Ben Franklin Warned Us

America should celebrate its 250th and leverage our built-in mechanics for fixing this

Credit: amrothman on Pixabay

Two hundred fifty years ago today, our founders staked everything on one idea. Ordinary people could govern themselves. This week, a congressional oversight report laid out what happened to the party the country had been planning to honor those ideals. Our national birthday was captured, walled off from public view, and offered for sale. That is a hard sentence to write on Independence Day. It should be a hard one to read.

Benjamin Franklin saw this coming. He was too frail to deliver his own closing speech at the Constitutional Convention on September 17, 1787. James Wilson read it for him. The new government, Franklin predicted, “is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in Despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other.” Notice what he feared. Not a corrupt leader. Corrupt leaders come and go. He feared a corrupted people, because only a corrupted people would learn to shrug. Hold his words as you read on.

Follow the money

Freedom 250 LLC was registered in October 2025 inside the National Park Foundation. That is the charity Congress chartered to raise money for our national parks. Weeks later the White House made it the lead vehicle for the 250th. But back in 2016, Congress had already created a bipartisan commission called America250 to run this party. It wrote disclosure rules for it which is probably why we ended up with a private LLC tucked inside a charity. Now, money flows in, and connected insiders get rich off you celebrating American ideals. This structure shields who gave the money, how much they gave, or what they were promised in return.

Some promises surfaced organically. Sponsorship packages ran from $500,000 to more than $10 million. The top tiers included a speaking slot at the July Fourth event, a private reception, and a photo with the President. The foundation confirmed cash gifts from Lockheed Martin, ExxonMobil, Northrop Grumman, John Deere, Mastercard, UnitedHealth Group, and Chevron, among others. Many sponsors hold federal contracts or await federal decisions while they give. They gave for those reasons, not to celebrate our founding principles

The most serious claim involves potential wire fraud. According to sources cited in the report, donors who meant to give to America250 were handed Freedom 250’s routing and account numbers instead. Their gifts flowed to the newer entity without their knowledge. If true, the report states, that conduct could amount to wire fraud. A felony. Freedom 250 calls the claims categorically false. It also states that every major sponsor got paperwork naming Freedom 250 before any money moved. You can weigh both accounts for yourself, but obfuscation seems to have been the point

Congress set aside $150 million for the 250th. The commission Congress chartered has received $25 million of it. Federal grant records show at least $68.3 million moving from the Interior Department to the National Park Foundation. The foundation passes funds along to Freedom 250. A $10 million museum grant was transferred away from the commission to finance Freedom 250’s mobile exhibits. Then there is the event firm whose former leader handled logistics for the January 6th insurrection. That firm has collected roughly $40 million in federal awards since the start of 2025. It also holds a master contract worth up to $100 million that runs to 2030.

Then came June 14. A fight ring rose on the South Lawn for a UFC event held on the President’s birthday. You got in with a personal invitation or a $1.5 million partner package. Fighters got bonuses in a stablecoin issued by a Trump family crypto venture. Weeks after the event was announced, the President bought between $15,000 and $150,000 of stock in UFC’s parent company.

The foundation says it created the LLC at the National Park Service’s request. Of course, the executive branch runs the National Park Service. Regardless, the administration directed the sponsorship tiers, the funding shortfall, the contracts, and the stock purchase sit in public records that nobody disputes.

The secrecy is a design choice, and design choices have authors.

Franklin’s remedy

Franklin buried the cure inside the warning. Despotism becomes possible only when a people grow so corrupted that they accept it. The corruption of a people is a habit, formed one shrug at a time.

But habits can be changed. We paid for this celebration. We own the lawn it was staged on. We hold every right to an accounting.

So act like an owner of this country — and not just citizens, but state governments. Yes, demand public hearings, the complete donor list, and a ledger of every federal dollar. Yes, the inspectors general at the Interior Department and the Institute of Museum and Library Services to audit these grants. But all of these crimes were state crime, not just federal. Wire fraud, donor fraud, embezzlement, etc. are all illegal at the state level, too. Freedom 250 LLC is domiciled in Washington DC and registered there as a nonprofit. Thus, it must comply with nonprofit laws in Washington DC. What could be more American than the District’s City Council wielding the wire brush and forcing transparency on this corrupt enterprise? The District of Columbia not only has the authority but the duty. A general failure to enforce laws is how America has found itself in its current state. If the District doesn’t enforce its laws, that will be just one more shrug

The money is still moving and the paper trail is still warm. The District could catch these companies feeding at the trough.

Waiting until the next federal elections means waiting two years, and that’s assuming the Democrats can make themselves sufficiently likable to win. This should not take a back seat to all those variables. Honoring America’s 250th means enforcing the law — and it be delicious irony if the District of Columbia would give the country a much-needed civics lesson on Federalism

Two hundred fifty years from now, Americans will read about this birthday. They will see either another shrug, or the year we noticed and took it back. I grieve that this is how our 250th will be remembered. I refuse to grieve for what comes next, because that part still belongs to us.