THE United States marks 250 years since it was founded on Saturday — but a new report by Congress Democrats says commemorations have become a “hotbed of corruption and self-enrichment” for allies of President Donald Trump.

Thirteen British colonies in North America adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4 1776, establishing the United States. The declaration of independence from Britain is often imbued with republican and revolutionary ideals, though its progressive character is disputed, especially by Native Americans whom the new state would drive from their lands and by black descendants of the enslaved Africans who formed a large section of its workforce.

The US Congress set up a group, America250, a decade ago to plan anniversary celebrations but it has been sidelined by Mr Trump, who created his own version called Freedom250 last year, according to the Democrats because he was unable to stuff America250 with his cronies.

Their report From Vanity to Insanity: How the White House Cheated the American People out of their 250th Birthday says many of Freedom250’s events are inappropriate, such as a prayer gathering on the National Mall which is seen as undermining the separation of church and state, and a Great American State Fair which presents a “sanitised” version of US history.

California representative Jared Huffman said the organisation had sold access to the president and awarded contracts in an “opaque fashion,” while pushing “a very divisive, very extreme and explicitly sectarian religious agenda into all these materials in our name, using our taxpayer dollars.”