President Donald Trump touted the record-breaking fireworks display prepared for Saturday’s festivities celebrating America’s 250th birthday on the National Mall. “Best fireworks show, EVER! President DJT,” he posted via his Truth Social platform after the last of the munitions had been spent. The 40-minute display included more than 850,000 individual fireworks, breaking the Guiness World Record for the largest fireworks display on record. American military service members provided the soundtrack for the massive spectacle, singing hits like Chicago’s “25 or 6 to 4,” Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’,” Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer,” the Village People’s “Y.M.C.A.,”  Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American),” and Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline.” The largest firework show in U.S. history for America’s 250th birthday!!!

Conservative NFL kicker Harrison Butker was reportedly the only Kansas City Chiefs teammate denied an invitation to Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift’s massive New York City wedding. Despite being teammates with Kelce since 2017, Butker did not make the guest list of approximately 1,000 people, an NFL source told the Daily Mail. It’s believed that every other player on the team received an invite, the report noted. Butker made journalists’ heads spin two years ago when he praised stay-at-home mothers during a commencement speech at Kansas City’s Benedictine College, a Catholic school. “How many of you are sitting here now, about to cross this stage, and are thinking about all the promotions and titles you are going to get in your career?” Butker said during the commencement speech. “Some of you may go on to lead successful careers in the world. But I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world.” “It cannot be overstated that all of my success is made possible because a girl I met in band class back in middle school would convert to the faith, become my wife, and embrace one of the most important titles of all: homemaker,” he added. It’s unclear, however, if Butker’s remarks had anything to do with the apparent wedding invitation snub. Following the controversy, Kelce actually spoke highly of his kicker, though he said he disagrees with Butker’s views. “I cherish him as a teammate,” Kelce said. “He’s treated friends and family that I’ve introduced to him with nothing but respect and kindness.” “When it comes down to his views … those are his,” the three-time Super Bowl champ added. “I can’t say I agree with the majority of it, or just about any of it, outside of just him loving his family and his kids.” Kelce and Swift tied the knot on Friday at Madison Square Garden. As noted by The Daily Wire, comedian Adam Sandler served as the officiant at the wedding. Kelce bonded with Sandler while filming “Happy Gilmore 2.” “The bride and groom’s wedding ceremony looks have been created by Christian Dior Haute Couture,” Swift’s team said in a statement. “Their shoes were custom made by Christian Louboutin and the bride wore Cartier jewelry.” Related: American Renewal Starts At The Altar

President Donald Trump made it clear in his Saturday remarks that he was all in on America as he touted American veterans and trashed communism on the nation’s 250th birthday. Hailing the United States as “the hope, the promise, the light, and the glory among all of the nations of the world,” Trump called on Americans to be proud of their rich heritage and to defend that vision in the years to come. Trump spoke late on Saturday night to a massive crowd after thunderstorms forced a delay, saying that the United States had always been — and would always be — the shining example of freedom that others looked to: “They try and be like us. Nobody can be like us” … “with God’s help, we can always be this or even better.” .@POTUS: “For 250 years, the United States of America has been the hope, the promise, the light, and the glory among all of the nations of the world… with God’s help, we can always be this or even better… Here on our National Mall, we’re celebrating Freedom’s triumph over… pic.twitter.com/XbJbC7A9l4 — Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) July 5, 2026 Trump proceeded to honor the veterans who served the country over the past 250 years, showing a number of different American flags that flew over different battles throughout the nation’s history. He went on to blast communism and those who are trying to bring it to the United States, declaring that the U.S. will never be a communist country. “Our warriors did not fight communism on battlefields across the world, only to have that menace rear its ugly head right back here in America. We’re not going to let it happen. All these talks from the communists, they haven’t got a chance … We don’t want communists in our country. Never worked, and it never will work.” “We like to stop a threat like that immediately,” he argued, adding that communism was “like a cancer. You got to cut it out, you got to cut it out fast.” .@POTUS recognizes Korean War veterans Cpl. Patrick Finn, and PFC Rudy Meekins, who fought bravely at the Chosin Reservoir while greatly outnumbered by Communist forces. “America will NEVER be a Communist country.”

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. *** Oh, the irony. California State Senator Scott Wiener, a champion of LGBTQ-friendly legislation, was chased from a Pride march last month over his views on Gaza. To the crowd, Wiener was a supporter of “genocide” who “didn’t belong” among the LGBTQ community. As it happens, on top of being a radical leftist, Wiener is radically anti-Israel. The allegations against him are akin to those against Senator Bernie Sanders; no matter how rabidly these progressives champion the Palestinian cause, they can never be forgiven for the crime of being Jewish. They are far from blameless in expecting to be spared for having bent the knee. The protestors’ visceral reaction to his presence is indicative of a greater issue: a rigid mindset that requires the world be pigeonholed into a single theory. Wiener’s decades-long activism for their stated cause was rendered meaningless the moment he was grouped into the “oppressor” class.  This fallacious way of thinking is as old as philosophy itself. It relies upon a “top-down” approach that is simply incompatible with human nature. Top-down philosophies come in many forms. They are characterized by a grand theory that seeks to unify all the social and political forces of the world into one framework.  A top-down philosophy begins with a theory of reality and then interprets every event through that theory. It starts with the answer and searches for the evidence. Bottom-up approaches begin with observation, accept complexity, and allow conclusions to change when reality shakes expectations.  The most infamous example of a top-down theory is economic determinism. At the outset of “The Communist Manifesto,” Karl Marx claimed, “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” Marxists regularly find themselves trying to explain with “class warfare” that which is completely unrelated. A Marxist will see all wars as an expression of underlying economic distress. To the empiricist (or the bottom-up philosopher), trying to categorize all wars as an expression of anything is a fool’s errand. A popular philosophy among the American Left is called intersectionality. It is the belief that the world turns according to privilege and discrimination. It brings together critical race theory, decolonialism, and a host of other postmodern theories to place all of human history in terms of oppression.  The trouble with top-down philosophies is that they are not subject to self-correction. In many cases, they require either blatant denials of reality or the simultaneous acceptance of direct contradictions, reminiscent of Orwell’s “doublethink.”  Since all new evidence must be interpreted according to the grand theory, the theory itself becomes impossible to disprove. When confronted with the reality that empirical evidence does not show the prevalence of colonial privilege, rather than rejecting the theory, proponents shift the narrative, which becomes that the institution of evidence is a form of colonial privilege designed to bury oppression. Earlier this year, SAGE Publications (one of the most prestigious journal publishers in academia) published a paper titled “‘Inviting Methodological Reworlding’: Toward a Pluriversal Future.” The thesis critiques “Western epistemological traditions that privilege objectivity.” In other words, facts are a colonialist tool that we should disregard when they don’t align with how we feel.  Last month’s display should serve as a wake-up call, not only to theorists but to those who try endlessly to contort themselves to fit the theory. But I wouldn’t hold my breath; the radical Left has favored this approach for hundreds of years. Edmund Burke, often called the Father of Conservatism, saw the dangers of this mindset and argued for its alternative. Years before the Reign of Terror, Burke predicted that the French Revolution would end in tyranny. Though he agreed with many of the grievances against the monarchy, Burke rejected radical change through vast theorizing as arrogant and dangerous. Instead, he called for change through cautious, incremental experiments. Burke argued that the world was simply too complex to be understood by any theoretician. Our best way of moving forward was by modifying the tried and true institutions we had built through generations of accumulated wisdom. There is a reason that English society flourished and the French revolutionaries did not: the same reason that American liberalism flourished and the centrally planned Soviet Union did not. In politics, humility always defeats certitude. David Hume, another intellectual giant in the conservative movement, commented extensively on the divide. Hume criticized top-down approaches as inviting disaster through human error. Hume wrote, “It is easy for a profound philosopher to commit a mistake in his subtile reasonings; and one mistake is the necessary parent of another, while he pushes on his consequences and is not deterred from embracing any conclusion.”  He recognized that no human, no matter how academically gifted, is capable of creating a flawless system. It’s simply impossible.  The “queers for Palestine” couldn’t adjust their framework to a Jewish ally, so instead they adjusted their allies. Scott Wiener was left behind.

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. *** I am writing this between physiotherapy sessions, nursing a lingering tendon injury from running the Toronto Marathon — my first full marathon — and wondering how exactly I got roped into a hobby best summarized as being bad at something that also makes you miserable. I won’t reveal my finishing time, but I can assure you nobody crossing the finish line near me looked like they were born in Kenya. It was Mick Jagger who got me into running. This sounds comical, not least because of all the hobbies one might plausibly inherit from the Rolling Stones frontman — from the music to his signature struts, to cocaine addiction — the one I picked up was much worse: long-distance running. But there he was, in an interview, explaining how he manages to stay in such preposterous shape well into his 70s while continuing to prance across stadium stages like a possessed aerobics instructor. His secret, apparently, is running. What began several years ago as a few three-mile jogs gradually snowballed and most recently culminated in the full 26.2 miles. But before I rush to LinkedIn to humblebrag about how the marathon taught me everything I know about sales, I will share my experiences here. Last year I ran a half-marathon and vividly recall thinking upon crossing the finish line: That is enough. I had tested the limits of the human body, or at least my human body — which, ideally, I would still like to retain some mileage on. It came as some surprise then, that when my fiancée suggested we register for the full Toronto Marathon, I agreed. On second thought, why only do something halfway? This, I have discovered, is the essence of running: making yourself miserable in pursuit of an arbitrary goal, suffering through it, feeling briefly proud, and then wondering whether you can do something even stupider next time. The often-cited “runner’s high” is a real phenomenon both during and after runs. Even if you are miserable during the run, you cannot quite escape the intoxicating feeling afterward that you might do it better next time. When we signed up, we had months ahead of us. This should have been comforting, except that we live in Toronto, where the weather is often worse than shin splints. Summer runs are plagued by suffocating humidity, and winter runs bring ice, snow, and sub-zero temperatures. There is, mercifully, an indoor track at the nearby YMCA, where 15 laps are equivalent to one mile. So a modest 10-mile run requires circling the same track 150 times, an experience somewhere between exercise and psychological warfare. The prevailing professional wisdom — or at least the wisdom of the sort of people who treat muscle pain by covering themselves in KT tape so they can keep running — is that marathon training should focus on total weekly mileage rather than attempting to run a full marathon before race day. You gradually build up to roughly 37 miles per week, with one “long run” serving as the weekly centerpiece of your training. Beleaguered by uncooperative weather and lacking the willpower of a Navy SEAL to wake up at 5 AM to run before work, we topped out at around 20 miles as our longest training run. Come race day, this meant there were only another six miles or so our bodies needed to figure out how to cover. What could possibly go wrong? The answer is — after the first 12 miles, which all felt great — my left knee. Then my right hip. Then my left foot. Then the right knee. The curious thing about marathon pain is that it does not arrive as a single predicament but as a sort of throbbing Lazy Susan, rotating through your body. Much of distance running is, as they say, mental. You can run a lot farther than you think, even when you begin to feel the debilitating pangs of exhaustion weighing you down. Eventually, these pains begin to cancel each other out. After two hours, you need to go to the bathroom so badly that the musculoskeletal system becomes a secondary concern. One of the consolations of running a marathon is people-watching. There are runners of every conceivable stripe and temperament. We saw one man running in a brown corduroy suit, presumably because dark gray wool would have been too formal for a 26.2-mile run. Another woman ran in a literal corset, which was not actually part of Alo’s latest collection. There was also someone dressed as Spider-Man, other couples like us in matching outfits, and, adding insult to injury, someone breezing by in flip-flops. The spectators provide their own entertainment. Some hold encouraging signs; others shout the name printed on your bib, creating the fleeting delusion that you are some celebrated athlete rather than an amateur runner panting through mile 14. One of the better signs read, “ChatGPT can’t help you here.” Another offered, “Pain is French for bread.” A more cynical placard suggested, “Therapy was also an option.” Seeing friends or family along the course, there to support you, is also a welcome jolt of energy. But the marathon photographers are the most diabolical. They possess the annoying and faintly evil instinct to position themselves at the midpoint of upward hills, the perfect vantage point from which to capture you at your most demoralized and downtrodden. Then there is the food. Your body needs fuel to run, and to run a marathon it needs a great deal of fuel. During the race itself, you fuel yourself with little packets of goo — sugary syrup you slurp down every three or four miles while running and trying not to vomit. The packaging has the sterile, futuristic look of astronaut food. And just like astronauts, we marathon runners will waste no opportunity to tell you we have run a marathon. I can write that now. Training for a marathon is like taking on a part-time job, except instead of being paid a wage, you get blisters, sore legs, heaps of laundry, and piles of worn-out, expensive running shoes you need to replace. You can say goodbye to your indulgent social life as entire Sundays disappear into five-hour runs because the training plan says you need to cover 20 miles, and unless you’re a top-tier runner, this is no brisk feat. On one occasion, we left for a run in the morning, and a woman stopped us later that afternoon to ask if we had been running all day because she recognized us from hours earlier. Sadly, yes. But completing the distance is, annoyingly enough, an incredibly rewarding feeling. It is the reason we undertake difficult things in the first place; they become meaningful precisely by being difficult. In his famous moonshot address, President John F. Kennedy said that “we choose to go to the moon and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” Running marathons falls under “the other things.” As we neared the final few miles, mustering what little energy we had left to run through the finish line, I began to understand why people keep doing this ridiculous thing — and why the marathon persists as the metaphor of choice for long and laborious undertakings like life itself. And now that it is finished, the only thing I can think about (aside from drafting that cringey LinkedIn post) is getting over this tendon injury so I can get back out there for another run. *** Harry Khachatrian (@Harry1T6) is a film critic for the Washington Examiner. He is a software engineer, holds a master’s degree from the University of Toronto, and writes about wine at BetweenBottles.com.