Freedom 250 dancer nearly struck by plunging panel as event stage 'falls apart': report

A stage panel plunged toward dancers rehearsing for President Donald Trump's Freedom 250 July 4th celebration on the National Mall, narrowly missing them.Video of the incident, posted to X at 3:18 PM Thursday by independent journalist Aaron Parnas, showed the panel falling from the arched stage structure as dozens of dancers performed below."The stage is falling apart at the rehearsal for Freedom 250's July 4th celebration," Parnas wrote."This is incredibly dangerous stuff," journalist Ryan Grim wrote on X."Trump cutting safety corners with stage building is the kind of thing somebody can genuinely be prosecuted for if someone dies," Grim added. Under criminal law, causing a death through reckless safety failures can result in prosecution even without intent to harm."This equipment is deadly when falling from those heights," he wrote.Since Freedom 250's Great American State Fair opened on the National Mall on June 25th, the event has been plagued by power outages that melted ice cream, a 110-foot Ferris wheel that repeatedly broke down, and plywood booth facades painted to look like marble columns, Forbes reported. Freedom 250 is a public-private partnership created by Trump to organize the nation's semiquincentennial celebrations, operating separately from America250, the nonpartisan organization Congress created for that purpose."MAJOR BREAKING: Trump's Freedom 250 stage collapses in the midst of a rehearsal for the July 4 performance," political commentator Brian Krassenstein wrote on X."People literally could have died," he added.Trump is scheduled to deliver a speech at the National Mall celebration at 9:45 PM on July 4th, two days away, according to WTOP.