House Democratic subcommittee report outlines web of alleged corruption, wire fraud and pay-to-play schemes
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).
The document was produced by Democratic staff of the House of Representatives’ natural resources committee’s oversight and investigations subcommittee. It has not been officially adopted by the committee.
‘A sanitized view of America’: inside Trump’s campaign to erase US history from national parks
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“Under President Donald Trump, this anniversary has been hijacked and perverted into a hotbed of corruption and self-enrichment,” it states, contending that the machinery built for a national commemoration was converted “into an apparatus for raising and spending money in service of the President’s ego, political ideology, and pet projects”.
How Trump is making the US’s 250th anniversary about himself – video
In 2016 Congress established the US semiquincentennial commission, operating as the non-profit America250 Foundation, to plan the nation’s 2026 celebrations on a non-partisan 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 non-partisan 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.”
The interim report alleges that Freedom 250 surreptitiously diverted resources intended for America250 for its own benefit, leaving America250 scrambling for funds.
Sources interviewed by Democrats on the committee said fundraisers including O’Rourke misled prospective America250 donors by providing them with Freedom 250’s banking and routing numbers instead. The report finds this could constitute wire fraud and charitable solicitation fraud under federal and District of Columbia law.
This deceit extended to the entertainment industry. Artists recruited for the kickoff of the Great American State Fair – including Martina McBride and Young MC – were assured the event was non-partisan, only to face social media backlash when the event was revealed to be a Trump-backed rally. In the words of Young MC, the booking was a “bait and switch”.
The investigation also outlines how Freedom 250 effectively put a price tag on presidential access, circulating sponsorship packages starting at $500,000 and climbing above $10m for tiered recognition, culminating in a “historic photo opportunity” with Trump.
The report also points to perhaps the most clear example on 14 June when the White House hosted a huge Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) event on the South Lawn to celebrate the president’s 80th birthday. The event was heavily sponsored by corporations facing impending federal regulation and used vast government resources for “Super Bowl-level security” marshalled by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Fighters received bonuses in “USD1”, a cryptocurrency issued by World Liberty Financial, a trust run by the president’s children, and Trump personally bought up to $50,000 in stock in the UFC’s parent company weeks before the event.
Freedom 250 has also functioned as a conduit for steering federal funds to Trump campaign loyalists. Event Strategies – the same firm that planned the January 6 rally that preceded the US Capitol attack – was awarded 18 federal contracts totalling roughly $40m, along with an indefinite delivery master contract worth up to $100m.
Beyond lucrative contracts, the administration is accused of building a partisan political database disguised as a government domain. Freedom 250’s website, initially managed by former “Department of Government Efficiency” (Doge) employees known for past data leaks, extensively logs user data.
Event registration is powered by Campaign Nucleus, a firm founded by Brad Parscale, a veteran of Trump election campaigns. Campaign Nucleus openly boasts about using artificial intelligence to analyse personal data and target “persuadable” voters. Unsuspecting visitors, such as attenders of a free Fifa World Cup Fan Zone on the National Mall, unwittingly fed their personal information directly into this Republican campaign apparatus.
The report also focuses on the ideological overhaul of the semiquincentennial. Freedom 250 replaced America250’s civic engagement focus with overt Christian nationalist programming, operating in tandem with the Religious Liberty Commission, which recently recommended repealing the Johnson amendment to allow churches to engage in partisan politics.
A central feature of this effort was “Freedom Trucks” – a federally funded fleet of mobile museums dispatched to schoolchildren across the nation. Supplied with content from the conservative PragerU [the Prager University Foundation] and Hillsdale College, these exhibits recast the founding of the US as an exclusively Christian project, embracing demonstrable falsehoods.
Exhibits include an AI-generated George Washington claiming that “our rights are a gift from God”, a statement the first president is not documented as having made, alongside antisemitic tropes suggesting that Jewish merchants financed the revolutionary cause while omitting they also fought and died for it.
Concurrently, the administration aggressively moved to erase historical realities, removing national park signage detailing slavery, forced removal of Indigenous peoples and climate change. Huffman said it amounted to an attempt to reshape American identity to fit a narrow rightwing agenda.
“It’s a fantasy that airbrushes out the more complicated parts of our history – slavery, the Native American genocide, the actual secular ideals on which our government was founded. It wasn’t the opening of the clouds and some revealed covenant with God as they would have you believe.”
As Washington barrels towards Fourth of July, with another Trump speech and a big fireworks display planned for the national mall, Huffman acknowledges that Freedom 250 is unstoppable. But his goal now is exposure.
“The one thing we can do is make sure the American people know what they’re doing in our name and with our tax dollars,” the congressman said. “We should do that because what they have pulled off here is a potential template for other betrayals of public trust that they and maybe future generations will attempt if we don’t challenge them.”
A federal judge said a lawsuit challenging the Department of Justice’s creation of a $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund will proceed.
Judge Leonie Brinkema cited the DOJ’s refusal to confirm in writing to her that the fund is dead.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche testified to a House committee on June 2 that the fund is not going forward. DOJ lawyers have pointed to that statement in arguing to Brinkema and another federal judge that it is sufficient to dismiss suits challenging the fund.
Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche speaks at a press conference at the Department of Justice on May 4, 2026 in Washington, DC.
Kevin Dietsch | Getty Images
A federal judge on Thursday said a lawsuit challenging the Department of Justice’s creation of a $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund will proceed, citing the DOJ’s refusal to confirm in writing to her that the fund is dead, as the department has verbally said it is.
Brinkema said that acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s refusal to rescind his May 18 memo that set up the structure of the fund, as well as his and President Donald Trump’s continued interest in compensating purported victims of DOJ overreach, “all support this conclusion” that the lawsuit is not moot.
The judge ordered the DOJ to file its answer to the lawsuit by July 17.
Blanche created the fund as part of a settlement of Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over a leak of his tax records. The fund, whose total possible disbursements would be $1.776 billion — in a nod to the year in which the Declaration of Independence was signed — was designed to provide redress to people who allegedly “suffered weaponization and lawfare.”
Critics called it a “slush fund” that would pay allies of Trump, including potentially hundreds of people convicted of crimes related to their involvement in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Blanche testified to a House committee on June 2 that the fund is “not going forward, period,” after sharp criticism of it by Republican and Democratic lawmakers.
DOJ lawyers have pointed to that statement in arguing to Brinkema and another federal judge that it is sufficient to dismiss suits challenging the fund.
In a court filing this week, the DOJ said that written declarations that the fund is dead “are unnecessary,” and that Brinkema’s request that Blanche and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent put in writing Blanche’s promise “implicates serious separation of powers concerns.”
But Brinkema, in her order Thursday, wrote, “That the defendants have refused to accord a genuine degree of trustworthiness to their representations about the Fund not going forward is particularly concerning because of the President’s consistent support for the Fund and Acting Attorney General Blanche’s acknowledgement that the Fund remains ‘important.’ ”
“Although Acting Attorney General Blanche reiterated several times during his testimony that the Fund was not going forward, when asked whether he would ‘issue a new memo in writing rescinding that May 18 memo,’ he replied, ‘I’m not committing to putting anything in writing. And I said it over and over again,’ ” Brinkema noted.
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit include Andrew Floyd, a former federal prosecutor who has said he was fired for prosecuting cases against Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol. The other plaintiffs are Jonathan Caravello, a professor at California State University Channel Islands, and the city of New Haven, Conn.
If you click on the link you can read the entire article for free as a gift article. What a corrupt authoritarian wannabe dictatorship the US government is. Hugs
A good place to pick up important info quickly; all linked/cited for sourcing.
Ed Martin Confirms Ed Martin’s Witch Hunt Against Elected Democrats by TPM
INSIDE: Pam Bondi … Adam Schiff … Letitia James Read on Substack
A Classic Example of Political Corruption
Ed Martin had no prior experience as a prosecutor when he became acting D.C. U.S. attorney earlier this year. And it shows.
Since his nomination to the permanent position was aborted because of lack of Senate GOP support, Martin has been triple-hatting at Main Justice as (i) U.S. pardon attorney; (ii) the chief of Attorney General Pam Bondi’s “Weaponization Working Group” — the unintentionally revealing name of the outfit that’s charged with politicizing the Justice Department; and (iii) most recently as Bondi’s “special attorney” overseeing the politically motivated mortgage fraud investigations of Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and New York Attorney General Letitia James.
It was in that third role that Martin was apparently serving when he went on Fox News and admitted that he’s using the pretext of the clearly bogus mortgage fraud probes to conduct an open-ended witch hunt into Schiff and James. “We’re also gonna look at everything else they’ve been doing,” Martin said on air:
Most legal experts think the mortgage fraud claims don’t amount to anything on the facts or on the law. But don’t underestimate the potency of ongoing criminal investigations hanging over anyone, especially elected officials, particularly when the investigations are used as justification for a wide-ranging probe of unspecified other wrongdoing.
Even if charges never come, this is a classic example of political corruption — and of authoritarian capture of the independence of federal prosecutors. Martin has embarked on a fishing expedition and he’ll keep it going for as long as it’s useful to the White House.
Speaking of Letitia James …
New York Attorney General Letitia James’ $500 million civil fraud judgment against Donald Trump has been held up on appeal for nearly a year, apparently because of deep divisions and three dueling written opinions on the five-justice appeals court panel, the WSJ reports.
Thread of the Day
With a new series of edicts, FBI Director Kash Patel is further degrading the bureau and converting into something akin to a national police department (which is NOT what the FBI has historically been):
WASHINGTON, DISTICT OF COLUMBIA, UNITED STATES – 2025/08/17: Activist Nadine Seiler holds a sign that reads “What Trump order won’t you obey” stands in front of a National Guard vehicle as protesters gather at Columbus Circle following President Donald Trump’s announcement to place the D.C. Metropolitan Police under federal control. (Photo by Probal Rashid/LightRocket via Getty Images)
A Recipe for Disaster
Red states are jumping on the bandwagon to send their national guards to the nation’s capital and show plurality Black D.C. who’s boss. West Virginia, Ohio, and South Carolina (still smarting from the last time it tried to overthrow D.C.) are first in line to engage in performative strong-arming of Democratic cities.
But the most alarming news to come out over a generally alarming weekend is that the national guardsmen may be armed, a reversal of an earlier decision that deployed the D.C. National Guard on the streets without weaponry on their persons or in the vehicles.
The ingredients could be in place for a cocktail of violence: federal agents and national guardsmen with little to no training in street policing being sent with guns into a peaceful urban area (that many of them are not even from) and expected to stir up trouble. It puts everyone — D.C. residents, local police, guardsmen, and federal agents — in an impossible situation.
One glimmer of good news was that the Trump administration was hauled into court Friday over its attempt to take over the D.C. police department and, under pressure from a federal judge, backed off its maximalist position.
ICYMI
Religion Dispatches: Latest ICE Recruitment Materials Include Overt Neo-Nazi Reference and Nazi-Nazi Script
Sign of the Times: The New Fascism Comes With Merch
The Florida GOP scrubbed its online store of a new line of merchandise touting the state’s new “Deportation Depot” after Home Depot complained it was an unapproved use of its branding.
Texas Dems Expected Back This Week
With California Democrats proceeding with their own mid-decade redistricting, Texas Democrats are expected to return to the state today, giving Republicans a quorum in the legislature to push through their redistricting plan. Texas Democrats succeeded in blocking the redistricting push in the first special session of the legislature. But when it ended, Friday Gov. Greg Abbott (R) immediately called a second special session, setting the stage for passing a new, more GOP friendly congressional district map to help national Republicans hold their House majority in next year’s midterms.
Quote of the Day
“Trump has completely ceded narrative control to Putin. What Ukraine is just basically getting as a concession is for the Russians to stop fighting. And this is Putin’s way all the way through the 25 years of his presidency, which is: ‘I’m going to beat you up and my concession is that I stopped beating you up.’”–former Trump I National Security Council official Fiona Hill
D’oh!
Guests at a hotel in Anchorage found sensitive documents from the Trump-Putin summit on a public printer, NPR reports.
D.C. Circuit Judges Gregory Katsas and Neomi Rao, Trump appointees who have had out-sized influence in the first months of the Trump II presidency, cleared the way Friday for the Trump administration to dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Judge Cornelia Pillard, an Obama appointee dissented.
“The notion that courts are powerless to prevent the President from abolishing the agencies of the federal government that he was elected to lead cannot be reconciled with either the constitutional separation of powers or our nation’s commitment to a government of laws,” Pillard wrote.
Garbage In, Garbage Out
TPM’s Layla A. Jones: The Trump Administration Is Laying the Groundwork for a Full Takeover of Federal Data
Judge Blocks FTC Probe of Media Matters
U.S. District Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan of D.C. sided with Media Matters in blocking a politically motived Federal Trade Commission investigation of the liberal watchdog group.
“This case presents a straightforward First Amendment violation,” Sooknanan ruled.
Media Matters has been struggling financially under the weight of bogus right-wing investigations into whether its reporting on antisemitic content on X/Twitter amounted to anticompetitive conduct. It also faces related serial lawsuits by Elon Musk.
“It should alarm all Americans when the government retaliates against individuals or organizations for engaging in constitutionally protected public debate,” Sooknanan wrote. “And that alarm should ring even louder when the Government retaliates against those engaged in newsgathering and reporting.”
A Rare Example of Organized Left-Wing Violence?
The purported attack at an ICE detention center in Texas last month caught my eye as an possible example of organized left-wing violence, a relative rarity since the 1970s. When I say “organized,” I don’t necessarily mean well-organized. The ragtag group’s alleged attack seemed especially hapless, even according to the official law enforcement account of the incident. Adding to the weirdness, the alleged perpetrators — among them two transgender women activists — appeared to be from in and around Dallas, which wouldn’t be my first choice for hotbeds of anti-fascism.
The WaPo’s Robert Klemko has dug a bit more into the “secretive network of Dallas anti-fascists” who “initially united around trans and queer identity issues.” He did a jailhouse interview with the group’s alleged ringleader, a former Marine Corps reservist of mixed Japanese and Korean descent who trained “very young, naive leftists,” as one witness put it, in close-quarters combat and large-scale gunfights at his mother’s taekwondo studio in suburban Dallas.
Illustration: Guardian Design
Key Points
Scottie's Playtime 