Congressman Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) spoke with Impactivize about President Trump’s Rededicate 250 — a 12-hour Christian nationalist event set to take place at the National Mall on May 17. Part of Trump’s Freedom 250, the ‘hijack’ of America’s 250th birthday celebration, the faith event centers on ‘rededicating our country as One Nation under God.’
By Nancy Levine Stearns | March 23, 2026
In a Congressional hearing last month, House Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) and Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Democrats called out Republicans for “allowing Trump to hijack America’s 250th Birthday celebration,” and “turning the country’s founding anniversary into a party exclusively for billionaires and a platform for Christian nationalism.”
Rededicate 250, a 12-hour Christian nationalist event, is set to take place at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., on May 17. The faith event is part of Trump’s Freedom 250, the administration’s hijack of America’s 250th birthday. In what the White House has described as a “large-scale revival,” Rededicate 250 centers on “rededicating our country as One Nation Under God.”
Freedom 250 is Trump’s hijack of America250, the official nonprofit entity celebrating America’s birthday. The organization was founded by the bipartisan U.S. Semiquincentennial Commission, established by Congress in 2016.
Trump’s Freedom 250 is under investigation by Democratic senators led by Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif) over funding questions, including a pay-to-play scheme. In separate letters to the White House and Interior Secretary Doug Bergum starting last month, senators demanded answers to questions surrounding the “troubling allocation of at least $100 million in taxpayer funds to Freedom 250, a private entity which has been reportedly soliciting high-dollar donations in exchange for preferential access to President Trump and official government events held for America’s 250th birthday.”
Deadlines established by senators in both letters to receive answers have passed. A representative from the office of Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), a co-signer of the letter to Bergum, messaged Impactivize saying Sen. Merkley had not received a response to the letter, as of Friday evening. Corporate sponsors of Trump’s Freedom 250 include Mastercard and Deloitte, as Impactivize reported last month. Neither company has responded to inquiries.
In his remarks to Congress last month, Rep. Huffman torched congressional Republicans:
“And you, his little Duma, let him hijack the country’s 250th anniversary, and sell access, hide his donors, and rewrite history. They siphoned off $100 million of taxpayer money to bankroll propaganda, as the administration replaces the real story of our history with a whitewashed fantasy. The horror of slavery, the Native American genocide, all that is out. Censorship and gauzy Christian nationalism, written by Prager U, is in.”
In a phone conversation on Saturday, I asked Ranking Member Huffman to elaborate on Rededicate 250 and the Trump administration’s Christian nationalist hijack of America’s birthday.
RM Huffman: They’re really making a mockery of separation at church and state. And they’re seeing this 250th anniversary as an opportunity to chip away further at what Jefferson called “the wall of separation” — this secular firewall against religious tyranny that was one of the great things about America’s founding. We were the first country to do this. It was an expression of enlightenment, lessons and values. And it has served us so well. For 250 years, religious freedom has thrived, and we haven’t had wars of religion, like Europe had for hundreds of years before the enlightenment.
So if we should be celebrating anything in this 250th year, it should be that secular foundation of democracy. But instead, these religious extremists are trying to retrofit our founding story and do the opposite — do the opposite of what our founders intended.
NLS: Is there recourse? I’ve seen the letters sent to the White House and to the Interior Department, led by Senator Schiff and co-signers. Senator Merkley’s office told me last night that he has not received a response to the letter. Senators had set deadlines requesting answers to questions. Didn’t it used to be the case that there would be responses if senators asked?
RM Huffman: Oh, yes. That’s such a nostalgic thing to think about norms. There used to be norms. Institutions used to follow rules. And there was a time when even if you were in the minority in Congress, if a big group of members of Congress wrote an oversight letter and asked reasonable questions, you would get responses. That’s the way government is supposed to work, but this administration just ignores Congress.
NLS: What are your thoughts about Secretary Hegseth’s comments yesterday about the war in Iran? He invoked Jesus Christ as part of the war effort. He said, “May almighty God continue to bless our troops in this fight. To the American people, please pray for them every day on bended knee with your family, in your schools, in your churches, in the name of Jesus Christ.”
RM Huffman: It’s very standard for Pete Hegseth and the other extremists in this administration. They godwash everything they do. This administration does the dumbest and the most extreme and destructive things, and literally has the gall to suggest it’s in furtherance of God’s plan. And it’s all kind of sanctified as part of this religious agenda.
NLS: Other thoughts about recourse?
RM Huffman: We’re not powerless. Certainly, my colleagues and I will keep writing letters, making the demands that we’ve always made as legislators. And they’ll probably be ignored by these by these folks, but the public will see. There will be value in using our platforms to call them out, and to show that we see what they’re up to.
The other thing is you’ve got these really great litigators out there with secular groups, from the ACLU to Americans United for Separation of Church and State. They’re really good at challenging egregious violations in court. But this administration is doing this flood the zone stuff, where it’s just overwhelming. They’re doing so many things each and every day that even these amazing nonprofits, that are so good at litigating, they can’t keep up with it all. They can’t sue every time Pete Hegseth crosses the line of church-state separation because they’d be filing multiple suits a day.
NLS: I saw you have a book coming out in August about Christian nationalism. You say that Christian nationalism is now America’s most dangerous political movement. Can you tell me more?
[No Prophets: The Fight to Save Democracy from Christian Nationalism by Jared Huffman, Foreword by Jamie Raskin. W.W. Norton, August, 2026]
RM Huffman: I have seen this Christian nationalist PR blitz coming for some time. One of the one of the first things Trump did with his executive orders is create this Religious Liberty Commission, which is a total sham, an absolute sham. And assign it a deadline of July 4, 2026, for its big report and recommendation. Clearly, they have been building to this 250th anniversary date for a long time. They’ve got folks like David Barton who is this prolific fake historian for Christian nationalists and churns out books that are just riddled with myths and lies. And you know he’s revving up his gaslighting fake history. They’ve got the United States government now and all of the biggest platforms in the world, the biggest megaphones in the world, working on this narrative. So this is a dangerous moment for sure.
[NBC News: “Meet the evangelical activist who’s had a ‘profound influence’ on Speaker Mike Johnson. David Barton has spent decades working to overturn church-state separation. He celebrated Johnson’s election as a turning point for the Christian right.”]
NLS: They’re missing one big megaphone, however. Pope Leo XIV declined Trump’s invitation. He is going to receive the National Constitution Center’s Liberty Medal in an event on on July 3.
RM Huffman: I think that’s great. And I think more people need to understand that there is a growing number of Christians pushing back on this Christian nationalist nonsense. And I’m so glad that the Pope is is one of them. There was a time when Catholics absolutely depended on church-state separation to protect themselves from their fellow Christians. And Baptists, Quakers, any number of them have taken their turns on the receiving end of theocratic abuse. So this is not just a Constitutional safeguard for Humanists like me. This is something that has long protected religious diversity and religious freedom, and it’s very important that people understand that.
[The National Constitution Center “will award the 38th annual Liberty Medal to His Holiness Pope Leo XIV for his lifelong work promoting religious liberty and freedom of conscience and expression around the world—ideals enshrined by America’s founders in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.”]
RM Huffman’s remarks to Congress about Freedom 250 were reported by Impactivize last month.