Trump Will Kick off a Yearlong Celebration of America's 250th Anniversary with Event in Iowa
Trump is expected to tout the major piece of his agenda when he takes the stage Thursday at the Iowa State Fairgrounds in Des Moines, according to the White House. This comes just hours after the House pushed it through in a tight roll call of 218-214.
Organizers see the coming year of festivities as a way to help unite a polarized nation and bridge partisanship. But it's a monumental task given the country's divides and the staunch Democratic opposition to the 800-plus page package full of the GOP's main policy priorities. More U.S. adults also disapprove than approve of how the Republican president is doing his job.
The event at the Iowa State Fairgrounds in Des Moines drew a few thousand spectators waiting for the president for hours in the 90-plus degree Fahrenheit (32 degree Celsius) heat.
Iowa was a 'logical choice' for the kickoff, said U.S. Ambassador Monica Crowley, Trump's liaison to the organizing group, America250. Crowley said that's because of its central location and Trump's affinity for the state, which supported him in each of the last three general elections. She also said Iowa's middle-of-the-country geography is symbolic of the desire to use the coming celebrations to help bring people together.
'We've had so much division and so much polarization over the last many decades, but certainly over the last few years, that to be able to bring the country together to celebrate America's 250th birthday through patriotism, shared values and a renewed sense of civic pride, to be able to do that in the center of the country, is incredibly important,' she said.
A recent Gallup poll showed the widest partisan split in patriotism in over two decades, with only about a third of Democrats saying they are proud to be American, compared with about 9 in 10 Republicans.
About 4 in 10 U.S. adults approve of Trump's performance as president, according to a June AP-NORC poll, while about 6 in 10 disapprove. That poll also showed a majority of Americans said the June military parade that Trump green-lit in Washington for the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army — an event that fell on his 79th birthday — was 'not a good use' of government money.
Crowley spoke to the political and ideological schisms that left the country 'torn apart' ahead of its last big birthday celebration, noting that 1976 closely followed the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal that led Richard Nixon to resign from the presidency.
'That moment was critical to uniting the country and moving forward, and I am very optimistic and hopeful that the yearlong celebration that we're about to launch will do the same thing in this present moment,' she said in an interview.
America's 250th birthday 'is something that I think that all Americans can come together to celebrate and honor our history as well as our present and our future,' Crowley said.
The Trump administration's own cost-cutting moves this year threaten to complicate the celebrations. Reduced funding led the National Endowment for the Humanities to send letters to state humanities councils across the country saying their federal grants had been terminated. Many of those councils had been working on programming to commemorate the 250th anniversary and had already dedicated some of their federal grants for events at libraries, schools and museums.
Gabrielle Lyon, executive director of Illinois Humanities and chair of the Illinois America 250 Commission, said the cuts already have curtailed some of the planned programs, including community readings of the Declaration of Independence.
'It is very hard to understand how we can protect and preserve people's ability locally to make this mean something for them, and to celebrate what they want to celebrate, if you're not funding the humanities councils,' Lyon said.
On July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, officially marking the 13 colonies' split from Great Britain.
'We're gonna have a big, big celebration, as you know, 250 years,' Trump said about the birthday during his Memorial Day address to a solemn audience at Arlington National Cemetery. 'In some ways, I'm glad I missed that second term where it was because I wouldn't be your president for that.'
Video of then-candidate Trump proposing a 'Great American State Fair' in Iowa in May 2023 began to recirculate after his reelection last November, but the culminating fair instead will be held next year on the National Mall in Washington, according to a White House official who was not authorized to share details publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
The lineup Thursday night will include Lee Greenwood, according to social media posts advertising the event, whose song, 'God Bless the USA,' is a regular feature at Trump rallies and official events. Also attending will be Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins.
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HANKSVILLE, Utah – Brett Stewart was in the lead, bouncing behind the wheel of a Can-Am Maverick X3 off-road vehicle that he likened to a 'Ferrari on dirt.' Then came Jean Robert Babilis, a 70-year-old with a handgun in the console, pushing a 114-horsepower Polaris side-by-side through the red rock canyonlands of southern Utah – spraying sand in defiance of the environmentalists who've fought a years-long battle to keep his kind away. The four off-road vehicles that set off in late May on the 100-mile Poison Spring Loop were exercising their right to recreate on America's public land, combatants in a noisy culture war about where off-road vehicles should be allowed to drive. The route was stunning: the hanging gardens and sandstone cliffs, the soaring buttes and endless mesas. But eight of these miles were particularly sweet: a stretch of hotly contested National Park Service land that Congress opened to off-road vehicles in May, overturning a rule finalized days before President Joe Biden left office that would have kept their convoy out. Sunshine was breaking through the clouds over a great American landscape. This was a victory lap. 'We're going to have a beautiful day, guys,' Babilis said. Then he hit the gas. The shift comes as environmentalists and others out West express alarm about the fate of public lands. Senate Republicans proposed selling more than a million acres of public land in Western states to build housing, before withdrawing the plan Saturday. The Trump administration wants to ramp up logging, mining and oil drilling and is considering shrinking several national monuments. Federal land management agency staffs that steward these landscapes have been slashed by layoffs and buyouts. The dispute over off-road vehicles is steeped in years of litigation, and technicalities about vehicle types and road classes and decibel thresholds. But it also boils down to conflicting visions about whether wild landscapes are more a playground to be enjoyed or a treasure to be preserved. 'At the end of the day, what ties us together is we all love this place,' said Jack Hanley, a field specialist with the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, an environmental organization that has fought for years to rein in off-road vehicle use on fragile public lands. The center of this long-running fight has been the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area – 1.3 million acres around Lake Powell, the country's second-largest reservoir – and particularly an area known as Orange Cliffs, which overlooks Canyonlands National Park. It's an exceedingly remote place where many people come to camp out under the stars and soak in the quiet and solitude. Hanley and his colleague at SUWA, staff attorney Hanna Larsen, spent two days slowly picking their way in a Toyota 4Runner over rugged cliff top roads and steep rocky trails that thread through this landscape. Some of those primitive roads were built decades ago in service of mining or ranching interests – and now offer a route for modern vehicles. With President Donald Trump back in office, Larsen said environmentalists were in 'defense mode,' picking their battles and trying to minimize the damage. Opening up Orange Cliffs could lead to more off-road vehicle access in national parks here or elsewhere, she warned. 'That tension has been brewing for a very long time,' she said. 'And it's come to a head with this.' For decades, environmentalists have pushed the National Park Service to regulate the off-road vehicles that plied the desert trails around Lake Powell. That used to be dirt bikes and dune buggies and is now dominated by utility terrain vehicles (UTVs), also known as side-by-sides, the car-like vehicles that have big studded tires and suspensions that can cost $50,000 or more, move fast over all sorts of rough ground, and often travel in packs. The decision by the National Park Service at the end of Trump's first term to allow such off-road vehicles on a portion of the Orange Cliffs area caused an outcry among environmentalists and led to lawsuits by SUWA and others. A settlement led to a new rule in January that blocked such access – which Republicans overturned in May by using the Congressional Review Act. Trump signed the resolution on May 23. 'My legislation was a response to local voices who wanted to access land they have enjoyed and explored for generations,' Rep. Celeste Maloy (R-Utah), who proposed the resolution, said in a statement. Even though other conventional vehicles – such as four-wheel-drive trucks or Jeeps – could always drive these Orange Cliffs roads, environmentalists argue that off-road vehicles pose a unique threat to visitors' experience and the environment. They are louder, they say, and more capable of traveling off trail through the sage brush and pinyon pine landscapes if riders choose to do that. Some like to travel at night, antennas illuminated, an eerie vision in the desert. If you were camping in Canyonlands National Park and a group of those vehicles roared past Orange Cliffs, 'your whole night is screwed, that's just a fact,' said Walt Dabney, who was superintendent at Canyonlands for much of the 1990s. 'To have a small group of these users ruin it for everybody else, I don't think is justified,' he said. 'There are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of miles of backcountry four-wheel-drive adventures to be had. You don't have to go everywhere.' Off-road advocates feel they are unfairly maligned by environmentalists. They say their vehicles don't cause any more damage than conventional ones, and it's just a few drivers who veer off designated paths. The Blue Ribbon Coalition, which advocates for off-road vehicle access, is currently involved in three lawsuits against the Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management to open about 1,600 miles of trails closed during the Biden administration, executive director Ben Burr said. Burr, who organized the convoy on the Poison Spring Loop, used to be an aide to Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and is a relative by marriage. His family name is all over the landscape out here – the Burr Desert, the Burr Trail – dating back to his Mormon ancestors who drove cattle in the area in the 1800s. He considers singling out off-road vehicles 'purity culture nonsense.' 'It's like skiers versus snowboarders, e-bikes versus non-e-bikes, non-motorized versus motorized – we've created all these distinctions and tribes we put ourselves into,' he said. 'But really all the agencies should be looking at is: How do I make the benefit of being here available to the most people?' 'The bigger the playground' The off-road vehicles started the Poison Spring Loop on sage brush flatlands. It wasn't long before Stewart, a former bricklayer, saw something he didn't like. 'All my signs are gone,' he said. Stewart, who has a nonprofit called Utah O.H.V. [Off-Highway Vehicle] Advocates, had put up skull-and-crossbones stickers to mark the Poison Spring Loop and someone had removed them. He knew many people loathe his hobby. 'People just hate these – flat out hate 'em,' he said. There are now more than 200,000 registered off-road vehicle users in Utah, according to a spokesman for the Utah Department of Natural Resources. Babilis said he's spent decades driving four-wheelers and motorcycles on trails in southern Utah, a pastime he's shared with his seven children and more than 20 grandkids. He's purchased several side-by-sides in recent years as they've swelled in popularity. Some of the places he used to drive have been closed to off-trail vehicles by the federal government, including in the Bears Ears National Monument that was created by President Barack Obama. 'They just shut off every trail that we've been riding on for decades,' Babilis said. To Stewart, exploring the outdoors in the type of vehicle that can cruise at 100 miles per hour is his preferred brand of therapy. He's too old to hike very far, he said, and off-roading allows him to experience vast landscapes away from crowds. 'I'm not worried about it being overridden because it's so spread out,' he said. 'The bigger the playground, the less people we'll see.' Life-changing lands By the next afternoon, SUWA's Hanley and Larsen had reached Panorama Point, on top of Orange Cliffs. It had been a slow, bone-jolting drive over rocks and boulders on the most primitive road, but the view was worth it, stretching out endlessly over the Maze district of Canyonlands National Park and the place where the Green River merges with the Colorado River. Along the way, Hanley had stopped regularly to point out what caught his eye. A pronghorn antelope amid the juniper trees. The call of a black-throated gray warbler. He'd stopped to smell a cliffrose and sample the wasabi flavor of a pepperweed. 'You want to hear my favorite sound?' he asked, and rattled a narrowleaf yucca. Hanley, who grew up in the Bay Area, took a family trip through the Southwest when he was 21 that included Zion National Park. He was stunned by the setting but also by the meaning of public lands. Standing around without buying something in a city is loitering; out there, commerce was not required. 'I could just sleep on the ground, you know,' he said. 'It just felt right to me in this way that really made sense.' Instead of going to college, he started rock climbing and washing dishes with a Zion concessionaire. He went on to work as a backpacking and canyoneering guide and interpretative ranger with the Park Service. When the first Trump administration slashed the size of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments, he decided to get more involved in protecting public lands and joined SUWA. Hanley has volunteered with BLM offices to help restore damaged landscapes by raking off-road tire tracks or putting up fences to keep vehicles off prohibited roads. In every field office where he's worked, he said, he's seen evidence of off-road vehicles that left the trail and tore up the landscape. 'I've had fences I've built cut. Signs that I put in shot or ripped out of the ground,' he said. 'I think there's something to the culture – those machines are designed to be driven off of roads.' On top of Panorama Point, Hanley tried to explain what the canyons in the distance meant to him. The first time he hiked into the Maze, he said, he followed mountain lion tracks for two days without seeing human footprints. Out there, he's come across haunting four-foot-tall pictographs that date back thousands of years. He's survived on spring water from a trough put in by ranchers a century ago and found a sherd from an ancient ceramic jar on the ground nearby – the water source has been convening people for millennia. Hanley and Larsen set up camp that evening on the cliff top. As night fell, they marveled at the stillness and watched the innumerable stars that began to appear. 'The beauty of a special place like this is it's a reminder that you come from the earth,' Hanley said. The 'do not touch' area The off-road convoy stopped at a couple of spots to look at Native American drawings along the Poison Spring Loop, which is also a popular thru-hiking trail. Many of them had been defaced by more modern visitors. Stewart's favorite lore is about Butch Cassidy, the famed bank robber and outlaw who hid in these canyons with loot that Stewart is still looking for. At one stop, Stewart led the group behind a giant boulder. He revealed where someone had carved 'Butch Cassidy' into the rock. It's a place he treasures, and each time he approaches, he's terrified vandals might have marred the inscription. Is it real? 'Only Butch knows,' he said. The convoy drove across the silty waters of the Dirty Devil River and up precipitous switchbacks, past Gunsight Butte and through Sunset Pass. A weathered wooden sign marked the entrance to the Orange Cliffs unit of the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. Four plaques identified what was allowed (camping, hiking) and prohibited (campfires, pets). A fifth plaque – which once banned off-road vehicles – had been pulled off. 'Now we're in the 'do not touch' area,' Stewart said of the 8-mile portion of the loop on Park Service land. 'There is nothing much different. It's just dirt and red rock.' The convoy eventually reached an intersection along a stretch of grasslands where large signs warned away off-road vehicles. Those routes continued to other parts of Orange Cliffs and to Canyonlands National Park. 'No OHVs beyond this point,' Stewart read. Conventional vehicles could continue. But on that day, at least, this group could not. 'They don't have bullet holes in 'em,' Babilis said of the signs. 'Not yet,' Stewart replied.
