“Every July 4th, Americans light fireworks, wave flags, and sing songs. This year, we do all of that and more: the nation turns 250, a milestone grand enough to demand something beyond the usual celebrations. So here is a question worth sitting with this weekend: What holds us together? Not what should hold us together in theory, but what actually does. What shared inheritance, what common story, what sense of mutual obligation binds 340 million people into something we can still honestly call one nation? Our national motto offers a clue, and a challenge.” (07/16/26)
“The wife of Spain’s prime minister will stand trial before a jury on charges of influence peddling and embezzlement, a court ruled on Thursday, in a further setback for the government embroiled in months of graft investigations and scandals. Begoña Gomez’s defence team had launched an appeal, asking Madrid’s high court to drop the charges made against her that she denies, and lift other orders imposed on her by a lower court last month. The Madrid court dropped a third charge of corruption in business against Gomez, and lifted the lower court’s order barring her from leaving the country, making her regularly report to court and requiring her to surrender her passport.” (07/16/26)
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Joe Tabor
“Illinois lawmakers finally passed legislation to become the last state in the country to comply with a three-year-old US Supreme Court ruling. State law allows the government to take an entire property for unpaid property taxes, even when they’re much less than the value of the property. House Bill 4537 brings the state into compliance with the 2023 high court decision in Tyler v. Hennepin County, which ruled that in taking property, state governments must give owners the value that exceeds the amount owed in taxes.” (07/16/26)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“[M]any Americans still cannot bring themselves to acknowledge that this ruthless, brutal, and remorseless killing machine turned its guns inwards on November 22, 1963, on the streets of Dallas. They especially do not want to acknowledge the fraudulent autopsy that the military conducted on JFK’s body shortly after they murdered him.” (07/16/26)
“The Food and Drug Administration approved a daily pill on Thursday that can lower cholesterol levels far below what can be achieved with statins, the cheap cholesterol-reducing pills. The drug, enlicitide, whose brand name is Lipfendra, is made by the pharmaceutical company Merck. Clinical trials have shown that it can bring levels of LDL — the dangerous type of cholesterol — down to 50 or 60 or even lower. Adults not taking cholesterol-lowering drugs usually have levels above 100. It works by inhibiting a protein known as PCSK9.” (07/16/26)
“Entire categories of federal spending shouldn’t exist.
Now, it would be easy to eliminate budget deficits and to begin to make big and regular dents in the national debt, were it not for one teensy-weensy problem. Just hand me the budget (in electronic form, please) and a red pencil and I’ll hack away at the billions and billions. And trillions. If that would take too long, I’d enlist a team of like-minded spending cutters to help. We’d be doing something like what the Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE, tried to do early in the second Trump administration. DOGE didn’t go or wasn’t allowed to go anywhere near far enough, though.” (07/16/26)
“cclaimed British filmmaker Christopher Nolan’s (The Dark Knight, Oppenheimer) newest film, The Odyssey, opens this week in the United States. But controversy has already surrounded Nolan’s adaptation of Homer’s 2,700-year-old epic poem about Odysseus’s 10-year struggle to return home after the Achaian victory in the decade-long Trojan War. Some of the film’s actresses have suggested that Nolan is offering a more feminist—and long-overdue—take on the ancient poem. Actress Lupita Nyong’o, in particular, has criticized Homer’s purported sexism. Perhaps her misreading of Homer stems from her admission that, despite receiving degrees from elite Hampshire College and Yale, the 42-year-old actress had never even read the Odyssey until she was cast in the minor dual roles of Helen and her sister Clytemnestra.” (07/16/26)
“Argentina face the prospect of disciplinary action from Fifa after their players celebrated the World Cup semi-final win against England with a banner in support of their country’s claims to the Falkland Islands. The defending world champions produced a dramatic late comeback in Atlanta, scoring twice to defeat Thomas Tuchel’s side 2-1 and book a showdown with Spain in Sunday’s final. After the final whistle, Argentina players celebrated while holding a banner reading ‘Las Malvinas son Argentinas’, which translates as ‘The Falklands are Argentine’. The Falklands, a British overseas territory in the south-west Atlantic Ocean, remain the subject of a sovereignty dispute between the UK and Argentina. Downing Street backed calls for Fifa to investigate, with the prime minister’s official spokesperson saying: ‘The World Cup might not be ours, but the Falkland Islands definitely are. Our commitment to the Falklands will never waver.'” (07/16/26)
