP maintain its control of Congress is “furious.” As U.S. Senator John Hawley (R-MO) said, “The fact that congressional leaders decided not to defund them…is just beyond me.” Hawley believes Republicans are “taking the pro-life movement and pro-life voters for granted” and are a group Republicans are “depending on…to turn out and vote…in November.”

Upsetting pro-life voters is idiotic. Do GOP leaders even want to maintain control of Congress?

Jeff Crouere is a native New Orleanian, and his award-winning program, “Ringside Politics,” airs Saturdays from 1-2 p.m. CT nationally on Real America’s Voice TV Network & AmericasVoice.News and weekdays from 7-9 a.m. & 6-7 p.m. CT on WGSO 990-AM & Wgso.com. He is the President and General Manager of WGSO Radio, a political columnist, the author of America’s Last Chance, and provides regular commentaries on the Jeff Crouere YouTube channel and at Crouere.net. For more information, email him at jcrouere@gmail.com.

Today’s socialists aren’t reviving Marx—they’re replacing faith with politics and promising comfort instead of freedom.

In the roughly two weeks since the New York primary elections, conservatives—and other normies—have been understandably upset about the prospects of a socialist surge in American politics. Three candidates endorsed by New York City’s socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani won their congressional primaries easily, while Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)-aligned candidates around the state did quite well. In short, June 23 was a good day for socialists throughout the country, leaving many observers wondering if this will be a new date that lives in infamy, the date that marks the official start of the socialist-led collapse of the world’s quintessential capitalist, democratic republic.

As I say, this concern is understandable. Avowed socialists are winning big in cities across the country, not just in New York City but also in Seattle, possibly in Los Angeles, and almost certainly in the nation’s capital, Washington, D.C. It has been well over a hundred years since the United States saw such a swell in socialist-affiliated political success. And this time, it’s highly unlikely that the leader of the Democratic establishment (whoever that is now) will be able to crush the nascent movement like his predecessor did last time, when Progressive patriarch Woodrow Wilson had the head of the Socialist Party of America, Eugene V. Debs, imprisoned for the crime of giving a speech. “Socialism” and its number of adherents will continue to expand for some time, at least until both major parties figure out how to refute their claims and prove the emptiness of their promises.

To that end, it is important to recognize just who and what it is the Republicans, the mainstream Democrats, and the nation at large are fighting. These are not your father’s socialists, to coin a phrase. Today’s DSA and yesterday’s SPA share much in common, but they also differ from one another in many significant and some definitive ways. Mamdani is not Debs. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is not Josephine Conger-Kaneko. Bernie Sanders is not Morris Hillquit. Indeed, to a great extent, today’s “socialists” are socialists in name only. And recognizing that—and what makes them different—is the key to both understanding and defeating them.

The first thing to note about today’s socialists is that they are not Marxists, not really. They regurgitate the rhetoric, of course, and spout the proper platitudes, but they don’t know or care anything about the “means of production.” They think the state should have a greater role in the economy, but not because they believe workers are alienated from their labor or because they think society has arrived, dialectically, at the stage at which that alienation can be rectified through collective action. Rather, they think the state should have a greater role because they want stuff, stuff that they—or those whom they purport to represent—can’t otherwise have: low rents, cheaper groceries, free college education, and healthcare. In this sense, today’s socialists are less Marxists than Stirner-ites, not communists so much as “egoists.” Almost two-and-a-half years ago, in a column in these pages about Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness obsession, I spelled out some of the differences between Marxists and Stirner-ites this way:

Unlike most of his fellow Young Hegelians…[Max] Stirner was not a communist or even a socialist. He was, rather, an “egoist,” which is to say that he was concerned with himself and his needs, first and foremost, and believed that all men were, at heart, radically self-interested. Stirner mocked Marx, Engels, and their fellow communists, assailing their quasi-religious utopian dreams and insisting that man, once freed from the “bondage” imposed by the Christians and their God, would never willingly accept the bondage imposed by the communists and their pseudo-god. Instead, Stirner asserted, man would feed his ego, would satisfy his desires, and would be concerned principally with his own personal comfort.

Marx, for his part, grew to hate Stirner more, perhaps, than any other person on earth. In part, Marx resented the fact that Stirner mocked his utopia. In larger part, he feared that Stirner was right. He fretted that Stirner had a better grasp of man’s nature and that once all man’s basic needs were met by modern capitalist society, he would not demand control of the fruits of his labor or of the means of production but would, instead, demand the satiation of his ego.

Mamdani isn’t going to end commodity fetishism. He’s going to make bus rides free. He isn’t going to redirect surplus value to the proletariat. He’s going to provide city-subsidized child care so that people can go to work and not feel guilty or have to give up their venti lattes. This isn’t about labor vs. capital. It’s about getting “billionaires” and “trillionaires” to pay their “fair share” so that everyone else can live in rent-frozen apartments. Or something. The DSA, in its language and agenda, caters almost exclusively to its supporters’ desire for cheaper, state-controlled creature comforts.

At the same time, it’s also worth noting that today’s socialists both confirm and repudiate Stirner. This paradox is, in some sense, the key to combating the socialist surge over the long term. While Stirner was inarguably correct about modern man’s preoccupation with his ego and, thus, his general revulsion at Marx’s anti-materialist Utopia, he profoundly misunderstood man’s innate desire for meaning and belonging. Stirner argued that the workers of the world would reject Marx specifically because of the religious nature of the Marxist project. He mocked the Communists as religious zealots of a sort and rightly predicted that modern man would have no more use for this new religion than he had for the old ones. He was right in the narrow sense but mistaken about man’s nature more broadly. Man is selfish. There is little doubt about that. He has innumerable wants and desires, as Stirner rightly saw. Nevertheless, man is an innately religious being. That’s the primary cultural conflict in history: what can man do to live a good life and find meaning while combating his temporal urges? Stirner—a product of the Enlightenment and its attack on traditional religion and its search for meaning—missed man’s need for meaning entirely.

The United States has always had some handful of political figures who have flirted with “socialism” in its many forms. Starting with Debs and then carrying over to FDR’s administration and the postwar Soviet infiltration of the federal government, true, economic socialists were a part of the governing class. Starting in the 1950s and 60s, the Lukacs and Frankfurt School-influenced cultural Marxists began taking over the institutions (media, education, religion, entertainment, etc.), bringing a different, albeit far more successful type of socialism to the American experience. Over the last few years, the Sanders- and Ocasio-Cortez-led Democratic Socialists have garnered considerable attention by mixing ego-based economic promises with cultural Marxist rhetoric and grievance-mongering. Like the poor, socialists of some form or another we will always have with us.

The socialists today differ from their predecessors, however, in that they seem to appeal to a bigger and broader constituency. Young people in particular seem drawn to the Utopian fantasy now in far greater numbers than ever before. As a result, the threat seems more real and more immediate.

Part of this is that we, as a civilization, are experiencing some very real and unprecedented economic problems. Housing affordability and economic mobility—in part driven by unparalleled longevity—are two issues that are genuinely and negatively affecting Generation Z and pushing them toward radical political solutions.

At the same time, however, it is largely inarguable that the real surge in socialist affiliation coincides with the appropriation by the movement of authentic religious sentiment and fervor. Mamdani and his cohorts—and the movement more generally—are very much animated by the cultural spirit of Islam. When I say that, I don’t mean just the anti-Zionist/anti-Israel/antisemitic vocabulary and policies—although that is a huge part. I also mean the fact that Islam has, for at least the last half century, helped fill two voids in Western society.

It is, first and foremost, the ultimate form of rebellion against “white, Christian hegemony.” In 1978 and 1979, Michel Foucault, one of the most influential intellectuals of the postwar Western Left, traveled to Iran as a newspaper correspondent and, by his own account, fell in love with the revolution unfolding in front of him. He called Ayatollah Khomeini “the old saint in exile” and described the uprising not as the birth pangs of a theocratic police state but as a “political spirituality,” an authentic alternative to the exhausted, disenchanted rationalism of the West. He was far from alone. Much of the Western intellectual Left spent the early years convinced that Khomeini’s Iran represented liberation rather than its opposite. Only once the executions started did most of them quietly look away.

To be clear, it’s not Islam itself that appeals here. It’s the West’s fetishization of Islam’s revolutionary edge, which serves as proof of its authenticity. As the late, great Joe Strummer observed, by romanticizing Islam and ignoring its faults, Western radicals feed the Western misunderstanding of the religious tradition and empower tyrants (while also making themselves look foolish). When he wrote that “Now over at the temple, oh, they really pack ’em in / the in-crowd say it’s cool to dig this chanting thing,” he wasn’t describing Iran. He was mocking his Western contemporaries, the Western hipsters and fellow travelers, Foucault’s spiritual descendants, who found the whole spectacle thrilling precisely because it offended the right people.

Cat Stevens, to name one hipster, took the whole bit further than most, abandoning the hippie-laden Peace Train, converting to Islam, and joining Khomeini in calling for Salman Rushdie to be killed. The peace train had become passé, while hating heretics, apostates, and Jews represented hard-core rebellion. Loving Islam became the ultimate sign of nonconformist legitimacy.

The second void that Islam helps fill is the void of meaning. As Western Christianity has grown flaccid and doctrinally muddled, Islam has remained steadfast in professing a binary certainty: good vs. evil, right vs. wrong, redemptive vs. condemnable. As a result, Islam has grown in appeal not just to wannabe rebels but to lost souls as well. Almost exactly three years ago, when Sinead O’Connor died, I wrote a note to clients explaining how radically misunderstood she was. Most people—critics, fans, etc.—labeled her “antireligious.” But nothing could have been further from the truth. She was deeply religious and desperate for God in her life:

When Sinead O’Connor needed healing, forgiveness, and love, she was instead greeted with confusion and contempt. Even on the cultural Left, where her “bravery” was heralded, she was treated as something other than human. She was turned into a “secular saint,” a righteous warrior against the inequities and “fantasies” of organized religion, rather than the profoundly broken woman she was. The Church, in turn, continued its worldly cover-up of abuses, addressed the “evil” O’Connor identified legalistically, and exacerbated many of its problems by continuing its efforts to save souls through decidedly rationalist means.

This is why, when she died, her legal name was Shuhada’ Sadaqat. She, like countless other lost souls before her, had converted to Islam, specifically because it offered certainty and a version of security. Modern, post-Enlightenment Christianity had more or less abandoned her search for meaning, and so, she found it somewhere else.

There is a lesson here. People—young people, in particular—are lost and are searching. If nothing traditional provides them with the meaning and purpose they desire, they will fill that void with politics. And when the option is available, they will fill that void with a political force that arrogates the certainty of religion.

This isn’t to suggest that America’s youth will all be converting to Islam soon, but it is to say that the current iteration of socialism in this country provides many distinctive challenges—the search for meaning and hatred of Israel being the two most prominent.

As I said, today’s socialists are not your father’s socialists. They are something else entirely, which means that resisting their advances will require a strategy that is completely different as well. People need a purpose. Work, family, and faith—the bedrocks of the American experiment—all provide purpose. It’s long past time to rediscover and rebuild them—lest the socialists keep winning elections.

Stephen Soukup, American Greatness

Communist radicals are mobilizing to sweep elections in 2028. Here’s what Republicans need to do to save the country.

Linda R. Killian | July 6, 2026

New York City’s Democrat primary results set off a political fuse that is causing explosions across Democrat, federal, state, and local power structures.  The victorious Democratic Socialists of America smoked two congressional incumbents, ended the political careers of Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer and House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, and set up the DSA as the kingmaker in the 2028 presidential primaries.

Why did the far left of the Democrat party, represented by the DSA, suddenly amplify its rhetoric from universal health care, oligarchy, and affordability to an intense onslaught against America, Judaism, Israel, and capitalism?  And in doing so, mount a challenge to the Democrat establishment?

The answer is Election 2028.  Democrat leadership shut out the young, radical generation for two decades.  Their voters haven’t had a choice for a president since 2008, when Barack Obama was the left’s lightbringer.  Then the Democrat leadership connived to steal the 2016 and 2020 presidential nominations from socialist Bernie Sanders.

With political strength in America’s largest cities — New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles — it’s tempting to write off the primary results as an urban problem.  The truth is, the DSA members hold over 250 elected offices nationwide.

The DSA and its allies have been training for a power-grab for a decade.  In 2018, it auditioned Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for her unexpected primary victory over a longtime congressional fixture.  During 2020’s George Floyd “summer of love” primary, a middle school principal of a failing Bronx charter school by the name of Jamaal Bowman beat New York congressman Eliot Engle, then the chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee and an ardent supporter of Israel.

Working through AOC’s Squad got copious press but modest headway until the election of Zohran Mamdani, who showed the DSA that openly professing antisemitism, anti-Americanism, and Marxism was a winning combination with no meaningful political consequences.

As a result, the DSA movement is invigorated by an intensity of purpose that would have been political suicide in any other election cycle.

Ahead of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, DSA éminence grise Senator Bernie Sanders voiced the same conclusion: “I believe that it may just be possible that this country is on the verge of the political revolution we have fought for for such a long time.”

Revolutionary movements can leverage small bases.  The DSA carefully selected sleepy Democrat incumbents and used the low-turnout primaries to win.  Four years ago, even two years ago, extolling the “eradication of Western civilization”; being a Nazi-loving, repetitive abuser of women; or openly celebrating the October 7 massacre of Jews by Hamas would have been disqualifying.  No more.  Targeted Democrats who object to these noxious views are being voted out.

What Democrat wants to be humiliated like Scott Wiener, who’s running to replace Nancy Pelosi’s House seat, at a gay pride parade, where he was chased away for being a “genocidal-supporting center right shill”?  Jewish Democrat Brad Lander was willing to condemn Israeli “genocide” to win a Manhattan congressional race over incumbent Dan Goldman, who had the temerity to support Israel, and was even humiliated by a Brooklyn coffee shop owner.

Republicans have a lot of work to do to counter the DSA’s momentum and appeal to cradle Democrats and young, ill educated voters.  They have to raise the level of their game over their standard arguments of enforcing the law, reducing taxes, and responsible governance to connect with Americans who are justifiably nervous about Bernie Sanders’s revolution.

For example, despite being openly loathed by the far left, Jewish Democrats continue to resist voting for Republicans.  Westchester County residents, 20 percent of whom are Jewish, voted for Bowman twice over a distinguished former mayor of Scarsdale and a physician whose parents were Jewish freedom fighters in Eastern Europe, simply because, as one Democrat put it, “I just can’t vote Republican.”  Bowman later disgraced himself with increasingly antisemitic rhetoric and, famously, by pulling a fire alarm to interrupt a crucial House vote.  He was primaried out in 2024.

Other Americans in the cities, suburbs, and heartland are potentially reachable.  Look at the civic and financial ruination that Mamdani is wreaking on New York City.  In Los Angeles, the DSA’s mayoral candidate, Nithya Raman, a Harvard graduate, intends to implement the same agenda.  Whereas willfully ignorant younger voters devour the theme of eradicating Western civilization and free Palestine over policies, most Americans can understand the destructive force of the DSA’s policies on a personal level.

The DSA’s strategy is to defeat, intimidate, and overwhelm.  So far, it is working.  Democrat luminaries are kissing Mamdani’s ring, from New York governor Kathy Hochul to presidential hopeful retread Kamala Harris.

Some Democrat incumbents are distancing themselves from the DSA.  Congressman Thomas Suozzi from Long Island launched “Promise to America” to show his patriotism.  Only ten of his moderate House compatriots and five candidates have joined him.

At the national level, the president, the vice president, and Cabinet members have been effective communicators.  Congressional and gubernatorial candidates have been much less so, because they have failed to elevate their discourse from crime, taxes, and governance.

Working-class families and wavering Democrats are worried.  They are primed for the taking.  Looking at the election results for Hamas-aligned Avila Chevalier’s winning primary results against Bronx dinosaur Espaillat, black, low-income, and Hispanic voters are not buying the message of hatred and “defund the police” by 2-percent, 10-percent, and 16-percent margins, respectively.  Another example is Spencer Pratt’s victory in the Los Angeles primary until it was whittled away by voter-harvesting.  The rousing turnout for America’s 250th birthday is another propitious sign.

Bernie Sanders issued a call to action for all Americans.  We need to respond with rapidity, strength, and reason to protect and advance the foundational principles that have made us the most successful country on Earth, so that our children will inherit the City on the Hill, not hatred and impoverishment.

Linda R. Killian is a retired financial analyst and a local chairman of the Republican Party.

Mark Finkelstein

CNN is a seemingly endless fount of dumb ideas.

Yesterday, we caught a CNN correspondent recommending that if Anas Al-Sharif was a Hamas terrorist, instead of killing him, the IDF should have asked Al Jazeera to fire him!

Today, it was CNN contributor and former NPR host Lulu Garcia-Navarro’s turn. Criticizing Trump’s use of federal agents to supplement DC police, Garcia-Navarro said the real solution to “girl brawls” is to have “better social media policies and better money for schools.”

So, limit teens to 15 minutes a day on TikTok, perhaps? Yup, that’ll bring girl brawls and other crime by the city’s ‘yuts’ to a screeching halt! Assuming you could even enforce such policies: “Sergeant, we just tracked a girl at Union Station who’s been on TikTok for 27 minutes. Get a SWAT team over there: STAT!”

As for spending “better money for schools,” in 2022-23, guess which school district ranked #1 in the country in per pupil spending? Yup!  And the returns on that lavish spending have been dismal. In 2024, two-thirds of students failed to read at grade level, and almost 80% failed to reach grade level in math. Entrusting even more money to the tender mercies of the teachers’ union isn’t going to fix the problem.

Garcia-Navarro managed to work in a shot at Trump for meeting with Putin regarding Ukraine. Guess what? To negotiate the end of a war, you have to talk with the other side.

She also parroted a current liberal trope, saying that “of course,” the “biggest episode of crime” in D.C. was on January 6th. For the record: the biggest episode of crime in the history of D.C. was the riots in the wake of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. Hundreds of stores were looted, and the fire department reported over 1,000 fires set, with arsonists setting buildings ablaze.

The man-in-the-DC-street interviews, which aired at the top of the segment, backfired badly on CNN. Surely the hope was that local residents would condemn Trump’s moves, and agree with the liberal “experts” that crime is down in the city. Nope! One man did say that instead of using federal agents, the city should hire more police officers. But other than that . . . 

The first person interviewed, asked what she thinks of Trump’s actions, said: “I love it! I think this is long overdue. I’ve been wanting the National Guard in this area for years.”

A store clerk, told that the city says crime is down, replied: “I don’t think the crime is down. Crime is up.” A lady in the store seconded that: “[Crime down] in D.C? Who told that lie?!”

Note: Flaunting her hip knowledge of kid-speak, Garcia-Navarro said that Trump’s actions on crime and his summit with Putin demonstrate that “we live in the dumbest timeline.” Ironically, Lulu, you might have uttered the dumbest line of the day!

For generations, Americans have been told to celebrate diversity, honor every culture, and preserve the stories that shaped the nation. Yet when it comes to Christianity–the single greatest influence on America’s founding and development–many of the same voices suddenly insist that history be edited, minimized, or investigated.

That contradiction was on full display this week.

Democratic Rep. Adelita Grijalva vowed that if Democrats regain control of the House, they will investigate the prominent inclusion of Christianity in America’s 250th birthday celebrations organized under President Donald Trump.

Think about that for a moment.

As America approaches one of the most significant anniversaries in its history, the concern is not crime, debt, border security, or international threats. It is whether Christianity might receive too much recognition in telling the story of America’s founding.

That says far more about modern politics than it does about American history.

The exchange began when MSNBC guest anchor Luke Russert suggested that the Freedom 250 celebrations reflected “Christian nationalism” and implied that Christianity was somehow “hijacking” America’s story. Grijalva agreed and said congressional investigations would likely follow if Democrats win back the House.

The irony is difficult to miss.

Those criticizing Christianity often appeal to history–until history becomes inconvenient.

No serious historian argues that the United States was founded as a theocracy. There was no American equivalent of the Church of England. The Constitution wisely prohibited establishing a national church, preventing government from controlling religious belief.

But acknowledging that truth is not the same as pretending Christianity played little or no role in shaping America.

The Declaration of Independence appeals four separate times to God or divine authority. It proclaims that human beings are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” That statement is not merely poetic language. It is the philosophical foundation of American liberty.

If rights come from government, government can remove them.

If rights come from God, government exists to protect them–not invent them.

That revolutionary concept separated the American experiment from much of the world’s political philosophy.

Many of the Founders held differing theological views. Some were deeply orthodox Christians. Others leaned toward deism. But virtually all recognized that biblical morality provided the ethical foundation necessary for a free republic.

John Adams famously wrote that America’s Constitution was made “only for a moral and religious people.” George Washington repeatedly spoke of Providence guiding the nation and warned that religion and morality were indispensable supports for political prosperity. Benjamin Franklin called for prayer during the Constitutional Convention.

These are not fringe quotations. They are central figures expressing ideas that shaped the nation’s founding culture.

America’s legal traditions likewise reflect biblical influence. The concepts of equality before the law, the dignity of every individual, objective moral standards, charity, forgiveness, covenant, justice, and personal responsibility all bear unmistakable marks of the Judeo-Christian worldview that dominated colonial America.

The first colleges in America–including Harvard University, Yale University, and Princeton University–were founded primarily to educate ministers and promote Christian learning. The Great Awakenings profoundly shaped American culture, encouraging literacy, civic responsibility, abolition movements, charitable institutions, and missionary efforts that transformed communities.

One cannot tell America’s story honestly while pretending Christianity was merely an incidental footnote.

Perhaps that is what makes this debate so revealing.

Notice what critics are not saying.

They are not arguing that historical facts are inaccurate.

Instead, they object to those facts receiving public attention.

There is an important difference.

Celebrating Christianity’s contribution is not the same as forcing anyone to become a Christian. Recognizing history is not establishing a state religion. Teaching that biblical ideas influenced America’s founders does not violate the First Amendment any more than acknowledging Greek philosophy influenced Western civilization.

History is history.

The First Amendment guarantees freedom of religion–not freedom from ever hearing about religion.

In fact, the very freedom that allows critics to denounce Christianity publicly exists because America’s founders rejected governments that controlled religious belief. Many early settlers crossed the Atlantic fleeing religious persecution. They did not come to erase faith from public life; they came so government could no longer dictate it.

That distinction has been increasingly blurred in modern political discourse.

Today, many activists appear comfortable celebrating virtually every religious and cultural tradition except Christianity. Public institutions enthusiastically recognize countless identities and belief systems, yet displays acknowledging Christianity often generate lawsuits, accusations of extremism, or now, apparently, promises of congressional investigations.

One must ask why.

Could it be that Christianity is treated differently because it remains the faith most closely associated with America’s historic identity?

If every historical reference to Christianity is labeled “Christian nationalism,” then honest discussions about America’s past become nearly impossible.

The term itself has become so broadly applied that it increasingly functions as a political weapon rather than a meaningful description. Loving one’s country, appreciating its Christian heritage, or acknowledging biblical influence on the Founders does not automatically constitute some dangerous political ideology.

It constitutes historical literacy.

America’s 250th birthday should not become another battlefield in the culture war.

It should be an opportunity for Americans to rediscover the ideas that made this nation exceptional: that rights come from God, that every person possesses inherent dignity, that liberty requires virtue, and that government exists under higher moral authority rather than above it.

Those principles did not emerge in a philosophical vacuum.

They grew from a civilization profoundly shaped by Christianity.

That heritage does not diminish Americans of other faiths–or of no faith at all. It simply tells the truth about where the nation came from.

A mature nation does not investigate its history because it is uncomfortable.

It studies it.

It preserves it.

And on milestone anniversaries like America’s 250th birthday, it celebrates it.

Later, Stockton reaffirmed his loyalty to the United States before his death at age 50 in 1781. The Fighters

Like McKean, several signers went on to take part in the conflict.

These included Rodney, Oliver Wolcott of Connecticut, Thomas Nelson Jr. of Virginia, and William Floyd of New York.

Others who left Philadelphia to join the conflict were taken as prisoners of war during the Revolution.

One of these was George Walton, who was wounded and captured during the Battle of Savannah. Despite spending months in British custody, Walton survived and was eventually freed, going on to serve as a governor, chief justice, and U.S. senator for Georgia.

Three others—Thomas Heyward Jr., Arthur Middleton, and Edward Rutledge—were taken prisoner during the Battle of Charleston. All three survived months of captivity at St. Augustine, Florida, with Heyward becoming the last of the three to die at age 62 in 1809.

Homes Looted, Occupied, or Destroyed

Many other signers faced consequences related to their properties and estates. Some of the most prominent of these included Lee and Hancock.

In New York, meanwhile, signer Francis Lewis had his property destroyed by the British, who captured his wife during the attack. Held in captivity for months without a change of clothes or adequate food, Elizabeth Annesley Lewis was ultimately freed under a prisoner exchange negotiated by Washington, but died shortly thereafter from the stress of the ordeal.

Also in New York, signers William Floyd, Philip Livingston, and Lewis Morris had their vast estates occupied by the British during the war, with the properties being used as barracks or stables.

Signer John Hart of New Jersey was also forced to flee from his home—and his wife’s deathbed—when Hessian troops attacked his farm and mills.

The Longest-Lived Signer: Charles Carroll

In 1832, Charles Carroll of Maryland knew that he was dying.

The only Catholic signer of the Declaration, Carroll had by then been the sole remaining signatory of the document for around six years.

He gained the accolade on July 4, 1826, following the deaths of Adams and Jefferson, who were among the final three living signers. Franklin had passed more than 40 years earlier.

By 1832, Carroll was well-used to the questions he received from young people and reporters, who were set on preserving as much of the early Republic as possible during the twilight years of the 1820s.

Before his death, Carroll played a key role in welcoming the new era of American life, laying the first stone of the B&O railroad, one of the first steps toward the transcontinental railroad that would take decades yet to be completed.

Carroll’s passing was commemorated in the papers and on the streets of the blossoming American republic, whose citizens recognized that with Carroll’s passing, the first generation of the United States was truly over.

Commenting on his status near the end of his life, Carroll wrote, “Grateful to Almighty God for the blessings. … I do hereby recommend to the present and future generations the principles of that important document … and pray that the civil and religious liberties they have secured to my country may be perpetuated.”

The United States enters its 250th year in fantastic shape. Elsewhere, not so much.

Clarice Feldman | July 5, 2026

We are the oldest continuous democracy in the modern world. In large part, this is because our founders were the products of the Enlightenment, who fashioned a written Constitution, which provides both freedom to citizens and checks and balances to restrain those in power. Massive celebrations are called for, with big ships, flyovers, and the largest ever fireworks display in the cleaned-up National Mall. It’s extremely hot, but that doesn’t seem to have dampened enthusiasm, and crowds have been large at scheduled events.

Just as they denigrated the effort to clean up the Tidal Basin and initially denied that it had been sabotaged, they sought to keep the celebration small. Mainstream media initially reported scarce crowds when they appeared with cameras hours before the events were scheduled. The latest effort to claim disinterest is the report that all these pyrotechnics will create dangerous air pollution. I’ve lived in Washington since 1969, in years when we had temperature inversions with leaded gasoline polluting the already dirty air, and yet the fireworks displays managed to go off without scores of people perishing from poisoned air. I expect this year will be no different. I don’t recall alarms in the press then, but Trump was not then in the White House.

As happy as we are to celebrate this national holiday, we have been mesmerized by events in Venezuela, which show the best and worst of humanity. Thousands of Caracas residents living in an earthquake zone were trapped in collapsed residences. Many apartments were in cheap government-built housing which lacked reinforcing steel and were finished in abysmal masonry — some plastic foam with thin layers on concrete disguising the flimsy underpinnings.

Ordinary Caracans, without even shovels, wheelbarrows, or any other useful equipment, used their bare hands to peel away the debris and rescue those trapped. In fact, countless videos on X taken by passersby show that officials were not helping; instead, they were preventing people from doing so. One shirtless man, “Topo de La Guaira,” rescued many with his bare hands. The government responded by arresting him because he openly decried its failures. The response was immediate — from around the world, people demanded his release, and the government relented by setting him free, after which he returned to the rubble to help rescue more people.

Although the government provided no equipment to the rescuers, the drug lord Minister of Interior, Justice and Peace, Diosdado Cabello, did provide motorized machinery and cranes to extract a mysterious vault in La Guaira, the hardest-hit part of Caracas. Some videos showed stacks and stacks of dollar bills pouring out of the collapsed buildings there, where reports say millions of dollars and drugs had been hidden.

It was wonderful to see the aid that poured in from around the world. The first on the scene was Bukele’s El Salvador, and while most, if not all, of the foreign aid missions have now departed, his corps — overseen personally by Bukele through video conferencing — is remaining to address the needs of the vulnerable population with food, necessities of life, and medical care. The New York Times listed the countries that sent aid, somehow leaving out Israel, which had quickly sent the most technologically advanced search team, even though Venezuela has not recognized it for almost two decades.

Interim President Delcy Rodríguez on Thursday became the first leader of the South American country since Hugo Chávez to publicly praise Israel, after an Israeli aid delegation arrived in Venezuela following the devastating earthquake disaster.

Although many countries sent aid missions, Rodríguez chose to single out Israel’s unique expertise. “I would like to report that yesterday we received a highly professional and skilled group from Israel, which arrived following contact made through the Jewish community in Venezuela,” Rodríguez said at a press conference Thursday night.

Here’s what makes the story so amazing: even on July 4, ten days after the earthquake, live survivors were being located and extricated from the scene. I cannot imagine how people survived and maintained hope for so long while being buried alive. The death toll was estimated to be in the tens of thousands. So far, it has risen to 2,645, with 12,666 having been reported as injured. How many are still buried is unknown.

American Thinker

Gone are the days of university freshmen reading classical philosophers like Plato or contemporary pedagogues like Ta-Nehisi Coates. These days, incoming college students are lucky if they can get through Judy Blume’s “Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing.”

According to a new “Survey of Adult Skills” conducted by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development — a forum for 38 high-income, predominantly Western countries — a not insignificant number of adult students enrolled in higher education are now reading and doing math at a level which, in a more functional society, would be alarming for a middle schooler.

The survey, first spotted by the Economist, tested around 160,000 people of all ages, across all 38 member states. It found that across all OECD member countries, a full 8 percent of college students are reading at the level of a ten-year-old, if not worse. While countries like Germany and France rang in at under 5 percent, countries like Poland, Israel, and the United States blew the curve at 21, 20, and 14 percent, respectively.

The numbers aren’t much better when it comes to math. Across OECD countries, 9 percent of college students do math at or below a ten-year-old level. In Italy, the US, and Slovakia, that figure jumps to over 15 percent — only outdone by Israel, where roughly 21 percent of college students were underachieving at the same low benchmark.

It seems there are numerous compounding explanations for these test results: pandemic-era learning gaps leading to lower levels of preparation, declining college enrollment forcing schools to lower admissions standards, and lower levels of public funding for education, to name a few.

The results also coincide with the explosion of large language models like ChatGPT, which by many accounts have carved out a new floor for academic failure in both K-12 and college-level education.

While there’s no denying how complicated the issue is, there is evidence that removing technology from classrooms altogether could offer an immediate boost.

In one classroom in Minneapolis, for example, a literature and English teacher banned phones and laptops, requiring all coursework to be done on pencil and paper. As the school-year started in September, just 46 percent of the students involved said they felt confident about their reading skills. A few months later in February, that number stood at 95 percent.

Though it’s just one classroom, something is clearly off the rails in the education systems of the richest countries of the world — and the longer it goes unaddressed, the more students will be pushed into the world with the reading skills of 4th graders.

Joe Wilkins, Futurism

From Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

To the Americans:

I’ve travelled all over the world. I’ve familiarized myself with many places, and met many people. And I’m a Canadian, although I’m privileged to reside once again in the States.

And here’s something I’ve noticed, and it’s a key element of America’s continuing greatness:

You bloody Americans value success, and you believe in its existence.

This is something that doesn’t really happen anywhere else in the world. Even in other free democracies—the United Kingdom; Finland, Sweden, and Norway; Australia, New Zealand and Canada; Germany, France, and the Netherlands (great countries all)—a counterproductive cynicism too often reigns.

Success is equated with exploitation.
Ambition is looked upon with contempt.

This happens sometimes in the United States too—particularly among the miserable progressives, who confuse their resentment, ingratitude and unearned skepticism with wisdom.

But in your great country, by and large, striving is admired and success celebrated.

This means that more people strive and succeed in the US than anywhere else. And it’s increasingly obvious. You remain stunningly more innovative and productive than any people anywhere else on the planet.

And so I say, as all should who are fortunate enough to live in the western world, let alone America:

Thank God for the United States.
Thank God for the wisdom of its founders.
Thank God for its faith in the free market and in the natural rights of man.

Happy birthday, you damn Yankees and Southerners.

Long may your admirable country dominate the world.

Long may your freedom and hope provide an example to those suffering everywhere at the hands of their malevolent states.

May your two and a half centuries of unparalleled success be just the beginning.

Your country is the light of the world, and the city on the hill.

Thank God for the USA.

Happy 250th.

Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

To the Founders: It hasn’t been easy. We’ve made mistakes in the past two and a half centuries. But a lot of us still regard with precious sentiment that you pledged your lives, your fortunes, and your sacred honor.

I have tried to uphold the duties imparted unto me as a citizen of this land. In reflecting upon the occasion, I am impressed with the conviction that my efforts have been found lacking. Very, very few of us, it must be said, have dedicated ourselves to uphold the responsibilities that come with the qualities that you announced for all time were of full rights to be bestowed upon every man and woman.

So it is that on this occasion, the two hundredth and fiftieth anniversary of the founding of our nation, that I resolve to devote however many years are within my lifetime to serving my native land with all the strength, and wisdom, and temerity that are mine to command.

I challenge every citizen of these United States to do likewise.

We are not yet the perfect Union. But we have come to be a more perfect Union. This is a process, lumps and all. And for all of the sins of the Founders that have become fashionable to condemn, it must be stated with all due confidence that those men, the greatest of their generation, gave us the means to draw closer to the ideals of freedom. America is and always has been a work in progress. We lift up what works and we take down what doesn’t. It’s gotten us this far, despite our faults and foibles. Maybe it can get us a little further.

I think a lot of harm has been done to our republic over the years. Especially in the past century. Too many of us have come to see this country as something to exploit and take from without having to contribute to it. Many people have done things that in a sane world would be deemed outright treasonous. Those will be dealt with in due time. Nobody ever got away with it forever, and so it will be with our republic.

But for all of that, America is still that shining city upon the hill. It is a sacred trust for her citizens, and an inspiration for those in distant lands who may not yet fully know freedom. It is still something that we can be thankful that we are a part of.

So I’m committing to be a better citizen of this great land. It’s what an Eagle Scout, no matter his age, should do. And I call upon ever other American who is reading these words to do that also.

Christopher Knight