{"id":2247,"date":"2026-06-26T04:20:20","date_gmt":"2026-06-26T04:20:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=2247"},"modified":"2026-06-26T04:20:20","modified_gmt":"2026-06-26T04:20:20","slug":"ken-griffin-celebrates-americas-250th-birthday-with-26-million-gift-for-new-roosevelt-library-built-into-the-badlands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=2247","title":{"rendered":"Ken Griffin celebrates America\u2019s 250th birthday with $26 million gift for new Roosevelt Library built into the Badlands"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Completing it required one final gift. On Thursday, that gift arrived: $26 million from Kenneth C. Griffin, founder and CEO of the $69 billion hedge fund Citadel. The library\u2019s west wing will bear his name.<\/p>\n

Read more The bond market knows something about the $39 trillion national debt that Washington doesn\u2019t<\/a><\/p>\n

It was not the largest check Griffin has ever written. Not even close. But it is certainly revealing.<\/p>\n

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The collector of American founding myths<\/h2>\n

To understand what Griffin is doing in Medora, it helps to start in Philadelphia\u2014or, more precisely, at a Sotheby\u2019s auction in November 2021, where Griffin paid $43.2 million for a first printing of the United States Constitution, outbidding an internet collective of 17,000 cryptocurrency enthusiasts who had crowdfunded under the name ConstitutionDAO. The price set an all-time record for a book, manuscript, or historical document sold at auction.<\/p>\n

Then, this past spring, Griffin quietly did something stranger: He bought the only other surviving first printing of the Constitution still in private hands\u2014the so-called Van Sinderen copy\u2014for an undisclosed sum. He now owns both of them. Of the roughly 500 copies printed for delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, 13 are known to survive. Eleven are held by institutions like the Library of Congress and the National Archives. The other two belong to one man.<\/p>\n

Griffin has loaned both copies to museums for public display\u2014one to the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, and a donation of $15 million to the Constitution Center, the largest single gift in that organization\u2019s history. The other was loaned to the South Street Seaport Museum in New York, where it anchors an exhibition called The Promise of Liberty: Words That Shaped a Nation<\/em>.<\/p>\n

A portfolio of patriotism<\/h2>\n

Griffin\u2019s philanthropic record is vast. He has given an estimated $2 billion to charitable causes\u2014and notably diverse: Harvard, the University of Chicago, Chicago\u2019s Museum of Science and Industry, the Art Institute of Chicago. But running through a significant slice of his giving is a specific, recurring subject: America itself, as an idea.<\/p>\n

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He has funded the restoration of the Lincoln Memorial. He made the largest donation in Navy SEAL Foundation history and the largest private gift ever to the Call of Duty Endowment, a veterans\u2019 employment fund. He gave $30 million to the National Medal of Honor Museum Foundation. Through Griffin Catalyst, his civic engagement initiative, he brought a sweeping dramatic presentation of American WWII history to audiences in New York and Miami.<\/p>\n

And now: a presidential library for Theodore Roosevelt, in the Badlands, opening on the nation\u2019s 250th anniversary.<\/p>\n

Read more \u2018Voters are just pissed off\u2019: Zohran Mamdani just uncorked a Democratic Civil War less than 6 months before the midterms<\/a><\/p>\n

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Each gift is defensible, even admirable, in isolation. Taken together, they form something that looks less like philanthropy and more like curation\u2014a deliberate, decades-long effort to paint a particular vision of American history: constitutional, militarily honorable, frontier-spirited, and defined by meritocratic striving rather than inherited privilege.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIn our nation\u2019s 250-year history, few Americans have embodied the spirit of leadership as fully as Theodore Roosevelt,\u201d Griffin said in Thursday\u2019s announcement. \u201cHis vision, courage, and commitment to public service left an enduring mark on our nation.\u201d<\/p>\n

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TR was the original trust-buster\u2014a capitalist who believed in vigorous markets and equally vigorous civic responsibility, who thought great men had an obligation to public life, and who built his identity in the very Badlands where Griffin has now written his name on a building.<\/p>\n

The tension at the core<\/h2>\n

What complicates the portrait\u2014and makes it a more interesting story\u2014is that Griffin has been one of the Republican Party\u2019s most reliable megadonors and fiercest critics of its current direction. He spent more than $100 million on conservative candidates in the 2024 election cycle, but declined to back now-President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n

The break became more public and pointed in May 2025, when Griffin appeared at the Milken Institute\u2019s Global Conference and described Trump\u2019s tariff regime as having \u201cregretfully\u2014already unleashed an era of crony capitalism.\u201d He called it \u201cterrifying to watch\u201d and described businesses lobbying the White House for tariff exemptions as \u201cnauseating\u201c\u2014the spectacle of a government choosing winners and losers as the antithesis of the American story he has spent hundreds of millions constructing.<\/p>\n

By May 2026, he was back to writing GOP checks\u2014$5 million to the Congressional Leadership Fund for House Republicans\u2014but his critique of the administration\u2019s economic direction has remained consistent.<\/p>\n

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Perhaps the choice of Teddy Roosevelt is intentionally symbolic\u2014a lion of the Republican Party whose heterodox positions and social liberalism paint a different vision of what the party, and country, could be. Clearly, Griffin doesn\u2019t mind that idea of the Republican Party\u2014and that idea of America.<\/p>\n

Read more \u2018Today I am celebrating the victory of our people\u2019: Native Americans ring in the anniversary of the Battle of Little Bighorn<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Citadel founder now owns both surviving private copies of the U.S. Constitution and just wrote a $26 million check in the name of Theodore Roosevelt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2246,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-philanthropy"],"yoast_head":"\nKen Griffin celebrates America\u2019s 250th birthday with $26 million gift for new Roosevelt Library built into the Badlands - Cross Country Moving Team<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=2247\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Ken Griffin celebrates America\u2019s 250th birthday with $26 million gift for new Roosevelt Library built into the Badlands - 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