America 250

The fascists are trying to take over America's birthday

America has been preparing for its 250th birthday celebration for over a decade. In 2016, Congress created America250, a bipartisan commission to plan for the nation’s birthday celebration, and then Donald Trump took it over and turned it into another one of his grifts.

America250.org is the 501(c)3 nonprofit that supports the America250 commission. Nonpartisan leaders sit on its board, and a group of about 30 bipartisan lawmakers makes up the commission. Shortly after Trump came back into office in 2025, he signed an executive order that created Task Force 250 as an additional 250th anniversary planning group. Trump named himself as the chair and JD Vance as the vice chair. This task force was part of the Department of Defense.

As part of the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” passed in July 2025, Congress appropriated $150 million in funding for the 250th anniversary celebration. While the law said this money was to be distributed by the Interior Department, it did not specify that it would go to America250. Freedom 250 did not exist yet.

Freedom 250 was created last December. It is officially housed inside the National Park Foundation, a congressionally chartered nonprofit that fundraises for the National Park Service. Like most things associated with Trump, it is very secretive, and it does not have to disclose its donors, so it doesn't. Freedom 250 is behind tacky crap like the UFC fights at the White House, the upcoming Indy car race in Washington DC, and the Great American Fair squatting on the National Mall that nobody is attending and where the Ferris wheel only operates half the time. You would be safer riding the bulls at the rodeo at the Great American Fair than riding that death trap of a Ferris wheel.

If you do attend the Great American State Fair and smell bullshit, it's not coming from the rodeo. The Great American State Fair is presented as something unifying for all Americans when, in reality, it's a Trump rally.

America250 is subject to congressional oversight. Freedom 250 is not. So what is the point of having Freedom 250 when we already had America250 over the past decade? The point is that Donald Trump can take funds that were designated for America 250 through the Interior Department and funnel them to Freedom 250. The Interior Department has reportedly given at least $68 million of taxpayer money to the National Park Foundation, where Freedom 250 is housed, and earmarked it for “significant events to commemorate the nation’s semiquincentennial” and “A250 events.”

At least $10 million from congressional funding was given to Freedom 250 for “Freedom Trucks” and mobile museums that tell a whitewashed version of American history. This material was created in partnership with Hillsdale College, a private, right-wing, Christian fundamentalist liberal arts college in Michigan, and PragerU, a fucknut propaganda outlet posing as a fake university.

Event Strategies, Inc., a company that was a vendor for Donald Trump's campaign and his rallies, and with close ties to Trump, has been paid to organize the Great American State Fair, the fireworks show, and other events. They have been paid by Freedom 250 with public money, but we don't know the amount yet. This is similar to what happened with the Reflection Pool, where a friend of Trump's is paid to fuck everything up.

Meanwhile, America250 has a $100 million funding shortfall and has only received one quarter of the funding that it had anticipated from the Trump administration. America250 has received less money than it expected from donors and corporations because Freedom 250 has also been raising money from the private sector. It's like both organizations are competing against each other for the same cause. Most Americans don't know the difference between the two, with many giving money to Freedom 250, not realizing that they're giving money to Trump-associated goons, if not to Trump himself.

The New York Times reported that the Interior Department had instructed staff to use Freedom 250 as the “primary branding” on federal communications about 250th-anniversary events. An agency memo stated that Freedom 250 should appear as the “lead identity” and encouraged staff to use the Freedom 250 logo in their email signatures.

And the grift continues. The Times obtained a Freedom 250 donor packet that suggested individuals who donated $1 million or more would receive an invite to a private reception with Trump. For $1 million, you can smell the cheese and fully loaded diaper up close for yourself.

Freedom 250 CEO Keith Krach encouraged world leaders to donate at the World Economic Forum in Davos earlier this year. American embassies and consulates have been meeting with global executives to solicit donations to Freedom 250. Trump is using our embassies to grift from foreign governments and corporations. These campaigns have raised concerns that Trump could be promising favorable treatment to companies that give money, like those that have donated money to Trump's ballroom and his golden arch that will loom over Arlington National Cemetery. The message is loud and clear that it is pay-to-play with the United States government under Donald Trump.

Remember, Donald Trump made $2.2 billion by grifting off the Oval Office last year.

On Thursday, Democrats on the House Natural Resources Committee published a 55-page report accusing Freedom 250 of aiding Trump in turning America’s 250th birthday into a “hotbed of corruption and self-enrichment” through tactics that potentially amount to criminal fraud. It’s titled “From Vanity to Insanity: How the White House Cheated the American People out of their 250th Birthday.”

Rep. Jared Huffman of California, the ranking Democrat on the committee, told NPR, “We put it all together to really tell the story … of how Donald Trump hijacked what should have been a unifying national celebration and repurposed it for his own interests. This was a team of operatives using the Freedom 250 shell company, but it was also Donald Trump himself telling them what to do.”

The report describes Freedom 250 as "a shadow organization capable of infiltrating the celebrations and injecting America's 250th with Trump's extreme, partisan agenda."

Huffman said, “Once you siphon off the funds and supplant the real bipartisan commission with this new entity and you declare it the main platform for our nation’s celebration, and you award all these shady contracts to your friends, you can do anything you want. And what these folks chose to do was to push a very divisive, very extreme and explicitly sectarian religious agenda into all these materials in our name, using our taxpayer dollars.”

There will be a Trump rally at the Great American Fair and a national prayer vigil for yeehaw fuckers and fucknuts. Donald Trump has co-opted America's birthday and Jesus Christ.

What Freedom 250 is doing could be illegal, and someone might end up in prison. The report alleges that the deception of donors who thought they were supporting America250, but were actually given banking information for Freedom 250, could constitute wire fraud.

Freedom 250 has refused to show any transparency or provide any documentation to Congress. If Democrats retake Congress in November, you can expect full investigations in 2027. Unfortunately, for those organizing Freedom 250, Trump's term expires before the statute of limitations does.

Hoffman said, "We may not be able to undo the damage they've done to us and the national celebration. But we can do something very patriotic by reminding everyone that our government belongs to all of us, not to Donald Trump."

Republicans believe that they have co-opted patriotism, but there's nothing patriotic about pardoning J6 Terrorists, stealing elections, and fleecing patriotic donors for America's birthday. You can be patriotic and celebrate America's birthday without being a racist, fascist douchebag. You can be a proud American while resisting MAGA and Donald Trump.

If you are in the Washington, DC, area, do yourself, your family, and your friends a favor by not going to the Great American Fair and avoiding MAGA fascism and a heat stroke.

Enjoy your barbecue and fireworks tomorrow, and happy birthday, America. Vive la Résistance!

Full disclosure: I lifted a lot of this from American Oversight, which does a great job of documenting Trump's grifting of America's birthday.

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Creative note: I imported the 250 logo for this cartoon.

But something was off with it, and it didn't seem to mesh with my art at all. It seemed stale. So I decided to hand-draw the logo instead.

I actually like it a lot better than the official logo.

The cartoon needed 20 layers in Procreate.

Drawn in 30 seconds:

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