People typically have blended emotions about their birthdays, particularly as they age. International locations can expertise that too. For higher or worse, America is due for a giant birthday celebration: July 4, 2026, will mark the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence—our nationwide semiquincentennial, within the awkward Latinate development, or “semiquin” for brief. In a perfect world, it might be a second of commemoration and celebration in addition to an opportunity to replicate on nationwide historical past. However up to now, the semiquin is shaping up as an embarrassingly correct reflection of America’s identification disaster.
Till just lately, America250, the federal fee charged with planning for 2026, was mired in organizational infighting and numerous disputes, together with over funding shortages and the distribution of patronage. Licensed whereas Barack Obama was president, the fee began work underneath Donald Trump, modified course underneath Joe Biden, and can spend most of 2025 answering to who is aware of which chief government. However the challenges of 2026 prolong properly past logistics, appropriations, and management. How do you throw a grand nationwide occasion when the nation appears unable to agree on first ideas or primary info? Ought to 2026 be a rah-rah competition or a sober historical past lesson? What ought to the non-MAGA part of the American populace—that’s, not less than half of it— deliver to such a patriotic event? Ought to it deliver something in any respect?
Former U.S. Treasurer Rosie Rios, now the pinnacle of America250, nonetheless believes that the nation can pull off one thing significant. The kid of a Mexican-born single mom, she recollects the 1976 bicentennial as a second when she started to really feel “pleasure in what it means to be American.” She needs 2026 to supply the identical kind of expertise, tailor-made to a brand new technology.
And maybe it’ll. As Rios identified after we spoke, 1976 was itself hardly a second of political concord; the Vietnam Warfare and Watergate had simply crashed to an in depth, proper on the heels of the turbulent Nineteen Sixties. Nor, for that matter, was American society particularly peaceful on the time of the sesquicentennial, in 1926, when the Ku Klux Klan was often parading by Washington, D.C.; or on the time of the centennial, in 1876, when the nation was preventing over the way forward for Reconstruction; or on the time of the semicentennial, in 1826, when a controversial populist chief, Andrew Jackson, had simply misplaced an in depth election and vowed to return for a second go-round.
What appears totally different in regards to the current second is that the very concept of attempting to inform some kind of nationwide story—a lot much less one with patriotic overtones—has itself been referred to as into query. That’s very true among the many individuals who purport to care most deeply about an sincere reckoning with the American previous. For generations, liberals leaned right into a story of gradual, if uneven, progress towards unfulfilled beliefs. However even they not imagine that the narrative of progress holds the facility it as soon as did.
There’s, in fact, no nationwide narrative that may magically unite America; true nationwide consensus has by no means existed and received’t instantly materialize now. However throughout previous celebrations—50, 100, 150 years in the past—the individuals excluded from America’s mythic narrative managed to leverage the nation’s symbols and rhetoric and put different tales earlier than the general public. They believed that the Declaration of Independence and the flag may very well be helpful and inspirational.
At stake in 2026 is whether or not a divided nation can discover widespread symbols value embracing. But in addition at stake is whether or not those that take a crucial view of America’s previous will step up proudly and say not solely what they stand towards, however what they stand for within the American story.
Tright here was as soon as an ordinary template for find out how to have a good time a centennial: Declare greatness and throw a giant occasion, ideally in Philadelphia. Over the previous two centuries, this mannequin has yielded its fair proportion of jingoism, together with fireworks and flags and cannon blasts. Nevertheless it has additionally offered a chance for reexamining American historical past and for elevating questions in regards to the nation’s future.
The primary try at a nationwide occasion in Philadelphia, through the “jubilee” yr of 1826, didn’t fairly come off. As one native newspaper famous, “The apathy of the residents” gave the impression to be the defining function of that exact July 4. The anniversary nonetheless occasioned not less than a little bit of nationwide self-reflection. In early 1824, anticipating the semicentennial, President James Monroe invited the Marquis de Lafayette, the teenage French hero of the American Revolution, to return to the U.S. and check out what he had wrought. With a lot hoopla, Lafayette visited each state in addition to the nation’s capital. However he additionally expressed horror at sure elements of American life, particularly the South’s ongoing embrace of slavery. Throughout a go to to the Virginia plantation of former President James Madison, Lafayette pointedly reminded him of “the proper that all males, with out exception, must liberty.”
Fifty years later, on the opposite facet of the devastating Civil Warfare, Philadelphia tried once more. This time, it succeeded. With an eye fixed to the world’s gala’s then common in Europe, town was decided to placed on “the best worldwide exposition that the world had ever witnessed,” because the historian Thomas H. Keels writes—albeit an exposition with a distinctly American stamp. The nation was engaged in a fierce debate over race, political partisanship, girls’s rights, and the rising focus of capital. All of the extra purpose, organizers thought, to attempt to get everybody collectively to have a good time what there was to like about America.
They began planning a competition for 1876 that was finally attended by some 20 p.c of the American inhabitants. Upon arriving in Philadelphia, these tens of millions of holiday makers discovered a complete mini-city constructed to accommodate and show the marvels of the fashionable world. On the Important Constructing, ticket-holders encountered their first phone, courtesy of the rising younger inventor Alexander Graham Bell. Thomas Edison despatched his newest innovations too. France contributed the upraised proper arm and torch of a proposed Statue of Liberty; guests may ascend stairs to the highest for only a dime. The sheer variety of gigantic expo buildings—249 in all—testified to the organizers’ outsize ambitions.
This frenzy of exercise and funding despatched an unmistakable message: Regardless of the Civil Warfare, America was filled with power and on the rise. However the scale of the spectacle masked vital absences. Though 26 states constructed their very own pavilions, most southern states opted out. Black residents have been banned from the expo altogether. When Frederick Douglass, an invited visitor, tried to take his seat on the dais on the opening ceremony, guards blocked him till a U.S. senator intervened. The grim politics of 1876 would quickly lead to a violent and contested presidential election, and with it the top of Reconstruction within the South.
If the expo did little to resume American commitments to equality, it did present an event for sure excluded teams to restate their claims to full American citizenship, utilizing the Declaration as inspiration. On July 4, Susan B. Anthony confirmed up uninvited on the Independence Corridor ceremonies, flanked by fellow suffragists, to learn the Declaration of the Rights of Girls. In Washington, a gaggle of Black males produced their very own Negro Declaration of Independence.
By 1926, the political terrain regarded totally different. White girls may lastly vote; most Black women and men within the South couldn’t. The U.S. had been by one other warfare, this time in Europe, and had come out of it disillusioned. At house, through the warfare, the nation had jailed 1000’s of dissenters. The Ku Klux Klan had constructed a robust constituency, particularly throughout the Democratic Occasion. And the nation had slammed its doorways shut to most immigrants.
The organizers of the sesquicentennial celebration nonetheless doubled down on the mannequin of a giant occasion in Philadelphia. An estimated 6 million individuals confirmed up—not as many because the organizers had hoped for, however nonetheless a considerable quantity. The marvels on show have been totally of their second: on the lowbrow finish, Jell-O and Maxwell Home espresso; on the excessive, Kandinsky and Matisse.
The exposition was billed as a “Pageant of Peace and Progress,” however like its predecessors, it couldn’t assist however replicate the political tensions of its time. When the KKK put in a bid for a particular Klan day on the honest, the mayor of Philadelphia mentioned sure earlier than saying no. The honest itself was largely segregated, although Philadelphia’s Black neighborhood mobilized to make sure not less than modest entry and participation. Below stress, the competition added the longer term civil-rights icon A. Philip Randolph as a last-minute speaker to symbolize the Black neighborhood and share the platform with authorities officers on the opening ceremony. Randolph delivered a searing account of how the nation had betrayed its promise of equality for Black residents.
Philadelphia tried to offer it another go 50 years later—for the bicentennial, in 1976. As the large birthday approached, although, many observers began to query whether or not the usual mannequin actually made sense anymore. “Is a World’s Truthful-type Bicentennial competition acceptable for a rustic wracked with social, racial, and environmental agonies?” the author Ada Louise Huxtable requested in The New York Instances. By 1976, President Richard Nixon’s resignation and the mounting traumas of the Nineteen Seventies had helped to yield a scaled-back, privatized, and decentralized celebration. There have been some old style touches, such because the American Freedom Prepare, which conveyed the nation’s founding paperwork and historic treasures from metropolis to metropolis, and the cheery tall ships that sailed between ports. However company promotion reasonably than civic function carried the day. Branded merchandise included a 1776-themed tampon disposal bag marketed with the slogan “200 Years of Freedom.”
Critics pushed again towards what they described because the “Buycentennial.” Among the most theatrical resistance got here from an advert hoc group referred to as the Folks’s Bicentennial Fee, organized by the New Left activist (and future social theorist) Jeremy Rifkin. The group held rallies at websites similar to Lexington and Harmony, all of the whereas claiming to be performing within the true spirit of ’76. Rifkin thought it essential that the American left interact with reasonably than reject the narratives and symbols of the nation’s founding. Different teams, together with the Afro-American Bicentennial Company, sought to make sure that not less than some programming would replicate the Black expertise. They advocated for a extra various and inclusive account of the nation’s historical past—not one American story, however many.
Not less than a few of that imaginative and prescient started to be realized within the years throughout and after the bicentennial. What 1976 might have lacked in spectacle, it finally made up for with quiet funding within the infrastructure of public historical past, a lot of it attuned to bringing overdue consideration to marginalized teams. In keeping with a examine by the American Affiliation of State and Native Historical past, some 40 p.c of all historic establishments in existence by 1984—museums, living-history websites, native preservation societies, and the like—have been created through the bicentennial period.
In the summer time of 2016, whereas a lot of the nation was transfixed by the presidential race pitting Hillary Clinton towards Donald Trump, Congress established the US Semiquincentennial Fee, made up of personal residents, members of Congress, and federal officers. The fee was given the job of overseeing a nationwide 2026 initiative.
Its leaders took their time getting began, and Trump’s White Home supplied little steerage past the implicit admonishment to make American historical past nice once more. In Philadelphia, a gaggle of native boosters took issues into their very own arms. They referred to as themselves USA250, a reputation barely distinguishable from that of the federal fee, and got down to make the case for a “blockbuster competition.”
USA250 had no scarcity of bold, costly concepts. Starting in 2025, in keeping with one scheme, roving caravans would crisscross the nation, showcasing the very best of American historical past, artwork, meals, and music. In 2026, the caravans would converge on Philadelphia. The price range that the organizers imagined was a symbolic $20.26 billion. Nonetheless, there have been not many takers for this type of effort, even in Philadelphia. The arrival of COVID in early 2020—and the worry of super-spreader occasions it engendered—dealt one other blow to the prospect of a giant in-person bash.
As for the federal fee, it swiftly descended right into a morass of costs and countercharges over course of, favoritism, hiring, gender discrimination, and price range selections. In June 2022, Meta pulled out of a $10 million sponsorship deal, reportedly owing to the fee’s “management dysfunction.” Across the similar time, a number of feminine executives give up the fee and filed swimsuit. They described a Gilded Age stage of “cronyism, self-dealing, mismanagement of funds, probably illegal contracting practices and wasteful spending”—to not point out intercourse discrimination and a poisonous work surroundings. Within the midst of the meltdown, the Biden White Home stepped in to nominate Rosie Rios as the brand new fee chair. By then, the clock was all the way down to lower than 4 years.
One of many federal fee’s signature initiatives, America’s Tales, is radically decentralized—much less a top-down grasp plan than a nationwide Instagram feed. Its web site encourages People to ship in private reflections in regards to the nation’s previous, current, and future within the type of songs, poems, private essays, images, audio recordings, and movies. The acknowledged purpose is to create “essentially the most inclusive commemoration in our historical past,” one wherein “no story is just too small” to matter. Rios views the emphasis on social media, in addition to on range of expertise, as a approach to appeal to constituencies that may in any other case look elsewhere—notably younger individuals, who typically appear to assume that the previous has little to supply.
R. Scott Stephenson, the CEO of Philadelphia’s Museum of the American Revolution, describes the federal technique as a “StoryCorps mannequin” of historic commemoration. He worries that such a decentralized method received’t rise to the second. “If it’s nearly everyone telling their story,” he asks, what’s to deliver everyone collectively? His considerations are echoed by many within the public-history sphere. In the intervening time, although, virtually no one sees any prospect for a single massive in-person celebration harking back to the extravaganzas of the previous.
Nobody, that’s, apart from Donald Trump. Alone amongst main political figures, Trump has seized the early momentum to supply a grand, centralized semiquincentennial imaginative and prescient. In Could 2023, he launched a marketing campaign video introducing the concept of a Salute to America 250, the “most spectacular birthday celebration” the nation has ever identified. Although billed as a severe celebration of the world’s oldest democracy, the plan comprises no scarcity of reality-TV touches. One proposal is a Patriot Video games, wherein high-school athletes can be pitted towards each other in interstate Olympics-style competitors. One other is the Nationwide Backyard of American Heroes, a long-standing pet venture wherein Trump hopes to pick “the best People of all time” to be honored in a Washington statuary park. The centerpiece of the celebration can be the Nice American State Truthful, an 1876 expo-style gathering to be held in Iowa. “It’ll be one thing!” he promised.
The video’s launch produced loads of crucial commentary from MAGA skeptics. However, to paraphrase Trump, the Nice American State Truthful would not less than be one thing: a targeted, nationwide, in-person commemoration with a transparent message about the place the nation has been and the place it’s going. No matter its different virtues could also be, the individualized, localized, “invitation” method evades any such nation-defining mission.
The issue is, many People don’t know what they’d be celebrating. On the left, rejecting conventional patriotism has change into de rigueur: by kneeling for the nationwide anthem, dismissing the Founders as enslavers, and expressing unease on the prospect of flying an American flag. Seeing left or liberal activists deploying the pictures and concepts of the revolution for their very own functions is way much less widespread than it was. One consequence could also be that many individuals who care a few crucial, nuanced view of the American previous will merely decide out of 2026. If that occurs, who will likely be left in control of defining what founding-era beliefs similar to “independence,” “revolution,” “We the Folks,” and “the overall Welfare” are alleged to imply within the twenty first century?
The duty of figuring out a usable previous is in fact a lot simpler for Trump and his MAGA coalition than for individuals who search a real reckoning with the nation’s historical past of injustice. Trump has a transparent view and a easy message: that solely sure individuals depend, that the previous was higher than the current, and that U.S. historical past was a story of triumph till roughly the Nineteen Sixties.
Trump’s views are embodied within the work of a gaggle referred to as the 1776 Fee, appointed close to the top of his presidency. Its creation (and identify) was partly a response to The New York Instances Journal’s 1619 Challenge, with its emphasis on slavery and the Black expertise. It was additionally a bid to place the Trump stamp on the founding legacy. “As we method the 250th anniversary of our independence, we should resolve to show future generations of People an correct historical past of our nation in order that all of us study and cherish our founding ideas as soon as once more,” the fee’s report acknowledged—on the similar time selling its personal exclusionary and distorted imaginative and prescient of the previous, one wherein the Founders would clearly have opposed progressive social coverage, affirmative motion, and all types of identification politics.
Professional historians have scorned The 1776 Report as right-wing propaganda reasonably than something resembling precise historical past. However students have typically hesitated to supply an alternate nationwide narrative as an alternative. By and enormous, they don’t view themselves as being within the enterprise of nationalism or patriotism; their mission is usually to inform the reality as they see it. Inside academia, the nation-state is itself typically seen as a suspect type of social group and energy with a doubtful monitor report.
However on this second of democratic disaster—and democratic chance—there’s something dissatisfying about sidestepping the problem of 2026, with its implicit name to create a usable however considerate nationwide narrative. Throughout Trump’s time period in workplace, the historian Jill Lepore chastised fellow lecturers for abandoning the venture of a nationwide story simply when it was wanted most. “Writing nationwide historical past creates loads of issues,” she argued. “However not writing nationwide historical past creates extra issues, and people issues are worse.”
Developing with an sincere however coherent imaginative and prescient for 2026 is a real problem. For the previous 60 years, a lot of American historic scholarship has been about exposing a darker story behind self-congratulatory myths. As a believer in that effort, I’ve lengthy shared the left’s ambivalence about patriotic symbols: the flag, the Founders, the nationwide anthem, the Fourth of July. As we speak, although, I really feel an urgency to reclaim and redefine all these items, lest they be ceded to these darker forces historians like to put in writing about.
The actual fact is, People have a fairly good origin story, as such issues go: centrally, a revolution on behalf of human equality, regardless of all of its flaws and blind spots and limits. “With regards to equality,” the political theorist Danielle Allen has argued, “no extra vital sentence has ever been written” than Jefferson’s assertion that “all males are created equal.” For its second—and even for ours—it was a daring and revolutionary assertion.
Actions for equality, racial justice, and human rights have lengthy taken benefit of that legacy. The abolitionists of the 1830s invented the Liberty Bell as an emblem of human freedom, seeing in its inscription to “proclaim liberty all through all of the land” a helpful hyperlink to each the previous and the longer term. The labor radicals of the late nineteenth century claimed Jefferson and Thomas Paine together with Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Discovering a stake within the American story has all the time been tougher for these intentionally excluded from the Declaration’s imaginative and prescient: girls and sexual minorities, Black communities, Indigenous nations. In 1852, Frederick Douglass delivered his well-known tackle asking “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” His reply was that it marked a day of mourning, not celebration. Nonetheless, Douglass seized the second to stress white residents to stay as much as their “saving ideas,” noting that the Founding Fathers understood that “there’s all the time a treatment for oppression,” even when they didn’t observe that perception to its logical conclusion.
What we’re witnessing now, with respect to America’s 250th, is thus an odd flip of occasions. To various levels, abolitionists, suffragists, labor leaders, and civil-rights activists have been keen and capable of harness America’s mythic rhetoric and acknowledged ideas to advance their causes. They embraced and invented cherished nationwide symbols. And but at the moment, many who profess to imagine in human equality and social justice appear to have little use for the American origin story and its most venerable phrases and figures.
Why not reclaim them? The American revolution was, in any case, a revolution—not in each respect the one you or I may need needed, however an infinite stride towards equality. And revolution itself is an inherently malleable idea, made to be renewed and redefined with every technology. One needn’t put on a tricorne hat or fly the celebrities and stripes with the intention to have a good time the unlikely second when a gaggle of personal residents organized, dreamed massive, and defeated the world’s strongest empire.
Although, now that I consider it, why not put on the hat and fly the flag? Regardless of at the moment’s political optics, neither one truly belongs to the devotees of MAGA rallies. Maybe these on the left can not less than seize the second to open up the dialog over what, if something, actually makes America nice—and to show some precise historical past. In the event that they don’t, the which means of 2026—and of American patriotism—will likely be determined for them.
