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City Cast DC

Kaela Cote-Stemmermann

We’re on a mission to get out there and remember why we 

 living in D.C. again. We think this bingo card will help.

How many can you check off before spring?

 if you get bingo and we’ll give you a shoutout!

Michael Schaffer

When the roster of artists slated to play the Great American State Fair was announced earlier this week, D.C.'s reaction was simple: Why couldn't we get A-List talent?

Two days later, the question has changed: Why couldn't we even keep D-List talent?

The first to bust a move was Young M.C., the rapper best known for the 1989 hit "Bust a Move.” 

"The artists were never told about any political involvement with the event,” 

 early Thursday, noting that SPIN had described the gig as "Trump-backed.”

More drop-outs followed. Morris Day, the longtime Prince collaborator who appeared in 1984's 

 that "contrary to the rumor, Morris Day & The Time will not be performing.” Milli Vanilli, the 1980s duo best remembered for a lip-synching scandal where it turned out they hadn't even sang their own song, declared that t

hey had never agreed to perform in the first place

The Commodores, the legendary 1970s soul act, 

: “Our music has always been our voice and we choose not to publicly affiliate with any single political party,” they wrote on social media.

The most painful hits came last. Country singer Martina McBride, who actually has fans in MAGA America, 

. “I was presented with the opportunity to perform at a nonpartisan event but that turned out to be misleading,” she wrote in a long, somber statement.

And then came Bret Michaels, singer of the 1980s hair-metal band Poison — and a one-time winner on 

. “Unfortunately, what was presented to us as a celebration of our country has evolved into something much more divisive than I agreed to be part of,” 

The internet has had a lot of fun with it, but the vibe may also feel familiar to Washingtonians: It’s not so different from what happened after Trump took over the Kennedy Center and acts started pulling out in order to not be associated with a once-neutral seeming institution that had now acquired a political charge.

Sure enough, Ric Grenell, who presided over the Kennedy Center during the artistic exodus, weighed in to slam McBride: “You’ve always been a woke lefty,” 

. In another post, he referred to the cancellations as “censorship.”

It’s not — though you can expect some political fireworks from one side or the other over Michaels’ claim that “concerns have been raised regarding the safety of my fans, band, crew, family, and myself, including threats that are completely unfounded and unforgivable.”

Artists have a right to associate with whatever political figure they want. But these particular artists’ choices are sad all the same. It used to be that playing at a big national institution like the Kennedy Center, or joining a National Mall festival designed to celebrate July 4, didn’t feel like linking arms with any political figure at all.

The Trump-era personalization of the capital’s symbolic core — the president was talking up his plans for the Mall even as the cancellations rolled in — has changed the dynamic so even hokey D.C. stuff now feels inextricably tied to the guy at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

That’s especially true for the Great American State Fair. Given that the festival is full of Make America Healthy Again content, it’s not hard to see why people would think of it as not just another bit of federal-city programming.

This change in the political valence of the Mall and its festivals, in the long run, is especially lousy for D.C. residents. We used to enjoy the benefits of capital-city events — sometimes with actual A-list stars — that you couldn't see in a regular American metropolis. Not these days.

Luckily, we can still see Vanilla Ice and Flo Rida, who as of this writing have not canceled.

Is Everyone Dropping Out of Trump’s Great American State Fair Concerts?

Local News

Get the story that everyone in Washington is talking about.

D.C. Local News

Emma Uber

Locals have refused to call the iconic D.C. performing arts venue the “Trump Kennedy Center,” even after the board voted to add Trump’s name in December and changed the signs. Now, a judge says the renaming was against the law.

A federal judge on Friday ordered the removal of President Donald Trump’s name from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts building and all official branding, ruling that the board acted unlawfully by renaming the institution without an act of Congress. In a 94-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper also temporarily blocked the institution from closing for two years of renovations.

"The Kennedy Center's organic statute makes crystal clear that the Center is to be named for President Kennedy, and it cannot bear any other formal name or public memorial based on the Board's unilateral say-so,” wrote Cooper. “Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it.”

As part of his ruling, Cooper ordered that all signage and online materials referring to the "Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts," the "Trump Kennedy Center," or anything similar must be removed within 14 days.

Cooper also found that the institution’s board had been “derelict” in failing to consider the consequences to programming when shutting down the center and called the renovation plans “murky,” writing that none of the board members had enough information to decide whether the closure was necessary. Most performances have already been canceled in anticipation of the closure that was set to begin in July — plus, the center has struggled to 

 talent since Trump installed himself as chair of the board last year.

The ruling does not prevent the Kennedy Center's board from a future closure, but the judge said that it should only do so after the board has "sufficient information to make a considered, independent decision, taking account of its obligation to both maintain and operate a premiere arts venue and its solemn duty to memorialize a fallen President."

Roma Daravi, a spokesperson for the center, said it would appeal the decision. In a statement Friday, she said that the Trump administration remains committed to giving the center “an urgent and significant restoration.”

“We are confident that on appeal the court will uphold the Board’s will to recognize President Trump’s historic contributions to our nation’s cultural center,” she said. “With $257 million secured by President Trump and approved by Congress, the resources are in place and we remain committed to pursuing every lawful avenue to ensure the Trump Kennedy Center is restored as a national cultural landmark for all Americans to enjoy.”

In an email sent after the ruling, Daravi referred to herself as the “Trump Kennedy Center Vice President of Public Relations.”

In response to a request for comment, the White House referred to Trump's lengthy 

 Friday evening, in which he railed against Cooper and decried the center as in need of renovation. He also wrote he is going to be 'working with Congress to transfer this failing Institution back to them,' though Congress already possesses legal control of the center.

"Unless I am free to do what I do better than anyone else, bring this Institution back, physically, financially, and artistically, I have no interest in continuing what could only be a hopeless journey into “NEVER NEVER LAND.”"

The rulings mark a win for Rep. Joyce Beatty, a Democratic congresswoman and board member who in December sued her fellow trustees after they voted to rename the institution after Trump. She later broadened her lawsuit to contest the closure of the center altogether.

"Today's ruling rightly affirms that this administration's efforts to rename and close the Center have no basis in law," Beatty said in a statement. "The Kennedy Center is an institution that belongs to the American people, not to Donald Trump. He has desecrated this sacred memorial for his own vanity."

In a separate decision Friday, Cooper denied a similar challenge to the renovations brought by preservationist groups.

A lawsuit filed in March by a coalition of architectural and historic preservation organizations, including the DC Preservation League, argues the Trump administration has already caused historic harm to the building and must go through a federal review process before any more work can be done. The group alleges that the administration appears intent on “major aesthetic transformation” or maybe even total demolition of the arts center.

The government countered by saying the Kennedy Center is not a federal agency subject to those review requirements, and that the construction plans do not indicate an intention to demolish the arts center.

Cooper sided with the government, but said his position could change based on the scale of the renovations.

“If the work is, say, more transformative than present testimony suggests or requires permits that the center has yet to acknowledge or secure, the court’s legal analysis might look substantially different,” the judge wrote.

U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper said the Kennedy Center’s board acted unlawfully by renaming the center without congressional approval. 


Trump’s Name Must be Removed from Kennedy Center, Judge Orders

The Stars may not be aligned for D.C. media mogul Robert Allbritton.

Last month, Allbritton’s political news site NOTUS announced it would expand its coverage and rebrand as 

 Many figured the name was an homage to his family’s former ownership of 

 – a paper that stopped printing in 1981. In 

 with the Columbia Journalism Review, Allbritton said replicating the full name of the paper would be too "backward looking.”

It may not have been quite so simple. According to a lawsuit filed in federal court Thursday, the name wasn’t Allbritton’s to use. According to the suit, NOTUS twice engaged in talks with The Washington Star Company to purchase the trademark, but were unable to reach an agreement. They went with a galaxy-inspired name anyway, just dropping the “Washington.”

Now, days before the planned relaunch, that decision is proving complicated.

was actually planning its own launch, led by Dovid Efune, the publisher of the conservative 

 began posting articles on Substack this month, ending a 45-year publishing drought weeks after NOTUS announced its expansion. Efune told the 

’s newsroom, soon. According to the lawsuit, having another company with Star in the name is bad for business.

The lawsuit claims the two newspaper names are confusingly similar and, since media executive Dovid Efune holds the trademark, a judge should order NOTUS to stop using the name and pay damages for infringing on 

’s relaunch had been “some years in the making.” Federal trademark records show that Efune has held the trademark since 2023. Interestingly, records show the trademark was filed by Robert Garson, one of President Donald Trump’s personal lawyers, who represented Trump in an unsuccessful $50 million lawsuit against ex-

In a statement to City Cast DC on Thursday, Allbritton said NOTUS plans to "vigorously defend against the claims.”

“Six weeks after NOTUS announced that it was rebranding to The Star, a newly formed entity associated with Dovid Efune has sued NOTUS for trademark infringement,” the statement read. “The entity does not and cannot own the word “Star,” which has been used by and associated with dozens of media publications for over 100 years. The entity itself only even claims to have recently adopted “The Washington Star,” decades after numerous other “Star” publications have been using “Star” marks.”

Lawyers for Efune are pointing to Allbritton’s family history with 

 as another reason D.C. readers may be confused about the distinction between the two publications. Allbritton’s father, Joseph Allbritton, owned the newspaper from 1975 to 1978. The paper folded a few years later, going bankrupt after 128 years as a conservative-leaning newspaper. The 

purchased its newspaper plant, printing presses and delivery trucks after the closure, but stopped short of acquiring the paper itself. (City Cast DC is owned by Graham Holdings, formerly the Washington Post Company.)

The younger Allbritton, meanwhile, stayed in the media business, founding Politico, which ultimately sold to a German media firm for more than $1 billion — giving him the money to bankroll this new venture.

website within the next two months and print a weekend newspaper by the end of the year. 

 will publish under the oversight of right-leaning 

 until an editor in chief is named, and in his editorial Efune wrote that the publication will support “limited government” and oppose “bureaucratic corruption and federal overreach.” He hasn’t said anything about covering local Washington, and the 

 does not focus extensively on metro news in its city.

For the record, City Cast DC will not be rebranding as City Star DC.

The plaintiffs say Washington is a one-star town.

 The Washington Star Is Suing The Star In a Very Confusing Media Battle

Jamelle 'Mellie' Harris was driving when her elementary-aged son began to have a breakdown. He had long struggled with mental and behavioral health issues, but this time she just couldn’t de-escalate. She sat on the side of the road, unsure how to get back to their Southeast D.C. home without her child trying to throw himself out of the moving vehicle. 

At a loss, she called the Child and Adolescent Mobile Psychiatric Service.

The hotline workers were able to soothe him. Later, when she needed tools to address mental health episodes at home, the service, known as ChAMPS, helped her develop a safety plan and put together a sensory box full of her son’s favorite things to help calm him down. And when she recognized her son needed more intensive help but worried about calling the police on a young Black boy, she trusted ChAMPS to make sure he was taken away in an ambulance, not a police car.

“I can’t imagine what it would be like if we didn’t have ChAMPS to call if there’s an emergency,” Harris, a 32-year-old mother of two, said.

ChAMPS is an emergency service for children and teens ages 6-17 who are having mental or behavioral crises. Under D.C.’s budget proposal, the program would be shuttered, part of a broader slate of cuts that would also phase out

the city’s contracts with a network of community-based organizations providing clinicians to D.C. schools. The proposed changes would save roughly $7 million dollars by moving those responsibilities to the city’s Department of Behavioral Health, which operates its own general crisis response team.

In a moment when the city is grappling with teen behavior – from “teen takeovers” to viral Chipotle brawls – and conversations about resources for the city’s youth have come under a national microscope, some fear it’s a dangerous time to disrupt the behavioral health care system.

More than 150 parents, educators and behavioral health professionals from over 60 D.C. schools, as well as 45 local organizations, signed a letter last month decrying the proposed changes.

"At a time when children across the District are facing deep instability, DBH is attempting to pull students’ trusted adults from their schools,” said Danielle Robinette, a senior policy attorney at Children’s Law Center, one of the organizations that signed the letter.

A DBH spokesperson said in a statement that it remains “committed” to making services available, and that consolidating children’s crisis services in-house will allow the department to better coordinate follow-up care and encourage families to seek ongoing support. The spokesperson also pointed out that DBH’s new plan for school-based care includes telehealth, which would extend resources to public schools currently without in-person mental health clinicians. D.C. plans to spend $18 million over the next few years to establish the new school-based behavioral health program

Shaina Lamchick Hagen is a parent to an autistic first grader at John Burroughs Elementary School. At a public budget hearing, she testified that her family developed a close relationship with a contracted behavioral health specialist at the school who worked with her son to develop social skills. But the specialist recently told Hagen she will not be returning next year because of the proposed restructuring of services.

“Ms. Taylor has been a lifeline for our son and for our family,” Hagen said. “I don’t know how we are going to tell my son. He and the other students at our school receiving services from Ms. Taylor will be devastated.”

The city is facing a difficult $1.1 billion budget gap, and Mayor Muriel Bowser submitted a proposal that balanced the budget without hiking up taxes. The proposed budget also includes steep cuts to the D.C. Department of Human Services, which provides programs for housing and food assistance, and the Pay Equity Fund, which uses taxes on the city’s wealthy to fund wages for child care workers. Earlier this month, D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson said he identified an additional $420 million in revenue to put towards the 2027 budget, potentially softening some cuts.

During a budget markup session last week, D.C. Councilmember Christina Henderson said she “strongly opposed” the move away from community-based organizations and recommended $6.1 million be reallocated to restore funding for contracts with community-based organizations. She also plans to fund ChAMPS and other crisis hotlines with money from a tax to D.C. residents’ phone bills.

Her colleagues from the council’s more progressive contingent like Brianne Nadeau, Zachary Parker and Charles Allen voiced similar concerns at the hearing. Parker said he doubted D.C. had the capacity to move these programs in-house, while Allen said he worried the sacrifices made in the budget came at the highest cost to the city's most vulnerable.

“A lot has been made about how our economy is shifting and we need to adapt to recent decisions by the federal government to reduce its workforce, its size, its real estate footprint," Allen said. "Unfortunately, I think the executive has chosen to go down a path where the budget may be balanced, but it’s on the backs of those who are most vulnerable.”

Harris said that as a Ward 8 resident raising fifth-generation Washingtonians, community-based organizations can feel more in-tune with neighborhood-specific concerns. She said her sons have made progress when they’ve developed relationships with school-based clinicians, and that they’ve grown comfortable with ChAMPS because they know the program was designed in part to divert children away from law enforcement and, if possible, avoid hospitalization.

“It just doesn’t seem like an ideal time to reduce or disrupt the community-based mental health resources,” Harris said. “Shifting these services into a more strictly clinical structure, it’s not attractive to my community so it might unintentionally reduce accessibility.”

Chandler Dennard, a music teacher at Kimball Elementary School in Greenway, also expressed concern about the timing. He said some of his students’ parents have lost jobs this year and have had to move in with relatives. These children need stability at school, he said, and he worried the potential loss of Kimball Elementary’s contracts with an art therapist or Hillcrest Children & Family Center could feel like a disruption.

“If we don’t protect it now, we’ll pay for it later,” said Dennard, a teacher of 25 years. “Mental health clinicians who are in the schools know the families, know the neighborhood and can step in to support the students before the behavior escalates.”

The Council will continue to make adjustments to the proposed budget in the coming weeks. A final vote is scheduled for June 23.

Under the proposed budget, D.C.'s sole mental health crisis team for kids would be shuttered — part of a broader slate of cuts that would also phase out the city’s contracts with a network of community-based organizations providing clinicians to D.C. schools.

As D.C. Weighs Budget Cuts, Families Fear Loss of Youth Mental Health Support

City Cast DC staff

City Cast DC is conducting interviews with the front-running candidates in the D.C. primary election this year. 

Here’s the transcript from the interview that executive editor and co-host Michael Schaffer did with D.C. Councilmember Janeese Lewis George, who is running for mayor. The interview has been lightly edited for clarity. You can also 

Janeese Lewis George, thank you so much for coming in to talk.

So you're a D.C. native, as am I. And you know, you have talked movingly about growing up on Kennedy Street, going across the park to Alice Deal. Seeing how different and unequal D.C. was, I wanna just set the table. Do you think a child growing up on Kennedy Street today, like you, has a better chance of good outcomes in life? Worse chance? How has D.C. changed for that child?

I honestly think that they have a significantly great chance of success. We have more young people going to their neighborhood schools in our community in Ward 4, where I grew up and Whittier has been a blue ribbon school every year. Coolidge and Roosevelt are doing amazing. Our Coolidge students are graduating with associate's degrees from Trinity University before they even walk across the stage and get a high school diploma. We have Ida B. Wells and McFarland, and so I just think we have more opportunities for young people to go to school in their community. Right? Trusdale is doing well. Our elementary schools have just excelled significantly. 

My old elementary school was Rudolph Elementary, which ended up closing, and so I'm excited that so many of our community are going to our neighborhood schools. I'm excited because of the opportunities that now exist at our neighborhood schools. Like, Whittier's a STEM school and you have Powell Elementary, you have all these options. And middle school as well. We have all these programs, the NAF Academy. 

We finally, I think, are at a space where our schools are continuing to just grow significantly in the options and the opportunity, which is really how I ended up going to Deal for junior high school. 

My grandmother actually had served as a lunch lady there for a number of years with all the principals there, and she saw something different. My grandmother didn't graduate from high school but she saw the quality of schooling that students were getting. I think she wanted her grandkids to have that access to good education. And then it wasn't, "Oh, do we have the opportunity to have that good education in the neighborhood that we're in?" And I think the answer to that today is, "yes, we do."

It's interesting 'cause you're painting a picture and a lot of stats bear this out of D.C. on a sort of upward trajectory. Certainly, the murder rate the year you were born was a lot higher than it is now.

It is. That's right. I experienced that too.

The District of Columbia Housing Authority was a disaster. Employees would scoff at residents who had complaints about heating and stuff. But you are now positioned as the candidate of change, the candidate of, “hey, government's not been delivering for people.” Explain the distinction there.

Yeah. You know, I think a lot of the things that we had when I was a young person, are a lot of the things we need to just reinvest back in. A lot of things I think we moved away from, right? 

We're seeing in this moment a lot of things happening with young people. And when I think about a student like me, education and opportunity was my pathway to success, right? My parents are Cardozo High School sweethearts but neither one of them went to college. I'm a first generation college student. And what really set me apart was that I had access to different opportunities, not just in my schools, but I'm an original D.C. SCORES kid. Right? 

I remember D.C. SCORES' original year. I learned about poetry and Black poets, and I had got a chance to play soccer and learn not just soccer skills, but teamwork skills. I remember we won the championship against Marie Reed. It's a feeling as a young person, you never forget, but sports teaches you so much more than just, you know, winning or losing. It teaches you so many skills. As a student, we did higher achievement, which helped with homework and support. I had Upward Bound, which is for students who are first-generation college students. Every summer, I stayed on campus at Trinity University for five days and did education, did group therapy work, took classes, and had a summer youth employment job. I remember summer youth employment, standing in line on H Street and signing up.

I am running on putting people first and I do think, I remember as a city the ways in which government showed up for young people, showed up for Black D.C. residents, created opportunity. When I say "show up," I mean create opportunity. We had robust arts and music and culture within our schools, within our communities, and so a lot of what I'm talking about is, I don't have to make up a lot of new things, actually. We just have to get back to the good things that really were integral parts of helping people in our city grow and giving them the opportunities they need.

It's interesting 'cause you're saying that, in so many ways, a child growing up as you did has a much better situation now. But you're also saying we've gotten away from something where government showed up for people. Aren't those two things at odds with each other?

No, they're not. And I think that's the problem. I think we thought these two things are at odds and we are in a conversation in a city where everyone keeps talking about what government can't do in this moment. But I don't think that's the question of this moment. I don't think that's the question in D.C. or across this country.

People are tired of hearing about what government can't do. People wanna hear about what government can do. And I know that government can do much more because I remember what government did for me and my family.

Has it stopped doing those things that it did for you?

I think it did stop investing in youth. I think it did stop creating spaces for young people. I think it did go away from understanding how important it is to have equity in not only education, but in economic justice and, just so many ways in which, how do we support our seniors? How do we support our young people? And I also think government functioning well, I think we got to a space where we were growing, growing, growing, but we were not making sure we were efficiently doing things, right? I always say this: D.C. is resource-rich. We're coordination-poor.

One of the reasons I'm running is because I think we can coordinate better as a government. I think we could spend and leverage our dollars better as a government. And we know how to do it, right? And we have the talent in our city. 

That's the other thing growing up here, I know how much talent we have in our city. We have some of the best thinkers around policies from education to public safety. Like, D.C. is a city that has all this robust talent. We have all these strong things that we get to leverage, right? Universities and hospitals and sports teams and arts and music and culture, right? So this moment is about, how do we lean into the things that make D.C. great? How do we lean in and leverage those things to grow our economy, to strengthen our community, and to make D.C. a more affordable place for D.C. residents?

So now you're in the middle of a mayor's race. We did a poll this week. It showed you up slightly, but not with majority yet. And we've got ranked choice voting, which is all just to say there's still a race on and I know you're working hard at it. 

I was struck in our poll by the coalitions that both candidates have. The old line in D.C. was that race was the dividing line of everything. In fact, both of you guys have multiracial basis of support according to what we found. I was surprised at the age gap in it. Younger voters are really strongly for you. People who've been in D.C. for less than 10 years are really strongly for you. D.C. natives and older people are really strongly for your opponent. 

How does that make you feel and what do you gotta do to communicate with the folks you do have, and what do you think you're doing that is working with the younger and newer voters?

I think this moment is about: D.C. is gonna go through a change. And I think the question is, what does the change in government look like and what kind of leadership do we want in this moment? 

That's why I always tell people the greater question here is like, who do you trust to show up in this moment and fight for all D.C. residents? And I've been proud of the broad coalition that I've been able to have supporting me from Free D.C. to Karl Racine to organizations like Sierra Club and, you know, just so many people — over 22 union organizations. And so I'm really proud of the coalition we've built.

What is it about your campaign that makes it so attractive to people who've recently moved to Washington?

I think they're experiencing what I've been talking about, the piece of this that is we can make government work better for D.C. residents. I think they are experiencing that. Earlier today I was at Cardozo and Ballou because the HVAC was broken and the students weren't in school. Things like picking up trash, right? 

A lot of my legislation has been around basic government services. CLEAN Collections was about making sure our trash and the trash was getting picked up at buildings, right? And Safe Routes to School was traffic safety around our schools.

So you're saying new people come to town and they're like, "Why isn't my trash being picked up well enough?"

I think they're thinking why are basic government services not working well here? And who is actually showing up to deal with the bigger issues? The smaller issues that make a big difference. And then, who has the vision to look ahead and say, what does the next 50 years of D.C. look like? 

I think many people are excited about leadership that is ready to put people first. And believes that government can do more and do better for residents. Maintaining the status quo is not all we can hope for. We can expect better, we can expect more, and actually government can deliver more.

We found a pretty significant divide by income and education too. Where people who make more money, have more education support you pretty strongly. You're a DSA member. I'm curious how that makes you feel? That the place where your numbers aren't as good is lower down the economic scale. What do you gotta say to change that?

You know, I am shocked. Only because I have been a working families fighter on the council since I got there. Like, everything I do is actually about closing income equality gaps, education gaps. The reason I stepped up to run initially is because I felt like D.C. residents were being left behind.

I remember what it was like as a child and my mom's a US postal worker, right? And I always think, my mom did not have time raising three kids and being a postal worker to come down to the Wilson building and say how things were impacting her. And ultimately, ever since I was a young person, even when I was a youth mayor, I've always said, “Who is advocating for those who don't have the money or the time, or the energy or the luxury of advocating?” They don't have time to be lobbyists for themselves.

So when I joined the council, and the reason I'm running for mayor, was because I felt like those people deserve a voice because oftentimes their voice can get lost because they don't have the luxury of being down at the Wilson building. Since I've been on the council, I have been the voice for working people and working families in the city. And not just the voice, but like the person who's been able to deliver those things, right? The Earned Income Tax Credit was about putting money in the pockets of working people. When the small things — not small, but big to me — but like librarians in all of our schools, I remember government saying in a $20 billion budget, we can't afford having librarians in our schools. And I thought, what are we talking about? What do you mean we can't have librarians in all of our schools? And I remember, I sat there all night looking in the budget, scouring and then finding a space in DCPS's budget that could afford librarians in all our schools. 

I think raising wages for early childhood educators was absolutely rooted in the fact that my aunt was an early childhood educator here in D.C. and was unable to stay at that job. It wasn't paying her enough and she had to take care of her grandkids because her daughter unfortunately passed away. Her husband was on disability. She's an early childhood educator who's amazing — people always talked about, "Your aunt's such a great teacher."

Brenda. My aunt Brenda, who is still amazing to this day. Everybody loves her. Her ability to be able to have a living wage and care for her family and then do the most important work of taking care of the most vulnerable children — she deserves a living wage. And even now, my son, right? He's at a childcare education center and his teachers are amazing, right? And so, paying Black and Brown women the wages they deserve for the quality of education, they're professionals, right? And they should be treated as professionals and paid as professionals. I think it is really just my goal for the rest of this race is to really talk to people about the way I've shown up.

You know, I'm a third-generation Washingtonian. I've also been fighting for seniors really hard, Ward 4 has one of the largest senior populations. I remember when I first got on, seniors were waiting on the waiting list for the Single Family Rehabilitation Program that we were supposed to have up, where they can get their roofs repaired. And I remember, one of the people said, "My mom died while waiting on that list." And at an oversight hearing, for my first oversight hearing, I just went to the agency and was like, "Hey, why are people not getting off this list?" And they were like, "Oh, we just haven't" — they hadn't allocated staff, right? It was just an allocation of staff issue. And I said, "Okay, well do you need to fund these staff or do we need to fund the staff? Or you just haven't hired the staff?" And they said, "Okay, both." And so we made sure they were funded and then that program got itself off. 

I think people don't get to see some of that oversight work that produces the changes you need. As a councilmember, I've been really strong on oversight work. A lot of that is not the cool, you know things that people hear about. But it's the things that actually make a difference in people's lives. It's me going on the ground figuring out what the problem is within the agencies and on the ground with people and figuring out those solutions to problems.

So my goal for the next few weeks is to really communicate well: One, that people should not be afraid of change because the change that I am fighting to bring is one that goes back to a fundamental principle that our seniors believe in, that black residents in this city believe in, that everyone believes in. Which is, we can have a government that put people first and invests in our communities. And I think people should, you know, know about how showing up and being on the ground and listening to people can help solve so many of our city's problems. 

And so, that poll just tells me to keep hitting the ground, to keep talking to everyone, to keep sharing my vision and my plans for how we make the city more affordable, how we make government work better, but also share with people who I am and who I've always been and, and continue to share my story. And I think the combination of all those things will land on June 16th.

I wanna talk for a second about crime. It's an issue that's been grabbing a lot of headlines and driving a lot of worry among residents of the city when they feel unsafe. Right now, one of the issues in that conversation is about teen curfews. They are, according to our poll, pretty overwhelmingly popular. And the majority of your council colleagues voted for them. You have been against them. And I imagine a political advisor would say like, "Why don't you just give it to 'em on this?" Why do you think they're a bad idea?

As a former prosecutor, I understand that we have to use various tools, you know? And I think what happened at Chipotle was absolutely unacceptable, right? And I think when kids are doing these teen takeovers and they're leading to violence or destruction of property, it is absolutely unacceptable. And I think we as a city have to do more to prevent these things from happening. And I also believe that, you know, young people have to be accountable for actions when they take those type of actions. And I voted for curfews in the past, right? As a tool. So I'm not totally against them.

What I have been saying is, as an executive and as a leader you have to make a decision about which tools you implement and when you implement them. And I feel strongly that the implementation right now is very dangerous. And that's because I've been on the ground. Not for a photo-op or press conference. I went down to Navy Yard 'cause I wanted to just see what was happening just, just like an everyday basis. We have federal law enforcement who is — right, like D.C. can't stop them — enforcing juvenile curfew and these agents, right? Trump's troops and the ICE agents and HSI — I even once saw IRS police, which I never even knew there was IRS police.

Maybe the kids are delinquent in their taxes.

I was like, "What you doing here?" That was the first of my time. So my point is this: You gotta choose when you use your tools and if you have different federal police departments and agents in our city, they are not trained in deescalation. We know that. We know that they are not accountable to the council or government. There's no oversight over them. And so the question is, do you use a tool like this when you know that it is going to be enforced by federal law enforcement troops and agents that are not trained in deescalation, who are not accountable to D.C. residents. And we know that there have been shootings that have occurred where D.C. residents have been killed. My biggest fear, right? I'm a mom too, right? My biggest fear is do we hand over our youth to federal troops? And ICE agents? Do we do that?

But I think a lot of people would say, listen, you got a thousand kids. Like you and me have both been teenagers, right? And I did some dumb stuff — you were the youth mayor so maybe you maybe you didn't — but the point is, if you get a thousand people together, some percentage of them are gonna be knuckleheads. Why not empower the authorities to say like, move along?

And we do. We have empowered our law enforcement to do that work and they can do that work. What happened in Chipotle was criminal activity and so I hope that the police department and the attorney general's office are working together — that's what I've asked — for them to work together to figure out who are those responsible people? Because those workers and the families who were there don't deserve to have been in that experience, that was criminal activity, right? So that needs to be handled with real enforcement and real accountability. 

My point is we don't have to give federal law enforcement troops and ICE agents tools to use against our children because we have the tools we need as a city to help protect our children and to get them to better third spaces.

In 2020, you talked about moving funds away from the police. Now you have talked about needing more officers. I think changing minds is a great thing in public life. Not enough people do it. People should do it more, but I think it's important to explain, like, tell me about the evolution of your thinking from then to now.

This has come up, which has been interesting. I think one of the things people don't talk about is we were all together in 2019 and 2020. And we remember what the national conversation was and what the local conversation was, right? We had just dealt with George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor. Here in D.C. we had Karon Hylton-Brown, who was a young person in my ward. And actually we had gone 10 years of seeing on TV Black people particularly being killed on camera and there being no indictments or no accountability. Right? 

I remember — Tamir Rice hits me the strongest because that was a young kid who was on a playground by themselves. They didn't deescalate in any way. He was just shot. And then we saw Dylan Roof, for example, who shot up a church and they deescalated him and took him in a car and got him a burger — and Tamir Rice was killed, right? And so I think in that moment, as I stood up as a regular person — I wasn't on the council then — I was saying the cry of all of our community, which was — Black Lives Matter and we want police to show up in our communities in a way that doesn't mean we end up killed. And then if people end up killed, there's actually some accountability and justice.

Transcript: City Cast DC's Interview with Janeese Lewis George

Politics

DC Politics

Between DOGE devastation, the police takeover, and a severe regional slump, D.C. has had a famously rough time over the past couple years. And those numbers showed up in City Cast’s poll of Washingtonians ahead of the mayoral race — which is full of questions about life and lifestyle that go beyond the candidates who happen to be running for office.

Eleven percent of Washingtonians, including 15 percent of Black residents, said they or someone in their household had lost a job as a result of the Donald Trump administration’s federal cutbacks. A further 34 percent said a close friend or family member had been hit.

Nearly half of residents — including significant majorities of Black D.C.ers — said they are worried about their family being able to pay for housing, utilities, and food.

Residents were also meh on the incumbent mayor, Muriel Bowser, with 49 percent calling her performance excellent or good and 48 percent rating it mediocre or bad.

And they were downright appalled by the President: 86 percent disapprove, 75 percent strongly. In D.C., that’s not just a national political question, given Trump’s ambitions to remake Washington. Some 79 percent of locals are negative about plans like the luxury Hains Point golf course, the triumphal arch, or a new blue paint scheme for the reflecting pool. They also oppose the National Guard deployment by 60 to 36 percent, with just over a quarter of Washingtonians saying that “it feels like an occupation.”

The survey, conducted by the polling firm TrueDot between May 12 and 17, asked 735 District residents about the upcoming city elections as well as their general sense of the city. The poll employed a hybrid sampling design and had a margin of error of 3.7 percent for the full sample.

The most surprising finding in the poll, though, is one that cuts in the exact opposite direction: Some 54 percent of respondents said they were 

 about the city’s future, against 40 percent who aren’t. That’s not runaway happiness, but after the year we’ve had, it’s quite remarkable.

And, beyond that, the vibes are fairly consistent across the District’s various political and demographic divides: White (51%) and Black (56%); rich (54%) and poor (55%); supporters of Kenyan McDuffie (61%) and Janeese Lewis George

 subscribers (55%) and folks who get their news from Instagram and TikTok (57%); people who’ve lost federal jobs (51%) and people who haven’t (55%).

There are, of course, a couple of categories that break the mold. Members of Gen Z (60%) and the Baby Boom generation or older (66%) are happier than Millennials or Gen X (both 49%). And negative feelings lead narrowly among white people with a household income more than $150,000. But even Commanders fans (64%) and Nationals fans (60%) were positive — and neither has had much to cheer about.

So are we just a city of Polyannas? In theory, of course, that positivity could reflect a view that once you’re at rock bottom, there’s nowhere to go but up.

Yet the details of the poll also showed a city with a lot of engaged citizens — and generally favorable feelings about an array of changes to local life.

More than 50 percent of respondents to a City Cast poll said they were hopeful about the city’s future.

Even After Everything, Washingtonians Are Optimistic, City Cast Poll Finds

Poll: Even After Everything, Washingtonians Are Optimistic

Not to be dramatic, but this might just be the longest winter of our lives. We’re on a mission to get out there and remember why we love living in D.C. again. We think this bingo card will help.

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