• A roving exhibition dedicated to U.S. history is traveling the country ahead of the nation’s 250th birthday.
• The Freedom Truck fleet is part of Trump’s controversial Freedom 250 initiative.
• It is taxpayer-funded, with a $14.1 million IMLS grant, and organized by conservative groups with evangelical ties.
  

As the U.S. gears up for the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, President Donald Trump has dispatched six roving Freedom Truck exhibitions to crisscross the country. The first of 20 planned stops—mainly in the south, with forays to the Midwest, Arizona, and Utah—was last month in Nashville, with three trucks in South Carolina this week.

These trucks present a very specific, “patriotic” version of American history and “how 13 colonies declared independence, defeated the greatest empire in the world, and secured American sovereignty 250 years ago.” It’s all very much in keeping with Trump’s stated vision for U.S. culture, focusing on the country’s successes and achievements while minimizing the impact of slavery and other forms of discrimination.

The exhibition is meant to be interactive. There’s an “Are You a Loyalist or Patriot?” quiz; you can digitally sign the Declaration of Independence, and converse with an A.I.-powered George Washington. There’s also a wall honoring “American heroes” and a selection of historic artifacts from American Journey Experience, Irving, Texas, which is run by conservative political commentator Glenn Beck.

Glenn Beck’s American Journey Experience. Photo by American Journey Experience, Irving, Texas.

But wall text proclaiming that the “foundational principles of America are rooted in Western and Judeo-Christian values” and organizers’ close ties to evangelical community have triggered concerns that the Freedom Truck is essentially a propaganda campaign pushing a right-wing, white Christian nationalist agenda.

What Is the Freedom Truck? 

The idea of a mobile exhibition dedicated to U.S. history can be traced back to the Freedom Train, held first from 1947 to 1949 and the American Freedom Train organized for the 1976 Bicentennial celebrations. The Freedom Truck also a take on the VA250 Mobile Museum, which the state of Virginia launched last year.

The Freedom Train of the 1940s, transporting a traveling exhibit of historical documents. Photo by HUM Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images.

The Freedom Truck project was announced in September by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). An initial $10 million grant has since increased to $14.1 million, all taxpayer-funded. (The guidelines for next year’s IMLS grants explicitly direct applicants to follow Trump’s executive orders about culture.)

The tour is being staged by the U.S. Department of Transportation, which has created its own dedicated Freedom 250 website. PragerU, a conservative education platform from Oklahoma and Hillsdale College, a Christian college in Michigan, organized the exhibition free of charge.

The American Freedom Train, a rolling museum of artifacts and documents from 200 years of U.S. history that traveled the nation for the Bicentennial. Photo by Bill Young/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images.

PragerU previously partnered with the White House and the U.S. Department of Education to stage the exhibition “Founders Museum: The Road to Liberty” at the White House in 2025. (The organization’s website lets you download the files to restage the show, but not its weird A.I. videos.)

Trump Throws America a Birthday Party

The nation’s plans for the semiquincentennial celebrations were in formation long before Trump’s second term began, overseen by America250, a bipartisan initiative established by Congress in 2016. But after the inauguration, the White House launched a rival group, Task Force 250, with a funding arm called Freedom 250 that is a limited liability company within the National Parks Department.

As of last month, America250 had only received $25 million of $150 million in previously appropriated funds. And the American Library Association lawsuit against acting IMLS director Keith Sonderling over the attempted dismantling of the agency points out a major issue with the Freedom Truck grant: IMLS is designed to distribute federal funding to state and local organizations, not feed it back upstream to the federal government.

America turns 250 🇺🇸🇺🇸

President Donald J. Trump on Freedom 250 and the 2026 celebration that honors our nation like never before. WATCH: pic.twitter.com/aSaPqQ0U7m

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) December 18, 2025

Freedom 250 is being billed as the “national, organization leading the celebration of America’s 250th birthday,” and the Interior Department has instructed staff to make Freedom 250 the “primary branding” in all government communications about anniversary events.

Donate $1 million to the organization, and you get invited to a private party with a photo-op with Trump, according to the New York Times. According to Mother Jones, major donors include Coinbase, Palantir, and UFC.

But this isn’t just another money-making operation. It’s also way for Trump to continue push his cultural agenda.

Men outside the Freedom Truck. Photo by the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

Organizers have not been shy about the prominence of Christian values on the Freedom Truck. The exhibition is aimed at “people today who want to truly know what’s going on and not learn about what America looked like based on an interpretation of some woke agenda,” Marissa Streit, CEO of PragerU, told USA Today. “We’ve been talking about how intentionally taking the Bible out of the classroom has effectively ruined America’s education system.”

Hillsdale College was on the advisory committee for Project 2025, which seeks to remake the federal government in accordance with conservative values.

“Freedom Trucks is a work of propaganda that promises to tell only one side of American history, promote only one set of so-called American values,” wrote Book Riot, an independent editorial book site.

The Freedom Truck exhibition. Photo by the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

But What About Patriotic Transportation?

A new American Freedom Train exhibition aboard five steam engines with 10 passenger cars is planned to kick off in the fall. Operated by a private foundation, the 44-city, 15,000-mile tour is set to run through August 2027.

There’s also the Freedom Plane, a roving exhibition courtesy of the National Archives. It kicks off this weekend in Kansas City, transporting historic copies of nine of our nation’s foundational documents by Boeing 737.

That includes one of 50 William Stone engraved copies of Declaration of Independence from 1823; and George Washington’s, Alexander Hamilton’s, and Aaron Burr’s Oaths of Allegiance from 1778.

The Freedom Plane. Photo courtesy of the National Archives.

And harkening back even earlier in transportation history, the Bureau of Land Management is promoting its Wild Horse and Burro program with a Freedom and Liberty tour starring Freedom, a wild horse and Liberty, a wild burro. Their first appearance was over the weekend at the Southern Equine Expo in Murfreesboro, Tennesee, with stops currently planned through October.