Did Biden have any plans for the Army's 250th anniversary

1. What the Biden administration actually approved

Available public reporting and fact-checks show the Army’s Military District of Washington filed a permit in June 2024 for a modest festival on the National Mall that described a small event — roughly up to 300 military personnel and civilians — not a grand parade ^{[1] [2]}. Media outlets and fact-checkers characterize that June 2024 submission as routine and limited in scope, and note it bore no resemblance to the later large-scale parade ^{[2] [1]}.

2. How the larger parade claim spread

After the June 14, 2025 parade and celebrations, social posts and some commentators asserted that Biden “approved” the parade months earlier. Snopes, MEAWW and MediaBiasFactCheck documented that those claims conflated the June 2024 festival permit with a separate large-parade permit submitted in March 2025 — the latter came after the presidential transition and before the June 2025 event ^{[1] [5] [2]}.

3. Timeline and who planned what

The Army began thinking about 250th-anniversary activities as early as 2023 and submitted a small-event permit in June 2024 ^{[3] [4]}. Reporting indicates the idea of expanding the celebration — including demonstrations, vehicle displays and a parade-scale event — emerged or was pitched to D.C. officials in spring 2025, and a distinct permit for a much larger event was filed in March 2025 under the Trump administration ^{[3] [1] [4]}.

4. Official voices and institutional planners

The U.S. Army’s own materials describe an extended planning effort for the 250th birthday and present the celebration’s theme and programming; institutional planning predates any single White House decision ^{[6] [3]}. Mother Jones and Wikipedia reporting highlight a web of bodies involved in the semiquincentennial planning — from America250 entities to Task Force 250 and Pentagon offices — complicating the attribution of any single person or president as “the planner” ^{[7] [3]}.

5. Why the distinction matters politically

Fact-checkers argue the conflation of two different permit applications feeds a partisan narrative: tying a later, high-profile parade to the prior administration seeks to blame or credit the wrong White House for a controversial spectacle ^{[2] [1]}. Mother Jones and other outlets point out political actors and advisers associated with the parade-level permit, underscoring that political control of the White House and Defense Department in 2025 shaped the parade’s scale and optics ^[7].

6. Areas where reporting diverges or is silent

Sources agree on the basic split between a small 2024 permit and a larger 2025 permit, but differ in emphasis about when the parade idea became realistic. Wikipedia and some news pieces say the Army had considered larger celebrations as early as 2023; other outlets stress the formal parade permit and expansion plan were a spring-2025 development ^{[3] [1]}. Available sources do not mention internal White House discussions in 2024 that might show higher-level Biden administration intent to authorize a parade (not found in current reporting).

7. Bottom line and caution for readers

The record in contemporary fact-checking and reporting is clear: Biden’s administration approved a modest festival permit in June 2024, not the large-scale military parade held on June 14, 2025; a separate, larger permit tied to the parade was filed in March 2025 after the presidential transition ^{[1] [2] [5]}. Readers should treat social posts that collapse those separate permits into a single narrative as misleading and consult primary permit reporting and fact-checks cited above before accepting claims that Biden “planned” the 250th parade ^{[1] [2]}.