American History

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) is leading a Republican effort in the House to abolish a controversial surveillance authority that is due for reauthorization at the end of the year. Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was enacted by Congress in 2008 as a post-9/11 measure to bulk up U.S. national security. The provision allows intelligence agencies to conduct...

Commentary In recent months, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) have been crisscrossing the country. They are offering dueling narratives regarding the upsides of their own states while lambasting the downsides of their opponent’s states. Why are these two governors sniping at one another? Are they raising their national profiles and jockeying for position in...

The United States will move forward with its plan to transfer F-16 fighter jets to Turkey, the White House said on July 11, shortly after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan withdrew his objection to Sweden joining NATO. “President Biden has been clear and unequivocal for months that he supported the transfer of F-16s to Turkey,” U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told...

St. George Tucker Washington, Adams, Madison, Jefferson, Franklin. All of these Founding Fathers are well known and need no first names. Tucker, however, is a surname of a member of the Founding Generation that for many isn’t familiar, and definitely needs a first name. And what a first name it is: St. George! St. George Tucker is a man whose...

On July 4, 11 federal agencies and dozens of their officials were legally blocked from further interaction with more than 20 social media companies about the censoring of information deemed by the government as misinformation. Communication about criminal activity, national security threats, attempted foreign influence, cyberattacks, illegal campaign contributions, and voter suppression are exempt from the ban. The preliminary injunction...

States are on the front lines in pushing back against federal efforts to normalize transgender procedures for minors On Saturday, Chief Judge Jeffrey Sutton of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit issued a preliminary injunction that allows Tennessee’s law to prohibit health care providers from performing or administering cross-sex procedures on minors to take place, a week...

U.S. National Archives and Records Administration U.S. House Chamber In the sweltering heat of Philadelphia, during the fateful days of July 5 and 6, 1787, an extraordinary event took place, but one that is hardly mentioned anymore by anyone. As I’ve written in an earlier article in this series, even before the echo from the gavel had subsided, divisions had...

John Whitehead Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.—Harry S. Truman How many Americans have actually...

Defense ministers and other officials from all 31 nations in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) gather between July 11–12 in Vilnius, Lithuania, for a meeting that could define the 75-year-old alliance’s next century. On tap is NATO’s first updated battle plan since the fall of the Soviet Union, a discussion about membership funding levels, Sweden’s proposed entry, and clarifications...

delihayat/iStock/Getty Images Plus A federal judge on Tuesday prohibited numerous federal agencies and high-ranking officials of the Biden administration from working with social media companies by ruling that the government “used its power to silence the opposition” during the Covid-19 pandemic.   U.S. District Court Judge Terry Doughty issued the preliminary injunction stating that the administration violated the First Amendment...

YouTube Proof that the Great American Revival is here — and has been for some time — continues to pour in. Over the Independence Day weekend, nearly 7,000 souls accepted Jesus Christ as their savior at Pastor Greg Laurie’s two-day Harvest Crusade at the Honda Center in Anaheim, California. Laurie celebrated on Twitter: The 2023 Harvest Crusade Welcomed Over 32,000...

An Oregon law that forbids recording in public without consent runs afoul of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment, a U.S. court has ruled. Oregon law 165.540, first enacted in 1955 and subsequently broadened to bar secret recording of conversations, is unconstitutional, Judge Sandra Ikuta, a George W. Bush appointee writing for the majority in the 2–1 ruling, said. Exceptions to the...

President Joe Biden has announced plans to nominate Virginia Solicitor General Andrew Ferguson and Utah Solicitor General Melissa Holyoak to serve as Republican commissioners of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The White House announced the GOP nominations—part of a longstanding practice to include bipartisan membership—in a July 3 press release. Senate lawmakers will need to vote to confirm Biden’s nominees for the FTC...

Commentary Canada’s federal government has cheerfully proclaimed June to September to be Pride Season. Beyond the commonplace vulgarity in pride parades, one reasonably perceives a push to include new identities. And generous Canadians are inclusive. But a push for inclusion is a push for power, and that makes inclusion a complex political beast. For starters, unless every person is included, any...

Commentary It seems that Chinese leader Xi Jinping is particularly sensitive to being described as a “dictator.” When U.S. President Joe Biden used the description, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was outraged, with its mouthpiece, the Global Times calling it a vicious attack. If Biden had said that Xi was the “leader of a dictatorship,” perhaps he would not have...

Commentary The United States Supreme Court has rendered an important decision on race-based admissions to colleges and universities which, at least indirectly, is relevant to Australia’s debate on the proposed entrenchment of The Voice in the Constitution and necessitates a reflection on Australia’s university admission policies. On June 29, the Supreme Court decisively banned race-based admission processes. It decided that...

Commentary Australia is a federation, although for decades now it has been hard to notice. But COVID-19 may have changed everything. In a functioning federation, like the United States, states revel in competition and distinguishing themselves from each other. While California appears to be going woke and broke at the moment, Florida is where “woke goes to die” and where...

AP Images Lorie Smith of 303 Creative The Supreme Court’s ruling yesterday in 303 Creative v. Elenis continues the dismantling of the “wall of separation” atheists have used successfully to remove the Christian faith from the culture. At issue is Lorie Smith’s First Amendment guarantee of freedom of speech, rendered through her talent and ability for creative graphic design. She...

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, has vetoed a bill that was meant to protect children from transgender gender-change surgeries and other procedures like giving kids cross-sex hormones. House Bill 648, known as the “Stop Harming Our Kids Act,” was passed by the Republican-controlled state legislature along party lines in early June. The bill sought to prohibit hormone treatments...

wynnter/iStock/Getty Images Plus From July 2 to July 5, 1787, the delegates attending the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia approved a resolution that would sufficiently satisfy the demands of delegates from small states for equality of representation, as well as those from the larger states who insisted that fairness demanded representation on the basis of population. Most historians consider it the...