Posts on Sunday, July 5, 2026

Elaine Chao, the spouse of Republican Senator Mitch McConnell, is said to have embarked on an official visit to China merely three days following her husband's cardiac arrest. The 73 year old Chao has been wed to the 84 year old Republican lawmaker since 1993. She held the position of transportation secretary during President Donald Trump's initial term. Images appearing in media outlets allegedly depict her in discussions with Chinese Vice President Han Zheng, occurring just 72 hours after McConnell was admitted to hospital. It comes as McConnell's staff issued an update on senator's condition after he was taken to

A family paying the electric bill doesn't care how noble a subsidy sounds in Washington. They care whether the lights stay on, the furnace runs, the air conditioner works, and the bill leaves enough money for groceries. President Donald Trump's tax law set July 4, 2026, as the deadline ending federal tax credit subsidies for new wind and solar projects not already under construction. U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright called the deadline the end of roughly 35 years of federal support for wind and solar, and he noted that in 2025 they comprised about 3% of total U.S. primary energy consumption. From Just the News:

As the Nazis took over Germany, they were a minority party that no one really took all that seriously. Hitler was crazy, but his ramblings weren’t thought of by most Germans or the political establishment as foreshadowing. People today forget they were not a majority, as history tends to obscure reality for the sensational. Communists in Russia and China (or anywhere they destroyed, really) were a minority, too. But you should never underestimate the ability of a distinct minority to bring about massive devastation, as once radicals gain power they tend to wipe out their opposition and move quickly to consolidate control.

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.

On this 250th anniversary of our birth as a nation - a truly monumental moment in our history - we see people pushing two competing views of America. There is the radical left version being pushed by people like New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. He dared to sit behind the desk of George Washington and scold us on our history on our birthday. Compare that with President Donald Trump's Mount Rushmore speech, where he spoke about our exceptionalism. We are not exceptional, as Mamdani claims, because "nothing is fixed." If nothing is fixed, it can be stepped aside by the political winds of socialism or Communism, as Trump warned.

South Korean authorities have repeatedly discriminated against the American company Coupang, violating its trade agreement, a Republican-led U.S. House Judiciary Committee report said. The 35-page report titled, “Closed for Competition: South Korea's Discriminatory Attacks on American-owned Businesses” was released Wednesday. It follows a large-scale data breach at the e-commerce firm last year that triggered investigations which have become a flashpoint for the Seoul-Washington relationship. This comes after Seoul's Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC) slapped Coupang, an American-owned company operating in South Korea and known as the "Amazon of Asia," with a $410 million fine in June. Coupang has publicly stated that it will pursue judicial action in the Seoul Administrative Court.

Like the soldiers at Valley Forge or the pioneers on the frontier of manifest destiny, Americans have always weathered difficulties to keep the light of freedom lit and the party rolling. A 250th anniversary bash in the nation’s capital was no exception. From Boston to Washington DC, millions of revelers battled through intense storms and searing temperatures that peaked at a record 103 degrees on Saturday but managed to celebrate two and a half of centuries of liberty with hundreds of thousands of fireworks shells, symphony music, tall ships and even drones.

It felt like former President Joe Biden’s famous “Red Speech” circa September 2022, when he told a Philadelphia crowd that “equality and democracy are under assault” and that “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.” The stage was bathed in dramatic, dark-red hues reminiscent of fascist regimes. Like, say, the Nazis. As I wrote at the time, it was a “foaming, vitriolic, vengeful speech that seemed designed to pull our nation further apart and inflame the more than 73 million Americans who voted for his opponent in the last election.”

New York’s Brooklyn Bridge caught fire in multiple places during Macy’s Fourth of July fireworks spectacular, part of the NYC America 250 Independence Day celebrations. The massive pyrotechnic show, marking the 50th anniversary of the Macy’s event, featured fireworks launched directly from the historic bridge as well as barges in the East River. The event drew massive crowds to ticketed viewing areas in Brooklyn Bridge Park and along the waterfront. Flames and plumes of black smoke were visible as fireworks were still being launched.

The Trump administration quietly marked the country’s 250th anniversary by quietly declaring independence from the Elon Musk-led cost-cutting project that wreaked havoc across the federal government during President Donald Trump’s first months back in office last year. The Department of Government Efficiency officially blinked out of existence Saturday in accordance with the executive order that mandated it would “terminate” on July 4, 2026. It leaves in its wake an estimated $11 billion hole in the federal budget paid to workers who accepted the Musk-authored “Fork in the Road” offer to do nothing for nine months before officially resigning while being paid full salaries and benefits during that period, plus a gutted U.S.

So here we are: July 4, 2026, the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. For the last several weeks, a crescendo of celebratory events has been building: fireworks without end, day-long flyovers of military aircraft, speeches, parties, and conferences galore. Nor have the celebrations been confined to America. All across the world, spectacular light shows, fireworks, and other red, white, and blue extravaganzas have rung out their grateful and congratulatory chorus. And quite right, too. For the Declaration marked the opening foray of what would become the greatest country the world had ever seen. At least,

You may be familiar with the agitprop group called the Patriot Front. They always showed up at convenient times when the Democrats were in power, obviously to make it look like the right is nothing but khaki-wearing white supremacists akin to the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). Of course, this was before the arrival of the second Trump administration and its Department of Justice, which is presently investigating the leftist Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) on allegations it was behind the funding and support of several real white supremacists and white supremacist groups, including the actual KKK. More often than not, everyday conservatives on the X platform, along with well-known conservatives,

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani's speech for our nation's 250th birthday has gotten a lot of well-deserved criticism. It was pretty awful on the whole. But there was one particular part on Friday that got a lot of attention, in which he lambasted America, attacked Elon Musk, and demonized Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The swipe against Musk was particularly nasty, saying children go hungry while the world's first trillionaire (Musk) "hungers for more." In that you can see the evil of the radical left - to demonize the people who are actually achieving and whipping up envy and class warfare. But Elon Musk responded,

President Trump marked the 250th birthday of the United States Saturday night with a speech paying tribute to the “glory” of America while vowing to protect it from the “cancer” of communism. “For 250 years, the United States of America has been the hope, the promise, the light, and the glory among all of the nations of the world, all over the world. They try and be like us. Nobody can be like us,” Trump said to a cheering crowd of more than 150,000 people on the National Mall who braved a thunderstorm-forced evacuation to hear the president speak in the 11 p.m. hour. Amid boasts of the country’s triumphs —

In another case of federal bureaucrats challenging elected leaders, seven employees of the Environmental Protection Agency who signed onto a public letter opposing President Donald Trump were eventually ousted. Now they’re suing to get their jobs back. The terminated employees are suing with the backing of the litigation group Democracy Forward. Democrat lawyer Marc Elias is chairman of the board for Democracy Forward, which has filed numerous lawsuits advocating for the federal bureaucracy against elected leaders. Elias is best known for election litigation for Democrats, and for his role in pushing the Trump-Russia collusion conspiracy theory.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis says he plans to formally designate more than 90 organizations as foreign terrorist organizations in a sweeping antiterrorism measure. After signing HB 1471 into law, DeSantis says he has greater statutory authority to identify, designate, and combat terrorist organizations operating in Florida. The groups he plans to designate as FTOs include the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Muslim Brotherhood, Antifa and more than 90 groups, including Mexican cartels. His actions follow Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who began making FTO designations four years ago.