As for history—and the story told about the American Revolution in museums and classrooms, on walking tours, and, inescapably, once the marketing kicks in, on cereal boxes and highway billboards and cans of soda—the Trump Administration has its version, and it wants that version to be everyone’s version. But the problems with the federal government’s interest in controlling the story of the American Revolution began long before Donald Trump was reëlected. The U.S. Semiquincentennial Commission, a bipartisan body orchestrating the celebration, better known as America250, or A250, was established in 2016 during Barack Obama’s last year in office. Almost immediately, it descended into internecine war, and, in the near-decade since, its dysfunction has greatly impeded the ability of the rest of the country to get any planning done. This is measurable. Near the end of the Biden Administration, A250 contracted with iCivics, a civics-education organization founded by Sandra Day O’Connor, to research activities planned around the country. These turned out to be very difficult even to discover since, as the iCivics C.E.O. told me, “People are very underfunded and just really didn’t have anything together by that point.” That’s still true.