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“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
250 years ago, the founding fathers were days away from adopting the Declaration of Independence.
Fast forward to July 4, 2026, two and a half centuries later, has America lived up to those lofty ideals?
Is this anniversary a time for celebration, mourning, reckoning, or something else? We hear from 1A listeners on what Independence Day means to them.
Note: One of our callers referenced the Frederick Douglass speech ‘What to the Slave is the Fourth of July.’ You can read that here.
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Americans are grappling with a rising cost in healthcare. For the first time in five years, fewer than half of Americans can consistently afford healthcare. That’s according to the latest data from Gallup. The cost of healthcare in the US remains higher than any other large, wealthy country. According to a report from the Department of Health and Human Services, five million fewer people are enrolled in marketplace plans for 2026, compared to last year. That’s as average premium costs rose about 58%.
With health care costs increasingly becoming a stress for Americans, voters are now making the issue a top priority at the ballot box. And it’s an issue that crosses party and geographic lines. According to new polling from The Century Foundation, 71% of Democrats, 66% of Republicans and 75% of rural voters agree that reigning in hospital costs should be a top priority for lawmakers. While new polling from Ipsos and Axios suggests that a majority of Americans say they’re more likely to vote for candidates in November who will lower their health costs.
How will the issue of healthcare shape the midterms? And how are Americans grappling with the cost of their health?
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President Donald Trump has taken an increasingly personal role in the government’s clemency process, wielding pardons aid his allies and advance his own political grievances.
A Reuters investigation found that 96% of Trump’s second-term clemency grants have gone to recipients who didn’t fulfill longstanding DOJ guidelines for such requests. Past presidents on have sidestepped those rules before, but fewer than 1% of those who received clemency during the Biden administration and just 14% of recipients in Trump’s first presidency failed to meet the guidelines.
Pardon applicants once had to comply with longstanding DOJ guidelines, such as a five-year wait after conviction or demonstrated remorse for their crimes. But a Reuters’ analysis shows that under Trump, clemency now is far more dependent upon access to his inner circle. They also found that “access is enhanced when an applicant can craft a narrative that resonates with the president’s own sense of victimization.”
During his first administration, Trump granted just 238 pardons and commutations, most of which came amid his frantic final days in office. But this term the White House has made clemencies a key part of its agenda.
As part of our weekly series “If You Can Keep it,” we discuss pardons in the second Trump Administration.
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This week the Supreme Court sides with President Trump on ending Temporary Protected Status. The decades-long program currently gives legal status in the U.S. to about 350,000 Haitians and more than 6,000 Syrians seeking refuge from crises at home.
The court also ruled to renew a “turn-back” policy at the border with Mexico that prevents migrants from entering the U.S. to seek asylum. A decision on President Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship in the U.S. is expected soon.
Also in Washington, the president creates chaos in his own party, demanding that Republican Senators reconsider their support for a war powers resolution on Iran. A vote to limit war powers passed on Tuesday with support from four Republicans. A similar resolution failed on Wednesday. President Trump also on Wednesday refused to sign a bipartisan housing bill that had passed the House 358-32.
And in New York, three candidates backed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani win their primaries for Congressional seats against establishment Democrats.
And, in global news, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President J.D. Vance were overseas this week, selling and negotiating an end to the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran.
But Iran’s chief negotiator calls the deal an “American declaration of defeat” and it marks the end of any remaining joint Iran-strategy between the U.S. and Israel.
Delegations from Israel and Lebanon meet in Washington to extend a ceasefire in a conflict that’s killed more than 4,000 people in Lebanon and displaced 20% of the population of under 6 million. And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vows to continue fighting in Lebanon as he faces pressure at home and isolation from U.S. leaders.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer resigns in the U.K., but analysts say his likely successor Andy Burnham will face the same deep challenges that have knocked out six leaders in the 10 years since Brexit.
We cover the most important stories from around the world in the News Roundup.
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Artificial Intelligence is advancing at a dizzying pace. One analysis shows it doubling its abilities every seven months.
And it’s surpassed humans in more than just trivia and Chess. Last year, an AI from Microsoft solved complex medical cases with 85% accuracy, far about the 20% average for experienced physicians. And a recent Stanford report found that some of the newest A-I systems now match or beat the average human expert on PhD-level science questions.
But what happens when A-I is better and smarter than the brightest among us at every task? That’s called superintelligence.
Researchers disagree about how close we are to that sci-fi goal: is it years, or decades—or possible at all? And what happens if that genie-in-a-bottle is let loose? Some say the risk is as existential as total human extinction.
We’ll discuss the biggest promise – and peril – of AI’s advancement beyond humans.
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Black Americans serving in the U.S. military have long lived with a great contradiction. The country they’re fighting to protect is the same one that’s failed to serve and protect them.
Despite this, Black Americans continue to enlist. There are over 350,000 Black active duty and select reserve members and more than 2.4 million Black veterans. That’s according to the Institute for Veterans and Military Families at Syracuse University.
This year, Defense secretary Pete Hegseth has blocked or delayed the promotions of more than a dozen Black and female senior officers. He’s also dismissed several high-ranking Black and female officers, according to The Atlantic. This comes amid the second Trump administration’s aggressive rollback of programs and policies connected to diversity, equity and inclusion.
Black military members have always battled discrimination. But for some, this is a step too far in the wrong direction. So, what does their future hold? And what does it mean for the U.S. military?
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The full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. The U.S. and Israel’s war in Iran. The Israel-Hamas war.
Each of these conflicts of the last few years is rewriting how war is fought. Cheap drones are doing damage that once required far more expensive weapons. Battlefield information is now available at a distance in real time. And some of the biggest innovations are coming from countries with relatively small defense budgets.
We sit down with a panel of experts and ask what these conflicts are teaching us – and how the U.S. is responding to these lessons.
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How would lawmakers respond to election interference – both foreign and domestic – ahead of the midterm elections?
That was the central question of a summit held earlier this month between top Senate Democrats and election experts. The meeting came weeks after President Donald Trump signed an executive order that gave the U.S. postal service control over who gets to vote by mail. That order is being challenged in court.
Meanwhile, the president continues to spread unfounded claims about the insecurity of U.S. elections. And he’s characterizing his executive orders as a means to shore up trust in voting.
How is the president using his power to undermine the midterms and the electoral process? And what’s at stake for our democracy if election interference succeeds?
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Novels centering on love and sex are among the best-selling books year after year. More and more are challenging the conventions of romance as a genre — and bringing us well beyond fairy tale endings.
Two novels out this summer are pushing some of the boundaries of romance writing and love stories as we know them.
Haili Blassingame’s “They All Fall in Love at the End” follows a young Black writer in D.C. as she explores non-monogamy while her city (and the whole world) deals with the fallout of the 2024 election.
And in Tia Williams’ “The Missed Connection,” a casting agent tries to find the handsome stranger who sat next to her on a flight while navigating past trauma and a shaky work-life balance.
We ask these new authors about writing complex love stories.
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When a couple struggles to conceive, the assumption is often that there is something wrong with the woman. Women are evaluated for infertility far more often than men.
But male factor infertility accounts for about half of all infertility cases. And when that’s the case, men are less likely to talk about it, seek support, or even get tested in the first place.
In this installment of our “In Good Health” series, we talk about male infertility — what causes it, what can be done about it, and what it’s like to go through it.
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