“They’re taking that down,” says Keith Krach when I ask if the White House’s UFC stage will still be up on July 4, as Donald Trump had suggested. “I think they’re disassembling it right now.” Krach is chief executive of Freedom 250 and responsible for planning events to mark America’s 250th birthday.
Well, partially responsible. The story of America’s birthday party is a complicated one, involving multiple “bipartisan” planning organizations with similar names, canceled acts and branding disputes.
Ten years ago, Congress set up the United States Semiquincentennial Commission to plan for the 250th. George W. Bush, Barack Obama and their spouses have honorary leadership positions. Joe Biden appointed Rosie Rios, a former US treasurer, to chair the commission. Other roles are held by senators and representatives of both parties, Trump cabinet officials and private citizens such as Kellyanne Conway and Jack Schlossberg.
Under the branding of “America 250,” that commission set about striking licensing deals with a number of corporate sponsors: American Airlines, Coca-Cola, Oracle, Target. Beyond that, the group didn’t achieve much else. “America 250 had nearly a decade to plan, 33 commission meetings, more than $60 million in public funding and no large, splashy events on the books,” according to a chastening New York Times report.
Then, last December, Trump launched “Freedom 250” as “a national, non-partisan organization,” to coordinate with the different bodies planning for the anniversary. “America 250 had years to plan this stuff. They did absolutely jack all during the Biden administration,” a source familiar with Freedom 250 told me. “A lot of the systemic problems that Freedom 250 has come directly from America 250 screwing everyone over. They wouldn’t let Trump take over anything.”
Trump appointed Krach, who served as an undersecretary of state in his first administration, as Freedom 250’s CEO.
Krach has an extensive private-sector résumé as a former chairman of DocuSign and co-founder of Ariba. “Being a Silicon Valley guy, you got to move at Mach III with your hair on fire. That’s what we’re doing,” he tells me. “I would have loved to have had a ten-year runway. There’s limitless things you could do.”
Freedom 250 consists of hundreds of events across the country throughout 2026. An early challenge for Krach came ahead of New Year’s Eve. “We lit up the Washington Monument on all four sides like a canvas and told the American story. To be able to do that, you have to have these special projectors,” he says. “We needed 43 of them. We took up basically all the projectors in the world. We had to go to Germany. We underestimated the excitement and it blocked all the traffic, but it ended up being fun.” The illuminations will return over the next three weeks.
DC will host an Indycar 250 series in August. The FIFA Fan Zone has seen a decent turnout, particularly for US games. “Sports is huge,” Krach says. “Sports is the biggest unifier.” But some of the fixtures have proven less unifying. At the White House UFC event, one winner, Josh Hokit, yelled “Michelle Obama is a man!” during his post-bout interview, as the President watched on.
The arts have provided even more contentious. As part of Freedom 250’s “Great American State Fair,” a series of somewhat well-known musical acts – Vanilla Ice, Bret Michaels, C+C Music Factory – were supposed to perform on the National Mall. After fan backlash due to the association with the Trump administration, the vast majority of the performers canceled. Trump branded the acts “Third Rate ‘Artists’” and held a rally on June 24 to kick off the fair instead, where the musicians joining him were – you guessed it – Lee Greenwood, Christopher Macchio and Kash Patel’s girlfriend Alexis Wilkins.
Being a Silicon Valley guy, you got to move at Mach III with your hair on fire. That’s what we’re doing,” he tells me
The event was promoted using an AI-generated poster with Trump in the foreground and a massive crowd in the background, as B-2 bombers and eagles fly in the sky above. On stage, Trump declared that America was “back” after being a “dead country” under his predecessor. “No one is laughing at us anymore,” he told a crowd of a few thousand, before touting his achievements in a standard stump speech.
Right after the musical acts canceled on Freedom 250, America 250 announced a July 4 benefit show at the Los Angeles Coliseum, headlined by country superstar Chris Stapleton and the Smashing Pumpkins. “Democrats know how to entertain and tell a story. Republicans refuse to learn and refuse to acknowledge creatives,” the source close to Freedom 250 says. “They’re controlling and they think this is going to be run like the RNC or the inauguration.”
A second Trump rally will take place on the Mall on Independence Day itself. (“Please show up!” Trump said at the State Fair Kick-Off.) Krach accepts that the Trump rallies are not for everyone, but points to the wide array of events Freedom 250 has on offer. “We try to have something for everybody,” he says. “I’m just hoping everybody celebrates, everybody participates.”
Trump has directed significant resources to improving the capital itself, which he made a point of mentioning during his State Fair speech. The more successful efforts – turning on fountains in Meridian Hill Park and Dupont Circle, cleaning up Columbus Circle and Union Station – have won begrudging respect from the city’s overwhelmingly progressive residents.
Yet the President is unhappy when his critics fixate on the botched attempts: the peeling paint and dead ducks in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool and the trash-picking National Guardsmen. It’s easy to imagine that Trump will take a similar view of the 250th events, reveling in the success of those that win wide approval and blaming his adversaries for those that fall flat.
“The events will be really great if people would just show up, stop being assholes and be excited about it instead of making it all about Trump,” says the source. Was that ever an option?
“Our mission is to create a movement for the next 250 years, where we honor our past and we’re confident in who we are as Americans and then be able to launch these next 250 years,” says Krach. “Much of it is about bringing the country together and unifying it. If we can move the needle on that, man, that’s a great mission accomplished.”
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