Thousands of people packed Washington's National Mall on Sunday for a daylong rally billed as a "rededication of our country as One Nation under God," part of a White House-backed program marking 250 years of US independence. 
Donald Trump addressed the gathering by video as a light rain fell, with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and House Speaker Mike Johnson also on the schedule, the PBS NewsHour reported. The event, which France 24 described as part of a White House push to amplify Christianity's role in public life, made prayer a focal point of the semiquincentennial celebrations.
Worship music played from a stage set against the Washington Monument, with stained-glass windows depicting the nation's founders alongside a white cross. Almost every name on the "Rededicate 250" program was Christian, drawn largely from Trump's longtime evangelical supporters, including Paula White-Cain of the White House Faith Office and evangelist Franklin Graham. Hegseth, who has infused Christian language into his Pentagon role, said in a promotional video that "our rights don't come from government; they come from God."
The lineup featured speakers who argue the United States was founded as a Christian nation, a claim disputed by many historians. The Rev. Adam Russell Taylor of the progressive group Sojourners said he was "deeply concerned that what is really being rededicated is a nation to a very narrow and ideological part of the Christian faith." The event was organized by Freedom 250, a public-private partnership backed by the White House whose structure congressional Democrats have questioned as a Trump-controlled end run around a congressionally chartered commission, the PBS NewsHour reported. Counterprogramming groups projected "Democracy not theocracy" onto the National Gallery of Art days earlier.
Figures referenced: Donald Trump. — JudgeMarket.
