We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Well, unless you’re transgender.

“I have been placed on administrative leave, which is a new concept for the military, until I am allowed to retire,” said Space Force Col. Bree Fram, one of the highest-ranking trans members of the military.

Or an immigrant.

“My husband got outside first and saw ‘M’ in handcuffs by one of the vehicles while men, some in vests and some in plain clothes, secured a long assault-style firearm in the back of one of their vehicles, which was disguised as a family minivan,” an Annapolis resident wrote.

Or an autistic adult who may lose his place in a group home because of cuts to Medicaid in the “Big Beautiful Bill.”

“David would lose his life,” Jane from Ellicott City said about her son. “He would become homeless. David can’t live at home. He had behavioral challenges as some people with autism do and home ceased to become a safe place for either of us.”

That’s the Declaration of Donald Trump: a vision of America remade in the image of his skinflint cruelty. It’s all about service to the wealthy, the rest be damned.

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another ...

It took a week for news of the Declaration of Independence to reach Annapolis in 1776.

There were warnings about this new declaration in Project 2025, and details started gushing from the White House in January.

Now it is spelled out in the president’s massive tax and spending bill, passed by the GOP-controlled Congress.

House Republicans squeaked it through Thursday — even faux budget hawk U.S. Rep. Andy Harris voted yes — and sent Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” to the White House for his signature on Independence Day.

It explodes any belief that we’re all in this together.

“They are choosing to engage in a huge transfer of wealth from people who are working paycheck to paycheck to those who are living off their huge inheritances or gigantic stock portfolios,” said U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed ...

We’ve always been a country of haves and have-nots. Since the Great Depression and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, though, we’ve been on a meandering path toward a more just society. This is a reversal of that progress.

The roughly $4 trillion in tax breaks extend tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, and create new ones through deductions and exemptions.

Maryland homeowners may finally get to deduct state and local taxes again, but they’ll also discover that the Alternative Minimum Tax is waiting to keep them from getting too far ahead.

The wealthiest households will pocket $12,000 a year under the Republican-backed measure, the poorest would pay $1,600 more a year.

It’s sleight of hand. No taxes on tips, overtime pay and automotive loans, as well as higher deductions for seniors, all get wiped out by cuts to programs and services. Then they disappear when Trump leaves office.

MAGA Republicans understand the political consequences.

That’s why many of the most painful budget and policy changes won’t go into effect until after the 2026 midterms.

That’s when 17 million people will lose health coverage in a reversal of the Affordable Care Act, accomplishing what Trump and Republicans have wanted from the start. Maryland will face a 13% cut in Medicaid funding. Another 3 million people will lose food stamps, including some of the 700,000 who rely on SNAP in Maryland.

The $3.2 trillion in additional debt these tax breaks create over the next 10 years — so much for the self-proclaimed party of fiscal discipline — will make it harder to get a loan for a home, car or start a small business.

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends ...

It is an agenda so foreign to what most Americans want, that its hundreds of provisions will feel like a betrayal.

This could be the farthest Trump’s rightward lurch goes — the start of another pendulum swing, this time to the left.

It could lead to the continued rise of progressive figures like Zohran Mamdani, the Democrat running for mayor of New York, and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, talking about free health care, free public colleges and free public transit.

And it will energize moderates like U.S. Rep. Sarah Elfreth, who rally around federal workers, incentives for clean energy and saving places like Annapolis from climate-driven flooding.

Conservatives dismiss them as too Muslim, too Latina, too liberal or too young. They forget.

Thomas Jefferson was 33 when he wrote the Declaration of Independence. George Washington was 43 when he accepted command of the Continental Army.

Revolutionaries are, by their nature, young.

It is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government

The only question is whether the reaction will be enough to power fumbling Democrats through the MAGA coalition in 2026.

In Maryland, it could be the thing that finally pushes out Harris, who caved this week on his ideals of fiscal prudence.

“The opportunity right now is the suffering that so many people are going to experience, whether they voted for [Vice President Kamala] Harris or Trump or didn’t vote at all,” said Steuart Pittman, Anne Arundel County executive and chair of the Maryland Democratic Party.

“They’re being hurt, and this is small-business people and farmers and families and seniors and almost any category you can think of.”

If they succeed, it would be a revolution.

And that would be a happy Independence Day.