I DON’T KNOW. THEY KEEP REBUILDING. WE NEED LOUDER TRUMPETS:  The walls of Jericho blocking Trump’s effort to streamline government have now fallen.

FREE SPEECH MAKES YOU SAFER. FREE SPEECH CURES VIOLENCE. FREE SPEECH PROTECTS THE POWERLESS. AND EVEN “BAD PEOPLE” CAN HAVE GOOD IDEAS: My recent TED Talk was structured around these four truths.

GOOD. LET THE PEOPLE DECIDE FOR THEMSELVES:   These States Now Allow OTC Ivermectin, and More May Follow — Four have passed new laws, and at least nine have legislation in the works.

TRAGEDY IS NOT A JOKE:  Why This Streamer’s Joke About Floods is NOT Funny. [Video]

INDEED:  Better Than MilSpec.

YEAH, WE NEED PUNISHMENT OR THINGS WILL GET UGLY:  More ICE Shootings – Alleged Antifa Thugs Face 30 Attempted Murder Charges, Up to 10 Lifetime Sentences Over ICE Attack.

OPEN THREAD: Hump Day.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: China is practicing orbital warfare to win in space.

WELL:

🚨BREAKING: Six Secret Service agents suspended over the Butler, PA assassination attempt on President Trump. pic.twitter.com/TJNZr3z6qJ

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) July 10, 2025

Related: At Last: John Brennan and James Comey Under Criminal Investigation for Russiagate.

KYLE SMITH: Superman Review: Man of Steel, Feet of Clay.

Back home, Lois Lane (a cute Rachel Brosnahan) knows Superman’s true identity and the pair have been dating long enough to get on each other’s nerves. For once, he gives Lois an interview, which devolves into a spat. Also, Superman has a super-dog, Krypto, who is annoyingly hyperactive but also keeps saving him.

Despite being fake-looking and digital, the mutt is the star of the movie, because this “Superman” has the soul of a sitcom. It features wacky neighbors: the subsidiary metahumans Green Lantern (Nathan Fillion, in a “Dumb and Dumber” haircut); Mister Terrific (Edi Gathegi), who floats around pushing buttons on a console; and the attacking Hawkgirl (Isabela Merced), all of whom pop in to assist Superman. Its villain, Lex Luthor (a staggeringly miscast Nicholas Hoult) is the persnickety Dwight Schrute of the piece, forever huffing about how Superman is breaking the rules, particularly at his Fortress of Solitude, which apparently is not up to code. Lex, whose girlfriend, Eve Teschmacher (Sara Sampaio), is a ditzy online influencer—Mr. Gunn takes a lot of feeble swipes at social media—is accompanied by a henchwoman, the Engineer (María Gabriela de Faría), who can make her hands into circular saws or tentacles that double as data cables for hacking into computers.

Luthor, an arms dealer trying to profit from the invasion of a sort of Middle Eastern analogue for Ukraine, threatens Superman by uncovering secret information, unknown even to the hero himself, about his background, which leads to a semi-comical stint in prison with a lump of Kryptonite and a strange being named Metamorpho (Anthony Carrigan). In keeping with the general air of mockery, Superman’s adoptive Earth parents are a pair of Dust Bowl dimwits (Pruitt Taylor Vince, Neva Howell) instead of strong-backed heartland avatars of decency.

That’s new, even startling, but also painful. For the most part the movie is, like Metropolis after Luthor gets to work, a disaster area.

Why can’t Hollywood get the Man of Steel right? That’s an easy one: The death of Superman.

Hence why Hollywood has the very idea of Superman backwards. Superman knows what American exceptionalism is; Hollywood and our media struggle with accepting the same idea. Instead they view him as a symbol of imperialistic and misguided patriotic propaganda, and therefore, he must be reinvented, reimagined and rewritten. It is why Hollywood has failed to top Richard Donner’s 1978 Superman film.

But to ignore the American propaganda aspect of Superman and similar comic heroes is to betray their entire reason for being. The character’s co-creator Jerry Siegel enlisted in the United States military in 1943. He was trained as both a skilled mechanic and as a reporter for Stars and Stripes. The character of Superman himself was published primarily as American military propaganda, with the character routinely foiling Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin.

The world may have changed around him, but Superman is constant, and should be understood as the quintessential American hero. It is not Superman who struggles with his identity. He knows what his purpose is. Despite its failings, America is a global force for good, like Superman. We struggle, we falter, but our ideals remain a constant. They are everlasting. It’s not Superman and America who need to be re-imagined. It’s Hollywood.

The 2006 reboot of Superman* summed up Hollywood’s anti-American worldview in a single sentence: “Superman has spent an extended five years away from Earth to search for any remains of Krypton and his otherworldly roots. Wondering if this foray into the universe has changed Superman’s ideals, Daily Planet editor in chief Perry White immediately sends out reporters to see if he still stands for ‘truth, justice and all that stuff.’”

* Created when yet another Hitler was in the White House, before his rehabilitation last fall.

UPDATE: Sonny Bunch concurs: “Unrelentingly goofy until it tries to get serious, and then it’s even goofier somehow.”

MORE: James Gunn Doesn’t Just Omit “The American Way” In ‘Superman’ – He Changes It To “The Human Way.”

Even the movie’s IMDB page states, “Superman must reconcile his alien Kryptonian heritage with his human upbringing as reporter Clark Kent. As the embodiment of truth, justice and the human way he soon finds himself in a world that views these as old-fashioned.”

UPDATE (FROM GLENN):

A UNIVERSE-SHATTERING KABOOM: Sound of The Big Bang Suggests Our Galaxy Floats Inside a Void.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Harvard Scientists Grow Algae in Mars-Like Conditions, Paving Way for Space Habitats.

CLEAN THE HOUSE: iRobot Roomba Max 705 Vac Robot Vacuum + AutoEmpty Dock. #CommissionEarned

ALL THE BEST PEOPLE TOLD ME IT WAS NATURAL AND HARMLESS: Even low doses of CBD may cause harm to the liver, FDA study finds.

BREAKING: JFK Airport Issues Travel Warning Over Anti-Semitic Protests.

CHANGE: Recent updates mean you can now drive certain Nissan and Infiniti models on mapped roads without using the steering wheel.

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Get your own soapbox.

A music teacher in a Maine elementary school, Marissa McCue Armitage has decided to teach about controversial topics, she writes in Education Week. She knows some parents don’t want their kids hearing about settlers stealing Indian land at Thanksgiving, the dangers of climate change, challenging gender norms or the horrors of slavery. But, after attending DEI workshops, she’s decided to “cover the hard stuff.”

Yes, she teaches music. Or that’s what she’s paid to teach.

She needs to be taught to stay in her lane.

CAMPUS ANTISEMITISM HAS THE SAME ROOTS AND SHOULD BE FOUGHT WITH THE SAME MEANS AS OTHER MANIFESTATIONS OF INTERSECTIONAL WOKENESS: Free speech, antisemitism and the fight for America’s campuses: “What we are witnessing on campus is not just a wave of anti-Israel sentiment. It is part of a larger assault on liberalism [in the broad sense] itself.”

TAKING THE FIFTH MEANS YOU’RE GUILTY, RIGHT, DEMS? Joe Biden’s Doctor Stonewalls Investigation Into Health Cover-Up.

VICTORIA TAFT: Commie Congresswoman and Harvard Prof Are Put on Blast for Holding Mob Boot Camp.

SO LEAVE ALREADY: Macalester Prof Calls For “Dismantling” America, Israel, in Favor of “Decolonialization”.

AT AMAZON, Prime Day Deals on Amazon Devices. #CommissionEarned

STANDING UP FOR FREEDOM: Ken Paxton Warns Austin: Drop WEX Bank or Face Lawsuit Over Gun Industry Ban.

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: The Jig is Up: Everytown Has Figured Out That Eliminating the $200 Transfer Tax is Just the Latest Step Toward Eliminating the NFA Completely.

BRUTAL: Understanding The Speed Of The Texas Flood.