Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal senior contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos. Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for the Daily Signal.   One question that came up constantly during this 250th anniversary Fourth of July celebration was whether we were gonna make it another 250 years, 500 years. We could be longer than the Roman Republic. Longer than the Roman Empire.   And to answer that question, you have to know what allowed us to get this far, and for those who don’t like us, what they would like to do to stop us.  And it turns out that the reasons that we survived 250 years and the reasons that we might survive another 250 years are precisely the areas where our critics would wish us to fail or who are actively trying to see that we fail.   Take the first one, our Constitution. What’s brilliant about the American Constitution is its federalism.  It outlines all the duties and prerogatives of the federal government, and then it says anything that is not relegated to the federal government is up to the states, and that’s the majority of human experiences. It doesn’t mean the states can fight one another or pass laws against one another or pass laws against the federal government.  The federal government has ultimate authority, but this federalism means that if California wants to tax 13.3% and Florida wants to tax 0%, then maybe 300,000 people a year will go to Florida and still enjoy the American experience, and vice versa.   You can go to any state in the country and what it really means is you’re having 50 separate experiments.  You’re all united by the federal government and the checks and balances of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. But you have 50 different interpretations of them based on local and regional concerns, and that gives Americans a lot of choice, and that means when you’re disaffected and you’re angry at your lot in life, you have 49 other choices, and it’s been a wonderful way of easing tensions.  The second is that we have been the beneficiary of legal immigration. We take more immigrants than any place in the world, and people have remarked that as we speak, the people who created Google, for example, or Elon Musk, were all legal immigrants, and they came to the United States because this is the only place in the world where you would have a free market economy, a protection of private wealth, and an encouragement of the population to be successful and to take risk.  And it’s impossible to envision a Silicon Valley in the Muslim Middle East. It just wouldn’t happen. Wouldn’t happen. You couldn’t have a Harvard or Yale or Princeton in today’s China. They wouldn’t allow free speech. You wouldn’t have most of our American institutions in any other place.   And that means we get all of these legal immigrants, and they enrich our country if they come in diverse fashion, in numbers that can be assimilated legally with some knowledge of our country and preferably with English language fluency.  The other third reason is we were very lucky naturally. Once the United States, whether you like it or not, embraced Manifest Destiny and decided we were not going to be a continent of warring states as was Europe, 30 or 40 individual nations, but one uniform state in North America, then it was richly endowed for all of us.  We had mining, we had gold, we had silver, we had iron ore, we had almost… We even have rare minerals, rare earth minerals we have not fully tapped. We have oil, we have coal, we have hydroelectric. We have the richest energy nation in the world. We’re pumping more oil and gas than any other country in the history of the universe.  We have plentiful timber. We have plentiful farmland. We’re the largest farming producing country by the value of our exports and our domestic produce in the world. We have two huge coastlines, not to count the Gulf of America.   In other words, we’re protected from the insanity that goes on in Latin America, Africa, Europe, and Asia, and we always have been.  So the sheer size of the American continent, its role in American history as a frontier, its role as a safety valve where people could head west, young men, if they were disaffected by events on the East Coast, and they could make a fortune or make a livelihood farming or in timber or in minerals or in energy, you name it.  There’s a fourth reason that we’re very successful, and that is we have a free market, private property economy. We’re not a socialist, we’re not a communist country.   In other words, people flock to the United States from countries where there is no economic opportunity. It either is statism controlled by the state or it’s crony capitalist, and that’s why we have the most billionaires in the world.  China has more people than we do, four times more people. Russia has twice, three times the territory, but we have more people in the affluent class.   And finally, we have a middle class. Our middle class is the largest in the world. We’re not a pyramidal society of a few rich people on top that use their wealth for special dispensations or to affect the government or a mass of poor who are subsidized and always demanding entitlements.  Free middle class. Now, those are our strengths.   So if you wanted to hurt the United States or to ensure that it would not last 250 years, what would you do to stop that? Well, the first thing that I would do is I would start questioning the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. So what do we see now from, for example, the left?  They’re always attacking the Second Amendment, the right to bear arms. They want to pack the court. They want to get rid of the filibuster. It is in the Constitution, the Electoral College. They want to ban or destroy the Electoral College.  They want to bring in two new states specifically, not one conservative and one liberal like the old Alaska-Hawaii compromise, but two liberal new states, Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C., and get four senators.   Anytime you see anyone that wants to alter the system like that, you know that they don’t have the best interest of the United States because the system has worked for 250 years in most of these cases.  The second thing is you would want to, as I said earlier, you would want to say, We don’t want legal-only immigration. We want anybody to come in. So we have 30 million illegal immigrants right now. Ten to 12 million came in under Joe Biden. We have no idea who they are. You walk across the border.  Is he a criminal? I don’t know. Is he Albert Einstein? I don’t know. Does he have COVID? I don’t know. We were vaccinating in a mandatory fashion Americans in 2020 while people were flooding across in 2020, ’21, ’22, flooding across the border without border security.   And today, even though legal immigration has been the bulwark of what we’ve seen, we are getting immigrants who even come in legally and have nothing but hostile attitudes toward their generous host.  I’m thinking now of you, Zohran Mamdani, and your followers who can’t say a good word about the United States even though it welcomed you with open arms and many people helped make your family even wealthier than it was when it arrived.  If you also wanted to damage the United States, then you would look at what I just talked about, natural resources. You would say no mining. We’re in a problem right now with rare earths. We’re short. They’re critical to our economy. China has a monopoly, but we have some of the most abundant rare earth minerals in the world and we’ve been prohibited from using them.  We have the richest deposits of oil. Until recently, we did not develop them all. We did not develop coal in the proper way.   Our farming sector, the best and most efficient in the world, is under attack by environmentalists who want to cut off the water here in California.   I’m speaking from the richest agricultural county in the United States, Fresno County, and yet it needs water that has been sent out on the San Joaquin River into the ocean.  If you also wanted to destroy the United States or see it not last too much longer, you would kind of assault the middle class.  You would look at the United States as a binary, a Marxist binary. It is comprised not by class but by race. So 70%, 65% are white oppressors. They are mostly white male, to be more particular, or more sensational, white male Christian heterosexuals, or the white race or whatever we call these silly terms.  They are the exploiter, victimizer, and everybody on the other side is the victimized or oppressed. This is the binary that Zohran Mamdani and people like him in the Democratic Socialists of America use to alienate and divide the country, and it’s worked very well.  But in between those two racial binaries is a class system in which the middle class still is the largest class and was the exact form, shape of a class system that the founders thought would be essential to republican government.  And then finally, of course, one of our greatest strengths is we have institutionalized a free market private property economy. Do away with that, and we go the way of the old Soviet Union or Cuba or Venezuela.  And what do we see now? We have people in the Democratic Socialists of America that want to confiscate property, get the means of production, take over tenant-landlord relationships, and absorb the private sector into the state.  If that happens, we will be impoverished.   So we can make it another 250 years if we do what we did the last 250 years. But if we let people destroy those strengths that I enumerated, then we won’t last another 50 years.   We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.

President Donald Trump is in Turkey this week to meet with heads of state representing our allies from across the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). In the wake of Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s announcement of a six-month review of U.S. force allocations to the European theater entitled “NATO 3.0,” leaders from across NATO are preparing their statements on what this new vision for the transatlantic alliance ought to look like. The summit is taking place in Ankara, Turkey, on July 7 and 8, marking Turkey’s second time hosting a NATO Summit. President Trump has stressed repeatedly that one of the main reasons he decided to attend the summit was his desire to meet with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Turkey, despite often coming in for negative headlines because of its sometimes problematic foreign policy, plays an important role in NATO, providing the alliance with an impressive military and a strategic  geographic location anchoring the southeastern flank of NATO. Ahead of the summit, NATO issued a statement outlining the key talking points to be discussed, including defense investment, the defense industry, and continued support for Ukraine within NATO. The Ankara Summit is in many ways a progress report on the hugely successful 2025 summit in The Hague, at which all NATO allies agreed to a new defense spending minimum of 5% in a move that was both a huge benefit to the security of Europe and a huge foreign policy win for President Trump. Secretary General of NATO Mark Rutte’s vision is “to turn allied commitments into concrete results.” The Trump administration has advocated that Europe boost its defense capabilities so the United States can shift its priorities to the Indo-Pacific. President Trump has previously criticized NATO’s defense capabilities and has withdrawn troops from Europe to posture-shift and increase burden-sharing. Defense industrial base issues will likely be a major topic of discussion at the Ankara Summit as well, and the Trump administration has expressed interest in increasing joint procurement efforts with other NATO allies. This is especially important for increasing the number of precision-guided munitions across the alliance. While America is changing its priorities and Europe is building up its own defense, the alliance will continue to support Ukraine, allocating $70 billion in military equipment, additional assistance, and training for the Ukrainian military. Amidst the talk about NATO’s posture shift in defense spending, The Heritage Foundation published a comprehensive special report titled NATO 3.0 and American Security Strategy in Europe, which contains extensive policy recommendations for what shifts in force posture, planning, and procurement will be necessary to make the NATO 3.0 vision a reality. U.S. decision-makers are forced by strategic necessity to look to the Pacific as China engages in a massive military buildup and continues to threaten its neighbors, many of whom are American allies like Japan, the Philippines, and Australia. At the same time, it is in the benefit of the U.S. to continue to play a critical role in NATO to secure American interests in the Atlantic theater. The success of the proposed NATO 3.0 is as much up to European NATO allies as it is to the U.S., and continued demonstrations of European commitment to taking primary responsibility for their own defense will go a long way toward convincing policymakers in Washington of the continued importance of the transatlantic alliance. NATO has served the strategic interests of both Americans and Europeans for more than 70 years, and NATO 3.0 is a vision for how it may continue to do so far into the future.

The town of Woodbridge, Virginia, a suburb of Washington, D.C., was recently home to a public roadside march of Islamic supporters who chanted sayings in a foreign language, beat their chest and flew flags written in Arabic. The scene was captured in a video posted on X. Amy Mek, founder of the Rise, Align, Ignite, Reclaim Foundation, described the march on social media as an organized event from the Mohammadia Center of Virginia, a group that describes itself as “a cornerstone for the Shia Muslim community in the Washington metropolitan area.” The Mohammadia Center of Virginia did not respond to the Daily Signal’s request for comment. “Another show of force in the Old Dominion. Democrats are celebrating their demographic conquest,” Mek wrote. “Shia Muslims marched through the streets of Woodbridge yesterday in a full Ashura Juloos – flags flying, chants echoing, the whole imported ritual on public roads.” ISLAM CONQUERS WOODBRIDGE, VIRGINIAAnother show of force in the Old Dominion. Democrats are celebrating their demographic conquest….Shia Muslims marched through the streets of Woodbridge yesterday in a full Ashura Juloos – flags flying, chants echoing, the whole imported… pic.twitter.com/6Sg9xuONzc— Amy Mek (@AmyMek) July 1, 2026 Mek accused the marchers of starting and ending the rally “at the site of their new mosque being built on Prince William Parkway.” “This wasn’t some quiet religious gathering in a basement,” Mek continued. “This was a public procession to make sure Virginia knows they’re here, organized, and growing.” Rallies like these, portraying the growing strength of Islam in the United States, helped prompt conservative members of Congress to found the Sharia Free America Caucus last fall. The caucus, whose membership has expanded to almost 70 members, serves to highlight and acknowledge the growth of Islam in the United States and, primarily, the concerns that Islamic civilizations could bring with them to the United States, which the caucus believes are incompatible with the U.S. Constitution. In a previous interview with the Daily Signal, co-founder of the Sharia Free America Caucus Rep. Keith Self, R-Texas, said that he founded the caucus because he acknowledged that “we are losing the race to stop the Islamification of America.” “My issue is what we don’t know about Islamic law,” Self continued. “One of those things is that a Muslim has the right to four marriages. The Muslim community is so insulated and closed off that we don’t know.” The other founder of the caucus, Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, told the Daily Signal that “well-funded and highly organized Islamic organizations” have brought the “march of Islam” to American town’s and cities because they “understand how to navigate and exploit America’s political and legal systems to advance their agenda.” “We cannot allow elected officials to dismiss these concerns by claiming the First Amendment leaves us powerless to act,” Roy added, before calling on Congress to continue using “its lawful investigative powers to expose these groups and fight back.” The group Mek claimed was behind the rally includes members predominantly from Pakistan and India, and recently expanded to welcome members with Iranian, Afghan, and Iraqi backgrounds. The countries represented in the Mohammadia Center of Virginia’s membership have each experienced their own variation of Sharia and Islamic rule. Sharia law and strict Islamic rule, the broad moral and legal framework derived from the Quran and the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad, often open the door to controversy and criticism due to concerns about treatment of women and non-Muslims, female genital mutilation, restrictions on education, and other human rights issues. For instance, according to the Canopy Forum, Pakistan’s 1973 Constitution declared Islam is the state religion, the head of state must be Muslim, and all laws must conform to Quranic and Sunnah injunctions. Article 227 of the nation’s Constitution established the Federal Shariat Court, which is a component of the country’s Supreme Court, to review laws for Islamic conformity, and the Council of Islamic Ideology, which provides advisory guidance. The other countries now included in the group’s membership, Iran, Afghanistan, and Iraq, arguably maintain stricter Islamic enforcement. Iran, for example, rebranded itself as the Islamic Republic of Iran after its 1979 revolution, enforcing strict Shia Muslim norms, seen by many as oppressive toward women and non-Shia Muslims, as detailed by the nonprofit organization No Labels. Similarly, since 2021, Afghanistan has been under the rule of the Taliban, an Islamist fundamentalist group that has subjected the country’s population to Sharia rule. According to the Council on Foreign Relations, Taliban rule has caused Afghanistan’s economy to “flounder,” while “malnutrition has soared, and more than half a million jobs have been lost.” “Most women and girls over twelve have been banned from working and attending school,” the Council on Foreign Relations added. In Iraq, the International Journal of Criminal Justice Sciences has described the country as operating under contract law that is heavily influenced by Sharia teachings.

After the U.S. Supreme Court struck down President Donald Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship, a Texas lawmaker is calling on the Legislature to convene a special session to combat birth tourism. Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that birthright citizenship may remain in place, with Chief Justice John Roberts writing that the 14th Amendment guarantees citizenship to anyone born on U.S. soil, regardless of their parents’ immigration status. The following day, Republican state Rep. Brian Harrison, sent a letter urging the Texas Legislature to convene an immediate special session to protect Texans from “birth tourism.” In his letter, Harrison called for legislation making it a felony to operate or participate in birth tourism within Texas, expanding the criminal offense of illegal entry to include entering the state for the purpose of birth tourism, and granting the Texas attorney general authority to investigate and prosecute birth tourism cases. Harrison is also urging lawmakers to adopt a resolution formally condemning the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision and another resolution calling on Congress to take action on birthright citizenship. Harrison’s letter comes as reports have surfaced that U.S. hospitals have advertised “birth packages” costing up to $5,000 for foreign nationals seeking to give birth in border states such as Texas.  One advertisement for Mission Regional Medical Center appeared on a highway billboard. Written in both English and Spanish, it directed expectant mothers to call a phone number or visit a website for information about giving birth in South Texas. According to the billboard, a natural birth cost $3,950, while a cesarean section cost $5,525. When visiting the website, havemybabyinTexas.com, visitors were initially greeted with a Spanish-language homepage featuring testimonials and information about two Texas hospitals that offer childbirth services: Mission Regional Medical Center and Knapp Medical Center—both located in South Texas near the border. After images of the billboard circulated on social media and prompted backlash, the website appears to have been taken offline. Harrison also pointed to Texas Department of State Health Services policies regarding birth certificates.  According to the agency, a foreigner may use certain forms of identification, including an El Salvadoran consular certification, El Salvadoran Unique Identity Card, Honduran consular certification, or a Mexican voter registration card when applying for a Texas birth certificate. The department’s website also states that an immediate family member—including a sibling, grandparent, or spouse—may request a birth certificate under certain circumstances, rather than only the child’s mother or father. Harrison’s proposal has drawn support from members of Congress, including U.S. Rep. Chip Roy who wrote on X, “Texas should do this—and more.” Harrison said Texas should act despite the Supreme Court’s decision and pressure the federal government to address birth tourism and birthright citizenship. “After yesterday’s Supreme Court decision, Texans deserve action, not just rhetoric, from their state leaders. Texas must start acting like the sovereign state it is and stop taking it on the chin when actions from D.C. threaten to destroy the very fabric of our republic,” Harrison said.  “Texas must not simply act like a powerless bystander but take bold and decisive action to protect liberty for future generations. I am publicly demanding an immediate special session to combat the harms from mass birth tourism, pressure the federal government to fix birth tourism, and to protect the value of citizenship that countless paid the ultimate price for. “I hope every elected Republican in Texas joins my call for immediate action. Delay is unacceptable for a state like Texas,” his letter concluded.

PROVO, Utah, July 6 (Reuters) – A police officer at the university where prominent conservative U.S. activist Charlie Kirk was killed last year testified on Monday he observed what looked like a “sniper pad” atop the building from which the fatal shot was fired, as prosecutors began laying out their case that a Utah man should stand trial for the crime. In a packed Provo, Utah courtroom, Kirk’s widow Erika Kirk sat feet away from Tyler Robinson, the man accused of driving four hours from his Utah town of Washington to murder Kirk, 31, on September 10. Members of Robinson’s family also were present. Robinson, wearing a gray jacket, sat between his lawyers, taking notes.  Donald Trump Jr. was at the preliminary hearing, media reported, and right-wing activist Jack Posobiec was seen entering the courthouse. During the week-long hearing, state prosecutors must convince District Court Judge Tony Graf that probable cause exists to believe that Robinson, 23, fired the single shot that killed Kirk in front of thousands of people in Orem, Utah. Kirk was an influential figure credited with energizing many young voters behind Republican candidate Donald Trump in the 2024 U.S. presidential election. Kirk was shot while appearing at Utah Valley University, 40 miles south of Salt Lake City, for one of his campus debates that drew crowds and gave him national prominence. Chris Bagley, who was an officer with the university’s police force on duty the day of the killing, said he saw Kirk shot and described the ensuing chaos. “He was answering a question, and then I heard a shot fired,” Bagley testified as the first prosecution witness. “Everybody started getting up and starting to run in a sort of chaotic, panic situation.” Bagley said he saw Kirk slump to the left after the gunshot. An initial report, which turned out to be mistaken, said a suspect had been taken into custody, Bagley said.  Bagley said he ran to a campus building from which he believed the shot came, and went up four flights of stairs to the roof. There, Bagley said, he found a screwdriver and markings in gravel, photographs of which were entered into evidence. Bagley also said he saw depressions in the roof’s gravel surface apparently made by elbows, knees and feet. “To me it looks like a sniper pad,” Bagley said. Bagley said he later viewed campus police video showing a person on that roof getting into position to shoot Kirk, taking a shot, then running to the northeast side of the building. The person dropped off the roof into grass below and escaped, Bagley said. In cross examination, Robinson’s lawyer Kathryn Nester asked Bagley about an empty pistol holster the officer saw on the ground in the courtyard area where Kirk was shot. Bagley said the holster was never recovered for evidence, nor checked for fingerprints. If the judge finds probable cause, Robinson would enter a plea at an arraignment that could take place the same day, and the case would be set for trial at a later date. He faces seven criminal charges including aggravated murder. Prosecutors have said they would seek the death penalty for Robinson, who was studying to be an electrician. Kirk’s killing, captured in cellphone video that spread widely on social media, is among a series of attacks targeting U.S. political figures in recent years that have fueled debate over political violence in a deeply polarized country.  He co-founded Turning Point USA when he was 18 in 2012, and the conservative youth organization became an influential force in Republican politics. Prosecutors are expected to show graphic video of the killing, and Kirk’s family may leave the courtroom when some evidence is presented, according to a person familiar with the situation.  They also are expected to present video that they allege shows Robinson at the university before and after Kirk was shot. Prosecutors also plan to offer other evidence they allege links Robinson to the crime, including DNA from the rifle that authorities say was used in the killing, a recorded statement from Robinson’s former roommate and a handwritten message reading, “I had the opportunity to take out Charlie Kirk and I took it.” Lawyers for Robinson are likely to highlight ballistics testing that proved inconclusive in matching a bullet fragment removed from Kirk’s body with the alleged murder weapon. Robinson surrendered to police after his parents saw images of the gunman and confronted him, according to court filings.  Erika Kirk, who took over Turning Point USA after Kirk’s death, was in the courtroom. Kirk’s parents Kathryn and Robert were seen entering the courthouse before the hearing. “Charlie was a beloved husband, son, brother, friend and father. Every court proceeding serves as a painful reminder of his death and the loss that has irrevocably impacted our lives and the lives of his children,” Kirk’s parents, wife and sister said in a statement on Monday. (Reporting by Andrew Hay in New Mexico; editing by Donna Bryson, Cynthia Osterman and David Gregorio)