#america250 — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #america250, aggregated by home.social.
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Join us LIVE tomorrow, May 15 at 11am CET with Abroad & Informed! Streaming live on Substack, Youtube, and Facebook. Looking forward to some great conversation with our special guests this week. See you then!
#democratsabroad #votefromabroad #abroadandinformed #gerrymandering #america250
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From Karen Elizabeth Park's "Ex Voto" newsletter comes a story both entirely believable and incredible about the Freedom250.org website (which seems coordinated with, but not hosted by, the Trump federal government): it uses fake quotes from fake people, apparently generated with #AI.
And bonus: although all major founding-era figures OF COURSE had their portraits painted, many several times, the site uses #AISlop for its founders' gallery.
Plus warmed-over nineteenth-century mythmaking masquerading as #history. What's not to hate?
"Freedom 250 is not only a slanted Hillsdale College account of history. It involves fake Americans spouting fake American dream stories in an attempt to digitally construct a coherent Christian Nationalist America. At Freedom250, AI-generated founders meet name-generated fake American citizens, all of them spouting the same false narratives about the US."
https://karenelizabethpark.substack.com/p/the-fake-americans-of-freedom-250
#Freedom250 #ChristianNationalism #GenAI
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USPS and Ralph Lauren celebrate America’s 250th birthday with patriotic American Icons stamps
https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://nerds.xyz/2026/05/usps-ralph-lauren-american-icons-stamps/
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USPS and Ralph Lauren celebrate America’s 250th birthday with patriotic American Icons stamps
https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://nerds.xyz/2026/05/usps-ralph-lauren-american-icons-stamps/
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https://www.europesays.com/iran/100426/ Powerful steam locomotive to make semiquincentennial stop in Lebanon #America250 #FeaturedSecondary #Lebanon
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Google Blog: Celebrating America’s 250th on Google Arts & Culture. “As the United States prepares to celebrate its 250th anniversary, we are announcing a unique collaboration between the White House Task Force 250, the National Archives, the National Park Service and Google Arts & Culture…. With the launch of Making of the Nation – America at 250, we are surfacing the archives of our […]
https://rbfirehose.com/2026/05/05/google-blog-celebrating-americas-250th-on-google-arts-culture/ -
Since returning to office, Donald Trump has aggressively plastered his name, likeness and signature across a series of US government buildings and documents. In the latest on this list, the US State Department announced that to mark the USA’s 250th birthday, it was unveiling a limited-edition “patriot passport” featuring Trump’s portrait. Vedika Bahl goes through what we know in Truth or Fake.
#Trump #America250 #passport -
Hegseth, Barron, evangelical leaders to join Trump event rededicating America to God
WASHINGTON (RNS) — A slate of political, military and religious leaders are scheduled to participate in a major…
#UnitedStates #US #USA #AMERICA250 #America250thanniversary #christiannationalism #Død #EricMetaxas #FranklinGraham #Freedom250 #JentezenFranklin #JonathanFalwell #pentagon #petehegseth #Rededicate250 #SecretaryofDefense #US250
https://www.europesays.com/2937465/ -
https://www.europesays.com/people/37845/ Hegseth, Barron, evangelical leaders to join Trump event rededicating America to God #America250 #America250thAnniversary #ChristianNationalism #EricMetaxas #FranklinGraham #Freedom250 #JentezenFranklin #JonathanFalwell #PeteHegseth #Rededicate250 #US250
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https://www.europesays.com/people/30124/ America 250: Nixon’s other legacy — the safeguards we take for granted #America250 #America250:FederalWorkforce #CleanAirAct #osha #POTUS #PresidentOfTheUnitedStates #RichardNixon
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Bok Tower Gardens part of ‘Road Trip Florida’ https://www.allforgardening.com/1676695/bok-tower-gardens-part-of-road-trip-florida/ #America250 #APPTraffic&Transit #florida #garden #gardening #GettingThere #news #orlando #PolkCounty #tampa #TimWronka #traffic #vod
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“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”*…
As the U.S. prepares to celebrate its 250th birthday, Dan Friedman and Amanda Moore unpack the ways in which in Trump administration is working to control the country’s future by bulldozing its past. They open with a recounting of the marking of the 250th birthday of the Army (and of Donald Trump’s birthday) last June: several thousand came to watch the military parade; an estimated 5 million Americans held counter-protests…
… spectators had lined up for hours to get inside the security perimeter. Uniformed troops were handing out free bottles of Phorm Energy—a beverage launched nationally the month before by Anheuser-Busch and Dana White, a vocal Trump supporter who runs the Ultimate Fighting Championship. Phorm, which bills itself as the “ultimate energy drink,” is an official sponsor of America250, a government-funded nonprofit organizing a series of celebrations for the country’s 250th birthday, culminating on July 4 this year. When asked, a soldier explained he had been ordered to hand out the samples—despite Defense Department rules that bar the military from endorsing “a particular company, product, service, or website.” The Pentagon didn’t answer questions about this apparent violation…
But the parade was simply a warm-up…
… So it goes with the Trump administration’s approach to the country’s semiquincentennial. Congress is expected to allocate some $150 million for the festivities, but that’s not enough to fulfill Trump’s vision. So corporations with links to the president or his inner circle—UFC, Palantir, Oracle, Amazon, Coinbase—have signed on as sponsors, pouring in millions of dollars alongside companies like Chrysler, Coca-Cola, and General Mills…
… America250 and the White House insist they are planning nonpartisan festivities for all Americans, rather than creating a slush fund to throw the president militarized birthday parties and advance hard-right ideology. But in reality, American history is being subordinated to Trump’s cult of personality. The president’s face is suddenly everywhere—next to George Washington on America250-themed National Parks passes; alongside Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt on giant banners hanging from federal buildings; on a $1 coin under consideration by the US Treasury.
Faced with sporadic pushback from a congressional commission overseeing America250 and from career officials at various agencies, Trump is now seeking to evade even these modest constraints. In December, he launched a new organization, Freedom 250, that could implement his most outlandish anniversary events without the inconvenience of legislative oversight or mandatory bipartisanship. For the president’s 80th birthday this year, Freedom 250 will help organize a UFC fight on the White House lawn.
The semiquincentennial is just one part of the commander in chief’s broader campaign to harness the mechanisms of the federal government to enforce his preferred version of the nation’s history and culture—a Trumpified presentation of America’s past and present. On the fifth anniversary of the January 6 insurrection, the administration even rolled out a taxpayer-funded webpage seeking to recast the day’s events as a patriotic effort to protest “the fraudulent election.” Three weeks later, Trump’s FBI seized hundreds of thousands of 2020 ballots and other election material from Georgia’s largest county. “TRUMP WON BIG,” the president declared the next morning. “Crooked Election!”
Since his inauguration last year, Trump has taken personal control of the Kennedy Center—reshaping its artistic programming, installing a MAGA-dominated board that claims to have renamed it in his honor, and then closing it for renovations. He’s railed against “OUT OF CONTROL” museums that he insists are too focused on “how bad Slavery was.” He has successfully pressured the Smithsonian Institution to review displays to ensure “unbiased content” and has extracted significant concessions over what top universities teach students. At his direction, the National Park Service has altered or removed scores of exhibits at parks and historic sites on topics including slavery, Native Americans, climate change, and even fossils. Trump acolytes are also leveraging federal dollars to stop local librarians and educators from sharing content they dislike.
Under the pretense of stamping out “woke” ideas and promoting patriotism, the White House is attempting to mandate uncritical acceptance of its own take on the American story, one that celebrates the martial feats of mostly white men and an imagined religious and ideological conformity that minimizes the fights, tribulations, and dissenters who have defined the country. It’s an effort that flies in the face of American ideals—and reality.
“In a pluralist democracy, there are invariably conflicts of values,” says Alexander Karn, a Colgate University historian who has written about the 250th anniversary. “To deny that messiness by seeking to erase the perspectives that don’t flatter a dominant group or help create a triumphal history is anti-egalitarian and, therefore, anti-democratic.”
Instead, Karn argues, “the road to a ‘more perfect Union,’ which is enshrined in the Constitution, runs through the past, and it depends on our willingness to confront our history in an honest and thoroughgoing way.”
Which is not the road we’re on…
[Friedman and Moore supply much more detail on the revisionist (in some case, “suppressionist”) efforts underway, and their relationship to the MAGA agenda. They conclude…]
…Rallies that celebrate a simplified, sanctified historical narrative have long been a favorite tool of autocrats. “Dictators brook no opposition, and this extends to the past,” says Karn, the Colgate historian. “When a dictator is intent on creating or sustaining a hierarchical social order, he will see to it that history abides.”
The military parade through Washington four days later proved to be a clumsy prelude for Trump’s very real efforts to deploy troops, along with heavily armed federal agents, on the streets of even more cities—often against the wishes of local officials. To justify sending the National Guard to Portland, the president made false claims about widespread violence, perhaps because Fox News repeatedly re-aired violent footage from 2020 as though it were part of the 2025 anti-ICE protests.
Since August, the Labor Department’s DC headquarters has displayed an America250-branded banner with a Mao-style image of Trump above the words “American Workers First.” The spectacle drew attention when National Guard members deployed by Trump were photographed beneath it—an image that captures the authoritarian ethos of his second term.
The troops, supposedly dispatched to Washington to fight crime, are now staying on in connection with the semiquincentennial. In an October court filing, the DC attorney general revealed that Guard leaders were planning for a prolonged deployment. “We know that America250 occurs this summer, and that will be a factor in determining the future of the mission,” a Guard commanding general wrote in an email included in the filing. In January, Trump officially extended the DC operation through the end of 2026, even as he bowed to court rulings blocking him from unleashing the armed forces on other parts of the country.
That Trump’s enthusiasm for the domestic use of troops is merging with America’s 250th festivities is almost too easy a metaphor. To celebrate the anniversary of a war sparked in part by the quartering of soldiers in US cities, the administration is lengthening a military occupation vehemently opposed by the local population.
A quarter-millennium later, amid “No Kings” protests and an unprecedented executive power grab, the arguments against tyranny that inspired American independence are alive and pressing. It seems worth asking whether America250 will celebrate the ideals of the country’s founders—or those of the monarch they rebelled against…
Eminently worth reading in full: “Trump’s War on History,” from @dfriedman.bsky.social and @noturtlesoup17.bsky.social in @motherjones.com.
* George Orwell, 1984
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As we face the past, we might send heliocentric birthday greetings to Galileo Galilei, the physicist, philosopher, and pioneering astronomer; he was born on this date in 1564. Galileo (whom, readers will recall, had his share of trouble with authorities displeased with his challenge to Aristotelean cosmology), died insisting “still, it [the Earth] moves.”
Draft of Galileo’s letter to Leonardo Donato, Doge of Venice, in which he first recorded the movement of the moons of Jupiter– an observation that upset the notion that all celestial bodies must revolve around the Earth. (source)
#America250 #astronomy #culture #Galileo #GalileoGalilei #heliocentricity #history #philosophy #politics #revisionism #Science #semiquincentennial #society #Trump -
Enlistment form for Abraham Jassum, Undercook, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers, 5 October 1862, p. 1 (Compiled Military Service Records, U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, public domain; click to enlarge).
Fleeing the brutal practice of chattel slavery in South Carolina during the fall of 1862, a Black youth walked into a recruiting station for the Army of the United States in Beaufort, South Carolina and told an officer there that he wanted to become a soldier. His name, according to his enlistment paperwork, was Abraham Jassum, and he was just sixteen years old.
Sadly, much of that teenager’s life has remained a mystery that has stubbornly resisted unraveling–until now. Thanks to documents recently copied by the U.S. National Archives for 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers: One Civil War Regiment’s Story, researchers now know that Abraham Jassum was born into slavery in Charleston, South Carolina sometime around 1846.
Although specific details about what happened to this teenager between the dates of his birth and army enlistment have not yet been found, researchers do already have several ideas. One theory is that Abraham’s surname was not actually “Jassum” because that surname does not appear to have been present on any federal census records for any plantation owners or other enslavers in South Carolina between 1840 and 1860, nor was it used for any Black Freedmen in South Carolina on federal census records that were completed after the American Civil War. Furthermore, there appear to be no U.S. Civil War Pension records that exist for any soldier with the surname of “Jassum.”
Another theory is that, by the time that Abraham reached the age of sixteen, he had been transported to Beaufort to be used as an enslaved laborer there (or was “sold as property” by his enslaver in Charleston to a plantation owner or other enslaver near Beaufort), and that he was freed by Union soldiers when Beaufort was occupied by the Union Army.
Fortunately, the Compiled Military Service Records (CMSR) file for Abraham Jassum does contain important details about his life between October 1862 and October 1865.
Bay Street Looking West, Beaufort, South Carolina, circa 1862 (Sam A. Cooley, 10th Army Corps, photographer, public domain).
What is known for certain is that he enlisted for military service on October 5, 1862 as an “undercook“–a designation that was first authorized for use by regiments serving with the Army of the United States by the U.S. War Department. Examined and certified as fit for duty by William F. Reiber, M.D., an assistant regimental surgeon with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, Abraham Jassum was then assigned to the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers’ F Company.
Military records at the time of his enlistment noted that he was five feet, six inches tall and had black hair, black eyes and a black complexion. Muster sheets subsequently described him as a “Negro.”
During his three-year term of enlistment, he traveled with the 47th Pennsylvania to its battle, garrison, occupation, and other duty assignments in Florida, Louisiana, Virginia, Washington D.C., and South Carolina. While stationed with his regiment in Louisiana, he was documented as having been officially mustered into the regiment in June 1864, along with the other Black soldiers of the 47th Pennsylvania.
Additional military records of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry confirm Abraham Jassum’s service in 1864 and 1865, describing him as a “cook” or as a “private,” which appears to indicate that he may have been promoted at some point prior to his honorable discharge.
Issued his honorable discharge paperwork on October 4, 1865, while his regiment was assigned to Reconstruction-related duties in Charleston, South Carolina, he was given a small travel allowance to enable him to return to his place of enlistment (Beaufort, South Carolina), which seems to indicate that he chose to settle in Beaufort, at least initially, rather than remaining in the city where he had been born (Charleston), and instead of relocating north with his former regiment when it returned to Pennsylvania.
Researchers will continue to search for records that can shed more light on what happened to Abraham Jassum after the war, and will post updates if and when new data is uncovered.
Sources:
- Bates, Samuel P. History of Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861-5, vol. 1. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: B. Singerly, State Printer, 1869.
- Jassum, Abraham, in Civil War Veterans’ Card File, 1861-1866 (Company F, 47th Pennsylvania Infantry). Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State Archives.
- Jassum, Abraham, Civil War Muster Rolls (Company F, 47th Pennsylvania Infantry). Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State Archives.
- Jassum, Abraham, in Compiled Military Service Records (Company F, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry). Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
- Jassum, Abraham, in Registers of Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861-1865 (Company F, 47th Pennsylvania Infantry), in Records of the Department of Military and Veterans’ Affairs (RG-19). Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State Archives.
- Schmidt, Lewis. A Civil War History of the 47th Regiment of Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers. Allentown, Pennsylvania: Self-published, 1986.
#47thPennsylvania #47thPennsylvaniaInfantry #47thPennsylvaniaRegiment #47thPennsylvaniaVolunteers #47thRegimentPennsylvania #America #America250 #AmericanCivilWar #AmericanHistory #Army #Beaufort #BlackHistory #BlackHistoryMonth #BlackSoldiers #Charleston #CommonwealthOfPennsylvania #FloridaAndSouthCarolina #PennsylvaniaHistory #PennsylvaniaInTheCivilWar #Slavery #Slaves #SouthCarolina #TheUnionArmy #USMilitaryAndTheUnionArmy #UnderCooks #Undercooks #UnionArmy