A growing number of Americans are feeling less patriotic about their country as the United States prepares to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. According to a Public Religion Research Institute poll released last week, “Just half of Americans are extremely or very proud of being an American (51%) or of America’s 250-year history (49%).” Those low numbers are being fueled by Democrats, according to the survey. “Most Republicans (83% and 82%, respectively) are extremely or very proud, compared with over four in ten independents (43% and 44%), and three in ten Democrats (31% and 28%),” the Public Religion Research Institute poll revealed. A mere 24% said America is a good moral example for the world, while 18% said they approved of how democracy is working in the United States today. The American Dream There is also a sharp partisan divide about the American Dream. When respondents were asked whether they believed if you work hard, you’ll get ahead, just 49% agreed vs. 50% who disagreed. “Republicans are notably more likely to believe in the American Dream (76%) than independents (46%) and Democrats (30%),” the poll found. PRRI President Robert P. Jones told Axios, “What you really see is one vision of the country, and one mood among Republicans, and a very, very different vision of the country and mood among both independents and Democrats.”   The survey also asked about the role of God in America. “Just 44% of Americans agree with the idea that God has granted America a special role in human history, compared with a slim majority who disagree (52%),” according to the Public Religion Research Institute data. In 2012, a majority of all religious groups believed in God’s providence for America. Today, that was true for only Latter-day Saints, white evangelical Protestants, Hispanic Protestants, and black Protestants. Progressives Prefer Europe In addition to the decline in patriotism, progressives in the United States also view several European countries more favorably than their own country, according to recent polling from the Napolitan News Service.  “The progressive base has a higher—significantly higher—opinion of France, the U.K., and Germany than they do of the United States,” said Scott Rasmussen, founder of the Napolitan Institute and president of RMG Research.  "Just 57% of the progressive base have a favorable opinion of our country."@ScottWRasmussen https://t.co/54InhX2UwM pic.twitter.com/fJ0YbU31Ka— Napolitan News Service (@NapolitanNews) June 4, 2026 Among voters who hold progressive policy positions, 81% viewed France favorably, 78% viewed the United Kingdom favorably, and 67% viewed Germany favorably, according to the Napolitan News Service.  Rasmussen noted that while progressives profess to “love the country” and “believe in America’s founding ideals,” they “are more likely to be disenchanted” when the president is a Republican like Donald Trump.  Progressives’ viewpoints on their country, therefore, shift depending on who is in office, Rasmussen said. With Trump as president, there is “an inclination for some of these progressives” to be “a little bit embarrassed, and that’s reflected in the data,” he noted.  Fewer than 6 in 10 AOC-Policy voters (57%) have a favorable view of the U.S.8 in 10 view France (81%) and the UK (79%) favorably.Just under 7 in 10 (67%) view Germany favorably.1,000 RV by @ScottWRasmussenhttps://t.co/54InhX2UwM pic.twitter.com/2K6ubPSx9I— Napolitan News Service (@NapolitanNews) June 3, 2026

Virginians are facing some tough battles this year, and it didn’t have to be that way. Republican leaders are getting heat for two votes taken on June 13 at the Republican Party of Virginia State Central Committee meeting. That’s not fair. They should take heat for the fact that neither of them should have been necessary. The first was what to do with the accusations that the Lynchburg Republican Committee had violated the law, and the second was whether to issue a Resolution Opposing the three constitutional amendments on the ballot in November. First, at the risk of challenging “watching grass grow” for your attention, I’m going to give you more background than the press (and social media posts) are putting out there about the Lynchburg situation and then show you why it should not have been necessary. The State Central Committee voted to dissolve the Lynchburg Republican Committee and invalidate their firehouse primary for city council. Yes, that is an extreme measure. It comes in the wake of Attorney General Jay Jones launching an investigation into the firehouse primary the unit held. The AG’s letter states that, “The OAG has reviewed allegations that the LRCC implemented an inadequate absentee ballot process for the primary and that certain protected voters were excluded from participating in the election.” The AG is not looking into whether political parties can hold firehouse primaries, as some have suggested; they are looking into allegations by Republicans who were kept from participating in this one. City Councilor Chris Faraldi told WFXR-TV that some of the issues come down to establishing email ballots. “When you consider the implications of fraud, of cheating, just with that fact alone that was determined.” This is where the Republican State Central Committee comes in. They voted 55-17 to declare the results invalid, disband the committee, and bar the leadership from returning for the rest of the term. The exception was Steven “Doc” Troxel, who was commended for trying to run a fair process. So, how would this have been avoided? The blame lies with the “Convention Ban” that was passed during the COVID lockdowns. It was called HB2020 before it got its catchy name “The Convention Ban,” and the vote in the House of Delegates was 53-44, with all Republicans voting “nay.” Here’s the avoidable part: in the 2019 general election, the GOP lost the majority in the House. Democrats flipped Districts 28, 40, 76, 83, 91, and 94, and only eight races saw higher than a 50% voter turnout. Two of those flipped seats were open, and the other four Republican incumbents were ousted with most of the district voters sitting it out: Tim Hugo (HD-40, to Dan Helmer, turnout 49.5%), Chris Jones (HD-76, to Clint Jenkins, 44.3%), Christopher Stolle (HD-83, to Nancy Guy, 40.3%), and David Yancey (HD-94, to Shelly Simonds, 38.8%). Because this was also the year that 12 Virginia Beach employees were killed by a co-worker, gun-control advocates like Michael Bloomberg’s “Everytown for Gun Safety” sent $573,000 alone to flip these seats. (Doesn’t sound like much by today’s standards, but it was a lot then.) Democrats also knew that this would be the Assembly that would finally wrest political districts from partisan assembly members (ironic, huh?). Regardless, there were lots of votes left uncast, and at least some of those might have been Republicans (sarcasm). The other State Central vote Saturday was the one that established a party position against the three constitutional amendments—amendments that flew through the General Assembly because Democrats flipped 14 House seats. Yes, those elections had low turnouts, too. House District 30: John McAuliff ousted Geary Higgins by 900 votes. Mark Downey defeated Chad Green by 1,300, and Bobby Orrock was sent home by 1,500. Much was made of the millions of dollars that were poured into them from outside Virginia on behalf of Democrats. Hearing of all those dollars coming in became a great way to get GOP voters to “self-suppress.” Sure, the amendments can be stopped, but it would have been easier to stop them before they got started. An EMS worker would tell you that if someone is turning purple, it means that they are being choked of oxygen. A state turns purple due to a lack of political oxygen getting to the “red” blood cells. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.

Imagine for a moment that you’re at a Donald Trump rally. As you approach the event, you come across a Republican protester wearing an anti-Trump mask and carrying a “No more wars” sign. Perhaps the person is also accusing the president of being too cozy with corporations. Does that sound unlikely? Well, outside a Democratic meeting this week—an event sponsored by a Democrat state senator and featuring an appearance by L. Louise Lucas, the president pro tempore of the Senate and the state’s most influential lawmaker—stood the Virginia Democratic Party’s version of just such a protester. This Democrat sported a cardboard image of the Democrat governor wearing a mock tiara that said: “Diva Data Center.” The protester was holding a “No more data centers” sign and hinted the governor is too close to Dominion Energy. The protester wasn’t shunned for shaming a governor from her own party; other rally-goers seemed to welcome her presence. The governor’s rift with Democrats goes deeper. Earlier that same day, Spanberger’s staff reportedly asked two Democrats who’ve appeared recently with Lucas to leave a bill signing that Spanberger was hosting. “It’s a shame the governor decided to take these actions today,” Sen. Russet Perry told Virginia Scope. “I’ve never been publicly critical or disparaging of her and genuinely wish her the best. But it is my job as a senator, in a coequal branch, to fight for my constituents.” Spanberger herself was met by anti-data center protesters at an event in Loudoun County this week. One of Spanberger’s hurdles is the same one faced by all governors: Virginia is the only state that limits its governor to a single consecutive term. That means that the governor’s strongest day is Election Day, and it can be a downhill slide from there. Still, Spanberger has taken that slide on steroids. She scored 57 percent of the vote in November 2025, sweeping into office in a state that had narrowly elected Republican Glenn Youngkin four years earlier. But the honeymoon was short. By the end of March, just more than two months into her term, a George Mason University poll put Spanberger’s job approval at 47 percent; it found that 46 percent disapproved. As a candidate, Spanberger benefited from a weak opponent: few voters seemed excited about then-Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears. So it makes sense that the new governor would lose some support as Republicans and independents fantasized about what might have been. But a 10-point drop in such a short time frame is surprising, especially since the state remains in generally good shape. It isn’t as if Virginia has endured a natural disaster or similar external threat. In fact, general fund revenues soared throughout the beginning of her tenure. Revenues jumped 6.9 percent in April year over year, and total collections are running 3.3 percent ahead of projections. The governor angered Democrats by vetoing 31 bills they passed this year, including attempts to grant collective bargaining rights to public employees and to create a market for the sale of cannabis products. Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell criticized Spanberger for vetoing bills instead of negotiating with lawmakers while those bills were being drafted. “It’s hard to work with a governor’s office that has opinions when they don’t share them before they act, or they don’t share them during the legislative process,” he told the Virginia Mercury. “Governor Spanberger’s proposals were serious policy proposals, but they were made about two months too late.” Spanberger’s biggest problem seems to be weak support within her own party. Following the release of the poll, Sen. Lucas trolled the governor on social media. “Interesting poll—my numbers are doing just fine,” she wrote. “The problem she has to correct is her policies don’t match her rhetoric from the campaign trail. Her issue is credibility.” Still, there are signs that Spanberger may eventually solidify her support inside her party. The cannabis proposal is expected to be included in a budget compromise bill that lawmakers must pass next week. That bill is likely to include some changes to the state’s support for data centers, which Senate Democrats and Republicans have called for. Gov. Spanberger seems to be gambling that she can steer a centrist path between Virginia Republicans and legislative Democrats. She still has three and a half years left in her term and will lead the commonwealth through another election when a new Senate and House will be chosen in 2027. Youngkin found ways to flex his power even after Democrats took control of both houses of the state legislature in 2023, and perhaps she can chart a similar course. Only time will tell whether she can pull off the high-wire act. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.

THE DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION—President Donald Trump announced British Prime Minister Keir Starmer will step down days after the release of a report saying 250,000 girls were raped by Muslim “grooming gangs” in the United Kingdom. Restore Britain Member of Parliament Rupert Lowe released the “Rape Gang Inquiry Report” on Tuesday, stoking fury at Starmer, a former head of the Crown Prosecution Service. Trump posted about Starmer’s rumored departure Sunday on Truth Social.Rumors of Starmer’s potential resignation have increased in the days after Andy Burnham won a by-election after promising to launch an intra-party challenge to Starmer. The British Foreign Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation. Starmer leaves office after becoming increasingly unpopular since taking office in 2024, having nearly been forced out of office after files pertaining to registered sex offender Jeffrey Epstein were released in January. The files revealed the registered sex offender’s close ties to Peter Mandelson, Starmer’s hand-picked ambassador to the United States. While Starmer claimed Mandelson misled him about his links to Epstein, the revelations led to the Reform Party sweeping local council elections. The Lowe report states that “predominantly Muslim Pakistani gangs across towns and cities throughout the United Kingdom” engaged in the “systematic targeting” of predominately white girls. “Across Britain, clear evidence of organised abuse by Pakistani gangs, among other majority-Muslim ethnic groups, was ignored because confronting it risked accusations of racism,” the Lowe report continues.Originally published by The Daily Caller News Foundation

Canada is headed for yet another recession, and their globalist prime minister is blaming immigrants—but not in the way you’d expect. He’s not pointing to the millions of people from the third world who flooded in, gutting wages and driving home prices to Hong Kong levels. Instead, it’s the opposite. The immigrants that Liberals imported into Canada were used to wallpaper over the country’s rotting economy, which has underperformed Japan for almost a generation now. Two weeks ago, Statistics Canada announced Canada is in a recession, making it the third economic downturn in the 11 years since Liberal Justin Trudeau took office. That’s a recession every three and a half years. For perspective, America has had only a single official recession in 17 years, and that was during the COVID-19 madness. Canada’s globalist-in-chief Mark Carney is ignoring his nation’s long-standing economic malaise and blaming immigrants—or rather, a supposed lack thereof—for the problem. Hilariously, he thinks the source of the problem is that he reduced migration to the already bloated pre-Covid level. In other words, he’s admitting that pretty much all of Canada’s growth was artificially boosted by counting migrant costs and welfare as GDP. Even these statistical illusions failed to boost growth past Japan’s levels. Previously, Trudeau’s Canada in 2015 was taking in almost a quarter-million migrants per year (the equivalent of 2 million a year in U.S. population terms). By Covid, he’d doubled that past 400,000 a year, about 4 million in U.S. terms. Then, it went vertical to over one million migrants per year. In U.S. terms, that’s equivalent to 9 million per year—President Joe Biden, eat your heart out. It’s worth noting, however, that mass importation of foreigners was a key part of “improving” the economic statistics in the U.S. under Biden. Essentially all of America’s net job growth from pre-pandemic to when Biden left office went to foreign-born workers as native-born Americans lost jobs on net. Similarly, with so many illegal aliens in the country and not being accurately captured by the Census Bureau’s population estimates, economic figures like GDP per capita were gross overestimates. Just as the flood of migrants under Biden was unsustainable for the U.S., so too is a million migrants a year in a country one-eighth the size. After all, it takes time for Canadians to learn Punjabi, and the natives were getting restless. So, Carney returned to Trudeau’s bloated annual rate of 400,000 and is using the 600,000 gap as his excuse for recession. Of course, 400,000 is still extremely high considering native Canadians are growing at 34,000 per year. As in, under Trudeau immigrants made up 96% of future Canadians—1 million immigrants, 34,000 natives. And under Carney that’s still 92% of Canadians being replaced—400,000 versus 34,000. But if not from changes to immigration, why is Canada’s economy so bad? Put simply, liberals destroyed the nation’s business environment while crushing regular Canadians with taxes, bureaucratic red tape, and sky-high house prices. In the past 10 years, business investment collapsed by one-third, with more than $1 trillion fleeing—that’s a large sum in Canada—during a period when U.S. business investment nearly doubled, rising nearly $2 trillion per year. Carney could easily fix Canada, considering that the country is swimming in oil and gas, wheat and hydro, and only has a tiny population. By all rights it should be the Saudi Arabia of the north, where residents don’t pay any taxes. The winning formula looks like what Trump is trying to do here: slashing the federal workforce to its lowest level in 60 years, expanding domestic energy production, supply-side tax cuts on work and investment, cutting 120 regulations for every new one added, and dramatically reducing spending. Previous Conservative governments essentially did just that. They kept red tape and bureaucracy under control to the point Canada was almost as rich per person as the U.S. when Trudeau took office—today, it’s poorer than West Virginia. Carney’s ignoring the winning formula and instead creating more red tape, especially on energy, which is why Alberta’s voting in October on whether to hold a referendum for independence. He’s also hiking government spending when the economy’s shrinking, doubling deficits, hiring more parasitic bureaucrats, and even doubling down on censorship. Eventually, Canadian voters will rebel. The question is whether they’ll be voting in Punjabi by then.