GOP leaders are planning to cap off festivities for the Republican National Convention next week with a fireworks display on the National Mall, shows a permit application obtained by DCist. But National Park Service officials are still reviewing the request and haven’t made a final decision about it, according to a spokesperson for the agency.
The RNC has asked for permission to set off fireworks near the Washington Monument late on Aug. 27, the final day of the convention and the eve of the March on Washington 2020, which will commemorate the 57th anniversary of the 1963 march and is expected to draw tens of thousands of people to the Mall. CBS was the first to report the news of the RNC’s permit application Monday.
The application indicates that 50 crew members will stage the fireworks, a figure that meets D.C.’s current cap on mass gatherings amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The fireworks are set to begin at 11:30 p.m., likely following President Donald Trump’s acceptance speech as the Republican nominee on the White House Lawn.
NPS spokesperson Mike Litterst says his agency is still processing the request of the RNC, which didn’t immediately respond to DCist’s inquiries. The news comes as the Democratic Party hosts a virtual Democratic National Convention this week, an event that’s anticipated to make ex-Vice President Joe Biden the party’s official nominee for president. (At a press conference Monday, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser said she wasn’t aware of the RNC’s plans for an event on the National Mall.)
The fireworks request also follows months of the GOP’s jumbled arrangements for the convention, which was originally scheduled to take place in Charlotte, North Carolina, before Gov. Roy Cooper requested that party officials scale it back due to the ongoing pandemic. Trump publicly denounced Cooper’s request, scrapping the North Carolina plans and moving the RNC’s major events to Jacksonville, Florida.
But when coronavirus cases spiked in Florida, the large convention events planned for Jacksonville were canceled. Now, several prominent Republicans are slated to deliver speeches from federal properties in the D.C. area, including the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium in Federal Triangle and the Fort McHenry site in Baltimore.
Critics have suggested that hosting RNC events on federal property may violate the Hatch Act, which bars federal employees from participating in certain partisan activities, though the president and vice president are exempt from the civil provisions of that law. Meanwhile, a recent U.S. Office of Special Counsel review found that Trump could legally deliver his acceptance speech at the White House.
Colleen Grablick