July 3, 2026

Photo credit: VCG / Contributor / Visual China Group via Getty Images

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Perhaps the most famous sentence in the English language, those words from the Declaration of Independence remind us “that the core principle of America is the freedom to exercise our God-given rights,” Jeffrey H. Anderson observes. “Americans are not a people meant to be compelled, barred, or taxed at every turn by a distant capital—they weren’t in 1776, and they aren’t in 2026. They should be left to govern themselves locally to the greatest extent possible, exercising their self-evident rights and relishing their good fortune to live in a nation whose essence is freedom.”

Read more about the Declaration.

Those who dismiss democratic socialism as little more than a slogan or a protest movement are getting a rude political awakening. Earlier this week, Democrats in Colorado’s First Congressional District voted for socialist Melat Kiros over 15-term incumbent and mainstream progressive Diana DeGette. And in New York’s congressional primaries last week, socialists Darializa Avila Chevalier, Claire Valdez, and Brad Lander won their races, beating more traditional Democrats.

“The Democratic Socialists of America have built out a disciplined political infrastructure that appears poised to continue its gradual capture of the Democratic Party,” Jesse Arm and Sean Speer write. Indeed, the DSA has the resources to mobilize, raise money, recruit, and ultimately enforce its ideology. Going against it will require an agenda that unites voters around public safety, civic pluralism, economic growth, and housing production.

“There are plenty of Democratic, independent, and Republican normies in and around America’s urban centers who would sign on to that agenda if someone built the vehicle for it,” Arm and Speer maintain.

Last month, Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey signed a law that requires K-3 students to receive evidence-based reading instruction, including phonics, vocabulary, and comprehension. The law bans the failed reading strategy “three-cueing” or “MSV cueing,” which encourages students to guess unfamiliar words using meaning and visual cues. And it requires districts to conduct screenings twice a year to assess student progress.

The state’s powerful teachers’ unions opposed the bill for years, arguing that it would infringe on their autonomy. “But even that power couldn’t outweigh the pressing need for reading reform,” Neetu Arnold writes. “Massachusetts has established a statewide expectation that schools provide high-quality, evidence-based reading instruction. Its success shows that even blue states can get teachers’ unions to back down when the facts demand change.”

School districts are increasingly providing mental-health services through unlicensed staff operating outside the safeguards that govern licensed behavioral-health professionals. The recent arrest of an unlicensed social emotional learning (SEL) coach at a Virginia elementary school on child sexual abuse charges has led to greater scrutiny, especially after parents learned that he conducted unrecorded one-on-one sessions with students without parental knowledge.

Attorney Chris Evans warns that proposals to expand school mental-health screening could make these scenarios more likely, unless stronger oversight and parental protections are adopted.

“Universal screening will flag more children, which will require more staff, hired from any background and empowered to become a child’s ‘trusted adult,’” he writes. “How many more families will someday have to ask: Why was I not told?”

Read more here.