It’s official: There will be fireworks over the National Mall Thursday night following President Donald Trump’s acceptance speech during the Republican National Convention.
The National Park Service approved the permit Monday, according to Park Service spokesman Mike Litterst.
The permit allows the RNC and fireworks company Fireworks by Grucci to use part of the grounds of the Washington Monument to launch the fireworks. The permit says the fireworks display is slated to last from 11:30 p.m. to 11:35 p.m. Thursday.
The application, filed by the RNC on Aug. 14, had noted that the fireworks display may draw “First Amendment demonstrators.”
The approved permit doesn’t lay out a specific security plan but says that the RNC, the fireworks company, the U.S. Park Police and the Park Service have held meetings “to coordinate and finalize the security plan for this event.”
According to the permit, the fireworks can be delayed, stopped or postponed for bad weather or inadequate crowd control, among other stipulations.
“The National Park Service reserves the right to immediately revoke this permit at any time should it reasonably appear that the public gathering presents a clear and present danger to the public safety, good order or health, or if any conditions of this permit are violated,” stated the permit, which was signed by Lisa Mendelson, the acting area director of the Park Service’s national capital area division.
A scaled-down version of the Republican National Convention takes place this week in Charlotte, North Carolina. Trump, however, will formally accept the Republican nomination Thursday in a live address from the White House, which an Associated Press analysis called “an unprecedented use of federal property for partisan political purposes.”
Fireworks by Grucci, which is based in New York and bills itself the “first family of fireworks,” previously supplied the fireworks display for the Salute to America event in July 2019.
