Once Freedom 250 took over, all that changed. The Smithsonian cultural festival, a version which had been hosted at the National Mall every year in late June, was replaced with Trump’s Great American State Fair, At least nine states declined to directly participate in it.
On the surface, neither group publicly acknowledges the tension. A spokesperson for America250 rejected the notion that there was any competition between the two, and the latest playbook published on America250’s website praised the Trump administration’s commitment and its vision for the historic milestone.
But behind closed doors, grievances are simmering over programming, budgets, and dueling marketing campaigns that befuddled the American public. Freedom250 did not respond to a request for comment from TIME.
The battlefield between the two groups has grown in the past few months, when both groups spent big dollars promoting their own brands at the Super Bowl in Santa Clara, Calif., this year. Both groups also launched their own version of student contest: America250 first launched the essay contest with a grand prize of a free trip to one historical site of their choosing, while Freedom 250 launched a student art contest that comes with a grand prize of a free trip to the Great American State Fair. The two groups are now fighting for media coverage, with Fox News slated to cover the opening of Teddy Roosevelt’s Presidential Library in North Dakota, a key Freedom 250 event, and CNN tapping Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen to cover the Times Square ball drop on July 3th, a signature America250 event.Â
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