Even on our 250 birthday, a day of national celebration, Trump can't help but make it about himself & his petty vendettas.

What Trump doesn't understand is America's greatness has never & will never come from one person, it comes from the American people. thehill.com/homenews/adm...

Listen. I spent more than a decade as a theatrical technician, rigging stages, hanging lights, flying scenery, etc. The number of times I have dropped anything on a stage with performers on it is zero. The number of times I’ve dropped something that might’ve killed someone is zero. This is major.

Trump is derailing his own legislative agenda to try to force the Senate to pass a piece of legislation that does not even include all of his demands.

The stage is falling apart at the rehearsal for Freedom 250's July 4th celebration.

"It’s hard to overstate the mismatch between the tens of millions of dollars that have gone to Freedom 250 and the result on the ground," @joshkovensky.bsky.social reports from DC. talkingpointsmemo.com/news/the-gre...

An attendee at the Great American State Fair says none of the booths had air conditioning so she had to go to the baptism pool in one of the tents

🚨 Trump's state fair is really filling in today! There are tens of people there now

Authorities are imposing a limit of “one bottle of water per person” for attendees on the DC Mall. This is on July 4, when the temp will exceed 100 degrees. Checkpoints open at 1 pm. Fireworks don’t start til after 1030 pm. Good luck to our EMS friends. www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/202...

10:30am Thu: Temperatures in DC area are running 7-8 deg higher than this time yesterday. Most spots currently in low 90s with heat index 100 to 105. Actual temp should get to near and above 100 this afternoon. More coverage at CapitalWeather.com and the Capital Weather app

"The Park Service, in a separate document, similarly said that people should ‘wear an n95 mask when outdoors’ and ‘remain indoors as much as possible during and after the show.’” The guidance is to remain indoors ... during the fireworks. www.washingtonpost.com/climate-envi...

INCREDIBLE SCENES ON FOX as there is LITERALLY NOT A SOUL at Trump's fair, which has now been open for 15 minutes

That's the sound of Americans making their voices heard, Pete! Hegseth thinks law and order sounds like a boat full of civilians exploding. theintercept.com/2025/11/17/t...

Congressional Report Alleges Fraud in Fundraising for ‘Christian Nationalist’ Freedom250 talkingpointsmemo.com/morning-memo...

A Second Judge Blocks Trump’s Attempted Federal Takeover of Vote by Mail talkingpointsmemo.com/news/a-secon...

If this is your first comment for why America is "an awesome place," you need to get out more

Indeed. Almost no one has proof of their ancestors’ legal immigration. All our citizenship depends on the citizenship clause being enforced.

“In downtown D.C., Arlington and the Capitol Hill area, where pollution will be ‘very unhealthy,’ the document says that people should ‘expect irritation symptoms’ and limit their postshow exposure to the pollution. It projects that pollution will remain at elevated levels for three to six hours…”

This is going to be a disaster

I’m here at Meridian Hill/Malcolm X Park, where protesters are greeting Peter Hegseth as he arrives for a ceremony related to President Trump’s Make DC Safe and Beautiful Task Force.

It added in an explanatory note that priests belonging to the society and lay members who “formally adhere” to the group are also in schism and excommunicated”

BREAKING: The Vatican announced Thursday that priests and members of a breakaway Catholic group that ordained four new bishops in defiance of Pope Leo XIV’s wishes are in schism and excommunicated. edition.cnn.com/2026/07/02/e...

BREAKING: The Vatican excommunicates bishops from a breakaway group of traditionalist Catholics that consecrated them without Pope Leo's consent.

It’s a stunning message to send at a time when Republicans are looking for ways to bolster their chances of maintaining control of Congress in the fall. But Republicans themselves are not doing a great job of appearing anything other than patently?? tone deaf?? on the issue of affordability:

As a former professional athlete, this is one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard. Your kid has a less than 1% chance of getting an athletic college scholarship. You’re better off putting the money into a 529 plan.

Dems now only have to sweep the 4 toss-ups (and win all Lean-D or better) to get to 51. Huge change since a year ago. Obviously no sure thing - they're toss-ups! - but yet another indication that the Senate majority has gone from impossibly uphill for Dems to 50/50.

In SCOTUS Anti-Trans Decision, Christian Right Sees Path to Ending Obergefell

NEW: A fourth federal appeals court has rejected ICE's massive expansion of mandatory detention for immigrants that have resided in U.S. for years. It seems increasingly certain that the Supreme Court will take up the issue next term. www.politico.com/news/2026/06...

"This drives home, Laura, why the midterms are so important, because it’s the senators who ultimately vote on those Supreme Court justices."

so will every woman now have to pee in a cup at airports?

Today's Morning Memo at @talkingpointsmemo.com: In SCOTUS Anti-Trans Decision, Christian Right Sees Path to Ending Obergefell talkingpointsmemo.com/morning-memo...

POCAN: You are a Christian nationalist by declaration VOUGHT: This is the second time you've used that slander POCAN: You wrote an article, 'Is there anything actually wrong with Christian nationalism'

House Speaker Mike Johnson abandons floor agenda and sends lawmakers home after hardline conservatives force him to scrap GOP priorities for a second straight week. https://cnn.it/4oUDB7g

What’s Big Balls up to now? Making federal websites that track who visits them and evade privacy tools. Good to know that the guy who exposed 300 million Americans’ Social Security data is still hard at work violating our privacy.

I do not think there is sufficient appreciation for how catastrophic yesterday’s decision in Slaughter is for this country. As Justice Sotomayor said in her dissent and she intoned from the bench yesterday, “today the majority reshapes our Govt.”

Today's Morning Memo at @talkingpointsmemo.com MAGA Melts Down at SCOTUS Over Its Insufficient Voter Suppression talkingpointsmemo.com/morning-memo...

No one and nothing is exempt from being turned into his cudgel to pass the SAVE Act — which he apparently now needs because of the "communists."

Why Watergate would be a 12-hour story today

MUST READ 👇👇👇 Exclusive: DOJ Taps Gang, Terrorism Prosecutors to Crack Down on Political Groups talkingpointsmemo.com/news/exclusi...

Let's be clear in reporting this. SCt expressly overrules (yet another) landmark precedent in Humphrey's Executor that has been the basis of American federal governance for nearly a century.

At the center of the report is an attack on the wall of separation between church and state, which Christian nationalists falsely contend is a “myth.”

3/ That shouldn’t stop the momentum to break the Courts corruption and anti constitutional behavior.

2/. a matter of course. That was never the case even among the most activist, most anti-reform Courts. The Courts corruption must be broken for the future of the country’s democracy. It’s one or the other. As reform gets closer they may start to trim their sails.

Always important to remind people that the occasional non egregious decision doesn’t make the Court any less corrupt or in need of reform. Even those who despise the Courts corruption have been accustomed to the idea that it reviews every law, prohibition or imperative embraced by Democrats as …

There's no sugar-coating Slaughter. It's an enormously important ruling (far more important than the other three decisions #SCOTUS handed down today). It's a huge win for Trump/the executive. And it's going to have massive ramifications for the functioning of the government long after Trump is gone.

Trump's gonna LOVE this SCOTUS: Trump can't summarily fire Fed governor Lisa Cook, BUT he essentially has the *constitutional* right to fire other agency heads even if Congress created the agency to be independent and limited now leaders can be fired. A gobsmacking expansion of presidential power.

Slaughter is an earthquake: SCOTUS has overturned a 90-year-old precedent that facilitated much of modern governance by granting many agencies meaningful independence from the president. Now SCOTUS crushes that independence ... for seemingly every agency except the Federal Reserve.

We have Slaughter and Cook. By a 6–3 vote, SCOTUS overturns Humphrey's Executor and lets Trump fire heads of independent agencies. But by a 5–4 vote, it refuses to let him fire Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve. www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25p... www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25p...

The Fifth Circuit opinion was one of the dumbest things I've ever read. The fact that it was reversed by *just* a 5-4 majority is breathtaking.