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Where to find eclipse glasses and watch parties around the DC area

By Ciara Wells

On Monday, April 8, a majority of the United States will be able to see a total solar eclipse. The eclipse will last all of 4 minutes and some change, but if you miss it, you won’t get another chance to see it for 20 more years.

If you’re still looking to get glasses or figuring out where to view the eclipse, here’s what you need to know.

More on the solar eclipse:

While D.C. isn’t in the eclipse’s path of totality, you still may get a glimpse of the solar wonder. In D.C., the new moon will start to cross the face of the sun at 2:04 p.m. and obscure 89% of the sun at maximum eclipse, which occurs at 3:20 p.m. The moon will shroud the sun for up to 4 minutes 28 seconds, but the entire eclipse ends at 4:32 p.m.

You’re going to want to make sure you have American Astronomical Society issued or approved glasses. If not, you could do serious damage to your eyes by looking into the sun.

“Be sure that your children do not look at the Sun,” said James Madison University physics professor Geary Albright in a statement. “It is hard for grown-ups not to look, children have even less discipline, so be careful with their eyes.”   

If you can’t get glasses, there are tons of other options. You can also make a projector using a cardboard box, aluminum foil and a piece of white printer paper. You could also use a hole puncher on a piece of printer paper to make the projections, before facing away from the sun onto a flat surface.

Here’s where you can still get eclipse gear before and on the big day:

DC

As of Thursday, only a few D.C. Public Libraries still have free solar eclipse glasses. In a post on X, the agency said limited supplies are available as long as they last at Anacostia, Bellevue, Francis A. Gregory, Southwest, Benning and Capitol View libraries.

From now until this Sunday at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in D.C., you can get free eclipse glasses while supplies last from 12 to 4 p.m. The Smithsonian store also has the glasses on sale going for 3 for $6. Glasses will also be handed out during the Museum’s Solar Eclipse Festival on the National Mall on April 8.

Maryland

The University of Maryland will host an eclipse viewing party starting at 1:30 p.m. on Monday. The university’s College of Computer, Mathematical and Natural Sciences; Department of Astronomy; and Space Sciences Outreach Cooperative who are hosting the event will give out ISO-certified glasses until supplies run out.

Several Montgomery County Public Libraries will host events and give out free glasses. To find out more information, see the dates on their events calendar.

Other watch parties will have glasses while supplies last including Maryland Science Center in Baltimore, NASA Goddard Visitor Center in Greenbelt and Gaithersburg’s Observatory Park.

Virginia

At the David M. Brown Planetarium in Arlington, you can get free glasses on April 6 and 7 before the “Lights Out! Eclipses: Whys, Wonders and Wows” shows.

A limited number of eclipse viewing glasses and sun spotting scopes will be available to view the eclipse at a celebration event hosted by the Fairfax County government. Extra glasses will be distributed during the Bluebells Festival at the Bend at Riverbend Park on Saturday, April 6. Four parks around the county will host the event. Tickets are $10 per person.

The Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly will provide safe solar telescopes and projection viewers to help you watch the eclipse from 2 to 4 p.m. on Monday.

Loudoun County’s Department of Parks, Recreation and Community Services will be hosting nine free events, and each site will include free eclipse safety glasses while supplies last.

Other

Warby Parker: Warby Parker will be giving out free ISO-certified solar eclipse glasses starting April 1 through the big day. If the store runs out of solar eclipse glasses by the time you arrive, they’ll be able to provide you with an eclipse pinhole projector.

Sonic: Sonic Drive-Ins have released an eclipse-themed “Blackout Slush Float” that comes with a free pair of eclipse glasses. The drink is black and topped with creamy soft serve and galaxy sprinkles.

Jeni’s: Starting Friday, eclipse glasses are free with any purchase online or in-store at Jeni’s Ice Cream scoop shops across the country.

If your weather is unfavorable on eclipse day, tune in to watch NASA stream the eclipse live.

WTOP’s Greg Redfern and Tadi Abedje contributed to this report.

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Pete Buttigieg returns to first-in-the-nation South Carolina with a fresh appeal to Black voters

By CNN
Orangeburg, South Carolina (CNN) — Pete Buttigieg has been to this small but historic city in South Carolina’s Midlands at least twice before, as an underdog presidential candidate in 2020 and then as the better-known transportation secretary under President Joe Biden in 2023.Now a private citizen eying a second White House bid, Buttigieg returned this weekend with renewed urgency, appealing to Black voters who have newly solidified influence in the 2028 nominating process and whom he failed to win over in his last presidential campaign.Buttigieg told party activists during a morning speech in Florence that Republicans were using redistricting as “the culmination of a generational project to dismantle Black representation.” He held a roundtable with students at a historically Black college where he discussed his idea of reparations for slavery. And during an evening speech to the storied NAACP branch here, he said President Donald Trump’s second term may feel all too familiar to activists who fought for civil rights in Orangeburg in the 1960s.“The mid-2020s does not represent our nation’s first experience with corruption and self-dealing, with bigotry and exclusion, with inequality and injustice, with undemocratic behavior or with political violence,” Buttigieg said, adding that prior struggles played out “not on some distant shore, but in places like Orangeburg.”With a midterm election looming where both parties are campaigning over the cost of living, Buttigieg chastised fellow Democrats whom he said prefer to prioritize economic concerns over tackling more fundamental questions about democracy. He argued that civil rights legends such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Rev. Jesse Jackson have shown that Americans “can — and we must — do both.”His trip to South Carolina, Buttigieg’s first since leaving the Biden administration, marked the beginning of a new phase of political maneuvering ahead of the next presidential election, with Buttigieg making a concerted effort to get in front of Black voters and demonstrating new bonafides from his transportation secretary tenure.It was also the first major visit by a potential 2028 candidate to the state since the Democratic National Committee voted on August 15 to keep it as the location for the first presidential primary in the nation, a nod to the political power of its large Black electorate.Buttigieg brushed off a question about his 2028 plans after his speech in Florence, telling reporters he is “totally focused on 2026.” But there were ample reminders of speculation about his next move on Saturday, including a scattering of homemade signs reading “PETE” and “2028” that sprung up when he took the stage. Surveying the enthusiastic crowd, he observed he should “come here more often.”One fan, 64-year-old retiree Karen Ench, wore a “Pete Buttigieg 2028” shirt to the speech. Contemplating his 2028 ambitions afterward, she said she thought he was “really taking it much more serious” and focusing on areas of improvement from 2020.A 2028 bid would undoubtedly start with higher expectations for the onetime mayor of South Bend, Indiana, compared to his first run.“The Pete Buttigieg of 2020 is not the Pete Buttigieg of 2026,” said Marlon Kimpson, a Black former state senator who backed Biden in the 2020 primary. “He has name recognition, he’s no longer introducing himself. I think people generally like Pete, and that’s a big deal in an open race because he starts out at a plus. But as we look at his economic agenda, just for the average South Carolinian, with emphasis on the African American community … and the political infrastructure he has deployed in our state, there will be questions with respect to those issues.”Buttigieg’s 2020 campaign, despite winning the Iowa caucuses with a much Whiter demographic, came to an end in South Carolina, dogged by his weaknesses with Black voters. After powerful South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn endorsed Biden and gave his flagging bid a shot of momentum that ultimately propelled him to the presidency, Buttigieg finished fourth in the Palmetto State and dropped out a day later.Biden received 61% support from Black voters in South Carolina, while Buttigieg got 3%, according to exit polls.Colleen Condon, a Charleston lawyer and longtime party activist who backed Buttigieg in 2020, said that “2020 is so hard to compare against” due to the unique circumstances of Clyburn’s support for Biden. Now, Condon, who is White, said, Democrats are “anxious for someone young and energetic” and noted Buttigieg would bring more experience to the 2028 race.“He has done a lot of work in the last eight years, (including) as secretary of transportation, in showing his ability to work on the federal level,” Condon said.‘What he’s actually done’In interviews across the state on Saturday, Black Democrats agreed Buttigieg’s experience as transportation secretary has distinguished him since he last sought their support. He played a high-profile role in promoting Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure law, visiting communities small and large across the country to announce funding for long-awaited projects.In Florence, Mattie Thomas, a member of the South Carolina Democratic Party executive committee, said she did not know about his time as mayor but now she sees him as “one of our best transportation secretaries.”“I think he’ll fare extremely well this go around because people, they’ve seen what he’s actually done,” Sandra Burgess Glover, a retired educator, said in Orangeburg as Buttigieg mingled with the dinner crowd before his speech.Buttigieg was showered with praise at the dinner for his June 2023 announcement in the city with Clyburn of a $23 million federal grant to better connect Orangeburg’s two HBCUs to downtown. Orangeburg Mayor Michael Butler prompted a standing ovation for Buttigieg when he brought up the project, calling it “a long time coming.”Deloris Frazier, a member of the Orangeburg County Council, embraced Buttigieg as he worked the crowd before the dinner, telling him that she keeps a photo in her home of the two of them from that day in 2023. She told CNN afterward that she’d support Buttigieg for president if he ran, joking that she would take the photo and “just blow it up and make it bigger.”Earlier Saturday, Buttigieg visited one of Orangeburg’s HBCUs, Claflin University, and held an hourlong roundtable with about 20 students. The conversation topics ranged from artificial intelligence to reparations for slavery, which was a litmus test in the 2020 primary.Buttigieg said he still supported legislation to create a commission to study reparations. But he said he learned as transportation secretary that the federal government could take “reparative” steps sooner, pointing to his efforts to combat decades-old urban planning that led to highways cutting across Black neighborhoods.“I have a perspective on that that I didn’t have before when I didn’t have a chance to work on federal policy,” Buttigieg said.Usir Jackson, the president of the Student Government Association, said afterward he found Buttigieg “down to earth” and “authentic.”Buttigieg, who took notes at some points, appeared moved when the roundtable topic turned to young voters feeling disillusioned – and Jackson shared why he still makes sure to vote.“I do it to respect people who came before me,” Jackson said, “so I could vote.”Hurdles remain with Black votersFor all the praise of his record in the Biden administration, some of Buttigieg’s admirers acknowledge he needs it to translate into far more Black voter support than he saw in 2020.While the crowd he spoke to in Orangeburg was overwhelmingly Black, the audience that came to see him earlier in the day in Florence, at the state Democratic Party’s Spratt Issues Conference, was mostly White.State Rep. JA Moore was a crucial Black supporter for Buttigieg in 2020 in South Carolina, backing him after then-California Sen. Kamala Harris dropped out. Moore said in an interview that any potential 2028 candidate needs to focus less on tailoring a message to Black voters and more on developing a “cadence” of regularly reaching out to them where they are.“What we call it is the difference between a ‘come here’ and a ‘been here,’” Moore said. “I think one of the things people missed about Joe Biden – he was a ‘been here’ in the sense that he had been coming to South Carolina for over 40 years.”Some Black Democrats said he may continue to face hurdles in the state as a gay man, an issue that came up in 2020 as he reached out to socially conservative church congregations. “This is the Bible Belt,” Thomas said matter-of-factly.“Sometimes they want to categorize a candidate or individual because of their sexual preferences,” said Brenda Montgomery, a 67-year-old training specialist from Lake City who saw Buttigieg in Florence. “But for me, he is everyone. He represents everyone, and I really like him as a person because he is approachable.”Buttigieg, whose crowd in Florence was dotted with some small rainbow flags, does not go out of his way to talk about his sexual orientation. But on Saturday, he spoke regularly about his two children, who are mixed-race, that he adopted with his husband, Chasten, noting fatherhood is the biggest personal change he has experienced since 2020.It’s a life change that would be put to the test by another grueling presidential campaign, which South Carolina Democrats see as likelier than ever. While he mostly avoided talk of 2028, he said in Florence that he was excited about South Carolina’s first-in-the-nation status and how it would spotlight the state’s diversity.Buttigieg has fielded the 2028 speculation by becoming one of the most prolific endorsers in the midterms, with an eye on supporting Black Democrats and Democrats running in Republican-leaning territory. He kicked off his South Carolina trip on Friday night by headlining a fundraiser in Charleston for Nancy Lacore, a retired Navy officer running for an open House seat in a district that Trump carried by 13 percentage points in 2024.Condon, the Democratic activist who helped host Buttigieg’s fundraiser for LaCore, said it was “extremely early, but I’m very inclined to” support Buttigieg again in 2028 if he runs.Moore said it was too early for endorsements but said he especially likes Buttigieg for at least one reason.Buttigieg “has the ability to learn and adapt,” Moore said. “I find that refreshing and appealing.”The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
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