How Trump Hijacked America’s 250th Birthday

House Democrats’ Report Reveals ‘Blueprint for Corruption’ From Vanity to Insanity

In 2016, Congress created America 250 to plan a non-partisan celebration. When Trump’s attempt to take it over failed, he created Freedom 250 to put on a MAGA celebration instead, with false history, dark money and foreign influence.

On July 4, Donald Trump attempted the biggest heist of his career: the theft of America’s 250th birthday. But the gods were not pleased. Capping a day of extreme heat and canceled events, they sent lightning, thunder and rain to scatter those assembled to hear his speech, forcing many to seek shelter in the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, which tells stories Trump is desperate to erase from history.

Eventually, the gods relented, and Trump gave his forgettable speech, followed by fireworks. But the speech itself was only a small part of the heist, as laid out days before in a report from Democrats on the House Natural Resources Committee, “From Vanity to Insanity: How the White House Cheated the American People Out of Their 250th Birthday.”

As the report explains, in 2016 Congress created a bipartisan commission, America 250, to stage a nationwide non-partisan celebration, similar to the bicentennial in 1976, which emphatically did not center around then-President Gerald Ford. Trump first tried to take over America 250 in early 2025, and when that failed, he created a new, utterly non-transparent entity, Freedom 250 LLC and lodged it inside the National Park Foundation, to exploit NPF’s credibility and donor relationships. Everything else followed from that.

“Donald Trump’s hijacking of America’s 250th birthday will go down as one of the most corrupt, brazen abuses of public trust in presidential history, even by the dubious standards of this administration,” said Ranking Member Jared Huffman (D-Calif), in announcing the report. Worse still, the report calls how he did it “a replicable blueprint for corruption.

“As our country prepared to celebrate a milestone that belongs to every American, Trump and his operatives launched a hostile takeover of the bipartisan commission established by Congress [in 2016] to lead the celebration. When that failed, they sidelined the commission, siphoned its resources, and infiltrated a beloved national charity under cover of a shadow corporation that shielded them from public scrutiny,” Huffman said.

All this echoed Trump’s hijacking of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, but there was more.

“Then they proceeded to deceive donors, solicit foreign money, sell access to the president, award no-bid contracts to Trump loyalists, harvest Americans’ personal data, and push a white-washed, Christian nationalist version of history,” Huffman added.

That’s a heady list of charges — including wire fraud and other possible crimes — so it’s important to note there’s solid evidence for each and every one, as supported by the report’s 266 footnotes.

“We’ve uncovered extensive evidence of corruption, self-enrichment and potential crimes,” Huffman summed up. “The American people deserve to know the truth about how the official national celebration of our country’s 250th anniversary was stolen, along with a large – and so far unaccounted for – sum of their taxpayer dollars.”

Here’s a summary of the report’s key findings:

• The president put himself at the center of the nation’s birthday, chairing a White House task force, and twice staging his own birthday as a national event, with the Army’s 250th military parade in 2025, and the UFC fight on the White House South Lawn in 2026 Freedom 250 banner.
• The White House built Freedom 250 — its replacement for the bipartisan America250 — on deceit. While misled musical performers dropped out upon discovering the deceit, donors may have been victims of wire fraud, believing they were donating to America250, but given routing information to send their money to Freedom 250 instead.
• Freedom 250 sold access to the president and courted foreign money in America’s name. While facially corrupt, it could also be a violation of the Constitution’s Foreign Emoluments Clause.
• Trump and his operatives cashed in, including Event Strategies, Inc. (the firm that helped plan the Jan. 6 rally), which collected tens of millions in federal contracts, Trump himself who traded in the stock of companies that made donations and staged a White House UFC fight promoting his own investments and business ventures, and Trump campaign associates who gathered personal information and sold merchandise, some of which was purchased by government agencies which then required employees to wear it.
• The White House imposed a false, Christian nationalist history, most blatantly via federally funded “Freedom Trucks” that conveyed false history to schoolchildren.
• Freedom 250 created a blueprint for corruption. The report concludes Freedom 250 is “a blueprint, not a one-time abuse,” already test-driven at the Department of Agriculture, and with the White House ballroom. It also “sets a precedent other officials may follow to turn trusted public institutions into vehicles for private and political power.”

Because they’re in the minority and lack subpoena power, and because Republicans had no interest in doing oversight, the report notes:

“These findings are interim, and they are alarming precisely because they remain incomplete. In a democracy, the people’s business is meant to be conducted in the open, yet many of the most basic facts here remain concealed behind the White House, Freedom 250, and unfortunately NPF.”

After the report came out, MS NOW reporter Kevin Frey sought out Republican responses. The White House was silent, and Freedom 250 spokesperson Danielle Alvarez predictably dismissed it as “a partisan smear,” but a small handful of Republican representatives “hinted at some discomfort with how politicized events have become,” as Frey put it, though none said anything critical.

Trump supporters were far more vocal, but characteristically said nothing about the report.

“This guy is Mr. America,” Rep. Wesley Hunt, R-Texas, told MSNOW. “I love the idea of leading from the top, leading from the front.”

“I don’t have a problem with it. He’s our president,” Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., added. And Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, R-N.Y., added her own dose of revisionist history to the mix, saying that “every president played a role whenever it was an important anniversary, right? It’s no different now,” adding the lie that Trump is “trying to bring together the country by hosting events like this that should make us all proud.”

Back in the real world, the 16-day “Great American State Fair” in the National Mall was drawing “crowds” so small there were fewer folks on hand than would normally visit when nothing was going on. The vast expanse was virtually empty, even before July 4, when extreme heat forced the fair to shut down completely.

In contrast, as part of America250’s plan, the Smithsonian Institution had spent years planning a month-long Folklife Festival on the mall, which “would have brought together traditions like Burning Man and Farm Aid alongside local and regional festivals from across the U.S. and its territories,” according to Politico. Pushed aside for Freedom250’s miserable flop, the Smithsonian took its festival nationwide, partnering with more than 40 existing festivals across the country.

It’s a perfect metaphor for what Trump has done to America — hogged the limelight, and forced people to adapt on their own. But after the mid-terms, things could start to change dramatically, and this report on Trump’s hijacking of America’s 250th birthday is a blueprint for how long overdue investigations may unfold.

“The deepest harm is not the sum of what has already been taken, but what the country is being asked to accept,” the report concludes. “The semiquincentennial was meant to remind Americans of what they hold in common. Let the record of how it was abused remind them of what they must never consent to lose.”