Saturday (*Sunday) Covfefe: Unstitched

America at 250: A Summer Reality Check.

Welcome back to Saturday Covfefe.

Yes, I know. It’s Sunday. I’m late.

In my defense, I spent the week in Los Angeles for the No ICE in the Cup watch party cheering on Mexico and later the U.S. in their World Cup matches, joined the Stephanie Miller Show live in studio, and then headed back to D.C.

Happy Father's Day to all the dads, grandfathers, father figures, and those carrying someone's memory today. And happy first day of summer! Thank you, as always, for reading and supporting this community. Consider this week’s Covfefe less of a morning coffee edition and more of a Sunday brunch issue.

Now, let’s get into it. ☕️🥂

1. The American Dream Is Running on Empty

America is about to celebrate its 250th birthday, and apparently half the country would like a refund.

A new national survey found that pride in being American has fallen from 82% in 2013 to just 51% today. Even more alarming? Only 18% of Americans say they’re proud of how democracy is actually working right now. The American Dream isn’t doing much better. Less than half of Americans still believe hard work gets you ahead, and among young adults that number has dropped to just 36%.

For years we’ve argued about taxes, immigration, and culture wars, but this feels different. The real warning sign isn’t that Americans disagree with each other—it’s that more and more Americans are losing faith in the idea that the system works at all.

It turns out "Make America Great Again" and "Save Democracy" are both symptoms of the same problem: a country searching for something to believe in.

Happy 250th, America! We may need more than fireworks this year…

🇺🇸 American Pride Falls Off a Cliff Ahead of America’s 250th Birthday (Axios)

2. The Taxpayer-Free Ballroom That Apparently Has Taxpayers

Remember the White House ballroom that President Trump promised would be funded entirely by private donors? Well, about that.

According to internal contractor estimates obtained by The Washington Post, the project’s actual cost may be closer to $600 million, not $400 million. More than half of that could come from taxpayers through the Secret Service, White House Military Office, and other government accounts.

That’s awkward.

Trump has repeatedly described the project as “taxpayer-free” and said private donors would foot the bill. The administration argues that some of the government spending is tied to security upgrades and underground facilities. Critics counter that when you build one giant structure, it’s hard to separate the ballroom from everything attached to it. As one procurement expert put it: “It’s one structure.”

Washington has many traditions. One of them is discovering that government projects cost more than originally advertised. Then again, this is Donald Trump we’re talking about. New Yorkers have seen this movie before.

🏛️ The $600 Million Ballroom (WaPo)

3. Dismantling Education, One Office at a Time

The Trump administration took another swing at the Department of Education this week, announcing that oversight of special education programs will be shifted to Health and Human Services while much of the department’s civil rights enforcement work moves to the Justice Department.

Officials call it a “partnership.” Critics call it dismantling the agency without asking Congress.

The stakes here are bigger than an org chart. For fifty years, the federal government has guaranteed that students with disabilities have access to an education and that students facing discrimination have somewhere to turn when schools fail them. Now those responsibilities are being broken apart and reassigned to agencies whose primary missions are health care and law enforcement.

One former employee put it bluntly: "We’re not going to our surgeon to learn how to read." That’s really the debate in a nutshell.

The more concerning reality is the lack of accountability for civil rights that is likely to follow. If you’re trying to dismantle an agency Congress created, you don’t necessarily have to close the building. You can simply move enough of the furniture out that the building stops functioning the way it was intended to. Washington has a fancy term for that. It’s called “reorganization.”

Most people would call it something else.

🧩 The Department of Education, Piece by Piece (NPR)

4. The Republican Case Against Execution

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine spent nearly half a century defending the death penalty. He helped write Ohio’s capital punishment law and built a career enforcing it. This week, he said Ohio should abolish it.

After 50 years of prosecuting cases, writing laws, and governing, he has reached a remarkable conclusion: the death penalty isn’t doing what it was intended to do. DeWine said the death penalty isn’t deterring crime, rarely results in actual executions, prolongs pain for victims’ families, and places enormous burdens on the people tasked with carrying it out.

"I do not believe that argument today can be successfully made, nor do I believe that there’s any chance in the future the facts that I’ve cited to support that belief will change," he said. "Therefore, I believe Ohio should abolish the death penalty."

What’s remarkable here isn’t the politics. It’s the intellectual honesty. After spending a lifetime helping build the system, DeWine concluded it wasn’t delivering what it promised. In modern politics, changing your mind is often treated as a liability. It shouldn’t be.

⚖️ Fifty Years Later (CBS)

5. America, Hand-Stitched

As America prepares to turn 250, a group of artisans across the country are doing something refreshingly un-American for 2026: They’re slowing down.

A tailor is hand-sewing George Washington’s inauguration coat. A shipwright is rebuilding the boat Washington used to cross the Delaware. Printers are recreating wallpaper from Mount Vernon. Conservators are preserving one of the few surviving Revolutionary War flags. No shortcuts or power tools. No artificial intelligence. Just people spending thousands of hours making things the way they were made 250 years ago.

What struck me most wasn’t the history. It was their patience. In a country obsessed with the next thing, these craftspeople are reminding us that some things are worth preserving, repairing, and passing on.

That’s a pretty good lesson for America at 250. Not everything needs to be torn down to build something better. Some people might want to write that down.

🇺🇸 Keeping 1776 Alive (NY Times)

✨ One Thing for Your Soul: Emily’s Graduation

Every parent imagines their child’s graduation day. The photos. The food. The celebration.

What Emily Matejovitz’s parents never imagined was hosting that gathering without Emily there. Emily died at 16 after struggling with her mental health. In the midst of unimaginable grief, her family learned something they never knew—she had quietly registered as an organ donor when she got her driver’s license.

This month, on what would have been her graduation night, several of the people whose lives she saved traveled from across the country to be there. A teenage boy who received her heart. A four-year-old who received her kidney. Families who wanted Emily’s parents to know that she had not been forgotten.

One moment stopped me in my tracks. Emily’s mother placed a stethoscope on the chest of the young man carrying her daughter’s heart. And she listened. For a moment, the thing she thought she had lost forever was still there. Beating. I sat with that image for a long time.

Emily’s story feels like a reminder that the measure of a life isn’t how long it lasts. It’s how many lives it touches.

💝 Emily’s Legacy (KTVB)

More very soon,

Olivia