Washington America 250 Extreme Weather Heat

President Donald Trump has ushered in the 250th anniversary of American independence with soaring rhetoric about American exceptionalism before veering into a darkly political speech with warnings about communism. Trump's speech Friday night at Mount Rushmore swerved from the typically apolitical, unifying speeches past presidents have delivered during high-profile Independence Day celebrations. In New York City, Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, delivered his own address that cast America as a nation of contradictions “working each day towards the perfection in which it was conceived.” The president’s speech capped an Independence Day eve that was otherwise most notable for a brutal heat wave the gripped much of the eastern portion of the country.