Opinion

Hooray, we're free! Screw you, England!

Now what?

America turns 250 this year. If you were around for the bicentennial in 1976 you probably remember it like I do. I was an 11 year-old preteen obsessed with presidents but not yet old enough to understand the experiment called democracy I was celebrating.

I remember red, white and blue everywhere. In our neighborhood, every porch or window had a flag. People proudly, and without partisanship, displayed them. I collected ‘76 decals and bumper stickers, the round ones, and stuck them on the wall above my bed, and on my bike.

This column grimly spent a spring predicting a dark summer of possible chaos and violence, an administration on the move, power grabs at every turn, one preparing for an unpredictable but authoritarian fall season. We would endure a lot of hot weather, late nights, some dangerous dynamics, and Kalshi had odds at 40% that Portland would be ashes by June 15th.

This worry followed protests in Minnesota, the fear of troops coming to Chicago, and everything else you surely remember. Well, the heat came to the East Coast. But nothing else, not yet.

Somewhere inside the White House right now, there’s a federal intelligence report sitting in a drawer, and Trump’s lickspittles who put it there are betting you won’t see it before you vote in November.

It’s an assessment of the security of America’s voting machines, produced by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and Reuters revealed last month that White House officials have spent months refusing to authorize its release, even as the 2026 midterms come barreling toward us.

The language of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution could not be plainer when it comes to birthright citizenship. It says that if you were born or naturalized here, you’re a citizen. Period. End of story.

There is no debate.

When Rep. Tom Kean went missing from Congress for nearly four months, the speculation ran wild. Where was he? Was he hiding something? Was his marriage in trouble? Had he done something to be ashamed of?

Reporters camped outside his New Jersey home. A colleague said he hadn't heard from him. The mystery became a campaign issue in a swing district that could help decide control of the House.

For one day, at least, the Constitution held, and in the chaotic and disjointed time we are living in, and where we hold our breath awaiting the rulings of an overtly bigoted Supreme Court, that is saying an awful lot.

The court today struck down President Donald Trump's executive order attempting to strip birthright citizenship from children born on U.S. soil to undocumented or non-permanent-resident parents. In doing so, it reaffirmed one of the oldest and most sacred guarantees in American life: if you are born here, you are an American.

You can hear the whispering in the White House across the Mall from the Smithsonian Aviation Museum, "Well, that didn't work, and that's bad — really bad." They're talking about the "Great American State Fair."

Aaron Rupar, the Left's irreplaceable and most deeply embedded intel agent, captured Fox News's inability to paper over a debacle devoid of people.

The failure of the American media is one of the biggest disappointments of the last 11 years.

Instead of standing together and standing their ground with integrity and dignity when Trump began bullying them in 2015, media organizations let him wear them down with his never-ending litany of insults. Once a toxic narcissist knows they can get away with it, they’ll just keep hurting you and taking things from you.