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The New York Times Editorial Board writes about America at 250. I think it's an important message for all Americans, especially for liberals tempted to give up on the American experiment as failed this Independence Day out of despair.

"On this Fourth of July, the United States turns 250. A quarter of a millennium is long enough to make a nation feel permanent, as though it had always been here and always will be. But the founders who signed their names to the Declaration of Independence knew that they were making a wager, not a guarantee. They pledged their lives, fortunes and honor precisely because the outcome was in doubt. Two and a half centuries later, the wager is still being placed by every generation that inherits it. That is the truth worth celebrating this summer — America is still being made.

...

Benjamin Franklin described the founding with a phrase so familiar that many Americans today can recite the line. Asked what kind of government the framers had produced, he is said to have replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.” The conditional part of that sentence — the if — comes fresh to every generation, and it is now the work in front of us.

In the decades ahead, the work will most likely come down to a handful of questions whose answers are genuinely uncertain.

...

America has answered questions this large before and some even larger, and we should not despair because we must again. The country did not fail even when it split in two and buried more than 750,000 of its people. It did not fail in the bread lines of the Depression, in the existential war against fascism that followed or in the smoke of burning cities in the 1960s. The country did not fail during the Cold War, when a rival nation vowed to bury us. Each time the Republic proved more durable than its mourners predicted, not because of any magic in the system, but because enough people decided the alternative was unacceptable and went to work. Democracy is not a sheltered structure we live inside. It is a habit we must practice — or lose.

So let the anniversary be more than fireworks and flags, though we should have those, too, gladly. Let it be a renewal of the work, a reminder that the right to govern ourselves is also the obligation to govern ourselves well: to show up, to listen, to tell the truth and to extend to one another the basic decency a shared citizenship demands.

The next 50 years are not a prophecy to be read. They are another wager to be placed. The founders handed us a promise they could not keep alone. We can’t, either. But we can answer their questions a little better than our forebears did, keep the Republic a little better than we found it and hand it on. That is the American project, and it is enough."

DALLAS FOLKS! The fight to protect voting rights never ends, and right now, we’re witnessing a Jim-Crow-era effort from politicians and their billionaire friends to restrict our freedoms, silence our voices, and consolidate power.

But in America, we choose our leaders. We will decide our future. The same spirit that fueled Selma, Montgomery, and the March on Washington lives on in our unified action.

Coined by civil rights icon Congressman John Lewis, Good Trouble is the act of coming together to take peaceful, non-violent action to challenge injustice. The power of collective non-violent action resulted in the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and we must maintain that same collective action to fight for voting rights today.

Six years after the passing of Congressman Lewis, we're organizing an event in our Dallas community to carry the torch, continue the legacy of John Lewis, and pass it forward to future generations. Join us!

PLEASE NOTE: 1. Any changes will be promptly communicated. 2. Event updates will be emailed and posted on Indivisible Dallas social media platforms as the date nears.

A core principle behind all Good Trouble Lives On events is a commitment to nonviolent action. We expect all participants to seek to de-escalate any potential confrontation with those who disagree with our values and to act lawfully at these events. Weapons of any kind, including those legally permitted, should not be brought to events.

Elizabeth Ginexi, a former NIH Program Official for 22 years, warns about an effort by the OMB to change federal grants system in a way that could cause major long term damage to American scientific research.

From the article:

"Since World War II, the United States built the world’s preeminent scientific enterprise on a straightforward principle: federal dollars should fund the best science, as determined by independent experts rather than politicians. Peer review, open competition, and institutional autonomy were the pillars of that system. This proposed rule dismantles all three, simultaneously, government-wide, and binding on every federal agency by October 1, 2026.

What OMB is proposing is not a reform of grants management. It is a complete political control apparatus layered over every stage of the federal science funding lifecycle.

• Before a competition opens, every program must be designed to align with the President’s policy priorities, not scientific need, statutory mandate, or expert consensus.

• When opportunities are announced, agencies can restrict who is eligible, and the agency head can exempt solicitations from public posting under a broad national interest exception.

• When applications are reviewed, political appointees must personally evaluate every discretionary grant. Peer review is explicitly reduced to advisory status. Appointees are forbidden from deferring to scientific experts.

• When awards are made, grants can be conditioned on compliance with an undefined “Gold Standard Science” standard, and institutions can be disqualified based on their affiliations or the political character of their prior work.

• During the research itself, scientists cannot attend conferences, join professional societies, subscribe to journals, or publish in peer-reviewed journals without express agency pre-approval. Each of those approvals can simply be withheld.

• At any moment, an active grant, including a multi-year award already mid-project, can be terminated because a political appointee decides it no longer aligns with agency priorities. No finding of misconduct is required.

• When results are ready to share, publication costs are presumptively unallowable, and any public communication that could be labeled issue advocacy on a sensitive topic puts the entire award at risk.

The rule is also notable for what it cites as justification. The preamble relies heavily on Heritage Foundation reports, partisan Senate committee documents, and White House fact sheets, rather than independent scientific or administrative assessments. It characterizes decades of peer-reviewed research on climate, public health, equity, and international collaboration as “woke,” “neo-Marxist,” “anti-American,” or “divisive ideology.” It treats the scientific community’s professional infrastructure, including conferences, journals, international partnerships, and open access publishing, as wasteful overhead to be controlled or eliminated.

Congress has repeatedly appropriated funds for science agencies with the expectation that those funds would be administered through merit-based, expert-driven processes insulated from political interference. This rule attempts to override that expectation administratively, without new legislation, by repurposing OMB’s grants management authority as a vehicle for political control of science.

The public comment period closes approximately July 13, 2026 (45 days from May 29 publication). Comments must be submitted to regulations.gov, Docket OMB-2026-0034.

Scientists, universities, scientific societies, patient advocacy organizations, state governments, and members of the public all have standing to comment. Given the scope of what is proposed, the breadth and volume of opposition in the formal record will matter both legally and politically."

From The Atlantic, an article discussing why the outcome in Iran was almost inevitable with Donald Trump in charge.

"To those at home and abroad whose necks are snapping and whose heads are spinning, I have to ask an obvious but uncomfortable question: What did you expect?

This debacle is, at the end of the day, classic Donald Trump.

In multiple ways, we are seeing Trump’s essential characteristics playing out on a national-security matter of the highest stakes.

First, he is utterly assured that he can do anything, that he can will any reality into being, despite all evidence and expertise to the contrary. Seduced by the overnight success of the removal of President Nicolás Maduro from Venezuela, he convinced himself that he could bring about the rapid collapse of the Iranian regime. His own intelligence experts and Cabinet officials counseled otherwise. Yet he pressed ahead.

Second, he deepened his self-deception through his childish belief in the invincibility of U.S. military power. A testosterone-infused operation name—Epic Fury—and a daily video diet of buildings going boom reinforced his delusion. The members of the United States military are fearsome and highly professional, and they carried out their assigned tasks with precision and effectiveness, degrading various Iranian capabilities. But Trump was incapable of aligning those operations with achievable strategic objectives. His mind doesn’t work that way.

Third, when the going got tough, Trump started to flail. One day he threatened to wipe out Iranian civilization, the next (and the next and the next) he promised that a deal was just around the corner. Never a detail man (for policy, anyway; he goes deep on architectural trimmings), he confessed to being bored with the war. And as when his business ventures veered toward bankruptcy, with better off-ramps in the rearview mirror, he grasped for any way out, damn the costs to U.S. credibility, alliances, and influence.

Fourth, he was susceptible to flattery, especially from strongmen. Remember his fruitless exchange of love letters with Kim Jong Un? They produced no breakthrough in nuclear diplomacy with North Korea. Somehow, without even an 80th-birthday card from Iran, Trump flattered himself into believing that he was the leader who could recognize, and cultivate, a new spirit of cooperation coming from the “very rational” and “not radicalized” leaders now in charge in Tehran.

Fifth, as always, Trump is out for Trump. He stumbled by entering a war that Americans broadly opposed, and their opposition increased as they felt it in their pocketbooks at the pump and the grocery store. But it soon became clear, with a midterm-election disaster looming, that Trump would pull the plug. Again, ending the war was necessary; giving away the store while doing so was panic-induced self-preservation.

Finally, Trump swaggered into the war, and will skulk out of it, with total confidence in the slavish support of his political base. His faith will probably be justified. Remember their discovery of the absolutely essential national-security imperative that we grab Greenland? (Wait for it: Cuba is next.) The hurrahs for Trump the conqueror will soon transform into oohs and aahs toasting Donald the diplomat. A few lonely, honest critics of the JCPOA—a flawed but workable deal that verifiably set back Iran’s nuclear program—will resist the demand to tie themselves into pretzels, and instead acknowledge that Trump’s deal makes the JCPOA look ironclad."

From the New York Times:

"Bill Pulte, a close ally of President Trump’s, appears set to take over as the acting director of national intelligence on Friday, despite deep opposition on Capitol Hill and apprehension inside the nation’s spy agencies.

Mr. Pulte has used his current post as a top federal housing official to help with Mr. Trump’s campaign of retribution against his perceived enemies. Lawmakers are worried that Mr. Pulte could find ways to weaponize the spy office even in just a few days on the job."

This is a very sinister appointment, even among Trump's many awful appointments. Bill Pulte's appointment to be acting DNI is almost certainly aimed at allowing him to use the power and information accessible to the DNI in order to further search for dirt on Trump's domestic enemies and also bodes ill for elections, given Tulsi's actions in Fulton County and her renewed "search" for foreign interference in voting machines. From the article itself, "Mr. Trump has teased that Mr. Pulte’s appointment could mean that the public learns about “rigged elections.""

In other words, start getting ready for Stop the Steal 2.0.

Rise Up, Sing Out: A Concert for the First Amendment is on June 14 at 7:30 ET. More info: https://riseupsingout.com/

Why it's relevant: This event is meant to call public attention to the need defend free speech, press, assembly, and petition against government pressure and industry self-censorship. These are all liberal values that are under intense sustained assault by the Trump administration.

The No Kings coalition is amplifying the event and encouraging people to get together for it. From No Kings:

"While the Committee for the First Amendment leads and hosts this powerful concert, Indivisible and No Kings are proud to partner with them to build the durable, hyper-local infrastructure our movement needs to win and counter the president's spectacle. On June 14, the national concert event celebrates the freedoms that belong to all of us: speech, assembly, protest, religion, press, and expression.

Across the country, communities will gather for local watch parties to sing along, make art, share food, connect with neighbors, and take meaningful action together.

Join a Rise Up, Sing Out event near you — or host one in your community."

The Atlantic reports on the Trump administration's ongoing quiet efforts to get creative with stealing taxpayer money for their slush fund.

Some highlights:

"When Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche appeared before Congress last Tuesday, senior administration officials hoped that his testimony would be enough to quell the uproar over a $1.776 billion payout scheme for Trump loyalists, including January 6 rioters. “We’re not moving forward with the fund,” he told a House appropriations subcommittee.

But Blanche, who was not under oath, refused requests from a representative to put that in writing. He asked instead for Congress to take him at his word that President Trump’s politically inconvenient project for rewarding those who were allegedly victimized by the Biden-era Justice Department had truly been abandoned.

It turns out that it’s not that simple. Behind the scenes, Justice Department and other Trump-administration officials have quietly assured allies that plans for some form of payout remain on track. I spoke with eight people familiar with the so-called Anti-Weaponization Fund—including current and former Justice Department officials, current and former members of Congress, a defense attorney, and political operatives close to the administration. All said that Justice Department officials and people close to the White House have indicated that the payout idea has not actually been scrapped. Rather, they say, officials are exploring whether elements of the fund can be reactivated while also examining alternative arrangements to make sure loyalists get compensated. Across the administration, and even within the Justice Department, officials have differing perspectives on whether the fund itself will ultimately be restored. But either way, officials see a path forward for the government to pay those who say they are victims of supposed government “weaponization.”

...

Under pressure from fellow Republicans, the administration backed off the plan—but never renounced it. One DOJ official and one political strategist close to the White House told me that that officials there didn’t think the fund was a bad idea; they just regretted that the rollout, which had been intended in part as a way of shoring up Republican support ahead of the midterm elections, had been too public and invited too much scrutiny. They hoped to do things more quietly in the future—and those who are seeking money from the government say that’s exactly what’s happening.

“Right now, you have to be an insider to know who to talk to,” one attorney who had advised multiple individuals seeking compensation told me. One Republican former member of Congress told me that he and others had been assured that the administration’s public statements about the weaponization fund being abandoned were “all part of the plan; nothing has changed.” One Justice Department official and two Republican political advisers told me that public backing for the fund was dropped to clear the way for Blanche’s confirmation, but that they had been promised that payments would eventually be made to January 6 defendants, pardon recipients, and those close to the president. “Trump didn’t want to fight this out in public,” the official told me.

Justice Department officials are still figuring out the exact mechanisms by which people who seek compensation can be paid. Officials told me that those who believe they were victims of a weaponized government may ultimately need to file lawsuits so they can then receive settlements from a previously established Justice Department fund. Suing the government is not a new idea. But typically the government looks for ways to defend itself; in this case, officials are exploring proposals to facilitate litigation and to expedite payments without requiring an expensive and lengthy process that might draw attention. One former DOJ official told me that discussions are happening about how to provide legal support at scale to those who want to file lawsuits. “They’ll sue, and they’ll settle,” the former official said of the plan."