The Washington Monument is illuminated with a projection of US President Donald Trump’s “Freedom 250” initiative during the New Year’s Eve show at the National Mall in Washington, DC on December 31, 2025. (Photo by Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)
“Donald Trump and his henchmen have sabotaged what should be a unifying moment and appear intent on instead creating a highly divisive, corporate-funded, ideologically extremist exercise.”
Allies of the Trump administration, in partnership with the White House, are reportedly using the upcoming 250th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence as another opportunity to solicit deep-pocketed donors, enticing them with promises of access to the president and other rewards.
The New York Timesreported Sunday that donors who give at least $1 million to Freedom 250—a group announced by President Donald Trump in December—have been promised a path to “gain access to, and seek favor with, a president who has maintained a keen interest in fundraising, and a willingness to use the levers of government power to reward financial supporters,” including through his crypto scam and ballroom project.
Trump has described Freedom 250 as a “public-private partnership” dedicated to organizing “a celebration of America like no other” later this year. Listed as official corporate sponsors of the initiative are prominent corporate names, including ExxonMobil, Mastercard, and Palantir.
The Times obtained a donor solicitation document circulated by Meredith O’Rourke, Trump’s top fundraiser. Donors who give at least $1 million to Freedom 250 “will receive prominent logo placement at Freedom 250 events,” which are expected to include UFC fights and an IndyCar race.
Freedom 250 appears to have been created to dodge oversight that applies to America250, a bipartisan congressional commission formed to plan official celebrations of the nation’s semiquincentennial.
“American history is being subordinated to Trump’s cult of personality,” Dan Friedman and Amanda Moore wrote in Mother Jones last week. “The president’s face is suddenly everywhere—next to George Washington on America250-themed National Parks passes; alongside Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt on giant banners hanging from federal buildings; on a $1 coin under consideration by the US Treasury.”
“Faced with sporadic pushback from a congressional commission overseeing America250 and from career officials at various agencies, Trump is now seeking to evade even these modest constraints,” they added, pointing to the launch of Freedom 250.
Park Service employees are being bombarded with guidance telling them to promote Freedom 250, the Trump-run org, in place of America250, the statutorily-bipartisan congressional commission. They were even urged to add the Freedom 250 logo to email signatures. www.documentcloud.org/documents/26…
Public Citizen demanded a congressional probe of Freedom 250’s activities, which the watchdog organization’s co-presidents described as a “potential diversion of taxpayer funds for highly partisan purposes.” According to the Times, roughly $10 million in taxpayer funds has “already been redirected to Freedom 250 from America250 for a fleet of six mobile museums called ‘Freedom Trucks’ that rolled out last month.”
“ Donald Trump and his henchmen have sabotaged what should be a unifying moment and appear intent on instead creating a highly divisive, corporate-funded, ideologically extremist exercise,” said Public Citizen’s Lisa Gilbert. “Once again, nothing is sacred in the Trump administration, not even the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Everything is for sale to corporate and potentially foreign interests.”
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U.S. President Donald Trump next to the Thames Water and KKR logos. DeSmog collage. Credit: Gage Skidmore / Thames Water / KKR
The U.S. private equity firm KKR, which has been selected as the ‘preferred bidder’ for the takeover of Thames Water, gave a seven-figure sum to Donald Trump’s inauguration committee, DeSmog can report.
Official records show that Kohlberg Kravis Roberts Co LP (KKR) donated $1 million to the Trump Vance Inaugural Committee on 7 January. The committee is appointed by the president-elect to arrange the inauguration ceremony, when a U.S. president is formally sworn into office.
The embattled London-based utilities provider Thames Water, in debt to the tune of £20 billion, is attempting to secure new investment to save it from nationalisation. In March, KKR was granted preferred bidder status, giving it a 10-week period to raise the equity to buy the water company.
KKR is reported to have lodged an initial £4 billion bid in exchange for a majority stake in Thames Water, which serves 16 million customers.
However, campaigners have raised concerns about KKR’s suitability to own Thames Water, given its financial ties to Trump.
“KKR recently donated $1 million to the inauguration fund of President Trump, a man who has repeatedly called the climate crisis a hoax,” said Matthew Topham, lead campaigner at the pro-nationalisation campaign group We Own It. “Let’s not kid ourselves that this company will swoop in and clean up our rivers and lakes.
“The government has ducked the issue for too long – special administration to slash the rotten debt, then full public ownership, is the only way to reverse this catastrophe.”
The new Trump administration has initiated a bonfire of clean air and water regulations – rules that were set to save the lives of 200,000 people according to The Guardian. Gina McCarthy, chair of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under former U.S. President Barack Obama, said the announcement of the mass rollbacks was the “most disastrous day in EPA history”. During his first term, from 2017 to 2021, Trump repealed more than 100 environmental regulations.
Since being inaugurated for a second time, Trump has pledged to once again withdraw the U.S. from the flagship 2015 Paris Agreement, which set an international target for limiting global warming, and has declared a “national energy emergency” to allow the U.S. to “drill, baby, drill” for new fossil fuels.
KKR’s prospective ownership of a vital public utility has also been questioned on the basis of the U.S. firm’s business model. Private equity firms – which buy and restructure companies – are known to cut costs, and increase prices for consumers, in order to maximise their profits.
KKR was infamously dubbed the “Barbarians at the Gate” in the late 1980s for its takeover of U.S. conglomerate RJR Nabisco.
“It beggars belief that anyone could seriously think this is a business model and owner who will truly fix the crisis at Thames Water,” said Mathew Lawrence, director of the think tank Common Wealth. “It is exactly the behaviour of loading Thames Water up with debt, extracting money, and underinvesting that has led us to this point. What is needed is long-term stewardship, patient investment, and putting the public and our water system first for once – not the interests of elite financial firms.”
These sentiments were reflected in Parliament this week, through a House of Lords address by Labour peer Prem Sikka. “Thames Water was put on the road to ruin by private equity,” he said. “Now its shareholders have designated KKR, another private equity group, as their preferred bidder. KKR’s business model is profiteering, high leverage, low investment, asset stripping and high cash extraction. That will inevitably multiply Thames’s problems.”
KKR and Thames Water were approached for comment.
Debt and Donations
Thames Water’s debt ballooned under the ownership of Australian private equity firm Macquarie, increasing from £3.4 billion in 2006 to £10.8 billion when the firm sold its stake in 2017.
During Macquarie’s ownership of Thames Water, the private equity firm extracted roughly £2.7 billion in dividends and a further £2.2 billion in loans. Despite this, Macquarie has recently said that it is “very proud” of its ownership record.
KKR’s preliminary bid proposed a mechanism that would allow the holders of Thames Water debt – including the U.S. hedge fund Elliott Management – to become Thames Water shareholders.
Elliott Management is an activist hedge fund that recently built up a large stake in BP and has urged the British fossil fuel major to ditch a number of its green commitments. BP’s profits recently dropped by 48 percent amid this pivot back to oil and gas. The hedge fund is run by Paul Singer, who also donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration committee.
Turning around the performance of Thames Water will take considerable investment and business acumen. Thames Water reported a 40 percent increase in pollution incidents in the first half of 2024, while the firm has been allowed to raise customer bills by 35 percent on average over the upcoming years. Senior KKR Europe executive Johannes Huth said last year that water bills must rise to boost investment in ageing infrastructure.
KKR also has a 25 percent stake in Northumbrian Water, which it acquired in 2022.
KKR’s Connections
In addition to its donation to Trump’s inauguration fund, KKR has other ties to fossil fuels and those who oppose climate action.
Analysis by the investigative group Private Equity Climate Risks published in April 2024 reported that KKR has a large fossil fuel portfolio, with 188 assets in 21 countries.
KKR has also created a $50 billion fund with Energy Capital Partners to invest in artificial intelligence (AI) data centre energy infrastructure. Data centres are heavily energy intensive, and DeSmog recently revealed that AI executives have told major polluters that the nascent industry can keep fossil fuels alive.
KKR is also the co-owner of Marshall Wace, a hedge fund co-founded by UK media baron Paul Marshall, holding a 39.9 percent stake as of June 2023. The same month, Marshall Wace reported investments of at least £1.8 billion in fossil fuels companies, including in the oil and gas giants Shell, Chevron, and Equinor.
Marshall is the co-owner of GB News, a broadcaster that has frequently given a platform to climate falsehoods, and is an opponent of policies to reach net zero emissions.
Speaking at a conference in February hosted by the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC), a group funded by Marshall, he said that the UK’s net zero plans are “leading the way in wrecking our industrial base”, “impoverishing people”, “sacrificing our energy security”, and “sacrificing our ancient rural landscape.”
The UK’s net zero sector is growing at three times the rate of the rest of the economy, according to the Confederation of British Industry (CBI).
DeSmog also revealed that Warren Stephens, Trump’s ambassador to the UK, donated $4 million to the president’s inauguration fund on the day that he was nominated for the diplomatic position.
The inauguration committee raised a record $239 million, including from fossil fuel giants Chevron ($2 million), ExxonMobil ($1 million), the U.S. branches of BP and Shell ($500,000 each), and Valero ($250,000).
