The United States will celebrate its 250th birthday tomorrow. The occasion has been marked by events all over the nation’s capital, from summer cookouts to military parades. But behind the scenes, these celebrations have been shaped by an ongoing struggle between some of the nation’s most powerful forces over who is in charge: the federal government, the president, or the corporations funding them both?
There are currently two different organizations organizing America’s 250th anniversary, and they are in direct competition with one another. America250 is a bipartisan organization created by Congress with the goal of organizing an anniversary that could be celebrated by all Americans. Freedom 250, on the other hand, is a company created by the White House shortly after President Trump was sworn back into office; though it is technically part of the National Park Foundation, it is controlled by the president and his appointees.
Trump’s initiative has gradually absorbed many of the responsibilities that were supposed to be overseen by America250 over the last year, a power grab that mirrors the president’s other efforts to remake the federal government in his own image. Massive posters with Freedom 250 branding now adorn several government agency headquarters across downtown D.C. Freedom 250 has sponsored ads in the city’s Metro system to announce that the CIA is hiring new recruits, and its logo will even be placed on the Social Security cards of all newborn babies for the rest of the year.
Both anniversary initiatives are funded by massive corporations that are simultaneously lobbying Congress, donating to politicians, and running advertising campaigns to influence the government. The large pool of money dedicated to the anniversary celebrations—including funds from both the government and the private sector—helped to encourage the president’s takeover: The more events Freedom 250 controls, the more of these funds it can absorb. The result has been a three-way tug-of-war between the public, the president, and corporate boardrooms over who gets to define American culture on this historic occasion. Right now, the public is losing.
Special Thanks to Our Sponsor
Back in 2016, the creation of a bipartisan commission seemed like an obvious solution for how to organize the semiquincentennial celebrations without overtly “politicizing” them. At first, Congress’s plan went smoothly. America250 led several relatively low-profile events like free concerts in early 2025 without much involvement from the White House.
Then came the first major controversy of the celebrations: the Army’s 250th anniversary military parade, scheduled to coincide with President Trump’s birthday. While the Army had planned for a celebration of some sort, the idea for a parade came directly from the White House. Neither commission was highlighted as an official sponsor of the parade, but the Freedom 250 website now retroactively claims the event as a part of their efforts; America250 sponsored a separate event the same day.
The Army parade featured advertisements for at least 11 different military contractors. General Dynamics, the world’s fifth-largest weapons company, was a presenting sponsor. Northrop Grumman, the third-largest, set up a stand giving away free merchandise next to a display of their M230 chain gun. As tanks rolled down Constitution Avenue, an announcer’s voice interrupted the parade to say: “Special thanks to our sponsor, Lockheed Martin!”—the world’s largest weapons company.
Government contractors, and especially military contractors, go to extreme lengths to promote their products to decision-makers in Washington, D.C. Their ads appear on the sides of buildings, in museums, in the transit system, and even on your phone. Lobbying and campaign contributions are regulated and closely monitored, but these marketing techniques give corporate giants a creative way to dodge the existing rules against influence-peddling. The 250th anniversary celebrations offered yet another set of opportunities for companies looking to buy favors from the government.
An overlapping network of companies has provided funding for the occasion. America250 sponsors include Amazon, JPMorgan Chase, Oracle, and Walmart. Freedom 250—which made a half-hearted effort to hide its financiers by erasing its sponsorship page—has received funding from ExxonMobil and Mastercard. Most interesting of all is how many major government contractors contributed to both efforts: Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Deloitte, Palantir, and more.
The Trump administration, always happy to exchange favors for cash, has played along. For Trump, forming his own initiative means a chance to take control over both the $150 million in congressional funding meant for America250 and the estimated $215 million expected from corporations. Once disagreements emerged between America250 and the White House in late 2025, it became especially clear to Trump that forming his own splinter group would be a win-win: a simultaneous opportunity for self-enrichment and the centralization of power.
The Funding Fight
In early 2026, the Interior Department sent out a memo ordering its employees to treat Trump’s Freedom 250 as the “primary branding” for anniversary celebrations. “America250 branding will still appear in co-branded events,” it read, but “Freedom 250 should be the lead identity in most cases.”
At a certain point, the president simply stopped giving congressionally approved funds to America250, redirecting that money toward his own initiative instead. Freedom 250 has so far taken at least $65 million of the $150 million that Congress allocated for the anniversary, more than twice the amount that went to the intended recipient.
As Trump’s White House blurred the lines between government-sponsored and Trump-backed events, corporate donors were forced to think twice about who to buy favors from. In April, The Wall Street Journal reported that Freedom 250’s fundraising efforts “confused corporate executives, many of whom didn’t know that Trump had started a separate organization.” Different companies responded with different strategies. Raytheon contributed only to Trump’s Freedom 250, while Boeing has almost exclusively latched itself onto America250.
To ensure that it took the largest possible share of the corporate money flowing into the anniversary, Freedom 250 worked to attract new sponsors. Trump’s top fundraiser began soliciting donations for the initiative and offering “bespoke packages” to the largest donors, including opportunities to meet the president for those who gave more than $1 million.
In March came “The Great American Road Trip,” a cross-country journey organized with the help of an independent nonprofit that was founded by a travel industry lobbyist but claims to be “closely aligned to President Trump’s Freedom250 program.” This show was able to attract sponsors like Google and Comcast by selling access to political officials. The more money a company gave, the more “VIP invitations to receptions or networking events” it received.
Now that the anniversary has arrived, it appears that Trump’s Freedom 250 has decisively won control. The initiative organized the Great American State Fair, which suffered significant setbacks once many of the states and performers scheduled to attend realized it was a Trump-led event rather than a bipartisan one. The UFC fight organized on the White House lawn—another birthday present for the president, this time from Ram Trucks and Crypto.com—was an unaffiliated event titled “UFC Freedom 250.”
Commercial marketing is integrated into the celebration itself, in ways big and small. To promote a flyover in late June, Freedom 250 ran ads online listing off three of the planes that would be participating, all of which were produced by companies that donated to the initiative. Boeing’s B-52 bomber also participated in the flyover, but it was not mentioned in the text of the advertisement; the company did not donate to Freedom 250.
It is entirely unclear what happens to whatever money Freedom 250 has left over once the anniversary celebration comes to a close. The National Park Foundation (NPF) that supposedly controls Freedom 250 says that the funds “will be accounted for through NPF’s standard financial reporting and audit processes,” but it is not clear that they actually have the power to make that decision. According to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Freedom 250 is really “run out of the White House.” Given this White House’s record of self-dealing, you would not be a conspiracy theorist to assume that the remnants of these funds will eventually re-emerge in the bank accounts of people close to the president.
A Private-Private Partnership
It is tempting to say that Freedom 250 exemplifies the corruption that comes with many so-called “public-private partnership” arrangements, especially those that bring government contractors together with the government that funds them. But the truth is that Freedom 250 is not really “public” at all: The beneficiaries include only the president and his friends, politically connected corporations, and the small handful of people who will attend one of the initiative’s free events.
It is more accurate to say that Freedom 250 is a private-private partnership between corporate America and the president’s family, backed by public funding and the state’s legal authority. At no point does the public interest ever enter the equation.
There is some obvious symbolism at play here. For one, President Trump’s hijacking of the occasion bears close resemblance to his assault on the checks and balances of the American government in favor of one controlled directly by whichever strongman is currently in power. Similarly, Freedom 250’s unique structure symbolizes Trump’s tendency to collect funds into nongovernmental accounts and then hand out government benefits in return. Just ask some of the companies that got new contracts after funding Trump’s inauguration fund and ballroom renovation fund.
But the president’s authoritarianism is really only half of the story. Of equal importance is the corrupt behavior of government contractors that constantly engage in legal bribery. Multiple rules and regulations exist to prevent these companies from using the government funds they receive to pressure the government into giving them even more funds, yet weapons companies and other contractors have dodged or outright broken these rules time and time again. This combination—a corrupt executive branch and an extractive government contracting industry—is an extremely potent recipe for corruption.
In the not-so-distant past, the beauty of the nation’s capital was intended to be enjoyed by the public in a noncommercial way. Many of these rules came to be seen as outdated in the business-friendly 1980s. By the early 1990s, the National Park Service had announced changes to their rules to allow corporate donors on signs, and the Smithsonian system loosened its rules around displaying sponsor logos. These rules have only gotten weaker over time. As a result, the National Air and Space Museum now hosts educational events inside of its Lockheed Martin IMAX Theater and Northrop Grumman Planetarium.
There are still some rules intended to prevent politicians and government agencies from profiting from corporate sponsorships, but even these are rarely enforced. It is still entirely illegal for the president or any other public official to use their position for “private gain,” including “the endorsement of any product, service, or enterprise.” Yet this law is now frequently and openly broken. It barely even makes the news when the president repeatedly tells people to “buy a Dell” computer, shortly after buying $5 million worth of Dell stock. When corporate power collaborates with unaccountable state power, the public gets left behind.
Having survived as a nation for a quarter of a millennium, our celebration of this milestone has now been reduced to a series of backroom deals between the White House and corporate executives that incidentally involves a few public fireworks displays. Whatever else Freedom 250 is, it is a cash grab first and a celebration second.
