WATCH LIVE: Trump attends Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library dedication ceremony

By — Jack Dura, Associated Press Jack Dura, Associated Press Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/watch-live-trump-attends-theodore-roosevelt-presidential-library-dedication-ceremony Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter WATCH LIVE: Trump attends Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library dedication ceremony Politics Jul 1, 2026 11:10 AM EDT BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — President Donald Trump will visit North Dakota on Wednesday to see the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library, a massive facility exploring the 26th president's life, built in the rugged, lonely landscape where the young easterner built his conservation values while ranching and hunting in the 1880s. The event is set to begin at 2 p.m. EDT. Watch live in the video player above. The 96,000-square-foot library opens over the weekend on July 4, the pinnacle date of celebrations this year honoring the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. But Trump is coming early to see the $450 million project, a push of Interior Secretary Doug Burgum from when he was governor of North Dakota, and bringing the official celebrations of the nation's birth to a region synonymous with its westward expansion. POLL: Most Americans think the U.S. has strayed from its founding principles All living presidents were invited to the grand opening of the library, which joins more than a dozen such libraries throughout the country examining the lives and legacies of U.S. presidents from Ronald Reagan in California, to Franklin D. Roosevelt in New York to Herbert Hoover in Iowa. The Obama Presidential Center recently opened in Chicago, bringing together four former presidents for the occasion. Educate your inbox Subscribe to Here’s the Deal, our politics newsletter for analysis you won’t find anywhere else. Trump will be the library's first official visitor, Library Executive Director Robbie Lauf said, and will speak at a nearby Western-themed amphitheater at an event run by Freedom 250, the Trump-created group billed as nonpartisan that he has tapped to organize the festivities he will participate in this week. On Friday, Trump also plans to visit South Dakota's Mount Rushmore for Independence Day fireworks, as he did in 2020. The president has often praised, and even compared himself favorably, to Roosevelt, declaring in 2020 that he was, "The number one environmental president since Teddy Roosevelt." Trump began his second term by trumpeting construction of the Panama Canal during the Roosevelt administration. He even suggested that the U.S. might seek to take back the waterway from Panama to curb influence from China — though that's a goal that was overshadowed by his suggestions that Washington might seize control of Greenland or that Canada could become America's 51st state. WATCH: How the Obama Presidential Center offers a new vision for presidential legacies In the run-up to staging a UFC fight on the Wh