The World Cup arrived. With it came millions of visitors from across the globe descending on American cities. They come for the soccer, sure. But while here they discover something more—the kind of abundance that is easy to take for granted if you were born here. Walk through any American host city, and you’ll see foreign fans posting videos in stunned delight. They talk about the food—enormous portions, every cuisine imaginable, available at midnight. They discover air conditioning, blasting gloriously in July. They experience the highways, the skylines, and the relentless commercial energy of a country that built itself on the premise that more is possible. Many of these visitors come from wealthy, developed nations. And yet, even they are struck by a realization: America is different, and that difference is worth protecting. Nowhere is that truer than in medicine. While fans from the U.K., France, Germany, and Spain enjoy American hospitality, many are also quietly relieved to be somewhere with a functioning health care system. Because back home, the cracks are widening into chasms. In the U.K., the National Health Service has become a symbol not of compassionate coverage, but of waiting. Waiting for a GP appointment. Waiting for a specialist. Waiting for surgery. Waiting, in too many tragic cases, until it is too late. NHS waiting lists have ballooned to over seven million cases. Patients with cancer, heart disease, and other serious conditions are routinely delayed for months. Some die before their number is called. According to one study from a British think tank, “between September 2024 and August 2025, around 79,130 names were removed from NHS waiting lists across 127 acute trusts because patients had died before reaching the front of the queue. Of those, 28,908 had been waiting longer than the 18-week statutory standard, and 7,737 had waited more than a year.” But it isn’t just the U.K. Across Europe, a different and equally damning problem has emerged: Patients can’t access breakthrough treatments even after regulators approve them. A new study from Germany’s WifOR Institute and Columbia University economist Frank Lichtenberg examined medicines for cancer, diabetes, and respiratory disease across 29 European countries from 2014 to 2022. The findings are stark. Separate data from the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations shows that once a drug is approved in Europe, it now takes an average of 597 days, nearly 20 months, before patients can actually access it. That’s up from 504 days in 2019. The gap is growing, not shrinking. Nearly two years. That is how long a European cancer patient may wait after a drug is approved before it becomes available to them. In many cases, that is the difference between life and death. Meanwhile, in the U.S., FDA-approved drugs typically reach patients in a fraction of that time. America’s system, for all its genuine imperfections and real affordability challenges, is a place where innovation arrives faster; where patients can fight for coverage of cutting-edge treatments; where doctors and patients, not government bureaucrats managing a national budget, make decisions about care. This is not an argument against reform. American health care has real problems that deserve serious attention, including cost, transparency, and administrative burden. But the answer to those problems is not to import the European model, a model that is demonstrably failing the people it was designed to serve. Yet that is precisely what some state legislatures are beginning to flirt with. Single-payer proposals, government-run coverage expansions, and price-control schemes modeled on European frameworks are making their way through statehouses across the country. Colorado, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, Oregon, and Washington have enacted “Prescription Drug Affordability Boards” or similar drug-affordability review entities. Some of these are able to implement MFN-style price controls. Other states considering their own iterations. New York is considering a single-payer healthcare bill, while California lawmakers have repeatedly introduced single-payer proposals as recently as this year. Proponents promise European-style universality without European-style consequences. They are wrong. The consequences follow the model. Price controls reduce investment in new therapies. Centralized systems create bottlenecks. Bureaucratic approval layers add delays. The 597-day wait discussed above is a feature of what happens when governments control access to care. The World Cup visitors snapping photos of American abundance will go home soon. They’ll tell their friends about the food, the heat, the spectacle. Some will quietly mention that they also visited a walk-in clinic, promptly, without an appointment, for a reasonable fee, and were seen by a doctor the same afternoon. That story doesn’t make international headlines. But it should. American health care’s greatest asset is the underlying architecture of a system that still rewards speed, innovation, and patient access. That architecture is what’s at stake when state legislators reach for European blueprints. The fans know what they found here. Let’s not give it away. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—Dr. Chris Fall, the director of the Commerce Department’s safety-centered artificial intelligence organization, has resigned, two sources familiar with the matter told the Daily Signal. Fall, who served in the first Trump administration at the Department of Energy as the director of the Office of Science, was tapped to lead the Commerce Department’s Center for AI Standards and Innovation in late April. “Following Chris’s departure, NIST Director Dr. Arvind Raman will continue to oversee CAISI and will serve as Acting CAISI Director,” a commerce spokesperson told the Daily Signal. The Trump administration had initially picked Collin Burns, a former researcher at Anthropic and OpenAI, to lead CAISI, but while Burns was in the onboarding process, the Commerce Department selected Fall to lead the organization, the Daily Signal reported. Fall resigned after only about three months in the role. This comes after the Commerce Department imposed export controls on Anthropic’s new models due to concerns about offensive cyber capabilities. The agency lifted the export controls after about two weeks. Anthropic said at the time that researchers from CAISI had “tested both our prior and new safeguards and agree that they are extraordinarily strong.”

Hawaii’s most recent Second Amendment defeat at the U.S. Supreme Court was both a major victory for the right to bear arms and entirely predictable. Since the court’s landmark decision four years ago in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, Hawaii’s anti-gun lawmakers had been trying to accomplish what Bruen had already forbidden: preventing ordinary, law-abiding citizens from carrying a firearm in public for self-defense. Their tool of choice became known as the “vampire rule,” an absurd legal contrivance stipulating that licensed concealed-carry permit holders couldn’t carry onto private property open to the public unless the property owner had first given express permission. The state compounded that restriction by designating an expansive list of so-called “sensitive places” where carry was also prohibited, from parks and beaches to government buildings and restaurants serving alcohol.  For the past four years, Hawaii effectively annulled the right to carry a firearm in public for self-defense by turning many of the places people visit every day into prohibited locations. But on June 25, 2026, the Supreme Court rejected that effort in no uncertain terms.  In Wolford v. Lopez, the Court held that Hawaii’s attempt to treat nearly every publicly accessible private business as presumptively off-limits to licensed carry violated the Second and 14th Amendments.  Americans spend much of their day on private property that is open to the public, and that’s precisely why Hawaii’s law was so egregious. They stop for gas, buy groceries, pick up prescriptions, grab coffee, meet friends for dinner, and run countless other errands without giving a second thought to whether the building they are entering is privately owned. Under Hawaii’s law, every one of those routine stops could expose licensed citizens—people who had passed background checks, completed training, and satisfied every red-tape requirement the state has imposed—to criminal penalties unless a business owner had affirmatively granted permission. Meanwhile, dangerous violent criminals were unlikely to concern themselves with such lawful-carry considerations, greatly endangering the residents of Hawaii. The people most affected by these restrictions were always going to be law-abiding citizens—rendered defenseless by the state.  Hawaii’s approach also conscripted thousands of business owners into a political debate many had no interest in joining. Private property owners have always been free to prohibit firearms on their premises if they choose, and nothing in Wolford changes that.  Hawaii erred in trying to reverse this commonsense default. Rather than allowing each proprietor to decide whether to exclude firearms, the state presumed lawful carry was forbidden unless the owner affirmatively opted in. Restaurant owners, shopkeepers, and other small-business operators were forced to signal a position on one of the country’s most contentious political issues simply to operate their businesses. At the end of the day, Hawaii’s dangerous and misguided law ultimately failed because it rested on the absurd premise that citizens must first obtain someone else’s permission before exercising a constitutional right. Bruen first rejected that premise in 2022. Wolford rejected it again.  Hawaii’s lawmakers may have convinced themselves they had found a clever workaround to Bruen, but all they really did was repackage the same unconstitutional restriction in different legalese, and the Supreme Court saw right through it.  Lawmakers in California, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, and anywhere else that has considered or is considering similar restrictions should take note. The Supreme Court has now made abundantly clear that law-abiding Americans cannot be treated as second-class citizens when exercising their constitutional right to bear arms in public for self-defense. Anti-gun lawmakers may not like that answer, but after Bruen and now Wolford, they can no longer pretend it is an unsettled one. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.

On July 5, 1852, in Rochester, New York, Frederick Douglass delivered one of the most important speeches in American history—and one of the most misunderstood. When “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” is remembered today, it is usually for the righteous anger of its middle section. Douglass was one of the nation’s foremost orators for a reason. His withering indictment of 1850s Americans’ acceptance of and complicity in the institution of slavery can still fire readers’ souls more than a century and a half later. Anti-American leftists love it. But all Americans today—and conservatives in particular—should not let the rest of Douglass’ speech disappear down a woke memory hole. For “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” is not just the greatest anti-slavery speech of the 19th century. It is one of the greatest patriotic, populist, constitutionalist speeches in American history. And 21st-century conservatives should proudly adopt Douglass’ address as one of our movement’s canonical texts. Douglass opens his remarks with a paean to America’s Founding Fathers. For paragraph after paragraph, he extols their courage, courtesy, wisdom, statesmanship, and manliness. “The signers of the Declaration of Independence,” Douglass says, “were brave men. They were great men, too—great enough to give frame to a great age.” A lesser rhetorician might have built up the Founders only to bolster their credibility as witnesses for the prosecution against their slavery-indulging descendants. But Douglass’ argument is more subtle and powerful. Before he ever contrasts the Founders with his own generation, Douglass contrasts them with the shameful, self-serving establishment of theirs. “The timid and the prudent … of that day,” Douglass says, “were, of course, shocked and alarmed by” the revolutionaries’ zeal. Then, as ever, the world teemed with “practical” men who would rather profit from injustice than fight it. “They hate all changes, but silver, gold and copper change! Of this sort of change they are always strongly in favor.” When the Continental Congress declared America’s independence, it was “to the dismay of the lovers of ease, and the worshipers of property.” The American revolutionaries, Douglass says, “loved their country better than their own private interests,” siding “with the right against the wrong, with the weak against the strong, and with the oppressed against the oppressor.” For this, colonial elites unwilling to make the same choice branded patriots as “plotters of mischief, agitators and rebels, dangerous men.” When Douglass turns to his own era, and the moral crisis of slavery, he maintains this populist perspective. Amidst the speech’s unsparing condemnation of American slavery, he nonetheless continually singles out elites for their singular role in its perpetuation. He condemns slavery’s commercial profiteers—“millions are pocketed every year by dealers in this horrid traffic.” “The flesh mongers,” Douglass reminds his northern audience, were not shabby, snarling clay-eaters but cultured sophisticates: “well dressed men, and very captivating in their manners; ever ready to drink, to treat, and to gamble.” Douglass similarly indicts the nation’s religious elites (“its most eloquent Divines”), including several by name, for their unwillingness to risk their privileged status by denouncing slavery. Theirs, Douglass charges, “is a religion which favors the rich against the poor; which exalts the proud above the humble; which divides mankind into two classes, tyrants and slaves; which says to the man in chains, stay there; and to the oppressor, oppress on.” Finally, Douglass takes aim at the nation’s political class, which had just enacted the Fugitive Slave Law two years prior—again in populist terms. He condemns the new statute’s authors for conscripting the American people into their inhumanity: “Your law-makers have commanded all good citizens to engage in this hellish sport.” Douglass then turns from his famous condemnation of slavery to a less remembered, but no less stirring, defense of the Constitution: a “glorious liberty document” that is “entirely hostile to the existence of slavery.” Finally, Douglass closes his remarks on an optimistic note, associating God’s will with the march of moral progress across the Republic: “The fiat of the Almighty, ‘Let there be Light,’ has not yet spent its force. No abuse, no outrage whether in taste, sport or avarice, can now hide itself from the all-pervading light.” “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” was a classic of American rhetoric the moment it was delivered. There had never been a speech like it. There hasn’t been one since. It is as American as the Declaration of Independence, as Christian as Lincoln’s Second Inaugural, as constitutionalist as the Federalist Papers, as patriotic as “The Star-Spangled Banner,” as populist as Bryan’s “Cross of Gold,” and as conservative as Ronald Reagan’s “A Time for Choosing.” The speech affirms America’s founding ideals—enshrined in the Constitution—and urges every new generation of “we the people” to defend those ideals against elite conspiracies to weaponize, compromise, and undermine them. Slavery, Jim Crow, and Roe v. Wade were the most monstrous examples. But the same elitist temptations gave us the Whiskey Tax, the corruptions of the Second Bank of the United States, Freemasonry, Gilded Age corporatism, Woodrow Wilson’s proto-fascism, the New Deal’s segregationism, anti-anti-communism, and the Warren Court during the Cold War. Today, it gives us open borders, globalism, and woke-ism. Conservatives today should read Frederick Douglass’ speech, study it, and arm ourselves with it—that our fight to save America might be as successful as his.

The first and only job for Irish police in the death of New York woman Jamey Carney should be solving her murder. So why play politics and issue statements that they’re “concerned the killing may be seized upon by the US far-right and political figures intent on stirring racial tensions in the Republic”? Perhaps they’re worried that it illustrates the self-destructive chaos of Western asylum policies. Carney moved to Killarney in 2021. There, she met a Jordanian, Ahmad Al-Saqar (or “Alsaqer”). Al-Saqar walked over the border from Northern Ireland into the Irish Republic and applied for asylum in 2024, but his claim was rightly rejected. He had already been in Turkey, France, and the United Kingdom—all of them safe states outside Jordan where he could have claimed asylum. Al-Saqar was taking advantage of Ireland’s open border, low standards, and welfare benefits. This is called “asylum shopping.” Despite his asylum rejection, Al-Saqar—described as a staunch pro-Palestinian activist who reportedly met Carney at a pro-Palestine rally—was allowed to remain in Ireland. At the time of her death, they were reportedly married, and he was already hitting her up for money. Al-Saqar’s ultimate goal was evidently to get into the United States. He would have felt right at home doing a master’s at Columbia or working at Democratic Socialists of America headquarters. Or in cities like New York and Seattle, whose mayors share his anti-Israel views. Or in Congress, where some lawmakers do too. Al-Saqar fled Ireland before Carney’s body was discovered, initially traveling to Turkey. From there, he went to Jordan, where he was arrested by their Public Security Directorate. The only basis for Al-Saqar to claim asylum in Ireland would be a fear of being persecuted in his home country. His returning to Jordan so quickly is proof that he never had any fear to begin with. And any prosecuting attorney would likely seize on it as the action of a man who had something to do with Carney’s death. This case illustrates how Western countries, including Ireland and the U.S., are held hostage by their adherence to an outdated asylum system that works against national interests. After World War II, the U.N. agreed to a framework for protecting refugees, the 1951 Refugee Convention. They had the recent memory of millions persecuted and killed by Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia because of their race, religion, or political beliefs. But for decades now, Western societies have been inundated by people seeking economic opportunity. Only a small percentage qualify for asylum, but most illegal arrivals or visa overstayers claim anyway so they can remain for years while their cases are decided. There is no penalty for fraudulent claims. Ireland is in the midst of a mass migration never seen in its history, partly caused by so-called asylum-seekers crossing the open border with Northern Ireland. Up to 25% of Ireland’s population of 5.4 million is non-Indigenous. In 2023, Ireland rejected more than 65% of asylum applications, and the Taoiseach (Prime Minister) admitted that most applicants were economic migrants. Around half of Irish asylum applicants are single males, many from countries with high rates of violence against women. Across Europe, statistics show that migrants from certain countries, many in the Middle East and Africa, commit violent crime at rates far higher than natives. In Germany, immigrants are under 20% of the population but commit 40% of violent crime. In Sweden, 63% of convicted rapists are first or second-generation immigrants. According to the Irish Examiner, of the 12 women murdered in Ireland in 2022, five were killed by immigrants. In the past decade, the number of asylum seekers housed by the Irish taxpayer has shot up by 650%, to over 30,000. Refugees now outnumber locals in Lisdoonvarna, and Ballyhaunis, Ballymahon, and Edgeworthstown all have over a third non-Irish residents. All over the country, shelters are being set up in villages, and in some, asylum seekers outnumber locals. Dundrum House hotel in Tipperary held up to 277 asylum seekers in a village of only 200. Europe accepts endless illegal economic migration, which it launders through its asylum policy. Asylum approval rates in Europe are too high to expect smooth assimilation, and the deportations of those refused are too low to discourage fraud. During the Biden administration, the U.S. positively encouraged a similar flow over our southern border. What will be the result of this asylum flood? In the long run, Irish and other Europeans will become ethnic minorities in their own countries. They already are in some of Europe’s largest cities, such as Brussels and London. In the near term, because the bulk of the new arrivals are low-skilled, if employable at all, their families will add to the already unsustainable fiscal burdens of health care, pensions, and welfare payments. The tragic story of Jamey Carney illustrates the dilemma of Europe’s Leftist-supported asylum trap. Absent reforms to end economic migration under the guise of asylum, the future is bleak.