On USA’s 250th, Even the Party Planners Are Divided

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news.

**Sarah Holder** (0:07)
Right now, on the National Mall in Washington, DC., a birthday party for America is supposed to be in full swing.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:14)
Being here at the Great American State Fair in the nation's capital, I can definitely say no one's here.

**Laura Bliss** (0:20)
It sucks.

**SPEAKER_5** (0:21)
It's not packed, but you guys have to understand, this is like three football fields here that this fair is on.

**Sarah Holder** (0:27)
The Great American State Fair is a 16-day event meant to mark the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Photos, videos, and reporting from the scene show people have had mixed experiences there.

**Laura Bliss** (0:43)
Here we go.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:44)
Rodeo 250 We're at the Great American State Fair, and as someone from the Midwest, I would like to have a word with whoever had the audacity to give it that name.

**SPEAKER_5** (0:51)
We're at the Great American State Embarrassment.

**Sarah Holder** (0:55)
The Blackluster Fair is just one of many semi-quincentennial events that have been planned in the lead up to July 4th. Laura Bliss, a senior editor at Bloomberg Businessweek says, there's turned out to be quite a range.

**Laura Bliss** (1:10)
A ball drop in Times Square, a concert at the LA Coliseum.

**Sarah Holder** (1:15)
A fleet of 16 wheelers featuring a video message from the president.

**Laura Bliss** (1:19)
A national volunteerism initiative.

**Sarah Holder** (1:21)
A day of national prayer.
If these celebrations seem a little disjointed, that's because they're the product of not one, but two federally funded party planning organizations, with competing visions that are as polarized as America itself. One is called America 250, an offshoot of a semi-quincentennial commission that Congress created all the way back in 2016 And the other is called Freedom 250, which the Trump administration set up last year to throw more MAGA-coded semi-quincentennial events. Laura just published a story in Businessweek that dives deep into both of these groups.

**Laura Bliss** (2:05)
It is kind of a bit of a dichotomy, I think you could say, of a fairly quiet, sort of somewhat decentralized, kind of politically neutral organization.

**Sarah Holder** (2:16)
That's America 250

**Laura Bliss** (2:18)
To one that is very much molded in the image of the president.

**Sarah Holder** (2:23)
Freedom 250 is the group behind the fair and the trucks. For months, these groups have been jockeying for influence and funding. Now that the big birthday is finally here, how did this two-party party system pan out? What does the unofficial rivalry itself say about the nation, 250 years after its founding?
I'm Sarah Holder, and this is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. Today on the show, Happy Birthday America, how planning for the US's 250th became tangled in allegations of mismanagement and partisanship.
Laura, before there were these two competing groups, there was just one, the America 250 Foundation, which was set up by the US. Semi-Quincentennial Commission. When exactly was it created, and what was it supposed to do?

**SPEAKER_1** (3:22)
So the US.

**Laura Bliss** (3:22)
Semi-Quincentennial Commission was created by an act of Congress in 2016 It was under President Obama to make sure that America's 250th birthday party was a smashing success.

**Sarah Holder** (3:35)
The commission was made up of four Democrats and four Republican members of Congress, along with 16 private citizens chosen by legislators.

**Laura Bliss** (3:44)
You know, the vision was that this group of people representing both sides of the aisle were going to put something together that reflected the country.

**Sarah Holder** (3:51)
But the commission got off to a rocky start.

**Laura Bliss** (3:54)
There were a lot of tensions, a lot of feuding on the commission very early on that potentially set it back to some extent, with some of its fundraising goals and that kind of thing.

**Sarah Holder** (4:05)
Yeah, I mean, you reported on some of those early controversies during the Biden administration. For example, four America 250 employees brought a lawsuit against their bosses. Tell us a little bit about that.

**Laura Bliss** (4:16)
I think it was 2022 that four former employees of America 250 filed a lawsuit accusing organizations leadership of cronyism, self-dealing, mismanagement of funds.
There were allegations about having to pay out invoices for work that was never done. And eventually these parties did settle.

**Sarah Holder** (4:39)
In a filing at the time, attorneys for America 250 said that the lawsuit failed to lay out any cognizable claim.

**Laura Bliss** (4:46)
I think America 250 would say this is bold, this is under previous leadership. But nevertheless, I think you can point to that and just sort of see that there were problems organizationally that may have kind of slowed down the momentum in terms of planning and actual celebration.