America at 250: A bitterly divided nation

Michael Chugani July 16, 2026 03:00

A country's national day should be a time for its people to put aside differences, be proud of their homeland, and celebrate in a spirit of togetherness. It should be a time for top leaders to unify the nation. That was not what happened on July 4 when a politically polarized America celebrated its 250th anniversary of independence from British rule.

President Donald Trump, a Republican, delivered a deeply divisive speech to mark Independence Day. CNN described it as a speech that attacked his political rivals and sought to deepen America's already bitter racial divisions. Some Democratic Party leaders likewise delivered partisan messages. The country today is more politically polarized than I have ever seen in my many decades as a naturalized American who has lived and worked in the US for years.

America was celebrating its 200th anniversary of Independence Day in 1976 when I traveled across the country as a young Hongkonger on a tight budget. The Watergate scandal involving Richard Nixon had ended two years earlier when Congress threatened to impeach him, forcing him to resign as president. The long-fought Vietnam War ended a year later.

Both issues heavily influenced me during my early schooldays and as a young man. The investigative reporting by Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein which exposed Nixon's wrongdoings made me decide to be a journalist. The America I found in 1976 as a tourist and while visiting close relatives was a country proudly celebrating its 200th birthday after the traumas of Watergate and the Vietnam War. I emigrated about ten years later to join my siblings.

The America of 2026 as it celebrates its 250th birthday is a country I am struggling to recognize. It is so bitterly polarized politically that I cannot see a path anytime soon to reconciliation that would remind me of the America I saw in 1976. I hope I am wrong. The country was politically divided in 1976 too, which is normal in democracies, but not to the abnormal extent it now is.

I am a proud naturalized American who celebrated every July 4 Independence Day by putting up a flag, doing family barbecues, and watching the fireworks, which is what most Americans do, when I was living in the US. I returned to Hong Kong in the late 1990s to live and work for newspapers and TV stations but left again in 2021 to return to the US.

After several years in the US, I went to Taiwan to seek a new experience, making frequent short trips back to the US and Hong Kong. My plan is to return to the US after this November’s Congressional elections to settle and write a book about my decades as a journalist in Hong Kong, London, and the US. What America will I find as Trump reaches the half-way mark of his second term as president in January 2027.

I don't know. A lot will depend on the outcome of the Congressional elections on November 3. The outcome will have a dramatic impact on American politics regardless of which party wins. Trump's Republican Party now has slim majorities in both the Senate and the House of Representatives. This makes the Democratic Party almost powerless because Republicans control the White House and Congress.

But polls show Trump's policies are extremely unpopular, especially with young and independent voters who can sway the outcome of elections. Opinion polls show voters overwhelmingly oppose his war with Iran, trade tariffs, demolishing the historic White House East Wing to build an expensive ballroom, and other vanity projects funded mostly with taxpayer dollars.

Trump's approval rating has hovered around 30 percent for months. Over 60 percent disapprove of the job he is doing. Polls also show the Democrats will likely win control of the House of Representatives and possibly the Senate. Many Democrats have said they intend to start the process to impeach Trump and hold hearings to grill his top officials about alleged corruption by Trump, his inner circle, and other wrongdoings if they retake the House of Representatives.

If they also win control of the Senate, American politics will see a seismic change because they will have the power to successfully impeach Trump, a process which must be approved by both Houses of Congress. But if the Republicans retain control of both Houses of Congress in the midterm elections, the Democrats will again find themselves in the political wilderness like they were in the 2024 presidential elections when the Republicans won the White House and both Houses of Congress.

Trump will have free rein to do whatever he wants until the end of his second term in January 2029 when the US Constitution won't let him run again. The Democrats will have two years until the November 2028 presidential and Congressional elections to find a new message that clicks with voters to win the White House and Congress. What America will I find when I return a few months after this November’s Congressional midterm elections? I hope it will be a country that has found a way to reconcile at least some of the current acrimonious political differences.

Michael Chugani

A Hong Kong-born American citizen who has worked for many years as a journalist in Hong Kong, the USA and London.