Public safety agencies across the United States will deploy drones to spot illegal fireworks during Fourth of July celebrations, thanks to new federal rules that accelerated drone-based enforcement. Last year, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) loosened regulations, allowing cities and counties to launch Drone as First Responder (DFR) initiatives more quickly by cutting bureaucratic red tape. That change led to an increase in the number of policing organizations implementing DFR programs, jumping from 50 to an estimated 1,500 nationwide. The rapid expansion reflects how drone-based enforcement has become a national trend, not only for monitoring illegal fireworks but also for emergency response, crowd management, and search-and-rescue operations. While some cities have used drones to monitor fireworks for years, this is the first July 4th holiday where aerial enforcement is widespread. California has been one of the most aggressive adopters, largely because of the extreme risk of wildfires and the prevalence of illegal pyrotechnics. Several cities, including San Jose, Sacramento, and Riverside, are deploying aerial enforcement units specifically to monitor fireworks this holiday weekend. Other western states with similar wildfire risks, including Colorado, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah, have also adopted unmanned aircraft operations teams. First responders say drones help them detect and respond to fires quickly, especially in wooded areas and during the dry summer months. The Wheat Ridge Police Department in Colorado has relied on drones to monitor illegal fireworks since 2024, and the Riverside Police Department began using them last year. The drones can capture footage to be used for citations and prosecutions, according to a spokesman. “This has been a spectacular tool for us to identify those who obviously make the decision to not follow the rules and be unsafe,” Det. Steven Espinosa, public information officer for the Riverside PD, told the Los Angeles Times. The growing use of DFR programs has raised some privacy concerns, but law enforcement says the technology is deployed only in response to specific calls, not for general surveillance. With thousands of law enforcement agencies now equipped with drones, this year’s Fourth of July could mark a turning point in how cities enforce fireworks laws and how Americans celebrate the holiday.

New York City socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani marked America’s 250th anniversary Friday by painting a dark, sinister picture of the greatest country on earth. Mamdani delivered a speech in which he invoked the history of immigrants who came to America’s shores, describing them as “weary from long journeys” who were greeted by “a towering monument to freedom, her torch glowing worldwide welcome.” He soon turned toward the dark: “Each of these new arrivals peered through portholes onto a city that was changing as fast as the nation. They saw merchants peddling their wares on the docks, streets being laid out on a grid, buildings rising into the clouds. They could not yet see the nativism they would face, the jobs they would be refused, the landlords who would not rent to them, and the abject labor and living conditions they would withstand.” He then twisted history, insisting that immigrants did not freely seek to come to America but were sent by the world: “For generation after generation, we have been told that when the world has sent its people to our shores, it has not sent its best. It sent Puritans and Sikhs and Quakers and Muslims and Jewish people who were banished for praying the wrong way, worshiping the wrong gods, angering the wrong people, it sent peasants and serfs from slums and shtetls who were treated as less because they hardly owned clothes, let alone land.” He then revealed what he believes America truly is: “It sent immigrants from whom power was something someone else had. … You each hold a special power, the power to determine what America means. The powerful have always known their answer. America, in their view, is an arena of supremacy, where only a select few are allowed freedom, where not all are created equal. America, if you ask them, becomes less the more people it welcomes. America, they will tell you, belongs only to those with the right accent or the right shade of skin. The rest of us, they insist, should be grateful for merely being allowed to visit, how small they are, how weak, how unoriginal.” He continued, “At every moment in our past, those who led through exclusion and isolation have tried to win power and enrich themselves by turning us against one another. Division is the oldest trick in politics, and the cheapest, but time and again, including 250 years ago, though those forces of division have been vanquished by the forces of progress.” His depiction of modern America was equally bleak: As we mark 250 years, what do we see? We see a city of contradictions within a nation of contradictions. We see the wealthiest country in the history of the world, one where children go to sleep hungry, while the world’s first trillionaire hungers for more. We see monopolies that dominate every industry and oligarchs who buy elections. We see massed agents terrorizing our streets, eating food cooked by our undocumented neighbors before spiriting them away in unmarked vans. We see a nation whose immense wealth has been built by those with calloused, dirt-streaked hands, those who toil on factory floors and chisel into stone, and we see a nation that has allowed so much of that wealth to be held instead in the soft hands of a precious few. … We see America in corporate landlords for whom negligence is a business model. … We see America when we spend our tax dollars on bombs and bailouts, when we sell our elections to the highest bidder. After claiming that “ICE invades our neighborhoods,” he issued a call for action: “Patriotism is every act of righteous dissent. It is every march led under the heavy sun. It is every protest held a decade before its time. It is precisely because we love this nation that we will not leave it. After all, who loves America more than those who have sacrificed so much to make it free?” Take note: this is the same mayor who signed off on a budget that cut funding for the Department of Veterans’ Services by roughly $1 million.

A political civil war is rocking the very core of the Democratic Party. On one side are upstart rebels — Jihadi-loving socialists who hate America and want to drag it down to destruction. On the other side are traditional moderate Democrats, Jihadi-loving socialists who hate America and want to drag it down to destruction, but would never say so out loud because they’re afraid Americans wouldn’t vote for them. Two diametrically opposed philosophies that are actually exactly the same. Two groups that completely agree with each other in a bitter battle for supremacy. Who will win? The radicals? Or the radicals who lie about being radicals and pretend to be moderates until they get elected and then are radicals? The future of the Democratic Party hangs in the balance. To find out more, the Daily Wire sent our crack reporter Crackety Crack to speak with Democratic Speaker of the House Hakeem Jeffries, a perilous assignment because Jeffries punctuates every word he says with a meaningless hand gesture and kept cracking our crack reporter Crackety Crack in the face until Crack fell unconscious either from the cracks or just from talking to Hakeem Jeffries. As far as the cracked crack Crackety Crack remembers, Jeffries said: The new Democrats are sadly misguided. Sure, we’re all in league with women-oppressing, Jew-killing, gay-hating Jihadis, and we all want to transform America into a third world hellhole while talking about affordability for some reason. But you can’t just go around saying that out loud. If people were ignorant and complacent enough to vote for their own destruction, some evil smiley schmuck-face like Zohran Mamdani would be mayor of New York right now and, trust me, that’ll never happen. You gotta be subtle. You gotta talk complete gobbledygook like “Love is love,” and “No one is illegal.” The kids eat that crap up. Then they vote for you. You win. THEN you ruin everything. On the radical side, there’s Daraliza Avila Chevalier, who’s a PhD if PhD stands for Pin-Headed Dame. Pin-Headed Chevalier said: A new generation of Democrat is rising up who’s not afraid to say that we’re going to screw up the lives of every single idiot who’s stupid enough to vote for us. It simply isn’t fair that Americans are letting Elon Musk get rich by building rockets to Mars, while Africans are languishing beside crocodile-infested rivers picking flies off their children’s faces as they starve to death. We want a fair world in which crocodiles watch everyone languish and starve to death. That’s what socialism is all about. So vote for us. PhD Chevalier did run into a potential scandal when it was revealed that she had posted on social media, “America is an effing disgrace,” and “I wipe my hands on the American flag,” But in a noon press conference, Chevalier explained that she had matured since she had made that post at 11:30 a.m. and would now phrase it differently by repeatedly underlining the words “effing disgrace,” and wiping her ass on the flag instead of her hands. Her apology caused her popularity to rise 20% with Democrats who think the “Super Mario Galaxy” movie is a documentary. Chevalier also defended a plank in the socialist platform that declares, “We hate Jews.” PhD Chevalier said, “Criticizing Israel is not antisemitism, and when we say we hate Jews, we are criticizing Israel, because they have so many Jews there, and we hate those people.” While some Democrat strategists feel the rise of openly America-hating, jihad-loving communists may damage the election chances of moderates who aren’t America-hating, jihad-loving communists until after Election Day, Democrat National Committee Chairman Mohammed Stalin Jihad Tucker Mohammed says a new generation of Democrats will carry the red tide forward. Mr. Tucker Mohammed said: There is a new generation of idealistic young people who sit in Starbucks using their iPhones to post videos on YouTube about how corporations must be destroyed. It’s hard to even find words to describe what a bunch of empty-headed ignoramuses these morons are. But unless they get a brain transplant, they will surely vote for the destruction of everything they take for granted, so the Democratic Party is in very good shape for the midterms.

New York City’s freshly-inked $126 billion budget shows exactly where Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s priorities lie — and it’s not with the men and women who served in uniform. The City Council, with Mamdani’s sign-off, carved out roughly $7 million for so-called “trans equity” initiatives, including $6.45 million funneled to a laundry list of LGBT advocacy groups and another $40,000 specifically earmarked for “Drag Story Hour” programs in city schools and libraries, The New York Post reports. Council Speaker Julie Menin alone kicked in $10,000 for drag readings in her district, while six other council members, Shaun Abreu, Tiffany Caban, Julie Won, Shahana Hanif, Gale Brewer and Crystal Hudson, chipped in $5,000 each. Meanwhile, over in the Department of Veterans’ Services, the story is the opposite: a roughly $1 million cut, shrinking the department’s budget from about $7.6 million to $6.6 million — a drop of more than 13 percent. The mayor’s plan would also scrap the “Homecoming of Heroes” ticker tape parade in favor of a cheaper substitute march, and trim funding for annual events honoring former service members by about $60,000 a year through 2030. Put plainly: the city is spending more on gender-identity programming and drag performances than it’s spending on services for the roughly 200,000 veterans who call New York home. For the record, Drag Queen Story Hour now receives more city funding than the Department of Veterans Services. Understand where we are. https://t.co/vwQxqBVxUK — Hon. Vickie Paladino (@VickieforNYC) July 2, 2026 Critics wasted no time pointing out the math. State Conservative Party Chairman Gerard Kassar questioned why police funding lags while cash flows toward what he called fringe initiatives, saying, “Why isn’t there more money for police? There are countless dollars going toward extreme, far-out programs. This goes way beyond recognizing transgender individuals into spending millions of taxpayer dollars to promote transgenderism.” Nassau County Executive and GOP gubernatorial hopeful Bruce Blakeman echoed, “Only in [Democratic Gov.] Kathy Hochul’s New York are your hard-earned tax dollars funding drag queen story hours instead of new police officers, roads, and schools. It’s a slap in the face to every New Yorker who goes to work every day to provide for their family, and it ends when I’m governor.” Veterans advocates are similarly furious. Marine Corps veteran Osbert Orduna called the cuts insulting to disabled veterans who sacrificed for the country. But this is par for the course for a mayor who hates what America stands for.

A heat dome affecting much of the United States has turned the nation’s capital into one of the hottest places on earth as Americans gather to celebrate the Semiquincentennial. On Friday, only the Sahara Desert, China’s Gobi Desert, parts of the Middle East, and parts of America’s Desert Southwest will reach higher temperatures than America’s capital, Washington Post meteorologist Ben Noll reported. Temperatures in D.C. are expected to reach 102 degrees, with the heat index potentially hitting a blistering 110. D.C. will be hotter than 99 percent of the planet on Friday. Only parts of Africa’s Sahara Desert, the Middle East, China’s Gobi Desert and a few spots in the Desert Southwest will be hotter. pic.twitter.com/GGedfFhpr4 — Ben Noll (@BenNollWeather) July 2, 2026 The major heat has also resulted in some parade cancellations on the East Coast on Friday, including the massive Philadelphia Salute to Independence Semiquincentennial Parade. Parade organizers in Philadelphia said they made the decision to call off Friday’s parade for the safety of participants and would-be parade watchers, CBS News reported. The historic town of Leesburg, Virginia, also canceled its parade planned for Saturday and moved its concert and fireworks show back one hour. The heat wave will continue in D.C. on Saturday during the Fourth of July celebrations, with temperatures expected to reach 99 degrees and the heat index rising to 113. A potential afternoon thunderstorm could also throw a wrench in the celebrations, according to AccuWeather. “Dangerous heat [and] storms that can bring damaging winds and downpours may disrupt outdoor holiday plans,” AccuWeather noted. The heat wave is not stopping President Donald Trump’s massive celebrations, however, as numerous events on the National Mall scheduled for Friday and Saturday are still moving forward. Americans who brave the high temps get to take in hours of military flyovers for Trump’s “Salute to America 250” celebration, The Daily Wire reported. The flyovers feature historic and modern aircraft from every branch of the military. The “Salute to America” live programming will begin on the Washington Monument grounds at 7:00 p.m. ET, and President Trump will deliver his address at 9:45 p.m. before the “World’s Largest Fireworks Display.” D.C.’s annual “A Capitol Fourth” concert is also moving forward on Friday night, but entry into the event will be delayed until 7:00 p.m., just one hour before the start time.