Americans made up for missed July Fourth celebrations in 2020 by going all out this year – and the holiday weekend also saw a spike in shootings and assaults across the country over last year. 

Major cities were already braced for gun violence as shootings had been on the rise over the past few weeks, but nearly 100 people were shot across the country during the holiday weekend. 

New York City alone saw 26 people shot from Friday through Sunday, with two of them resulting in deaths. 

President Joe Biden used his Fourth of July speech to declare the nation’s emergence from its pandemic nightmare a collective victory — and urged Americans to do their patriotic duty by getting vaccinated.

Speaking on the White House lawn, Biden on Sunday night said, “Today we see the results of the unity of purpose.”

On June 19, 1865, the news of emancipation finally reached Galveston, Texas. On that day, the crack of the master’s whip would no longer be sanctioned by the laws of the United States. Exercising the powers vested in him by President Lincoln, Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger, along with more than 1,800 federal troops, marched into Galveston to announce General Order Number 3. Addressed to the “The people of Texas,” the order set out Granger’s task: to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863.

Record-breaking holiday weekend travel at JFK Airport was grounded Saturday night by a “minor water leak” at the airport’s control tower, officials said.

Hundreds of departing and incoming flights were canceled or delayed at the international transit hub, the Port Authority’s online flight tracker showed at around 10:30 p.m.

“JFK controllers are operating from a secondary control tower due to a minor water leak in the main facility,” the airport tweeted just before 7 p.m.

Most Americans can celebrate Independence Day this year with a new appreciation of what it means to be free.

Roughly half the nation has now been fully vaccinated and participation is higher among older, more vulnerable adults. The several vaccines are exceeding expectations for effectiveness, even against variants of the virus.

More and more of us are returning to at least a semblance of our prior lives.

Consider where we were one year ago. The last time July 4 arrived it was hard to find much to celebrate.

Americans may have fallen short of President Biden's July 4 vaccination goal, but by most measures, we should be thankful for how far we've come in the past year.

The big picture: Last July 4, many Americans were hunkering down in their backyards with small cookouts, and travel was way down. This year, most adults have at least some vaccine protection, travel is back up, and most Americans are ready to move on with their lives.

In his famous Independence Day oration of 1852, Frederick Douglass asked, “What to the American slave is your Fourth of July?” If we turn that around and ask, “What to the Fourth of July were African Americans?,” we can only answer: “A lot.”

African Americans played a crucial, if often overlooked, role in their White owners’ and neighbors’ decision to declare independence from Britain.

SOUTHOLD, N.Y. — The American flag flies in paint on the side of Peter Treiber Jr.’s potato truck, a local landmark parked permanently on County Route 48, doing little more, he thought, than drawing attention to his family’s farm.

Until he tried to sell his produce.

At a local greenmarket where he sells things like wild bergamot, honey and sunflowers, he had trouble striking a deal until, he said, he let his liberal leanings slip out in conversation with a customer.

As this great nation celebrates its 245th birthday, it is time to fight back, hard, against the critical race theory and 1619 Project lies claiming that the founding was motivated largely by racism and slavery.

When even the National Archives, the repository of the original Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, wastes huge amounts of time and money in a mendacious initiative adopting the 1619 Project’s slander of the founding and of the nation, it is clear that the battle for the truth of our nation’s origins must be joined.

Doctors are calling on parents to keep their children away from fireworks this holiday weekend, citing the thousands of injuries reported last year.

“We know that sales of fireworks increased in 2020, as did injuries, so parents and caregivers need to be vigilant this Fourth of July and leave any fireworks to the professionals,” said Dr. James Dodington, a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics Council on Injury, Violence, and Poison Prevention.