Stadiums filled to capacity with fans in Collegetown, U.S.A. A marching band with full brass in sync with impeccable, crisp, choreographed movements. A cheer squad of young women wearing bright uniforms and brighter smiles — the Saturday ritual that is college football has taken a turn from the homespun, wholesome, right-of-passage, wistful alum, stuff of Americana to a multi-million dollar enterprise complete with eye-popping dollar bids over television rights, legal battles over players’ compensation, and the darker side of gambling. And that’s just football. College sports in the 21st century have evolved into a chaotic mess. But one senator is hoping to make sense of it all through a bipartisan bill. Will it be the last best hope of reviving the charm and spirit of college sports, or are we at the end of an unraveling American legacy? The Daily Wire sits down with Senator Ted Cruz to briefly talk about Iran, followed by an in-depth conversation to see if he can mark one in the W column and save college sports.
***
Ben Domenech: I want to get your initial thoughts on the MOU, this deal, and what you think about it in terms of pros and cons, risk and reward.
Ted Cruz: To the best of my knowledge, the administration has not yet briefed Congress on what this deal entails. I understand that the administration is doing background calls with reporters with the briefer, whom they identify as a &#8220;senior administration official.&#8221; And I&#8217;m told that the official read the MOU verbatim to the reporter. So I assume that is the text, but no one has confirmed it to me.
BD: Assuming that it is essentially the framework that has been publicly discussed and that has been going back and forth, do you think that it&#8217;s a satisfactory end to achieve the goals that this administration set initially?
TC: I am hoping there are more deep details and better details than what has been released so far. What has been released so far suggests that, unfortunately, the president is getting very poor advice when it comes to this deal. History teaches that giving billions of dollars to theocratic lunatics who want to murder us is a bad idea. Under the terms of what&#8217;s been released, somewhere between $10 billion and $30 billion will flow to the Ayatollah immediately before they make even a single nuclear concession. I think that&#8217;s ill-advised. That money, if it goes to the Ayatollah, will go to fund terrorists trying to kill Americans and weapons that will be used to try to kill Americans.
It also appears to formalize a permanent role for the Islamic regime controlling the Strait of Hormuz. It is difficult to see what possible benefit to America could come from that.
BD: When it comes to control of the Strait, the idea that they&#8217;re going to wait 60 days and then start charging tolls or fees — however you want to describe it — for going through, it shocks me that that&#8217;s something that is acceptable to this administration.
TC: I do not believe the Ayatollah should be able to charge one penny for the free navigation of the seas. It has also been discussed that the financial reward could be $300 billion to the Ayatollah. If that is true, that would be three times more than the money Joe Biden and Kamala Harris funneled to the Ayatollah. It is a virtual certainty that if $300 billion went to the Ayatollah, that money would be used to murder Americans.
I&#8217;ll also say the idea that we should want a Marshall Plan for Iran to come in and rebuild Iran like the United States did for Europe after World War II makes no sense whatsoever.
President Trump was exactly right to initiate military action against Iran because, for 47 years, the regime has been waging war against America, has been the world&#8217;s leading funder of terrorism, and has been murdering Americans for 47 years. Nearly 1,000 Americans have been murdered by the Ayatollah and the Mullahs. That is why the president acted as a strong commander in chief to take out their military capacity, and it is not remotely in America&#8217;s interest for us to pay to rebuild that capacity that we just took out.
BD: Let&#8217;s talk about sports. Only a slightly less fractious moment for sports in America, thanks to the college system and the changes that have happened in recent years. And you have a bipartisan bill to save college sports, with proponents and opponents who cut across political lines in interesting ways. What made you feel like you needed to weigh in on this topic and have a federal solution on these matters?
TC: College sports is an incredible institution. At a time when Americans are divided on so many issues, sports is one of the few things that brings us together — students and alumni and fans and communities. Sharing your hometown team. It is uniquely American. No other nation has anything remotely comparable to what we have in college sports in the United States. College sports has also been an avenue for millions of young men and women to go to college and to get an education. Right now, there are more than 500,000 collegiate athletes competing across the country. Many of those are from low-income environments, where they would have few, if any, other viable paths to a college education.
And yet college sports is in crisis right now. Every week, we see another program being canceled, women&#8217;s sports being canceled, track and field being canceled, Olympic sports being canceled, and non-revenue sports being canceled. The transfer portal is chaotic, with student-athletes transferring two, three, four, or five times, which is not good for them. It&#8217;s not good for the college. It&#8217;s not good for the fans. It&#8217;s not good for the sport. And for a student who transfers two, three, or four times, the odds are vanishingly small that the student will get anything resembling a college education. If you&#8217;re moving from school to school to school, the academic environment is one where students are being robbed of the opportunity to get a meaningful college education. You have college sports being governed by endless lawsuits and injunctions. Eligibility standards are all but nonexistent because of the chaos. And you asked why Congress needs to get involved?
Well, that chaos was caused by the application of laws Congress passed, which means only Congress can change those laws. Only Congress can fix this problem. College sports, universities, and conferences have come to Congress, begging it to act. I&#8217;ve spent three years working on this problem, trying to bring Republicans and Democrats together. This is obviously a deeply divided time with real partisan differences on virtually everything, and miraculously, we were able to forge a bipartisan compromise to save college sports. And I&#8217;ve worked hand in hand with [Sen.] Maria Cantwell (D-WA), who is the ranking member on the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. I&#8217;m the chairman, obviously. The two of us together have spent hundreds of hours negotiating this bill and reaching common ground. This bill is the only viable path for a bill that can actually pass the Senate and be signed into law. My hope is that we will get a big bipartisan vote behind the bill.
BD: From your perspective, what are the three biggest problems? You mentioned the transfer portal, kids moving around, not getting an education. What are the three biggest problems that your bill is attempting to solve?
TC: There are a number of different pieces in this bill that are really important. Number one is the transfer reform — it guarantees every student-athlete one free transfer, and after that, you can have a second transfer only in narrow, specified circumstances: if your coach leaves, your program is discontinued, or you&#8217;re the victim of sexual assault or sexual harassment. If you transfer a second time for any other reason, then that athlete has to redshirt a year. That provision alone will do a lot to fix the chaos because it ensures that athletes will not constantly enter the transfer portal and simply be acting as free agents, but rather will be student-athletes.
Much of my focus was not about the superstars — the Michael Jordans of the world — they&#8217;re going to do fine. They&#8217;re going to make millions of dollars. They&#8217;re going to be on the cover of Wheaties boxes. They&#8217;re going to do great. My focus is very much on the 99% of student-athletes who will never play in the NBA. They&#8217;re never going to play in the NFL. But sports provide them a pathway to get a college degree. It also teaches them life skills — hard work and grit and discipline and teamwork and sportsmanship — all of which set them up for success in the future. So bringing some sanity to the transfer portal is an important element of this bill.
Another important element of this bill is providing clear eligibility rules. Every athlete is entitled to five years of eligibility, a hard age cap of 24, so that you don&#8217;t have what we have right now, which is 27- and 28-year-olds competing against 17-year-olds. That&#8217;s not fair. And what it&#8217;s doing is crowding out high school graduates from the scholarship slots they used to get to go to school.
The bill also makes clear that professional athletes can&#8217;t compete in college sports. If you choose to be a professional athlete, you&#8217;re no longer eligible to be a student-athlete in college. Both of those provisions are very important. The bill addresses the problem from two directions: cost and revenue. On the cost front, the bill provides the authority to enforce the House settlement and slow the constant cost spiral. Right now, virtually every athletic program in the country is losing millions of dollars; many are losing tens of millions. And if Congress doesn&#8217;t act, we&#8217;re on a path that, within five years, there will be 30 to 50 schools playing competitive college football. They&#8217;ll essentially be a mini-NFL, and the rest of the athletic programs will collapse. They will not be able to keep up with the arms race, and when they cancel football, football is what pays for every other sport, so the remainder of their sports will go away as well. That would be a disastrous outcome. That would be bad for student athletes, bad for colleges, bad for academic programs, and bad for fans.
This bill, on the cost side, provides the authority to enforce revenue-sharing limits to keep costs manageable. And then on the revenue side, we provide the legal authority for colleges to join together and negotiate their media rights collectively as pooled media rights. That is designed to substantially increase the revenue that they extract for college sports. Right now, college football has roughly twice as many eyeballs. Roughly twice as many people watch college football as watch the NBA, and yet the NBA&#8217;s media deals are worth billions more than college football’s.
That&#8217;s because right now every conference negotiates separately, and they&#8217;re fractured. By allowing the schools to negotiate jointly, I believe this will substantially grow the available revenue pie, and that revenue is what will enable these programs to survive and thrive. It&#8217;s also what enables us to keep and protect women&#8217;s sports, Olympic sports, and all of the remaining sports that are not college football. And I underscore that media pooling is purely voluntary. The bill does not force them to do that, but it creates an avenue they can pursue if they determine it is in their interest to do so.
BD: How important is transparency in the NIL [Name, Image, and Likeness] world?
TC: I think it&#8217;s very important. The bill has provisions that require reporting of NIL deals and protect the rights of student-athletes to be compensated. The old system, where student-athletes could not be compensated, was unfair.
You had college sports producing millions of dollars of revenue, and everyone got a piece of the pie except for the athletes, and that was not a fair system. As a conservative, I believe you ought to be entitled to earn the fruits of your labor. And so this bill explicitly protects the right of athletes, number one, to participate in genuine NIL contracts. If a quarterback can sell millions of tennis shoes, then that quarterback ought to be able to reap millions of dollars as a result. Now, those NIL deals have to be genuine NIL deals for a valid business purpose. This also protects athletes’ right to share in the school&#8217;s revenue. Both of those are protected, but what it prohibits is phony NIL — essentially a booster with a bag of cash in a back alley simply paying an athlete to be at the school, and that kind of abuse, unfortunately, has been rampant.
By requiring reporting of the NIL deal, the bill is designed to ensure transparency. The bill also puts important restrictions on agents. One problem we&#8217;re seeing across the country is unscrupulous agents taking advantage of often 17- or 18-year-old kids who are not financially sophisticated, extracting huge fees and exploiting these young athletes. And so this bill creates an agent registry, and it caps agent fees at 5%, which is consistent with where they are in the NFL or the NBA, and it provides important protections for student athletes.
BD: Looking at the Brendan Sorsby situation, which obviously applies particularly to those who have issues with gambling, there are different polls that suggest that, given its ubiquity, it&#8217;s going to be a bigger problem going forward with athletes participating. What&#8217;s the solution to avoid this from being resolved just by local judges? There has to be a way to adjudicate this and feel like it has fairness and also understands these situations in ways that don&#8217;t feel like there&#8217;s something corrupt going on.
TC: The Sorsby judicial decision was indefensible, and it is a perfect illustration of why this bill is necessary and of the chaos that currently exists in college sports. I&#8217;m very glad, by the way, that Texas Tech made the right decision to no longer continue down that path, but if the Protect College Sports Act had already been signed into law, you would never have had the judicial decision in Sorsby because this bill makes explicit that eligibility rules can be fully enforced and that gambling is explicitly a basis for denying eligibility. Gambling will only grow as a problem. Gambling goes right to the heart of sports integrity across the board, so this bill provides the authority to enforce those eligibility rules and prevent another situation like what happened with Sorsby.
BD: How optimistic are you that you&#8217;ll be able to get it done?
TC: I’m quite optimistic. Right now, the bill has two Democrat sponsors and two Republican sponsors. So [Sen.] Maria Cantwell and I, but then also [Sens.] Chris Coons (D-DE) and Eric Schmitt (R-MO). On the Democrat side, both Cantwell and Koons are senior Democrats. They have a lot of respect in their conference. My hope is that the markup will produce a meaningful bipartisan vote. I don&#8217;t know if it will, but I hope that it will. We&#8217;re having very productive conversations with members of the Commerce Committee, both Republicans and Democrats, and trying to find consensus and common ground.
We&#8217;ve seen overwhelming support for this bill. Twenty-two conferences have come out and endorsed the bill. It&#8217;s been endorsed by the NFL, the NFL Players Association, and the NBA Players Association. It&#8217;s been endorsed by Coach Nick Saban and upwards of 50 college coaches across the country. Coach John Calipari has been vocal in supporting it. It has been endorsed by Notre Dame&#8217;s athletic director, who testified at the hearing. The breadth of support is significant. There have been a handful of critics, and I would say any critic bears the burden of pointing to the alternative, and I don&#8217;t believe there is a viable alternative. Some have pointed to the SCORE Act in the House. I like a lot of provisions of the SCORE Act. The House has worked hard on the SCORE Act, but Senate Democrats strongly oppose it.
In order to pass into law, we&#8217;ve got to get at least 60 votes, and the SCORE Act would get zero Democrats in the Senate. What made this difficult was negotiating a compromise that could actually pass the Senate. My objective is not just to eke by with barely 60 votes. My hope is to get substantially more than 60 votes — a big bipartisan vote — and to do that, we had to compromise. I made compromises that I don&#8217;t like. I think Senator Cantwell made compromises that she doesn&#8217;t like. And we tried to reach a middle ground designed to solve the problem, and I think this is the only path that can result in legislation that is actually signed into law and able to solve the problem.
***

Punch 5-5 – Fly Me to the Moon-1-1 (2)

Can College Sports Survive The Chaos?

College sports

College Transfer Portal

DW Opinion

Protect College Sports Act

Punch

Ted Cruz

Despite its woeful polling figures at a national level in Britain, the Labour Party&#8217;s political machine is not dead yet. Last night, the by-election in Makerfield, in the north of England, saw Labour&#8217;s Andy Burnham score a triumphant victory. He won 54% of the vote, far ahead of Reform U.K. with 34%, and Restore Britain in a distant third place with 7%.
This was billed as the most important and consequential by-election in recent British history. In some respects, the result itself is unremarkable. The Labour Party held on to a seat that it had won comfortably for decades. Indeed, it has secured well over 50% of the vote in Makerfield since the 1980s. The party ran a strong candidate with huge local name recognition and the only Labour politician with strong personal approval ratings.
However, this election was not just about Labour holding on to one of its seats in its northern heartlands. It was also a vote about the future of the government. Andy Burnham is tipped to become the next Prime Minister in short order. He was standing on a platform to replace Sir Keir Starmer and hopes that he will have enough Labour MPs supporting him to mount a challenge once he lands in Parliament on Monday. He has assembled a team of advisers from the Left of the Labour Party and is expected to take the party in a more redistributive direction, if that is at all possible.
The country&#8217;s fiscal situation remains precarious, and there is a febrile atmosphere around immigration. Burnham has attempted to preempt this by stating he will stick to existing fiscal constraints and not loosen immigration policy. Whether this holds in reality remains to be seen. Without any plan or vision for government beyond &#8220;I am not Keir Starmer,&#8221; it seems very likely that a Burnham-led government will encounter exactly the same problems as the one currently led by the flailing premier. Tax and spending choices have become zero-sum, and the Labour Party is an ungovernable caucus, split between those who want to spend more on welfare and immigrants and those who want to repair the country&#8217;s finances and Britain&#8217;s ailing defense capability. So, we should expect much the same as now, just with a northern accent.
The political picture is more interesting. The result is undoubtedly disappointing for Reform U.K. In last month&#8217;s local elections, Nigel Farage&#8217;s party swept the board in the same area. Considering the demographics of the seat — 95% white, Brexit-voting, and a strong Reform performance in 2024 — many expected it to be an easy result for Reform, especially considering its national polling numbers. That Reform fell far behind Labour is a cause for concern.
Some will blame it on poor candidate selection. Rob Kenyon, a local councillor and plumber, was thrown into the brutal scrutiny of a by-election relatively unprepared and burdened by a checkered social media history that was used against him with brutal effectiveness by Labour and the activist organization Hope Not Hate. Others may say it is a sign of how Left-wing voters are tactically voting against Reform. The Liberal Democrats and Greens barely registered. This is not to suggest there was formal cooperation between Left-wing parties, but it is clear that there is a &#8220;stop Reform&#8221; tendency among them.
This takes us to Restore Britain. For all the international attention, money from Elon Musk, activists mobilized in the constituency, and hype following early canvassing returns in the campaign, Restore secured around 3,000 votes. This was far smaller than the gap between Labour and Reform. Indeed, on the final day of campaigning, the Labour Party sent the same number of activists to get out the vote in Makerfield that Restore had in actual counted votes. Yet while Restore has performed far below expectations, it is clearly a problem for Reform. In a by-election where Reform should have focused its efforts against Burnham and against Labour for their mismanagement of the economy and the borders, Reform spent most of the campaign defending its Right flank against Restore.
The more time Reform has to devote to winning over voters from Restore, the harder it is to build the necessary coalition of voters towards the center ground to win national elections. Though the Conservative Party all but vanished in Makerfield, it remains resilient in prosperous rural seats and parts of Scotland. This is the landscape that Reform must navigate over the next couple of years, and it is not an easy one.
Though it is highly unlikely that Burnham&#8217;s victory could be replicated elsewhere — his local popularity and the fact he was campaigning to replace Starmer were unique ingredients to this contest — last night&#8217;s by-election will re-energize a weak Labour Party for the time being. However, the fundamentals have not changed. The public will sour on Burnham&#8217;s empty agenda and remember how unpopular he was last time he was a national figure in 2010. Normal service will resume: taxation, regulation, censorship. The usual. The question for Reform is whether they can squeeze their rivals on the Right in time for a general election, or whether it is too little, too late.
***
Fred de Fossard is Director of Strategy at the Prosperity Institute.

Downing Street

Do Britain’s Latest Elections Signal More Of The Same For A Country Needing Change?

Andy Burnham

Labour Party

Reform Party

U.K. Elections

Vice President J.D. Vance waded into the pit of vipers that is ABC’s &#8220;The View&#8221; on Tuesday. Armed with his wit and the facts, Vance was assailed on all sides by the panel of liberal ladies who slung lies and conspiracy theories at him, and he defused all of it — many times by just asking for evidence or questioning where it came from, and often triggering them.
Almost out of the gate, Vance had to defuse mischaracterizations of President Donald Trump’s comments about the economy and affordability. “President Trump has called affordability a hoax. He said that, not me,” claimed Joy Behar. In one of her many out-of-turn questions, Ana Navarro chided, “He [Trump] just said he loved the inflation.”
“Well, I got to defend the president on the hoax point. What the president said is the idea that Republicans caused the affordability problem is a hoax,” Vance told Behar. To Navarro, he noted: “What he said is that he loves the fact the inflation is going to come down when this war is over. That&#8217;s what he said.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
And we get the first clash. 
Vance FACT-CHECKS The View for spewing misinformation about what Trump has said about inflation. <a href="https://t.co/1DLYMZzcz1">pic.twitter.com/1DLYMZzcz1</a>
— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) <a href="https://x.com/NickFondacaro/status/2066908417088774509?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 16, 2026</a></blockquote>
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Interrupting Vance’s answer to a question about the Epstein files, Navarro tried to implicate Trump in the billionaire’s crimes by noting, “They were best friends for a decade.” Vance was still able to get in his fact-check:
<blockquote>
So, number one is, yes, Donald Trump said this. He knew Epstein back in the 1980s. He also threw Epstein out of his club when he found out he was a creep and reported him to the police. That&#8217;s something the media often misses when it reports the story. They tell the fact they knew each other in the ’80s, which the president himself admits. They ignore the fact that he narced on him to the police and ultimately led to Jeffrey Epstein&#8217;s downfall.
</blockquote>
It’s worth noting that moderator Whoopi Goldberg had <a href="https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/nicholas-fondacaro/2026/02/19/view-has-new-excuses-their-names-epstein-files-whoopis-jet">shifting explanations</a> after a <a href="https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/nicholas-fondacaro/2026/02/04/whoopi-goldberg-requested-epstein-jet-fly-her-monaco-charity">NewsBusters investigation </a>of the Epstein files found an email from someone associated with her requesting to borrow his infamous jet.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Sunny Hostin asks Vance about releasing the Epstein files but gets angry when he says he believes the conspiracies about Epstein and powerful people. 
He point out that Epstein hates Trump and it&#8217;s evident in the emails, he calls out the media for hiding the fact Trump called the… <a href="https://t.co/SVxAWsHI5v">pic.twitter.com/SVxAWsHI5v</a>
— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) <a href="https://x.com/NickFondacaro/status/2066909968142361045?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 16, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.x.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Continuing to be a spigot of misinformation, Navarro repeatedly clashed with Vance on the issue of illegal immigration.
At one point, when Vance was setting the record straight on the lie that Trump called all Mexicans rapists and noted he was talking about Central American countries releasing criminals to go north, Navarro interrupted to falsely claim “there’s no evidence” and “this was made up.”
“Ana, we know that there were people released from prisons who were encouraged to come to the United States,” Vance pushed back. Navarro actually gave a tacit admission that it was true when she argued, “It wasn&#8217;t like it was in the Mariel [Boatlift] … it wasn’t where it was like a purposeful open up the jails, open up the insane asylums and flood Florida.”
Navarro also threw out the massive whopper, suggesting that the Trump administration was essentially torturing thousands of children:
<blockquote>
There are thousands of children, 6,200, that are being held in places like Dilley Detention Center that people that have visited — I don&#8217;t know if you have — talk about the subhuman, infrahuman conditions, the lack of clean water, the lack of medical attention, lack of education.
</blockquote>
Of course, she provided no evidence for such a claim, and Vance called out the story as coming from “one person with a political bias.” But when Vance seemingly tried to bring up how the Joe Biden administration lost hundreds of thousands of migrant children, he got shut down by Sunny Hostin.
On Friday’s show, Navarro said that if Trump were on the show, she would treat him the same way and “push back on the lies.”
Arguably one of the most brazen lies came from Goldberg about something that came out of her mouth during the interview.
After insinuating that Vance and the administration were racist and othering minorities, she snapped at Vance and got aggressive for accurately describing what she said:
<blockquote>
GOLDBERG: What did black people do to this administration that has allowed it to really stigmatize folks of color?
(&#8230;)
VANCE: But let me just give you an example. Okay, so you say we’re anti-minority or anti-black —
GOLDBERG: No, I didn&#8217;t say that! I asked. See.
VANCE: Okay, fine. Fair. Fair.
GOLDBERG: Don&#8217;t start any stuff with me, man!
</blockquote>
Goldberg’s comment definitely sounded accusatory to an honest listener.
Amid that exchange, when Vance asked her for a specific example of her purported claim of the erasure of black history, all she could do was get flustered and assert, “there’s so many.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Sunny Hostin asks Vance about releasing the Epstein files but gets angry when he says he believes the conspiracies about Epstein and powerful people. 
He point out that Epstein hates Trump and it&#8217;s evident in the emails, he calls out the media for hiding the fact Trump called the… <a href="https://t.co/SVxAWsHI5v">pic.twitter.com/SVxAWsHI5v</a>
— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) <a href="https://x.com/NickFondacaro/status/2066909968142361045?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 16, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.x.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
So many, just like the lies &#8220;The View&#8221; tells.
***
Nicholas C. Fondacaro is the associate editor for the Media Research Center and NewsBusters.

ABC’s “The View” – Season 25

Vice President Vance Assailed On All Sides By The View’s Lies

JD Vance

Media Bias

The View

These are unprecedented times in politics, and they include unprecedented decisions on the part of political leaders – none more so than what J.D. Vance decided to do this week, in the midst of a book tour where no one talked about his book.
The vice president of the United States, the odds-on favorite to be the next presidential nominee of the Republican Party, decided to unequivocally bet his reputation and his future electoral prospects on an extremely vague and uncertain deal with Iran — one which if it comes to fruition (a doubtful matter itself) would result in tens and potentially hundreds of billions of dollars flowing to the regime of the new Ayatollah.
From the perspective of Washington Republicans, this is a move by a vice president who wants a political win. Having felt his skeptical views about the Iran conflict and other foreign policy actions largely ignored by President Trump, here was an opportunity for narrative success: a potential “forever war”, unpopular particularly with working-class Independent and younger Republican voters, brought to an end in a sweeping act of diplomatic acumen by the young veteran of past conflict.
The story is a compelling one. Instead of his potential presidential competitor, Marco Rubio, solving this problem, it would be Vance who stepped in to lower energy prices, relieve the pain on American working families, and also bail out nervous Republicans on Capitol Hill fighting to keep their jobs and their majority. And if you disagree, you favor — as he put it to Megyn Kelly — &#8220;[E]ndless conflict. They want this to go on until every bomb has been dropped or until every Iranian is dead.&#8221;
There is not enough straw in the world to build a man this size. But as for the deal, the devil is in the details, and they are not minor details: Immediate ability for the Iranians to move oil and profit from it; a vaporware rebuilding fund, sure to be filled with corrupt interests and repurposed for the usual items on the Ayatollah’s grocery list; unenforceable demands that rely on a pinkie swear — sorry, “gentleman’s agreement” — from the religious zealots who rule the country.
On Thursday, the vice president answered a question from The Daily Wire in the White House briefing room with a casual list of things that could bring resumed military action against Iran for violations of the memorandum of understanding:
<blockquote>
It&#8217;s just going to be a holistic approach where we look at their behavior. Are they funding terrorism? Are they leading attacks on other people? Are they trying to get centrifuges to redevelop their nuclear weapons program? There are all these questions that we&#8217;re going to ask about whether they&#8217;ve actually changed their behavior. Do they allow the inspectors in, as they have said they would do, or do they refuse to allow those inspectors in? A whole host of things we&#8217;re going to see, working towards a very successful resolution of this process. But again, it takes two to tango. And what the President is just saying is that we maintain economic, diplomatic, and military leverage that nobody else in the world has. So if the Iranians want to change, great — we&#8217;re going to help them. If they don&#8217;t change, we still got all the cards.
</blockquote>
The problems with this answer are obvious and numerous. If you have all the cards, why the capitulation? The Iranian regime has never, including during the latest operations, stopped funding terrorism through its proxies. Leading attacks on other people is part of their daily routine. The situation in Lebanon is impossible to guarantee. And as for future commitments to inspectors and changed behavior, the Ayatollah has no term limit — he can just wait a year or two and return to the regime’s behavior — and what then? Would a future President Gavin Newsom resume military action? Would a President J.D. Vance?
As an advocate for this new Iran deal, the vice president deployed his usual Yale Law skill: turn the situation into a false choice between boots on the ground, American casualties, and forever war, or this deal. What is the alternative? You may recognize the same rhetorical tics from an equally eloquent and unlikely Oval Office decisionmaker. At least this one has the virtue of coming after a near-decimation of the Iranian ballistic missile arsenal — but if that’s all this was about, why do they stand to reap all the financial benefits?
Vance clearly believes in this deal. His former Senate colleagues who supported Operation Epic Fury don’t understand the nature of it and resent the lack of any read-in on the details. Behind the scenes, several admit they view the deal and the follow-on negotiation as laughable, a punt that is unlikely to actually come to fruition, scoffing at the idea of a $300 billion fund and assuming that bombs will be falling again in months.
One Senator confided that they believed Vance was nuking his future political prospects by tying himself so closely to a major foreign policy endeavor that looks, for all appearances, like a doomed effort at “trust, but only verify if we have to.” It is a perspective echoed by others — but of course, they are making assumptions based on facts not yet in evidence, and for some, it’s a silver lining to a bad resolution.
Most vice presidents don’t have to stake their future political prospects on a major decision. But Vance’s political career was so brief prior to joining the 2024 ticket that this essentially amounts to the biggest thing he’s ever owned. How this deal turns out could end up being one of the biggest questions for him on the debate stage in two years’ time. That places an enormous amount of faith in the Iranians.
The vice president is clear about where he’s placed his trust. We’ll see how much that’s worth.

Vice President  Vance Holds News Conference At White House

JD Vance’s Big Iran Gamble

2026 midterm

Foreign Policy

Iran Nuclear Deal

Memorandum of Understanding (MOU)

Trump Administration

As America approaches its 250th birthday on July 4, a debate is growing about what it means to be an American.
Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch waded into the conversation last month by asserting in an interview that America is <a href="https://x.com/NRO/status/2052080018449137691">“a creedal nation.”</a> According to Gorsuch, “what unites us is not a religion, it’s not a race, it’s a belief” in the ideals of the Declaration of Independence.
For some, those remarks were fighting words.
On social media, Gorsuch was quickly denounced as “<a href="https://x.com/StevenDeLay4/status/2052157802806657254">a traitor</a>” who was spouting <a href="https://x.com/realJeremyCarl/status/2052129536528331115">“nonsense” and “claptrap.”</a>
Critics of America as a creedal nation like to think of themselves as the vanguard of a popular new movement, especially among conservative Christians. But <a href="https://www.discovery.org/a/new-survey-americans-defined-by-belief-in-americas-founding-ideals-not-by-ancestry-or-religion/">a newly released survey</a> of 2,500 Americans conducted by Discovery Institute undercuts that claim.
Respondents were asked, “in your view, for someone to truly be an American, which attributes should they have?”
Six in 10 said that to truly be an American, someone should embrace “the ideas expressed by the Declaration of Independence” and “the form of government created by the Constitution.” Seven in 10 said that to be a true American, one “should agree with the freedoms protected by the Bill of Rights.”
By contrast, only 3.2% of respondents said people “should be descended from an ancestor from Britain or Europe” to truly be an American, and only 16.8% thought that true Americans needed to “agree with Christianity.”
With minor variations, these overall results hold across all major demographics, including political ideology.
For example, 97% of self-identified Christian conservatives reject British/European ancestry as a requirement to be a true American, and 69% of Christian conservatives reject the idea that someone needs to agree with Christianity in order to be a true American.
These results reflect how deeply ingrained the creedal nation idea remains in the American psyche.
Some claim the idea of America as a creedal nation was invented by post-World War II liberals. But America’s Founders proclaimed limited government, unalienable rights, equality under God, and the consent of the governed because they believed these were universal truths. Accordingly, from the early years of the republic, they held up those principles as applicable to all people everywhere.
Catholic Charles Carroll was the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence. Reflecting on the Declaration’s 50th anniversary in 1826, he recommended: “to the present and future generations the principles of that important document, as the best earthly inheritance their ancestors could bequeath to them; and pray[ed] that the civil and religious liberties they have secured to my country may be perpetuated to remotest posterity, and extended to the whole family of man.”
By 1921, the uniqueness of America as a creedal nation was so apparent to others around the world that Englishman G.K. Chesterton declared, “America is the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence.”
Contrary to some critics, being a creedal nation does not require America to allow unlimited immigration. In fact, America’s founding principles provide a principled reason for keeping out all those who do not support its creed — and for making sure native-born Americans are taught America’s creed as well.
That said, the more thoughtful critics of the “creedal nation” idea are correct to insist that culture matters as well as creed. Here, they have a legitimate gripe with Justice Gorsuch, who seemed overly dismissive of culture, remarking, “Our nation is not founded on a religion. It’s not based on a common culture even, or heritage.”
In truth, creeds develop from — and are sustained by — culture. That includes religion.
The idea that all humans are created equal, for example, grew out of the Bible. This fact was widely recognized by America’s founders, regardless of their own faith convictions.
Physician Benjamin Rush was a signer of the Declaration of Independence and a devout Christian. He argued that the Bible was the book “above all others” that “favors … equality among mankind.” Pamphleteer Thomas Paine was a deist who rejected the Bible as supernatural revelation, but on this point he agreed with Rush. Paine traced the idea of human equality back to “the Mosaic account of the creation.”
Americans are right to be concerned about culture. But instead of repudiating our founding creed or suggesting its truths are limited to people of a certain race or religion, we should be working to rebuild the institutions needed to support that creed.
***
John G. West is the author of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Endowed-Our-Creator-Science-Americas/dp/1637120877/">Endowed by Our Creator</a> (DI Press, 2026) and vice president of the Discovery Institute. He is also the Distinguished Scholar of American Government and Christian Civic Engagement at Cornerstone University.

Stars and Stripes flag of the United States

The Makings Of Americans

America 250

American culture

American History

Founding Fathers

Philadelphia’s recalcitrant District Attorney Larry Krasner is back in the news this week, thanks to an <a href="https://penncapital-star.com/criminal-justice/pa-supreme-court-ruling-curbs-philly-district-attorney-adds-state-attorney-general-oversight/">extraordinary ruling</a> by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. Invoking what’s known as “<a href="https://digitalcommons.law.villanova.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3460&amp;context=vlr">King’s bench jurisdiction</a>” — which allows the state’s high court to assume jurisdiction over a case at any stage when it involves a matter of extraordinary public importance—the justices reversed a lower court decision to grant a new trial to a convicted murderer under the state’s Post-Conviction Relief Act (PCRA). The high court held that the record did not support a new trial, despite Krasner’s office conceding in the courtroom that the defendant was entitled to such relief.
Courts generally defer to such concessions by a prosecutor’s office, so it is striking that Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court would disregard that concession and overturn the granting of a new trial. But the decision makes perfect sense.
For starters, Krasner’s office has a curious habit of conceding relief, according to the court. This matters because when the prosecution concedes relief, the reviewing court loses out on the benefits that stem from zealous advocacy in an adversarial process.
Prosecutorial concessions can also shield important evidence from judicial consideration — and that may very well be the point for Krasner. The court stated that the DA’s concession wasn’t just wrong in the case at hand, but that it was “not reliable.”
Even the most brilliant lawyers can make legal errors, but the court’s findings suggest that Krasner’s concessions — even the unwarranted ones — are not the result of mistakes. In a scathing opinion, the court found that Krasner’s office “violated its duty of candor to the PCRA court, withheld material evidence from the court, opposed efforts by amici to gain access to this evidence, submitted a false stipulation of fact, misstated facts in its pleadings, failed to conduct a reasonable investigation, and opposed a required evidentiary hearing” (emphasis mine).
So “numerous” are these “instances of untrustworthy concessions, lack of candor, misrepresentations of fact, lack of adequate investigation, and avoidance of hearings” that the court also ruled that in future cases in which Krasner’s office concedes relief, the reviewing court “shall grant the Office of Attorney General (OAG) notice and the right to intervene in the case before ruling on the concession.”
Readers may be wondering why a prosecutor would go this far out of his way to help a convicted murderer. The most plausible answer: ideology. Larry Krasner subscribes (sincerely, one suspects) to a “social justice” view that elevates the concerns of perpetrators over those of victims. He comes from a school of thought that sees the enforcement mechanisms of the criminal justice system as inherently oppressive and reflective of society’s failures to prevent lawbreaking by making society more equitable.
Earlier this week, New York City congressional candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier articulated this social justice view during a <a href="https://ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/politics/2026/06/16/full-debate--adriano-espaillat--darializa-avila-chevalier-face-off-in-ny-13-debate">debate hosted by NY1</a>. Per Chevalier, government should spend public money on solutions “that actually bring real safety to our communities” rather than policing and incarceration. What kind of solutions? “[F]unding the programs that are actually correlated with an increased sense of safety,” she said, without (naturally) specifying any.
In a <a href="https://phillyda.org/news/district-attorney-larry-krasners-response-to-the-pennsylvania-supreme-courts-opinion-in-the-lavar-brown-case/">video</a> released in response to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision, Krasner was defiant. Accusing the court of acting out of fear of “reform,” he likened his critics to opponents of Martin Luther King Jr., whose portrait Krasner stood in front of while delivering his response. The DA went on to take credit for the recent reductions in Philadelphia homicides, without providing a shred of evidence to support that suggestion.
Here’s the truth that people like Krasner and Chevalier are afraid the public will learn: policing, prosecution, and incarceration are unmatched in terms of their proven (by <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/593141">rigorous</a> <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/43189364">empirical</a> <a href="https://gspp.berkeley.edu/archived/files/research/pdf/p69.pdf">evidence</a>) ability to <a href="https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship/1915/">significantly</a> <a href="https://www.law.upenn.edu/live/files/8949-179jrss831pdf">reduce</a> <a href="https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aeri.20200792">crime</a>.
The “abolitionists” and “reformers” want you to believe they have somehow derived solutions to problems — like poverty, inequality, predation, greed, and violence — that have been present in every society throughout history. The hubris of this view cannot be overstated. Nor can one overemphasize how thoroughly the <a href="https://bfi.uchicago.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/BFI_WP_2024-42.pdf">evidence disproves it</a>. New York City, for example, <a href="https://www.nyc.gov/assets/nypd/downloads/pdf/analysis_and_planning/historical-crime-data/seven-major-felony-offenses-2000-2025.pdf">saw homicides fall by 87 percent</a> between 1990 and 2017. Gotham didn’t solve poverty or reduce economic inequality. Nor did it reduce crime through some jobs program. In fact, the city continued to cut homicides during the Great Recession, when the unemployment rate nearly doubled.
Krasner and his comrades may be comfortable abandoning proven approaches to pursue their misguided ideas about justice. The bad news is that, as public officeholders, they’re in an excellent position to do that. The good news is that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court just took an important step to check their ideologically motivated folly. Here’s hoping the rest of the country takes notice.
***
<a href="https://www.city-journal.org/person/rafael-a-mangual">Rafael A. Mangual</a> is the Nick Ohnell Fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, a contributing editor of City Journal, and the author of the 2022 book, <a href="https://manhattan.institute/book/criminal-injustice">Criminal (In)Justice</a>.

Philadelphia Mayor Kenney Names Danielle Outlaw As New Police Commissioner

The Progressive District Attorney Who Wants A Convicted Murderer To Go Free

Crime

Crime stats

District Attorneys

Larry Krasner

There is good news about fatherhood in America today: dads are more engaged in their kids’ lives than ever, a fact heralded by scholars, advocates, and journalists. The Atlantic writer Derek Thompson <a href="https://www.derekthompson.org/p/why-do-richer-dads-spend-more-time">saluted</a> dads who “became the parents their fathers never were.” Richard Reeves of the American Institute for Boys and Men <a href="https://ifstudies.org/blog/what-gender-war">points</a> to how men “have massively increased the amount of childcare” they are doing. Noting the time that married fathers are devoting to their families has tripled since the 1960s, the Institute for Family Studies’ Lyman Stone <a href="https://ifstudies.org/blog/american-dads-rock-fathers-are-doing-more-at-home-than-ever">put it</a> this way: “American Dads Rock.”
But there is also sobering news to report on the fatherhood front. Fewer young men are becoming fathers at all — we are seeing the rise of what might be called the “Vanishing Father.” In fact, a big reason that today’s dads look so good is that fatherhood has become much more selective, increasingly concentrated among men with the <a href="https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/x4j79_v2">financial resources</a>, social capital, or cultural commitments that make family formation a possibility and a priority. The ranks of the childless, meanwhile, are surging among younger, less-educated, liberal, and secular men.
In fact, the share of men in their prime family-building years (25-45) who are fathers has fallen from two-thirds in 1980 to 53% in 2024. This means that almost 1 in 2 men in this group are not dads. It also means that the number of men ages 25-45 who are childless has risen from 10 million in 1980 to 23 million in 2024, a record high.
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<div id="attachment_1119095" style="width: 2570px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1119095" class="size-full wp-image-1119095" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/1-finalfathers2545total--scaled.jpg" alt="" width="2560" height="1723" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/1-finalfathers2545total--scaled.jpg 2560w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/1-finalfathers2545total--300x202.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/1-finalfathers2545total--856x576.jpg 856w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/1-finalfathers2545total--768x517.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/1-finalfathers2545total--1536x1034.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/1-finalfathers2545total--2048x1378.jpg 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px" />Credit: IFS</div>
This Institute for Family Studies (IFS) report spotlights the growing share of men who are not crossing the threshold into fatherhood, the ways age, class, and culture shape entry into fatherhood today, and the likely consequences of declining family formation among men for them and the nation. We draw on the General Social Survey (GSS), a decades-long survey of American adults run by NORC at the University of Chicago. For this analysis, we focus on American men ages 25 to 45. Data from the Human Fertility Collection suggests that over 80% of births are fathered by men between these ages. While the average age at childbirth is rising, and many men are delaying fatherhood, fertility data suggests younger cohorts will see higher rates of childlessness. We include younger men in our sample to see which groups are most likely to be affected by these projected declines in fatherhood.
<h3 class="p4">Declines by Age</h3>
Declines are most prominent among younger men. Whereas the majority of men ages 25–35 were fathers in the 1980s, just 38% are today. Part of this story is delayed parenthood. The average age of new fathers has been rising for decades, alongside that of women.
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<div id="attachment_1119097" style="width: 2570px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1119097" class="size-full wp-image-1119097" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/2-finalfathersagegrouped--scaled.jpg" alt="" width="2560" height="1723" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/2-finalfathersagegrouped--scaled.jpg 2560w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/2-finalfathersagegrouped--300x202.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/2-finalfathersagegrouped--856x576.jpg 856w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/2-finalfathersagegrouped--768x517.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/2-finalfathersagegrouped--1536x1034.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/2-finalfathersagegrouped--2048x1378.jpg 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px" />Credit: IFS</div>
But delayed fatherhood isn’t the whole story. An analysis of the latest birth rate trends by IFS senior fellow Lyman Stone suggests that <a href="https://ifstudies.org/blog/1-in-4-projecting-childlessness-among-todays-young-women">1 in 4 young women today</a> will never have children, up from the 15% historic baseline. This dramatic rise in childlessness will be paralleled among today’s young men.
<h3 class="p4">Declines by Education</h3>
Historically, men in their prime family building years without a college degree were much more likely to be fathers than their college-educated peers. In the 1980s, 70% of men between 25 and 45 who did not have a bachelor’s degree were fathers, compared to just 53% of those with a higher degree. Today, 57% of men between ages 25-45 without a college degree are fathers, a 13-percentage-point decrease from the 1980s. Although less-educated men are still more likely to be fathers, they have seen larger declines than the college-educated. The share of college-educated men who are dads has only fallen by 8 percentage points.
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<div id="attachment_1119099" style="width: 2570px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1119099" class="size-full wp-image-1119099" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/3-finalfatherseduc--scaled.jpg" alt="" width="2560" height="1723" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/3-finalfatherseduc--scaled.jpg 2560w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/3-finalfatherseduc--300x202.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/3-finalfatherseduc--856x576.jpg 856w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/3-finalfatherseduc--768x517.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/3-finalfatherseduc--1536x1034.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/3-finalfatherseduc--2048x1378.jpg 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px" />Credit: IFS</div>
Over the past few decades, the connection between marriage and fatherhood has also changed among working-class men. In the 1980s, the vast majority of working-class dads were married: 58% of less-educated men between ages 25 and 45 were married fathers — just 12% were unmarried with children. But unmarried fatherhood has risen since then, while married fatherhood has declined for this group of men. Today, 34% of working-class men between ages 25 and 45 are married fathers, and 23% are unmarried fathers.
By contrast, unmarried fatherhood remains just as rare among well-educated men today, at just 6%, as it was in the 1980s, at 5%. This means that declines in fatherhood among college-educated men are almost entirely declines in married fatherhood.
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<div id="attachment_1119103" style="width: 2570px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1119103" class="size-full wp-image-1119103" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/4-finalfathersstackededuc--scaled.jpg" alt="" width="2560" height="1723" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/4-finalfathersstackededuc--scaled.jpg 2560w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/4-finalfathersstackededuc--300x202.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/4-finalfathersstackededuc--856x576.jpg 856w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/4-finalfathersstackededuc--768x517.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/4-finalfathersstackededuc--1536x1034.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/4-finalfathersstackededuc--2048x1378.jpg 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px" />Credit: IFS</div>
<h3 class="p4">Declines by Ideology</h3>
Class disparities in family formation get plenty of coverage. But today, cultural factors — ideology especially — are stronger predictors of entry into fatherhood than class. Using the latest GSS data, we find that just 37% of liberal men ages 25–45 are fathers, compared to 62% of their conservative peers. That 25-percentage-point gap dwarfs the 12-point gap between college-educated and less-educated men.
The divergence has widened sharply over time. Liberal men have seen fatherhood rates fall 21 percentage points since the 1980s — down from 58% — while fatherhood among conservative men has declined only 7 percentage points. When it comes to predicting which men are becoming fathers today, culture looks more determinative than class.
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<div id="attachment_1119107" style="width: 2570px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1119107" class="size-full wp-image-1119107" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/5-finalfathersideo-1--scaled.jpg" alt="" width="2560" height="1723" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/5-finalfathersideo-1--scaled.jpg 2560w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/5-finalfathersideo-1--300x202.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/5-finalfathersideo-1--856x576.jpg 856w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/5-finalfathersideo-1--768x517.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/5-finalfathersideo-1--1536x1034.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/5-finalfathersideo-1--2048x1378.jpg 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px" />Credit: IFS</div>
There is little difference between married and unmarried fatherhood across ideological lines. We find that, today, 68% of liberal fathers between ages 25 and 45 are married, compared to 72% of conservative fathers. These differences are statistically insignificant. It should be noted that conservative men have seen a substantial increase in unmarried fatherhood since the 1980s, rising from 1 in 10 to around 1 in 4 fathers ages 25 to 45.
<h3 class="p4">Declines by Religiosity</h3>
Religiosity, measured by religious attendance, is another strong predictor of who is a father in America today. The latest data shows that 64% of men between the ages of 25 and 45 who frequently attend religious services are fathers. Just half of secular men in that age range have children. Both groups, notably, have seen similar declines in fatherhood in recent years.
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<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1119113" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/6-finalfathersattend--scaled.jpg" alt="" width="2560" height="1723" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/6-finalfathersattend--scaled.jpg 2560w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/6-finalfathersattend--300x202.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/6-finalfathersattend--856x576.jpg 856w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/6-finalfathersattend--768x517.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/6-finalfathersattend--1536x1034.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/6-finalfathersattend--2048x1378.jpg 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px" />
<h3 class="p4">Men Without a Mission</h3>
After surveying dozens of cultures, the anthropologist Margaret Mead concluded that masculinity is not a natural state but a social accomplishment. Cultures had to work hard to channel men’s talents, energies, ambitions, and interests in prosocial directions. In <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=lWWHQgAACAAJ&amp;dq=mead,+male+and+female&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0ahUKEwjqifXL0pPWAhViYpoKHfPjAEEQ6AEIMzAC">Male and Female</a>, published in 1949, she further argued that fostering prosocial masculinity was inseparable from family life — because “every known human society rests firmly on the learned nurturing behavior of men.” So long as it is tied into the fabric of family life, fatherhood, in her view, gives men something few other institutions can: a clear mission in life.
Half a century later, Nobel laureate George Akerlof made a similar case from economics. In his 1998 paper “<a href="https://academic.oup.com/ej/article-abstract/108/447/287/5128553">Men Without Children</a>,” he concluded that without the responsibility and commitment that marriage and fatherhood demand, men often tend to drift — toward atomization, idleness, and higher rates of crime and substance abuse. Recently, USC psychologist Darby Saxbe <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/06/opinion/dad-brain-health-fatherhood.html">put</a> the positive case well in the New York Times: engaged fatherhood cultivates in men “strength coupled with a willingness to look out for the young and vulnerable, to teach but also listen, to lead by example, to tackle daunting challenges and to persevere with grit.”
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<div id="attachment_1119117" style="width: 2570px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1119117" class="size-full wp-image-1119117" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/7-finalfatherhappiness--scaled.jpg" alt="" width="2560" height="1723" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/7-finalfatherhappiness--scaled.jpg 2560w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/7-finalfatherhappiness--300x202.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/7-finalfatherhappiness--856x576.jpg 856w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/7-finalfatherhappiness--768x517.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/7-finalfatherhappiness--1536x1034.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/7-finalfatherhappiness--2048x1378.jpg 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px" />Credit: IFS</div>
There is no question that some men do not seem to require the disciplines of family and fatherhood to thrive — work, or sport, or faith is enough to orient these male lives in meaningful and fulfilling ways. But contemporary research confirms the wisdom of Akerlof, Mead, and Saxbe: for most men, life is better when it is grounded in family and fatherhood. Men without children are typically living lives that are <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/ageing-and-society/article/childlessness-and-social-and-emotional-loneliness-in-middle-and-later-life/E412E2A2FAAA5AC4F0A0EDE5EA35CC0F">lonelier</a>, less <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250387523/dadbrain/">purposeful</a>, and less happy than their peers who are engaged fathers — most typically in the <a href="https://ifstudies.org/ifs-admin/resources/briefs/ifs-wang-fatherstimebrief-oct2023-1.pdf">context</a> of marriage. Indeed, there is no question that married fathers are the happiest men in America today — they are more than twice as likely to be “very happy” with their lives, compared to their peers who are childless and unmarried.
The evidence, in short, suggests that separating men from marriage and family is bad for men — and, likely, bad for the country. That’s because such men are significantly more likely to succumb to <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10680-024-09699-2">idleness</a>, <a href="https://sampson.scholars.harvard.edu/sites/g/files/omnuum1841/files/sampson/files/2006_criminology_laubwimer_1.pdf">crime</a>, and <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/23780231241275429">deaths</a> of <a href="https://ifstudies.org/blog/married-people-are-living-their-best-lives">despair</a>. And if current trends hold, it is younger, less-educated, liberal, and secular men who will pay the steepest price for the rise of the Vanishing American Father.
***
This is republished with permission from the Institute for Family Studies. The original can be found <a href="https://ifstudies.org/blog/the-vanishing-american-father-more-men-are-opting-out-of-fatherhood">here</a>.
Grant Bailey is a Research Fellow and IFS Insights Editor at the Institute for Family Studies.
Brad Wilcox is Melville Foundation Jefferson Scholars Foundation University Professor of Sociology and Director of the <a href="https://nationalmarriageproject.org/">National Marriage Project</a> at the University of Virginia, Future of Freedom Fellow and Director of the Get Married Initiative at the <a href="https://ifstudies.org/">Institute for Family Studies</a>, and a nonresident senior fellow at the <a href="https://www.aei.org/">American Enterprise Institute</a>.

A man wakes up on a sofa, surrounded by sheets and duvets and pillows. He rubs his eyes and face as he tries to rouse himself.

The Great Unfathering: American Dads Are Disappearing

Childlessness

fatherhood

Institute for Family Studies

Marriage

Masculinity

There is a contest this year among Democrats to find the worst possible candidate for the general election. As a Republican, this is great news, as it should lead to Republican wins, but as an American, I am appalled.
This September marks the 25th anniversary of the terror attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and, were it not for brave patriots who overpowered hijackers and downed a fourth plane, the attempted attack on the U.S. Capitol or White House. Yet if you can believe it, the Democratic House candidate from New Jersey, Adam Hamawy, was affiliated with Omar Abdel-Rahman, the “Blind Sheikh&#8221; who attempted to take down the World Trade Center in 1993. Hamawy is <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2026/06/04/hasan-piker-democratic-primaries-00949340">backed by radical podcaster Hasan Piker</a>, as is Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan’s U.S. Senate race. Both are radical leftist candidates.
The Democratic candidate for Senate in North Carolina is Roy Cooper. As its former governor, he drew strong criticism for his <a href="https://www.wral.com/story/new-trial-over-cooper-s-covid-lockdowns-ordered-by-nc-supreme-court/22127718/">heavy-handed</a> COVID lockdowns and policies. Recently, it was reported that he <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/former-dem-gov-hot-seat-complete-failure-insane-early-release-thousands-inmates">released violent criminals</a> before their sentences were up with a secret agreement with the NAACP. Many of those released criminals reoffended. Decarlos Brown, who slashed the neck of 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska as she rode the train in Charlotte, was on that early release list.
Next, look at Texas State Rep. James Talarico’s comments about God, made in the Texas legislature and from the pulpit, which are totally out of the mainstream. He has said, “God is non-binary … God is both masculine and feminine and everything in between.” On the border, he suggests the U.S. should have a “welcome mat.” In a deeply traditional Christian and America’s most border-y border state, these are not Texas values. They’re also not American values.
Then there’s Graham Platner. No doubt Democrat party leaders searched high and low for anybody, anybody else to run for U.S. Senate in Maine. Some say the Democrats’ only chance to take control of the U.S. Senate is to <a href="https://www.semafor.com/article/06/10/2026/democrats-weigh-whether-a-senate-majority-is-possible-without-platner">flip Maine’s Senate seat</a>. It’s been almost fun watching national Democratic leaders squirm, hesitate, and contort themselves into knots while trying to explain their support for this lunatic.
Platner, until recently, had a Nazi SS tattoo (and most likely knew <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2026/06/04/platner-democrats-furious-new-york-times-report-00951496">it was when he got it</a>), has made racist and <a href="https://spectrumlocalnews.com/me/maine/politics/2025/10/23/platner-sounds-off-on-controversial-past-at-ogunquit-rally">homophobic</a> comments, has <a href="https://www.wsj.com/politics/elections/graham-platners-wife-flagged-sexually-explicit-texts-to-his-senate-campaign-628ec832">sent sexually explicit texts</a> to multiple women, is on a social media platform that <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/platner-still-has-active-account-anonymous-app-dubbed-predators-paradise-amid-cheating-scandal">seeks out underage girls</a>, and has allegedly been <a href="https://apnews.com/article/senate-election-graham-platner-susan-collins-a07b35d03ee1acc419471c048572b065">violent with past girlfriends</a>. He has intimated that <a href="https://spectrumlocalnews.com/me/maine/politics/2026/03/18/in-maine-senate-primary--platner-responds-to-mills--ad-highlighting-past-comments-on-sexual-assault">rape victims deserve</a> what they get, has spoken <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/left-wing-dem-senate-hopeful-cheered-antifa-violence-unearthed-rant-kill-motherf-er">in favor of political violence</a> as a means to an end, and has <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/watch-platner-doesnt-apologize-purple-heart-recipient-voters-when-confronted-post-mocking-soldier">disparaged veterans</a>.
To add insult to injury, he claims that he said these things in a “dark” period of his life and attributed them to PTSD from his time in the military. As if insulting and devaluing women isn’t enough, he insinuates PTSD is an excuse for his bad behavior and vile words. Understandably, this has incensed many veterans.
There was a time not long ago when these types of behaviors and comments would have elicited calls for cancellation by party leaders, yet Platner’s have been glossed over by supporters like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA). Their hypocrisy is off the charts. Whatever happened to “Believe all women”? Eric Swalwell must be kicking himself, thinking he caved too soon.
Democrats’ support of Platner is insulting to women. Women voters in Maine, unless they have an incurable case of Trump Derangement Syndrome, should be running as fast as they can toward Maine’s moderate Republican incumbent Susan Collins.
Platner campaigns with the party’s backing as its official candidate, and it seems Maine’s Democratic voters are sticking with their man. Still, there are whispers that even more salacious allegations are to come. If the Democrats do end up dumping him, it will only be when they become convinced he will lose.
These horrible candidates now constitute the Democrat Party’s norm. They’re radical, corrupt, indecent, and just plain strange — poster children for a party that has completely lost its moral compass. Some are socialists. Some are opportunists. Some are both. But they are all products of a Democratic Party that has decided winning matters more than decency, and ideology matters more than the Constitution.
It is time for Americans to reject these candidates and the un-American values they peddle before they get the chance to act on them. We have a Tricentennial to celebrate in 2076. Let&#8217;s make sure we get there. God Bless America.
***
Martha Jenkins is president of the <a href="https://www.nfrw.org/">National Federation of Republican Women</a>.

GettyImages-2278039744

Democrats Have Gone Full Platner

Democratic Party

graham platner

James Talarico

As congressional Republicans reportedly debate the diminishing likelihood of a third budget reconciliation package, they should focus on the fact that such legislation could offer them a historic opportunity to rectify a decades-old injustice in the federal tax code that costs Americans billions of dollars every year.
If they act, they will demonstrate their genuine commitment to reducing the cost of living. In doing so, they will greatly improve their chances of retaining control of Congress in the midterm elections.
The federal income tax that we know and love today became law in October 1913, following ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Initially, the economic impact of the tax was quite limited. As a result of a low flat rate of just 1%, and numerous exemptions, only about 2% of households were covered. Those subject to the new tax paid all they owed at once on April 15 each year.
Years later, with the onset of World War II, the federal income tax changed radically as the government’s need for revenue soared. Congress passed legislation to significantly increase tax rates and greatly expand the number of individuals subject to the tax.
The Roosevelt administration was concerned that increased tax burdens could produce political blowback that might undermine the war effort. The administration was also concerned that many taxpayers might not be able to make the large annual lump sum payments needed on April 15 to comply with their increased obligations.
And even if taxpayers complied, the administration was concerned that significant revenue fluctuations from annual tax payments would complicate the management of government finances.
In the summer of 1942, in testimony to the U.S. Senate Finance Committee, Mr. Beardsley Ruml presented a proposal to address the government’s concerns. Ruml, treasurer of Macy’s Department Store and chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, proposed that employers be required to withhold estimated income taxes from the paychecks of their employees and send the money withheld to the government each quarter.
By collecting income taxes in increments each pay period well before they were due, the government could accelerate and smooth its cash receipts and improve taxpayer compliance by reducing the risk of default on large year-end tax bills.
And, by focusing the attention of taxpayers on the net-of-tax take-home pay contained in their paychecks, the government could obscure the increased income tax burden it was imposing.
The government eagerly embraced Ruml’s proposal, and Congress enacted it into law by the Current Tax Payment Act of 1943. While Ruml’s paycheck withholding plan effectively addressed the government’s concerns, it imposed an enormous cost on taxpayers, an onerous burden that we continue to bear today.
Throughout 2025, taxpayers had more than $2.6 trillion withheld from their paychecks for income tax returns due on April 15, 2026. This was a vast amount of money that the government took from taxpayers and drained from the private economy.
In the absence of paycheck withholding, taxpayers could have made productive use of that cash throughout the year. They could have saved it to pay their 2025 taxes and earned billions of dollars of interest in the meantime. They could have used some of it to make short-term productive investments in the private sector, boosting the economy and benefiting everyone. The government provides no compensation for these lost economic opportunities.
If a taxpayer fails to pay his or her taxes on time, the Internal Revenue Service immediately begins charging interest, which compounds daily until the late payment is made. However, the IRS does not pay a penny of interest on the trillions of dollars withheld during the year for returns due the following April.
This is because, under current law, income taxes are payable when you receive your income and not when you file your return next April. Therefore, the government does not consider deductions from paychecks to be early payments. But paycheck deductions are enormous cash advances to the government that come at a real and significant economic cost to taxpayers.
The Republicans can, and should, use a third budget reconciliation bill to correct this unjust one-way flow of interest payments and mandate economic neutrality in the income tax withholding system. They should direct the IRS to develop regulations that provide for interest payments to taxpayers on wages withheld and advanced to the government, with those interest payments calculated using the same percentage interest rate the government uses to calculate interest payments due from taxpayers who miss an IRS deadline.
The development of regulations by the IRS, or any government agency, is a complex process. There will be many details to work out. But Republicans can clearly set the direction of the process with legislation that establishes the fundamental principle that taxpayers must be compensated fairly for the significant economic burden they bear due to paycheck withholding.
The government gets many valuable benefits from paycheck withholding. It is only fair to make the government pay for those benefits.
***
J. Kennerly Davis has worked as a finance executive for a Fortune 500 company and has served as a Deputy Attorney General for Virginia.

US Tax forms focused on the Amount You Owe line

How The IRS Is Stealing Your Money And Charging You For It

Internal Revenue Service (IRS)

Tax reform

Tax withholding

Vice President JD Vance is a busy man.
For the better part of a week now, almost every major American news channel has had a near-permanent box tucked away in its lower right-hand corner, teasing a forthcoming appearance from the architect of the Trump administration’s Memorandum of Understanding with Iran.
This media blitz has had a Twilight Zone-like feel. The signing of Vance’s accord with the Islamic Republic coincided with the release of &#8220;Communion,&#8221; the VP’s narrative about his journey into the Catholic Church.
For those counting at home, that’s two items to sell: a book about his faith and a high-stakes international agreement with the rogue, theocratic regime whose hands are coated in American blood.
It goes without saying that the wannabe heir to President Donald Trump’s political movement – who opposed Operation Epic Fury at its outset and now must extol its virtues while also celebrating its conclusion – finds himself in an exceedingly difficult, and indeed pivotal, position.
Still, the president saw fit to say it.
“If it works out, I’m going to take the credit. If it doesn’t work out, I’m blaming JD!” declared Trump at his G7 conference presser on Wednesday. “You better be careful, JD!”
Half-joke, half-warning — one wonders if Vance cracked a smile or a knuckle.
With about a year until the 2028 election cycle kicks off in earnest, his performance could prove to be either the shot in the arm his prospective presidential campaign needs or the shot in the head that stops it in its tracks. The results so far have been mixed at best.
First, the good. JD Vance is at his best in enemy territory. Remember, the &#8220;Hillbilly Elegy&#8221; author was widely regarded as a disastrous vice-presidential nominee right up until the moment he killed Governor Tim Walz with a devastating combination of kindness and Yale Law School-honed polish during the pair’s lone debate in October 2024.
Vance was similarly impressive during his appearance on Tuesday’s edition of &#8220;The View,&#8221; where he amiably handled a barrage of questions from not one, not two, not three, but six antagonistic women. With the tone of a particularly patient parent, Vance muddled his way through unfriendly questions about Epstein, race, inflation, immigration policy, and his faith. He quickly disarmed his interlocutors with a joke about their differences. He presented his transformation from Hitler-crying Chicken Little to right-hand man on the not-insignificant subject of Donald J. Trump as an act of humility. He aptly made the case that decency demands the enforcement, not the neglect, of immigration law. Joy Behar came away from the experience so thoroughly charmed that she later revealed she had urged him to run for president during a commercial break.
”I don’t think that he’s a bad guy,” mused Behar, who even went so far as to admit he had a “good vibe.”
It’s no surprise that the interview in which he wasn’t asked about his signature achievement to date was the one he performed best in. Nor should it shock that, when he wants to, he excels at speaking the language of America’s progressive elite class. After all, he cut his teeth playing the “Good Republican,” writing fawning New York Times op-eds about “Barack Obama and Me.”
Despite his humble beginnings and meteoric rise through the rough-and-tumble MAGA political ecosphere, Vance is still the accomplished Yale grad with an intuitive understanding of what appeals to and revolts the average white-collar Democrat; in no small part because he once did — and perhaps still does — share many of their sensibilities.
Where he’s faltered, though, is on the news of the day.
Vance spent an awkward conversation with Megyn Kelly walking the aforementioned tightrope of making the irreconcilable cases that both Epic Fury was a success and that signing the Memorandum of Understanding in its current dismal form was imperative. Ultimately, his own views — which are shared by the increasingly crankish Kelly — came through.
In rebutting the deal’s critics, Vance failed to so much as erect strawmen, opting instead to beat up on loose hay.
“Fundamentally, if you look at what they’re proposing, they’re proposing an endless conflict. They want this to go on until every bomb has been dropped or until every Iranian,” he declared, before begging Kelly to push back on these apparent lunatics “from inside the tent.”
This is how the vice president rewards the supporters of his boss’s most consequential decision of his six years in office? With vile, lazy smears directed at them in an effort to placate a figure who has lobbed the same smears at his own administration?
This is not a man with the requisite judgment to win a fight for the Republican Party’s nomination, much less be trusted with the keys to the White House.
His unpreparedness for the bright lights was even more manifest during a sit-down with CBS’s Norah O’Donnell, who asked him prior to the deal’s formal release, “Why not allow the world to see whatever this deal is you signed with Iran?”
“Yeah, so there are some frankly diplomatic protocols that I don&#8217;t fully understand. The Qataris and the Pakistanis, who have been helpful in mediating this agreement with the Iranians, they&#8217;ve asked us not to release the full text for a little while,” replied Vance. “We&#8217;re actually trying to push them to get it out today because we want to tell the American people what&#8217;s in this deal. It&#8217;s fundamentally a good deal for the American people, but it’s also very simple, and I’ve also seen some misrepresentations about it.”
His claim not to “understand” the “diplomatic protocols” at play was both suspect and of grave concern. The point person for the entire enterprise was unable to wrap his head around the reason for concealing the contents of the agreement from his constituents? It almost came as a relief when the deal leaked and it became clear that he had lied: the administration had been delaying because it knew the reaction to the establishment of a $300 billion war chest for the mullahs, the failure to secure the Strait of Hormuz over the long-term, and the unenforceable demand that Israel lay down its arms in the fight against Hezbollah would be justly apoplectic.
Perhaps the vice president merely misspoke when he characterized the accurate representations of his deal as “misrepresentations.”
Worst of all, though, was an assertion Vance made during a Monday evening conversation with CNN’s Jake Tapper.
“The coolest thing about the progress we’ve made over the last few weeks is that you see people within the Iranian system — senior leadership, even IRGC officials — say, ‘You know what? We may have some animosity, we may have some mistrust. But we recognize the way that we’ve done business with the United States for 47 years is a mistake. Let’s try something else,’” he marveled.
Isn’t it neat what nice things notorious liars will say when their opponent has removed the boot from their neck and extended a $300 billion bag among numerous other concessions?
A contempt for the Democrats’ doe-eyed naivete about the nature of America’s enemies has long been among the right’s unifying organizing principles. Vance would replace it with the rebranded Obama-ism to which he has always subscribed.
In &#8220;Communion,&#8221; Vance frets that his critics will always view his Road to Damascus moment vis-à-vis Trump as “a politically cynical maneuver to gain political power.” By embarking on a mendacious press tour spotlighting the continuities between the Never Trump Vance of yesteryear and the MAGA enforcer of today, he has rendered that fear a self-fulfilling prophecy.
In June 2026, JD Vance won the battle over Trump administration policy, but lost the war for the soul of his party. It makes for a striking parallel to the shooting war America has just forfeited at his behest.
***
Isaac Schorr is a staff writer at Mediaite and a 2023–2024 Robert Novak Journalism Fellow at the Fund for American Studies.

Vice President JD Vance Speaks In Allentown, Pennsylvania

JD Vance’s Performance Review Has Him Walking A Fine Line

Communion

Hillbilly Elegy

MAGA

Vice President

Twenty-five years ago, it didn&#8217;t matter if you were red, white, blue, black, gold, or purple. On July Fourth, our nation&#8217;s birthday, Republicans and Democrats both showed up for the party.
Not anymore.
In 2026, we can&#8217;t agree on the color orange, whether water is wet, or what the American flag even stands for. And the polling proves it. Sixty-four percent of Republicans will display the American flag on July Fourth. Democrats? Twenty-seven percent.
Back in 2001 — before the towers fell, before the culture war went nuclear — Democrats and Republicans were nearly identical in how proud they were to call themselves Americans. Eighty-seven percent of the country, unified, coast to coast. Then came the decades of left-wing institutional rot, and here we are: 90% of Republicans say they are proud to be American. Democrats? 29%. That is a 61-point gap between two halves of a country that used to grill out together.
Absolutely pathetic.
The Left has always been a little less enthusiastic about American symbols, but this is more than dyspepsia; this is pure contempt. More Gen Z Democrats say they have little or no pride in being an American than say they are extremely or very proud. Think about that. The party of &#8220;our democracy&#8221; has produced a generation that actively dislikes the country more than they love it.
Instead of parties this July Fourth? They&#8217;ll be hosting off-key sing-alongs, mourning deported illegal aliens, and papering their doors with rainbow stickers. Old Glory won&#8217;t make an appearance.
Here&#8217;s why that matters.
That flag proudly wears thirteen stripes for the colonies that told a king to pound sand in 1776. Fifty stars for the states bound together under a Constitution that declared rights come from the Creator — not from government. It flew over Washington, crossing the Delaware in the snow. It inspired Francis Scott Key to write the national anthem while British rockets lit up the night over Fort McHenry. It led the charge at Normandy and planted itself on the moon.
The stars and stripes don’t represent perfection. They represent the longest-running experiment in ordered liberty the world has ever seen.
The modern Left cannot rally around any of that. Their entire worldview requires them to see America as an original sin that can never be forgiven. Slavery existed here — just as it existed on every continent for thousands of years. The difference is that the principles in that flag gave Americans the moral and legal tools to end it. The Left&#8217;s preferred history — the 1619 Project revision pushed in classrooms and newsrooms — pretends those principles never existed. It teaches children that the country was founded on oppression rather than on the radical idea that all men are created equal.
The feature, ladies and gentlemen, never the bug.
The New Left that took over universities in the 1960s and 1970s did not want to reform America. It wanted to delegitimize it. Herbert Marcuse and the critical theory crowd taught a generation that Western civilization, and America in particular, was the source of all repression. Repressive tolerance became the rule: shut down any defense of the country as “hate,” while every grievance gets a platform. Decades later, the results are in the polling.
Democrats who went through that education system now look at the flag the way a vampire looks at garlic.
They&#8217;ve been trained to see every American success as stolen and every American failure as proof the whole thing is rotten, all while living in the country with the highest living standards, the strongest military, the freest speech, and the most opportunity any large nation has ever produced. The hypocrisy writes itself.
So let them sulk. Let them treat July Fourth like a national day of mourning.
The rest of us still believe in the country that produced the Wright brothers, the polio vaccine, the internet, and the men and women who stormed beaches to liberate continents. Republicans aren’t just holding the line. We are still building. Entrepreneurs are creating jobs instead of burning buildings. Mothers are raising children instead of raising fists at the system. Young men are enlisting or starting businesses instead of majoring in resentment.
The revolutionary spirit that won independence never left the Right. It just got busy winning in the real world.
The numbers keep dividing because one side loves what America is, and the other resents what it has achieved. That isn&#8217;t a disagreement over policy. That is a fundamental rejection of the country itself.
Democrats hate the flag. We don’t.
This July Fourth, fly it anyway. Fly it high. Fly it for the people who built this place and for the ones still trying to keep it worth defending. 
The Left can keep their grievance parade. The rest of us have a country to celebrate.

Medium size flags line a white fence

Democrats Hate The Flag That Leads The World. We Celebrate It.

All American Patriotism

Conservatism

Fourth of July

Leftists

Patriotism

I spoke to Texas Senator Ted Cruz today for this Saturday’s Daily Wire Weekend Punch interview, but he provided his immediate reaction to the widely publicized release of the memorandum of understanding with Iran. Here were his thoughts:
***
Ted Cruz: To the best of my knowledge, the administration has not yet briefed Congress on what this deal entails. I understand that the administration is doing background calls with reporters, with the briefer whom they identify as a quote, senior administration official. And I&#8217;m told that the official ran the MOU verbatim to the reporters. So I assume that is the text, but no one has confirmed it to me.
Ben Domenech: Assuming that it is essentially the framework that has been publicly discussed and that has been going back and forth, do you think it&#8217;s a satisfactory end to achieve the goals that this administration set out to initially?
TC: I am hoping there are more deep details and better details than what has been released. What has been released so far suggests that, unfortunately, the president is getting, I think, very poor advice when it comes to this deal. History teaches that giving billions of dollars to theocratic lunatics who want to murder us is a bad idea. Under the terms of what&#8217;s been released, somewhere between $10 billion and $30 billion will flow to the Ayatollah immediately before they make even a single nuclear concession.
I think that&#8217;s ill-advised. That money, if it goes to the Ayatollah, will go to fund terrorists trying to kill Americans and weapons that will be used to try to kill Americans. And it also appears to formalize a permanent role for the Islamic regime controlling the Strait of Hormuz. It is difficult to see what possible benefit to America could come from that.
BD: When it comes to control of the Strait of Hormuz, the idea that they&#8217;re just going to wait 60 days and then start charging tolls or fees, however you want to describe it, for going through, it shocks me that this is something acceptable to this administration.
TC: I do not believe the Ayatollah should be able to charge one penny for the free navigation of the seas.
It has also been discussed that the financial reward could be $300 billion to the Ayatollah. If that is true, that would be three times more than the money Joe Biden and Kamala Harris funneled to the Ayatollah. It is a virtual certainty that if $300 billion went to the Ayatollah, that money would be used to murder Americans.
I&#8217;ll also say the idea that we should want a Marshall Plan for Iran to come in and rebuild Iran like the United States did for Europe after World War II makes no sense whatsoever.
President Trump was exactly right to initiate military action against Iran because for 47 years the regime has been waging war against America, has been the world&#8217;s leading funder of terrorism, and has been murdering Americans for 47 years. Nearly one thousand Americans have been murdered by the Ayatollah and the mullahs. That is why the president acted as a strong commander-in-chief to take out their military capacity. It is not remotely in America&#8217;s interest for us to pay to rebuild that capacity that we just took out.

US-ISRAEL-IRAN-WAR-POLITICS-TRUMP

Instant Reaction: Ted Cruz Blasts Plan To Send Billions To Ayatollah

Strait of Hormuz

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