At the end of last week congressional Democrats published their investigation into the pathetic Freedom 250 mess and they found the same stuff I wrote about last month:

The report accuses Trump of long wanting to place himself at the center of the anniversary agenda. It points to events held on his birthdays — last year’s Army 250th parade and this year’s White House UFC fight — and longer-term projects like his plans to build a 250-foot-tall triumphal arch.

It alleges that when America250 resisted that vision, the Trump administration turned the National Park Foundation from a “beloved nonprofit into a presidential shell” by standing up Freedom 250 under its auspices.

It is not clear where that directive came from: Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, who serves as ex officio director of the foundation’s board, testified before Congress in May that he was “not aware of the final decision maker on Freedom 250.” That same month, he told CNN the organization is “run out of the White House.”

In any case, Freedom 250 emerged with more visibility and more federal funding than America250.

Alvarez, of Freedom 250, says it “stepped in to rescue our nation’s 250th birthday from years of wasted time, wasted money, and failed planning.” But the report argues it supplanted America250 “through a series of diversions and misrepresentations that drained the chartered Commission of the resources it needed to function.”

The report says Congress allocated $150 million in federal funds last year to the Interior Department for events celebrating the 250th anniversary, with the “understanding” that $100 million of that would go to America250. The group has only received $25 million, it says, citing unnamed sources.

I also wrote about how joyless and awful the setup on the Mall was. And then on Saturday night it was time for the highlight of the programming, the grand fireworks show in DC. I’ve been to a lot of the Independence Day firework shows in DC and they were always great. There were always all kinds of shells, varied colors and types, and it always included whatever was “new” in fireworks so you always saw something you hadn’t seen before. Not this year. The sad Great American State Fair was the right segue to the disappointing holiday’s conclusion. President Grievance’s vision of a celebration of America was a celebration of him. And since he’s just a giant pile of shit, if you’re seen one you’ve seen them all.

The rains came first though, and disrupted the programming and the MAGAts had to disperse into federal buildings to take shelter from the lightning. I did love this outcome:

Some videos speak for themselves

— Phil Lewis (@phillewis.bsky.social) 2026-07-05T02:44:26.830Z

Of course this also happened:

The program finally began after the same boring singers sang the same boring songs they always do. And then Trump came out, to whine about all of the same things, and then to introduce a bunch of veterans and a bunch of old flags. With all due respect to the veterans and their families—it was wholly inappropriate. Independence Day is a civilian holiday. And the president is a draft dodger. It was all so boring and simultaneously offensive because miserable people have no idea of how to have fun.

Then the fireworks began and they were underwhelming. I know they were loud and that there were a lot of them, but they were just the same things over and over and over again, like the decrepit Lee Greenwood singing that terrible song as his voice gets worse and worse. All of that money spent for a boring show that, like the fake state fair, was put on by someone who has never been to a community Independence Day celebration. I mean a business near my house puts on a fireworks show every July 4^th and it was more varied and prettier than that 40 minutes of pedestrian overkill. Miserable people have no idea how to have fun.

This is the stuff other Americans got to watch, like this drone show in Boston:

We deserve a do-over with a new Democratic president. I hope we get it.

I’ll leave you with the annual A Capitol Fourth show, which is not about Trump or about flags.