Commission to honor America’s 250th birthday is ‘toxic,’ lawsuit says

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When Renee Burchard went to work for the America 250 Foundation in 2020, she was excited. After a long career in politics and nonprofit management, she had the chance to work for a congressionally-funded commission tasked with helping the United States celebrate its 250th birthday, or semiquincentennial — a commission that hoped to raise $250 million.

But after working for the foundation for less than two years, Burchard resigned in December and sued in February, alleging the foundation had done nothing to further its mission, instead corruptly funneling federal funds to its leadership and favored contractors in a toxic, sexist environment.

The complaint alleged “cronyism, self-dealing, mismanagement of funds, potentially unlawful contracting practices and wasteful spending.”

“This was run by a cabal,” Burchard said of the foundation. “Everything had to go through the cabal.”

Burchard is one of four female executives who filed a federal suit against America 250 in February, saying they had no choice but to resign from an organization that paid them less than male employees and ignored them when they raised concerns about its purpose and business practices.

The suit, which sought an investigation of America 250 and lost wages, comes as members of the commission and lawmakers tasked with overseeing the commission publicly battled the man who runs it — a President Donald Trump appointee left in place by President Biden.

America’s big birthdays do not come often — even some Gen Xers have no memories of the nation’s bicentennial celebration held in 1976. Thus, for the upcoming bash in 2026, Congress created the Semiquincentennial Commission in 2016 to mark “the national heritage of the United States of individual liberty, representative government and the attainment of equal and inalienable rights.”

Filed in U.S. District Court in D.C., the suit recounted the formation of the America 250 Foundation — the commission’s “operational arm.” Funded by appropriations, donations and sponsorships, America 250 has received $20 million in federal funds so far, according to the suit.

The commission’s unpaid chair is Daniel DiLella, a Philadelphia businessman appointed by President Trump in 2018. In the past two years, the suit alleges, DiLella has staffed the foundation with friends, improperly steering contracts to businesses with which he had “personal dealings or relationships, that created a potential conflict of interest and/or had questionable prices in services.”

Opinion: Remember the Bicentennial? Celebrating might be even harder for America’s 250th birthday.

Burchard and three other women quit the foundation when “they could no longer participate in noncompliant, unlawful and/or fraudulent use of taxpayer funds, and could no longer endure a toxic and volatile work environment,” the suit said.

In a court filing on April 7, attorneys for America 250 said the lawsuit “fails to articulate sufficient facts to set forth any cognizable claim.”

“At bottom, the Complaint contains unsupported allegations and speculations regarding Plaintiffs’ collective disagreements on management decisions during their employment,” the filing said.

The White House declined to comment.

In a telephone interview, DiLella also declined to comment on the lawsuit’s allegations. However, DiLella said, the commission had “no money, no organization, and no appropriation” when he took over in 2018.

When many commissioners did not return his phone calls looking for resources, he said, he donated $250,000 of his own money and turned to his friends to raise around $3 million to “open the doors.”

“We had absolutely nothing,” he said. “It was just dumped in my arms.”

Burchard said she saw working for America 250 as the “cherry on top” of her career. With the country newly focused on racial justice, she said, the semiquincentennial could put the bicentennial in context through programs mounted across the country by historians.

“We’re looking at America 250 years behind us but also equally 250 years ahead of us,” she said. “This whole thing was going to set that up.”

The foundation’s never lived up to its potential, according to Burchard and her co-plaintiffs. In over 60 pages, their complaint alleges they were “retaliated against, shunned, isolated, humiliated and undermined because of their activities as whistleblowers” and “subjected to a hostile work environment because of their gender.”

Burchard alleged in the suit that she was told to pay $30,000 worth of invoices “for which there were no contracts and no proof that work had been done.” The suit also said she expressed concerns about a “potentially unlawful quid-pro-quo” between America 250 and Facebook’s parent company, Meta, which gave the foundation $10 million in exchange for rights to map national parks with drones “for its own business purposes” — using the “pretense” that the mapping was an America 250 program. (Meta did not respond to a request for comment. The National Park Service, which is not a party to the lawsuit, declined to comment.)

Meanwhile, the foundation’s president assigned Burchard secretarial duties and told her she “needed to learn how to serve him,” the suit claimed.

The suit also alleges that Keri Potts, another plaintiff and a sexual assault survivor who has been profiled in The Washington Post, was disparaged by a fellow employee “in a drunken, sexist tirade to a work peer,” calling her “a b—-” who “probably made up the claim she is a survivor.”

Potts resigned after some commissioners questioned the foundation’s “waste and misappropriation,” the suit said, concluding “she could not refute them because they were largely true.”

In an interview, Potts said America 250 has a “sacred privilege” to represent the nation as its 250th anniversary approaches — one that the foundation was not living up to.

“I’m the PR person,” she said. “I’m not Houdini. These are disastrous decisions. I’m not putting my name on that.”

Some commissioners, however, praised America 250. In an emailed statement, Commissioner Val Crofts said the majority of the commission was “energized and excited for a commemoration that will make this country proud.”

Programs like the Young People’s Continental Congress, an America 250 partner program that will bring students to Philadelphia in an event modeled on the First Continental Congress, offer “hands-on experience in discussing contemporary issues and proposing changes and ideas to improve them,” the statement said.

“The Foundation staff has also designed a detailed plan for any and all Commissioners who want to be a part of the planning process,” the statement said. “I know that many of my fellow Commissioners have done so and I call on my colleagues who have not to take them up on this opportunity.”

In a letter to the foundation in February, three lawmakers on the commission — Sen. Robert P. Casey Jr. (D-Pa.), Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-N.J.) and Rep. Dwight Evans (D-Pa.) — said America 250 should launch an investigation into the women’s claims.

At a virtual meeting last month, Coleman held up a sign reading “I Demand to Be Heard” after DiLella refused to let her speak, as the Wall Street Journal reported.

“The Commission was established to honor the American people and their 250 years as a nation,” the letter said. “Its activity should not be unnecessarily obfuscated, and its conduct should be held to the highest standard.”

This is not the first time drama has threatened to derail an American anniversary. Bicentennial celebrations in 1976 were held only after a federal commission “later abolished by Congress for ineptitude … spent 6½ years arguing over an appropriate national celebration and finally recommended that there be none,” according to a 1975 Time magazine article. The nation’s 150th, also celebrated in Philadelphia, was also plagued by debt, low attendance and bad weather.

Andrew Hohns, a member of the commission who opposed the rule changes, said in an interview that the nation’s anniversaries are important opportunities for education and infrastructure-building. For example, he said, South Philadelphia swampland drained for the nation’s 150th birthday celebration is now home to the city’s sports stadiums and public parkland.

America 250 should be mustering resources for a wide array of programming — everything from organizing volunteer projects for high school students to promoting childhood nutrition that will strengthen the “social fabric,” according to Hohns. Instead, the foundation, which has about 2,000 Instagram followers, has unsuccessfully focused on building its brand, he said.

“I’m not at all comfortable with the way things stand,” Hohns said. “This is a very significant abuse of this public institution.”

Commissioner Noah Griffin Jr., who also opposed the rule changes, said he is one of the commission’s few African Americans. Griffin’s grandfather was an enslaved person, he said, and he joined the commission to make sure Black stories were told.

Now, America 250 is nothing but a “branding operation,” according to Griffin, and Biden must act to ensure it is effectively run.

“Each generation’s ceiling is the next generation’s floor,” Griffin said. “I’m not willing to turn it over to folks that are not willing to understand and appreciate that. Somebody has to continue to make this commission what it should be.”


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