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. *** We Americans are no longer talking to our neighbors as much as we once did. This is especially true for younger people, with only 25% reporting conversing with their neighbors a few times per week. There’s also an educational gulf. For those without college degrees, a mere 46% have spent an evening hanging with someone from the ‘hood, compared to 58% for the grads. Even when technology is in the mix, just 45% of youngsters are texting or emailing vs. 65% of those who matriculated.  We’ve gone from keeping up with the Joneses to only paying attention to their social media output. The neighborhood, once the cornerstone of community, is becoming extended-stay housing, with people who live next to one another doing little more than offering a passing wave as they pull into or out of their garages. As an American Enterprise Institute study points out, there are myriad reasons for this. Though work from home has given way to returning to the office, people still spend more time around their homes than they did pre-COVID. Technology is another factor, whether it’s because one doesn’t have to walk a few steps and knock to send a text or because we post so much of ourselves online. There is also the fact that our kids are overscheduled and have to be driven here and there. Sports parents may commiserate, but largely it’s done on the sidelines or in a hotel lounge, not sitting in one another’s backyards.  There is also the trend toward turning what used to be called offices into campuses, replete with stores, coffee shops, bars, restaurants, hotels, daycares, and any and everything else an employee might need. While marketed as a testament to concern about the well-being of those who work there, c’mon. The purpose of these splendiferous campuses is not to enrich the lives of the people; it’s to ensure they never have to leave. The residents of these abominations may not have to worry about loading 16 tons, but we’ve almost come full circle back to them owing their souls to the company store. The campus also reduces the number of outsiders people will talk to as they go about their day-to-day lives. Gone is stopping for a few things on the way home, perchance to run into someone along the way. Instead, it’s returning a package while talking to the person you were working on a PowerPoint deck with a few hours ago. And it’s not a conversation about how the kids are doing in school or that Ben and Stella are installing a pool, it’s about the PowerPoint they’re going to work on tomorrow.  It’s easy to mock those who yearn for buggy whips and typewriters as hopelessly caught in the past. The loss of neighborhoods is different. It’s not the sort of change that eases life, enriching it along the way, but one that diminishes it. While people may yearn for the freedom of the college years, sprawling office parks without a quad or a stadium are but a pale imitation of the true campus. Likewise, the algorithm can never provide the frisson, or the tensions, that neighbors do. Online, it’s easy to settle into echo chambers, ones where there is no possibility of getting slugged in the mouth. On the streets, more decorum and bonhomie are required. The streets also offer more opportunity to see people as full humans rather than caricatures, ones based solely on their job titles and voting preferences. Losing neighborhoods — places for community, for tribes — to extended-stay housing atomizes us instead of helping to build those bonds. We are not meant to be atoms, careening around alone in the world save for our immediate family members, people who are also likely isolated in the digital panopticon rather than sitting in the living room together. It seems dark and difficult to surmount. It isn’t, though, not with a modicum of effort. All you have to do to be the change you want to see in the world, to quote something Gandhi never said, is to go out and be in the world. Take a walk. Get a dog and take him to play fetch. Bake some cookies and deliver them to your neighbor. Sit on your front porch. Randomly fire a pistol in the air to attract attention to yourself.  Actually, don’t do that last one unless your goal is to sacrifice yourself in order to bring the rest of the neighborhood together in opposition to you and your flagrant disregard of HOA regulations as well as common sense. If you’re planning to move, though, no, still don’t do that. Maybe put up one of those giant Halloween skeleton statues but leave it up year-round?  While technological progress and the economy (mostly) just keep humming along, life is more than the sum of our material inputs and outputs. Government is not simply the name for things we choose to do together, but instead a necessary evil since we ate our way out of the garden. Becoming digital recluses is not the mark of progress, but an omen of the dystopian future that awaits us if we don’t start fighting back. Civilization encompasses the entire tapestry that we weave together, one not solely focused on key performance indicators or politics as sports fandom, but on shared sorrow, hope, fear, and joy. No one should have to put up those stupid giant letter signs announcing the arrival of a child or to honor someone’s birthday. We should just know that the mom and dad could use some heat-and-eat meals or that the party is on Saturday and we’re responsible for an appetizer.  Nor should it take a study to remind us to talk to our neighbors, to go hang out with them from time to time. Most of us who walk this earth are destined to be forgotten. There will come a day when the last person to remember us will die, and our memory will die with him. Much better to leave a legacy focused on working together, on celebrating together, on crying together, on building up the spaces immediately around us together such that we leave them better than we found them. But we cannot do that without doing something far simpler first: saying hello. *** Rich Cromwell is a writer living in Northwest Arkansas. He produces the Cookin’ Up a Story podcast, which you can listen to here. You can also follow him on X: @rcromwell4.

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. *** As America celebrates its big birthday this summer — writing from across the pond to wish you “happy Semiquincentennial,” I must say you look remarkably good for your age — it is worth taking a moment to consider that such a milestone anniversary is being ignored by this summer’s crop of blockbuster movies. Aside from the “blink-and-you’ll-miss-it” three-day limited release of Hillsdale’s documentary “Revolutionary America,” and the Revolutionary War-adjacent “Young Washington,” which depicts the nation’s first president learning his soldiering as a British subject in the French and Indian War, our movie theaters this summer will be free of tricorn hats and flintlock pistols. Which is rather a shame when you think about it, given the significance of this year.  That wasn’t the case back in 1986, when to mark America’s less catchy 210th birthday, Alan Alda wrote, directed, and starred in “Sweet Liberty,” a charming little film about an idealistic history professor watching with growing dismay as a Hollywood film crew arrives in his small town and proceeds to turn his book on an obscure Revolutionary War battle into a trashy crowd-pleaser. Seeing how little the film’s director and screenwriter care about historical accuracy, Alda’s character offers to rewrite the screenplay to keep the film’s story at least a little closer to actual historical events. He ends up falling in love with the actress played by Michelle Pfeiffer, who is cast as the loyal wife of a patriotic hero off fighting elsewhere. Michael Caine stars as a philandering British movie star playing the film’s token baddie, a Redcoat general trying to seduce Pfeiffer’s character while her husband is away fighting. The movie itself, though not a classic, is similar in tone to other movies Alda wrote and directed in the ’80s, sort of Woody Allen-lite comedies about relationships and middle-class neuroses. But Alda’s charm as an actor, along with the cast he assembled for “Sweet Liberty,” makes this film eminently watchable, especially at the moment. The film satirizes those historians who look to the past and cannot help but idealize it, and it honors the uncompromising truthfulness we should bring to our depictions of the past. It also savagely mocks Hollywood’s self-importance and sense of reckless entitlement. Surrounded by a film crew that cares only about making a brainless popcorn movie, which the director sums up as containing three plot-points: “defying authority, the destruction of property, and people taking their clothes off,” Alda’s appalled historian finds unlikely allies in the local band of historical reenactors hired as extras to beef up the film’s battle scenes.  These reenactors are the comic relief of the movie in their earnest fussing over costumes and obsession with the 14 different firing positions on a musket, but they are also its beating heart through their reverence for the country’s past. “Sweet Liberty” ends with Alda and the reenactors rebelling against the bullying Hollywood movie machine, along with its condescending professional stuntmen, all of whom are playing Redcoats, by changing the film’s final battle scene so that it correctly retells the historical events.  Another thing the film does, though Alda could not have known it at the time, is anticipate the kind of creative environment from which Mel Gibson’s bombastic blockbuster “The Patriot” sprang. Now, as a British historian, I am sure it may appear that I am writing from a place of “unconscious bias” in my objection to “The Patriot.” But I assure you my reasons are professional and not (purely) patriotic. Scores of distinguished American historians joined British voices in crying foul over the film’s largely invented depictions of the Redcoats as murderous Nazis. It should be noted that the screenwriter, Robert Rodat, had just been Oscar-nominated for his screenplay for “Saving Private Ryan” and was essentially told to repeat the formula for the Revolutionary War. For all its stirring imagery — who can forget Mel Gibson brandishing his tomahawk — the film turned out to be exactly the kind of historically illiterate crowd-pleaser “Sweet Liberty” had parodied. One of the most telling things about “Sweet Liberty,” however, is the snapshot it gives us of the culture scene 40 years ago, when Hollywood could laugh at itself, something that feels impossible to imagine now. Alda’s film also reminds us of a time when the Revolutionary War was such a safe topic that he could choose it as the backdrop for his frothy comedy. There is an ease and innocence in the references to the 1770s, which feels hard to picture in the ruthlessness of the post-“The 1619 Project” world. In Alda’s 1980s, the American Revolution was not yet a battleground of the culture wars but something that genuinely united Americans. In Britain, we have historical reenactors who recreate the key battles of the English Civil War, our own struggle against tyrannical royal authority, which took place almost 150 years before the Revolutionary War. Our reenactors, called the Sealed Knot, are similarly passionate about costumes, cannonballs, and muskets, and they work to keep the knowledge of our Civil War alive. But the sad truth is that too few people care anymore this side of the Atlantic. Our Civil War had been fought over ideals that are strikingly similar to those of the American Revolution, and much of the language used by the framers of the Declaration of Independence was inspired by legal documents written a century earlier as English Parliamentarians put King Charles I on trial for tyranny. In 1786, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson even took a week-long road trip to visit the battlegrounds of the English Civil War, rather like we may visit key sites of the American Civil War, or cemeteries in mainland Europe from the two World Wars. They wanted to pay tribute to that “holy ground” where a previous century’s soldiers had sacrificed everything in the cause of freedom. Yet Adams was shocked at how quickly the English were losing interest in their own history, writing in his diary: “Do Englishmen so soon forget the ground where liberty was fought for?” Watching Britain today going through a profound identity crisis, I think Adams may have had a point. Maybe one reason I have always had such affection for America is that you do care about your history, even if you may not have as much of it as we Europeans do. But what you don’t have in quantity, you make up for in quality. Which is why, for all their twee silliness, I will love thinking about those faithful reenactors parading in small towns across America this summer. They are keeping alive the memory of an ideal that was worth dying for. Even if we can laugh at them for having period-correct breeches, knowing all 14 firing positions on a musket, and matching the theme-park quality of a place like Colonial Williamsburg, there is something essential to a nation’s future health in the way it cares about its past. So happy birthday, America! I hope you have a great celebration and eat way too much cake and ice cream. *** Bridget Riley studied modern history at Oxford and completed a Ph.D. in Medieval history at the University of Reading. She writes on history, culture, and the philosophy of religion.

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. *** As the GLP-1 train keeps on rolling, the 30 million adults taking weight loss medications such as Ozempic, Wegovy, Zepbound, and Mounjaro face a serious struggle to maintain lean muscle mass as they drop the pounds. And to fill in the gaps, supplemental protein is suddenly popping up everywhere, in pasta, cereal, chips — and your morning coffee.  “When you lose 20 or 30% of your body weight, you lose muscle mass,” University of Texas professor Dr. Ralph DeFronzo told “The Peter Attia Drive” podcast, referencing GLP-1s. Research shows that nearly half of the weight dropped with these drugs can come from vanishing muscle. So how do you hang onto those guns? By upping your exercise and getting more protein.  Here’s where “proffee” enters as the internet’s buzziest protein bump. Just as delicious as other portmanteaus like brunch, cronuts, and pizzadillas, it involves adding a full serving of protein to your morning cup of joe. (We’re not waking up for less than 25 grams of anything.)  “Adding protein powder to your coffee can be a convenient way to supplement your diet, especially if you’re someone that skips breakfast,” registered dietitian Dawn Menning says. “Depending on your nutrition needs, preferences, and goals, this may be an easy way to increase protein intake.” If you’ve been hanging out on planet Earth for a minute, you may remember the ’90s low-fat era, the healthy-fat trend of the 2010s, and conflicting low-carb and high-carb schools of thought. Now we’ve entered the protein jungle as we shed our formerly thicc skins for mid-2020s “body-positive” skinniness. It’s all kinds of boneless skinless chicken-breasty up in here. I’m not currently taking GLP-1s, but I definitely didn’t understand how much protein I was missing in my diet until I entered a nutrition challenge at my CrossFit gym a few years ago. (I know, protein plus CrossFit is like the “Inception” of wellness cults.) But balancing my daily macros throughout the day (carbs, fats, and protein — especially the last one) showed me I could sustain energy while preserving lean muscle mass and snatching extra fat. When I entered a bodybuilding competition, slightly adjusting those numbers completely transformed my body. (Also props to the insanely dark spray tan.) Truth be told, building and maintaining lean muscle should be a priority for everyone, not just the workout crew. Don’t tell Gwyneth or Demi, but lean muscle is one of the greatest things your body has going for it. The more muscle you have, the higher your resting metabolic rate, which means your body easily burns calories to maintain a healthy weight.  Muscle is also key for strength and mobility, increasing insulin sensitivity, lowering blood pressure, improving cognitive ability, and extending life span. Studies show it’s your muscle mass, not your BMI, that more accurately predicts how long you’ll live. Turns out six-pack abs and buns of steel are actually good for something other than thirst-trap selfies in the locker room.  Okay, so let’s agree we need protein to, y’know, survive. How much do we actually need every day? Are you getting enough? Too much? Does Khloe Kardashian’s Khloud Protein Popcorn count as food? Literally everyone has an opinion on the ideal amount.  Gym bros are over there doing tricep curls on 300 grams per day of the stuff, while your yoga-loving bestie’s going full Savasana on nothing more than a few raspberries. Officially, the Food and Drug Administration recommends 50 grams of protein daily for adults. That’s the rough equivalent of a five-ounce salmon filet and a cup of cooked lentils.  “If we look at the recommended daily allowance right now, we see it’s around 0.8 kilograms of body weight,” physiologist and nutrition scientist Dr. Stacy Sims notes. “That, I want people to understand, is the bare minimum you need to consume to prevent malnutrition.” Active and aging adults need more. “As we get older, our bodies, both men and women, become more resistant to the growth effects of protein, and growth effects of exercise,” Dr. Sims explains. “We need to look at dosing more of both.”  For women, healthy macros can clock in at one gram of protein per pound of body weight. Active men might need two grams. Maybe you need more, or less. But this isn’t just about getting shredded at the gym. It’s about leveraging the amino acids in protein to preserve brain, bone, and muscle health. “We’re going to have a stronger skeletal system, a stronger musculoskeletal system, and better brain health if we start looking at increasing our protein intake from that 0.8 grams per pound, trying to eek our way up to at least one gram per pound,” Dr. Sims says. GLP-1 users need to be extra vigilant about getting enough nutrients since they may be eating less than half the amount of food they consumed before starting the weight loss medications. I admit I’ve tried adding protein powder to coffee with limited success. That is, if you prefer coffee that’s not full of powdery clumps you have to chew. There’s boba, and then there’s whatever monster I created.  Luckily, I’ve been following Dr. Sims as my protein guru. Not only is she an expert in balancing nutrition and exercise during all stages of life (pregnancy, peri-, and menopause), but she also offers a recipe for protein coffee that actually tastes good. Her strategy for letting it chill overnight eliminates unappealing textures. I especially love this method for fueling early morning workouts when I don’t have time to digest a meal. Plus, it legitimately tastes like a milkshake. You might even skip snoozing your alarm.  Dr. Stacy Sims Protein Coffee 30 grams (two tablespoons) chocolate protein powder 4 ounces cold milk of choice 2 shots coffee or espresso (decaf works too!) Optional plant-based sweetener like Stevia Mix the protein powder with the milk, then add the coffee and optional sweetener. Stir or shake to combine, and chill in the fridge overnight. You can also drink it on the spot.  “Caffeine, good fat, carbohydrates, and 30 grams of protein? And you can put it in a cup to go?” Mel Robbins remarked after tasting the protein coffee on her podcast. “Dr. Stacy Sims, you’re a genius.”  Don’t feel restricted to “proffee” if you’re not one of those “offee” types. Try the combo using matcha or chai instead of coffee, pairing these bold teas with vanilla or unflavored protein powder and your favorite milk. You can even pop a few shots of espresso into a pre-made protein shake to satisfy the assignment.   With many of us trying our best to work a little more protein into the day (without having to tote around a zip-top bag full of grilled chicken breast — I can’t be that girl!), adopting the trendy protein coffee habit might be just the ritual your body has been craving. The best part of waking up is “proffee” in your cup. 

Second Lady Usha Vance delivered a rare rebuke to The New York Times over an article essentially claiming that women within President Donald Trump’s administration were using maternity fashion to weaponize pregnancy. Vance, who is pregnant with her fourth child with husband and Vice President JD Vance, mocked the outlet’s attempt to make her wardrobe political and made it clear that her maternity fashion choices were typically born of just three things: necessity, comfort, and economy. “Now that we know the political significance of my $8.75 coral maternity dress from Old Navy, can’t wait to hear what the New York Times has to say about my elastic-waistband pants and compression socks!” Vance posted via X. “In the meantime, enjoy my pregnancy fashion (or lack thereof) and a good story with your kids on ‘Storytime with the Second Lady.'” Along with her caption, Vance shared a video — also featuring the vice president — of herself wearing the dress in question as he read aloud from A. A. Milne’s classic, “Winnie the Pooh.” And here’s the receipt! pic.twitter.com/tgICmpbapQ — Second Lady Usha Vance (@SLOTUS) June 24, 2026 For good measure, Vance followed up with a screenshot of her receipt showing that she had, in fact, purchased the dress from Old Navy. It also showed that the coral-colored “Asymmetrical Shoulder Maxi Dress,” originally $49.99, had been marked down to $12.99 and she had saved an additional $3.74— making her final total $8.75. And while that choice may have been one of convenience and economy, Vance said in March that being pregnant as the Second Lady of the United States meant that she necessarily had to change her style, mainly because her position dictated a number of events that she would have to attend — and many of those would not be held in places where leggings and sweatpants were considered appropriate. “I have to dress up a lot more. I enjoyed my last pregnancy — there were a lot of sweatpants. I was working from home and sometimes put a blazer on over what was under,” she told NBC at the time. The article to which Vance was responding was published on Wednesday and was titled, “The Politics and Power of the Pregnancy Image.” If that did not paint a clear enough picture of the tone, the sub-headline removed all doubt: “Usha Vance, along with Katie Miller and Karoline Leavitt, shows how much is said by an expectant silhouette, without anyone saying a word.” The article proceeded to accuse women within the Trump administration of flaunting their pregnancies to make a political point: this is what women are supposed to do — and how they are supposed to look. Together, the women have created a notably consistent, and somewhat paradigm-shifting, picture of the White House’s family and fertility platform. If the bare-chested, muscled mixed martial arts fighters of the U.F.C. match that President Trump hosted on Flag Day were the poster guys for MAGA’s image of masculinity, then the pregnant women of Trump world are one half of their feminine counterparts. Along with the sheath-clad, lip-filled, pageant-haired Mar-a-Lago set, they offer an image of idealized womanhood that gives literal shape to the pronatalist movement. Jill Filipovic, the host of the “Week in Women” podcast, suggested that even though it’s highly unlikely that the pregnancies were coordinated, the presentation appeared to be: “It almost feels like a memo went out. They have quite intentionally opted to present themselves as, ‘I am really pregnant, and this is what women were chosen to do,’ and they are happy to say that both with their looks and their mouths.” Vance, quite clearly, said otherwise. Miller, whose fourth child with longtime Trump adviser Stephen Miller was born just days before Father’s Day, weighed in as well — and said that maternity fashion had been made more difficult as American birth rates had fallen. “Over the last few years, many clothing brands have largely stopped producing maternity clothes that most women actually want to wear. @SLOTUS has done a phenomenal job curating affordable, fashionable options that make pregnancy fashion accessible. The root cause is sadly straightforward: with fewer women having babies, it’s likely become unprofitable for brands to invest in dedicated maternity lines,” she said.

Tuesday’s primary elections indicated that the divide within the Democratic Party, between the moderate and the more socialist factions, is only growing ever deeper. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) responded after three far left candidates — all backed by Democratic socialist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani — swept their individual races, making it clear that he too had chosen a side. “Our message to the oligarchs: bring it on. After last nights decisive wins, have a new, strong, bold Democratic party,” Khanna said.  Our message to the oligarchs: bring it on. After last nights decisive wins, have a new, strong, bold Democratic party. pic.twitter.com/cGqpQozYcn — Ro Khanna (@RoKhanna) June 24, 2026 “The reality is that our platform of a new deal is resonating, it’s a platform that says no to foreign wars, no to genocide, but it’s also a platform that says yes. Yes to medicare for all, yes to childcare for all, yes to unions for all, and yes to a tax on billionaires and trillionaires.”  The three Mamdani-backed socialist candidates swept their congressional races on Tuesday, defeating two incumbent Democrats: Reps. Dan Goldman and Adriano Espaillat. Their challengers were viewed by many in the party as radical leftists.  Democratic primary winners Darializa Avila Chevalier and Claire Valdez actually belong to the Democratic Socialist party of America. The New York Times Editorial Board learned Chevalier could not name an instance in which she would support a man being imprisoned for murder. Chevalier claimed that when “we put people behind bars in incredibly traumatizing conditions in a context where they cannot actually reflect on the harm that they caused.”  Along with abolishing prisons, Chevalier has advocated for abolishing police and national borders. Notably, she has said that “all deportations” — including those of immigrants convicted for murder, rape, and assault — should be banned, as imprisoning and deporting would be seen as “double jeopardy.” Valdez, who won New York’s 7th district, supports abolishing ICE, private healthcare, and strengthening unions.  Khanna is not alone in his support for the “new, strong, bold Democratic party.” Senator Cory Booker voiced support for the new candidates saying, “One of the things that makes the Democratic party great is it’s a big tent party, we need to stay that way.” He added, “The focus has got to be the November election.”  Members of the parties’ progressive left such as Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Ro Khanna did not recognize the anniversary but celebrated Tuesday’s election. Alhamdulillah! I can’t imagine experiencing what she had to a still smiling as a first time candidate but respect her grace and resilience and I am very proud of her. We are very lucky to have a principled leader and someone who understands who it means to be a leader carrying… https://t.co/FpUI1tsr0v — Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) June 24, 2026 However, other establishment Democrats did not comment on Tuesday’s election, focusing their attention on the four-year anniversary of the overturning of Roe V. Wade. Former Vice President Kamala Harris, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and the Democrat’s page recognized the anniversary and did not make a comment on Tuesday’s election night.  When the Court overturned Roe, one thought kept running through my mind: Women of this generation were about to lose rights that previous generations had fought to secure. Four years later, we have seen exactly what that looks like — chaos, confusion, fear. Women denied care.… — Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) June 24, 2026 Senator Bernie Sanders and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani highlighted both events.