Fast food chain Chick-fil-A has launched its first non-chicken kids meal featuring one of customers’ favorite sides: macaroni and cheese. The mac and cheese kids meal features a medium cup of macaroni and cheese, made with Chick-fil-A’s blend of Parmesan, Cheddar, and Romano cheeses. The meal also includes a side, a drink, and a toy. The fast food chain — famous for chicken — first introduced macaroni and cheese as a been a side item for regular meals in 2019. The new kids meal reflects customers’ requests for more flexible menu options for children who do not like chicken. A February Reddit thread was filled with users excited about the idea of a macaroni and cheese kids meal. “This really seems like a no brainer [sic] to me,” one user said. “I didn’t eat meat as a kid and would have loved to have this option.” The kids meal is now available at participating locations for $6.75. “My kids absolutely love their Mac and Cheese and one of [them] won’t touch the nuggets,” another Reddit user said. “I’d love to see them add a Mac and Cheese kids meal.” This is the first time Chick-fil-A has offered a non-chicken entree in a kids meal. Its other options include regular or grilled chicken nuggets and chicken strips. Customers can choose from sides including applesauce, a fruit cup, and waffle fries. Drink options include apple juice, chocolate milk, regular milk, and orange juice. The new meal is being debuted alongside several new kids meal toys as well, according to Fox Business. The toys include a Cow Case with foldable games, a Cow Kart cardboard racer, a keychain, and Hasbro Cow Games. The kids meal was introduced as Chick-fil-A announced the return of seasonal summer menu items such as the pineapple dragonfruit lemonade, the honey pepper pimiento sandwich, and the peach milkshake.

Embattled former First Son Hunter Biden offered an extensive defense of Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner, arguing that his critics should be the first to reveal the contents of their own phones. Biden, speaking with Governor Gavin Newsom (D-CA), explained away everything from Platner’s Nazi-inspired tattoo to his apparent history of troubling behavior with women before arguing that he made up for any shortcomings by taking appealing political positions. Biden also suggested that Platner’s issues were irrelevant anyway, since the people raising concerns about him were probably equally dirty. WATCH: Newsom raised the question about Platner, who has faced a number of controversies since he rose to the top of the heap in Maine, asking Biden what he made of the way things had played out in recent weeks. “What do think in the context of authenticity versus the audacity frame of Platner as a — as, you know, an example?” Newsom asked, referencing Platner’s tattoo and vulgar comments he’d made on social media. Biden began by attributing Platner’s previous behavior to his military service and his struggles with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, alluding to his own troubled history as a drug addict and suggesting that he of all people would recognize someone who was trying to right his own course. “He’s not saying something new today that he wasn’t saying four months ago,” Biden said. “Or five months ago, which is this: he was a veteran, a combat veteran, and when he came back he had some real issues with PTSD, and that trauma, and whatever way that he was working it out, I think he has been really open about … he wasn’t a good person.” Biden then compared Platner’s struggles to his own, saying that he knew how much “stamina” and “courage” it took to turn things around. He went on to declare that he was “99% certain that Graham Platner is no Nazi,” and argued that people should stay out of the Maine Democrat’s relationship with his wife. “I always say to people, like, show me your phone,” Biden continued, and Newsom laughed. “Give me access to your iCloud. Let’s go through it and pull everything that we can that is inappropriate, that is off-color, that is — you know, that selfie that you took when you were drunk off your ass and you sent it to your blah, blah, blah. Like, show me your phone!” Biden argued that, by that standard, no one would ever be qualified to hold public office — and appeared to suggest that for that reason, people should ignore the furor around Platner. In his final defense, Biden said he did not believe Platner was abusive, and he was worth supporting because no matter what his personal issues might be, he supported things like government-provided free healthcare and sticking it to billionaires.

In just a few weeks, America turns 250 years old. That’s honestly staggering when you stop and think about it. History is filled with kingdoms, empires, and nations that rose fast, burned bright, and disappeared just as quickly. Freedom, self-government, and individual liberty are not the historical norm. They’re rare. Fragile. Hard-earned things. And yet here we are. A little over a year ago, I found myself wrestling with a question I couldn’t quite shake: What could I possibly contribute to a moment this significant in our nation’s story? The answer surprised me. Write a novel. Not because the world desperately needed another book, but because I kept hearing people — adults and kids alike — talk about history as if it were lifeless, dry, boring, and disconnected from real human emotion. Meanwhile, I looked around at our culture and saw something else happening: a country increasingly disconnected from sacrifice, gratitude, shared identity, and the understanding of what it actually costs to build and preserve this experiment called America. And I think people are starving for stories that reconnect them to those things. That’s where The Unlikely Life of Oliver Atkinson came from. I want readers to feel the founding of this nation again — not as a chapter in a textbook, but as something dangerous, uncertain, human, and alive. I want them to step into the fear, courage, faith, loss, and hope of ordinary people caught inside extraordinary times. So I imagined America’s founding through the eyes of a young orphan and indentured servant who suddenly finds himself swept into the chaos of the Boston Tea Party aboard one of the very ships that were raided that night. Eventually, he’s taken in by Paul Revere and introduced to the world of the Sons of Liberty, where he comes of age as the nation itself is born. But the deeper truth is this: Oliver’s story really isn’t about Oliver alone. It’s about us. Because America itself was young then. Vulnerable. Divided. Uncertain of whether it would survive. The Founders weren’t marble statues standing frozen in perfection. They were flesh-and-blood human beings trying to hold together an impossible dream under enormous pressure. Farmers. Printers. Merchants. Mothers. Soldiers. Clergymen. Imperfect people carrying unimaginable weight. And the more I researched, the more I realized how much they risked. When the signers pledged “their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor,” those weren’t poetic words for a history classroom wall. If they lost, many of them would have been executed as traitors. My own ancestor, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, signed his name boldly enough that the British would know exactly who he was. He had wealth, status, comfort — everything to lose. Yet he signed anyway. Why? Because some things are bigger than comfort. Some things are worth sacrifice. And I think deep down, Americans still know that. That’s part of why stories like this matter right now. We live in a time where cynicism is easy, division is constant, institutions are mistrusted, and national identity itself is often treated as something embarrassing or dangerous rather than something worth understanding, protecting, and improving. But people still hunger for meaning. They still long for courage. They still respond to stories of sacrifice, conviction, faith, redemption, and purpose. They want to believe there are still things bigger than self-interest. That hunger is everywhere right now. And maybe that’s because beneath all the noise, Americans still want to reconnect with who we are, not in some simplistic or sanitized way, but honestly. With humility. With gratitude. With perspective. America has never been perfect. The Founders knew that. But they also understood something modern people sometimes forget: freedom requires virtue, sacrifice, responsibility, courage, and citizens willing to preserve it. Benjamin Franklin famously said we had been given “a republic, if you can keep it.” Two hundred and fifty years later, that question still hangs in the air. As we approach this remarkable milestone in our history, maybe the best thing we can do is remember. Remember what was risked. Remember what was built. Remember the people who gave everything so future generations might have the chance to live freely. That’s ultimately why I wrote The Unlikely Life of Oliver Atkinson. Not simply to entertain people — though I hope it does that too — but to help readers feel connected to the courage, sacrifice, faith, and fragile hope that helped give birth to this nation in the first place. *** David Jones III is a historical fiction writer living in Myrtle Beach. His book, The Unlikely Life of Oliver Atkinson, is available on Amazon. More: davidjones3.com

This article is part of Upstream, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you. *** Today is the birthday of one of my favorite British writers, Dorothy L. Sayers. The Oxford educated author, translator, and literary critic insisted on the L., as she was nothing if not a stickler for detail. You may be generally aware of Sayers’ existence — more likely so if you have a library card, a Britbox subscription, or enjoy the sort of detective fiction that Rian Johnson has been ripping off for his “Knives Out” movies. These stories tend to have a much smaller number of deaths (and less grotesque ones) than the American “true crime” genre. The investigators, such as Sayers’ iconic creation Lord Peter Wimsey, are marked more for their wit, banter, and understanding of human nature than their devotion to forensics. If you are a Christian, you may know Sayers as someone who, while not a member of the infamous men-only Inklings, was a close friend of some of its members, including C.S. Lewis and Charles Williams. But that friendship did not include her Oxford graduating classmate J.R.R. Tolkien, who confessed that he “loathed” her books, finding her depictions of sexuality hedonistic. In “Strong Poison,” when she introduces her own stand-in romantic interest of Harriet Vane, Wimsey is weighing the pros and cons of pursuing the woman: “She has a sense of humor … and brains … life wouldn’t be dull. One would wake up, and there would be a whole day full of jolly things to do. And then we would come home and go to bed … and that would be jolly too.” That was a bit too much for Tolkien in 1930, but then no one (at least no one normal) reads Tolkien for his takes on sex. If you’re a true nerd, you may even know Sayers as a founding member of the renowned Detection Club, whose first members included Agatha Christie and whose first president was G.K. Chesterton. She famously authored the oath to be sworn over a skull by its invite-only members: “Do you promise that your detectives shall well and truly detect the crimes presented to them using those wits which it may please you to bestow upon them and not placing reliance on nor making use of Divine Revelation, Feminine Intuition, Mumbo Jumbo, Jiggery-Pokery, Coincidence or Act of God?” She would go on to curate great collections of detective fiction published by some of the top writers in the field. What you may not know is that Sayers’ life outside of the world of British mystery writing was often stacked with personal drama. Prior to the publication of her first novel, she gave birth to a son out of wedlock, having discovered belatedly the father in question was married. She gave the baby up for fostering and never acknowledged him as her own. The daughter of a vicar, she behaved like nothing of the sort, despite her Christian faith. She loved to smoke and drink and ride her motorcycle, and as an advertising writer in the 1930s, she created the famed Guinness toucan, the ads for which you’ll still find hanging around your Irish local pub. What certainly deserves to be known and appreciated more about her is that Sayers’ unique life and experience gave her an understanding of human nature that proved prescient for our day and age, and particularly for the fractious relationship between modern men and women. You can find this throughout her work, but its best distillation is a speech given nearly a century ago to a women’s society in 1938, which you can find published in full in the collection “Are Women Human?” She opens her remarks by saying that she is unsure about the very word “feminism,” and that “under present conditions, an aggressive feminism might do more harm than good.” As she explained in the context of her university experience: Take, for example, the very usual reproach that women nowadays always want to “copy what men do.” In that reproach there is a great deal of truth and a great deal of sheer, unmitigated and indeed quite wicked nonsense … That battle was won, and rightly won, for women. But there is a sillier side to the university education of women. I have noticed lately, and with regret, a tendency on the part of the women’s colleges to “copy the men” on the side of their failings and absurdities, and this is not so good … The women students, too, have a foolish trick of imitating and outdoing the absurdities of male undergraduates. To climb in drunk after hours and get gated is silly and harmless if done out of pure high spirits; if it is done “because the men do it,” it is worse than silly, because it is not spontaneous and not even amusing. You can read the entire speech here. The conclusion of Sayers’ argument has always struck me as stunning for how much it reflects the tensions between the sexes that endures today: Indeed, it is my experience that both men and women are fundamentally human, and that there is very little mystery about either sex, except the exasperating mysteriousness of human beings in general. And though for certain purposes it may still be necessary, as it undoubtedly was in the immediate past, for women to band themselves together, as women, to secure recognition of their requirements as a sex, I am sure that the time has now come to insist more strongly on each woman’s — and indeed each man’s — requirements as an individual person. It used to be said that women had no esprit de corps; we have proved that we have — do not let us run into the opposite error of insisting that there is an aggressively feminist “point of view” about everything. To oppose one class perpetually to another — young against old, manual labour against brain-worker, rich against poor, woman against man — is to split the foundations of the State; and if the cleavage runs too deep, there remains no remedy but force and dictatorship. If you wish to preserve a free democracy, you must base it — not on classes and categories, for this will land you in the totalitarian State, where no one may act or think except as the member of a category. You must base it upon the individual Tom, Dick, and Harry, on the individual Jack and Jill — in fact, upon you and me. This is the warning we in the West should heed today. The anti-relational musings of the chattering class, the grinding down or caricaturization of masculinity, the runaway scared memes of whether a man or a bear in the woods is more dangerous to a woman — all represent in their deepest level a collectivist vision of sex. This inhuman vision, advocated for by voices on the Right and Left today, is not just a danger to our pursuit of happiness. They are a danger to individual freedom itself. This is not idle talk. Recognize it for what it is: the seeds of Western suicide. Dorothy L. Sayers did. So should you.

This article is part of Upstream, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you. *** Not since iconic illustrator Norman Rockwell has anyone captured American life as vividly and poetically as Ralph Lauren. What made Lauren distinct among his peers was that the subject of his designs, of his deep admiration and fascination, was his country. His fashion immortalized and honored the many archetypes of American culture, from the sportsman and the cowboy to the sailor and the Ivy League prepster. Therefore, it was absolutely fitting that the U.S. Postal Service chose Ralph Lauren to curate a full stamp collection for America’s 250th birthday, the first such private collaboration in its history.  On Tuesday, I attended the first day-of-issue ceremony for Ralph Lauren’s stamps in Midtown Manhattan. Originally Ralph Lipschutz, Lauren forged his brand, and these stamps, from a place of deep gratitude for the homeland that allowed him to aspire to greatness despite coming from a modest Jewish household in the Bronx. From Lauren’s personal archives, the images printed on the stamps are, of course, open to interpretation. But it’s clear the intention was to evoke the timeless values that America has cherished since her inception. The pickup truck represents hard work and humility. The cheeseburger means community and national pride. The Jackie Robinson baseball glove symbolizes equality and competition. The wild horses conjure up pioneers and manifest destiny. These are simple yet powerful vignettes. Not merely stickers for mailing envelopes, they together make up our national DNA, packaging the ideals that have sustained us for 250 years. They convey the unique qualities that French political philosopher Alexander de Tocqueville marveled at when he visited the United States in the 1830s: the dynamism of our civil society, our entrepreneurial drive, and the way we jealously safeguard our freedom even amid difficult tests, while never forgetting our scrappy roots going back to 1776. The lighthouse signifies the guidance, specifically from the divine but also those principles enshrined in our founding documents, that has kept America on a fruitful and free path. The sailboat stamp nods to the thrilling race it is to be a part of America, especially in our industries and new commercial developments.  For Lauren, celebrating America’s survival over two centuries is personal. His work demonstrates that he believes he is a truly blessed beneficiary of such a city on a hill. He is unafraid to express that in his garments and in his philanthropy, no matter how cultural winds may change in any given year. This isn’t a new theme in his life, either. In 1998, Lauren spearheaded the preservation of the original 1813 Star-Spangled Banner. Through a multimillion-dollar donation, his company funded the Smithsonian Institution conservation project to stabilize the historic Fort McHenry flag, ensuring it remains on permanent display in Washington, D.C. The 13th and centerpiece stamp of the collection is an image of a knitted American flag that Lauren designed from scratch, with the writing “1776. 2026. USA Forever.”  After the ceremony, I popped over to the Upper East Side to pick up my stamp purchase in person at the Ralph Lauren flagship on Madison Avenue. Every corner of Lauren’s retail locations across the country is spectacularly curated with Americana maximalism that makes you feel like you’re stepping into an old-school general store, an auto shop, an Army surplus outpost, and a Hamptons boutique all at once. Lauren’s genius is that he pays homage to many different flavors of American society, both elevated and down-to-earth. While obviously high-end in price tag and showcased on glamorous runways, Ralph Lauren makes every season feel like an American renaissance, hailing the rugged blue-collar and the country club, the military and the polo field, the ranch and the tennis court, and the Native American tribe and the cigar bar. Lauren has outfitted our athletes at multiple Olympic Games, our Hollywood stars on their red carpets, and millions of Americans, making their treasured pieces into heirlooms. And through his aesthetic prowess, Lauren has evangelized the American spirit to places, from China to the United Kingdom, that should be reminded why our nation is beautiful not just in topography but in customs, character, and creed.  For America’s semi-quincentennial, we can now adorn our letters with poignant and classic symbols of our monumental heritage. After a storied career, 86-year-old Ralph Lauren should rest in the knowledge that he built an empire that gave so many citizens a creative language to articulate what it means to be American through wardrobe. His whole life has been a love letter to America. *** Caroline Downey is a columnist and video personality at National Review. She is also a senior fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum and a 2025-2026 Novak fellow with the Fund for American Studies.