SEKULOW

Will Haines: Today on Sekulow, you're not going to believe it, folks, but the Washington Post has issued a surprising warning ahead of the Fourth of July fireworks. Welcome to Sekulow. It's July 2nd, 2026, folks. We are two days away from the 250th birthday of this country. Everywhere I go, we are seeing a lot of celebration. We see a lot of people decorating for the Fourth of July. In the area we live, that's normal, but I feel like it is ramped up a little bit more than normal because of this historic 250th anniversary.

But there are those that can't help themselves but be pessimistic about something that should just be what it is. It should just be a time to celebrate. I know that everyone in the media will sometimes try to find an angle. They'll try to find some sort of clickbait. But here is exactly what I got as a push notification to my phone last night from the Washington Post. It was labeled as an exclusive, folks. They got it. They are the ones who got the story.

Here's the headline. I'm going to read it to you. "Fireworks on Mall likely to cause hazardous air pollution, documents show." That's their warning, that massive explosions from fireworks that happen once a year are likely to pollute the air. I feel like that's a no-brainer. This is probably not the most healthy thing that we do, but we do it one time a year to celebrate our country. I think we're fine with that. That's something we have collectively accepted as okay.

We are setting off explosions in the air to mark the birth of our country, to pay tribute to the battles that were fought to secure our freedom. The Francis Scott Key line in our national anthem, "bombs bursting in air," it's symbolism. We get it. But to write the exclusive as if they got the scoop that fireworks on the Mall are likely to cause hazardous air pollution? I don't think you want to be breathing in all the time for prolonged periods residue from fireworks. I don't think that this is even something people questioned.

But here we are. They can't let us have a wonderful celebration without trying to tear it down. They've been working hard at this. They've been going after the Reflecting Pool. Remember the dead ducks story that I talked about, that I just couldn't get over? A dead duck was found in the Reflecting Pool, and then they found two more close by. That was a headline from the Washington Post. They don't want you to enjoy the celebration. They want to cast doubt over the future of our country.

I understand also saying, "Okay, it's their job. They're the media. They're not supposed to be cheerleaders per se. They're not supposed to only write happy stories or propaganda for the government." I feel like the 250th anniversary is one time we can just say, "Hey, you don't have to find a negative angle. You can just be happy. Write about other things." But they're not going to give it up, and they're not the only ones. Stick around. I'm going to go into this article because some of the quotes are going to make you chuckle at very least on this Thursday ahead of our 250th celebration.

But I think it also is a reminder that there are those that just want to tear down. That's what I even see this week leading up to it. I see people on the right as well saying, "Not much to celebrate, Supreme Court opinion I didn't agree with, end of the Republic." Don't let that negativity tear you down. You should be joyful in celebrating what a wonderful country that we are blessed to live in. I'm going to talk more about that, and I want to hear from you. 1-800-684-3110. We'll talk to you on the other side of this break.

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Will Haines: Welcome back to Sekulow. Will Haines in today, and we're talking about the way, unfortunately, the media is framing the 250th. I think it's fair to say many in the media do not want Americans to enjoy this. They are rooting for a failure. They are rooting for a celebration that is lackluster. You've been seeing the way that they've been covering the Great American State Fair that's happening in Washington, D.C., the way that they are covering trying to make the Reflecting Pool a more beautiful place to visit. They've been rooting for that to fail.

And now you have this headline from the Washington Post that I got a push notification to my phone. Someone at the Washington Post that handles the push notifications they send out—because they're picking and choosing which articles get pushed—last night at 5:21 PM our time, that's when it was published. I sent it to our team to Will and Ali and said, "You got to see this, guys." It said, "Fireworks on Mall likely to cause hazardous air pollution, documents show."

To me, I had a lot of questions immediately. One, I wanted to see how other news organizations were covering this. I also wanted to see if this was something the Washington Post has covered before. I'll admit I did research quickly. I used an AI chatbot to find this for me, so full disclosure there. But I just asked. I said, "Hey, Washington Post published this article. Have they ever written an article like this before?"

This is a theme from the Washington Post. They have done this not just this year. They did it last year. They did it in 2023, and they did it in 2019, and they did it in 2015. So, this is a rinse and repeat story of theirs. They like to throw water on the fireworks. They like to try and lessen the joy of the celebration. It would be one thing if our nation's capital set off a 40-minute fireworks display every weekend, even. I won't even say every day; that would be absurd.

Every weekend, go to D.C., you can see fireworks. If that was a feature, I could understand them writing, "Hey, this isn't good for the people that live here. We get it's pretty, whatever, but it's not good." No, it's once a year in the nation's capital that this is a thing. I don't even think they do fireworks—I could be wrong, people could fact-check me—but it's not something they go live to on New Year's Eve. Everyone's watching New York. Everyone's watching every other city in the world, really, for the New Year celebration where fireworks occur.

But fireworks on the Fourth of July are like apple pie. It is something you associate with the United States. The fact that they're running this article from the media, they want you to not like it. They're concerned about the air pollution from a one-time event. I understand that this is a thing. It makes sense, but do they write about every time that there is a flyover at a sporting event, the carbon footprint of that? These type of things that are one-offs that happen once a year, I don't know that it's warranted, even if they wrote it framing it a different way.

If they said, "Hey, listen, National Park Service does a study. They want you to be aware if you have respiratory issues, if you have asthma, be aware." I get that. I mean, that's a very valid thing. It is the whole premise here. Fireworks for this year's Fourth of July celebration are expected to cause hazardous levels of pollution around the National Mall and "very unhealthy conditions" in central D.C. They frame it as "this is the one time, folks," even though they've written a similar story to this since 2015, taking a few years off. It wasn't going to click that year.

But just the fact that they're framing it as this year's Fourth of July celebration, the 250th. It's going to be a bigger fireworks display this year, but it should be. It's the 250th. It is a wonderful time to celebrate our country. You look at this, it says "avoid prolonged exposure." Also, these are logical things. It's the framing that I take issue with. One individual said—this is a professor of medicine and population health at NYU—said that people should use the precautionary principle, which is to minimize exposure, and an N95 mask would be a good idea.

That would be the Washington Post dream if there was a wide shot of the National Mall and everyone was wearing an N95 for the 250th. I mean, they would probably win a Pulitzer Prize if they could capture that. But even the levels of the pollution, if you read the article, is saying that the expected or most likely scenario is that the level is something that this same professor has said that we have seen in other events; just take precautions.

That's where they don't want you to enjoy it. When you read the other articles, my caution is—and I know a lot of you watching this broadcast aren't reading this—but just I think combat this with joy, with the fact that we are in the greatest country on Earth, no matter what the media wants you to believe, no matter what some politicians want you to believe, no matter what some influencers want you to believe.

It is the greatest country on Earth and in the history of the world. We have a wonderful opportunity to talk to our neighbors, to be excited, to have a collective joy about our country and the future of this country. But Reuters: "Happy Birthday America? At 250, nation may be too divided to celebrate as one." They are saying that because President Trump's involved and all this, it's hard for Americans; they struggle with how to separate politics from pageantry. That's on them.

And it's actually on you, media, because you're having a hard time celebrating politics from pageantry. There's once again—I read this morning an article from CNN. This is from Brian Stelter's Reliable Sources newsletter sent to my email inbox. "The July 4th balancing act." This talks about how many networks are going to be covering it. Just wait for this part. "The coverage is nonpartisan in nature"—referring to NBC, ABC, CNN networks that are going to be having coverage of the celebration, as they should.

"The coverage is nonpartisan in nature and intentionally so. But President Trump's plan to speak on the National Mall on Saturday night is..." dot-dot-dot "...complicating matters. Will TV networks show Trump's remarks live? Should they? What if he rambles into a political rant? What if he delays Washington's iconic firework show?" You mean the one that's going to pollute the air, Washington Post says? "I've been asking around, and my sense is that the networks are not turning Independence Day into the Trump show, even if the President may want that."

"News organizations have to assess how newsworthy Trump's speech might not be." First of all, that's a tricky sentence, Mr. Stelter. News organizations have to assess how newsworthy Trump's speech might not be? Normally, you assess if something is newsworthy to cover it. So they're like, "It might not be super newsworthy, it is newsworthy, but it might not be super newsworthy so we're going to cut away from it." Regardless, they're also trying to make it be like this is Trump's Fourth of July.

The ridiculousness to me is if Joe Biden had won reelection and were in office before he dropped out, or if Kamala Harris had won election, this is the 250th anniversary. Journalists are excited to be able to write words in their story like "semi-quincentennial," because you're seeing that everywhere. That's a word everyone says all the time when they say 250th, semi-quincentennial. If anyone else was President, they would be speaking on the Fourth of July. It is an honor that you get to be the President during such a landmark anniversary.

So them trying to say Trump is trying to make it about himself? He's trying to celebrate the country. He's trying to do everything around this is not "very look at me," which is hard for them to believe. It is: Let's celebrate America. Let's have a huge fireworks display. Let's clean up the Reflecting Pool. Let's have a cool state fair. Let's have concerts. Oh, no, they're going to shame artists into dropping out. He's not trying to make it about himself. He may make a lot of things about himself. I don't think this one is it.

And the fact that he's speaking before it, I think is what any other President would have done. Call me. I want to hear your thoughts on all of this. 1-800-684-3110. What do you think about the coverage of the Fourth of July and how will you celebrate? We'll be right back with more.

Will Haines: Welcome back to Sekulow. Will Haines in today, and I did want to take a quick pivot. I see the phone lines are filling up. James and Steve, I'll get to you guys soon. The rest of you are being talked to right now, but give me a call. I've got one line open, 1-800-684-3110. Also, how are you going to celebrate this? I feel like it's going to be, if you're watching this broadcast, very different than the way that these headlines I've been reading want you to celebrate it. But that's good.

I do want to take a little bit of a pivot here. This is something the ACLJ is doing today. Our work didn't end this week. A lot of people are on vacation. You can tell that by the numbers. I appreciate all of you that have been watching and joining me this week as we go through it. But this is a big travel week for Americans. This is a big week to go on vacation. You get an extra day built in that many people wouldn't have to take paid time off because of the holiday.

Folks, we actually—if you are watching, I'm going to let you down—I'm not going to be live tomorrow on YouTube and Rumble. If you listen on the radio, there will be a show for you. But it's the 3rd of July. We got to start preparing to actually celebrate and to be with family. I encourage all of you to think about how you're going to celebrate and just be thankful for this wonderful land we live in, that we have the freedom to get on here and talk about this.

We have the freedom to mock the Washington Post a little bit for some of their silly takes. A lot of places you can't get away with that in this world. But we have these constitutional rights that the ACLJ defends each and every day, including today as we filed a new Supreme Court brief. This is an interesting one, folks, because this is a case that the government, and this is out of Colorado, we're defending a Catholic preschool's right to preserve their faith.

And the big question is: Can the government tell a Catholic school it may prefer a child based on geography, family ties, or even shared hobbies, but never based on shared faith? That's what the state of Colorado is doing, and we filed an amicus brief to support St. Mary Catholic Parish. But this is why this one's interesting. If you put that brief back up on the screen for folks, I want to point this out because this brief isn't just on behalf of the ACLJ.

It is on behalf of the ACLJ, Advocates for Faith and Freedom—that is the law firm with Bob Tyler who we work with on the Calvary Chapel case; you've seen him on this broadcast also representing Calvary Chapel. We also filed it on behalf of Calvary Chapel San Jose and Pastor Mike McClure. So this amicus brief isn't just on behalf of all of you that support the ACLJ, as many of the briefs are just us filing with our expert attorneys giving analysis on the case through the amicus brief filing in support.

And this one, though, is our clients in a case that is before the Supreme Court as we speak, the Calvary Chapel case, where California is still trying to impose $1.2 million in COVID fines on the church. This is interesting because this case has already is already before the Supreme Court. And we are filing this brief because what happens here could directly shape the fate of the Calvary Chapel case. Now, something unique has happened in the Calvary Chapel case. There was no—it was distributed for conference, and then we heard nothing from the Court.

Many times, it either gets rescheduled, it gets denied, it gets granted. You see some sort of action. But this was distributed for conference and just nothing. So it is still before the Court. And there is some analysis that would look at that potentially the Court because of the similar issues here in this could affect the way they look at our case. So not only are we waiting to see what the Supreme Court will do surrounding our case, but we engaged in this on behalf of our clients because it could also help determine what they do in our case.

So even the day as everyone is Fourth of July minded, our attorneys are hard at work filing another brief at the Supreme Court. Supreme Court's already out of session, but we're still filing. So I think that's just important if you support the work of the ACLJ, know that our attorneys are always working and working very hard trying to do everything we can to defend these churches, in this case to defend you, your rights under the First Amendment. It's not easy work. It's a lot of work. Our attorneys work nonstop, all night, every day. They are very special people.

And when you support the work of the ACLJ, you support them. You support everything we do here, but you also support the Constitution. Because at the end of the day, that is what we are fighting to preserve. And we know even these silly headlines, they at the end of the day, they're silly. I mean, there's more of them. We can get to like: "Democrats grapple uncomfortably with World Cup success." I didn't see that. I haven't seen that really anywhere.

Maybe some of these newly nominated Democratic Socialist candidates are having a hard time with it, maybe. But I watched that match last night where we played Bosnia and won. It was contentious. It was dramatic. But I saw a lot of people excited, not just in the stadium. Obviously, they paid tickets to be there. On social media, they cut to different cities holding watch parties. And those aren't all conservative Republicans. Let's be honest. This is maybe the only time every four years conservative Republicans really lean into soccer.

So I feel like of all of the sports fan demographics, this one is less likely to be who they think would be celebrating America. But this headline from Politico, that they grapple uncomfortably with World Cup success? I don't believe it. I think that's just a lie. They found a couple people they could get a quote from to support their claim, but it's not true. That moment after the U.S. won that match and they're playing "Country Roads" by John Denver was like—you got the warm and fuzzies.

You got chills watching success of our country and not being crowded by politics and Supreme Court decisions and elections. It was a moment of like: That is the best kickoff to this weekend to me, that we can just be happy about something. The media doesn't want you to just be happy about something. A lot of political influencers or analysts don't want you to just be happy about something.

But you can be. You can show pride in this country. There's a reason they talked about a more perfect union. No one is saying we're perfect. America gets things wrong. We fight to correct those wrongs. And we've got a long history of that, but it doesn't mean you have to just be upset, a pessimist, a cynic about the future of your country. Engage it, be a part of it, but be proud of it in that process.

I've got a lot of phone calls. I'm going to get to them in the next half hour. But if you're watching this today, we are in the beginning of our Liberty Drive. And when you support the ACLJ, your donation is doubled. Go to ACLJ.org and donate today.