Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt called on President Donald Trump to ditch the chairwoman whom former President Joe Biden tasked with planning and overseeing America’s 250th birthday bash due to her “extreme partisan bias.”
Rosie Rios, who currently chairs the United States Semi-Quincentennial Commission, “has a track record of extreme partisan bias against [Trump] and [the Trump] administration,” Schmitt said in a letter to the president on Tuesday.
“In July 2016, she insisted that ‘nothing good’ could come from your presidential candidacy,” Schmitt continued, alleging Rios has made “statements denigrating your [Trump’s] vision to put America first.”
Rios served as U.S. treasurer in the Obama administration and was appointed to chair the commission in 2022. Rios replaced Trump’s original selection of Daniel DiLella in 2018.
The problem isn’t just politics — it’s personal hostility to the United States. As exposed in a thread on X by War Room co-host Natalie Winters, Rios has repeatedly expressed a conflicted allegiance to Mexico: “I am as much Mexican as I am American” she said during a 2015 speech.
Rios has also said: “We are the same blood. California, where I was born and raised, was Mexico. People tend to forget that, that we are in the same land, and that was Mexico.” Rios further stated she felt “much more…at home” in Mexico while lamenting that Trump doesn’t “defend the Mexicans.”
In a separate interview with Animal Politico, Rios stated: “Mexico is my country, just like the United States; my family is here, my blood is here. I can’t choose between the two countries; I’m part of both.”
America’s 250th birthday is not the time for celebrating foreign countries instead of our own. As Theodore Roosevelt warned nearly a century ago: “There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism.”
“A hyphenated American is not an American at all,” he said. “The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin…would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities…”
Yet the woman currently tasked with planning this historic celebration not only embraces at-best dual allegiance, she appears to want to rewrite America’s history. When asked in 2020 who her favorite Founding Father or “other American hero” would be, she instead said she was “inspired by our founding mothers,” “all the women who have made significant contributions to our history, specifically Harriet Tubman and Susan B. Anthony.”
Rios, a self-described “feminist,” said she wants to open people’s eyes to “what women have done in our history.”
“I hope to bring this energy to the commission. It’s not his story, it’s our story,” she said. This revisionist mindset shouldn’t be anywhere near a day that should celebrate and honor the United States’s actual Founders and the country they created.
Rios also said she hoped the United States would “appreciate…different cultures” before adding: “United States, united concept.”
But America is not a “concept.” It’s a nation born in revolution, built on specific ideals, culture, habits, and principles, and defended by generations who believed in its singular greatness. As our nation approaches its 250th birthday, we deserve a celebration that honors America’s founding, history, and exceptionalism — not one that distorts and shames it.
Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist. Brianna graduated from Fordham University with a degree in International Political Economy. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2
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