Potential conflicts over celebrating America's 250th anniversary spill out in congressional hearing

WASHINGTON (AP) — Congressional Democrats on Tuesday accused the Trump administration of trying to hijack plans to celebrate America’s 250th anniversary and using the nonprofit National Park Foundation to solicit money from private donors for some of the president’s pet projects, including the massive arch he wants to build in the nation’s capital.

During a hearing on the 250th anniversary commemoration, U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman said President Donald Trump and his allies are attempting to use the celebration to “promote an alternate reality.”

The California Democrat accused Republican members of the committee of letting the administration “hijack the country’s 250th anniversary and sell access, hide his donors and rewrite history. You let him clean house and put loyalists on the board of the National Park Foundation, open the door to foreign, dark money donors to buy influence with zero oversight.”

Democratic Rep. Maxine Dexter of Oregon voiced concern that a White House-led initiative, called Freedom 250, is using public money earmarked for a separate, congressionally chartered commission, America250, and is co-mingling it with private donations.

Dexter said the structure of the organization created by the White House makes it difficult to tell who is donating to it.

“This leaves us all guessing which one of Donald Trump’s billionaire buddies and which foreign interests are buying access,” she said.

Danielle Alvarez, spokeswoman for Freedom 250, said it has received no funding from foreign donors. The park foundation, which typically raises money to help the national parks, must grant anonymity if a donor asks for it, the foundation's president and CEO, Jeff Reinbold, said when asked during the hearing.

Davis Ingle, a White House spokesman, responded to the hearing by saying the president wants to ensure that the country gets “the spectacular birthday it deserves.

“The celebration of America’s 250th anniversary is going to display great patriotism in our nation’s capital and throughout the country,” he said in a statement. “President Trump’s bold vision will be imprinted upon the fabric of America and be felt by generations to come.”

The three-hour hearing, before a subcommittee of the House Committee on Natural Resources, was promoted as an explanation of public and private partnerships supporting America's 250th anniversary on public lands, but it veered into an airing of numerous Democratic concerns.

Democrats raised questions about national park sites where exhibits and displays have been sanitized or removed altogether as part of the administration's efforts to quash diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as questions over funding and transparency. Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina gave an impassioned address about seeing the darker parts of U.S. history as part of the nation's strength.

Alan Spears, senior director at the National Parks Conservation Association, testified that when “you begin picking at words to soften and sanitize, to erase the history, that is a dangerous precipice to be on. Because I think the quickest way that you can disappear people is to disappear their story or to soften it.”

In 2016, Congress formed America250, the U.S. Semiquincentennial Commission, to lead planning for the anniversary that commemorates the signing of the Declaration of Independence in July 1776.

The commission was initially expecting to receive $100 million of the $150 million appropriated for the anniversary in the Republicans' tax and spending bill, which they called the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The money went to the U.S. Department of the Interior and was intended for activities surrounding the commemoration.

A source familiar with the funding for America250, who was not authorized to speak publicly about it, said that the anticipated amount dropped to $50 million and that so far the organization has received just $25 million. Federal funding cuts last year already had led some communities to begin scaling back their plans for celebrating the anniversary.

Tim Whitehouse, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, testified that the funding question is tantamount.

“The American people are paying for this commemoration. We deserve to know where our money is going,” he said, adding that he sent a letter to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum seeking answers.

A spokeswoman with the Interior Department said in a recent email that a portion of the funding was being provided to the U.S. Semiquincentennial Commission through an interagency agreement with the National Park Service. The Interior Department did not respond to requests after the hearing for comment on the distribution of federal money to America250.

Republicans were relatively silent in responding to the Democrats' lines of questioning, except North Carolina Rep. Addison McDowell, who defended the celebration being planned as a reminder of how far the nation has come.

“As I sat here and listened to the other side’s remarks, what I heard was a deeply misguided and dark vision of America,” he said. “If you didn’t know any better, you might believe from their remarks that the United States is not the greatest experiment in human history, but an ongoing crime scene.”

Rep. Val Hoyle, an Oregon Democrat, countered immediately: “Yes, we need to celebrate how far America has come, but how the hell do we know how far we’ve come if we erase the history? How is that patriotic?”

America250 is focused on commemorations around the country, including a national volunteer effort and creating an audio-visual archive of stories from everyday Americans. One initiative, “America’s Field Trip,” asks students from around the country to share stories on what America means to them, with a chance to get field trips to historic sites and landmarks. One initiative, America Gives, aims to significantly increase the number of Americans who volunteer with nonprofits with support from companies like Walmart and Coca-Cola and nonprofits like Points of Light.

So far, the organization has said it has had enough money, including from donations, to continue with its original programming.

Much of the programming from the White House group has so far appeared to focus on splashy events, including a planned UFC fighting competition at the White House, athletic events involving high school athletes it's calling The Patriot Games and a “Great American State Fair” on the National Mall. Freedom 250 was responsible for the striking birthday lighting of the Washington Monument coming into the New Year.

AP reporter Thalia Beaty contributed to this report.

Demonstrators gather to protest removal of explanatory panels that were part of an exhibit on slavery at the President's House Site in Philadelphia, Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

A U.S. Capitol Police officer patrols on the East Front of the U.S. Capitol, Friday, Feb. 6, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)

NEW YORK (AP) — This is not the run-up to the midterm elections that Republicans wanted.

A year and a half after winning the White House by promising to lower costs and end wars, Donald Trump is a wartime president overseeing surging energy costs and an escalating overseas conflict that many in his own party do not like.

He offered little clarity to a nation eager for answers this week during a prime-time address from the White House, his first since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran more than a month ago, simultaneously suggesting that the war was ending and expanding.

“Thanks to the progress we’ve made, I can say tonight that we are on track to complete all of America’s military objectives shortly, very shortly,” Trump said. “We’re going to hit them extremely hard over the next two to three weeks.”

Trump's comments come roughly six months before voters across the nation begin to cast ballots in elections that will decide control of Congress and key governorships for Trump’s final two years in office. For now, Republicans, who control all branches of government in Washington, are bracing for a painful political backlash.

“You’re looking at an ugly November,” warned veteran Republican pollster Neil Newhouse. “At a point in time when we need every break possible to hold the House and Senate, our edge is being chipped away.”

It’s hard to overstate how dramatically the political landscape has shifted.

At this time last year, many Republican leaders believed there was a path to preserve their narrow House majority and easily hold the Senate. Now they privately concede that the House is all but lost and Democrats have a realistic shot at taking the Senate.

Republicans are also struggling to coalesce around a clear midterm message on Iran.

The Republican National Committee has largely avoided the war in talking points issued to surrogates over the last month. The leaders of the party's campaign committees responsible for the House and Senate declined interview requests. Many vulnerable Republican candidates sidestep the issue, unwilling to defend or challenge Trump publicly.

The president remains deeply popular with Republican voters, and he has vocal supporters like Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

“That was the best speech I could’ve hoped for,” he wrote on social media after Trump's address on Wednesday evening. Graham said Trump “gave the American people a clear and coherent pathway forward.”

Trump made little effort to sell the conflict to Americans before the initial attack. Five weeks later, at least 13 U.S. service members have been killed and hundreds more injured. Thousands more troops have converged on the region, and the Pentagon requested $200 billion in new funding.

The Strait of Hormuz, a key passage for a fifth of the world’s oil, remains closed. The average price for a gallon of gasoline in the U.S. was $4.08 on Thursday, according to AAA, almost a full dollar higher than on President Joe Biden's last day in office.

On Wednesday, Trump insisted that gas prices would fall quickly once the war concluded but offered no solution for reopening the Strait of Hormuz. Instead, he invited skeptical U.S. allies to do it themselves.

He insisted that the war would be worth it.

“This is a true investment in your grandchildren and your grandchildren’s future,” Trump said. “When it’s all over, the United States will be safer, stronger, more prosperous and greater than it has ever been before.”

Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican who was once among Trump's most vocal allies in Congress, lashed out against his Iran policy.

“I wanted so much for President Trump to put America First. That’s what I believed he would do. All I heard from his speech tonight was WAR WAR WAR,” she wrote on social media. “Nothing to lower the cost of living for Americans.”

About 6 in 10 U.S. adults say the U.S. military action in Iran has “gone too far,” according to AP-NORC polling from March. Roughly a third approve of how he’s handling Iran overall.

The possibility of sending U.S. forces into Iran also appears politically unpalatable.

About 6 in 10 adults are “strongly” or “somewhat” opposed to deploying U.S. troops on the ground to fight Iran. That includes about half of Republicans. Only about 1 in 10 favor deploying troops.

At the same time, Trump’s approval ratings have remained consistently weak. About 4 in 10 Americans approve of how he’s handling the presidency, roughly in line with how it’s been throughout his second term.

Republican strategist Ari Fleischer, a senior aide in former President George W. Bush’s administration, acknowledged that Trump has not received the polling bump in this war that Bush got after invading Iraq.

Bush, of course, worked to build public backing for the Iraq War before going in. Immediately after the 2003 invasion, Bush's popularity soared, as did the stock market.

Public sentiment and the economy soured only after the conflict stretched on. It ultimately spanned more than eight years, spawning a generation of anti-war Republicans — and sowing the seeds of Trump's “America First” foreign policy.

“My hope is that the Trump experience is the exact opposite of the Bush experience,” Fleischer said.

He said Trump must win the war decisively and quickly to avoid a further backlash, saying there could be a “very significant political upside if things end well, oil comes down and markets rally.”

Fleischer added that Trump's actions will matter much more than his words.

“Ultimately, he is not going to get judged on his persuasion or his explanations or his assertions, he’s going to get judged on results,” he said.

Associated Press writer Linley Sanders in Washington contributed to this report.

In this image made with a long exposure, President Donald Trump speaks about the Iran war from the Cross Hall of the White House on Wednesday, April 1, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool)