Everybody’s Working For That Weekend

NEW YORK — If President Donald Trump floats past Manhattan on a warship for America’s 250th birthday, don’t be surprised.

Amid the myriad semiquincentennial celebrations being planned nationwide is a 72-hour stretch in New York City that will feature a massive maritime and aerial extravaganza on July 4 sandwiched between a World Cup knockout match and what the tabloids say will be Taylor Swift’s wedding. It will amount to one of the most complex peacetime security challenges an American city may ever face.

“I don’t mean to be negative, but it’s a lot for us,” Kathryn Garcia, the head of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, said recently. “But hopefully everyone gets to have a good time. It will be the biggest party New York has seen and New Jersey has seen in literally decades.”

The World Cup was already a logistical test for the 16 North American host cities, but the challenges facing New York are almost comically daunting and prompting concerns about thinly stretched law enforcement and security agencies.

For months, the Coast Guard has been accepting feedback on its plans to secure the area for the naval exhibition by severely limiting access to New York Harbor, which encompasses the nation’s second largest cargo port, for a full week. Militaries from around the world are sending historic and modern warships, joined by the U.S. Navy’s own vessels, including one likely to have the president aboard to sail down the Hudson River to review the assembled armada.

As many as 125 American and foreign aircraft, led by the Navy’s Blue Angels, will fly overhead. Once the ships dock, 15,000 sailors from all over the world are expected to come ashore for an international fleet week.

During the Coast Guard’s comment period, interest groups — including the shipping industry, recreational boaters and New York City government — worried the security perimeter will impede vital ferry traffic, block cargo ships, threaten a newly installed underwater power line and trap trash that leaves New York on barges.

A recent planning session for events that weekend involved more than 400 people, said William Armstrong, a spokesperson for Sail 4th, a nonprofit helping to organize the naval pageant, the largest of its kind in American history and the first since Sept. 11, 2001. They gamed out government responses to potential threats, from a drunken pleasure boater to threatening drone.

“It’s very, very reassuring to see all of those potentially hostile scenarios debated and solved during that daylong exercise,” he said.

The Coast Guard is planning to impose its special security zones around New York beginning on July 1 as Navy ships arrive over subsequent days and remain for a week or longer. The New York Post’s Page Six gossip column reported last week that Swift plans to have a July 3 wedding in New York City, a possibility local planners are only beginning to grapple with, even though few details are available. The main naval review will happen on July 4, capped off by the 50th anniversary of the Macy’s fireworks show. The next day, Sunday, July 5, there will be a World Cup quarterfinal match just across the river in New Jersey that is likely to include soccer heavyweight Brazil.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani are both trying to get their arms around a summer of major events that were largely committed to by previous administrations but left up to them to pull off.

Both picked aides to help manage preparations around the World Cup, which has been assigned the same top-level Special Event Assessment Rating by the Department of Homeland Security that applies to major-party political conventions. Hochul tapped former New York City Council Member Justin Brannan, while Mamdani named Maya Handa, his former campaign manager.

“New York is taking an all-hands-on-deck approach to ensure the safety and security of residents and visitors ahead of a once-in-a-generation summer of events,” said Brannan, who is also working on the naval gathering. “At Gov. Hochul’s direction, state agencies, law enforcement, and all local partners are scaling up operations so everyone can enjoy everything this historic season has to offer from Brooklyn to Buffalo.”

Mamdani’s administration recently put a moratorium on major events in public parks during the World Cup, a measure meant to free up police resources.

“We feel good about our staffing levels and we’re excited about everything we're going to deliver,” Mamdani said.

The maritime festivities are being planned by a combination of Sail 4th, which has organized several parades of tall sailing ships for the 1964 World's Fair and the bicentennial in 1976, and the Navy, which is overseeing what it calls the international naval and aerial reviews.

The president typically oversees a naval review. This will be only the seventh in American history and the first since the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000 made clear a new vulnerability to warships, when a small boat piloted by suicide bombers pulled aside a Navy destroyer in Yemen and killed 17 sailors.

The Coast Guard and Navy are also involved in planning. While Trump is not certain to come, the Coast Guard disclosed in the Federal Register the review would be overseen by “a person under the protection of the United States Secret Service.”

The White House declined to comment on the president’s presence. The Secret Service said it couldn’t comment on its protective operations, but said it works with local and federal law enforcement partners to ensure the safety and security of those it protects.

“Our approach includes comprehensive coordination and location-specific security planning, leveraging the full resources of the federal government to provide the highest level of safety and security for our protectee,” said Secret Service spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi.

Ultimately, the sight will be stunning, and unlike the World Cup, free for all New Yorkers to observe. A parade of historic tall ships will float under the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge that connects Staten Island to Brooklyn at the mouth of the harbor as dozens of modern warships from around the world dot the harbor.

Trump’s foreign policy choices may yet rain on the parade. Senior military leadership, including dozens of naval and airforce leaders from around the world, are expected to attend the July 4 maritime and aerial reviews. Ambassadors and other heads of state could come. Dozens of countries — including Great Britain, Colombia, France, Japan, Germany and India — have planned to send vessels, but organizers are treating the final lineup as fluid, according to someone close to the planning granted anonymity to candidly discuss it.

The U.S. and Israel’s strikes on Iran have opened the biggest rift between London and Washington since Trump reentered the White House, yet both capitals are trying to preserve collaboration on major planned events such as King Charles's state visit this month and the 250th anniversary celebrations.

Britain’s Royal Navy has not yet made a final decision on whether to send an aircraft carrier, according to two people familiar with the matter, while a Ministry of Defence spokesperson said: “We do not comment on speculation regarding operational deployments.”

Defence Secretary John Healey, asked by the BBC about the U.K.’s July 4 plans last week, cited the countries’ conflicts over Greenland as a reason it might not participate: “We will deploy our military where the threats are greatest, and at the moment, our priority is in the High North."

The British did send warships to New York Harbor in 1776 for the first July 4.

Esther Webber contributed to this report.