The YMCA deleted a pledge recognizing “gender identity” as one of its priorities for inclusion after a watchdog warned that girls may be forced to share cabins with gender-confused boys at camps across the country.  The website scrubbing took place after The Daily Wire reported on a campaign by the American Parents Coalition urging parents to research their local YMCA’s transgender policies before sending their child to camp. YMCA camps across the country from Colorado to Michigan have policies in place allowing boys who identify as girls to stay in female cabins and use female intimate spaces.  Before the campaign, the YMCA had a “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” section on its website that highlighted how it worked “to ensure that everyone” regardless of a variety of personal identifiers including “gender identity” and “sexual orientation” had the opportunity to “reach their full potential with dignity.” YMCA page prior to Daily Wire report Now the words “diversity, equity, and inclusion” have been removed, as have all the references to various personal identities.   Updated YMCA page Last year, the YMCA scrubbed guidance from its website saying that its campers should have access to bathrooms and cabins based on their gender identities after a similar campaign from the American Parents Coalition.  “The YMCA continues to get caught embedding gender ideology into its national infrastructure and is desperately trying to scrub the evidence and rebrand overnight. Hiding the language doesn’t erase the policies they are promoting,” Alleigh Marré, the group’s executive director, told The Daily Wire. “Parents deserve the truth, not deletions.” Local YMCA camps still have posted “gender inclusive” policies disclosing that they will house campers based on gender identity and appear to say they will keep a child’s so-called gender identity a secret from parents.  “If a camper shares information about their identity while at camp, we respect their privacy and autonomy,” the Sherman Lake YMCA in Michigan details online. “We will only share this information with caregivers if the camper gives express consent, unless there is a concern related to the health or safety of the camper or others.” Similarly in New York, Camp Gorham offers “girl+” cabins as a “space for girls, trans and non-binary campers who feel most comfortable living with girls” and “Boy+ Cabins” for “boys, trans and non-binary campers who feel most comfortable living with boys.” Marré told The Daily Wire her organization would “continue to highlight the Y for pushing an ideology that compromises fairness, privacy, and safety.” The YMCA did not immediately respond to request for comment on why “gender identity” was deleted from its “about us” page.

Victor Willis, the lead singer behind the iconic hit song “Y.M.C.A.,” died on Tuesday. He was 74 years old. Willis’ wife posted online that the Village People frontman suffered from a “short, but aggressive illness.” “It is with profound sadness that I must announce the death of my husband, VICTOR WILLIS. Victor passed away on Tuesday June 30, 2026, as a result of a short, but aggressive illness,” she wrote on Willis’ Facebook page. “The family request privacy at this time of great loss.” Willis and his bandmates performed at multiple rallies for President Donald Trump, who loved the “Y.M.C.A.” jam and routinely played it to close out his political rallies. The president on Wednesday morning paid tribute to Willis, noting that the singer was there with the Trump team from the beginning. “Village People singer Victor Willis is dead at 74,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “He was a great and happy guy who loved that I used his group’s song, YMCA, at my Rallies. It became a ‘monster’ hit, again, 30 years after its original launch.” “Many singers and groups wanted to get on board at the Rallies after all of the Rally Attendance Records were set – The crowds were, and are, enormous – But Victor and the group was there for us right from the beginning!” the president said. “They loved the action, and we loved them and their great and uplifting song.” “We will think of Victor every time YMCA is played, like today, and all throughout this July Fourth Birthday week,” Trump added. “My condolences to his wonderful family and group, Victor Willis will be sorely missed, God Bless Him!!!” Scott Olson/Getty Images It was in fact the “Y.M.C.A.” tune that seemed to launch the ever-popular “Trump dance,” where the president pumps his arms and sways while the song closes out his rallies. President Donald Trump dances to the final performance of the Village People during the FIFA World Cup 2026 // Mandel NGAN – Pool/Getty Images Willis, born in Dallas, Texas, co-founded the Village People in 1977. He typically dressed as a policeman to perform Y.M.C.A., which he co-wrote.

Happy 100th birthday, Route 66! Yes, that scenic byway that runs from Chicago to Santa Monica, California – 2,448 miles of pure America — hit the centennial mark and looks pretty darned good considering it was marked for execution half its lifetime ago. Instead of a death sentence, this vein that cuts through the heart of America persists, just as America has for 250 years: reinventing itself and rebelling against generations of nostalgia-bathed geriatrics to define its own purpose and future, brick by brick — or paved mile after paved mile. Sure, there’s plenty of old-timey glory to be had, but this super roadway toward a sunset strip offers so much more: a glimpse into the past with the wheels always treading toward the future. And if you follow it west, it goes right into the horizon of a sun that never sets until you want it. And even then, perhaps it’s somewhere in the cool desert under a canopy of endless stars winking you a goodnight through the neon glow of a roadside motel or trippy little teepee. The Mother Road offers what Americans have always been looking for: adventure, discovery, possibility, and a path of unwritten rules (speed limit be damned). Go west, young man, and grow up with the country. But this isn’t about Route 66. It’s about the type of country and the type of Americans it represents. We are empire builders in every sense of the world, and if you’re ashamed of that, then you need to reassess your priorities, man. Because doggone, how could you not always be in love with the team that suffers the foolishness of the world and ends up shaking the whole thing down until it’s safe for the beaten and scared – or threats are at least behind us – and then carries on as if it was NBD? And all the while we’re blasting rockets into space, curing diseases, feeding the world’s hungry, writing great literature, creating great art, and writing the Great American Songbook. We build skyscrapers, railroads, fleets of aircraft, and TV dinners. We invented Hollywood, football, pantyhose, and pinup girls. We make muscle cars. We play golf on the moon. What good is an empire if you don’t use it? Yet here we are – the U.S. of A. with our hotdog cookouts where men wear low-cut sneakers and grab beers from sweating coolers under the Maple tree, and wives in gingham and soft brown hair corral barefoot children, sticky from ice pops and marshmallows and lemonade made with too much sugar. Here is the Empire of the true believers: the road doesn’t start or end here. Each man knows from where he came and wishes to go. These are parents whose own childhoods were unburdened by the weight of the future and the fears of old men. Couples who fell in love with each other and the American Dream. When it comes to realizing that love — of God, family, and country — it cannot be held back. It’s akin to closing the back cover of a book that blew your mind, and the only thought that bubbles to the surface is, “This must be shared.” And so it is with building the American Empire. Who has lost faith in the American Dream? When “proud” is a proxy for love, it’s easy to see who is invested in the long-haul, full-speed-ahead, ride-or-die America of the past, present, and future. If one man is making that drive by way of the Main Street of America or any other highway or byway, backroad or country road, in a Corvette alongside Tod Stiles or riding shotgun with Hunter S. Thompson, the Empire is unmistakable. It is belief in the project of America rather than the political projects subject to the whim of office-holding power. To Democrats, there is nothing to be proud of — nothing to love — when the levers of power aren’t being pulled by “your team.” So it goes, why invest in the American Dream, become part of the Great American Project, the American Empire, if your entire viewpoint and love is dependent on political power? You don’t. You don’t see the point beyond one being wholly consumed by a constant feed of hateful slop, shoveled into every eye, ear, and mouth hole until the consumer is conditioned to crave it. For the leftist, the defiance and the satisfaction both depend on the project of destroying the American Empire rather than on recognizing its awesomeness. We live in the most culturally and environmentally diverse nation, yet are largely unified under the principle of being, well, American. To paraphrase John Candy (R.I.P.) We like us — and we like being American. This is a land still waiting to be discovered and shared, and welcomed to, where you can stake your own little corner of it somewhere – practically anywhere. We are kind and without prejudice to strangers until the moment you badmouth the very things that make this the best place on Earth — our trust in goodness, and our ability to do good, if imperfectly. We unapologetic Americans don’t care about how others denigrate us to feel morally superior; that’s our superpower. The down-on-America types contribute nothing to this scenic adventure, but they do expose a shallow and unprincipled life by so easily and flippantly turning on a nation and its people who gave the world so much in exchange for the self-important applause of fellow pompous status-seekers. It shouldn’t be surprising, then, that those who still love America despite the politics of the thing are having more kids, according to the Institute for Family Studies. There might be something about being absorbed in shoveling slop to such an extent that the idea of being without it drives a person to be an anxiety-riddled mess, the weight of the synthetic fears smothering any optimism for the future. People mercilessly attack the very idea of America as a chimera or a worn-out fable for silly-headed children and misty-eyed, faded patriots. But America and the American Dream endure — if not as the Promised Land, then as the Land of Promise. And whose to say what that promise is, exactly? Maybe we don’t want someone to tell us the answer (what’s up, Alexa?) but to go forth and discover it on our own — and even if we don’t find it, we take pleasure and pride in seeking it ourselves. Because the truth is somewhere down that road, but first you have to get in the car and drive. And what a drive it is. That’s the dividing line. Those who see the miles of mountains, desert, grassland and plains, swamps and valley, forest and seashore, and stand in awe at what God has so graciously given us, and we want so desperately to share that sense of wonder. There is nothing that can satisfy that urgency like having children and wanting them to see and discover and experience what we have been so generously given for 250 years. Even through war and famine and desolation, Americans have conquered — not nation building for its own sake, but conquered to spread the American ethos: the unbound spirit of searching for an American Dream that never dies in the hearts of those who believe in it.

Democratic socialist Melat Kiros upset incumbent Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO) in the primary for Colorado’s 1st congressional district on Tuesday night as the far-Left continues its hot streak in Democratic contests. With 93% of the vote counted as of Wednesday morning, Kiros holds 51.3% to DeGette’s 41.7%, with Wanda James, another candidate in the race, taking 7%. DeGette, who has held the House seat for as long as 29-year-old Kiros has been alive, will likely be replaced by Kiros after the general election. Kiros will be heavily favored over Republican nominee Christy Peterson in the general election in a district that last elected a Republican in 1970. Kiros, endorsed by democratic socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), wants to increase publicly owned housing, make college tuition free, hike the corporate tax rate from 21% to 50%, end at-will employment, create an AI moratorium, abolish ICE, allow gender-affirming care for all ages, and invest in “community-based” emergency response teams over police. Kiros, who was born in Ethiopia and immigrated to the United States with her parents when she was an infant, also proposed giving immediate citizenship to all illegal immigrants in the United States. “Abolishing ICE is just one step … I think there has to be an immediate pathway for every single undocumented immigrant that’s here in this country today that doesn’t require them to shell out thousands of dollars to go through the process,” she said. The leftist Democrat has also faced criticism over recent comments she made on the 9/11 and October 7, 2023, terrorist attacks, arguing that 9/11 was the result of American foreign policy and October 7 was “the inevitable consequence of apartheid.” Kiros has spent the majority of the last decade in school, obtaining an economics and political science degree from Washington College, a law degree from Notre Dame, and is currently pursuing her PhD in public affairs at the University of Colorado. She currently works as a barista while running for Congress. She was an attorney for about 15 months before she was fired after criticizing her own law firm and other firms for signing a statement that pushed for deans to address antisemitic language and protests on college campuses after Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel. In her own letter in November 2023, Kiros claimed she was confused why calls for the elimination of the Israeli state were seen as antisemitic. Kiros is the latest democratic socialist to cruise to a primary victory after three radical leftists won their primaries in New York last week. Some sitting Democrats are embracing the radical newcomers. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) said after New York’s wins there is “a new, strong, and bold Democratic party.” On Tuesday, New York City democratic socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani claimed socialists “not only understood economics” but they can right the so-called wrongs created by capitalism. Kiros told SiriusXM radio, “People are seeing that capitalism is responsible for a lot of the degradation that we’re seeing in our economy, in our democracy, in our climate.” She attributes socialism’s rise to people “demanding a new way to organize our economy, our government and making sure that’s all centered on working families and protecting basic needs.” Melat Kiros: “People are seeing that capitalism is responsible for a lot of the degradation that we’re seeing in our economy, in our democracy, in our climate and they’re demanding a new way to organize our economy, our government and making sure that’s all centered on working… pic.twitter.com/SKwvzP8KIt — Marco Foster (@MarcoFoster_) June 30, 2026

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. *** This summer, America’s hitting the open road in search of bold adventures. But if you don’t want to drag family drama across state lines, these kid-friendly road trip tips keep it copacetic in the back seat. (Let there be Cheez-Its.) Whether it’s the annual trek to the lake house or a day trip to the beach, if you’re one of the 61.4 million people road-tripping over July 4th weekend, traffic looks clearer with your travel plans on lock. Gas prices may be steep, and the vacation budget tighter than ever, but the only way to experience America is to see it for yourself. As for an itinerary, we’re taking inspiration from “The Great American Road Trip,” U.S. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy’s America 250 travel series where he and his wife Rachel Campos-Duffy — and their nine children — explore America’s greatest hits. From the desert dunes of Maine to a “Stonehenge” made of cars in Nebraska (yep, that’s a thing!), iconic stops like these mean you don’t have to travel the globe to discover the world. You’ll still be able to make a Diet Coke drinking game out of every “Are we there yet?” But packing a few of these tips in your duffel will make the journey as awesome as your destination. Buckle up! We’re going on a road trip. Get ready to rumble Some might advise that you never take a road trip with small children. But we don’t need that kind of negativity in our lives. That next-level energy can work to your advantage.  Get kids on the same page by planning your trip with them. Little kids can help pick out snacks at Costco and get hyped up about hotel pools or playgrounds along the route. But older kids can contribute with meaningful tasks. Is your daughter obsessed with the family calendar? Put her on road map duty. Does your son communicate solely through text? Have him message your Airbnb host that you’re on your way.   Making sure kids (and adults!) get some real exercise the day before a stint in the car guarantees that residual exhaustion will lead to less restlessness on the road. Prep your ride We’re officially beyond the full tank of gas and a 3,000-mile oil change. When you’re road-tripping with kids, it’s essential to stock that glovebox with supplies. Baby wipes are a no-brainer. Whether they’re hand sanitizing or flushable, if you think you have too many, pack more. Reusable water bottles let you fill up for free at the next water fountain. And about that first aid kit, don’t be afraid to repurpose tampons to stop a nosebleed like a boxing champ. It’s also smart to pin pit stops on your map ahead of time. The last thing you want to do is hunt down Artist’s Palette in Death Valley while your phone searches for WiFi somewhere between gas stations. Pack road-tested snacks No one tries to start a hunger-induced car fight, but they happen. To avoid this easily preventable phenomenon, pack snacks — and make those goodies count.  Aim healthy, not messy. Baby carrots, Cuties, string cheese, apple wedges, and grapes fit in a cooler. Shelf-stable yogurt pouches, meat sticks, and freeze-dried mango, bananas, or peaches tap in as handy room-temp treats. Craving crunch? Veggie straws, pretzels, and Goldfish understand the assignment. But if you wanna get creative, pack mini cooked cheese tortellini in zip-top portions to mix it up. (Skip the sauce!) Older kids can prep their own daily snack bags to eliminate the “Mom! I’m hungry!” chorus, and save some cash at rest stops. Still, if you pass Buc-ee’s, you’re legally required to pick up a bag of those Beaver nuggs.  Turn up the entertainment Good news: The analog car games of your youth still hit. “I spy,” the alphabet game, and rocking out to songs everyone loves will dutifully occupy the miles.   “My sister and I would play this game we called ‘Cows vs Cemeteries,’” one Redditor shared. “If you passed a cow pasture that was on your side of the car, you counted the cows and those were your points. You kept your points the whole trip, unless you passed a cemetery on your side of the car. Then you lost all your points and had to start over.” A short stack of favorite books, a secret stash of surprise goodies, and dry erase markers for window art coax creativity. And a few rounds of “Would You Rather” sparks hilarious conversation for all ages. But if the crowd’s getting restless, intentional screen time comes in clutch. Preload an iPad with kid-friendly audiobooks or podcasts (like Brains On!, “Wow in the World,” or “Relax With Animal Facts”), and save it for longer stretches of highway. If all else fails, stick grandma (or another capable adult) in the back seat to play with the kids. If grandma’s into it, it’s a win-win. Carve out some quiet time Add a sense of calm to your road trip rager by designating quiet time on your trip — even if the kids aren’t napping. Two hours into kids scream-laughing while you chug the Starbucks, and you’ll be singing the praises of this technique. Cozy blankets, pillows, and cranked A/C help convey the relaxing message, and independent activities like coloring or sticker books focus growing minds. The mental break offers parents time to recoup some of their sanity without low-key “losing the will to live” before the next exit. Make those hours count Maybe you could grind out 17 hours straight if you were traveling solo, but you’ve got to give kids lots of breaks. And setting time limits can actually make your travel days even more efficient. Set a maximum number of driving hours for the day, as well as in between stops. Drive at night while the kids are sleeping (or start before the crack of dawn) if you want to make the best time. When you need a break, seek out rest areas with playgrounds. And whatever you do, don’t rest. Challenge kids to jumping jack contests and push-ups to blow off some steam. And make sure everyone goes to the bathroom every time you stop. Choose your own adventure You could book that all-inclusive in Cabo and fly straight to lazing by the pool. But stepping outside your comfort zone for a family road trip might be the key to a stronger family bond. Hilariously, research shows that shared stress actually brings us closer together. (Great news for every family!) And in a vote for recounting the best part of the day, studies prove that passionately recalling your favorite moments helps you remember them even longer.  Lastly, don’t sweat the small stuff. Whether or not you make it through all the verses to “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall” without turning this car around, you’re making memories that last. Take the scenic route and let the journey unfold.