Fireworks, heat and politics: America celebrates its 250th birthday

The 250th an­niver­sary of Amer­i­can in­de­pen­dence is col­lid­ing with a coun­try gripped by po­lit­i­cal po­lar­iza­tion and a heat wave bear­ing down on mil­lions of peo­ple across mul­ti­ple states as cel­e­bra­tions get un­der­way across the Unit­ed States on Sat­ur­day.

The sign­ing of the De­c­la­ra­tion of In­de­pen­dence, one of his­to­ry’s most cel­e­brat­ed ar­tic­u­la­tions of de­mo­c­ra­t­ic am­bi­tions, is be­ing marked in myr­i­ad ways. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, set to take a cen­tral role in fes­tiv­i­ties, plans to speak on the Na­tion­al Mall in Wash­ing­ton ahead of what’s be­ing billed as a his­tor­i­cal­ly enor­mous fire­works show that will rain down over the na­tion’s cap­i­tal. The pres­i­dent was in South Dako­ta at Mount Rush­more on Fri­day, where he de­liv­ered a dark speech about the threat of com­mu­nism in the U.S. as the chis­elled im­ages of four of his most promi­nent pre­de­ces­sors loomed be­hind him.

Else­where, fire­works are sched­uled to be set off Sat­ur­day over Navy Pier in Chica­go and against the sky­line of New York City, which al­so host­ed a ball drop at mid­night to ush­er in the hol­i­day with the same fan­fare as New Year’s Eve. Bris­tol, Rhode Is­land, de­scribes it­self as home of the na­tion’s old­est In­de­pen­dence Day cel­e­bra­tions dat­ing to 1785. In Los An­ge­les, Queen Lat­i­fah will host a con­cert fea­tur­ing per­for­mances by The Smash­ing Pump­kins and Chris Sta­ple­ton. Cha­ka Khan is billed as a spe­cial guest.

An­tic­i­pa­tion for the mile­stone hol­i­day has been build­ing for much of the year, serv­ing as an op­por­tu­ni­ty for Amer­i­cans to re­flect on their com­pli­cat­ed his­to­ry as one­time colonists of an em­pire who be­came a su­per­pow­er of their own. Cel­e­bra­tions months in the mak­ing had to ad­just or can­cel ac­tiv­i­ties en­tire­ly as much of the East Coast swel­tered un­der heat that ap­proached and in many cas­es sur­passed triple dig­its.

Heat is defin­ing the big week­end in many places

In Wash­ing­ton, the Great Amer­i­can State Fair was closed for sev­er­al hours Fri­day af­ter­noon dur­ing the worst of the heat. The city’s In­de­pen­dence Day pa­rade sched­uled for Sat­ur­day was can­celled.

To the cha­grin of many on the East Coast, the weath­er was down­right pleas­ant on the oth­er side of the coun­try. The Pa­cif­ic North­west en­joyed tem­per­a­tures in the 60s on Fri­day with a few light show­ers.

In the Seat­tle sub­urb of Is­saquah, Megan Kurows­ki, 31, brought her two dogs to the dog park so they could get some ex­er­cise be­fore she went to work. Kurows­ki said she was feel­ing pos­i­tive about Amer­i­ca’s 250th an­niver­sary and was plan­ning a pos­si­ble pad­dle­board to watch the fire­works.

“Every­one’s just, from what it seems, been pret­ty ex­cit­ed about cel­e­brat­ing 250 years,” she said.

Oth­er Amer­i­can pas­times are over­lap­ping with the hol­i­day.

More than a dozen Ma­jor League Base­ball games are on the sched­ule for Sat­ur­day. The World Cup, be­ing host­ed in the U.S. for the first time in 32 years, will have match­es in Hous­ton and Philadel­phia on Sat­ur­day fol­low­ing a nail-biter over­time win by Ar­genti­na over Cape Verde on Fri­day out­side Mi­a­mi. Pop cul­ture en­thu­si­asts can ob­sess over Tay­lor Swift’s Fri­day wed­ding to foot­ball play­er Travis Kelce at New York City’s Madi­son Square Gar­den. And Madon­na re­leased her 15th stu­dio al­bum, a col­lec­tion of dance tracks.

An un­easy na­tion gets ready to cel­e­brate

The cel­e­bra­tions are un­fold­ing against the back­drop of a deep di­vide that has been ex­pand­ing for years, vis­i­ble in every­thing from po­lit­i­cal ex­pres­sion to cul­tur­al norms to age-old ques­tions over race, class and im­mi­gra­tion.

At Mount Rush­more on Fri­day, Trump spoke of com­mu­nism as a “mor­tal threat to Amer­i­can lib­er­ty.”

“It is the great­est threat to our coun­try, in­clud­ing World War I, World War II, Pearl Har­bor or even 9/11,” he said.

With­out nam­ing Trump, New York City May­or Zohran Mam­dani, a De­mo­c­rat who is al­so a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic so­cial­ist and re­cent­ly backed sev­er­al suc­cess­ful con­gres­sion­al can­di­dates in their pri­maries, ap­peared to ref­er­ence Trump dur­ing a speech Fri­day.

“Those ideals up­on which our na­tion was built — they are strong enough to en­dure any au­thor­i­tar­i­an regime, but on­ly if we reach for them,” he said.

Ahead of the hol­i­day, au­to tech­ni­cian Joe Fuqua-Be­jara­no in Tope­ka, Kansas, sized up “what makes us awe­some” as a peo­ple. It is clear­ly not the pol­i­tics, in his view, but rather re­silience.

“We’ve just all got to find uni­ty some­where, whether that’s in laugh­ter or per­se­ver­ance, and keep every­body cool,” he said from the fire­works stand where he is do­ing a boom­ing busi­ness as a side hus­tle.

Jer­ry Chin of New­cas­tle, Wash­ing­ton, said he wasn’t aware that the U.S. was cel­e­brat­ing its 250th an­niver­sary and planned to stay low-key around the hol­i­day. He and his wife gen­er­al­ly skip the fire­works and in­stead stay home with their fear­ful dogs to keep them calm.

“Amer­i­ca’s a great place,” he said, “but there are some con­cerns.” —WASH­ING­TON (AP)

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Sto­ry by STEVEN SLOAN | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

As­so­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Martha Bel­lisle in Seat­tle and John Han­na in Top­kea, Kansas con­tributed to this re­port.