This might be the second most brazen scandal of Trump’s second term.
A new interim report from Democrats on the House Committee on Natural Resources lays out how the White House allegedly hijacked the nation’s 250th birthday celebration and turned it into a grift. America250 — the independent committee Congress set up back in 2016 to plan this — reportedly refused to let the administration turn it into a campaign-style spectacle. So according to the report, they built a workaround: a shadow company called Freedom 250 LLC, tucked inside the National Park Foundation.
I go through what the report alleges happened from there — donations meant for America250 rerouted to Freedom 250 without donors knowing, potential pay-for-access arrangements with corporations, and a $10 million taxpayer-funded grant that sent AI-equipped “Freedom Trucks” into schools pushing content from a Christian nationalist.
The details are what got me, honestly. An AI-generated George Washington saying things he never actually said. An exhibit the report says echoes antisemitic tropes about Jewish participation in the Revolutionary War. A false claim that Muhammad Ali disavowed Islam.
I also touch on the actual Freedom 250 event happening in DC this weekend, including why I think nobody should be standing out in that heat for it.
