Money Flows Reveal 'Trumpified' 250th Celebration Rife With 'Grift, Self-Dealing, and Enriching Friends'

A report released Thursday reveals that the Trump administration has been using the United States' 250th birthday as an opportunity to shovel more than 100 million in federal contracts and grants to a network of politicized entities under the control of Trump administration officials and political allies.The report, produced jointly by researchers at Public Citizen and the Revolving Door Project, reveals how Freedom 250, an organization created by Trump loyalists last year after a failed effort to take over the congressionally-authorized America 250, has been raising money to create a Trumpified semiquincentennial celebration.Since October, the administration has handed out contracts and grants worth nearly 103 million to entities that are either controlled or influenced by Trump insiders including Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, 2024 campaign manager Chris LaCivita, and former campaign finance director Meredith O’Rourke.In addition to receiving taxpayer cash, Freedom 250 is getting undisclosed amounts in private funding from corporations including ExxonMobil, Oracle, Lockheed Martin, Palantir, and United Airlines, all of which have major regulatory issues before the federal government.Freedom 250’s ongoing efforts to raise private money raise a slate of ethics and transparency concerns about whether Trump and his allies are soliciting donations in exchange for access to the administration, including the president, the report notes, especially since many of the corporations that have joined have major business dealings currently before the administration.Alan Zibel, research director with Public Citizen and co-author of the report, said that Freedom 250's entire operation revolved around creating a Trumpified version of the 250th anniversary that is mostly about lionizing Trump and catering to his political base.The 250th anniversary of the country should be a moment to reflect on the values of the nation, added Zibel. Apparently, the Trump administration is replacing those values with grift, self-dealing, and enriching friends with taxpayer dollars.Toni Aguilar Rosenthal, program director with the Revolving Door Project and report co-author, remarked that the Freedom 250 celebrations fit a lifelong Trump pattern of obsessively scarring everything in his path with his likeness, his name, and his gaudy, dictatorial taste in faux gilding.The Trump administration has once again found an avenue to tilt the scales in favor of corporate interests, Rosenthal added, even as millions struggle to believe in the dream of America 250 years after the signing of the [Declaration of Independence].A Thursday report in The Atlantic detailed the tensions between Freedom 250 and America 250, which is still planning to put on its own events in a spirit of nonpartisan celebration of the United States.While some Republican members of America 250, including former Trump White House adviser Kellyanne Conway, have been trying to make peace with the more MAGA-centric Freedom 250 operation, that hasn't stopped Trump loyalists from taking shots at the group.America250 can’t get over the fact that Trump won,” former Trump campaign manager LaCivita told The Atlantic. “They want to apologize for America’s 250th. We don’t.”