GOP spent years targeting progressive dark money. That could boomerang on Trump.

During President Trump's second term, Republicans have escalated their attacks on hard-to-trace fundraising methods used by left-leaning groups. Now, those efforts could force more disclosure for a project linked to Mr. Trump himself: Freedom 250, the entity behind America's 250th birthday celebration.

When the Trump administration set out to plan events for America's 250th anniversary, it did not build a new charity. Instead, the National Park Foundation — a congressionally chartered nonprofit that raises money for the National Park Service — created a special subsidiary in October 2025 and established it in Delaware.

President Trump declared that Freedom 250, organized as a limited liability company, would throw America "the most spectacular birthday party you've ever seen." The National Park Foundation received roughly $90 million in federal dollars to support the celebration, government records show. Freedom 250 separately solicited seven-figure donations from corporate sponsors, documents show, without filing any public financial disclosures of its own.

This kind of lawful structure is familiar in the nonprofit world, where charities routinely house projects that lack their own tax-exempt status, an arrangement known as fiscal sponsorship — a term that does not appear in the tax code. The National Park Foundation describes Freedom 250 as a "wholly owned subsidiary" that provided the Park Service with "access to the expertise needed for planning and executing the events" for the 250th.

Freedom 250 files no tax return of its own, and money raised in its name legally belongs to the National Park Foundation. There is no standalone accounting on these disclosures of how much flowed through the project, how it was spent, or who ran it.

Charities face broad public-disclosure requirements "at least in part because they are publicly supported through tax benefits," said Brian Mittendorf, an Ohio State University professor who specializes in nonprofit accounting. But while a charity must disclose that it owns an entity like Freedom 250, it is not required to break out how that project raised or spent its money, he said.

"There's always been this challenge for transparency," Mittendorf told CBS News.

For years, Republicans have scrutinized this exact type of fundraising system, arguing that left-leaning nonprofits abused lax federal regulations while funding allegedly partisan causes. Liberal groups have denied any impropriety.

Now, those GOP efforts have ramped up. Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee advanced a bill last week that would