Foreigners love America. European and Asian tourists visiting for the 2026 World Cup are filming themselves discovering Waffle House, Big Gulps, In-N-Out Burger and the cereal aisle at Walmart, and gushing about it. Fox News hosts called it proof of “America’s greatest run” in years. Josh Hammer at PJ Media described this reaction and concluded: “America is great because America is good. Not perfect. Not above reproach. But fundamentally good.”

Really? Does a colossal sports event, supersized portions and large, air-conditioned homes make a nation righteous?

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America’s prosperity is real. Its wealth, its abundance, its sheer scale of “stuff” truly are unmatched in human history. But Big Gulps, Waffle House and a stadium full of foreigners are not a national revival.

Consider what Americans are spending on these sporting events. The Wall Street Journal followed one American couple who spent $10,000 simply to travel within their own country to see the games.

The Journal wrote that “people are willing to spend vast pools of money and go into debt to attend once-in-a-lifetime events.” Working and middle-class families “bust open savings and borrow money to afford spiraling prices.” It continued:

From the World Cup, to the nba Finals, to concerts by chart-topping artists such as Olivia Rodrigo and Harry Styles, to boomer-friendly megatours by Rush and AC/DC, there seems to be no limit to what some are willing to pay.

For ardent fans, budgetary concerns are no match for the fear of missing out in a you-only-live-once economy.

For many young people, it’s a mark of desperation. They don’t see how they’ll ever be able to afford a house, so they spend their savings on fun instead.

Look beyond the stadiums: While America parties, its war policy in Iran lurches from declarations of imminent peace to resumed bombing within the same week—a sign of a nation flailing, not blessed, in international affairs. That contradiction should trouble us more than any soccer score.

These sports events are distracting us from what should be a major wake-up call—and driving ordinary Americans deeper into debt.

America should be grateful for its material blessings. Hammer and others are right that the gushing reaction to American prosperity is a powerful reminder of what America has to be grateful for.

But none of it—not one Big Gulp, not one championship parade—is the result of national righteousness today.

Contrast this response to another European tourist: Alexis de Tocqueville traveled from France to America in 1831. Here’s what he took from his tour:

Religion and morality were indispensable to the maintenance of the American republic. While the constitutional law of liberty allowed Americans complete freedom to do as they pleased, religion prevented them from doing that which is immoral and unjust.

“Liberty could not be governed apart from religious faith, lest there be anarchy,” he concluded. America today has great prosperity, but it is heading toward anarchy. Tocqueville warns us we are heading for disaster.

America is approaching its 250th birthday, and the timing of this World Cup euphoria could not be more dangerous. A nation lulled into believing its abundance is a sign of divine approval is a nation unprepared for what is coming.

The solution is repentance: to get back to the values that made America great. America had some of this in Tocqueville’s day, but to find the true source of America’s greatness, you have to go back thousands of years to its great ancestor, Abraham. God’s promises to Abraham are the true source of this greatness—and we’re squandering them on sports and Big Gulps.

To learn more about the exciting origins of America’s prosperity, look at the latest special issue of our Trumpet magazine.

SCOTUS Upholds President’s Power

Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court backed President Donald Trump’s firing of Federal Trade Commission member Rebecca Slaughter, overturning a 91-year precedent.

• The 1935 ruling in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States established that Congress had the authority to block the president from firing leaders of regulatory agencies.
• In the 6-3 Trump v. Slaughter decision, the court held that such protections for executive-branch officers violate the Constitution’s separation of powers.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by fellow liberal justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, wrote in her dissent that the ruling “reshapes our government” and “shifts tremendous power over broad swaths of American life into the president’s hands.”

Yet the constitutional rationale behind the ruling is simple.

• The U.S. Constitution divides power between the legislative, executive and judicial branches. Regulatory agencies must come under one of these three branches.
• The Federal Trade Commission is part of the executive branch, so its employees come under the authority of the president, as he is the only person in the executive branch of government elected by the American people.
• In fact, the presidency and the vice presidency are the only executive offices even mentioned in the Constitution, except for the statement that the president “shall commission all the officers of the United States.”

“In its present form, the ftc enforces and administers some 80 statutes, which cover almost every facet of our nation’s economy,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion. “The tasks it undertakes are ‘the very essence of execution of the law’—precisely the president’s constitutional role.” He added, “Subordinates who exercise the president’s power are subject to removal by him.”

In a separate case decided yesterday, Trump v. Cook, the Supreme Court refused to overturn a lower court decision blocking President Trump from firing Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook. Since the Federal Reserve is not actually part of the executive branch but an independent bank directly accountable to Congress, the president cannot fire Federal Reserve governors in the same way he can fire bureaucrats and executive agents.

In a third case, Watson v. Republican National Committee, Justice Amy Coney Barrett sided with the liberal justices in ruling that Mississippi’s law allowing absentee ballots to be counted if received up to five days after Election Day.

Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch pointed out in their dissent that counting ballots received after Election Day effectively postpones the date on which that collective choice is finalized, violating the federal requirement that elections be held on a specific uniform day.

In “Is America’s Supreme Court in Bible Prophecy?” Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry highlighted a prophecy in Amos 7:13 about the “king’s court,” which would be better translated as “kingdom’s court.” He explained why he believes this refers to the U.S. Supreme Court and how this indicates that, though it is not personally loyal to America’s end-time Jeroboam (President Trump), it does favor his fight against lawlessness.

The current Supreme Court doesn’t always make the right decision, but overall it is helping President Trump rein in the “deep state.”

Germany Orders Helsing to Build a Combat Cloud System

Germany is preparing to give defense start-up Helsing a half-billion-dollar contract to begin developing software to allow drones, aircraft and other sensors to operate together.

Germany was originally planning to develop the software as part of a sixth-generation fighter jet program with France and Spain. The jet program was recently canceled, but the three countries were still open to developing the combat cloud system together.

Internal documents, however, now reveal that Germany is pursuing its combat cloud system independently, Politico revealed last week. They are preparing a $580 million contract for Helsing to develop the Combat Fighter System Nucleus (cfsn).

The most likely explanation is that Germany has been able to draw on lessons from the Ukraine battlefield, putting it ahead of France and Spain in this area. Helsing has notably been engaged on the Ukrainian battlefield since 2022.

• Helsing is tasked with delivering “two experimental uncrewed combat aircraft, two ground control stations, a ground segment, operating system software, autonomy software and a government-owned reference architecture that other systems could plug into,” Politico reported.

It’s unusual to trust a start-up with such a vital project. If successful, this cloud system will be the backbone of Germany’s, and possibly all of Europe’s, future warfare. Politico wrote, “[T]he ministry is treating cfsn as more than a narrow research project. One paper describes it as a backbone for future networked air warfare.”

German secrecy: Politico wrote:

In other documents seen by Politico, the contract favors Helsing despite the Defense Ministry’s concerns about locking the development to a single contractor. The ministry also indicates it plans to avoid additional parliamentary scrutiny. …

The ministry is also citing a national-security exemption from normal EU procurement rules, arguing that a standard tender would risk Germany’s security interests.

Germany is up to something big, and it doesn’t want even its European partners to know about it.

There are real risks in betting on a five-year-old start-up for something this critical. But Germany is taking that risk—and our world is taking an even greater one by simply watching it happen. As Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry warns in “Germany is Arming for World War III,” Germany isn’t arming to deter or defend but to surprise.

“Beware! Germany is a country fertile in military surprises,” Winston Churchill once warned. We are about to experience its biggest military surprise ever.

IN OTHER NEWS

EU bank lending to empower European defense companies: The European Investment Bank will lend a record $3.4 billion to Airbus, bank president Nadia Calviño said yesterday, adding that the institution “is deploying its full firepower to bolster Europe’s technological autonomy, industrial strength and economic competitiveness.”

Peru shifts right: Right-wing candidate Keiko Fujimori was declared winner of Peru’s presidential election yesterday, winning by a small margin of 50,000 votes.

Poland signed a deal to buy three Swedish A26 submarines produced by saab for $4.8 billion yesterday. The first submarine will be delivered in 2031, with all three complete by 2038. Sweden will loan Poland a submarine until it receives its first delivery.

Putin’s defiance: Despite weeks of painful blows to Russia’s oil infrastructure, on Sunday President Vladimir Putin rejected a new proposal by Ukraine for both sides to halt long-range strikes. His goal, he said, remains the “complete liberation of Donbas and Novorossiya,” with the latter term referring to the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions.