To everyone who…
Puts the cart back, smiles at strangers, lets others go first, shows real empathy, listens to understand, is kind to animals, notices the little things, offers help, checks if people are okay, sends the “Did you make it home?” text, and feels for those who are hurting.
Thank you. The world needs more of you. 🙏🏻
Dear @WhiteHouse, my name is Rodney Smith Jr., founder of Raising Men & Women Lawn Care Service in Huntsville, Alabama. Through our 50 Yard Challenge, over 6,000 kids across the country have signed up to mow free lawns for the elderly, disabled, veterans, active-duty military, first responders, and single parents. With America celebrating its 250th birthday this year and me also being born on July 4th, I wanted to humbly ask if a few kids from our program and myself could travel to Washington, D.C. to help mow the White House lawn for this historic celebration.
More than anything, I want these kids to see how a simple act of service something as ordinary as mowing a lawn for someone in need can lead to extraordinary places. What better lesson in community service than showing them that helping others can take them all the way to our nation’s capital? I’d also love to bring my American flag-themed mower in hopes that the President might sign it, so I can later auction it off and donate 100% of the proceeds to a nonprofit supporting veterans. It would be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to highlight the importance of service, patriotism, and the impact young people can have when they choose to make a difference. 🇺🇸
In Wisconsin, a graduate was forced to stop on stage when his diploma couldn't be found.
That's when the school said a person traveled thousands of miles to deliver it to him.
It was his sister, returning from military service, for over a year. ❤️
Memorial Day will always mean more to our family than cookouts or a long weekend.
It’s the sound of boots on concrete.
The weight of a folded flag in shaking hands.
Three children growing up with memories instead of a father.
A headstone in Section 60 with a date that changed the course of all our lives forever.
SSG Alan W. Shaw, was killed in Iraq on February 9, 2007. He was 31 years old. He didn’t get the chance to come home, grow old, meet grandchildren, or live the quiet life so many of us take for granted.
That’s what Memorial Day means to us.
It’s not abstract. It’s not political. It’s personal.
But over the years, I’ve also realized something else. The men we honor today did not give everything so America would sit in mourning forever. They believed in life. In freedom. In family. In backyard barbecues, ballgames, loud laughter, and the simple privilege of being home.
So yes, remember them. Speak their names. Teach your children who they were. Fly the flag. Visit the cemetery.
And then live.
Live in a way worthy of what they gave up for the rest of us. Because they are never truly gone as long as somebody is still speaking about them. 🇺🇸
It was an honor to visit your husband’s grave today on your behalf, and to pay my respects. It was wonderful to see the beautiful flowers representing many others who did the same. Our nation owes a debt of gratitude to those who made the ultimate sacrifice, and to the loved ones they left behind. Thank you for your service and sacrifice @SharrellAnne2 🙏🏽
Good rainy morning from Arlington National Cemetery.
Specifically, the final resting place of your hero husband Staff Sgt. Alan Shaw.
His grave now has some fresh roses placed in front of it, alongside two American flags, a reminder that Americans truly appreciate his sacrifice.
God bless you and your family on this Memorial Day 🙏🏻🇺🇸
This is probably a long shot, but if anybody happens to be in DC this weekend and plans on visiting Arlington, I would love to see a fresh photo of my husband’s grave in Section 60.
SSG Alan W. Shaw
Section 60, Grave 8451
B Co 1/12 Cav, 1st Cavalry Division
November 10, 1975 - February 9, 2007
There’s just something about knowing people still stop by, still say his name, still remember. 🇺🇸⭐🇺🇸
Copper used to be called Dr. Copper because demand reflected industrial activity weeks before the macro data showed it. That worked until around 2018, when speculative ETF flows started moving copper independently of physical demand.
The idea isn't dead, but you need copper-gold or copper-silver ratios to extract the leading info, not copper alone.
This arrival is unique and more incredible than is reported. Let me explain…
This trip was planned earlier in the month, and I was invited to fly down with @PeteHegseth.
For security reasons, none of us had a clue it was for the arrival of the Ford.
Then POTUS pulled @SecWar onto Air Force One for the trip to China, and all the logistics changed. I no longer had a seat on the SECWAR plane.
I’ve been to a lot of “dog and pony” arrivals over the years, and without fail, some CEO or admiral or ambassador delays the damn thing.
The crew ends up slowing down or doing circles in the ocean to push the arrival back. Sometimes it’s just a few hours so the VIP can get his beauty sleep. Sometimes it’s days.
Often, after all that, the VIP doesn’t even show up. He sends some deputy to make the remarks.
And these delays are always dressed up with lies about mechanical failure or weather.
I was thinking of driving down anyway, and the SECWAR team welcomed it.
Then yesterday morning I drove over a massive nail, blew a tire, and had to cancel.
Immediately @RileyPodleski called and rattled off the reasons I needed to be there, including the 55 babies who would be on the pier waiting to see dad for the first time.
“I can’t get there first thing. Any chance it’s going to be delayed till noon?”
None.
But the crazy thing was the media team hadn’t even talked to Hegseth in days. They were still confident he wouldn’t push the arrival back a single minute.
Air Force One arrived late last night.
I’ve been on trips with Pete Hegseth. He doesn’t lounge. He doesn’t sleep. He works. And President Trump barely sleeps, so I can guarantee Hegseth is beat.
I also don’t know the travel arrangements from Andrews to Norfolk, but those transfers always take longer than expected.
Seems like a minor thing. Seems like something he could have easily pushed back a few hours to catch well-deserved sleep or slip home quickly to spend a few hours with his kids.
He refused.
And then his media team hammered me and other journalists to cover this incredible story.
What makes it even more incredible? Hegseth is Army. Yes, he absolutely knows how powerful homecomings after long deployments are. He knows how painful even an hour delay at a terminal can be.
But he doesn’t know the energy of thousands arriving home at once. Army soldiers get orders, and it can take days to get home, but they move through crowded terminals and airports. They have time to decompress.
Naval arrivals come after weeks of hard underway time in lonely seas. Time made longer and more painful by deferred maintenance and endless cleaning.
Naval arrivals are the most incredible feeling a person can experience.
On both sides. Personally, I’ve only been on the shoreside, when my wife returned from Iraq, but oh what a feeling.
And despite having the best excuse in the world, the most important summit of the year with our greatest adversary, Hegseth refused to rob these sailors of a single second of joy. He didn’t just show up. He arrived with enthusiasm and spirit.
Why?
Because he isn’t lying when he says the job isn’t about him. It’s about our warfighters.
The legacy media has gone out of their way to paint him as selfish and, after a minor fire and the Strait of Hormuz still closed, the carrier sailors as failures.
The truth is polar opposite.
To @PeteHegseth about each and every sailor who just completed the longest carrier deployment since the Vietnam War.
And it’s about forcing the media to report on his and @USNavyCNO words of congratulations for an excellent job.
And it’s about the sons and daughters and wives waiting on that pier.
Congratulations to the Ford Carrier Strike Group.
Bravo Zulu and welcome home sailors.
🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
🚨WHAT THE HELL?!!!!
Divers doing a ROUTINE maintenance check at the Converse Reservoir dam in Mobile, AL...
...just found an underwater IED!!!!
Apparently a grenade-type bomb was sitting submerged at the bottom of a dam that holds an entire city's DRINKING WATER.
It took FIVE agencies: the FBI, ALEA, the Sheriff, Mobile PD, and a maritime render-safe team, to pull it out and detonate it.
Someone put a BOMB in our water supply...
WHERE IS THE NATIONAL COVERAGE?!!!