When former Gov. Walter J. Hickel of Alaska became President Richard M. Nixon’s Interior secretary, Mr. Watt was named a deputy with oversight for water and power resources. In 1975, President Gerald R. Ford named him to the Federal Power Commission. He became a proponent of the “Sagebrush Rebellion,” a Western movement that sought regional […]
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A loud noise that was heard across much of the Washington, D.C., area on Sunday afternoon, including in the suburbs of Virginia and Maryland, was caused by a sonic boom from an authorized Defense Department flight, the Annapolis Office of Emergency Management said. It was not immediately clear where the flight originated or which branch […]
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WASHINGTON — I think about Jackie Kennedy several times a day. I have no choice. Tour groups come by my house in Georgetown to see John Kennedy’s bachelor pad, where he was living when he met Jacqueline Bouvier at a dinner party. I eavesdropped at the window once and heard a tour guide spin the […]
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WASHINGTON — On a day of high drama at an international climate change conference early in his administration, President Barack Obama confronted a senior Chinese official who offered what the American delegation considered a weak commitment. Mr. Obama dismissed the offer. Not good enough. The Chinese official erupted. “What do you mean that’s not good […]
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After days of marathon sessions between House Republicans and the White House, negotiators are closing in on a deal and beginning to draft legislative text. While some details are still in flux, the agreement would raise the debt limit for two years while imposing strict caps on discretionary spending not related to the military or […]
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Less than a month after 19 children and two teachers died in the elementary school shooting last year in Uvalde, Texas, the U.S. Senate passed the most significant gun control bill since the long-expired federal ban on assault weapons. The very same day, June 23, the Supreme Court upended gun policy in jurisdictions with some […]
Read MoreKids gather in D.C for a ‘Trans Prom’ (Photos courtesy of Kisha Bari). By the time Daniel Trujillo was nine years old, the transgender Arizonan was already advocating for his own rights: He wrote a letter for a state legislator to read on the state Senate floor. Four years later, he and his parents started […]
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Sarah Driscoll was out for drinks with colleagues one evening in early 2017 when a veteran political operative she worked with, Adam C. Sullivan, cornered her at a Washington bar. They were both directors of the Hub Project, a small Democratic advocacy group leading a pitched fight against Donald J. Trump’s new presidency. But rather […]
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Whatever news gods decided that the cable television stars Tucker Carlson and Don Lemon should be fired the same week that President Biden was scheduled to give a funny speech ribbing the news media certainly were generous in providing fresh material. And Mr. Biden took advantage on Saturday night as he gleefully mocked some of […]
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More than two decades ago, the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery acquired a 19th- century album filled with nearly 2,000 silhouette portraits, including those of two former presidents. Before displaying the cut-paper portraits, made by a traveling artist named William Bache, the museum needed to create a new, sturdier binding for the book. That’s when curators […]
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WASHINGTON — As he strode into a bar packed with margarita-sipping young Republicans here the other night, Representative George Santos of New York looked like a man who had finally gotten what he had always wanted. Nevermind the conspicuous giggling or an introducer’s reference to “bipartisan condemnation” that he has inspired. It was a glorious […]
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While plenty of hotels claim to be “redefining the hospitality space,” few are actually doing it. Hotels, like everything, move in waves and fall victim to trends. But on my recent visit to Eaton DC, I did feel like I was glimpsing the future. The property is one-part hotel, one-part coworking space, and exhibits a […]
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WASHINGTON — For weeks, the hottest ticket in town has been the British director Simon Godwin’s searing “King Lear” with a phenomenal Patrick Page, put on by the Shakespeare Theater Company. “It’s a critique of the gerontocracy,” Drew Lichtenberg, the theater’s dramaturg, told me, a parable on clinging to power “when leaders are too old […]
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During Daniel Snyder’s 24 years as owner of the N.F.L.’s Washington franchise, the team plummeted in popularity and became a textbook example of a toxic workplace. The announcement on Thursday that he has reached an agreement in principle to sell the Commanders came only after years of Snyder insisting that he would not part with […]
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For four decades, a sculpture of artfully placed granite boulders bordering a reflecting pool occupied the courtyard of an international headquarters in Washington D.C., creating an urban oasis in the shadows of the tall modernist buildings. But six years ago, the National Geographic Society, decided that the sculpture, known as “Marabar” and designed by the […]
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A federal judge has ordered former Vice President Mike Pence to appear in front of a grand jury investigating former President Donald J. Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election, sweeping aside two separate legal efforts by Mr. Pence and Mr. Trump to limit his testimony, according to two people familiar with the matter. The […]
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WASHINGTON — When Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, arranged a tour of the D.C. jail to inspect the conditions of defendants charged in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, Democrats faced a choice: Boycott or participate. House Democrats had watched last Congress as the Republican leader Kevin McCarthy pulled his members from a Democratic-led […]
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I asked Joel Kotkin, presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University and executive director of the Urban Reform Institute in Houston, about the economics of major cities, and he replied by email: “The era of urban supremacy is over. The party that addresses this will win. These areas need infrastructure and tax structures that […]
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WASHINGTON — The data of more than 56,000 people, including Social Security numbers and other personal information, was stolen in a hack of the online health insurance marketplace for members of Congress and Washington, D.C., small businesses and residents, officials said in a statement on Friday night. The D.C. Health Benefit Exchange Authority revealed the […]
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A former New York City police officer was convicted this week of several crimes for her role in the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, during which, prosecutors said, she pushed against and slapped the arms of police officers, all while yelling and wielding a tambourine. A federal jury in Washington, D.C., found the retired […]
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Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, was hospitalized on Wednesday after tripping at a hotel in Washington, D.C., his spokesman said. “This evening, Leader McConnell tripped at a local hotel during a private dinner,” the spokesman, David Popp, said in a brief statement early Thursday morning. “He has been admitted to the hospital, […]
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WASHINGTON — The Senate on Wednesday voted overwhelmingly to block a new District of Columbia criminal code that reduces mandatory minimum sentences for some violent offenses, with Democrats bowing to Republican pressure to take a hard line on crime in a move that underscored the rising political potency of the issue ahead of the 2024 […]
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As he heads into an expected third term as president, China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, is signaling that he will take a harder stance against what he perceives as an effort by the United States to block China’s rise. And he’s doing so in uncommonly blunt terms. Mr. Xi has hailed China’s success as proof […]
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WASHINGTON — President Biden told Senate Democrats on Thursday that he would not stand in the way of a Republican-led proposal to block a new criminal code for the District of Columbia, according to senators who attended a private luncheon with him in the Capitol. With a floor showdown expected next week, Mr. Biden told […]
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WASHINGTON — Republicans in Congress are working to block changes to the District of Columbia’s criminal code, potentially setting up a politically charged veto fight with President Biden as the party works to capitalize on fears of rising crime in the run-up to the 2024 campaign. Senate Republicans hope to marshal the votes as early […]
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WASHINGTON — A People’s Liberation Army veteran turned drone manufacturer. A Shanghai real estate company that wagered there was more profit in high-altitude airships. An eminent Chinese aviation scientist who started more than a dozen companies to commercialize his expertise. Each sought to help their business by supporting China’s military modernization. Each now stands accused […]
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WASHINGTON — After a heady few years for the District of Columbia’s longtime aspirations of self-governance, with a statehood bill even passing in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2021, the temperature between Congress and the city it sits in has plummeted to new lows. On Thursday, the House voted by large margins for two […]
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Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina has worked hard to cultivate an image as a different sort of Republican — one willing to publicly criticize former President Donald J. Trump and the party’s embrace of the far right, even as she usually votes the party line and has come to adopt some of the same […]
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Now, as some smaller states — particularly those the United States describes as allies and partners — confront this new potential threat of surveillance, their options may be limited. What we consider before using anonymous sources. Do the sources know the information? What’s their motivation for telling us? Have they proved reliable in the past? Can […]
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When the Trump campaign tried to conceal details surrounding its infamous Trump Tower meeting with a Russian lawyer in June 2016, the Mueller report suggests that the effort “may reflect an intention to avoid political consequences rather than any prior knowledge of illegality,” that is, that the Trump team might have felt just shame, not […]
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