Up until now, some Democratic worries about the upcoming midterm elections have been dismissed by the "It could never happen here" crowd as unfounded nightmares. They pooh-pooh such worries as being laughably outlandish and accuse people who express these worries for overreacting about things that couldn't possibly happen right here in the good ol' U.S. of A. But this week should make such scenarios a whole lot less laughable and a whole lot more worrisome.

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Today's rerun was an easy choice, even though it was originally published less than two months ago. Because today the House of Representatives actually passed the Sunshine Protection Act, by a vote of 308-117. As the article below mentions, what's unusual about that vote count is that it was amazingly bipartisan, with 193 Republicans and 114 Democrats voting in favor of it. Not many things are that bipartisan these days.

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As the M.O.U. crumbles, the price of gas is going back up again. That's where America stands with Donald Trump's on-again/off-again war of choice with Iran. The Memorandum Of Understanding that both sides signed less than a month ago now lies in tatters, Trump just announced that U.S. military ships will re-impose the blockade of Iranian ports, and ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz are under attack again from Iran. All of which has spooked the world's oil market, where prices are (once again) rising fast.

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Last week, we warned everyone that July was going to be a sketchy month for us, in terms of our ability to write these Friday columns. So we begin today with a program update. Today's offering is not a complete Friday Talking Points column. It is bare-bones, at best. We're not even really going to attempt reviewing the past week, and we're also not going to write out talking points at the end (although we did complete the two awards sections). Just to warn everyone up front.

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Rahm Emanuel just launched his 2028 presidential campaign -- in Israel. He did so by giving what might be called a "Sister Souljah moment" speech in Tel Aviv, where he delicately tried to thread the needle of addressing the relationship between the U.S. and Israel in a realistic fashion without burning his bridges with either American Democrats or Israeli Jews. That is a challenging thing to attempt these days, which is why Emanuel's speech was such an important political development.

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As of this writing, Graham Platner has still not officially dropped out of the Maine Senate race. That may have changed by the time you read this, however, because he is reportedly going to make some sort of announcement tonight. Everyone knows what he's going to do already, though. So the two big questions before Maine Democrats now are: who is going to replace him, and how will the replacement candidate be selected?

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Tomorrow, America will celebrate 250 years of independence. That sounds like a long time, to Americans at least. It is a laughably short period to those who live in places with much longer histories, however. Travel around Europe or other foreign lands and you will see ruins and remains that sometimes date in the thousands of years. So while a quarter-millennium is impressive to us, to people who live near (for instance) Roman aqueducts that date to the time of Christ aren't quite as impressed.

Nevertheless, 250 years of one form of government that has endured throughout (well, except for the Articles of Confederation period, which is always conveniently forgotten) is something definitely worth celebrating. The question many are asking at this moment in time is how much longer the same form of government will endure in the future -- will the United States of America still be recognizable in another 100 years? Or 50? Or even five years?

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A paroxysm of hand-wringing and pearl-clutching was set off yesterday, as another Democratic Socialist candidate beat a long-standing Democratic incumbent in a Colorado primary. This likely means there will be at least three new members of the House of Representatives who call themselves Democratic Socialists, which is causing certain political commentators to absolutely freak out.

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As one of the last decisions the Supreme Court handed down in this year's term, they upheld the concept of "birthright citizenship" enshrined within the Fourteenth Amendment. Barely.

The stunning thing wasn't the ruling, which was expected. The truly stunning thing is that the decision was partly 6-3 and partly 5-4. It should have been at least 7-2, with the only dissenters being Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas (who always vote the way Republicans want them to vote, no matter how clear the legal evidence is on the other side). Honestly, the decision should really have been 9-0, since the case is so cut and dried. Having it only 6-3 (or 5-4) shows that too many conservative judges are complete hypocrites when they swear up and down that they are "originalists" or "textualists" who only take into account what the Constitution (or any amendment) meant by the people who drafted it. Whenever that lofty principle becomes inconvenient in a case, too many of the conservatives just start making stuff up instead of reading the clear and unequivocal language of a law or an amendment.

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It is darkly ironic that we are only a few weeks away from celebrating the 250th anniversary of declaring independence from a king while our own Supreme Court continues to advance a vision of American government where the president has powers that can only be described as kinglike. They don't call it that -- they use the term "unitary executive" instead -- but the upshot is the same.

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