The United States celebrates its 250th anniversary on Saturday, a historic milestone reached at a time when the country is deeply divided, with Donald Trump determined to take the lead in Washington.
• Also read: Donald Trump at the foot of Mount Rushmore to launch the 250th anniversary festivities
This particular “Independence Day”, 250 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia (east) marking the break of thirteen colonies from the British Crown, coincides with a suffocating heat wave in the eastern United States.
In Washington, temperatures are close to 38°C, and, combined with humid air, the heat felt could be around 43°C. The traditional July 4 parade scheduled for Saturday morning in the capital has been canceled.
It would take more to upset the plans of the American president, who did everything to transform this anniversary of the United States into a celebration of himself, with aerial flights and military bands to perform patriotic music, American classics, as well as his “playlist”.
Donald Trump is due to hold a political meeting in the style of an electoral campaign on Saturday evening (from 01:45 GMT Sunday) on the immense green esplanade of the National Mall, in the heart of the capital, before what he touts as the largest fireworks display in the world – 850,000 rockets for 40 minutes!
“Despite the heat which is not as strong as expected, the crowd in Washington is incredible,” he assured on his Truth Social network.
Across the capital, many passers-by wore the colors or stars of the American flag on their clothing.
“A little disappointing”
Patrick Thompson, a teacher from Alexandria, near the capital, told AFP that he would celebrate the national holiday with the family with the traditional barbecue but did not want to take his two teenage children to the official ceremonies in Washington.
“It’s great to experience this 250th anniversary,” he explains to AFP, but “why does it have to bear Trump’s imprint? “.
“The America I celebrate is not the one of hatred and polarization,” says Rajesh Mirchandani, an Indian of origin working in the communications sector, who became American in February, “it’s the one in which warm, modest and funny people still work together to build something better,” he adds.
“To say that it has been 250 years and that people in this country do not live in true freedom, it is a little disappointing,” said Melissa Pate, a psychotherapist from Atlanta (southeast), deploring the “ambient political climate”.
A sign of the country’s divisions, masked men marched in the morning in Washington, some brandishing Confederate flags and others displaying the emblem of the supremacist movement Patriot Front, chanting “Let’s take back America!” “.
On the eve of the national holiday on Friday, at the foot of the emblematic Mount Rushmore, Donald Trump affirmed, in an ultra-patriotic speech, that the American identity was undergoing a “new offensive” coming from “radicals and extremists”.
In New York, which is hosting a parade of sailboats, Vice President JD Vance gave a speech on Saturday denouncing critics of the United States who, according to him, only see its “imperfections”.
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King Charles III said on Saturday that he had “no doubt” that the United Kingdom and the United States would continue to defend their “common values”, in a message published on this occasion.
In Philadelphia, lines formed early in front of the famous “Liberty Bell” and Independence Hall, where the Declaration of Independence was signed.
Concerts are also planned from Boston to Los Angeles.
As the country looks back on two and a half centuries of triumph and tragedy, slavery and freedom, civil war and world wars, a recent Quinnipiac University poll shows that 61 percent of Americans believe the United States has failed to live up to the ideals set forth in the 1776 Declaration of Independence.
