Think More: Tuesday, July 7, 2026
Mamdani's Independence Day, the DSA's rise, the Founders and equality, grade inflation and failing schools, the student-loan cutoff, and more.
Lead · The Nation and Its Newcomers
Mamdani Tells New Yorkers That Immigrants Hold the Power to Decide What America Means
Batya Ungar-Sargon | batya-us.com
Delivering his July 4 address from behind George Washington’s desk, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani cast America’s 250th birthday as an indictment rather than a celebration, telling recently naturalized immigrants they hold “the power to determine what America means.” Batya Ungar-Sargon reads the speech as the sharpest form of the day’s central question: whether newcomers should assimilate into a great nation or remake it in their own image.
The Nation and Its Newcomers
Self-Deportation Is an American Tradition Dating to the Revolution, Waller Argues
Writing in Lyceum, J. Michael Waller traces self-deportation to the founding era, when towns and states made life untenable for as many as 100,000 loyalists. With no federal enforcement under the Articles of Confederation, citizens themselves drove out those they judged to hold divided loyalties. Washington’s 1796 Farewell Address, Waller notes, warned against precisely that danger.
Anton Says Laura Field Recasts the Founders and Lincoln as Modern Progressives
Michael Anton | The American Mind
In The American Mind, Michael Anton answers Laura Field’s charge that he distorted Lincoln, arguing she recasts the Founders as progressive avatars. Their quarrel turns on equality: Anton holds that the Founders and Lincoln meant equal rights before the law, not equal outcomes, and no automatic right of foreigners to settle without the citizenry’s consent.
The Democrats’ New Face
A Former Democratic Operative Says the DSA’s Takeover Is Only Beginning
Evan Barker, who spent five years raising money for progressive candidates before leaving the party in 2024, tells The Free Press that the democratic socialist surge shocked everyone but her. She taught DSA-aligned staffers to build fundraising machines and worked with figures behind the recent leftward sweep. Her forthcoming book argues this is only the beginning.
A YouGov Poll Finds Democrats Rating the BLM Flag Above the American Flag
At Power Line, John Hinderaker highlighted a YouGov survey of more than 1,000 adults on the politics of flags, noting that Democrats rate the Black Lives Matter flag more warmly than the Stars and Stripes. The same crosstabs show Democrats favoring the Palestinian flag by 27 to 12 percent, while splitting negatively on the Israeli flag.
Failing Grades
A Success Academy Report Finds 906 New York City Schools Failing Their Students
A report from Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy charter network finds 906 New York City public schools where fewer than half of students passed state math or reading exams last year, enrolling 43 percent of the system’s children. Grade inflation masks the failure: even in these schools, 98 percent of teachers are rated effective.
Washington Cuts Off Federal Loans to Degree Programs That Do Not Pay Off
A rule effective July 1, drawn from last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, strips federal student loans from degree programs whose graduates earn less than the typical high school graduate. In the New York Post, Rikki Schlott counts more than 800 such programs, including at the University of Southern California, and calls the reform overdue.
As Freshmen Arrive Less Prepared, Universities Expand Remedial Support
Campus Reform reports that universities across the country are logging declining academic proficiency among incoming students and responding by expanding tutoring, advising, and remedial programs. Jack Roberts frames the buildout as a widening gap between enrollment and readiness, with institutions now absorbing the cost of teaching skills that high schools once delivered.
New York City’s failing schools, per the Success Academy report
906
Schools failing students
43%
Of all city students in them
98%
Of teachers rated effective
The Sinews of American Power
Economists Call the New “Trump Accounts” a Good Deal for American Newborns
Christina Park | Just the News
Just the News reports that the tax-deferred “Trump Accounts,” seeded with a $1,000 Treasury deposit and invested in index funds, drew praise from economists after launching this week; more than six million children have enrolled. Stockton University’s Michael Busler calls them a lesson in capitalism, arriving as candidates in several races openly campaign on socialism.
Toyota Shifts Tacoma Production From Mexico to Texas in a $3.6 Billion Bet
Toyota will move Tacoma pickup assembly from Baja California to San Antonio, investing $3.6 billion to add a second line, create more than 2,000 jobs, and lift annual output by 150,000 units. The shift, reported by PJ Media, follows Washington’s decision to let the USMCA lapse in favor of annual reviews. One Mexican plant stays open.
A Hoover Report Maps the Quantum Race and Warns No One Nation Controls It
Eyck Freymann et al. | Hoover Institution
A Hoover Institution report led by Eyck Freymann argues that quantum computing, sensing, and communications are three separate races, and that fault-tolerant machines could arrive by the early 2030s, sooner than most forecasts assume. The United States leads in computing platforms, China in communications, and Europe and Japan in components; none, the authors write, is self-sufficient.
