Say this much for the Americans: when they throw a birthday party, they do not do it halfway.
I was on the National Mall in Washington on 4 July for Freedom 250, the celebration marking 250 years of American independence. I went in late, in the evening, which turned out to be the smartest decision of the day. The huge lines that had stretched for blocks in the afternoon heat were gone and I walked in as one of the few people getting onto the grounds without a wait.
Once inside, the first thing that struck me was not the spectacle. It was the logistics. Free water stations were everywhere. Air conditioned cooling tents lined the grounds. Firefighters sprayed arcs of water over the crowds to beat the heat, which climbed into triple digits and had much of the East Coast under alerts. It felt less like crowd management and more like a city taking care of its guests.
Security was thorough, understandably so. President Trump was set to deliver his keynote speech right there on the Mall and it was the first Fourth of July celebration in the capital ever designated a National Special Security Event, the classification usually reserved for inaugurations and Super Bowls. You could feel it in every layer of the perimeter. Then the weather decided to write itself into the story. As evening fell, severe thunderstorms rolled toward the city and with lightning striking nearby, authorities asked everyone to evacuate the grounds. Tens of thousands of us were guided into nearby museums and office buildings, where volunteers handed out ice cold water. There was something oddly moving about it. Strangers packed into marble lobbies, some singing, everyone waiting for the sky to make up its mind.
It did. The gates reopened, and close to eleven the president took the stage. Several moments cut through the exhaustion completely. He brought out the descendants of those who made the original American flag, a connection stretching back 250 years to the very birth of the nation. He honoured a veteran of Pearl Harbor, one of the last living witnesses to that defining chapter of American history, whose presence on that stage felt like the full sweep of the country’s story condensed into a single moment. And he honoured the Artemis II crew fresh from their lunar mission alongside a veteran of Apollo 17.
Standing in that crowd, watching all of it unfold on America’s 250th birthday, I had goosebumps. Whatever one’s politics, he is one of a kind when it comes to staging a moment.
Then at 11:50, a fighter jet roared directly overhead and the sky detonated. What followed broke every record in history for a fireworks display, nearly 850,000 shells launched from ten sites across the Reflecting Pool, barges on the Potomac and West Potomac Park. The night burned gold and red and blue, every burst timed to live music from military bands. At moments the fireworks seemed to compete with the last flickers of lightning on the horizon, as if the storm itself had stayed to watch.
Walking out in the early hours, sunburnt and soaked, I slipped onto the Metro ahead of the crowds. Coming in late and leaving early turned out to be the best decisions of the night. The heat, the storm, the evacuation, none of it broke the evening. If anything, it made the fireworks feel earned. Countries, like people, need their birthdays. And this one, for all its chaos, was unforgettable.
—The author is a writer and economist based in Washington, DC.
