July 5, 2026 at 12:04 PM EDT
Conservative reveals how Trump is living out his favorite movie -- in the worst way

In the classic 1950 film "Sunset Boulevard," aging silent film star Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) pretends that Hollywood is still as it was when she was at her peak, creating a grotesque charade that obscures unpleasant realities. Drawing from rumors that this is President Donald Trump's favorite movie, conservative writer David Frum wrote in The Atlantic on Sunday that Trump's 4th of July speech similarly ignored the ugly truth about the Republican's second term.

July 5, 2026 at 11:17 AM EDT
Legal scholars expose Trump's 'most consequential casualties'

President Donald Trump has done nearly incalculable damage to the federal government and the guardrails meant to rein in corruption, but as two legal scholars revealed for The Hill this week, his "most consequential casualties" are a key group of employees that some may not have heard of. Published Sunday morning, the piece from The Hill hailed from David Wippman, emeritus president of Hamilton College, and Glenn C. Altschuler, the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Emeritus Professor of American Studies at Cornell University. In the piece, the pair echoed the common sentiment among other legal scholars that Trump, in his second term, is obliterating the ethical guardrails put in place around the presidency in the wake of the Watergate scandal.

July 5, 2026 at 10:57 AM EDT
Trump is bringing back 'death panels' Republicans once raged against

When President Barack Obama passed the Affordable Care Act, opponents accused the new bill of including "death panels." Now President Donald Trump is including measures that by the same logic could also be considered death panels -- and, according to a conservative commentator, those same critics are quiet. "A new regulatory proposal from the Trump administration, first reported by Maya Goldman in Axios, would instruct hospitals to record end-of-life preferences in patient electronic health records""and then, potentially, include compliance as one of the factors for adjusting Medicare's 'value-based' payments in the future," opined The Bulwark's Jonathan Cohn on Sunday. "'The goal of this measure is to establish advance care planning as a normalized, routine part of care regardless of health status and age,' the proposal says, according to the Axios report."

July 5, 2026 at 9:58 AM EDT
Trump just found a new way to grift Europe: report

President Donald Trump's policies toward NATO have transformed a multinational alliance predicated on the ideal of preserving democracy into a far more transactional enterprise. "Europe is still dependent on the U.S. for a while," a European diplomat told Politico on Sunday. "It is therefore not in our interest to pick fights. But we also need to make the U.S. understand in assertive ways that Europe is not [to be taken] for granted, that we have our interests, too."

July 5, 2026 at 9:07 AM EDT
What MAGA doesn't know about American history as historians demolish Trump report

President Donald Trump's Religious Liberty Commission released a draft report on American religious history that, according to experts, gets a lot of basic facts wrong about its purported subject. "A new draft report from a Trump administration task force presents a competing vision of America's tradition of religious liberty -- one that argues that the founders wanted as much religion, everywhere, as possible -- and that makes the case that our understanding of religious freedom has been corrupted by 20th-century European secularists and radical progressives aiming to eliminate religion from public life," Vox's Christian Paz wrote on Sunday. The report also claims that the Founding Fathers' seminal documents like the Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights were based explicitly on religious concepts.

July 4, 2026 at 5:44 PM EDT
Robert Reich reveals July 4th plan for 'mourning' US ideals assaulted by Trump

As the U.S. celebrates its 250th birthday, the "ideals that this country began with" are under assault by President Donald Trump, prompting commentator and economic equality activist Robert Reich to plan a symbol "mourning" to mark this year's Fourth of July. Reich is a veteran lawyer who previously served as the first Secretary of Labor under former President Bill Clinton, and he remains an outspoken liberal political voice. In the latest edition of his "Coffee Klatch" video series, he revealed the surprisingly mournful way he intended to mark the country's 250th on Saturday, in order to convey the gravity of damage done by Trump and his allies.

July 4, 2026 at 5:10 PM EDT
Medical expert sounds alarm that Mitch McConnell is 'unfit to serve'

Former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's staff claims that his health is improving after a recent emergency hospital trip, but as one medical expert argued, his situation means that he is overall "unfit to serve" the rest of his term in office. McConnell is a long-tenured Senator from Kentucky, best known for his many years as the GOP's Senate majority leader, where he used blunt and controversial tactics to block the agendas of Democratic presidents and Congresses. Having handed off that role to Sen. John Thune, he is set to retire in January, opting not to seek reelection in the 2026 midterms.

July 4, 2026 at 3:53 PM EDT
Trump biographer exposes why Melania's 'preposterous' legal move is doomed to fail

First Lady Melania Trump is pursuing new sanctions in her battle against Michael Wolff, but as the prominent former biographer of her husband explained this week, her "preposterous" legal strategy is doomed to fail. Wolff is a veteran reporter and author, best known for several books documenting President Donald Trump's first term in the White House. In the last year, he has also been embroiled in a legal battle with the first lady after she initially threatened to sue him over comments about her and her family's connections to Jeffrey Epstein. He responded with an anti-SLAPP lawsuit, accusing Melania Trump of attempting to silence him, in breach of freedom of the press.

July 4, 2026 at 2:36 PM EDT
DC cops forced to disperse Trump fans

President Donald Trump's fans arrived at his "Salute to America" event four hours before doors were set to open, causing such a problem for police that they had to disperse the crowd, reported News Nation's Libbey Dean. Trump, who isn't set to speak until 9:45 p.m. E.S.T. typically has fans show up to his rallies early to ensure they can get front row seats. The gates don't open for this event until 5 p.m. For Trump fans, the rallies feel like an event where they spend the day together, meeting people and sharing their own stories and experiences from previous events.

July 4, 2026 at 2:30 PM EDT
US stuck with 'a clown show' White House -- but it could finally speed up change

President Donald Trump has left the U.S. at the mercy of "a clown show" in the White House, but according to a new piece from Politico, these circumstances might be what "accelerates change" for the better. Jonathan Martin is the politics bureau chief and senior columnist for Politico. To mark America's 250th anniversary on Saturday, he published a new piece arguing to offer a "prescription" for treating the "curdled state of American democracy."

July 4, 2026 at 11:31 AM EDT
Political scholar exposes surprise gender gap in GOP's July 4 mania

Much has been said about the partisan divide at play in the ways that Americans react to President Donald Trump, but as one political scholar revealed for The Hill, there is also a surprising gender gap going on, and it is most striking in relation to the celebration of America's 250th birthday. Melissa K. Miller is a professor of political science at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, and to mark the Fourth of July, she published a new piece for The Hill revealing the findings of a national poll her school conducted with YouGov. According to the poll, she explained, gender is a significant driver of sentiment and engagement with the country's 250th anniversary, having a notable impact on whether or not the respondents said they would take part in festivities, but also on what they believed to be important to celebrate about the occasion.

July 4, 2026 at 11:09 AM EDT
Alito's influence on the Supreme Court may be reaching an all-time high

One of the most dangerous power players in the U.S. Supreme Court is at it again, wrote the New York Times in a report about the conservative Justice Samuel Alito. Alito recalled in his youth his father tapping away on a calculator, trying to redraw electoral maps. All of that came to a head on Tuesday when Alito penned the landmark decision that struck another harmful blow to the Voting Rights Act. The decision ultimately makes it more difficult to bring racial discrimination challenges to districts.