THE WAR ROOM: Russian missiles rained down on Kyiv today, killing at least 12 people and wounding 64 on the eve of a NATO summit in Turkey. It was the second major attack in less than a week.

  The unending Ukraine war will be on the agenda. The White House says President Trump spoke with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin over the weekend. 

TRUMP AT 250: After a delay for threatening weather Saturday night, President Trump spoke at the National Mall near midnight, extolling the greatness of America, its founders, pioneers, inventors, geniuses, and the military, before wandering off into politics, expounding on his own greatness, and claiming there is a looming communist threat within the country.

  He said; “America’s Navy sank the Spanish fleet to the bottom of the Manila Bay, one of the greatest naval victories in history. Much like our recent victory by sinking the entire Iranian Navy, 159 chips to the bottom of the sea, all done in just a moment’s time, happened very quickly.”

  And then: “America is back and we want to keep America great. And we will do so by approving the Save America Act, which means all voters must show voter ID, all motor business. All voters must provide a little thing called proof of citizenship. And there will be no mail in ballots except for illness, disability, military deployment, or travel. And you won’t have cheating on the elections anymore. It’s very simple.”

  Then this: “America will never be a communist country. Won’t happen. Communism is a loser, and it always will be. The communist system is the opposite of the American system, and the communist system has never worked. Our warriors did not fight communis on battlefields across the world, only to have that menace rear its ugly head right back here in America. We’re not going to let it happen.”

  The White House claimed later that the fireworks display following Trump’s speech was “the largest pyrotechnics display in the history of the world.”

WHITE MEN WALKING: On July 4^th a group of about 400 white supremacist men of the Patriot Front dressed in identical outfits of khaki pants, blue shirts, baseball caps, and white balaclava masks covering their faces, marched through Washington, DC.

  Many of the marchers carried American flags while some held the stars and bars of the confederacy.

  The group’s website appealed to people “born to this nation of our European race” to assert their “right to cultural independence”.

  In a sure candidate for the Pulitzer Prize, a photographer on a subway train captured a picture of a young Black girl looking bewildered and frightened, surrounded by the white supremacists.

PITCH PERFECT: US striker Folarin Balogun, who was given a red card and ejected from Wednesday night’s winning match against Bosnia-Herzegovina and barred from the next game, was given a reprieve and will be allowed to play today against Belgium.

  Red Cards are not normally appealable. It is the first time since 1962 that FIFA has backed off a red card suspension, and it might be the result of President Trump making a direct appeal to the organization’s president, Gianni Infantino, the man who gave Trump the newly-created FIFA Peace Prize.

  Infantino has courted Trump’s favor for years and FIFA even rents an office in Trump Tower with the income going to the Trump family business. 

  In a tight struggle for the ball against B-H last week, Balogun accidentally stepped on the ankle of opponent Tarik Muharemovic. Strictly by the rules regarding rough play, he had a red card coming. 

  US officials complained that the referees used video replay to call the penalty, although that is common. Trump in his phone call also pointed out that Raphael Claus, the referee who made the call, had been involved in match fixing in Brazil, although FIFA had made no finding of wrongdoing.

  The Belgian team reacted with fury to Balogun’s reinstatement.

INFINITE SCROLL: 

— House Speaker Mike Johnson says he plans to slip President Trump’s voter identification bill through Congress with the budget reconciliation process. Otherwise he would need 60 votes in the Senate, which he can’t get.

  This has been tried before but the Senate parliamentarian ruled that the voter ID bill did not comply with the chamber’s rules regarding what legislation can be put through the budget framework.

— In a scathing 162-page report released on the 4^th of July, the White House’s Domestic Policy Council accused the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History of failure to celebrate the nation’s heritage, arguing it has become a political tool intent on denigrating the American story.

  The report accuses the museum of anti-white bias and claims the museum’s mission has shifted “from straightforward historical education and scholarship toward an extreme political activism that seeks to transform our country.”

  The report says visitors “will find no major exhibit dedicated to America’s founding era, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, other founding fathers, the Continental Congress, the pilgrims, the Puritans or major moments of the American Revolution.” Instead, the report claims, many founders are presented chiefly in terms of their connection to slavery.

THE SPIN RACK: Archaeologists in Egypt uncovered a 1,600-year-old Byzantine city outside Alexandria that includes preserved watchtowers, a church, and a trove of artifacts and Christian symbols. — Eight people including four children were wounded in a shooting Saturday during a shooting on New York’s Coney Island. The shooter appeared to have intentionally targeted a group of friends and relatives. — Police in Newport Beach, California over the weekend arrested as many as 400 people, most of them teenagers, for being in fights, looting, and setting off illegal fireworks. 

BELOW THE FOLD: Ashley Smith, the sister of Kansas City Chiefs offensive lineman Trey Smith caught Taylor Swift’s wedding bouquet Friday night at Madison Square Garden.  

-30-