The Trump administration is planning a series of grand patriotic events for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. From a massive Ultimate Fighting Championship match on the South Lawn of the White House on June 14th - which is both Flag Day and Trump’s 80th birthday - to a ball drop in Times Square, a Grand Prix on the streets of DC in August and the Great American State Fair spanning the course of two weeks on the National Mall - the America 250 and Freedom 250 celebrations are set to take over the summer across the country.

America 250, led by the U.S. Semiquincentennial Commission, has been a decade in the making and says they’re striving for “350 for 250” - “engaging all 350 million Americans by our nations’ 250th anniversary.” The Trump administration’s Freedom 250, with sponsors like Northrop Grumman, and Moms for Liberty and the Museum of the Bible, seeks to celebrate “the triumph of the American spirit.” The two initiatives might seem radically different, with media and administration figures criticizing one or the other, but both intentionally leave out real parts of the history of the United States: the legacy of slavery and indigenous genocide and the racism that’s still with us today, centuries of wars and conquest, mass oppression, but also the resistance and struggle of workers and other oppressed people in the United States. Those true stories won’t be told by either America 250 or Freedom 250.

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