America runs on things most of us never see. Food shows up on grocery store shelves. Trucks carry it from farms all over the country. Workers plant it, pick it, and pack it. We trust that all of this will keep happening, no matter which party is in power. We assume it always will.
But that trust depends on a long chain of people and decisions. Most of us don’t think about that chain, especially when we vote. We should. Our daily lives depend on chains like this one, and the leaders we choose can strengthen them or break them.
Take immigration. The people who harvest our food are, in large part, immigrants. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, only about 32 percent of crop farmworkers from 2020 to 2022 were born in the United States. The rest were immigrants (some citizens, some green-card holders, and about 42 percent without legal work authorization). Source: USDA Economic Research Service.
Tariffs (taxes on goods coming into the country) touch almost every link in the chain, too. The nonpartisan Tax Foundation estimates that tariffs put in place in 2025 cost the average American household about $1,000 that year. That money comes out of family budgets, not foreign governments’ pockets.
Wars matter as well, especially in the Middle East. Conflict there can push up the price of oil, and almost everything we buy travels on trucks that burn fuel. Fighting may be good business for weapons makers, but it makes life more expensive for regular families. Big decisions like these should never be made without experts who study these effects every day.
Right now, too much attention goes to small parts of the chain (parts that do little for ordinary Americans, or even hurt them) while leaders chase deals that benefit themselves and their friends. For 250 years, Americans have watched out for politicians who put their own wealth ahead of the country. We need to be even more watchful now. That means clear rules: limits on trading stocks and cryptocurrency while in office, a ban on no-bid government contracts even during emergencies, and real consequences for anyone using public office to get rich.
We live in an information age. Our elections need more security and more scrutiny, not less, and we should modernize how we vote in the safest ways possible. Public service should mean one thing above all: the oath to the Constitution comes first. Our government, including our military, has long set that standard. Every elected official, at every level, should be held to it.
It is July 4th, 2026. This is a day to look past our own small corner of the world and see the whole country. Black lives matter. LGBTQ Americans deserve allies. Every one of us deserves freedom of speech and freedom of religion, or freedom from religion, if that’s our choice. Let’s go about our business and be great Americans to all Americans.