Updated June 15, 2025 at 12:48 AM EDT
The U.S. Army celebrated its 250th anniversary on Saturday with a massive military parade that overtook the streets and skies of Washington, D.C., and included thousands of service members participating in the big-budget spectacle.
Also celebrating on Saturday was President Trump, whose 79th birthday corresponds with the Army anniversary, and who has long dreamed of holding such a display of America's military might. A parade of this magnitude is unusual during times of peace and has stirred up controversy for what opponents view as a politicization of the nation's armed forces and a break from U.S. democratic norms.
As Trump and first lady Melania Trump took to the viewing stands at the start of the main event, a group of individuals wearing "250 special guest" badges began singing "Happy Birthday" to the president. Others chanted "USA."
Millions across the country spent the day participating in demonstrations against the parade and Trump's broader political agenda, including fallout from mass immigration raids in Los Angeles that led Trump to send in both California's National Guard, against state officials' request, and the Marines.
The group No Kings — a coalition of more than 200 organizations — arranged some 2,000 protests nationwide against what they described as a "costly, wasteful, and un-American birthday parade in Washington."
Plans for commemorating the milestone Army anniversary had been in place for at least a year — long before Trump had secured a second term. But the parade feature was added in recent months, ballooning the budget by tens of millions and leaving planners for both the city and military scrambling to prepare.
Throughout the parade, Trump wore a neutral expression on his face, standing occasionally to salute different regiments as they marched past his view.
Trump delivered closing remarks, hailing the Army as the "greatest, fiercest and bravest fighting force" the world had ever seen.
"The Army keeps us free, you make us strong, and tonight you've made all Americans very proud," he said. "Every other country celebrates their victories. It's about time America did too. That's what we're doing tonight."
After his speech, Trump was presented with a traditionally folded American flag — a gift usually reserved for the family members of fallen soldiers.
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Trump had been asking for such a parade since 2017, after he saw a military demonstration in France for Bastille Day. At the time, officials were able to keep the notion at bay, citing costs and the questionable optics of a peacetime demonstration.
But in his second term, the Army's birthday presented an opportunity for Trump to have the parade he'd long wanted.
Since the parade was announced, there has been sharp criticism, particularly from Democratic lawmakers who call the showcase self-indulgent and a misuse of public funds.
"To use the military in this manner when Donald Trump is slashing veterans' benefits to aggrandize himself, to communicate to the country his control over the military, is just another shameful act of this administration," said Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff of California.
Other critics have said it's a display of military force typically associated with autocratic governments in places like Russia or North Korea.
"It's a vulgar display," Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom of California said during a news conference on Friday. "It's the kind of thing you see Kim Jong Un, you see Putin — you see with dictators around the world that are weak."
"How weak do you have to be to commandeer the military to fete you on your birthday in a vulgar display of weakness? That's Donald Trump," he continued.
The parade featured dozens of armored tanks and artillery vehicles such as HIMARS, army aircraft, including Black Hawk helicopters and Apaches, and more than 6,000 uniformed troops. With historical uniforms and vehicles also on the program, the parade was meant to walk viewers through the history of American military conflict.
Additionally, 34 horses, two mules and one dog — a Blue Heeler named Doc Holliday — also joined the march.
Preliminary cost estimates for the parade rang in at between $25 million and $45 million, Army spokesperson Heather J. Hagan said earlier in the week. That included planned road repairs due to possible damage from tanks rolling on city streets.
First major military parade in the U.S. in decades
Such a display of military equipment and personnel is highly unusual in the U.S.
The country has not had a major military parade like the one planned for this weekend during times of peace in a very long time, although presidents such as John F. Kennedy and Dwight D. Eisenhower did have some troops marching with military equipment for their inaugurations.
The last major military parade was in 1991, also in D.C., to celebrate the end of the Gulf War and commemorate fallen soldiers from that conflict. But even that move was seen as controversial, says Joshua Zeitz, a historian and contributing editor for Politico magazine.
"Our country was born of a very particular opposition to state power, state authority, to standing armies which could enforce that type of authority and power," he told NPR's All Things Considered, saying that it's important to view this parade in context with other moves Trump has made to expand the authority and the power of the presidency.
"He's really reinventing the presidency as something that doesn't resemble what it has traditionally in American history, and the military parade is part of that," Zeitz says.
But Matthew Frakes, a historian of American military history and assistant professor at the Ohio State University, points out America does have a history of smaller military parades — like local Independence Day or Veterans Day celebrations, for example. He said he would be interested to see how much the parade focused on history versus how much it was a show of America's military prowess.
"In democracies, military parades are meant to commemorate, whereas in authoritarian regimes they're meant to intimidate. And so you can think of, you know, the Soviet Union or more recently in China or North Korea," Frakes says.
Anti-Trump protests held nationwide
As the the festivities kicked off on the National Mall, organizations across the country protested against the parade, which they criticized as a vanity project for the White House.
The group No Kings, which has organized past protests against Trump, said protests planned in cities across the country drew some 5 million demonstrators.
"I think there is this broader understanding that what Donald Trump and his political supporters are doing is trying to position him as a monarch, as a king, as somebody who can operate above the law. And I think that that is really negatively impacting the lives of the American people," Joel Payne, a spokesman of the organization MoveOn, told NPR.
MoveOn is one of more than 200 groups that comprise No Kings.
The group said that in order to pull attention away from the display of military grandeur, No Kings would specifically not demonstrate in Washington on Saturday, and instead hosted their largest demonstration in Philadelphia — the city known as the birthplace of America.
The Philadelphia event was attended by tens of thousands of demonstrators, and police said the protest was peaceful.
Not everyone, however, was against having a military display.
Mike Davis, a 30-year Army serviceman and employee of the Pentagon, attended the parade and said that he felt the 250-year anniversary of the military branch called for something big.
"I welcome it, and the reason I say that is the last time we've had a military parade of any sorts, I recall, is the Gulf War," Davis said. "So, it's been a long time and what better way to celebrate it than the 250th?"
By Friday, the National Parks Service had approved a protest permit for just one demonstration related to the parade.
But on Friday evening, U.S. Capitol Police arrested 60 protesters, some of whom pushed down barriers and ran toward the steps of the Capitol Rotunda. All 60, police said, will be charged with unlawful demonstration and crossing a police line and some will also be charged with assault on a police officer and resisting arrest.
Trump had vowed to take action against demonstrators at Saturday's events. The president is already facing sharp blowback for his decision to deploy the military to Los Angeles amid protests against ICE immigration raids.
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