Trump Celebrates America’s 250th
President Trump capped the nation’s semiquincentennial with a Saturday night speech on the National Mall, telling a crowd of more than 150,000 that America has been “the hope, the promise, the light, and the glory among all of the nations of the world” while warning that communism is “like a cancer. You got to cut it out.” Severe weather forced an evacuation that pushed his remarks to the 11 P.M. hour, but the night still ended with a record-setting fireworks display that spilled into July 5. The night before, Trump rallied at Mount Rushmore, where the new Air Force One was photographed flying over the monument—echoing an iconic 2001 image of its predecessor.
🗽 A Tale of Two Speeches: While Trump celebrated American “glory” in Washington, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani offered a starkly different vision of the 250th, speaking from George Washington's desk at City Hall, surrounded by recently naturalized citizens. Mamdani retold American history as a story of struggle and contradiction, saying he sees “monopolies that dominate every industry and oligarchs who buy elections” and “masked agents terrorizing our streets.”
World News
💥 U.S.-Iran ceasefire: The two countries traded strikes for a second day this week after Iran attacked ships in the Strait of Hormuz, with the U.S. hitting around 90 targets and Iran firing on American military sites in Bahrain and Kuwait. Trump declared the ceasefire dead at the NATO summit in Turkey, calling Iran “scum” and negotiations “a waste of time,” although he later said talks would continue.
🇪🇸 Spain cut off from U.S. trade: Trump ordered the Treasury Department on Wednesday to immediately halt all trade with Spain, calling it a “terrible partner” for refusing to back the Iran war or NATO’s 5% defense spending target. The Treasury will present him with a menu of Spanish products that could be embargoed in the coming days.
🛩️ Turkey and the F-35: President Trump announced Tuesday he’ll lift sanctions restricting military equipment sales to Turkey and signaled he’s open to selling the country F-35s again, saying Turkey “has been, in many ways, much more loyal than other countries that we think would be loyal.” This would reverse Turkey's ouster from the F-35 program, which occurred after they bought S-400 Russian surface-to-air missiles in 2017, which military experts say would compromise the highly classified capabilities of the F-35 to Russia. Congress passed a law in 2019 that prohibits any F-35 sales to Turkey as long as it retains the S-400s. President Trump has indicated that removing the S-400s is not an issue for him, but he did not explain how he plans to obtain unlikely Congressional approval for the sale.
🚀 China joins the reusable rocket club: China recovered the first stage of a Long March-10B rocket on a sea platform for the first time, a milestone SpaceX and Blue Origin reached back in 2015. Japan followed almost immediately, safely landing its experimental reusable rocket on its first test flight.
U.S. News
🏗️ Housing bill becomes law: President Trump let the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act take effect Friday night at midnight without a signing ceremony, marking the federal government's first real push in over 30 years to build more housing. The law cuts red tape for developers, eases lending, and bars large investors from buying up single-family homes.
🛬 Old Air Force One used again: Trump left the NATO summit aboard the old Air Force One rather than the Qatar-donated jet, raising questions about the new plane's security features.
💰 Trump Accounts launch: The Treasury Department officially rolled out Trump Accounts, IRA-style investment vehicles that give U.S. citizens born between 2025 and 2028 a $1,000 government-funded start, along with an app for families to easily track and add funds.
🗳️ Maine scramble: Maine Democrats voted to hold a “Nominating Convention” to pick a replacement Senate candidate for Graham Platner, a controversial former Marine and oyster farmer who won the primary to face five-term incumbent Susan Collins despite a deal of past personal baggage, but who was then taken down with allegations of sexual abuse from women in his past.
✈️ PBI now DJT: The FAA alerted air traffic controllers that Palm Beach International Airport's three-letter identifier has officially changed to honor President Trump.
🏡 Home prices peak: The median U.S. home sales price hit a record $440,600 in June, per the National Association of Realtors.
⚖️ Carroll payout: A judge ordered that E. Jean Carroll be paid $5.8 million after a jury found Trump liable for sexual assault and defamation, and the Supreme Court rejected his appeal.
🏛️ Kirk case in court: Tyler Robinson, charged in the killing of Charlie Kirk, appeared in a Utah courtroom for the start of a days-long preliminary hearing where prosecutors seeking the death penalty will present evidence. Kirk's widow, Erika, attended.
☀️ Yearly cosmic milestone: Earth hit aphelion this week— its farthest point from the sun at about 94.5 million miles—and July 6 at noon marked the exact midpoint of 2026, with 182.5 days on either side.
The Future of This Newsletter
After about two years of writing this newsletter weekly, we have decided to stop the weekly format and instead occasionally bring articles to you that we think will be helpful and informative to you.
As the writer of the newsletter to date, I’m signing off, and I am quite excited about the additional time this shift will give me to produce and release new church music and media projects, which I wager you may enjoy more than a dry weekly run-through of current events.
— Andrew
As an example of what you may expect, here is the first article below:
Challenges to Homeschoolers
By Howard Wheeler
Across the world, many countries are taking a stricter approach to home schooling, tightening the noose around parental rights. Germany and Sweden have basically outlawed home education. Our community in the Netherlands has just received notice that after one more year they will have to enroll their children in public schools. We know here in the U.S., an organized group of scholars and lawyers desire to ban homeschooling, but in the U.S. they face the legal obstacles of the First Amendment freedom of religion and the legal precedents establishing parental rights. Other countries do not have such legal barriers.
For example, news reports reveal that two months ago a court in Brazil sentenced a couple to 50 days in prison for “intellectual neglect” because they homeschooled their two daughters without a State-approved curriculum. The charges were based on the fact that the parents had failed to include programs on “gender and sex education” and “tolerance and diversity” in the curriculum for their two daughters, aged 15 and 11. The court also ruled that the parents failed to properly integrate their children into Brazilian culture, citing the girls’ preference for religious and classical music over popular trap or “sertanejo” (folk) music.
The parents have said they were surprised by the ruling and never expected to be sentenced to prison for trying to provide a better education for their daughters, who are both accomplished pianists and speak multiple languages.
Isabel Monteiro, the defense attorney representing the family, said the judge made an “ideological decision to convict them,” based largely on the older daughter's preference for sacred music over mainstream music that often features explicit lyrics.
Even the State’s own prosecutors urged the court to acquit the parents, concluding after an evaluation by an independent educational psychologist that the girls showed no signs of neglect and were thriving socially and academically.
We need to pray for this family, and as Paul told Timothy, we need to pray for kings and those in authority that we (and this family) can lead peaceable lives. This Brazilian incident may seem thousands of miles away, but the spirit and ideology behind this draconian ruling lives right here in this country as well. We can never lose sight of the reality that we live as strangers in a strange land. While we remain grateful for our legal protections in this country, we must never forget how exceptional—and transient—these protections are, and therefore, “Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil” (Eph. 5:15-16).
