Remember walking into Toys "R" Us as a kid? A lot more shoppers are about to get that experience again. Toys "R" Us is making its biggest U.S. expansion in years, opening 120 new standalone stores across the country just in time for the holiday rush. The rollout brings its total to 160 as the iconic retailer continues rebuilding its brick-and-mortar footprint after its 2017 bankruptcy and the closure of its U.S. stores the following year. Shoppers can expect everything from LEGO and Barbie to Pokémon and Hot Wheels, with select locations adding candy shops, cafés and Creator Studios. The company has not yet revealed the full list of locations or said whether all 120 new stores will stick around after the holidays. Read more: foxbusiness.com/retail/toys-…

Brendan Farrington, a friend and colleague who covered Florida politics and the quirks and people of this state, has died. Here’s a statement from his beloved wife Amy Farrington. R.I.P. sir you were one of a kind

The Space Academy belongs in Florida - America’s launchpad to the stars.

Bryan Avila is a military officer and dedicated public servant who has spent his career fighting to defend freedom and cut costs. He is also the son of Cuban exiles — this is a man who understands the Florida Dream and why we must defend it. I’m proud to have him by my side.

THE GREATEST LL MOUND VISIT OF ALL TIME!! “If you walk the next 5 batters Jesus is still lord,if you strikeout the next 5 batters Jesus is still lord” 🙏🏻 ✝️🙏🏻✝️ #llws #espn #patmcafee

Jack Latvala, longtime Florida senator and Pinellas powerbroker, dies tampabay.com/news/florida-po…

Born this day in 1925 in a Texas sharecropper's shack, one of twelve kids. His dad walked out, his mom died young, and Audie Murphy quit school in fifth grade to pick cotton and hunt rabbits to feed his brothers and sisters. He got deadly accurate with a rifle for one reason: the family couldn't afford a wasted bullet. After Pearl Harbor he tried to enlist and got laughed off. The Marines rejected him. The Navy rejected him. The paratroopers rejected him. He was 5'5" and barely 110 pounds, and they all said he was too small to fight. His sister had to fudge his paperwork just to get the Army to take a 17 year old. Then he went to war and became something out of a legend. January 26, 1945, near Holtzwihr, France. His company was down to a handful of men facing six tanks and 250 German infantry. Murphy sent his men back, then climbed onto a burning American tank destroyer that could have exploded under him at any second, grabbed the .50 caliber machine gun, and held off the entire assault alone for nearly an hour. He was wounded in the leg and kept firing. When a buddy asked over the field phone how close the Germans were, he reportedly said hold on and let me ask them. He came home the most decorated American soldier of the entire war. Every valor award the Army could give, some of them more than once, plus French and Belgian honors on top. Life magazine put his baby face on the cover, James Cagney saw it and invited him to Hollywood, and the cotton picker who couldn't pass a physical became a movie star. He made over 40 films. In 1955 he played himself in To Hell and Back, the movie of his own memoir, and it was Universal's biggest hit until Jaws came along twenty years later. But the war never let go. He had what we now call PTSD, slept with a loaded pistol under his pillow, and got hooked on sleeping pills trying to outrun the nightmares. He kicked the addiction by locking himself alone in a motel room for a week. Then he did something almost no famous man did back then: he went public, told the country that combat had wrecked his nerves, and pushed the government to study and treat what war does to a soldier's mind. He died in a plane crash in 1971 at just 45 years old. They buried him at Arlington, where his simple headstone is the most visited grave in the cemetery after John F. Kennedy's. Every branch told him he was too small to fight. He outfought all of them, then spent the rest of his life trying to help the men who came home broken like he did.

This is great- seeing scholars on the center-right and center-left writing and studying fatherhood, its impact, and how we can maximize the intentional involvement of dads in the lives of their children. This was unheard of 10 yrs ago. That’s worth celebrating this Father’s Day.

3. But what does that distinctive path actually look like—so dads aren't just second-rate moms? At @FamStudies, John Cuddeback points not to the '50s but before the Industrial Revolution: to a homeward path defined by craft, leisure, and feast. Three concrete anchors: 🪚 A hand-art practiced in the home—gardening, carpentry, raising animals—something that forms character and can be shared w/ the kids. Not a mere hobby but a context for formation and deepening relationships. 🪑 A weekly "porch time"—a recurring leisure moment where the family gathers for conversation, stories, & games. This takes a lot of intentionality in today's busy world. 🍽️ One special meal a week, with shared prep and clean-up, good manners, maybe a simple dress code—prayers said, traditions carried on, technology in its place. Other dads will no doubt think of different ways to be fathers in the 21st century. But the broader takeaway is that conservative dads are finding their way towards a distinctive vision & model for fatherhood in this moment. This is not nostalgia. Not a 50-50 split. It's about a father forging his own distinctive path. . . homeward bound. ifstudies.org/blog/fathers-a…

"My parents are fallible goofballs like anyone else. But there is something a bit different about the conversations at my dinner table—and something magical and rare about the people leading them."