The Sestercentennial as a Civil War?

Yesterday I quoted a couple of news stories about how the White House was using America250 to raise money, and how it set up another group called Freedom 250 to raise more money with fewer rules.

Boston 1775 readers may remember these reports from September of America250 fighting off a Trumpist staffer’s attempt to commandeer its communication channels. The White House lost its plant within that organization then. After that, it appears, the administration promoted a rival organization to suck attention and taxpayer funds away from America250.

Freedom 250 was originally named Task Force 250, an initiative ordered up within the Department of Defense in January 2025. (The administration has of course also tried to rename that government department, without congressional authorization.)

The Mother Jones article by Dan Friedman and Amanda Moore reported that the top of the National Park Service is now telling employees to replace all America250 references and logos with Freedom 250 insignias. There are competing sets of merchandise. (The internet working as it does, there’s also merch from Freedom250.net, a domain registered in September 2024 and operating out of Sandwich.)

The New York Times story by Kenneth P. Vogel, Lisa Friedman, and David A. Fahrenthold says: “About $10 million in taxpayer funds has already been redirected to Freedom 250 from America250 for a fleet of six mobile museums called ‘Freedom Trucks’ that rolled out last month.”

Where did that $10 million come from? The conduit is the Institute of Museum and Library Services. At first the Trump administration tried to shutter that agency entirely, but federal judges ruled that illegal—so the administration is exploiting that channel instead.

Kelly Jensen of BookRiot reported, “IMLS’s new leadership has decided that nearly all of the $14.1 million allocated to the National Leadership Grants for Libraries program is going to a single recipient, the U.S. Semiquincentennial Commission for its America250 project, even though the America250 project has nothing to do with the Leadership Grant’s requirement that the grant recipient’s work ‘involve or directly impact libraries’.”

But that was back in September. Now, it appears, at least $10 million of that library money has been shifted over to Freedom 250 for trucks.

TOMORROW: About those trucks.