Trump calls bluff of critics in July 4th speech  —  (CNN)President Donald Trump was as good as his word Thursday: He saluted America.  —  In one of the least polarizing speeches of his presidency, Trump paid tribute to America's armed forces at a July Fourth appearance before the Lincoln Memorial …

CNN Exclusive: Joe Biden says he wasn't prepared for Kamala Harris to confront him the way she did  —  Des Moines, Iowa (CNN)Former Vice President Joe Biden said in an exclusive interview with CNN airing Friday that he wasn't prepared for California Sen. Kamala Harris to confront him on issues …

Donald Trump trips up on history in 4th of July speech, mentions airports during Revolutionary War  —  President Donald Trump celebrated America as “the most exceptional nation in the history of the world” in a Fourth of July commemoration before a soggy, cheering crowd of spectators.

The Deepening Crisis in Evangelical Christianity  —  Last week, Ralph Reed, the Faith and Freedom Coalition's founder and chairman, told the group, “There has never been anyone who has defended us and who has fought for us, who we have loved more than Donald J. Trump.  No one!”

Trump's Not-Crazy Speech Just Highlighted Norms He's Crushed  —  It was a speech that had all the excitement of an excerpt from one of Bill O'Reilly's YA history books.  —  It was a triumph of low expectations.  —  Donald Trump's “Salute to America” speech could have easily devolved into chants of …

Trump's sad, strange, somewhat Soviet Fourth of July spectacle  —  Let's get an obvious point about President Trump's Independence Day speech out of the way right at the top.  It was a bad speech.  —  It wasn't bad in the way most of Donald Trump's speeches are bad, in that it was not overtly objectionable.

How the Supreme Court will upend 2020  —  The Supreme Court is already poised to drop some big political bombshells right into the heat of the 2020 campaign.  And there are even more waiting in the wings.  —  Why it matters: The court will likely hand down rulings on some of the most contentious issues …

It's Not Just the White House in 2020.  The Power to Draw Maps Is Also at Stake.  —  DALLAS — Only hours after the United States Supreme Court said it could do nothing to stop partisan gerrymandering of the nation's political maps, Eric H. Holder Jr. had a message for his fellow Democrats in downtown Dallas.

'This doesn't look like the best economy ever': 40% of Americans say they still struggle to pay bills  —  Sommer Johnson thought everything was finally coming together for her last year.  She was engaged, working full time and doing well in online college classes when her fiance's mother died …

Trump administration scrambles to save citizenship question on census  —  Spurred on by President Trump, government lawyers scrambled Thursday to find a legal path to add a controversial citizenship question to the 2020 Census, despite their conclusions in recent days that no such avenue exists.

CrowdStrikeOut: Mueller's Own Report Undercuts Its Core Russia-Meddling Claims  —  At a May press conference capping his tenure as special counsel, Robert Mueller emphasized what he called “the central allegation” of the two-year Russia probe.  The Russian government, Mueller sternly declared …

Why American conservatism failed  —  Today's crisis of conservatism has produced surprisingly few books that try to understand what exactly has happened to the venerable creed.  For decades, conservatism was a dominant ideology in the Western world, championed by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan.

Ordered Deported, Then Sent a $497,777 Fine From ICE  —  Edith Espinal spends her days praying, reading and, when feeling brave, taking short accompanied walks outside the Mennonite church in Columbus, Ohio, where she has been living for 21 months.  Church leaders have been protecting Ms. Espinal …

When do struggling 2020 candidates have to bail to run for another office?  —  The 2020 Democratic presidential race is still wide open, but candidates who have yet to break through have to decide how long they want to ride it out.  In some cases, their ambitions for political Plan B will force …

More about that Fourth of July parade  —  Phillip Kennicott, a lefty critic for the Washington Post, begins his column about the Fourth of July parade this way: … Really?  What about those enraged feminists who marched up and down the Mall wearing pussy hats?  They didn't seem conciliatory to me.