The pages of tomorrow’s history are written by today’s decisions. History is littered with failed republics and democracies. The Roman Republic became the Roman Empire. Democracy in ancient Greece turned into an aristocracy. This didn’t just happen in ancient history. In 1961, a new constitution in Venezuela divided the government into three branches. But in 1999, Hugo Chavez swept to power and rewrote the country’s constitution. He eventually became a dictator. The Founding Fathers were well aware of the fleeting nature of our form of government. In 1787, Elizabeth Willing Powell asked Benjamin Franklin, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” Franklin replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.” For context, in Federalist 39, former President James Madison defined a republic as “a government which derives all its powers directly or indirectly from the great body of the people, and is administered by persons holding their offices during pleasure, for a limited period, or during good behavior.” The term “democratic republic” references the role that popular elections play in selecting some of our leaders. But the Founding Fathers held a much dimmer view of democracy by itself. In Federalist 10, Madison observed that democracies “have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.” Even as America celebrates her 250th birthday, there are plenty of reasons to wonder about the country’s future. America has abandoned her Christian heritage. Government-funded schools teach children to hate America and Western Civilization more broadly. Birth rates have generally been below replacement level for decades. You can see the fruit of those trends. Darializa Avila Chevalier, a Democrat congressional nominee from New York City, founded a group that seeks “the total eradication of Western Civilization.” Chants of “Death to America” have rung out on college campuses and the streets of New York City. Muslims are openly plotting to turn America into a Muslim country. But concerning trends are not outcomes. Americans still have the freedom and ability to change course. The most important thing is for America to return to her Christian roots. Listen to our Founding Fathers, not the misinformation taught in most modern history classes. “Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God?” Thomas Jefferson wrote. A version of that quote is on the Jefferson Memorial. “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports,” George Washington said in his farewell address. “In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens.” You can’t force people to become Christians. But students should learn historical truths, not skewed leftist narratives. Institutions should also elevate and honor other pillars of America’s past — like the ideas of Western Civilization and the family. Part of this requires political action. You can’t win the war of ideas when the government subsidizes the losing side. America needs leaders who will act vigorously to defend America’s values. That includes deporting immigrants who hate America. But it also requires individual action. Pray for your country. Urge your friends to vote. Use whatever influence you have to advance these ideas. Send your grandchild a great work of literature and talk about a chapter a week. Revive the lost art of matchmaking to encourage one more marriage. Offer the practical help, like watching kids or helping buy a home, that could help a responsible young couple have one more child. A few of those choices would make headlines. Most wouldn’t. But every one of them would help restore America’s greatness. COPYRIGHT 2026 CREATORS.COM We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.

On this Independence Day, by invitation of the White House Task Force 250, I will stand on the main stage of the Great American State Fair to lead a National Mall crowd in a one-hour program of music and prayers for our nation. This exciting moment marking 250 years of American independence was unimaginable for me, a woman whose childhood Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) score—a test used by courts in custody cases—is 8 out of 10. I am in roughly the top 1% of American childhood adversity, enduring physical, emotional, sexual, and mental abuse. From this, several of my 7 biological siblings attempted suicide, and I struggled with severe depression, PTSD, and anxiety—including multiple hospitalizations. My father died on Monday this week. Dad was a talented music professor and former protégé of guitar legend Andrés Segovia. He taught me to sing, bought my first violin, and taught me piano—starting around age 4. Dad introduced me to the timeless beauty of Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart. But Dad was molested by a babysitter as a child, never recovering. He became a violent, mentally ill man who believed he was a modern-day prophet and subjected our family of 10 to instability, fear, and traumas I have shared publicly. What My Father Gave—and Took Both of those histories are true; I have spent decades learning to hold them in paradox. That tension—between perpetrators’ harm and the gifts they nonetheless transmit—is, in miniature, the same tension America confronts at 250. We are a nation founded on self-evident truths by men who did not live them. We expanded liberty each generation while failing, sometimes catastrophically, those we claimed to protect. For some, America’s current temptation is to either burn the inheritance down or whitewash its flaws. Neither posture serves us. The more noble work is to grieve what was broken while receiving its goodness and restoration. I learned this from my family long before I applied it to my country. My father’s abuse cost my siblings and me nearly everything. I do not diminish his harm for the sake of a tidy redemption arc. Yet when I sing patriotic hymns on July 4, the breath support, phrasing, and instinct for the emotional center of a melody—that came from Dad, cultivated across years of training. He gave me, amid wrenching damage, an inheritance that enriches my life: music as a vessel for the beautiful and holy ideals of America’s founding. Holding Pain and Inheritance Together This is a quintessential American capacity—honoring an imperfect inheritance without erasing its history. We practice it with our Founders, who constructed a framework for liberty while many of them embraced the evil practice of slavery. We practice it with our institutions, which extended rights and dignity through generations of struggle even as they betrayed others. We practice it within our own families, which rarely arrive as clean stories of villains and heroes. Efforts like the 1619 Project go further than honest reckoning—they seek to recast the American founding as irredeemably corrupt, its ideals mere cover for exploitation and documents unworthy of reverence. That is not history; it is a prosecutorial brief dressed as scholarship. Our founding documents did not cause slavery; they eventually helped end it. Generations of Americans—many of them enslaved or excluded—appealed to America’s promises as their own and used them to demand what the Founders failed to deliver. To discard those promises because the men who wrote them were hypocrites is to punish the ideals for the failures of the men and to leave the most vulnerable Americans hopeless. A nation that cannot distinguish between acknowledging its sins and repudiating its founding principles has lost its truthful core. A Patriotism Worth Singing About Forgiveness, I have learned, is not the same as excusing. It is stopping someone else’s worst chapter from writing the rest of your story. America is engaged in this reckoning right now—across race, region, and generation—and the outcome is not certain. What is certain is that the alternative—complete rejection of anything tainted by failure—leaves nothing to build on. Every institution, nation, family, and person (myself included) is tainted by sin. The question is what we choose to promote and transmit. When I lead the crowd on the Mall in “America the Beautiful” and “Amazing Grace,” I will be standing on a stage made possible by the musical gifts my father cultivated in me on a birthday celebrating the quest for a more perfect union. That is patriotism worth singing about: not blind celebration, not cynical dismissal, but the harder work of holding a legacy—a family’s, a nation’s—and choosing, with clear eyes, to honor what is good, true, and beautiful.

RealClearWire—If America’s Founding Fathers were still with us today, they wouldn’t avoid social media—they’d master it. Popular platforms like X, Facebook, Truth Social, and Instagram can reduce our ability to build trusting relationships and cross political boundaries. But they are also incredibly powerful tools to spread news and perspectives—and are not inherently incompatible with thoughtful citizenship.  The American Revolution itself was fueled by the disruptive communication methods of its day. Patriots embraced every available tool to spread their message, rally support, and build a movement for liberty. The Founders were not communication purists, but communication innovators. They were the pamphlet generation, and in a way, progenitors of the modern keyboard generation. The prominent methods of the day in 1776 were elite formal speeches and scholarly essays. But as John Adams wisely noted, “Liberty cannot be preserved without general knowledge among the people.” So the “ungrateful colonials” used nails, trees, horses, and town criers to inform the public. We employ websites and phones. Although we don’t even need to leave our chairs to promote liberty, the goal is no different.  Revolutionary communications specialists like Thomas Paine and Benjamin Franklin used pamphlets and newspapers to connect citizens across 13 colonies, allowing information and ideas to travel faster than ever before. Paine understood communication perhaps better than anyone. His pamphlet “Common Sense” became one of the most influential political publications in American history. Written in plain language for ordinary citizens, it transformed public opinion and helped turn colonial frustration into a movement for independence. If Franklin had access to the Internet, he would have used his liberty-based writings in The Pennsylvania Gazette to shape public opinion throughout the colonies. Paine and Franklin both had a gift for distilling complex political arguments into memorable phrases that would today become viral posts shared millions of times. They knew that ideas only matter if people hear them.  Consider Paul Revere’s famous midnight ride. His mission was simple: Get critical information to as many people as possible before it was too late, using horses and lanterns. If Revere could have sent a Tweet, posted on Instagram, or blasted a group text warning that British troops were on the move, he would have done it without hesitation, and the patriots of Lexington and Concord would be assembling before the British left Boston. The Founders would also not have shied away from vigorous online debate—would you want to argue with James Madison on the blessings of liberty and Natural Law? One can easily imagine Alexander Hamilton and Jefferson airing their political differences on podcasts or posting back and forth at each other on X. Disagreements between the two men were often fierce, but both recognized that a healthy republic requires citizens to hear competing viewpoints and weigh arguments for themselves. As the Founders were gifted with incredible discernment, they also would recognize the dangers that accompany modern communications technology. Social media allows information to travel faster than ever before, often at the expense of accuracy—both accidental and on purpose. A message may reach millions of people, but reach is not the same thing as trust. The Revolutionary era was also not free from misinformation, rumor, exaggeration, and political attacks. Newspapers regularly published anonymous essays. False stories circulated. Political opponents accused one another of dangerous intentions. Human nature has not changed much in 250 years. The challenges facing Americans today are remarkably similar to those facing the founding generation: how to use powerful communications tools to strengthen self-government rather than weaken it. Used wisely and with accuracy, social media can expand opportunities for citizen engagement and advance the cause of liberty just as pamphlets, newspapers, and correspondence networks did during the Revolution. But it requires citizens who value truth over tribalism, persuasion over intimidation, and dialog over outrage. Citizens still need trustworthy information. Leaders still need credibility. Public trust still matters. And a free society still depends upon the open exchange of ideas.  Modern communicators must use today’s tools with the commitment to truth, honesty, and liberty the Founders brought to their public squares to strengthen self-government rather than weaken it. Over two centuries later, they still have it right.  This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.

RealClearWire—The United States Army turned away Erik Holmstrom on Reception Day at West Point in 1995. He was a standout offensive lineman from Duluth with the body and the drive for it. The problem was an old ACL repair and a ligament that measured 0.03 centimeters too loose to meet deployment standards. The Army didn’t apologize. It sent him home. That’s how it’s supposed to work. That same standard is now at the center of a political firestorm over the Pentagon’s gender dysphoria exclusion policy and the D.C. Circuit’s June 2 ruling against it. The legal architecture of that fight matters, and my earlier piece in RealClearDefense laid it out in detail. But the deeper question gets less attention: Why does the military exclude people from service based on medical conditions in the first place? The answer is not cruelty. It’s arithmetic. Combat readiness is the mission. Every personnel decision the military makes flows from that fact. The military doesn’t owe anyone a uniform, and it never has. The Department of Defense has published its accession standards in DoD Instruction 6130.03, Volume 1 for decades. Change 6, issued February 3, 2026, reflects what military medicine has learned over generations: some conditions are incompatible with the demands of service, not because the individual lacks character, but because the body or mind can’t meet the mission requirement. The list of disqualifying conditions is longer than most people imagine and more mundane than most politicians would admit. Severe nodulocystic acne is on it. So is a history of atopic dermatitis after the 12th birthday with residual lesions in characteristic areas. Applicants actively on isotretinoin, the standard Accutane treatment, don’t qualify until four weeks after completing therapy—because severe acne on the chin or jawline can interfere with proper wear of a Kevlar chin strap in the field. Insulin-dependent diabetes disqualifies. Persistent asthma requiring medication after age 13 disqualifies. A history of ACL reconstruction is disqualifying, though often waivable depending on the branch and the functional outcome. The standards aren’t arbitrary. Each one traces back to a deployment scenario where the condition creates a medical liability the mission can’t absorb. Consider what that means in practice. A cadet at West Point earns a taxpayer-funded education valued at more than $250,000. He plays on the football team, starts every game, and tears his ACL in the fourth quarter of the Army-Navy game in his junior year. The surgery goes well. Rehabilitation goes well. But if the ligament doesn’t heal to spec before graduation, the Army won’t commission him into a combat role. The investment stops there. That is a rational decision by an institution that cannot afford to send officers into a forward operating base who can’t run to the wire. The military’s job is to break things and win wars. Officers who can’t deploy can’t do that job. The pool of eligible Americans is shrinking fast, and the numbers are difficult to excuse away. A 2020 Pentagon study found that 77% of Americans aged 17 to 24 are ineligible for military service without a waiver. The primary disqualifiers are not exotic conditions. Obesity accounts for 11%. Drug and alcohol abuse accounts for 8%. Medical or physical conditions account for 7%. In fiscal year 2023, the services turned away 52,000 applicants solely because of obesity—a figure that exceeded the Army’s 41,000-recruit shortfall that same year. Obesity costs the military an estimated $1.5 billion annually in health care and readiness costs. More than one in three young adults aged 17 to 24 is too heavy to qualify on weight alone. Among Gen Z, only about one in four is eligible for service at all. Vaping and nicotine use, which degrade pulmonary function and cardiovascular endurance, add to the picture. Drug use and criminal records round it out. The Council for a Strong America, a coalition of retired generals and admirals, has been raising this alarm for years. The supply of physically capable, mentally stable, drug-free young Americans who also want to serve is not infinite. The military cannot afford to fill a slot with anyone who brings a condition that forecloses full participation in the mission. Gender dysphoria belongs in that analysis. The condition, by clinical definition, involves clinically significant distress lasting at least six months. The treatment protocol for those who pursue medical transition involves indefinite cross-sex hormone therapy requiring regular laboratory monitoring and a clinical supply chain that doesn’t exist in the field. Surgical procedures, when pursued, are elective and extensive. The RAND Corporation’s 2016 study, commissioned by the Obama Pentagon, estimated that male-to-female surgical transition would result in 135 non-deployable days, with hysterectomy adding 111 days. A Washington Free Beacon analysis of the RAND data calculated an average of 238 non-deployable days per individual when all procedure types are combined. That’s nearly two-thirds of a year removed from the force for elective procedures. Between 2016 and mid-2021, the Pentagon spent $11.58 million on psychotherapy alone for service members with gender dysphoria diagnoses. An additional $3.1 million covered 243 surgeries, and $340,000 went toward hormone therapy for 637 individuals. The $15 million total across five years isn’t what breaks the defense budget. The readiness gap is. The Army’s May 2025 separation guidance makes the operational reality plain: A service member with a confirmed gender dysphoria diagnosis is immediately non-deployable, and separation actions begin within 30 days. This principle didn’t originate with the current administration. The military’s selection logic has been consistent since the Civil War: finite training budget, finite medical capacity, finite deployment slots. You fill them with people who can go where the mission requires and stay until it’s done. The Army turned away men with flat feet, men with compromised eyesight, men with histories of psychiatric treatment—not because those men weren’t Americans, but because the infantry doesn’t carry passengers. I spent time around Marine OCS candidates who were as mentally committed to service as anyone I’ve encountered. Some didn’t make it through physical screening. The Marine Corps didn’t apologize for that either. The mission defines the standard, not the candidate’s desire to serve. The counterargument runs like this: transgender individuals have served honorably, the medical costs are manageable, and exclusion is discriminatory. The first point is true. The second is a partial truth that ignores the deployability data. The third misunderstands what a military exclusion policy actually is. Employment discrimination law governs civilian workplaces. The military operates under a different constitutional framework precisely because its function is different. The Supreme Court established that clearly in Rostker v. Goldberg (1981), and the Court’s May 2025 stay order in Shilling v. Trump confirmed that the executive branch retains broad authority over military personnel decisions. The question isn’t whether someone wants to serve. The question is whether the armed services can execute their mission with that person in the force. That’s the only test that has ever mattered. The United States military is the most capable fighting force in human history. It remains so because it has applied a ruthlessly practical filter to who wears the uniform. An aging population, a deteriorating baseline of youth fitness, and a political culture that increasingly treats military service as a vehicle for social redress are converging on a readiness problem that no appellate court can solve. The man who tears his ACL at West Point doesn’t get a commission because he can’t do the job. The recruit who’s 40 pounds overweight doesn’t ship to Parris Island because he can’t do the job. The individual whose treatment protocol requires 238 non-deployable days and indefinite hormonal therapy doesn’t go to a forward operating base because they can’t do the job. That’s not a political statement. That’s a job description. This article was originally published by RealClearDefense and made available via RealClearWire. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.

This year, Americans are celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, which declared the “self-evident” truth that “all men are created equal” and “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights,” including the rights to “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The leaders of the Democratic Party, however, deny this self-evident truth. Take, for example, House Democrat leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York. On Jan. 11, 2023, House Republicans brought up the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act. This very simple and straightforward bill, as explained by its official summary, would have required that when “a child” is “born alive following an abortion or attempted abortion … a health care practitioner who is present must (1) exercise the same degree of care as would reasonably be provided to any other child born alive at the same gestational age, and (2) ensure the child is immediately admitted to a hospital.” This proposal to protect born babies outraged Jeffries, who saw it as an attack on one of the fundamental principles embraced by his political party. “As Democrats, we believe in a woman’s freedom to make her own reproductive healthcare decisions, period, full stop, decisions that should be between a woman, her family, and her doctors, period, full stop,” he said on the House floor. “We believe in Roe v. Wade,” said Jeffries. “Do you wonder about our position? That is it. The Women’s Health Protection Act, that is it. Freedom to make your own reproductive healthcare decisions, that is it. As compared to a clear effort—that is what this bill is about today, a march toward criminalizing abortion care, a nationwide ban, government-mandated pregnancies, part of an extreme MAGA Republican agenda.” That day, the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act passed the Republican-controlled House 220-210. No Republican voted against it—but only one Democrat (Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas) voted for it. It did not come up in the then-Democrat-controlled Senate. The Women’s Health Protection Act that Jeffries said his party supported would prohibit, according to its official summary, “governmental restrictions on the provision of, and access to, abortion services” before the viability of the unborn baby. After viability, it would prohibit government restrictions on abortions done to protect a patient’s “health.” In other words, it would legalize the killing of unborn babies nationwide. In opposing the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, Jeffries likely feared that if Democrats recognized the unalienable right to life of a newly born baby, they would not be able to defend denying the right to life of that same baby just moments before birth. Later that same year, when Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., was nominated to be speaker of the House, Jeffries went on CNN and accused Johnson of having what he called “extreme views.” The primary example of these “extreme views” that Jeffries cited was: “Mike Johnson wants to criminalize abortion care and impose a nationwide ban.” When the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act came up in the Senate on Jan. 22, 2025, as this column has noted before, Democrats used the filibuster to block it. “This bill is a metaphor for what is to come: an emboldened, extremist anti-choice resurgence far, far further to the right than the American people are,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York said on the Senate floor that day about this proposal to protect born babies. When the House voted on this bill the next day, it passed 217-204—but, once again, only one Democrat (Cuellar) voted for it. Jeffries, of course, voted against it again—as he had in 2015, 2018 and 2023. This year on June 24—the fourth anniversary of the Supreme Court’s opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade—Jeffries held a press conference with other House Democratic leaders. “The Dobbs decision was unjust, unacceptable and un-American,” he claimed. “As Democrats, we believe in a woman’s freedom to make her own reproductive healthcare decisions,” Jeffries said. “It’s a decision that should be between a woman, her family, and her doctor, not right-wing officials trying to jam their extreme ideology down the throats of women throughout the United States of America and their families. And as House Democrats, we will continue to push with the fierce urgency of now to protect the reproductive freedom of women, to stand up and forcefully advocate for the Women’s Health Protection Act and all other enlightened pieces of legislation designed to ensure that we are protecting the health and well-being of the women throughout the United States of America.” Schumer also spoke at a press conference marking the fourth anniversary of Dobbs—and called for abortion to be a defining issue in this year’s midterm elections. “So, Republicans created this horror story,” Schumer said. “Democrats won’t stand for it. We’re going to fight them every step of the way. … [T]his issue will help us win back the House, win back the Senate.” If Democrats do win control of the House and Senate in this year’s midterms—on the 250th anniversary of American independence—Jeffries and Schumer are likely to become the speaker of the House and the Senate majority leader, respectively. In those roles, they would lead their party in seeking to violate the first principle of the Declaration of Independence by denying unborn babies their unalienable God-given right to life. COPYRIGHT 2026 CREATORS.COM We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.