newsline24

Trump staged ‘hostile takeover’ of US 250th anniversary to serve ‘political ideology’

Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.

Donald Trump hijacked the United States’ 250th anniversary celebrations to serve “political ideology and pet projects”, a congressional report released today has revealed.

The interim report, “From Vanity to Insanity: How the White House Cheated the American People Out of Their 250th Birthday”, outlines a web of alleged corruption, wire fraud and pay-to-play schemes orchestrated through a shadow corporation embedded within the National Park Foundation (NPF).

It alleges that the president staged a hostile takeover of the US’s 250th anniversary celebration to enrich political allies, harvest voter data and promote Christian nationalist ideology.

In 2016 Congress established the US semiquincentennial commission, operating as the nonprofit America250 Foundation, to plan the nation’s 2026 celebrations on a nonpartisan basis. However, under Trump, the White House launched a sustained pressure campaign to subsume the commission.

When America250 leadership resisted its demands to shift focus toward partisan, campaign-style spectacles, the Trump administration created Freedom 250 as a wholly owned subsidiary of the congressionally chartered NPF.

The interim report finds that, by taking control of the NPF board and installing key campaign operatives such as Meredith O’Rourke and Chris LaCivita, the White House secured an opaque vehicle that enjoyed the NPF’s nonpartisan credibility and tax-exempt status while operating outside standard government transparency laws.

Jared Huffman, a California congressman who is the top Democrat on the natural resources committee, said:

I can’t, in my time here in Congress, remember anything even remotely like this: watching this trusted, venerable charity organisation, the National Parks Foundation, literally be hijacked for a craven political agenda that tries to steal the celebration of America’s 250th anniversary and turn it into something that’s all about Trump, advancing this very divisive agenda and even enriching Trump and those around him.

Read the full report here:

In other developments:

The acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, said that federal prosecutors and law enforcement officers will focus on keeping pregnant non-citizens from giving birth in the US to acquire birthright citizenship. He did not mention that Donald Trump’s father was born in New York to a non-citizen mother who arrived six months pregnant.
Trump batted down questions about the $1.2bn he earned from crypto businesses, according to his latest annual financial disclosures.
Trump refused to renew the North American trade pact he once championed as his signature deal, opting instead to keep it alive on a short leash of annual reviews.
The mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani, plans to deliver what his office calls a “major address” on Friday to mark the 250th anniversary of the United States, “surrounded by recently naturalized citizens.”
A federal ⁠judge blocked a proposed restriction on mail-in voting across the US, challenging a crackdown on elections ordered by Donald Trump.
During a visit to a new museum dedicated to Theodore Roosevelt, Trump asked an AI rendition of the 26th president about the Panama canal. Trump then lied to supporters about the exchange.

Key events

George Chidi

A federal ⁠judge blocked a proposed restriction on mail-in voting across the US, challenging a crackdown on elections ordered by Donald Trump.

Judge Emmet Sullivan of the US district court for the District of Columbia ruled that a US Postal Service (USPS) plan to deny ballots to voters in states that do not turn over their voter rolls to the federal government should not proceed.

It was the second time in recent weeks that the US president’s plan to restrict mail-in-voting has suffered a setback in court.

The decision by Sullivan bars the postal service from enforcing an executive order issued by Trump in March that called for sweeping changes to the administration of elections nationwide.

In accordance with the order, the postal service issued a proposed rule on 2 June that would ‌require states to give the US Department of Homeland Security and other agencies access to lists of voters and to adopt new balloting procedures before the mail agency would make deliveries. If states did not comply, USPS would refuse to deliver the ballots.

Sullivan, who was appointed ⁠to the bench by the Democratic former president Bill Clinton, sided with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) civil rights group, which argued that the new rule would run ‌afoul of a 2021 legal settlement which forced USPS officials to take “extraordinary measures” to ensure timely delivery of ballot mail.

In that case, the NAACP sued the postal service in 2020 after delayed mail service threatened election access for voters during the Covid-19 pandemic.

David Smith

The sound of YMCA by the Village People booming through the badlands of North Dakota could only mean one thing: Donald Trump’s 250th anniversary travelling circus had reached a remote corner of America more familiar with bison, wild horses and bighorn sheep.

The US president visited Medora on Wednesday to dedicate a $450m library and museum honouring Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th president, in the region where he roamed as a cowboy and big-game hunter in the 1880s.

In what critics saw as his latest effort to cloak himself in the mantle of great men of history, Trump delivered a speech that drew comparisons with Roosevelt, whose face is carved into Mount Rushmore in neighbouring South Dakota, but notably said little about his predecessor’s environmental legacy.

Even by the haphazard standards of the America250 events so far, Wednesday’s extravaganza was bizarre. Trump’s trip marked the debut of a refurbished Boeing 747 gifted by Qatar that will serve as Air Force One, featuring a red, white, dark ‌blue and gold paint scheme selected by the president.

Against a dramatic landscape of eroded hills, deep ravines and layered rock, Trump then emulated Roosevelt’s whistle-stop tours by taking a short journey on a train painted red, white and blue with bunting and the words “Freedom”, “Liberty” and “1776-2026”.

Trump refuses to renew US-Canada-Mexico trade pact he once championed

Joseph Gedeon

Donald Trump has refused to renew the North American trade pact he once championed as his signature deal, opting instead to keep it alive on a short leash of annual reviews rather than committing to another 16 years.

Wednesday was the deadline built into the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) for the three countries to jointly decide its fate, which is set to expire in 2036.

After virtual talks between officials from all three governments, the US trade representative’s office confirmed that Washington had walked away from renewing the deal on its existing terms, pointing to persistent US trade deficits with both neighbors.

The refusal does not kill the pact outright, however. USMCA stays in force while negotiations continue, but it will now face a review every year rather than once every six, as originally designed.

A senior administration official, briefing reporters on a call announcing the decision, said Trump had “chose not to rubber stamp a USMCA renewal without addressing existing issues”.

The official added: “So in other words, the United States did not agree to renew the USMCA in its current form. So, as a result, the USMCA is not renewed.”

In a statement, Jamieson Greer, the US trade representative, said the US would “continue to engage with Mexico and Canada to address the Agreement’s shortcomings”.

At a press conference on Wednesday, Mexico’s economy minister, Marcelo Ebrard, said his government wants to address the issues raised by the US on foreign dependence.

“There is no difference that I can identify between Mexico, the United States and Canada that is so big that we cannot resolve it,” he said, according to Reuters.