To mark this particular Fourth of July—or Trump 250, as it’s known in the cheesy online merchandise circles where a 22-ounce “Trump 250 Airplane Water Bottle” can be yours for $38.00—we offer a selective look back at the last 250 years of American democracy, and a speculative look ahead to the next … well, best not to make assumptions. Let’s say the next 250 days.

THE DECLARATION
July 2, 1776
The Continental Congress votes for independence. Two days later, the first draft of the Declaration is signed by John Hancock and Charles Thomson, one of whom proved better at advancing his brand: on August 2, 54 additional Founding Fathers append their John Hancocks—not their Charles Thomsons—to the parchment.
THE CONSTITUTION
September 17, 1787
Signed. Nine more months to ratify it, 239 years to trash it. (Shout-out to the current Supreme Court!)
SLAVERY ABOLISHED
December 6, 1865
The 13th Amendment is ratified. One hundred sixty years later, a certain president (hint: “I am the least racist person anywhere in the world”) will whine about the Smithsonian always going on about “how bad slavery was.”
WOMEN’S RIGHT TO VOTE
June 4, 1919
Congress passes the 19th Amendment. A century later, Christian nationalists such as Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s B.F.F. Pastor Doug Wilson call it “a bad idea” and dream of repealing it.
THE MARCH ON WASHINGTON
August 28, 1963
More than 250,000 march for civil rights. Decades later, Trump will claim that his rallies are “bigger than the Martin Luther King crowd.” They’re not. On the other hand, what is “I have a dream” compared to Trump’s soaring oratory: “And they calmly walk to us, and ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. They’ve only got 17 seconds to figure this whole thing out. Boom. O.K. Missile launch. Whoosh. Boom.”
NO KINGS
June 14, 2025
Millions participate in the first of many “No Kings” rallies and marches. Vice President J. D. Vance, supposedly the kind of “high-I.Q. person” his boss so admires, suggests that the protesters are hypocrites for not opposing King Charles’s visit to the U.S.
SEMIQUINCENTENNIAL
July 4, 2026
You are here. We all are, for better or worse. As for what might lie ahead:
CEASEFIRE, SHMEASEFIRE
August 28, 2026
On the six-month anniversary of the start of the Iran war—you remember, the “unconditional surrender” one that didn’t exactly turn out as planned—the president, his approval rating in single digits, tests the waters for a possible reboot. He posts (3:56 a.m.) that if Iran doesn’t “immediately and At Once” close the Strait of Hormuz, and then reopen it on his orders, “they will be Annihilated off the Face of the Earth,” though he adds (4:01 a.m.) that a “historic, beautiful deal like no one has ever seen” was still possible, as long as Iran agrees to let us periodically “obliterate” their nuclear-weapons program. Then posts compulsively about White House drapes until aides confiscate his phone (8:15 a.m.).
THE WHITE HOUSE SUPERDOME
September 9, 2026
Size/cost of proposed White House ballroom, already doubled, now triples: 270,000 square feet, $1.2 billion. Melania Trump will do the tasteful interior design, having been awarded a hefty taxpayer-funded fee.
THE NATION’S HEALTH
October 23, 2026
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. identifies oxygen as something our systems were “never intended to handle” and the “primary culprit” for all that ails us. Breathing, says the health secretary, should be a personal decision, though he recommends doing it no more than once a day.
CLOCKS BACK
November 1, 2026
Daylight-saving time ends. We gain one extra hour of profoundly dispiriting news developments.
THE MIDTERMS
November 3, 2026
Still scheduled, as we go to press.
THE DAY AFTER
November 4, 2026
The president declares the midterm elections “rigged,” citing unspecified evidence of rampant “fraud” in every race Republicans didn’t win.
VETERANS DAY
November 11, 2026
Much-rumored nationwide military call-up, necessitated by “an unpatriotic Whack-job Democrat midterms HOAX!!!” (Exemption for anyone with documented bone spurs.)
CONGRESS, AGAIN
January 3, 2027
The 120th Congress convenes, solemnly swearing to waste no time becoming its own punch line.
NATIONAL HOLIDAY
February 15, 2027
Presidents’ Day Henceforth, by executive order: “President’s Day,” singular. Plans revealed to construct a 370-foot gold-plated beam to sit horizontally atop the Washington Monument. The president “hadn’t even realized” the addition would form an enormous T, but muses about constructing a pool to catch the letter’s reflection.
CLASS OF 47
March 5, 2027
Coinciding with Kristi Noem’s first anniversary as “Special Envoy” to the Shield of the Americas: the Trump Administration Alumni Association In-Like-a-Lion-Out-Like-a-Scaramucci Spring Soirée/Dinner-Dance, at the Capitol One Arena (capacity 20,000). Black-tie sit-down dinner for onetime Cabinet members, former government-agency administrators, and erstwhile White House staff. First 500 people who can prove they were C.T.N.S.W.’s—Controversial Trump Nominees Subsequently Withdrawn—will be admitted, though only for cocktails. (Sorry, no plus-ones.)
250 + 250
March 11, 2027
A very happy Post-Semiquincentennial Ducentesimus Quinquagesimus Dies! And good luck to us all.

George Kalogerakis, a Writer at Large at AIR MAIL, worked at Spy, Vanity Fair, and The New York Times, where he was deputy op-ed editor. He is a co-author of Spy: The Funny Years and a co-editor of Disunion: A History of the Civil War