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Happy Birthday, America! To celebrate your 250th, President Trump got you something amazing!
Sorry, no, you can’t return it for a refund. You left it out in the rain and then doused it with smoke from 80,000 fireworks. And anyway, you don’t have a receipt.
But the Great American State Fair on the National Mall was more than a national embarrassment. It was the endpoint of a MAGA-fication of the nation’s historic birthday, transforming it into a vehicle to glorify Trump and line his allies’ pockets. And according to a report by House Democrats on the Natural Resources Committee, it may also be a crime.
Make it MAGA
In 2016, Congress passed the United States Semiquincentennial Commission Act, establishing a bipartisan organization called America250 to plan for the nation’s 250th birthday. Trump doesn’t really do bipartisan, but America250’s chair Rosie Rios, a former US Treasurer under Obama, bent over backward to work with the new president.
She hired a slate of Trump insiders to keep the peace, including former campaign manager Chris LaCivita, fundraiser Meredith O’Rourke, and event producer Justin Caporale. And she didn’t blink when the White House installed a 25-year-old former Fox News producer named Ariel Abergel as executive director. America250’s nonprofit, chartered by Congress to raise money from outside donors, directed more than $30 million to fund Trump-focused events, including the 2025 parade to commemorate the Army’s 250th anniversary — which just so happened to coincide with the president’s 79th birthday.
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But the commission balked at funding de facto MAGA rallies. On July 3, 2025, Trump used an America250 event in Iowa to denounce Democrats: “I hate them. I cannot stand them because I really believe they hate our country, you want to know the truth.” And in September, after Charlie Kirk’s assassination, Abirgel was pushed out after using America250’s official X.com account to tweet “God bless Charlie Kirk.”
With the White House pressuring America250 to turn every event into a partisan carnival, it was clear that the fragile detente could not continue. In October, Trump’s advisers stood up Freedom 250, a Delaware LLC, later entered in DC, whose registered agent is Harvard Business Services, the vendor of choice for a constellation of other Trump-affiliated entities.
Freedom 250 was nested inside the National Park Foundation, the official charitable partner of the National Park Service. On November 11, 2025, the Service signed a cooperative agreement with the Foundation designating Freedom 250 the “primary public-private partner” for the entire 250th anniversary commemoration. Celebrations and fundraising which had previously been supervised by a bipartisan commission were now parked inside an entity supervised solely by Trump officials, specifically Interior Secretary Doug Burgum. Freedom 250 quickly seized events and resources from America250, including the trademark for the Betsy Ross flag, which became its logo.
Before LaCivita decamped for the president’s project, House Democrats say he counseled America250 to ask for $150 million from Congress — $100 million for America250, and $50 million for the president’s priorities, which would be supplemented with $85 million raised by O’Rourke. But America250 was quickly relegated to projects outside DC and only received $25 million. Meanwhile, between December and April, Burgum’s agency transferred $68 million to the National Park Foundation, the group now housing Freedom 250.