The media has focused on the price tag and potholes. But history may mark 14 June as the ceremonial birth of US fascism

In 2017, watching a two-hour Bastille Day procession, Donald Trump told the French president that we’d have one too, only better. That time, the grown-ups said no. The reasons given were costs – estimates ran to $92m – hellish logistics, and the Washington DC mayor Muriel Bowser’s worries that tanks and other armored vehicles would tear up Washington’s streets.

Some retired generals objected publicly to the totalitarian-adjacent optics, especially given the US president’s praise for such bad actors as Saddam Hussein and Vladimir Putin. Several Republican lawmakers also expressed their distaste. “Confidence is silent, and insecurity is loud,” the Louisiana senator John Kennedy told MSNBC. “America is the most powerful country in all of human history ... and we don’t need to show it off. We’re not North Korea. We’re not Russia, we’re not China,” he continued, “and I don’t wanna be.”

This time, as Washington prepares for a huge military shindig on 14 June, Trump’s 79th – and, oh yes, the US army’s 250th – birthday, the generals are silent. The Republicans have sworn allegiance to the king. And the media are focused on the price tag, the potholes and the impending pomp; on tensions between the blue city of Washington and the red capital; and on the decimation of veterans’ healthcare, housing, and pensions while the administration throws $25m to $45m at a circus of war.

All are important parts of the story. Yet commentary is muted and the debate mischaracterized as normal political discourse. The horrific point is missed: the spectacle of a massive show of military might, before a president who behaves like a dictator and views the armed forces as his personal foot soldiers, evinces memories of the worst totalitarian regimes. History may mark 14 June 2025 as the ceremonial birth of a new American fascism.

Military Parade in Capital on Trump’s Birthday Could Cost $45 Million, Officials Say, reported the New York Times in mid-May. CBS also led with the cost. The Washingtonian described in detail the street-damage-preventive measures the army is installing: metal plates under the parade route, rubber padding on the tank treads – though transportation experts warn that running, at last count, 28 Abrams tanks, 28 Bradley fighting vehicles, 28 Strykers, and four Paladins, each behemoth weighing as much as 70 tonnes, could buckle the asphalt and smash power, water and telecom lines underneath.

Even the New Republic, the president’s daily disparager, put the cost up top, tallied the ordinance, and noted that the man who “signed an executive order creating a program to ‘beautify Washington DC’” was now “plotting to transform his expensive birthday party into a demolition derby that will cause serious damage to the roads that line the nation’s capital”.

In late May, three weeks after the Associated Press first revealed the parade plan, the army promised it would pay to fix the streets. It did not commit to picking up the multimillion-dollar tab for policing and cleanup, however, which will come out of a city budget from which the House cut $1.1bn in March and didn’t get around to restoring.

Still, the partial resolution of the infrastructure problems liberated the press to get on with the fun stuff: “what to expect” on the festive day: not just planes, tanks and 6,700 soldiers, but also fireworks, football players and fitness competitions. USA Today linked to the free tickets page and published the parade route, plus a map of the military goodies on display, including robots and night-vision goggles. It called the event an “unofficial birthday party”. ABC News ran a feature on Doc Holliday, the dog who will join the parade in a mule-drawn cart.

Tucked into some stories was a sentence or two indicating controversy, such as this from Reuters: “Critics have called a parade an authoritarian display of power that is wasteful, especially as Trump slashes costs throughout the federal government.”

“The plans have drawn some criticism from Democrats,” said CBS.

The Hill wrote: “Democrats and critics have questioned both the cost of the parade and whether it politicizes the military, which has traditionally been nonpartisan. The fact that the parade falls on Trump’s birthday has only fueled criticism from Democrats who view it as a way for the president to celebrate himself.”

Over at Fox, they were telling the critics to get over themselves. “The Democratic party, they’ve chosen to be an outrage machine at a time when there is outrage fatigue in this country,” scoffed Kayleigh McEnany, Trump’s former press secretary and current Fox News host. “People are fed up with the ‘authoritarianism coup’ language.”

It’s true. Only one party is complaining. But what is striking about their complaints is the relative dearth of authoritarian coup language. “The egotist-in-chief wants taxpayers to foot the bill for a military parade on his birthday,” said Steve Cohen, a US representative from Tennessee, in a statement. As if the president were moved by mere narcissism.

Reported Forbes on 15 May: “There has been no formal pushback to the proposal.”

Trump likes hulking lethal toys, but he hasn’t always been partial to the people who run them. There was the fight he picked with a couple of Muslim Gold Star parents during his first campaign; the comments on a 2018 European trip that fallen soldiers are “losers” and “suckers”; the undisguised queasiness about seeing or being seen with wounded veterans; the Pentagon session where he called his top officers “a bunch of dopes and babies”.

But he is warming to the role of commander in chief. In his commencement speech at West Point, between bloviations on Nato, drag shows, golf and trophy wives, he boasted about the unprecedented $1.1tn military budget. “You’ll become officers in the greatest and most powerful army the world has ever known,” he said. “And I know because I rebuilt that army, and I rebuilt the military ... like nobody has ever rebuilt it before.”

Also breaking from script on Memorial Day at Arlington Cemetery, he suggested that the parade, on top of nabbing the World Cup and the Olympics, was divinely ordained. “Look what I have, I have everything,” he cried. “Amazing the way things work out. God did that.”

If he is to ease from commander of the armed forces to commander of everything, he will need more than God on his side. He’ll need to own the military. Forty-five million bucks is a good starting bid.

Stalin’s 50th birthday celebration, in 1929, is considered the kickoff of his cult of personality. Hitler’s 50th birthday military parade, in April 1939, was organized by the propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels for maximum grandeur, including a motorcade of 50 white limousines. Five months later, Germany invaded Poland.

Kim Jong-un changed Loyalty Oath Day from 1 January to his birthday, 8 January. This February, the Republican US representative Claudia Tenney of New York introduced a bill to designate Trump’s birthday as a national holiday. It hasn’t gone anywhere – yet.

The pieces are lining up like a phalanx of soldiers. The website of America250, the non-profit fundraising and marketing arm of the Semiquincentennial Commission, is an advertisement for Trump. Its description of the “grand military parade” refers to him in the second sentence and proclaims that under his “leadership, the U.S. Army has been restored to strength and readiness”.

At the parade, the crowd of 200,000 spectators will be dominated by Maga idol worshippers. Trump will watch the extravaganza from a reviewing stand, just like Xi Jinping and Putin did recently at Red Square. The army’s Golden Knights parachute team will land on the Eclipse and hand the president a flag. Officials say there are “no plans” to sing Happy Birthday, but there are rumors the army will also give Trump a birthday gift.

Let’s call 14 June what it promises to be: the ceremonial birth of the US’s 21st-century fascist regime.

Employees at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and all the agencies under its umbrella, were told that contracts would have to go through a new approval process called the Departmental Efficiency Review (DER). Any requisitioning or contract approval is paused until after workers submit a form to start the DER and the deputy secretary’s office reviews the funding, according to an email about the process obtained by WIRED. The email also states that the review will flag any contracts that appear to be expensive and excessive.

Urgent contract oversight is also occurring at the Department of Labor (DOL). “There is a LOT of pressure to end these contracts as soon as possible, within the next few days,” a source at the DOL told WIRED on Thursday.

At other agencies, like the USDA and the Treasury, some tech workers were recently notified that they may be asked to interview with someone at DOGE for an unspecified reason. “Just last week we were warned of possible contact from DOGE for interviews,” the USDA IT source says, adding that no one told workers what the interviews would be about. At Treasury, employees were told those who perform “some of the more technical functions” would be pulled into these interviews.

Tech contractors at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), one of the first agencies DOGE burrowed into, were suddenly let go after returning from the long Memorial Day weekend. Their termination letters credited DOGE with their dismissal.

“The United States Office of Personnel Management (OPM), under the direction of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has modified the IT services contract with RMCI [an IT contractor] that you support,” the termination letters say. “As a result, it is with regret that your work on the OPM contract will end.”

During Friday’s press conference, Trump gifted Musk what appeared to be a golden key in a box that had a picture of the White House, thanking him for his last few months of government work.

“DOGE is integral to the federal government’s operations, and its mission, as established by the President’s executive order, will continue under the direction of agency and department heads in the Trump administration,” White House spokesperson Harrison Fields tells WIRED. “DOGE has delivered remarkable results at an unprecedented pace, and its work is far from complete.”

United States DOGE Service administrator Amy Gleason did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

“Elon may be stepping away, but DOGE’s mission remains stronger than ever. Exposing reckless, wasteful government spending isn’t about one individual—it’s about a lasting overhaul of Crazy Town,” congressman Aaron Bean, chair of the House DOGE caucus, tells WIRED about the group’s continued work. “From reducing fraudulent payments by reforming the Treasury payment system to modernizing federal processes, like the OPM retirement system, the House DOGE Caucus is working to codify targeted spending cuts to rein in government overreach and deliver real accountability to the American people. We are also working closely with the White House to ensure recession packages reflect DOGE’s critical findings—turning transparency into action. Rest assured, the House DOGE Caucus is here for the long haul, and our work is just getting started.”