“America 250” — A private group. 4 participants. Notifications: ON. Encryption: We hoped so.
A satire by Joe Broadmeadow
Jefferson opens the thread.
JEFFERSON (2:14 PM) Gentlemen. The Republic turns two hundred and fifty. I trust the citizens are marking the occasion with sober reflection on self-governance.
FRANKLIN (2:14 PM) They put your face on a $100 bill and Trump put his signature on it.
JEFFERSON (2:15 PM) His what.
FRANKLIN (2:15 PM) His signature. On the currency. While he’s still in office. It’s a whole thing.
JEFFERSON (2:15 PM) That is not a thing. That has never been a thing. There are twelve provisions in the Constitution specifically designed to prevent that from being a thing.
HAMILTON (2:16 PM) Actually the Constitution is silent on presidential signatures appearing on currency during a sitting term, so technically —
MADISON (2:16 PM) Alexander I swear to God.
HAMILTON (2:16 PM) I’m just SAYING. As the guy who invented the Treasury Department I feel like I have standing here.
FRANKLIN (2:17 PM) He also made $1.2 billion from a personal cryptocoin last year and about a million people who bought it lost their shirts.
JEFFERSON (2:17 PM) What is a cryptocoin.
FRANKLIN (2:17 PM) Imagine a continental. Now imagine it’s imaginary. Now imagine the President is selling it out of the East Room.
JEFFERSON (2:18 PM) I need to sit down.
MADISON (2:18 PM) Tom you literally invented sitting down about money problems.
• • •
HAMILTON (2:22 PM) Okay but did anyone else see the Smithsonian report
MADISON (2:22 PM) The one where the White House accused the museum of American history of engaging in “extreme political activism”
HAMILTON (2:22 PM) Yes
MADISON (2:23 PM) For displaying American history
HAMILTON (2:23 PM) Yes
JEFFERSON (2:23 PM) I own several of the objects in that museum.
FRANKLIN (2:23 PM) Tom read the room.
JEFFERSON (2:24 PM) I’m just noting that the artifacts of the Enlightenment are apparently now radical.
FRANKLIN (2:24 PM) Ben. Buddy. We WERE the radicals. That was the whole point. We committed felony treason in a room in Philadelphia in July.
JEFFERSON (2:24 PM) I’m aware, Benjamin, I was there taking minutes.
FRANKLIN (2:25 PM) You were taking notes for a document that begins “When in the Course of human events” and now a man is calling a museum political for hanging it on a wall.
• • •
MADISON (2:31 PM) Speaker Johnson wants to restrict birthright citizenship.
HAMILTON (2:31 PM) He wants to what
MADISON (2:31 PM) Restrict. The 14th Amendment.
HAMILTON (2:32 PM) Via what mechanism
MADISON (2:32 PM) A bill.
HAMILTON (2:32 PM) A BILL. To amend an AMENDMENT.
MADISON (2:32 PM) Alex please your blood pressure
HAMILTON (2:32 PM) I was SHOT IN THE ABDOMEN in 1804 do not talk to me about blood pressure
FRANKLIN (2:33 PM) And I was born in 1706. Everyone calm down.
JEFFERSON (2:33 PM) As a foreign-born immigrant, Alexander, this must feel particularly pointed.
HAMILTON (2:33 PM) Tom I love you but I will fight you again.
JEFFERSON (2:34 PM) I am not throwing away my shot.
HAMILTON (2:34 PM) Do NOT.
• • •
FRANKLIN (2:41 PM) So he’s going to Turkey for NATO and wants everyone to spend 5% of GDP on defense.
MADISON (2:41 PM) Didn’t we specifically warn against entangling alliances and a standing army?
JEFFERSON (2:41 PM) I did. Extensively. In writing. That is now considered radical activism apparently.
FRANKLIN (2:42 PM) He’s also flirting with annexing Greenland.
JEFFERSON (2:42 PM) I bought Louisiana for $15 million and people are STILL mad at me. Greenland is a mountain range covered in ice, tell him to read a book.
MADISON (2:42 PM) He shared a meme about Meloni saying “restraining order needed.”
JEFFERSON (2:43 PM) Who is Meloni
FRANKLIN (2:43 PM) Prime Minister of Italy.
JEFFERSON (2:43 PM) The head of a foreign government.
FRANKLIN (2:43 PM) Correct.
JEFFERSON (2:43 PM) Via meme.
FRANKLIN (2:44 PM) Correct.
JEFFERSON (2:44 PM) I once sent Lafayette a letter about wine and I was accused of foreign entanglement for two years. This man is running international relations off Truth Social.
HAMILTON (2:44 PM) What is Truth Social.
FRANKLIN (2:45 PM) Imagine the Federalist Papers but instead of arguments there are memes and instead of Publius it’s just the President and instead of persuasion it’s punctuation.
HAMILTON (2:45 PM) I hate every word of that sentence and I understood all of them.
• • •
MADISON (2:52 PM) Tom I have to ask about Lisa Cook.
JEFFERSON (2:52 PM) Who.
MADISON (2:52 PM) Federal Reserve Governor. Supreme Court said the President can’t fire her. He says he’s going to keep trying.
HAMILTON (2:53 PM) THAT IS MY BANK. I BUILT THAT BANK. THAT IS MY WHOLE THING.
FRANKLIN (2:53 PM) We know Alex.
HAMILTON (2:53 PM) The independence of the central bank is the ONE THING I asked for. I gave up a lot of stuff. I gave up on the monarchy talk. I gave up on the lifetime senate. I asked for ONE independent bank.
JEFFERSON (2:54 PM) For the record I opposed the bank.
HAMILTON (2:54 PM) NOT NOW TOM.
• • •
FRANKLIN (3:02 PM) The AI images.
MADISON (3:02 PM) Oh no.
FRANKLIN (3:02 PM) The White House is officially posting AI-generated pictures.
JEFFERSON (3:02 PM) Of what.
FRANKLIN (3:03 PM) Of anything. Him as a king. Him as the Pope. Him as a lion. Cartoons. Memes. Whatever moves the algorithm.
JEFFERSON (3:03 PM) I sat for a portrait for four hours in a room with no ventilation because I believed the image of a leader was a solemn matter of public record.
FRANKLIN (3:03 PM) I invented bifocals so I could squint at printing plates. He’s generating his own face at 4 in the morning.
MADISON (3:04 PM) There was also a former Olympian indicted for allegedly vandalizing the Reflecting Pool.
JEFFERSON (3:04 PM) Was there actual damage.
MADISON (3:04 PM) The President says the water was cloudy.
JEFFERSON (3:04 PM) So a felony charge for water clarity.
MADISON (3:04 PM) Correct.
FRANKLIN (3:05 PM) I once printed a satirical almanac under a fake name for twenty-six years and no one indicted me. We have really lost the plot on proportionality.
• • •
JEFFERSON (3:14 PM) Gentlemen. A serious question.
JEFFERSON (3:14 PM) Did we do this.
HAMILTON (3:15 PM) Do what.
JEFFERSON (3:15 PM) Any of it. The signature on the money. The birthright bill. The memes at heads of state. The museum audit. Did we build a system that made this possible.
MADISON (3:16 PM) Tom. I wrote Federalist 51 specifically because I thought men were not angels. I built the whole thing assuming the man in that chair would be exactly like this one.
JEFFERSON (3:16 PM) And?
MADISON (3:17 PM) And I assumed the other branches would care.
(silence, 4 minutes)
FRANKLIN (3:21 PM) Boys. A republic, if you can keep it. That was the bit. That was always the bit. I didn’t say a republic guaranteed. I said if you can keep it. Read the sentence.
HAMILTON (3:22 PM) So what do we tell them. On the 250th.
FRANKLIN (3:22 PM) Tell them we were not gods. We were printers and lawyers and farmers and one very tired doctor. We wrote a document that only works if the people below it are more honest than we were. Tell them the paper doesn’t defend itself.
JEFFERSON (3:23 PM) That’s good. Can I use that.
FRANKLIN (3:23 PM) Tom you plagiarized the entire preamble from John Locke, knock yourself out.
JEFFERSON (3:23 PM) Fair.
• • •
MADISON (3:31 PM) One more thing. The Coast Guard removed a boat from the July 4 ship parade in New York because it had “politically charged banners.”
HAMILTON (3:31 PM) What did the banners say.
MADISON (3:32 PM) Environmental stuff. Save the water. That kind of thing.
HAMILTON (3:32 PM) On the Fourth of July.
MADISON (3:32 PM) Yes.
HAMILTON (3:32 PM) The holiday specifically commemorating a group of men who put “political banners” on a literal warship and threw the tea into the harbor.
FRANKLIN (3:33 PM) Boys, I think we have to accept it.
JEFFERSON (3:33 PM) Accept what.
FRANKLIN (3:33 PM) We’re the radicals again.
FRANKLIN (3:35 PM) Someone tell Adams. He’s going to be insufferable about this.
— end thread —
Someone Tell Adams
A private thread. 2 participants. Read receipts: on. Regrets: many.
A companion piece by Joe Broadmeadow
Adams has been added to a new thread by Washington. Adams has been typing for four minutes.
ADAMS (4:02 PM) George.
ADAMS (4:02 PM) George.
ADAMS (4:02 PM) GEORGE.
WASHINGTON (4:04 PM) John.
ADAMS (4:04 PM) Have you SEEN it.
WASHINGTON (4:04 PM) Seen what, John. I have seen a great many things today. I have seen the sun set over the Potomac. I have seen my own portrait on a coffee mug in a Mount Vernon gift shop. I have seen a schoolchild pronounce my name “Warshington.” Be specific.
ADAMS (4:05 PM) The signature. On the money.
WASHINGTON (4:05 PM) Ah.
ADAMS (4:05 PM) “Ah.” “Ah,” he says. “Ah,” like it is a mild weather development. Like a light frost in Braintree. George. The man signed the currency. WHILE STILL IN OFFICE.
WASHINGTON (4:06 PM) I am aware.
ADAMS (4:06 PM) I refused a THIRD TERM. I stepped down VOLUNTARILY. I set the precedent that MADE the peaceful transfer of power a THING. And this man is signing the twenties like they are Christmas cards from his club.
WASHINGTON (4:07 PM) You did not refuse a third term, John. You lost the second one. To Jefferson.
ADAMS (4:07 PM) THAT IS NOT THE POINT.
ADAMS (4:08 PM) AND ALSO YES IT IS THE POINT. I LOST GRACEFULLY. I WENT HOME. I DID NOT CLAIM FRAUD. I DID NOT ASSEMBLE A CROWD. I DID NOT INVENT A NEW WORD FOR ELECTION AND SELL A COIN OF IT.
WASHINGTON (4:08 PM) I know, John.
ADAMS (4:09 PM) I WROTE ABIGAIL A LETTER. That was my coping mechanism. I WROTE MY WIFE A LETTER.
WASHINGTON (4:09 PM) It was a very good letter.
ADAMS (4:09 PM) DON’T PATRONIZE ME GEORGE.
• • •
WASHINGTON (4:14 PM) John. Sit down.
ADAMS (4:14 PM) I AM SITTING.
WASHINGTON (4:14 PM) You are not.
ADAMS (4:14 PM) How dare you.
WASHINGTON (4:15 PM) I can hear you pacing through the phone, John. There is a rhythm to it. It is the same rhythm as your Discourses on Davila.
ADAMS (4:15 PM) People still read the Discourses on Davila.
WASHINGTON (4:15 PM) No one has ever read the Discourses on Davila, John. Not one person. Not in two hundred and fifty years.
ADAMS (4:16 PM) Abigail read them.
WASHINGTON (4:16 PM) Abigail was being polite.
ADAMS (4:16 PM) I am muting this conversation.
WASHINGTON (4:16 PM) You will not.
ADAMS (4:17 PM) You’re right. I won’t. Fine. Talk to me. What did you actually want to say.
• • •
WASHINGTON (4:22 PM) I have been reading the news, John.
ADAMS (4:22 PM) I gathered.
WASHINGTON (4:22 PM) The birthright citizenship business. The talk of Greenland. The pardons for men whose names the President himself refused to say aloud. The federal filing that shows a sitting president made $1.2 billion from a personal coin.
ADAMS (4:23 PM) A COIN, George. A COIN. Like a peddler on a dock.
WASHINGTON (4:23 PM) I read the Farewell Address again this morning.
ADAMS (4:23 PM) The whole thing?
WASHINGTON (4:24 PM) The whole thing.
ADAMS (4:24 PM) That’s a lot of Farewell.
WASHINGTON (4:24 PM) John.
ADAMS (4:24 PM) Sorry. Continue.
WASHINGTON (4:25 PM) I warned them about party spirit. I warned them about foreign influence. I warned them about the man who would use the office as a vehicle for his own aggrandizement. I did not use the word aggrandizement lightly. I looked it up.
ADAMS (4:25 PM) I know you did. You had Hamilton help you write half of it.
WASHINGTON (4:26 PM) That is not public knowledge, John.
ADAMS (4:26 PM) Everybody knows that, George. It is on the Wikipedia.
WASHINGTON (4:26 PM) What is the Wikipedia.
ADAMS (4:26 PM) It is like an encyclopedia except everyone can edit it and half the entries about you were written by a fourteen-year-old in Ohio.
WASHINGTON (4:27 PM) That is horrifying.
ADAMS (4:27 PM) The entry on YOU is fine. The entry on ME opens with the sentence “John Adams was a lawyer who was often described as difficult.”
WASHINGTON (4:27 PM) That is accurate, John.
ADAMS (4:28 PM) GEORGE.
• • •
WASHINGTON (4:33 PM) John. May I say something without you shouting.
ADAMS (4:33 PM) You may TRY.
WASHINGTON (4:34 PM) I set the precedent of stepping down because I was afraid of exactly this.
ADAMS (4:34 PM) I know.
WASHINGTON (4:34 PM) I refused the title of “Your Highness.” I refused a crown when Nicola offered one. I sent the army home. I insisted on being called Mr. President because the word “mister” is the word for any free man. That was the point.
ADAMS (4:35 PM) I know, George.
WASHINGTON (4:35 PM) And now the office is a marketing platform.
ADAMS (4:35 PM) Yes.
WASHINGTON (4:36 PM) And the flag is a merchandising opportunity.
ADAMS (4:36 PM) Yes.
WASHINGTON (4:36 PM) And the currency is a business card.
ADAMS (4:36 PM) Yes.
WASHINGTON (4:37 PM) And the Cabinet is an audience.
ADAMS (4:37 PM) Yes, George.
WASHINGTON (4:37 PM) Then I have failed.
(long pause)
ADAMS (4:44 PM) No.
ADAMS (4:44 PM) No, George. Listen to me. You didn’t fail.
ADAMS (4:45 PM) You set a precedent. A precedent isn’t a wall. It is a suggestion made by a man who trusted the men who came after him. That is not failure. That is faith. When the next man ignores the suggestion, that is HIS failure. Not yours.
WASHINGTON (4:46 PM) That is generous, John.
ADAMS (4:46 PM) I am not being generous. I am being a LAWYER. There is a difference.
WASHINGTON (4:46 PM) There is not.
ADAMS (4:47 PM) GEORGE.
• • •
WASHINGTON (4:52 PM) Tell me one good thing, John. About the country. On its two hundred and fiftieth. Something small.
ADAMS (4:53 PM) Give me a moment.
(three minutes)
ADAMS (4:56 PM) A woman I have never met and will never meet is at this moment writing a letter to her congressman about a bill she read the actual text of. She is annoyed. She is specific. She cites section numbers. She is not being paid to do this. She is doing it because she thinks it will matter.
ADAMS (4:57 PM) A public schoolteacher in Kansas taught the Federalist Papers this year. Badly, probably. But she taught them. To thirty children who did not want to hear it. And two of them listened.
ADAMS (4:58 PM) A police captain in Rhode Island retired after twenty years and started writing books about what he saw, because he could not stand for it to be forgotten. That is a Republic, George. That is what a Republic does. It produces witnesses.
WASHINGTON (4:59 PM) That is three things, John.
ADAMS (4:59 PM) I have never in my life given only one of anything.
WASHINGTON (5:00 PM) I know.
• • •
WASHINGTON (5:07 PM) John.
ADAMS (5:07 PM) Yes.
WASHINGTON (5:07 PM) Franklin sent me a message. He says we are radicals again.
ADAMS (5:08 PM) Ben was ALWAYS the reasonable one. If he is calling us radicals then I take it as confirmation of good standing.
WASHINGTON (5:08 PM) You would.
ADAMS (5:08 PM) I would.
WASHINGTON (5:09 PM) What do we do.
ADAMS (5:09 PM) The same thing we did the first time, George.
WASHINGTON (5:09 PM) Which was.
ADAMS (5:10 PM) We told the truth in writing. We signed our names to it. We did not run when it was hard. And we assumed the next generation would be better than us, and we WORKED as if that were true, even on the days we suspected it wasn’t.
WASHINGTON (5:11 PM) That is a good line, John.
ADAMS (5:11 PM) Yes. I know.
WASHINGTON (5:11 PM) Are you going to put it in a letter to Abigail.
ADAMS (5:12 PM) I ALREADY DID, GEORGE. I am typing this from her side of the bed.
— end thread —
A note from the author
The events referenced in these threads are drawn from headlines of the week leading up to July 6, 2026. The Founders are not. They belong, as they always have, to whichever generation is willing to keep the Republic.
— Joe Broadmeadow
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