Two partners are each taking the lead in a dance to celebrate America’s 250th birthday next year: Rosie Rios, chair of a bipartisan commission created by Congress to plan events to commemorate the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and President Donald Trump, chair of a White House task force that is making its own plans.
While Trump and his appointees have pushed to put his face on many of the so-called semiquincentennial events, Rios’ 24-member commission and its advisers have largely maintained control over a national jubilee that will kick off in earnest around New Year’s Day.
To Rios, the former U.S. treasurer in the Obama administration who joined the commission two years after its 2016 establishment and became chair in 2022, it’s all going according to plan: The president has the reins for events in Washington, D.C., while the commission’s plans, laid out in a 56-page “playbook,” take place throughout the country.
