Category: News

For all the power he has flexed over the past year and a half, President Donald Trump could not control the scorching, dangerous, record-shattering weather in the nation’s capital for the 250th anniversary of America’s independence, or the lightning strikes in the distance that prompted officials to evacuate the National Mall ahead of his planned speech.

But nearly every other aspect of the celebration in Washington bore Trump’s imprint, as decisions he made transformed an official commemoration of American history into another polarizing moment in American politics.

After a chaotic scene unfolded early Saturday evening, with Secret Service officials forcing defiant Trump supporters to flee the president’s Salute to America event as severe weather loomed, Trump told them all to come back. The show would go on.

His supporters, wearing gear bearing his name and slogans, trekked back to stand in security lines again in the rain.

“I said, ‘There’s no way — if we have to speak in front of one person at 4 o’clock in the morning, I’m going to be here,’” Trump declared when the rain had stopped and he began speaking after 11 p.m. to a crowd half the size of what it had been earlier. “There’s no way we can be deterred.”

“This is an evening for the ages. I believe this is something very special,” Trump said into the night, describing the attendees’ perseverance and late-hour return as “bigger than if we didn’t have the lightning blaring.”

“But this is bigger. A little more inconvenient, but it’s bigger. I think, in its own way, it’s more beautiful.”

It was but the latest twist in a national celebration that Trump defined in his terms — and for which the president has called the shots.

Ever the showman, Trump throughout his speech brought notable Americans out onto the stage with him — war veterans as old as 107 who saluted from wheelchairs, astronauts from the Artemis II and Apollo 17 missions, and families of soldiers killed in battle.

He praised the “unstoppable spirit that created the world’s most powerful industries and built the strongest military anyone had ever seen‘” but also reprised his political grievances.

Trump joked that he was serving his third term as president, a reference to his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. He prompted cheers from his supporters as he touted his bill to assert federal control over election rules — legislation that Senate Republican leaders have repeatedly told him won’t pass as it is currently written. And he lobbed several verbal attacks at “communists,” his label for the democratic socialists who have won several recent Democratic primary elections.

Before Saturday night’s rally, Trump didn’t pretend that the celebrations would be anything other than his usual unapologetic rhetoric.

“Has anyone ever seen a Happy Dumocrat?” the president wrote of his opposing political party on social media on Saturday morning, his first Fourth of July greeting of the day. Weeks earlier, Trump had abruptly announced that he would also serve as the headlining act of a rally kicking off the two-week Great American State Fair on the National Mall, calling himself “the Number One Attraction anywhere in the World, the man who gets much larger audiences than Elvis in his prime.”

“Only Great Patriots invited” Trump wrote of the launch of a fair that was, in theory, open to all, later billing the kickoff to the 250th anniversary festivities as a “Trump rally.”

Milestone anniversaries like the semiquincentennial present rare moments of shared civic ritual, occasions when presidents are widely expected to place themselves within the sweep of the American story, rather than at the center of it. This year’s celebration, instead, reflected both Trump’s vision of America, and America’s divisions over Trump.

The decision to have Trump speak late Saturday also reshaped a long-standing July Fourth tradition. Security restrictions prevented attendees from bringing coolers or arriving throughout the evening, and the speech was already set to delay the fireworks until after 10:30 p.m.

The pyrotechnics finally began moments before midnight, with Trump remaining in a climate-controlled box at the National Mall to watch. The massive show set a record, organizers said.

As Americans sweltered through a dangerous heat wave, with Washington’s heat indexes reaching 115 degrees, Trump had warned that he planned to “make a really long speech … just to show that I can do anything.” Organizers instructed those attending not to arrive too early to limit their time outside.

In the end, the late-night speech was about 35 minutes long.

The National Mall fair itself, long touted as a showcase for American greatness and national unity, instead became a Rorschach test. Trump supporters praised the patriotic atmosphere and military flyovers.

His critics, meanwhile, pointed to images of sparse crowds, a mock-up of Trump’s proposed triumphal arch on the grounds, and administration officials touting their accomplishments as evidence that the president’s personal involvement had undercut what might otherwise have been a broader civic celebration.

With just months to spare before the occasion, Trump had pushed aside America 250, the long-standing bipartisan commission tasked a decade ago with planning anniversary festivities, replacing it with his own group of political allies, Freedom 250. His advisers argued the move was necessary because the commission had become bogged down by bureaucracy.

But as Trump’s chosen planning organization became increasingly seen as a partisan entity, vendors and performers alike ultimately pulled out of the fair, which has struggled to draw large crowds for much of its first week.

Besides supplanting the bipartisan commission, Trump has increasingly put his imprint on other aspects of this year’s commemoration. His face appears on a commemorative gold coin marking the anniversary and on limited-edition “patriot passports.” Administration officials have pushed for a $250 bill bearing his portrait, and Trump this week posted an image of a $100 bill featuring his autograph — marking the first time a sitting president’s signature has been featured on U.S. currency.

As he has throughout the anniversary celebration, Trump cast himself as central to the story he wants the country to tell about itself: that America was diminished before him, revived by him, and is now celebrating its founding through his restoration — a promised “Golden Age.” At Mount Rushmore on Friday night, he told the crowd that he “saved, almost single-handedly,” the Second Amendment and that he was going to “give our country its identity back.”

“We never had the American Dream, however, like we have it right now,” Trump said Saturday on the National Mall. “The American Dream is back. Very strong. Beautiful.”

Republican President Gerald Ford took a different approach during the nation’s bicentennial celebration in 1976, even as he was running for reelection in the aftermath of Watergate and the Vietnam War. In his remarks, Ford made no mention of the campaign, the Democratic front-runner Jimmy Carter, or his GOP primary challenger, Ronald Reagan.

Ford’s only reference to electoral politics came as a broader reflection on self-determination: “This November the American people will, under the Constitution, again give their consent to be governed,” he said, outside Independence Hall in Philadelphia. “This free and secret act should be a reaffirmation by every eligible American of the mutual pledges made 200 years ago by John Hancock and the others whose untrembling signatures we can still make out.”

But comparisons with past presidents are complicated by the fact that patriotism itself has become more polarized, said Tevi Troy, a presidential historian and senior fellow at the Reagan Institute.

“There’s a feeling out there that Republicans are more patriotic than Democrats, or that the patriotism gap can differ depending on which party is in the White House,” Troy said. “While Trump does things in terms of partisanship that you can safely say are unprecedented, he is also president in a more divided time.”

A recent Gallup poll found that national pride has fallen to its lowest point since the organization began asking in 2001 how proud respondents were to be an American. Just 33% reported being “extremely proud,” down eight percentage points from a year ago and 37 points since a high in 2003. The partisan gap there is wide, with Republicans reporting much higher American pride while Democrats and independents have hit record lows for their respective groups, Gallup found.

John Pitney, a former national Republican official who now teaches political science at Claremont McKenna College, said Trump is diverging from the tradition of presidents who have used moments of national triumph and tragedy to speak as Americans first, not as partisans.

“I remember Reagan at Normandy in 1984 — the 40th anniversary of D-Day, surrounded by people who were veterans of that war,” Pitney said. “There is a reason why that speech is still remembered. It wasn’t about him.”

As wildfires rip across the parched American West, federal firefighters say they are facing immense pressure and grappling with a shortage of resources that has worsened following the Trump administration’s staffing cuts.

A collision of risky conditions have made things harder as the summer gets underway: a warm, dry winter; prolonged drought; snowless mountains; thick fuels that have had time to cure — elements that have set the stage for what could be a hellish fire year. The scenario started rearing its head in March and intensified over the last few weeks, with about 50 large fires now burning across the United States, and Utah and Colorado experiencing particularly large or destructive blazes.

Before these factors aligned, strain on federal firefighting capacity had been building for years, leaving many feeling short-strapped and exhausted as they respond to prolonged and erratic fires, according to interviews with 26 current wildland firefighters, state officials, experts, and former federal officials.

In interviews, emails, and message exchanges with the Washington Post this week, 15 federal firefighters said that what goes on behind the scenes can be more challenging than the blazes themselves. They spoke of organizational gaps across agencies, smaller crews with fewer seasoned leaders, prolonged exposure to dangerous conditions, and major changes to the way the nation fights fires. They all spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.

The crisis, firefighters say, hit a crescendo when the Trump administration slashed federal agencies last year. Multiple states and forest stations lost workers who could support fire response. Many senior leaders and veterans also took deferred resignations or retired early.

The U.S. Forest Service, housed within the Agriculture Department, is the nation’s largest wildfire firefighting force, managing more than 193 million acres across the country, as well as partnering with state and local fire departments to help respond to large blazes.

In 2024, there were 18,700 federal employees who could fight fires. Now there are a little over 17,000, according to the U.S. Forest Service and Interior Department. In a recent June report, the Government Accountability Office noted that the U.S. Forest Service’s workforce “decreased by about 20% in response to a February 2025 executive order for large-scale workforce reductions.”

The administration is also in the middle of reshaping how the country responds to wildfires. Earlier this year, officials announced the formation of a new unified U.S. Wildland Fire Service and a shift back to a strategy that prioritizes “suppression,” which seeks to put out all fires quickly. Firefighters in the field say that transition — which they say commands more of their time and resources — is taking place in real time as they respond to ongoing fires.

While firefighters have been raising the alarm on staffing concerns for years, they say the current climate — the exceptionally fire-prone conditions and the administration’s assault on federal workers — has fueled intensified levels of burnout and concerns over the preparedness of less-experienced crews.

In response to questions about wildland firefighter staffing and resources, the U.S. Forest Service said it is “stronger than ever, fully staffed, and equipped to respond aggressively to every unplanned ignition.”

The agency added that it has “reached and exceeded our hiring goal of 11,300 firefighters. This is the earliest we have reached our 11,300-target since 2022.”

Experts and firefighters say the Forest Service has had that same hiring goal of 11,300 since April 2022, according to public memos. Some argue the number has not kept up with demand, in part because the agency includes what are known as secondary fire employees, such as dispatchers and administrative positions, in that number, according to congressional budget requests, internal data viewed by the Post, and two people familiar with the situation.

While the Forest Service said it surpassed its hiring goal and brought on “11,719 wildland firefighters onboard nationwide,” the number of primary firefighters, workers whose main duty is to fight fire, is about 9,000, according to staffing data from late June reviewed by the Post.

The Forest Service confirmed the yearly hiring figure does include secondary positions, including dispatchers, describing them as “critical to successful daily operations.”

“Between our operational firefighters, our non-fire carded employees and administratively determined hires — the Forest Service can mobilize more than 28,000 responders,” the agency said.

“I’m so frustrated I could cry,” said one federal firefighter currently fighting Utah’s Cottonwood Fire, the largest active blaze in the country. In a message to the Post, he said firefighters knew what dangers could emerge “while watching the snowpack all winter.” But he said the Forest Service has had less staff to reduce fuels in drought-stricken forests and do other fire prevention work.

He described a cratering morale and said firefighters are “treated like we’re dispensable.” Last week, three of his federal colleagues died after helicoptering into fires burning on remote parts of the Utah-Colorado border. That kind of tragedy so early in the summer has added to the emotional heaviness.

“We are reeling, devastated, and still trying to come to terms with it,” he said.

And even though about 3.2 million acres have burned across the U.S. so far this year — nearly twice as many as this time last July — firefighters and experts caution that the fire current fire landscape isn’t that busy yet. California and the Pacific Northwest haven’t seen major blazes; there haven’t been the kind of megafires burning for weeks that require resources from other countries.

The Cottonwood Fire, which has burned nearly 100,000 acres, is the largest blaze burning in the U.S., fueling devastating loss across Southern Utah. Colorado is also grappling with a siege of wildfires that has forced about 6,000 residents in rural communities to evacuate.

These kinds of overlapping fires have stretched federal assets, experts and fire officials said.

On Monday night, Tim Ross, an incident commander with the U.S. Forest Service, said during a briefing on the Willow Fire that with all the activity across the state, “there is a battle for resources.”

In an interview Thursday, Gov. Jared Polis (D) and several fire and public safety officials said that while Colorado may have its hands full right now, they are managing. It’s what could come next that worries them. Decades of falling behind on fuel treatments and climate challenges have made their forests tinder boxes, they said.

“Our biggest worry right now are more major incidents,” Polis said from his car after getting an update on the Aspen Acres fire, which has burned more than 50,000 acres and has become the state’s top priority. “While we don’t have a shortage [of resources], our concern is that we would have a shortage in our state and other states if there were additional incidents.”

Colorado has been bolstering its firefighting apparatus over the past few years, Polis said, buying more aircraft and engines, and changing policies so they can put out fires before they get too big. Other states that are becoming more fire-prone might not have made those changes. But the reality is, when fires explode, even the most well-resourced states still need the federal government’s help.

For about the past 15 years, the Rocky Mountain region has had the same number of incident management teams — three. Right now, they’re all dispatched in Colorado. In need of further assistance, officials brought in what’s known as a complex incident management team to help out, a crew that came all the way from Alaska.

Experts said that suggests most of these teams are already committed to other fires.

“They are hitting the limits of available resources across the Lower 48 because of this recent outbreak of fires across the entire Southwest,” said Michael Wara, the director of Stanford University’s Climate and Energy Policy Program who specializes in wildfires. “There are only so many firefighters to go around. Our militia is smaller than it used to be because so many people got laid off or left. At some point you start to get into difficult competition for resources when things get really busy and there are so many battles happening at same time.”

Colorado fire officials also acknowledged they’ve seen some loss of experienced incident command officials who really know how to fight fires.

The Forest Service said it has sufficient resources to battle wildfires. As of July 1, the federal government has mobilized more than 9,000 personnel, the agency said, adding that “over the past week the Rocky Mountain and Great Basin areas processed 9,623 resource requests with about 1.5% of those requests being unfilled. This demonstrates that incident management teams are receiving the support they need.”

Staffing the nation’s federal wildfire response infrastructure has long been difficult and opaque, according to experts and previous federal investigations. And federal wildland fire staffing levels are complex — agencies often have a mix of permanent full-time employees, seasonal, and emergency hires that ebb and flow throughout the year.

A 2022 report from the Government Accountability Office highlighted that “recruiting and retaining federal wildland firefighters has been difficult” due to “low pay, poor work-life balance” as well as a lack of mental health support and other issues. Other GAO assessments from 2024 and 2025 found that low staffing was hampering goals such as prescribed fire targets.

Those are some of the same struggles firefighters are now describing as the summer ramps up.

A Forest Service official in Colorado who leads a team focused on suppression said a lack of funding meant he could no longer hire the standard number of seasonal workers. There are important leadership spots still open, he added, and his forest may have to stop using one of their engines because they don’t have enough crew members to staff it. That means their fire response will be less robust, he said.

And at a time when “the fires are larger and more complex,” they have lost officials who’ve been around for decades, and who know best how to respond to dicey situations or rugged terrain.

“We simply don’t have the experience and qualifications to backfill them,” he said. “They say ‘don’t do more with less’ but the reality is that we must.”

These experiences echo hundreds of others who took a recent survey for the Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, a nonprofit advocacy group, according to Riva Duncan, president of Grassroots and a retired firefighter currently helping out on assignments as an officer making strategic decisions when new fires flare up.

“Over the past several years as the climate crisis worsens, it feels like we keep asking fewer firefighters to do even more and morale is suffering,” she said. “And a very challenging fire season, like this one is shaping up to be, will probably only affect that even more.”

Zeke Lunder, a 30-year wildfire expert who specializes in mapping and wildfire science, said the loss of senior, qualified leadership can have a tangible effect on crews when they are in the field, because fire — when, where, and how it burns — is often cyclical.

As an example, Lunder pulled up maps showing how a wind-driven fire in the 1990s hit the same area where the three firefighters died last week. That fire, he said, spread 10 miles in one day, “and these fatalities happened under similarly explosive conditions.”

Federal officials are investigating the conditions during which the firefighters responded.

“History tells you the potential, the possibility of a fire. When you forget those stories we repeat those mistakes,” Lunder said. “The right question isn’t are your positions fully staffed. It’s how many people do you have who have been working over 20 years?”

For the past several months, firefighters and officials have also been undergoing a significant reorganization. While many firefighters think a unified federal firefighting force is a good idea, they described a transition that’s been disruptive and has added even more pressure to all-consuming jobs. As one high-level supervisor with the new service explained, they are trying to rebuild long-established protocols “in real time, during fire season.”

“Winter is normally when we recover from the previous season, take leave, complete hiring, conduct training, and prepare for the year ahead,” the supervisor said. “That opportunity largely disappeared this year. Permanent fire staff have spent the offseason consumed by organizational unification efforts instead of preparing for fire season. Many people are already exhausted, and it’s only July 1.”

A new directive to put fires out as fast as possible also means there’s more risk, firefighters said.

In one Mountain West state, a member of a specialized helicopter-based crew detailed how his team was already missing critical positions, known as spotters, and that he has had to shift people around to fill the gaps.

These kind of firefighters land near or rappel from helicopters in remote terrain engines often can’t drive into. The firefighters who died last week in Colorado were part of a helitack crew.

Focusing on full suppression will require these teams to be in the air more — flying further and shuttling food and protective gear back and forth — as well as responding to more dangerous situations.

On one recent assignment, the helitack firefighter said the pilot he was with didn’t feel safe because the area was so congested with other air traffic. He said the helicopter decided to pull out of the assignment despite officials asking them to keep dumping water on flames.

“We said no,” the firefighter said. “All this pressure to put everything out is adding to the workload; that is unequivocally what is happening.”