$103M in Federal Contracts Flow to Trumpified “Freedom 250” Events as Trump and Political Allies Turn Anniversary Celebration into Corporate-Sponsored Vanity Cringefest
This report is published in full on Public Citizen’s website here.
Key Findings
Donald Trump and his allies have seized control of the bipartisan 250th anniversary celebration and substituted it with a Trumpified series of events, at the public’s expense. Our analysis of federal contracts and corporate sponsorship deals related to the 250th anniversary reveals that:
- The Trump administration has awarded nearly $103 million in federal contracts and grants for the 250th anniversary celebrations to a network of politicized entities under the control of Trump administration officials and political allies.
- The recipients include entities controlled or influenced by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, as well as Chris LaCivita (Trump’s former campaign manager) and Meredith O’Rourke, Trump’s former presidential campaign finance director.
- These grants represent the vast majority (about 80%) of the nearly $126 million in federal contracts awarded since October 2025 to fund this summer’s 250th-anniversary celebrations, which have devolved into a celebration of Trump himself.
- Private funding has also flooded the anniversary celebration, often from corporations with regulatory issues before the Trump administration. As of June 8, 18 corporate sponsors are funding the Trump administration’s preferred anniversary organization, Freedom 250, compared with the 62 sponsoring the original, bipartisan celebration, dubbed America 250 (12 companies sponsor both).
Introduction
A decade ago, Congress created a bipartisan commission, the U.S. Semiquincentennial Commission, to oversee the nation’s 250th anniversary celebrations. The commission then created a nonprofit organization called America 250 to be its official partner organization, helping to plan events, memorials, celebrations, and other commemorations reflecting on the history of the United States.
Upon Trump’s second election, Trump allies spent months trying to take over the America 250 organization by installing loyalists and partisan operatives to its board. Following scrutiny from the organization’s bipartisan leadership (and a strict limit on the President’s power to remove existing members from the board), Trump’s efforts to take over the organization faltered. The Trump-appointed leader, former Fox News producer Ariel Abergel, was fired by America 250 amid allegations that he improperly attempted to pressure board members to resign and engaged in other infractions. (Abergel attributed his firing to his efforts to issue a statement and post on social media about the killing of conservative broadcaster Charlie Kirk.)
The failed putsch at America 250 revealed Trump and his allies’ disdain for a nonpartisan vision for the semiquincentennial celebrations. Rather than choosing to collaborate with America 250 the Trumpian coalition instead founded a new, opaque organization known as Freedom 250 to facilitate a MAGAfied celebration of the nation’s 250th anniversary.
The America 250 website (left), the official site of the U.S. semiquincentennial commission, features a bipartisan, inoffensive version of the country’s 250th anniversary while the Freedom 250 site (right) showcases Trump himself.
Freedom 250 has since quickly displaced America 250 as the Trump Administration’s preferred partner in the 250th anniversary celebrations, a preference made clear by actions like linking to Freedom 250 (but not America 250) at the bottom of the White House’s landing page. At least one federal agency sent out directives to staff instructing that “Freedom 250 should be the lead identity in most cases,” while noting that America 250 should still be used for co-branded events.
In the last six months, Freedom 250 has also courted a slate of 18 corporate sponsorships, including a number seemingly drawn from its nonpartisan competitor, although the America 250 organization continues to boast significantly more, with 62 sponsors as of early June. There is some overlap between the two organizations, as 12 companies sponsor both America 250 and Freedom 250. The Wall Street Journal reported that the competition between the two highly similar organizations “confused corporate executives, many of whom were unaware of the parallel organization raising money for Trump’s own celebration.”
Freedom 250 was incorporated in October 2025 as a wholly-owned subsidiary of the National Park Foundation (NPF), the congressionally-chartered non-profit partner of the National Park Service. The project was announced by Trump himself, but not until December 18, 2025, when the White House released a video celebrating a “new public-private partnership.” In the same video, Trump lamented “men playing in women’s sports” and promised a “triumphal arch,” while bemoaning the lack of such a structure in D.C.
In December 2025, Trump announced the formation of Freedom 250 in White House video statement.
It remains unclear who directed the creation of Freedom 250 under the National Park Foundation’s banner. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum sits as the ex officio director of NPF as required by the organization’s 1967 congressional charter. Burgum, however, insisted in Congressional testimony in May 2026 that he did not direct the establishment of the Freedom 250 organization; “I’m not aware of the final decision maker on Freedom250,” Burgum said. Appearing on CNN, Burgum said the “Freedom 250 organization is run out of the White House.”
Even so, Burgum has spent the last year stacking the NPF board with Trump loyalists — including longtime Trump fundraiser Meredith O’Rourke, and Trump’s 2024 campaign co-manager, Chris LaCivita. O’Rourke is also raising money for several other Trump-tied vanity ventures, including Trump’s corporate-funded East Wing ballroom project.
This Trumpified version of the semiquincentennial seems first and foremost to lionize Trump and glorify his political base while shirking the opportunity to understand and respect the shared, complicated history of our country.