Today, Explained - America's birthday blues

Episode Date: June 9, 2026

America's 250th birthday party has gotten political. So did its last big one. This episode was produced by Kelli Wessinger and Hady Mawajdeh, edited by Jolie Myers, fact-checked by Gabriel Dunatov, engineered by David Tatasciore and Patrick Boyd, and hosted by Noel King. The Capitol and Lincoln Memorial near a video display showing "250" projected on the Washington Monument during an America250 kickoff celebration. Photo by Aaron Schwartz/Bloomberg via Getty Images. Listen to Today, Explained ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. New Vox members get $20 off their membership right now. Transcript at ⁠vox.com/today-explained-podcast.⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I heard there are going to be a record number of fireworks. Oh, okay. Everybody's excited about America 250 in Washington, D.C. Like a Guinness World Record number of fireworks. Producer Kelly Wessinger is excited. Lee Greenwood is excited. Because there ain't no doubt I love this land. Are you going to stick around for any of the events?

Oh, we're only here until Thursday. Leaving on Thursday is excited. Admittedly, it's gotten a little messy. The concerts of flop. A judge might stop the UFC. fight. The fireworks should be good. Which I'm excited about because I love fireworks. Good for you. Like a lot. Yeah. The country's

divided. The protests are planned. The locals are anxious. The president fell asleep at a Knicks game. It's summer in America. We are 250. And some years back, we were 200. And you know what? That one was a mess too. Today on Today Explained from Vox, happy birthday, Dear America. I didn't realize they had closed

it totally off. I thought the mall would still be open. But yes. Support for Today Explained comes from BetterHelp. BetterHelp wants you to enjoy the summer, not just slip into survival mode with those kids at home and those vacation plans coming at you fast and that routine stressing you out. Then summer is over and you're wishing you enjoyed the sunny days a little more. Wow, BetterHelp therapy can help you slow down and be present for the moments that matter with BetterHelp you can connect with a licensed therapist from

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You're listening to Today Explained. Ben Smith, I'm the editor-in-chief of Semaphore. Okay, President Trump has all kinds of plans for the 250th anniversary of America. Before we get to what the plans are specifically, you have read into and talked to a lot of people, what do you think President Trump is trying to say with this celebration? I think President Trump is trying to celebrate America as he sees it, which is not totally separate from celebrating himself. UFC is coming, as you know, in front of the White House with a building literally a stadium. We will host the great American state fair on the National Mall.

As far as birthday, as far as wishes, I want to just, you know, we have a phrase. I think it goes down. I would think in the history of our country, maybe the history of the world, is the greatest slogan or phrase ever, make America great again. That's all I want. The history of these big anniversaries in the United States, I would imagine that in the past, we've made a big deal out of these. In talking to people who are involved with these celebrations and with the planning,

Have they made a case to you that the spectacle is warranted? Do you believe that what President Trump is up to is justified? Well, I think most Americans think it's a good idea to celebrate big national anniversaries. So are you excited for the big birthday celebration? Yes, I am. Yes. And that's the reason why I brought my child here, my grandchild and my mom. I'm excited to celebrate our country.

I mean, it's an amazing country for all its fault. So I'm just excited. I mean, $250, that's pretty awesome. We're just happy to be in this country at this moment and that our family are enjoying this kind of event, which is 250 years of independence of this country, you know? In fact, there's a congressional body called the Semi-Sinquentennial Commission. Been around for years preparing to, you know,

to put up flags at football games and have a ball drop in Times Square and do kind of, you know, cheerfully generic. celebrations of America's 250th anniversary. The Trump administration thought that it was kind of sleepy. And in particular, I think the original points was it just didn't have the kind of flare for spectacle that Donald Trump likes. Like, they wanted more glam and more fireworks and more, you know, cage matches on the White House lawn. You know, we're building something in front of the White House.

It's quite attractive to a lot of people. It's going to have the big UFC fight on June 14th. And I'm looking at it and maybe what? I'll never ever take it down. But when I was talked to the people at these two essentially rival semi-sinquentennial committees, one the congressionally mandated one called America 250 and one, the White House one called Freedom 250, they are mostly staffed by people who were trying hard, at least for a while, to kind of get along and to not have the 250th birthday of America descend into the sort of partisan mayhem

that every other thing in America descends into. And then what happened? Are they competitive now? Are they still working together? Well, they've always been competitive and kind of eyeing each other with a bit of mutual alarm or disdain or rivalry or something. Because the Republicans control Congress and because Trump basically controls the Republican Party, two-thirds of the money Congress allocated went to the White House branch, not to the congressional branch. But the congressional bipartisan thing got $50 million to play with and raised a bunch of outside money. And so they were kind of grudgingly satisfied and, in fact, dropped. There had been a plan to explore darker elements of America's past, which when Trump won, they just dropped because the White House doesn't like doing that.

Ah, okay, okay. Let's talk about what some of the plans are. Much has been made of the concert series. Can you talk us through where that all began and where we are, you and I are talking late in the workday on Friday, where we are right now? So there was an idea that came out of the kind of White House-led arm that I think is kind of a fun idea of a great American state fair to have like the kind of spirit of state fairs, which are in fact genuinely kind of delightful American institutions on the mall in Washington. and as part of that there would be big concerts with beloved artists. And, you know, artists in general meant most of them have learned lessons about staying away from politics and like to stay away from politics. And Donald Trump is very unpopular right now, which I think has made it particularly hard for him to get any, you know, mainstream popular artists to appear.

And so what they wound up with was a lineup of kind of lesser artists of the 90s. in the early 2000s, C&C Music Factory, young MC of the great, I think it was a 1987 hit Bustamove, Vanilla Ice. Yo, VIP. Let's kick it.

I mean, honestly, like, I'm a child of the 80s. I would have enjoyed this. But certainly wasn't kind of, it was kind of an embarrassing lineup to begin with. And then when young MC realized that he had been, in his view, kind of snookered into doing the kind of pro-Trump version rather than the bipartisan version, he dropped out.

And it's actually like usually when you book an artist for something like this, you don't see this happen a lot because usually event organizers kind of run the traps on this. And before everybody signs the contract, they realize what they're signing on to. But these guys are also sensitive to social media and apparently did not want any kind of association with the White House or Donald Trump.

And so only vanilla ice is left and so he is trying to bring back the spirit of the 1990s, which I do actually involve a kind of like some degree of bipartisan comedy. So, you know, I think we can all appreciate vanilla ice. We can in fact all appreciate vanilla ice. All right. Stop. What else is, what else is planned? I know there's the UFC fight drawing a lot of attention. Any of the initial state fair elements? preserve? Do we get like a big ferris wheel? Yeah, I think there will be carnival elements. And actually, I'm not sure if they're going to be giant pigs and cows, but that's always a fun state fair feature. But mostly there's just going to be Donald Trump.

I mean, this is like it's the most sort of classic cycle of American politics where Trump says, I want to put on a big bipartisan spectacle, and it leans a little more partisan than even in the first place than Democrats and these artists are comfortable with and they drop out. And Trump says, well, fine. I'm just going to turn this into a hyper-partisan rally for myself. Yeah. And Democrats say, well, you were always going to do that anyway.

And he says, no, you forced me into it. And it's kind of like worse than doing nothing in the end, like in terms of, you know, the kind of goals of whatever the goals. If the goals were bringing Americans together to celebrate the birthday, it kind of winds up kind of like a negative sum game in which everybody loses. I do think the White House detects an opportunity to accuse Democrats of not being patriotic. enough and of, you know, selling out America's birthday celebration. I think some Democrats, like, are mildly worried that the party

will be somehow cast as unpatriotic. But I think as this thing continues to spiral, I think most Americans likely will just see it as the latest, you know, Washington hyper-partisan antics. This could have been fun. Let's be honest. I mean, it could still be fun.

It could still be fun. We don't know until you. Are you going to go? If I can, yeah. I live up in New York. off to make the trip down. I'm in D.C., I'm going to go. But I'm already predicting, I could be wrong, that the partisan nature of it will make it less fun than it could have been if we had all agreed to get along. Well, maybe less fun for you, more fun for others.

I mean, it's actually one of the features of Trump rallies that I think his opponents miss is that they're very fun for the people to go. That's a very good point. Trump rallies are fun for people who really like Donald Trump. Yeah, okay. So I was going to ask whether Donald Trump actually cares a ton of. about the people attending. And I think what I'm hearing you say is if they're his supporters, yeah, he does care that they have a good time.

Yeah, I think he wants to throw a big party for his supporters and not for the haters and losers. Last question. What do we know about the fireworks? I hear the biggest fireworks display in the history of the world. Is that accurate? Trump loves spectacle. Military parades. He's talking about building a massive triumphal arch.

Although, honestly, I'm not sure which triumph it intends to commemorate. And yeah, if he's going to have a fireworks show, it'll be the biggest firework show in history. You know, hide your dogs. Which I'm excited about because I love fireworks. Ben Smith of Semaphore. When we return. I remember the 200th. So I guess just, you know, who thought we'd make it to 250?

So let's see if we can make it to 300, right? Will we make it to 300? No one can say. But America in 1976, the bicentennial, you won't believe. what happened. Support for the show today comes from What Not, and they provided me a pronunciation key that says, What Not. That's how

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Upwork.com. M.J. Rimsha Pavlovska, teaches history at American University, wrote a book about the bicentennial. Let us dip back into the mists of time. It is 1976. America is a different country than it is today. What is the mood leading up to the 200-year bicentennial celebration? of USA. You know, it is not dissimilar as the mood now, and it's actually also not dissimilar as the mood in 1876. So we never have a uncomplicated national commemoration, it turns out. So in

1976, the president has just resigned under a cloud of scandal. All of this adds up to a totally unprecedented situation, a grave and profound crisis. in which the president has set himself against his own attorney general and the Department of Justice. Nothing like this has ever happened before. To leave office before my term is completed is abhorrent to every instinct in my body. A president who many people really, really disliked, who was accused of having an imperial presidency. I think the people are sick and tired of a war that never ends, which President Nixon has not ended. I think they're tired of a leadership that tells us one thing in public while following a different course in private.

We are coming out of a deeply unpopular war that had launched a lot of criticism and social movements. And also Americans have just been protesting for, you know, 10, 20 years. So we live in a world where, you know, there have been kind of very active social movements, but where things have also changed a great deal in a short period of time. So bicentennial planning started in 1966 when Lyndon Johnson was president. Lyndon Johnson formed the American Revolutionary Bicentennial Commission, which was the kind of national body that was charged with blending the bicentennial. So what Johnson really wanted to do is. is he wanted to have a commemoration that reflected his priorities for a domestic agenda, which was Great Society.

The Great Society asked not how much, but how good. Not only how to create wealth, but how to use it. Not only how fast we're going, but where we're headed. So he envisioned a commemoration where the federal government would pump tons of infrastructure and resources into American cities. And the way that he wanted to do this is he wanted to have an international exposition and several cities competed. Philadelphia finally won.

And the idea is that the bicentennial, the world's fair, would be a kind of model city. It would be a showcase for essentially all of Johnson's domestic programs. And then? And then Nixon came in in 1968 and he wanted to make it his own. thing. So Nixon also originally wanted a international exposition, a World's Fair, but unlike Johnson, he was less interested in using it as an opportunity to build infrastructure and more interested in using it as an opportunity to celebrate America and Richard Nixon. The first thing that I'll say is that he took the American Revolutionary Bicentennial Commission

And under Johnson, it had been a bipartisan, you know, non-political commission. Under Nixon, he stalked it with people from his own cabinet and also his political allies. So he put people in who shared his vision for the commemoration. But the thing that happened is, well, Nixon, even when Nixon came in, he was a contentious an unpopular president with a lot of people. He, you know, he had supporters, but he also had a lot of detractors. And, you know, the Vietnam War was intensifying. Immediately he tries to do this kind of very celebratory World's Fair. He gets a lot of pushback. What are they planning to celebrate? 200 years of prejudice and hate? We have nothing to celebrate. New York Times. New York Times.

Times, January 10th, 1971. So there's an organization called the People's Bicentennial Commission, which is kind of started by sort of like soft, new left people. They had a lot of support from like, you know, civics teachers and, you know, they had all these, yeah, they had all these protests. And their idea was basically like you should make, you know, the Bicentennial is a moment for reflection. The Bicentennial should not be a time for a grandiose display of chauvinism, but rather a time for the reaffirmation of the principles of democracy and equity for all, which serve as the foundation upon which this nation was built. Instead, the government group, whose members would have

been labeled Tories during the American Revolution, plans to have a jamboree for its corporate mogul friends and others that control the institutions that try to manipulate our lives. New York Times, February 9, 1973. Why don't we try to plan a bicentennial? that reflects the diversity of experience and the diversity of opinion across America. Oh, this is interesting. Okay, so one thing that I recall from being an American civilization major is that the 1970s were a time of, it was everybody's movement. It was like the civil rights movement. It was the women's rights movement.

It was the Native American rights movement. So when these groups were calling on Nixon to complexify the plan or to like not make. it so simple. Was it the same argument of like, yes, America's a great country, but it also has some problems and we need to acknowledge those? Yes, absolutely. Well, they were saying that a commemoration should be an opportunity to reflect and also to reflect on the past, the present, and the future of America. So, you know, for the American Indian movement, the thing that they said is like this is a colonial history. This is not a history of, you know, freedom, of expanded rights, at least not for us it is.

Who would want to participate in the 200th year of the rip-off of our country? If the government would say, okay, we'll honor your old treaties on water and fishing rights and we'll give back land that was stolen, that would give the Indians something to celebrate. New York Times, December 8, 1975. Okay, so here you have President Nixon wanting to do the simple patriotic Nixon-centric version, and you have all this pushback. And what ends up happening? The thing that's really exceptional and the biggest difference between the past,

1976, and what we're seeing now is that the Nixon administration listens. Huh. You know, part of the reason they listen is probably because they have a lot on their plate. You know, so this is, all this is going on more or less simultaneously with Watergate, you know. So at the beginning of the Nixon administration, they, you know, have a lot more time and energy to micromanage. the bicentennial. By the end, they are, you know, putting out lots of other fires. But the Nixon administration basically realizes that their vision for this kind of patriotic, celebratory, straightforward, bicentennial is not flying. And so they totally change course. The mission totally

changes. So Nixon gives the speech in early 1974 when he's announcing this new direction. And what he says is the bicentennial is not going to be invented in Washington, printed in triplicate by the government printing office, mailed to you by the U.S. Postal Service and filed away in your public library. Instead, we shall seek to trigger a chain reaction of tens of thousands of individual celebrations, large and small, planned in and carried out by citizens in every part of America. Wow. What does this tell us? So this is the bicentennial that we got, that, you had all of this grassroots energy of people really advocating for and planning their own

commemorative activity that was more reflective of their experience. And what they ended up doing is creating this new American Revolutionary Bicentennial Administration whose sole purpose was to disperse funding through the states to like really hyper-local, groups and even individuals who were planning bicentennial events and then to publicize those events. So the actual experience that most people had of the bicentennial were kind of really sort of local community-based grassroots, very seven, you know, a very 70s take on commemoration. This is very wholesome what you've just described, but it started out as a similar kind of politicized fury as what we're seeing now. It is absolutely.

You and I are speaking on June 8th. We got less than a month. Do you think there is any chance that this heavily politicized celebration that President Trump has planned could morph into something perhaps a bit more hands across the water? I think that in some ways it already is. As a public historian, as a fairly community-engaged person, I live in a world of kind of structures-created form. me by the Bicentennial, you know. So one thing that happened when the Bicentennial switched to kind of funding these small local projects is that a lot of small local projects and organizations were funded. And that capacity is still there, you know, like your local museum probably got a new exhibit.

Your library probably, you know, videotaped a bunch of people talking about what the commemoration means to them. So that, that ethos. is still there. And when I look at the kind of stuff that's happening here in Washington, the D.C., for example, and, you know, in other cities where people that I work with in the public history community are involved, I see a lot of, you know, really kind of great local projects. So here in D.C., the public library is doing an exhibit about Washingtonians' contributions to America. there's a great organization called Made by Us that do these kind of talkback walls

for Gen Z people to write about what, you know, to write down what they want to see for the next 250 years. So there's stuff. You just have to look for it. MJ Rimsha Pavlovka of American University. Her book is History Comes Alive. Kelly Wessinger and Hadi Moagdi produced Jolie Myers

edited today's show. Patrick Boyden, David Tadishore, are our engineers and Gabriel Dututov check the facts. I'm Nguil King. It's today explained. Support for this show comes from Fetch Pet Insurance. Do you have a pet? Every six seconds, a pet owner in the U.S. gets hit with a vet bill of over $1,000.

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