America’s 250th birthday party on the Fourth of July extended into the early hours of the Fifth, with an enormous fireworks display that began seconds before midnight in its capital. That capped a coast-to-coast celebration that featured fighter jets, marching bands, dirt bikes and a parade of recalcitrant thunderstorms.
Lightning, record-breaking heat and wayward pyrotechnics brought a measure of unpredictability to a day that had been planned for years. That was a fitting tribute for a country that has proved, again and again, difficult to manage.
As the evening’s headline event was set to start in Washington — a presidential address followed by what organizers billed as “the largest pyrotechnics display in the history of the world” — the approach of severe storms forced a sudden and chaotic evacuation.
Thousands of confused attendees sought shelter in nearby Smithsonian museums, the headquarters of the Internal Revenue Service and a McDonalds. The evacuation order was lifted two hours later, bringing the crowds back to wait in security lines that stretched for blocks.
President Trump, determined to give his address on the actual holiday, began speaking a little after 11 p.m. “After two and a half centuries, this American republic still stands tall and strong, and we love each other,” he said. “That showed tonight. You heard it was over, and what happened? You came back!”
The night also featured fires on the Brooklyn Bridge that were quickly extinguished. New York Police Department officials said it had “very likely” been caused by the Macy’s 4th of July Fireworks show.
As Mr. Trump’s patriotic but bluntly partisan speech bore out, this year’s Independence Day was always going to be shadowed by the nation’s stark polarization. But it began auspiciously enough.
People gathered in New York City to watch an armada of sloops and schooners sail up the Hudson River. Crowds waved at flag-draped tractors rolling through small towns, and listened to neighbors in ill-fitting wigs and breeches read aloud from the Declaration of Independence. Revolutionary War re-enactors drilled on Independence Mall in Philadelphia, and Queen Latifah hosted a giant block party in Los Angeles. Hundreds ran up and down a mountain in Seward, Alaska.
Triple-digit temperatures and grueling humidity in much of the country did not seem to deter the crowds, though the heat did lead to the cancellation of parades and other events up and down the Eastern Seaboard. Some events that were going ahead as planned were called off because of the evening storms.
Out West, some fireworks shows were canceled over fears that they could set off wildfires.
In many places, concerns about a decline in national pride were hard to make out in crowds of people wearing Old Glory-patterned bucket hats, sundresses and golf shirts. But it was not hard to find a sense of unease.
“I am nervous for the state of the country and where it’s headed,” said Nico Amato, 26, who was wearing an American flag shirt and waiting for a parade to start in Bristol, R.I. “But I’m happy to celebrate the freedoms I do have today.”
States and cities had long been planning for the 250th, though President Trump, whose administration took over the organizing at the federal level, brought particular attention to Washington. National Guard troops poured in by the hundreds and a labyrinth of security fencing went up around the monuments.
After a week of online snark about the thin crowds at Mr. Trump’s Great American State Fair, huge crowds showed up Saturday on the National Mall. The atmosphere in the capital was festive — mostly. Earlier in the day, a gaggle of white nationalists, sweating through their khakis, marched into downtown, shouted some nativist slogans, and left.
In Charlottesville, Va., infamously the site of a far right gathering in 2017, a crowd of hundreds came together on Saturday morning at Monticello, the home of the man who wrote the document that the country was celebrating. The Virginia governor spoke, teenagers in Revolutionary-era uniforms played the drums, and a man dressed as Thomas Jefferson shared memories of drafting the Declaration of Independence.
But the day’s main event there was a swearing-in ceremony for 75 immigrants who had come to the United States from Algeria, Zambia and 34 other countries.
Among them was Debee Arvind Bouch, 23, who arrived from India nine years ago. She was initially startled by how quickly Americans talked, she said. But she got the hang of it, and on Saturday, at the slow and measured prompting of a federal judge, she raised her hand and pledged to support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States.
“I wanted citizenship because this is a land of opportunities,” Ms. Bouch said, after becoming one of the 250-year-old country’s newest citizens. “There’s nowhere else I’d rather call home.”
Jackson Landers and Kevin G. Andrade contributed reporting.
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