by Lorraine Connelly, member of the Chester Democratic Town Committee
As published in CTInsider July 10, 2026
This week I attended a simultaneous reading of the Declaration of Independence at our town meetinghouse in Chester. This nationwide initiative, “Sharing the Spirit of America,” commemorated the 250th anniversary of the first public reading of the Declaration in Philadelphia on July 8, 1776. We gathered around the meetinghouse gazebo, decked out in red, white, and blue bunting, to hear the document read aloud, while an audience in lawn chairs soaked in the stirring affirmations of our “certain unalienable Rights… among these … Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Sponsored by the Hawaii America250 Commission, Americans in all 50 states, five territories, the District of Columbia, and U.S. Minor Outlying Islands were invited to read the Declaration aloud concurrently. The program was designed to unify participants across 10 time zones and over 9,500 miles, allowing communities to read the Declaration in concert, despite varied geographic differences. Perhaps the effort was also meant to bridge the tectonic political divide that plagues us on our 250th anniversary. Could today’s citizenry possibly unite around the inspirational words that ignited the American Revolution and inspired democratic movements across the globe?
With rhetoric from the current White House administration suggesting the possibility of annexing of Canada, Venezuela, or Greenland as a 51st state, I find it especially significant that this program was initiated by Hawaii, the last state to join the U.S., in 1959. Also known as “The Aloha State,” Hawaii has put a premium on the unique meaning of aloha, the greeting for “hello” or “goodbye” in the native language. More than just a greeting, this expression embodies love, compassion, and peace. It was such a fundamental concept for Hawaiians that the state legislature codified the “Aloha Spirit Law,” establishing it as a guiding philosophy for citizens and lawmakers alike. As we celebrate our historic 250th milestone, our citizenry and legislatures could benefit from the guiding principle of “aloha.”
Preparations for the semiquincentennial were well underway when the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) abruptly terminated hundreds of grants and operational funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) in April 2025. Although a federal judge in May 2026 ruled that the mass termination of over $100 million in congressionally appropriated funds was unlawful, because of the late timing of the decision many small towns and local historical societies had to scale back historical and educational celebrations, or cancel initiatives entirely.
Funding that Congress had allocated to the bipartisan America250 Commission, established in 2016 under the Obama administration, was redirected to the competing White House-endorsed Freedom250 Task Force to make the 250th milestone bigger, greater, and dare we say—more exceptional. Bravado overshadowed the Spirit of Aloha.
The Great American State Fair, held on the National Mall, was paid for, in part, by those redirected federal funds. At least 11 states declined official participation in the fair, including Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington, with some states noting prohibitive participation costs, in addition to what one Oregon spokesman cited as, “growing concerns that the event in Washington, D.C., is shaping up to be a more partisan affair than originally presented,” according to The Hill.
Connecticut chose instead to direct its resources toward local America250 celebrations taking place within the state, under the aegis of the America250 CT Commission.
One of the goals of the America250 CT Commission was to tell inclusive stories, to capture America’s diversity, and to illuminate local histories, expanding the national narrative beyond traditional founding myths. Connecticut’s commission also highlighted the lived experiences of women, Indigenous people, free and enslaved African Americans, immigrants, and the working class.
Although America250’s platform of inclusiveness might not have resonated with the current administration’s anti-DEI, anti-wokeness stance, the universality of liberties was foremost in our Founding Fathers’ thoughts as they declared for the ages that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.”
President Trump did pay tribute to these lofty ideals in his speech at the Great American State Fair, but reverted to triumphalism in his remarks, saying, “Those timeless American principles did not just win a revolution, but they built us into the greatest, strongest, and most exceptional nation the world has ever known. There has never been anything like the United States of America, and together we are making it bigger and better and stronger and far more exceptional than ever before.”
The 250th anniversary is a time to reflect on our nation’s founding principles, which eschewed exceptionalism for any particular people in favor of the universal rights of all. More Aloha than Bravado. That is the true Spirit of America.