Country music, tanks and a big price tag: What to know about Trump's military parade

E&E News

a day ago

Tanks will rumble along the National Mall in Washington on Saturday as part of President Donald Trump's celebration of the founding of the U.S. Army, which falls on his 79th birthday.
The event, which will coincide with counterprotests across the country, showcasing the nation's military might is expected to draw hundreds of thousands of visitors to the city and has drawn corporate sponsors from the billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel's Palantir to Coca-Cola. But it's also found critics, who've panned the celebrations as valorizing wartime violence and questioned the parade's potential $45 million price tag.
The parade is now also taking place against the backdrop of the president's decision to deploy the U.S. Marines and National Guard troops to Los Angeles to quell domestic protests against the administration's immigration raids. California has sued to block the military intervention.
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'He's doing [the military parade] at the same time he's deploying active-duty troops against American citizens,' said Destry Jarvis, a longtime conservationist who co-authored a book on the politics of the National Park Service with his brother, Jonathan Jarvis, a former NPS director. 'That's what's bad here.'
The parade this weekend echoes Trump's aborted effort in 2018 to bring a military parade to the nation's capital after seeing a Bastille Day parade in Paris. That parade was canceled due to the projected high costs, which Trump blamed on Washington city officials. But part of the president's vision was eventually realized in a July 4 celebration in 2019, with a flyover of the U.S. Navy's Blue Angels and Bradley Fighting Vehicles parked in front of the Lincoln Memorial, where Trump gave a 47-minute speech.
The fanfare planned this year, culminating in a military parade, remarks by the president, a fireworks show and a concert Saturday is expected to top the first administration's festivities.
'For two and a half centuries, our brave soldiers have fought, bled, and died to keep us FREE, and now we will honor them with a wonderful Parade, one that is worthy of their service and sacrifice,' Trump said in a May post on his Truth Social website.
Mike Litterst, communications chief for the National Mall and Memorial Parks at the NPS, said the event is routine for the NPS.
'This is just one of 9,000 permitted events we do on the Mall each year,' Litterst said. 'Obviously, this one's a little bit bigger, but it's the same instrumentation. It's the same permitting process.'
The NPS had not yet approved a final permit for the event as of Tuesday morning. The sparse application filed in March promises live music from 'well known performers, likely from the country music world.'
The application also promises to handle trash removal and clean up after the parade. It was filed by Megan Powers, a former White House press aide during the first Trump administration who also worked on the first Trump administration's inauguration, according to her LinkedIn page.
Counterprotests to Trump's parade, under the name No Kings, are being organized with support from the American Civil Liberties Union, the Human Rights Campaign, the Center for Biological Diversity and other advocacy groups, according to the No Kings website.
'No Kings is a nationwide day of defiance,' the organizers wrote on their website. 'We're taking action to reject authoritarianism.'
There are no plans for a counterprotest in Washington.
Law enforcement presence is likely to spike across the D.C. area to help with the Army's event. The Interior Department last week lifted its normal premium pay cap for the weekend, allowing those working the parade to earn more.
The U.S. Park Police declined to say how many officers would be out at the events this weekend, citing security concerns, and directed all other questions to the Secret Service.
Because the event has been designated a National Special Security Event — similar to presidential inaugurations — by the Department of Homeland Security, the Secret Service is the lead law enforcement agency for the event.
'The Secret Service, along with our state, local, and federal partners, have been working around-the-clock to create a secure environment for all who want to participate in Saturday's events,' said U.S. Secret Service Washington Field Office Special Agent in Charge Matt McCool in a statement. 'Our number one goal is to ensure the safety and security of our protectees and the public with an extensive security plan in place this weekend.'
Neither the Secret Service nor America250 — the group organizing the events — responded to questions about the expected size of the police presence and crowds for the event. The Secret Service told reporters in a press conference Monday that hundreds of thousands could attend, according to The Washington Post.
Many of downtown Washington's streets will be closed to traffic for the event. Planes at Reagan National Airport will be grounded to allow for military flyovers and part of the Potomac River and the Tidal Basin will be closed to water traffic.
The parade itself will include a display of military paraphernalia, including 25 M1 Abrams main battle tanks and 150 other vehicles. Abrams tanks weigh roughly 142,000 pounds — about the same amount as 35 vintage Volkswagen Beetles.
The parade will also feature a WWII-vintage B-25 bomber and Huey helicopters from the Vietnam era. More than 6,000 soldiers will march in the parade, wearing both historic and present-day uniforms.
The festivities will also include a parachute demonstration by the Golden Knights, a concert with country music artists and a fireworks display.
The day's theme is 'This we'll defend,' a battle cry first used by the Continental Army.
'It reminds us that our Army's purpose is clear: to fight and win the nation's wars,' the Army said in a press statement. 'We remain committed to honing our warfighting skills, enforcing standards and discipline, and living the values that have defined our Army for the past 250 years.
Destry Jarvis said the National Mall is in some ways a fitting place for Trump's parade.
It's designed as a center point for national and honorific events, he said, from presidential inaugurations to Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous 'I Have a Dream' speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial.
There's also precedent for military showcases taking place on the National Mall. In 1991, then-President George H.W. Bush convened the National Victory Celebration to celebrate the end of the Gulf War that included a march of more than 8,000 Desert Storm troops down Constitution Avenue.
Trump's parade and celebration is expected to be more extravagant, but it is not unlike these earlier parades, Jarvis said.
'He's nothing if not excessive,' Jarvis said.
Trump's military parade has faced some criticisms, including from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle who've questioned the overall cost.
'I would have recommended against the parade,' Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) told POLITICO following an Army budget hearing that placed the cost of the event between $25 million to $40 million.
Army Secretary Dan Driscoll defended the event during the hearing as a 'once-in-a-lifetime opportunity' to recruit a new generation of Army service members.
NBC Washington has reported that the damage from the military vehicles alone could cost Washington streets more than $16 million.
The Army has pledged to pay for any damages to the city. It's also planning to use rubber tracks on vehicles to reduce potential damages and is placing 1-inch-thick steel plates at turns in the roads.
'We hope there's no damage,' Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser recently said during an event. 'We know that the Department of the Army is planning their 250th anniversary, that there will be large vehicles, both on the ground and in the air. … If there's damage on our roads, we are going to work to have those damages repaired.'
On NBC's 'Meet the Press' last month, the president downplayed the cost of the event as 'peanuts compared to the value of doing it.'