Good morning. Cloudy with shower chances and very humid today with a high around 87. Storms are possible this afternoon. A low near 70 overnight. The Nationals begin a four-day-long visit to Philadelphia, a large city north of DC, with a game against the Phillies this evening.
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I can’t stop listening to:
Karma and the Killjoys, “St. Pete’s.” Some witchy pop from Louisiana arrives at DC9 tonight when Karma and the Killjoys play with Johnny Manchild and the Poor Bastards and Friend of a Friend.
Take Washingtonian Today with you! I keep ridiculously long playlists on Apple Music and on Spotify of this year’s music recommendations. Here are 2025’s songs (Apple, Spotify), too.
Here’s some administration news you might have blocked out:
The war: Oil prices plummeted overnight after President Trump claimed he’d canceled planned strikes against Iran this weekend due to peace negotiations he said would begin today. (AP) Trump said the “perimeters of a deal” were in place and that the Strait of Hormuz, which has been mostly closed since he launched this war in February, could reopen as a result. (NYT) Iran’s foreign minister said Monday the country was not in talks with the US. (Reuters)
The analyses: Trump said US allies in the region had persuaded him to hold off. If these talks don’t pan out, the President “could once again fall into a familiar cycle of reviving his military threats shortly after he shelved them.” (WSJ) Here’s a timeline of that cycle over the past few months. (AP) Iran’s leadership has “spotted a pattern in Mr. Trump’s attempts to shape negotiations.” (NYT)
The write stuff: Attorney general hopeful Todd Blanche yielded to pressure from two Republican senators who’d held up his nomination and published documents Sunday night that explicitly said the Justice Department wouldn’t move ahead with a $1.8 billion slush fund it had granted Trump to pay allies who’d felt they’d been mistreated by the government and also narrowed the scope of a deal to protect the President from audits. (NYT) Trump claimed over the weekend that unless Blanche was confirmed he would revive the fund by way of legislation whose existence has so far proved elusive. (Washington Post) US Senator John Cornyn of Texas said Blanche’s documents were sufficient to get Blanche’s nomination moving tomorrow. (Politico) That means “the earliest the Senate could confirm him is Saturday unless Democrats agree to speed things up.” (Punchbowl News)
The Pirro-ic journey: Trump flipped out on US Attorney for DC Jeanine Pirro this weekend after her office moved to drop charges against David Hearn Friday, saying the Olympic canoeist did not, in fact, vandalize the Reflecting Pool and that the damage to the water feature was “the result of a botched installation and not vandalism.” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum claimed his department had provided Pirro’s office with evidence of vandalism. (NOTUS) Pirro’s filing said the evidence Interior was entirely focused on the vandalism theory but that information it gathered independently pointed toward the contractors, not passersby. (NYT) Implied in the filing: This is more than a “story about the Justice Department beclowning itself yet again”—Pirro and AUSA Michael P. Spence “essentially argued in the motion to dismiss the Hearn case that any legal or ethical fallout from this indictment should lie with the Department of the Interior, not with them.” (Law Dork)
Administration perambulation: Trump Media launched a service Saturday that grants subscribers early access to Trump’s market-moving Truth Social posts. (CNBC) The State Department has quietly begun to restore some international health aid. (NYT) ICE detentions last month “set a monthly record high.” (CBS News) Republicans in the Senate blocked an attempt to expand military families’ access to IVF. Trump had promised to expand such access to all Americans. (NYT) The Senate moved to avoid a shutdown before the midterm elections, potentially ending bids for “Trump-class” battleships and an administration proposal that would put political appointees in charge of grants. (AP) US Representative Marcy Kaptur of Ohio was injured in a hit-and-run accident in Toledo. (WTVG) US Senator Bernie Moreno of Ohio said US Representative Max Miller of Ohio should leave Congress. Miller was married to Moreno’s daughter Emily Moreno, who has accused him of abuse, which Miller denies. (Politico) George Santos settled an insider trading case about his use of Kalshi, where the former member of Congress bet on whether he’d show up for a State of the Union address. (NOTUS)
The Best Thing I Ate Last Week, by Ann Limpert:
Michael Schlow’s newly revived Riggsby has much in common with the original, which closed during the pandemic: it’s in a Dupont hotel (a different one); it has a dark, moody vibe; and it celebrates throwback American cocktails and dishes. One new reason to visit is the off-menu burger—not so secret if you follow the restaurant on Instagram (also, it went viral well over a decade ago at Schlow’s Boston restaurant Radius). Here, you’ll only find it in the bar area, and the kitchen makes just 12 a night. And in this smash-burger-crammed city, the giant patty of good-quality, house-ground beef is a standout. It’s set on a freshly made milk-bread bun, gilded with cheddar and creamy horseradish sauce, and piled with an almost ridiculous amount of fried onions.
Recently on Washingtonian dot com:
• Party photographer Dan Swartz shares his monthly roundup of swanky events and boldfaced names.
Local news links:
Free markets can be rough, man: Washington Post opinion editor Adam O’Neal is out of a job. He led the section’s rightward reinvention, which owner Jeff Bezos ordered last year. (NYT) O’Neal had recently been “sounding triumphant and boasting that he had pushed the paper’s storied opinion section further to the right.” (Status) The Post wrote about this departure. What, exactly, is the rule for covering personnel moves over there? (Washington Post)
Do more with Dulles: Will you end up paying for Dulles’s big planned renovation? It seems quite possible! (Axios D.C.) The plans call for a much larger parking garage than officials said they needed; the proposed structure “would likely tower over the iconic terminal designed by Finnish architect Eero Saarinen.” (NOTUS)
• Preservationists hope to stop Trump’s plans to paint the Eisenhower Executive Office Building white. (NBC News)
• The GSA took three federal buildings off the market, including HUD’s headquarters, which was slated to become a facility for homeless people. (WTOP)
• Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger said Friday that her office had restored voting rights to more than 66,000 people since January. (VPM)
• Watch this story: Amazon plans to build four data centers on land in Ashburn that it bought from George Washington University. (Northern Virginia Magazine)
• The women’s and men’s finals in the Mubadala DC Open were halted by rain yesterday and will be played today. (Reuters) The Nats traded Luis García Jr. to the Yankees in exchange for four pitchers. (Fox 5)
• DC nightclub Culture asked the public for help finding its employee Madeline Avillion. The Ivy City venue says she has been missing since early Friday, when she was seen in Adams Morgan. (WUSA9)
• A woman walked into a DC police station Sunday to seek help after being stabbed during a carjacking. (DC News Now)
• A sergeant in the Stafford County Sheriff’s Office got canned “after the FBI accused him of getting child sexual abuse material (CSAM) through an online account.” (ABC 7)
• Police in Alexandria say a man threw a dog. (ALXnow)
• Former Virginia state Senator Janet Howell, who represented parts of Northern Virginia for decades, died Sunday. (WTVR)
• US Senator Ashley Moody of Florida proposed a bill last week that would require students in DC to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Moody’s office hasn’t commented yet on the legislation. (City Cast DC)
The post Pirro Gives Up on Prosecuting Canoe Guy, Washington Post Opinions Editor to Depart, and You May Help Pay for the Big Dulles Renovation first appeared on Washingtonian.
