This week our nation celebrates its 250th birthday. As we all mark this milestone, the themes of shared civic identity — what it has meant since our nation’s founding and what it means today — give the commemoration its deepest significance.
In short, America’s 250th birthday should be a moment that brings us together.
Unfortunately, what should be a nonpartisan celebration has become a growing scandal involving secrecy, political favoritism, and the diversion of significant taxpayer funds and resources to a private entity operating outside the oversight structure Congress created.
And we all deserve answers.
Which is why I was honored to testify last week before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution on the unraveling scandals around Freedom250 — the private, partisan entity set up by President Trump.
You can watch my full testimony here.
A little background on how we got here.
In 2016, Congress established America250 as the official bipartisan entity responsible for commemorating our nation’s 250th anniversary. Congress created a structure with safeguards, oversight mechanisms, and clear lines of accountability to ensure that public funds would be spent appropriately and that the celebration would belong to all Americans — not to any political party, administration, or special interest group.
All that is standard, and in line with past precedent. But what happened next is anything but.
Shortly after Congress appropriated funds to the Secretary of the Interior for observance of this important anniversary, the Trump administration created a private entity, Freedom 250, shielded as a limited liability company and as a subsidiary of the National Park Foundation.
And public reports indicate that Secretary Burgum directed at least $100 million of taxpayer dollars into this private and partisan new entity.
Since then, reports have raised troubling questions about whether Freedom 250 is being used to sell access to the President, conceal the identities of donors, and spend taxpayer dollars on partisan political activities.
At PEER, we have been trying to get answers about Freedom 250 for months.
In January, we wrote to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum seeking answers to how taxpayer funds were being used for this private entity and how public employees were being used to support and promote President Trump’s private entity.
In February, I testified before the House Natural Resources Committee on the growing scandal and sought to raise alarms in Congress.
And in May, we sued the Department of the Interior for failing to disclose key details of Freedom 250.
I concluded my testimony to the Senate subcommittee by saying that Americans needed to “reclaim and fight for transparency, accountability, and oversight in government, and we need to put guardrails against the current pay to play politics in our system and fight corruption.”
Those, I said, “were civil values worth fighting for.”
As we celebrate our nation’s 250th anniversary, we will continue to seek answers. Because a 250th anniversary celebration should strengthen trust in our democratic institutions, not degrade it into a political and fundraising spectacle.
And when it comes to Freedom 250, the American people deserve to know who is funding this political project of the President and, most importantly, what they can expect to get in return.
We are determined to help make that happen.
Tim Whitehouse is the Executive Director at PEER.