1. United States
2. Wash.
3. Letter

Investigate the Freedom 250 event and how it came to replace the legitimate, congressionally authorized America 250 commission. Congress created America 250 in 2016 as a bipartisan body to coordinate the nation's 250th anniversary celebrations. Trump sidelined that commission and substituted a for-profit, partisan event on the National Mall. That is not a scheduling change — that is the conversion of a public commemoration into a private revenue stream. The event itself was a fiasco: power outages shut down the Ferris wheel for roughly two hours, electrical failures melted the food, booths sat empty, and most musical acts pulled out after learning the event was a MAGA production. This follows the same pattern as Trump's military parade, which cost taxpayers $45 million and drew a fraction of the promised crowd. Someone profited from both. The public deserves to know who, how much, and whether federal resources or permits were leveraged to make it happen. Open a formal inquiry into how Freedom 250 was funded, who received the proceeds, and what role, if any, federal agencies played in displacing the America 250 commission. The American people paid for that Mall. They are owed an accounting.