America turns 250. Not everyone is celebrating

Fourth of – As the United States marks the 250th anniversary of its founding, Black and brown Americans—and other marginalized people—are describing the holiday as mourning instead of celebration, pointing to fears around deportation, state violence, and the Trump adminis

For many Americans, the Fourth of July is arriving with a different weight than it used to.

Instead of the usual pull of fireworks and parades. this year—when the country turns 250—has been described by some as a day of reckoning. The question is not just what it means to love a country that celebrates itself so loudly. It’s what it means for people whose lives have been shaped. again and again. by the sense that the country does not love them back.

The deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in January. killed in Minneapolis by federal immigration officers. have become part of that reckoning. For some white liberals and other white people of conscience. the killings have underscored a painful lesson: skin color offers no guarantee of “absolute protection against state violence” in what the article describes as the Age of Trump.

Immigrants who have been in the United States for decades are living in fear of being deported, the piece says. Under the Trump administration, their “Americanness” and sense of belonging are being rendered precarious and suspect.

The holiday also lands as many Americans process what Donald Trump’s return to power has meant for them personally—especially those who saw his election as a moral injury. For people who believed the American public was fundamentally good and decent. the article argues. the election demanded painful answers they hadn’t expected to face.

One of those answers is voiced by Brynn Tannehill.

Tannehill, a U.S. Naval Academy graduate and former naval aviator who is described as a trans activist and author and who is now a resident of Canada. said she is struggling to name what she feels about the country at all. As the holiday approaches, she told the interviewer, “I’m not sure I can say I love the U.S. anymore.” She added that what is happening “goes beyond ‘doesn’t love you back’: The U.S. voted for a man, and a party, that promised to eradicate transgender people, everyone like me, from public life.”.

For Tannehill, the disappointment is not abstract. She spent 30 years as a service member. and the article frames what she’s living through as “intensely personal.” She said. “Now. I’m essentially a person without a country: It no longer says I’m worthy of being American. ” and she said she “doesn’t particularly” feel like claiming to be an American given what the country “collectively decided to do [in electing Trump].”.

Her sense of loss is described as echoing across “tens of millions of other Americans.” A Pew Research Center survey is cited as showing that nearly 60% of Americans say that the country’s best years are behind it, and almost 70% are dissatisfied with the way things are going today.

The article also points to other polling that suggests many Americans view the country as breaking faith with its founding ideals. A Gallup poll is cited as finding that most Americans believe the signers of the Declaration of Independence would be disappointed in what America has become. The piece says that figure has increased substantially from a quarter of a century ago.

Against that backdrop, the article describes a growing belief that democracy itself is under threat. In a March 2024 Monmouth University poll. one-third of respondents said they would move to another country if they had the opportunity. like Tannehill. citing the “unhealthy state” of American politics.

The piece then widens the lens to the academic public warnings that followed Trump’s rise. and to what happened when some of the country’s most prominent voices moved away. Historians Timothy Snyder and Marci Shore. along with philosopher Jason Stanley. left their jobs at Yale University to take positions at the University of Toronto. Snyder and Stanley are described as leading experts on fascism and authoritarianism. and as among the earliest public voices to sound the alarm about what the article frames as an existential threat Trump and MAGA pose to American democracy and society.

In an essay published in the Yale Daily News. the article says Snyder explained he was not fleeing the country to escape Trump. But it also includes a qualifier from Snyder: “I did not leave Yale because of Donald Trump. or because of Columbia. or because of threats to Yale — but that would be a reasonable thing to do and that is a decision that people will make.”.

Stanley’s description, the article says, was more direct. It quotes him saying he left the U.S. “to raise my kids in a country that is not tilting towards a fascist dictatorship.”

The article turns back to Tannehill with questions about her move to Canada and whether others should follow. She said, “Can the country be saved? Is it survivable? If you answer yes to either one, you’re probably better off not leaving.”

She also pointed to a line she keeps returning to: “I keep coming back to the quote that for most people living in an authoritarian state. life is ‘boring and tolerable. ’ so it’s survivable for most.” From there. she argued that if someone thinks a place can be fixed from the inside—“even if it’s not survivable if you fail”—then. she said. they may have a moral obligation to try.

But Tannehill’s warning is sharper as well. She concluded differently about what she expects next. “If things go the way I expect with the 2028 election [and] Trump and the Republicans will not surrender power, a lot more people will wish they [had] left,” she warned.

That forecast feeds the broader tension running through the article’s account of patriotism this summer. It describes a split between an allegiance built on the idea of “love it or leave it. ” where loyalty is absolute and America is treated as almost perfect—or “divinely inspired”—and a more mature. aspirational patriotism rooted in critical love and thinking. That second view. as presented in the piece. allows flaws and failures to be confronted honestly so the country can be made into “the best version of itself.”.

In contrast, the article argues that Trump and MAGA stand at the opposite end of that spectrum. It says their nostalgia for “Make America Great Again” is the antithesis of the kind of patriotism that demands truth. It also describes the president’s patriotic project as “Orwellian. ” portraying it as an effort involving historical erasure and the annihilation of truth.

The 250th anniversary, the piece says, is a reminder of a hard truth: “Democracy is a skill and way of life that must be taught and learned.” Civic life, it adds, “must be nurtured and renewed each generation.”

It frames American neofascism under Trump as a “tough lesson” about the atrophy of the country’s democracy and institutions—arguing that too many Americans assumed democracy was forever, and that others would do the work of protecting institutions, norms, and values.

The article describes a conclusion many people won’t want to sit with—“The American people must accept we have lost something and may not get it back”—and compares it to what happens when broken things can’t be restored.

On this Fourth of July. the piece says. the writer will be thinking about an iconic photograph of Chief Petty Officer Graham Jackson watching President Franklin Roosevelt’s funeral procession. tears streaming down his face as he plays the accordion. Jackson is described as “many of us” right now “on both sides of the color line.”.

The sadness the article depicts—mourning a broken democracy and society—doesn’t have to be paralyzing, it says. It can become a form of “healthy grief” that turns into democratic renewal and a call to action.

Even as the nation marks 250 years, the central story running through these pages is the same: for too many Americans, celebration has stopped feeling like the only option.

United States politics Fourth of July 250th anniversary Trump administration immigration officers Minneapolis Renee Good Alex Pretti Brynn Tannehill deportation fears transgender rights patriotism democracy threat Pew Research Center Monmouth University poll Gallup poll Yale University University of Toronto Timothy Snyder Marci Shore Jason Stanley