Do-nothing federal bureaucrats aren’t the only ones who have been negatively affected by the deadlock between Republicans and Democrats over a federal spending bill. The Ku Klux Klan is also suffering.
Officials at the Gettysburg National Military Park have notified a Maryland-based branch of the Confederate White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan that a planned rally on the site of the historic Gettysburg Battlefield can’t happen because of the shutdown, reports WCAU.
The rally had been scheduled for Saturday from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. on the battlefield where up to 50,000 Union and Confederate soldiers were killed or wounded.
Park officials told the Philadelphia NBC affiliate that they have cancelled all special-event permits as a consequence of the government shutdown.
The National Park Service has closed all of America’s national parks to the public in the wake of the shutdown, notes The Washington Post.
Before the shutdown, park officials at Gettysburg had emphasized that federal officials have an obligation to make federal property available to even the most odious citizens.
“As custodians of land owned by the American people, the National Park Service has a responsibility to make that land available for exercising those rights,” explained a Park Service news release obtained by The Hanover Evening Sun.
The same Maryland-based Klan group held a rally in September at the Antietam National Battlefield, a Civil War-era combat zone near Sharpsburg, Md.
Local Klan big wheel Richard Preston said nine people were scheduled to show up to the Antietam event, according to The Evening Sun.