For nine years, the people who put together a grand hoax based on a campaign dirty trick, have never been held accountable. A new CIA review concludes that American intelligence knew that the Steele Dossier was baseless, and yet then Director John Brennan insisted on using it to conclude that Russia had interfered with the 2016 election to benefit Donald Trump.

However, Brennan directly contradicted that finding in testimony before Congress. He claimed that “it was not in any way used as a basis for that conclusion.” Now, however, analysts involved say Brennan insisted on using the Steele Dossier and also pressured analysts to ratify his own conclusion rather than allow them to independently assess the intelligence.

After eight years, it may be too late to hold Brennan legally accountable for his alleged perjury. We need a full investigation, however, for long-overdue political accountability for the attempt to hijack intelligence data to undermine a duly elected president.

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After Texas floods claimed the lives of Americans including seven- and eight-year-old girls, discourse on social media illuminated something about the state of our nation. And it’s not heartening.

Some on the left jumped to politicize the tragedy. Commentators like Obama advisor David Axelrod linked the disaster to Trump administration government cuts.

The claims were false. The National Weather Service office had extra staff on duty and issued warnings well in advance. But that’s not the point.

The bodies of some of these little girls haven’t even been found yet. It’s indecent to play politics so quickly at a time like this. It’s a hallmark of a society that’s lost its way. But it’s what happens when your deity is political power, rather than God Himself.

Whatever our politics, let’s try to do better. Our fellow Americans, mourning their dead, deserve that much.

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“Let your “yes” be yes and your “no” be no,” the apostle James wrote to the church in Jerusalem. Too often, politicians forget this simple wisdom.

Donald Trump is not among them.

The lesson of Trump’s second term is that he rarely bluffs when it counts, and we have seen results in recent weeks in every arena. He warned Academia that he would enforce the law and Supreme Court decisions on civil rights and DEI, and Harvard has learned the hard way that he was serious.

Trump ran for a second term on a promise to seal the border and take care of the problem of illegal immigration. He’s made terrific progress on doing just that.

And, most explosively, he told Iran they could not have nuclear weapons. He said—and I quote: We can “blow them up nicely or blow them up brutally.”

They should have listened.

The secret of Trump’s appeal is clear to see. Voters elected Trump to do what he promised.

And that’s exactly what Trump does.

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Socialism is planting itself firmly in America—and the Democratic party is its cultivator. The same week Tim Walz said socialism is nothing more than neighborliness, Kamala Harris chose him as her running mate. Today, the Democratic party’s largest rallies are headlines by self-described socialists. In New York City, an avowed socialist is on path to becoming its next mayor.

Zohran Mamdani is on record aping Marx and Lenin, saying his end goal is “seizing the means of production.”

Saying this socialism is “democratic” is no salve; The China and Cuban constitutions also say they are democratic socialist countries; and the USSR stood for itself as a Socialist Republic. Because our school textbooks refuse to teach the evils of Marx and socialism but do not hesitate to teach the evils of National Socialism; and because the mainstream press along with other educational outlets venerate Marx, this is what you get. We can’t shrug our shoulders; we can’t say the Democrats’ nurturing of socialism will keep them out of political pole position. Or It may very well not.

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President Trump’s supporters have been frustrated with lawfare 2.0. Left-wing lawyers slowed his agenda by finding federal judges to impose nationwide injunctions against Trump’s executive orders.

That ended with the close of this term. Although the Supreme Court didn’t rule on the merits of the Trump order on birthright citizenship, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, writing for a 6-3 majority, ruled that injunctions should focus on relief only for the specific plaintiffs at hand.

The majority opinion also took aim at Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s dissent in unusually pointed language.

In the past, those on both sides of the aisle have hailed the use of nationwide injunctions. But their overuse in the Trump era has led to the Court’s timely reminder: just as America can’t have an imperial presidency, it cannot have an imperial judiciary, either.

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The great political scientist Harry Jaffa wrote on our bicentennial: In 1776 the United States was nothing, promising to become everything; having become everything, it now promises to become nothing. This is even truer today, on the cusp of our 250th anniversary.

A new Gallup poll reveals a record-low percentage of Americans proud of America, dragged down by our youth and only 36 percent of Democrats being proud of America. This was all foreseeable. For years, our schools have taught that America was a blight on the world, not a blessing. And American history is our high school seniors’ worst subject.

Thus, our high school graduates enter adulthood by the millions, every year, alien to a country they don’t know or were taught to dislike. As C.S. Lewis put it: “by starving the sensibility of our pupils we only make them easier prey to the propagandist when he comes.”

Ronald Reagan’s farewell address called on us to teach patriotism again, informed patriotism. Now, more than ever, this holiday is the time to take up that challenge.

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The nation goes into this fourth of July holiday weekend at pivotal period of our nation’s history.

Next year we’ll be marking 250 years of independence … our "semiquincentennial." Quite an achievement and a word —quite an experiment in democracy it has been.

As we mark this day, I don’t need to remind you—but it still bears stating: Our nation is deeply divided; often bitterly so divided; and with a number of examples we could point to, sometimes violently divided.

And yet I still resonate with the words of Abraham Lincoln—spoken a month before he issued the Emancipation Proclamation.

The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise -- with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country…. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.

I still believe it.

Have a great 4th. And may God bless America— “the last, best hope.”

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What a win for parents’ rights! In Mahmoud v Taylor, handed down last Friday, the Supreme Court affirmed in a 6 to 3 holding, that parents — not schools — have the last word on what their children are going to be taught.

The case focused on Maryland’s Montgomery County Board of Education. There, books with LGBTQ themes had been approved for primary school curricula. Some parents objected — but the board ultimately refused to allow them to opt their children out.

Justice Alito’s majority opinion made it clear the board’s approach didn’t pass constitutional muster, implicitly noting the irony of excluding religious parents’ views from the inclusive environment the board sought to encourage.

This ruling’s importance really cannot be overstated. The Supreme Court has made it clear: Schools may not impose views on America’s children that conflict with the views and values of their parents. Full stop.

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