As America Celebrates 250 Years, Murkiness Surrounds Trump-Backed Planning Fund

Among the sponsors of Freedom 250, the organization created by President Donald Trump to organize the nation’s semiquincentennial celebration, is a Florida mining company with a regulatory crisis pending before the Trump administration, according to a new report.

Mosaic Co. mine phosphate and potash, used in the production of agricultural fertilizers. The Tampa-based company, which operates in North and South America, is seeking permission from the US Army Corps of Engineers to expand its landfill in Florida, raising environmental concerns in a state vulnerable to hurricane intensity, according to a report by the Revolving Door Project and Public Citizen, two watchdog groups.

“Right now they’re waiting for a big regulatory decision that could affect their company. So they have every incentive to come out as close to Trump as possible,” said Alan Zibel, a Public Citizen researcher and co-author of the report. “We have to know which companies are trying to influence the government and why and what they want. We know a little bit about that through the disclosure of campaign funds, but cars like these are unclear, in the dark, it makes it difficult to understand who is trying to influence our government.”

The Trump administration awarded nearly $103 million in contracts and grants for 250th anniversary programs to “a network of politically motivated organizations controlled by Trump administration officials and political allies,” the report said.

Private funding has also entered the planning process, often from companies with regulatory problems before the Trump administration, including Chevron, ExxonMobil, UFC and Mosaic. These companies put in undisclosed amounts without being monitored, according to the report. Trump created the Freedom 250 shortly after taking office, and the organization is already a rival to the bipartisan America250, which has been in the works for a decade. Mosaic and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Mosaic is seeking approval under the Clean Water Act from the US Army Corps of Engineers for a $260 million expansion at its Riverview production facility outside Tampa. The site consists of a manufacturing plant and two waste piles called stacks. One stack is closed, and Mosaic said the other has capacity left to store about six years of operation. The stacks at Moses’ site contain phosphogypsum, a radioactive, carcinogenic and toxic waste produced in the production of fertilizers.

The company wants to expand the open stack so it can continue production at the site until the production facility ceases to operate, although that was not immediately clear. Construction will begin in January 2028 and take approximately two and a half years to complete. The project site is less than a mile east of Hillsborough Bay, although Mosaic said plans are designed to minimize environmental impact. The center is near a black community called Progress Village, said Ragan Whitlock, staff attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, an advocacy group.

“It’s a good example of how these facilities pose serious problems to communities and the environment in Florida,” he said. “Mosaic is trying every way to pay a small fee to prevent this waste from leaking into the environment instead of seeing the damage.”

The project was expedited through the federal approval process, in response to Trump’s order to streamline approvals for infrastructure and energy projects to promote national security and economic prosperity.

Phosphogypsum is often dumped in those stacks to limit public exposure, but the stacks have had problems. Most notably, a reservoir in Florida’s Piney Point area, which is not owned by Mosaic, leaked and threatened to collapse in 2021, forcing the release of 215 million gallons of wastewater into Tampa Bay. More than one billion tons of waste is stored in landfills in Florida, and the fertilizer industry adds 40 million tons annually, according to the Center for Biological Diversity.

Conservation groups including the Center for Biological Diversity sued to force the Trump administration to classify phosphogypsum as hazardous waste. Another lawsuit challenges the Environmental Protection Agency’s approval of Moses’ controversial plan to apply phosphogypsum to a proposed road project at the company’s nearby New Wales facility.

“There are companies that cooperate with Trump not because they want to be political but because they have a great financial interest,” said Zibel. “It’s both a matter of getting what you want from the authorities and avoiding punishment. Because this government punishes hard … people who don’t respect and don’t say nice things about them; they’re notorious for revenge.”