Thirty-three members of the America250 commission were sworn in at its 2018 organizing ceremony.
The ceremony occurred at Independence Hall in Philadelphia on November 16, 2018. The members represented the commission’s mixed structure, which included private citizens, members of Congress, and federal officials. Their first organizing meeting marked the start of the commission’s active planning for the 2026 anniversary.
The membership figure can be confusing because the commission’s authorized composition later changed. Amendments increased the number of nonvoting ex officio federal officials, and the body eventually had a different total membership. The figure of 33 refers specifically to the group sworn in at the initial 2018 ceremony.
That first gathering was deliberately held at a historically significant site. Independence Hall had hosted the Continental Congress during the adoption of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitutional Convention, linking the commission’s work to both revolutionary and constitutional history.