How MAGA took over America’s 250th birthday

Tanks, armored personnel carriers, and howitzers will roll through the streets of Washington, DC, on Saturday—coming to a halt just steps from where President Donald Trump once exhorted his supporters to “fight like hell” and march on the US Capitol. But the president’s grand military parade has something else in common with the “election integrity” rally that preceded the January 6 insurrection: It’s being organized by some of the same political operatives.

The permit application for the parade—which celebrates the 250th anniversary of the US Army and, conveniently, coincides with Trump’s own birthday—lists former Trump aide Megan Powers as a point of contact. Powers, the document says, is a general contractor for America250.org Inc., the nonprofit helping organize the publicly funded, multiyear America250 commemoration of the country’s semiquincentennial.

Four and a half years ago, Powers was on the permit for the infamous January 6 Ellipse protest, where Trump demanded that Vice President Mike Pence overturn the 2020 election. So was Hannah Salem Stone, another former Trump White House staffer now involved in running the upcoming parade. Stone and Powers were subpoenaed by the House January 6 committee and cooperated with the panel; neither was accused of wrongdoing.

In 2021, both women were working closely with Event Strategies Inc., a Trump-aligned firm that oversaw arrangements for the January 6 rally. This year, Event Strategies is working with America250 to oversee logistics for the parade and other activities.

While the involvement of January 6 rally planners might seem to undermine the parade’s patriotic billing, it is fully consistent with the stunning transformation taking place within America250. In recent months, the putatively nonpartisan group has seen an influx of MAGA loyalists. And what was once planned as a unifying celebration for all Americans has morphed into a militarized exaltation of Donald Trump—its website trumpeting a photo of Trump’s head alongside the presidents on Mount Rushmore.

With these changes, the wildly expensive parade—on which the Army alone has said it is spending up to $45 million—and the upcoming anniversary celebrations have become a source of job and contract opportunities for Trumpworld operatives.

In January, the organization brought on as a senior adviser Chris LaCivita, the former Trump campaign co-chair who once masterminded the “swift boat” smear campaign targeting John Kerry’s Vietnam service. A representative for America250 said LaCivita offers “guidance on strategic communications, public affairs initiatives, and coordination with the White House Task Force on America 250,” but declined to say whether LaCivita was being paid for this work. LaCivita confirmed his work for the group in a text message but did not answer questions about his compensation.

America250’s executive director has been replaced by a 25-year-old former Fox News producer who spent six months in the first Trump administration, mostly as an intern. Its media operation is now being handled by Campaign Nucleus, a company founded in 2022 by Brad Parscale, who worked for all three of Trump’s presidential campaigns.

Earlier this month, America250 announced that Monica Crowley, a former Fox News pundit whom Trump has made the State Department’s chief of protocol, would become the top media representative for the organization. Crowley began her work for the group by suggesting, on Steve Bannon’s podcast, that the crowd at the parade would serenade Trump with “Happy Birthday” during the event.

In the five months since Trump took office, the organization’s work has shifted dramatically, too. The liaison in charge of coordinating with federally recognized tribes was let go. Advisory councils, each dedicated to making the anniversary events resonate with different groups of Americans, have been quietly removed from the website. Council members say they have not heard from the organization in months. Meanwhile, corporations with ties to Trump or his inner circle—such as UFC, Palantir, and Coinbase—have been brought on as sponsors.

The sweeping changes have angered some of those who spent years working on the celebration. “America250 has been hijacked,” a former advisory council member told Mother Jones. “It’s disgusting.”

The “cascade” of MAGA-connected individuals surrounding America250 “is a further example of how corrupt Trump is,” said Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-N.J.), a member of the congressionally created US Semiquincentennial Commission, which is closely affiliated with the project. “It’s a damn shame A250 has to be blemished with Trump…It’s unfortunate that this egoistical maniac is the president when we are supposed to be showcasing our country in a bipartisan or nonpartisan way.”

America250 consists of two closely related organizations. The first, the US Semiquincentennial Commission, was established by Congress in 2016 to oversee planning for the celebration of the United States’ 250th anniversary; it is composed of 32 lawmakers and federal officials. The second organization is the nonprofit America250 Foundation, which was formed in 2019 and now goes by America250.org Inc., or A250. According to its website, A250’s role is to support the commission “with a focus on procurement, development, and facilitation with our team of expert service providers for programming purposes.” A250 and the commission work together, sharing a website, an office building, and members of their leadership. The commission receives millions in federal appropriations, much of which it passes on to the foundation.

In January, Trump issued an executive order creating Task Force 250, a separate entity filled with administration officials. While America250 is required by law to be bipartisan, Task Force 250, housed in the Department of Defense, has no such obligation. Trump and Vice President JD Vance are the chair and vice chair of the task force, highlighting Trump’s desire for control of this “extraordinary celebration of the 250th Anniversary of American Independence.”

Trump’s influence can be felt outside Task Force 250, too. In April, the New York Times reported that A250 had severed ties with Precision Strategies, a consulting group founded by former Obama staffers, and replaced it with Event Strategies Inc. The latter company made millions of dollars organizing rallies for Trump’s 2020 and 2024 campaigns. It also pulled in around $179,000 overseeing preparations for the January 6, 2021, rally. 

America250 did not respond to questions about how it is paying former Trump operatives and firms like Event Strategies and Campaign Nucleus for their work.

On Tuesday, Trump kicked off the official celebrations of the US Army’s birthday with a speech at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. The president lambasted former President Joe Biden, Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz, the media, and immigrants. He described Los Angeles—where he recently deployed National Guard troops and US Marines—as “a trash heap.”

The event, where MAGA merchandise was for sale, was promoted by Never Surrender Inc.—formerly the principal campaign committee for Trump’s 2024 run—in an email that advertised the supposedly nonpartisan address in a manner similar to a campaign rally.

“You’ve been invited to Fort Bragg by President Trump!” announced the subject line of an email featuring a “Team Trump” and “Make America Great Again!” banner. A link directed users to an event registration page run by Parscale’s Campaign Nucleus on America250’s website. Former A250 advisory council members told Mother Jones that the email was unprecedented, a complete departure from the group’s past efforts to avoid partisan politics.

This past spring, the Bitcoin Conference—“the largest and most influential gathering of the bitcoin world”—announced that America250 would be co-hosting the first day of the massive Las Vegas confab. Dubbed “Code + Country,” the day was specifically for crypto whales and industry insiders and featured talks from a who’s who of GOP influencers and politicians. Even with Trump’s desire to make the United States the “crypto capital of the world,” the conference seemed an odd choice to celebrate American history. 

LaCivita—who serves on the global advisory council of crypto giant Coinbase—spoke on a panel devoted to “the next golden age of America.” Joining him were Coinbase chief policy officer Faryar Shirzad; Rep. Brian Jack (R-Ga.), a former Trump aide; and A250 Chair Rosie Rios, who is on the board of the cryptocurrency firm Ripple. Rios served as US treasurer in the Obama administration, and some Trump supporters have called for her removal. But at the conference, she and other panel members cited her status as a Democrat to play up America250’s nonpartisan bona fides.

“I’ve been a fiscal conservative for years,” Rios said. “By the way, we are by law mandated to be bipartisan for the 250th.” Rios praised Trump and asserted that in the last few months, she had been able to accomplish more under his leadership than the organization had achieved in the previous seven years combined. 

“Thank you to all of you for what you have done to put this president in office,” she told the audience.

Some of those recently sidelined from America250 bristle at such comments and argue that Rios is ignoring the extent to which Trump has redirected the group toward his own priorities.

Sara Capen, executive director of the Niagara Falls National Heritage Area and a former member of the Civics, History, & America’s Future Advisory Council, lamented the apparent elimination of the group’s advisory councils.

“My experience with A250 wasn’t about Philadelphia and the Liberty Bell, but how can we make sure the stories of farmers in Iowa are part of this, the stories of the people of the Mississippi Delta?” Capen said. “We tell the story of steel workers, the coal region heritage foundation in West Virginia. How can we make sure the coal workers’ story is told, how they shaped America? We wanted that included.”

Last July, A250 held a conference in DC, where council members were assured that their mission and organization would not be affected by the outcome of the election—a true nonpartisan effort. But now, the organization has transformed into something that does not need heritage areas advocating for rural America.

The Bitcoin Conference’s Code + Country day ended with Code, Country, and Cocktails, an open-bar VIP party for America250 that featured women in cow onesies dancing to Bone Thugs-N-Harmony. Upon arrival, disembodied hands held out glasses of champagne for guests, the bar staff’s bodies hidden behind a wall covered in Tron branding.

Tron is owned by Justin Sun, who in 2023 was accused of fraud in a federal complaint filed by the US Securities and Exchange Commission. After the 2024 election, Sun became a major investor in Trump’s World Liberty Financial crypto venture, and in February, the SEC agreed to pause its lawsuit. By May, Sun was also the largest holder of the $TRUMP meme coin, an entirely different crypto project connected to the president. Days before the Bitcoin Conference, Sun attended a $TRUMP gala dinner. The Bitcoin Conference waited to announce him as a speaker until two days before its start, but the Tron branding on display at the America250 party suggested that his involvement may have been in the works for far longer.

America250 recently updated its website with an assortment of new corporate sponsors, including Coinbase, Palantir, UFC, and Phorm Energy, an energy drink company partly owned by UFC CEO and Trump ally Dana White. In a press release, the organization said that “many of these sponsors will support the upcoming grand military parade” and that the companies “will bring essential resources, ideas, and expertise to engage all Americans in this historic milestone in the year to come.”

Hours after that release went out, Trump laughed off the idea that the government would be spending a lot of money on the parade. “A lot of that money is being paid for by me and people who make donations…we have people putting up money to do it.”

America250 hasn’t answered questions about the details of these sponsorships. It’s unclear how much money the companies are donating and what services they might be providing. Two weeks before it was announced that Palantir had joined America250, the Department of Defense awarded the company another $795 million contract. The week prior, the New York Times reported that Trump planned to use Palantir to compile cross-agency data on Americans. 

Whatever the sponsors’ motivations, A250’s critics aren’t looking forward to Trump’s parade.

“I think that this parade and its association with America250 is very unfortunate,” said Watson Coleman, the New Jersey Democrat on the Semiquincentennial Commission. “I respect our military, our Army. I respect celebrating their 250 years. But we don’t boastfully show our might in parades.” The troops, she said, shouldn’t be sent through the streets of the nation’s capital “so they can salute some authoritarian leader, which is what this looks like to me.”