Evictions and Tax Breaks. D.C. Councilmember Zachary Parker kicked off a fascinating debate Monday by proposing to forgive taxes on a local apartment building called The Gale. The building’s owners, he explained, face “challenges receiving rent from tenants.” In other words, they can’t afford taxes or repairs because residents aren’t paying rents. Eager to protect a big affordable-housing development, Parker tried to help out. But inevitably, this desire ran smack into D.C.’s angry political divide over protecting tenants from evictions, which developers claim makes it hard to build in D.C. “I’m just against any more of these bailouts until the council comes up with a plan to let buildings just collect the rent they’re due,” Jordan Weissman of the centrist Progressive Policy Institute posted.

Unions vs. Kencen. The stagehands’ union is taking the Kennedy Center to court over layoffs, the Washington Post reports. They claim management did not consult the union ahead of its planned two-year closure. Look for this issue to be a big storyline: Unions represent the vast majority of workers at the center, where finances have tanked under Trump. Unions that the new leadership wants cheaper non-union labor when it reopens.

Police Scandal Latest. Police Chief Jeffery Carroll said yesterday that all 13 terminated senior officers were caught up in the crime-data scandal, my colleague Emma Uber reported. Meanwhile, the D.C. Police Union crowed about the firings. The union spent months accusing higher-ups of wanting to dishonestly make D.C. look safer than it is. The Trump-friendly posture of union leader Gregg Pemberton means its statements are going to carry extra weight on the Hill and in the administration, where separate investigations are proceeding.

As Goes Ward 3… WAMU’s Alex Koma files an election dispatch from D.C.’s wealthiest, whitest ward. The conventional wisdom is that Ward 3 will support Kenyan McDuffie as an heir to fellow moderates Muriel Bowser and Anthony Williams. But there’s reason for Janeese Lewis George to hope, starting with a hunger for a more confrontational stance towards Donald Trump. It’s an interesting dispatch since, to judge from both campaigns’ rhetoric, strategists are more focused on up-for-grabs middle-class Black voters on the east side of town.

Finally: In case you’d forgotten about the Mall project that was consuming D.C.’s energy before the East Potomac Park golf course snagged our attention…. Trump posted an AI image of himself, J.D. Vance, Marco Rubio, and Doug Burgum floating shirtless in a very blue National Mall reflecting pool alongside what appears to be a smiling, bikini-clad Melania Trump. Before you ask: Yes, it’s illegal to swim there.

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Welcome to City Cast’s occasional series introducing Washington to the namesakes behind all those alphabetized streets. Today’s request comes from newsletter reader Kumar C., who lives on Warder Street NW and wants to know who it’s named for.

Warder Street, a surprise north-south thoroughfare in the Park View neighborhood, is named for a guy whose story a lot of contemporary D.C.ers might recognize. Benjamin H. Warder (1824-1894) made a bunch of money in the private sector, then moved to D.C. and dabbled in real estate.

In those days, though, that meant something different than just upgrading an old rowhouse. With the city expanding from its old core, Warder bought a bunch of land and subdivided it to create the neighborhood where Kumar still lives. And he found a way to name one of the neighborhood streets after himself.

Hardcore Warder fans will note that his name also adorns a grand old building in Penn Quarter (it has a Shake Shack) as well as Meridian Hill’s Warder Mansion apartments. The mansion actually began life as Warder’s own home on K Street, but was disassembled and moved as downtown became an office district.

Curious about your street’s namesake? Drop us a line at dc@citycast.fm