'Awesome.' 'Sad.' 'Let's keep democracy going.' Americans weigh in on state of a 250-year-old nation

WASHINGTON (AP) — Across the United States, many Americans are celebrating their country's 250th birthday by closing their ears to all the partisan shouting. All the fingernails-on-chalkboard screeching out of Washington. All the clamor of social media agitprop.

Instead, in varied ways, they are tuning into their own personal concepts of America the Beautiful.

In Associated Press interviews with citizens in the days before the Fourth, auto technician Joe Fuqua-Bejarano, in Topeka, Kansas, sized up “what makes us awesome” as a people. It's clearly not the politics, in his view, but rather resilience.

“We’ve just all got to find unity somewhere, whether that’s in laughter or perseverance, and keep everybody cool,” he said from the fireworks stand where he's doing a booming business as a side hustle.

The world's long-running image of Americans as a brash and confident (if not boastful and jingoistic) lot did not square easily with the tempered enthusiasms and trepidations expressed by many of the people AP interviewed.

“There are lots of points of contention going around,” noted one of them, Christina Zhou, a 25-year-old research assistant from Cambridge, Massachusetts. Yet “there are still a lot of beautiful things that are happening.”

“What I’m trying to do is think about just things that are happening locally,” she added. “It feels a little bit more like within our own personal control.”

In Mont Vernon, New Hampshire, farmer Mindy Dean, 50, and her family will be milking their goats Saturday and maybe taking in some local fireworks. Or maybe not. The 250th hoopla has been mostly lost on her. “We’re just happy Americans,” she said. “We kinda do our own thing and just enjoy our freedom as Americans.”

In contrast, the goat-free Neil Casey, an 81-year-old retiree from Nashua, New Hampshire, and his friend Maureen Regan, who lives in Cambridge, are free-range celebrants. They're roaming Boston's historical sites, like Paul Revere's house, and as many of the city's Fourth events as they can manage. They, too, are plugging their ears to discord.

“I’m very much aware of our country and what we’ve been through, you know, so I’m just trying to immerse myself in the atmosphere of the 250th," Casey said. Regan took heart in all the soccer fans who poured into the country for the World Cup and praised what they experienced.

“They love everything we have," she said, ”and I want people to not forget that and remember how lucky we are." Her advice to compatriots: "Just enjoy the moment. Enjoy that we’ve been here for 250 years.”

Still, for some, it is nearly impossible to separate holiday patriotism from steps by President Donald Trump to bend the celebrations toward himself, as with the Fourth of July festivities on the National Mall that he said will culminate in a Trump rally Saturday.

"When you’re celebrating the Fourth of July right now, it feels like that’s like a Republican thing to do,” said Madeline Capodilupo, 26, a special-education teacher who lives in Boston. She'll spend the weekend with her fiancé's family at their Maine beach house.

“It’s just hard to celebrate something when it doesn’t feel like we should be celebrating anything," she said.

What celebrants are celebrating, exactly, is diverse and personal.

Ronald Hall spent 18 months in the Air Force toward the end of the Vietnam War. His wife, Karen, served two years in the Army and took part in Operation Desert Storm during the first Gulf War. While they shopped for vegetables at Detroit's Eastern Market this week, Ronald said he's spent a lifetime celebrating American ideals, which might be distinct from reality.

As a Black man, he said, America's promise of freedom and equality was at the core. “I grew up remembering the promise,” he said. “That’s what we celebrated: the promise, not the country.”

Veterans are always front and center in America's big occasions and the 250th is no different. At the New Hampshire Veterans Home in Tilton, residents are looking forward to a community celebration in the coming days that will feature a National Guard Black Hawk helicopter, a World War II ambulance, food trucks, music and even Uncle Sam on stilts.

The old warriors are keeping the faith. But that faith is being tested.

“I believe this country is the greatest that ever existed,” said Leo LeClerc, 83, an Air Force veteran who served in Vietnam. “Our democracy is strong and it will continue to be strong as long as people participate in it.”

But, he said. “I don’t like what’s going on in this country" and “I don’t feel very good about the 250th.” An independent who voted for Trump in 2016, he now believes a “cult of personality has taken over" around the president.

Tom Gaumont, 74, an Army veteran and former history teacher, remembered the 1976 bicentennial as a more hopeful time, despite the aftershocks of President Richard Nixon's resignation under threat of impeachment.

“I’m kinda sad at this point with what I anticipate,” Gaumont said. “I’ve seen and taught about how these things kind of crumble, so I’m concerned.”

“We’ve lasted this long," he added, "and this is a very existential time in our history.”

Allan Bailey, 83, a Republican who also served in Vietnam and later owned a motel, voiced similar pessimism.

“I’m worried about how the country is going, I really am,” he said. "I don’t know what we’re going to leave our children, and that bothers me a lot.”

In Dearborn, Michigan, Nabeel Mawari, 38, sounded a more hopeful note. On Saturday, he'll be working his security guard job while his wife and two young sons celebrate the holiday with relatives. An immigrant from Yemen, now a U.S. citizen, Mawari spoke from his backyard about life in the United States.

“My life is here,” Mawari said. “We try to make the U.S.A. the greatest. That’s why I’m here. I love this country. The Fourth of July, it is very important.”

Then there's the man who, for perhaps very understandable reasons, wanted to stay far away from the political fray.

Gary MacGrath, 77, has been a caricaturist at a suburban Philadelphia fair for 14 years. This year, McGrath’s booth was sandwiched right between the local Democratic and Republican Party clubs. Talk about a rock and a hard place. He said he learned as a bartender earlier in life to “never talk about religion or politics" and was heeding that lesson now.

But he did permit himself this: “It’s 250 years," he said. “Let’s keep democracy going.”

Ramer reported from Bedford and Tilton, N.H. Associated Press writers John Hanna in Topeka, Kan., Mike Catalini in Southampton, Pa., Michael Casey in Cambridge, Mass., and Corey Williams in Detroit contributed to this report.

The Washington Monument and the ferris wheel on the National Mall are seen at sunset, Wednesday, July 1, 2026, on the National Mall in Washington. (AP Photo/Allison Robbert)

The Commerce Department is decorated for the Fourth of July celebration, Thursday, July 2, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Mindy Dean poses for a photo at the farmers market in Bedford, N.H., Tuesday, June 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Holly Ramer)

Tom Gaumont, an Army veteran and former history teacher, poses for a photo at the New Hampshire Veterans Home in Tilton, N.H., Wednesday, July 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Holly Ramer)

Joe Fuqua-Bejarano, left, and his brother, Blake, manage Jake’s Fireworks stand on Tuesday, June 30, 2026, in Topeka, Kan. (AP Photo/John Hanna)

Karen and Ronald Hall shop for produce at the Eastern Market in Detroit on Tuesday, June 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Corey Williams)

Madeline Capodilupo poses for a photo at a farmers market in Bedford, N.H., Tuesday, June 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Holly Ramer)

NEW YORK (AP) — Most U.S. stocks are rising Thursday after the latest update on the job market suggested the Federal Reserve may feel less pressure to hike interest rates. But more swings for chip stocks and other winners of the artificial-intelligence boom are keeping indexes mixed.

The S&P 500 fell 0.3%, even though two out of every three stocks within the index were rising. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 329 points, or 0.6%, as of 12:30 p.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 1.1% lower after erasing an early gain.

Stocks broadly got some help from easing Treasury yields in the bond market, which fell after a report from the U.S. government said employers added 57,000 jobs to their payrolls last month. That’s growth, which is good for the economy, but it was also short of the 100,000 jobs that economists expected and a slowdown from May’s hiring pace.

The weaker-than-expected result could keep pressure off inflation, which has been accelerating worldwide because of jumps in oil prices caused by the war with Iran. And if inflation slows in upcoming months, now that oil prices are back below where they were before the war, the Federal Reserve may feel less need to raise interest rates several times this year.

That would be a relief for investors, who tend to love lower interest rates because they can give the economy a boost by making it cheaper for U.S. households and businesses to borrow money and spend. Lower rates also tend to push upward on prices for stocks and other investments.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury got to 4.50% in the morning, up from 3.97% just before the war. But after the release of the U.S. hiring data, it fell back to 4.47%.

The two-year Treasury yield, which more closely tracks expectations for the Fed, fell more sharply. Traders now see an 82% chance that the Fed and its new chairman, Kevin Warsh, will not raise the federal funds rate at its next meeting later this month. That’s up from the 71% chance seen a day earlier, according to data from CME Group.

“The labor market isn’t overheating,” said Brian Jacobsen, chief economic strategist at Annex Wealth Management. He said the data could allow the Fed to wait through the summer to get more clues about how inflation is behaving before having to decide on hiking rates.

On Wall Street, the company behind LaCroix sparkling waters helped lead the market and climbed 13.4% after National Beverage said it will pay a special dividend of $3.25 for each share that investors hold.

Dollar Tree rose 2.6% after the retailer said it approved a program to send up to $2.5 billion to its shareholders by buying back its stock.

Stocks of companies in the crypto industry were also strong after the price of bitcoin rose roughly 2%, a day after dropping near its lowest level since 2024. Robinhood Markets rose 2.4%, and Coinbase Global gained 2.8%.

But more drops for computer chip companies weighed on indexes. They’ve come under pressure because of worries that their stock prices shot too high in the frenzy around AI and that all the spending on chips and data centers may not result in as much profit and productivity growth as hoped.

Memory maker Micron Technology erased an early gain to drop 5.7%, a day after plunging 10.6%. Nvidia fell 2%, and Applied Materials sank 9.2%. They were some of the heaviest weights on the S&P 500 because they've grown so huge in size amid AI mania.

In stock markets abroad, continued drops for chip companies sent indexes sharply lower in several Asian markets. South Korea's Kospi index sank 7.9% due to losses for chip companies like SK Hynix. That’s its worst drop since a 10% plunge a little more than a week ago.

Indexes also fell 2.5% in Tokyo and 2% in Shanghai.

European indexes were stronger, and France’s CAC 40 rallied 1.7%.

In the oil market, prices continued to ease on hopes for negotiations for a permanent end to the war with Iran. Brent crude, the international standard, fell 0.6% to $71.16 per barrel.

AP Business Writers Chan Ho-him and Matt Ott contributed to this report.

Trader Robert Charmak works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Friday, June 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Options traders Serge Marinovich, left, and Phil Phil Fracassini work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Friday, June 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

An electronic board shows Japan's benchmark Nikkei 225 index, bottom, and exchange rate of the Japanese yen against the U.S. dollar in Tokyo Tuesday, June 30, 2026. (Kenichiro Kojima/Kyodo News via AP)

Members of media film near the screens showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won at a dealing room of Hana Bank in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, July 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

A dealer watches computer monitors at a dealing room of Hana Bank in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, July 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

A dealer walks past near the screens showing the foreign exchange rates at a dealing room of Hana Bank in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, July 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

A currency trader watches monitors near a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, July 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)