Hopefully, Nicolas Cage wouldn’t steal it this time, like he did in 2004’s implausible adventure movie National Treasure.
What the bill does
New legislation would convene Congress at Philadelphia’s Independence Hall, the site of the Declaration of Independence’s signing on July 4, 1776, for the 250th anniversary on July 2, 2026.
Why not on July 4, the exact anniversary? Because in 2026, that date will fall on a weekend Saturday, when Congress would likely be out of session.
The legislation was introduced by Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-PA2), who represents the area of Philadelphia containing Independence Hall itself. The legislation does not appear to have an “official” title.
Context: outside D.C.
Congress has twice convened in cities beyond Washington, D.C. for special occasions.
On July 16, 1987, Congress met at Independence Hall for the 200th anniversary of the Constitution—not the entire Congress but 55 members of the House and Senate. C-SPAN broadcast the event on television.
On September 6, 2002, Congress met at Federal Hall in New York City for the one-year anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. Though more than half of Congress attended, around 300 members, that still fell short of the entire body. C-SPAN broadcast that event, too.
Context: the Declaration
Written by Thomas Jefferson, later elected as the third president, the Declaration of Independence detailed colonists’ grievances against King George III and explained why they declared a revolution against his rule. Jefferson’s opening phrase became one of the most famous in American history: “When in the course of human events.”
56 delegates to the Continental Congress signed the document, including some of the most prominent men of the era like Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson. John Hancock famously signed his name extra large, reportedly so that the king could see it all the way from England.
Today, the document is on display to the public at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. and the signing is celebrated annually as the federal holiday Independence Day.
(Although recently, historian Andrew Roberts prompted something of a reconsideration when he argued in his 2021 biography The Last King of America that King George III wasn’t actually that bad.)
What supporters say
Supporters argue that it’s fitting to mark the entire origin point of the American experiment in the room where it all began.
“In 1776, Philadelphia was the birthplace of American democracy,” Rep. Boyle said in a press release. “It is only right that we celebrate our nation’s 250th anniversary in the very building where the Continental Congress signed the Declaration of Independence. Our bill will bring Congress together in Philadelphia once again for a historic special session to honor 250 years of freedom.”
What opponents say
The Fulcrum was unable to locate any explicit statements of opposition, but perhaps some could object to one of the lead Democratic sponsor’s seemingly anti-Trump arguments.
“Both abroad and at home, we are seeing threats to democracy today in a way which hasn’t been the case at any point in my lifetime,” Rep. Boyle told the Philadelphia Inquirer in 2024 upon introducing a prior version of the legislation. (His phrase “and at home” clearly referenced Donald Trump.) “So I think this takes on greater symbolic value to remind all of us of the spirit of 1776, what our founders achieved, and how precious it is in this generation that we don’t lose it.”
Odds of passage
The legislation has attracted 25 bipartisan cosponsors: 14 Democrats and 11 Republicans. Notably, more than half—or 13 of the 25—hail from Pennsylvania.
It awaits a potential vote in the House Judiciary Committee.
Rep. Boyle previously introduced a prior version of the legislation in late June 2024. It attracted a slightly larger 28 bipartisan cosponsors, 20 Democrats and eight Republicans, but never received a committee vote.
Jesse Rifkin is a freelance journalist with the Fulcrum. Don’t miss his report, Congress Bill Spotlight, on the Fulcrum. Rifkin’s writings about politics and Congress have been published in the Washington Post, Politico, Roll Call, Los Angeles Times, CNN Opinion, GovTrack, and USA Today.
SUGGESTIONS:
Congress Bill Spotlight: National Garden of American Heroes, As Trump Proposed
Congress Bill Spotlight: Preventing Presidential Inaugurations on MLK Day, Like Trump’s
Congress Bill Spotlight: No Invading Allies Act
Congress Bill Spotlight: Suspending Pennies and Nickels for 10 Years
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.