Over the last decade, I’ve grown used to waking up before dawn and writing about a soul-crushing defeat from the night before. Usually it’s on a Wednesday, but somehow Donald Trump is always involved. Monday’s 4-1 demolition of the U.S. men’s national soccer team by Belgium pretty much confirmed that I won’t live to see Americans win the World Cup in my lifetime, so it’s time for acceptance. But these last three weeks have been a blast, and the party isn’t over. Sometimes the tritest words are also the truest: Maybe the real World Cup was the friends we made along the way.
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Future generations will remember America’s 250th for its state of denial
The long-awaited arrival of the 250th birthday of the United States inspired a lot of talk about everything that’s changed since July 4, 1776, especially as “the man on a hobby horse” sinks to the founders’ worst fears about democracy and demagoguery.
But historians of the future may dwell on another huge difference between the day the ink started drying on the American Declaration of Independence and July 4, 2026.
Thomas Jefferson — his work as chief author of the nation’s founding document wrapped up — bought a new thermometer that morning and recorded the temperature in Philadelphia three times in his diaries that day, including a temperate 1 p.m. reading of 76 degrees.
Jefferson’s thermometer might not have been up to the task of keeping up with Philadelphia’s climate 250 years later. On Saturday’s Semiquincentennial, temperatures maxed out at 101 degrees — the third straight day that the mercury reached that mark, which had never happened since records began in 1870. But with the fetid, humid air, it felt more like 110 degrees for anyone brave enough to celebrate America’s birthday outside.
Philly should have seen this train coming. I mean, literally. Two days earlier, officials just outside of Reading, nearly two hours northwest of America’s founding city, plowed ahead with a welcoming party for Union Pacific’s Big Boy No. 4014, the world’s largest operating steam locomotive — even as the railway relic ran an hour late, with some thermometers posting 106 degrees.
The result was what local officials called “a mass casualty event” — no one died, but rescue teams were summoned from neighboring counties to help revive more than 100 people suffering from heat exhaustion, in desperate need of water or an IV. Some 35 of the would-be train spotters were rushed to the hospital.
“It was a little bit chaotic,” an EMS director told the local TV station in Reading. “I don’t think anyone anticipated the weather or the volume of crowds.”
But they should have seen it coming. The Big Boy heat fiasco was almost too spot on as a metaphor for the slow train wreck of climate change, as the locomotive would spur on the Industrial Revolution that then triggered the rise of greenhouse gas pollution. To the extent that anyone out there still listens to scientists, they were quick to say this weekend: We warned you.
The scientific group World Weather Attribution, which tracks the impact of human-made global warming, said last week’s heat dome over the Eastern Seaboard was indeed a rare event, yet — without the contribution of burning fossil fuels to a warming planet — it “would have been so extreme as to be virtually impossible.”
Heat waves aren’t new. I was just 7 but still remember the July Fourth week of 1966 — exactly six decades ago — when it also topped 100 degrees. It’s one of the few things I remember from that grade-school time because it was so incredibly rare. Today, “once-in-a-century” heat waves are routine all over the planet. In June and looming again this week, Western Europe — where few homes are air-conditioned — has sweltered under temperatures that climate scientists weren’t expecting until around 2050.
This suffocating July Fourth could have been — to steal a phrase from the multiplex marquee — America’s “disclosure day,” exposing the truth of a threat to humankind that’s been hiding in plain sight. Instead, it was our “denial day,” led by our planet’s denier-in-chief, Donald Trump, whose 250th birthday card to America only read: “Don’t look up.”
The denial was immediate, as the president insisted — ignoring the experts who warned that the triple-digit temperatures and intense, gathering thunderstorms might spark a much bigger “mass casualty event” in Washington, D.C. — on going ahead with his bombastic and self-serving speech and a fireworks show that lasted well into the early morning hours of July 5.
Our modern-day seersucker-wearing mayor of Jaws might as well have told the broiled holiday weekend throng, “But, as you see, it’s a beautiful day, the beaches are open, and people are having a wonderful time” — as ominous John Williams music swelled in the background.
The denial was also metaphorical to the max — and not just when those predicted storms arrived and panicked MAGA Trump supporters were forced to take refuge at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the history and culture their movement is so eager to erase.
In New York Harbor, U.S. Coast Guard vessels forced the storied environmental sloop Clearwater — which took part in the historic Bicentennial tall ships parade back in 1976 — to leave the July 4 Parade of Ships because of two anodyne political banners taped to its sails: “Save the Clean Water Act” and “Indigenous Rights, Racial Justice, Climate Solutions.” Don’t look up, not even at a tall ship.
Hours later, during the fireworks show, the Brooklyn Bridge caught fire, which had nothing to do with climate change, yet felt like a coded message from the overheated planet nonetheless.
But maybe we shouldn’t wade too deeply into the metaphors when the worst denial is the all-too-real policy stuff. Every day, some nightmare headline about killer floods or disappearing glaciers is met with some nonsensical action from the U.S. government based on Earth 2, where none of this is happening.
As the climate-change-intensified heat dome settled in over the Eastern United States, Trump issued pardons for nine people — and you really can’t make this stuff up — who’d been convicted of felony violations of the Clean Air Act by selling or installing devices for diesel trucks that defeated their emissions controls, because polluting our spacious skies is no longer a crime in Trump’s America.
It cuts much deeper than this. Trump actually chose the July 4 peak of the heat wave to announce a massive cut in federal subsidies for wind and solar projects, a move that was expected under legislation passed last year. This was just one more layer to a sweeping agenda that has massively relaxed pollution regulations and even wasted taxpayer dollars to make sure clean energy projects aren’t built.
America continues to get a whopping 82% of its energy from polluting fossil fuels, and that’s unlikely to drop over the next 30 months, regardless of how many Trump voters can cheat death on looming “mass casualty events.” But POTUS 47 warned voters he planned to set the world on fire if he returned to the White House.
What’s harder to understand, frankly, is why the people who should be fighting Trump on climate change are running away from the front lines. Yes, I’m talking about Democratic Party leaders who’ve tossed climate action down the memory hole in the 2026 campaign — either terrified that any mention of climate will undercut their single-minded focus on affordability, or distract from fighting Trump’s brand of autocracy.
And ditto for newsroom leaders who seem to have decided that environmental journalists are the first people to lay off, not to mention the other world chieftains who ought to be challenging Trump’s destructive policies, but are meeting the moment with a shrug. Even Canada’s center-left prime minister, Mark Carney, is now backing away from the aggressive climate action he once supported, claiming, “It’s too expensive.”
That’s a lot of malarkey, as the president who just four years ago passed the largest climate action bill in U.S. history might say. Clean energy continues to rise elsewhere in the world because the alternatives, like wind and solar, are ultimately cheaper and also a source of desperately needed job creation. The fossil-fuel-boosted heat wave of July 4, 2026, proved that inaction is a threat not only to our lives and our liberty but also to the pursuit of happiness. It’s hard to celebrate 250 years of American democracy when climate denial is exposing that system as so badly broken.
Yo, do this!
- Did I mention the World Cup isn’t over? If you are a true fan of the Beautiful Game, you’ll brush off the quadrennial disappointment of the U.S. men’s team and get excited to watch one of the greatest generations of international soccer superstars we’ve ever seen. One of the more intriguing of the four quarterfinal matchups this weekend will occur when Harry Kane and his English squad face Erling Haaland and his Norwegian upstarts in the Miami heat. The match kicks off at 5 p.m. Saturday on Fox.
- The new movie scene for the July Fourth holiday was a disappointment, so the heat wave was a perfect opportunity for revisiting the classics of the 1970s and ’80s with the generation that had not been born yet. We went back to the late Rob Reiner’s first great serious film, the coming-of-age saga Stand By Me. It’s hard not to feel nostalgia today for a time when 12-year-olds had to entertain themselves without iPhones and could disappear into the woods overnight, which felt less strange in 1986 when the movie was first released. It felt truly like a faint signal from a lost planet.
Ask me anything
Question: Talk about Mitch McConnell’s demise. — Wendy (@wensilver.bsky.social) via Bluesky
Answer: Well, Wendy, that’s not exactly a question, and while the New York Times is reporting that the Kentucky senator and former majority leader was unconscious and in cardiac arrest when paramedics found him on June 14, his staff insists McConnell is still alive. That hasn’t stopped conspiracy theories that McConnell is on life support until August, when his replacement, named by GOP lawmakers, could avoid a messy November election. I don’t know about that, and I agree that it’s very poor form to speak ill of the dead. So the fact that he’s still alive is an ideal moment to remind everyone that his hijacking of the U.S. Supreme Court and his cowardice during Donald Trump’s second impeachment both started America on the path toward tyranny. So get well soon, senator. You still have a lot to answer for.
What you’re saying about …
Last week’s question about whether you are happy or concerned about progressive Democrats doing well in the 2026 primaries brought a mix of interesting responses that aren’t easy to categorize. Most of you want Dems who will fight harder than the current crew. “I have been voting since 1968, always for Democrats, but seldom with enthusiasm,” wrote Stephen Boone. “Finally, in my old age, there are a few decent politicians. I want more AOCs! More Zohran Mamdanis! …” Others felt more cautious. Wrote Thomas Desmond: “I think the progressive candidates are fine in deep blue seats, but may not be a great idea in purple or light-red seats that could prove winnable this year.”
📮 This week’s question: It may be water under the bridge next week, but Donald Trump’s personal role in overturning the arguably wrongly given red card to U.S. star Folarin Balogun has sparked a heated debate. Was the red card an injustice to be reversed by any means necessary? Or did Trump’s involvement ruin the World Cup? Please email me your answer and put the exact phrase “Trump Balogun” in the subject line.
Backstory on Trump ruining the World Cup like everything else
If the big-screen tragedy of the U.S. men’s soccer team’s same-as-it-ever-was Round of 16 exit from the 2026 World Cup on Monday night had a theme song, it should have been John Lennon’s “Instant Karma.” For its first four (mostly) exhilarating matches, the USMNT gave a nation that was desperate for both an escape from relentless bad news — but also a connection to a wider world — the good vibes it desired. It truly felt like the Americans could go further than ever before (in modern times) in the planet’s greatest sporting event. TV ratings soared. Watch parties were packed. A broken land was coming together.
Then Donald Trump showed up.
To longtime soccer fans, the red card handed out last Wednesday to the U.S.’s top goal scorer, Folarin Balogun, for stepping (seemingly unintentionally) on the ankle of a Bosnian player during a 2-0 victory — a harsh punishment that meant not only his ejection from the pitch but a suspension for the upcoming Belgium match — was the essence of our love/hate relationship with soccer. It may be a beautiful game, but it’s the ugly calls that we debate for decades. For a non-soccer fan and malignant narcissist like Trump, for whom anything that goes against his desired outcome is proof of the world’s unfairness toward him, the looming loss of America’s star striker was an opportunity to act like the strutting strongman of a personalist dictatorship.
The Trump White House called in the lawyers, treating soccer like it was a bad story about the president in the New York Times, or like trying to reverse the 2020 election. And POTUS got on the phone and called up a fellow dictator, Gianni Infantino, the president of the notoriously corrupt FIFA — a man who even invented a FIFA Peace Prize and gave it to Trump as protection so that his $13 billion soccer tournament wouldn’t get hurt. By Sunday, FIFA announced — without any effort at justification — that Balogun’s suspension was lifted and he was cleared to play. This had not happened during a World Cup since 1962. The raw power play cemented the world’s bitter opinion about today’s United States: a nation that refuses to play by the rules, whether it’s blowing up fishing boats or fixing a soccer tournament.
There were too many ironies to bear — especially the fact that Trump had just gone all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to fight to strip U.S. citizenship from people like Balogun, who was born to British-Nigerian parents in 2001 during an American visit, and millions of other immigrants who aren’t as talented with their feet. But the other irony was that — like so many corrupt schemes, whether from the mafia or the Trump White House — the president’s soccer coup failed. It felt like Trump had attacked the positive zeitgeist around U.S. men’s soccer with a neutron bomb. Balogun rarely even touched the ball. We’ll never know how much of Belgium’s 4-1 rout of the mistake-prone U.S. was simply a European powerhouse outclassing the Americans, as has happened so many times before, and how much was Trump destroying the juju.
It did seem fitting that this sordid affair played out over the weekend of America’s 250th birthday, as it was more confirmation that Trump, in spite of what the hat says, actually has no clue what makes America great. If any one principle stood out from the founders’ 1776 and 1787 experiments, it is that the United States was to be based on fairness and following the rules, with no king imposing his will. The single greatest thing about America’s presidential elections was not who won, but the fact that the loser accepted the results, and there was a peaceful transfer of power — until Jan. 6, 2021. Likewise, nothing could ruin the often unbridled joy of the World Cup faster than a rigged competition.
I’m still looking forward to the next 12 days, to watching the pinpoint passing of Argentina’s Lionel Messi or the raw power of Norway’s Erling Haaland, and to seeing who can actually win the World Cup on the pitch, and not in a back room. We already know the tournament’s biggest loser: Donald Trump.
What I wrote on this date in 2014
Looking back on this Attytood blog post from 12 years ago today is a reminder of how debates can evolve over time. My short piece on July 7, 2014, was a riff on an op-ed that called newspapers’ online comment sections in those early internet years “a hate crime” that should be cordoned off because of the vitriol spewed at immigrants or others outside the traditional American hierarchies. Back then, I disagreed, taking the side of free speech absolutism. “These are people who shouldn’t be censored … just set straight,” I argued. “The one true powerful weapon against offensive free speech … is your free speech, and mine.” Time proved me wrong: The Inquirer now avoids comments on most articles, including my columns. It turned out that “the wisdom of the crowd” that newsroom reformers once hailed was fatally infected with racism, sexism, and other forms of hate.
Read the rest: “‘Newspaper Comment Sections Become Cordoned-Off Hate Crime Scenes.’”
Recommended Inquirer reading
- Only one column last week, as I enjoyed the July Fourth holiday by spending time with family and watching countless hours of soccer. In that piece, I wrote about an American 250th birthday that should have been a meditation on what makes our nation great, and where we so desperately need to improve — but which Donald Trump used as an excuse to rob the cash register when no one was looking. The president’s staggering $2.2 billion-plus payday during his first full year back in office — accomplished with a mix of crypto flimflammery, informed stock trading, and dealings with foreign dictators — is a five-alarm fire for the rule of law.
- One final thought about the 250th birthday of the United States as the moment recedes into the rearview mirror. It’s true that 2026 has been a lousy year, economically, for newsrooms, but you would never know that from reading The Inquirer’s remarkable coverage of such an eventful time. I’ve already praised our world-class World Cup coverage, but our overworked staff also went out and covered a July Fourth party that happened despite killer heat, biblical storms, and a plague of locusts (not really, but it felt that way). This included some real accountability journalism, such as the Trump regime’s efforts to twist the truth around George Washington and slavery, as well as questioning the cost of the big day for city taxpayers. It was also a reminder that Philadelphia has been a hotbed for journalism and the rugged practice of bringing the First Amendment to life since the early days of the republic. Help keep it going another 250 years by subscribing to The Inquirer.
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