Good morning. Partly sunny today with a high around 88. A chance of showers and storms tonight, with a low near 72. The Nats host the Cubs again this evening.
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I can’t stop listening to:
Lindsey Buckingham, “Time Bomb Town.” A zesty chestnut from the “Back to the Future” soundtrack. AFI Silver shows the 1985 classic tonight.
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: The US fired on a ship in the Gulf of Oman that US Central Command said was trying to evade an American blockade of Iranian ports. President Trump insisted the months-long war was “going fine.” (AP) Iran-backed Houthi rebels fired on a ship in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, killing six people. (Reuters) Iran’s ascendant hard-line leaders have embraced an “economic strategy built around endurance rather than recovery,” which could mean Trump has made a “risky assumption that Iran will crack before Washington does.” (WSJ) Iran has adjusted how it attacks the US and its allies in the region, “learning how to evade U.S. air defenses” as the US’s stock of precision munitions has shriveled. (NYT)
The catering truck caper: Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, top Trump aide Stephen Miller, and White House communications director Steven Cheung flew on the Air Force One plane used as a decoy after US authorities detected a credible threat on Trump’s life from Iran. Many of the people on that plane—including the White House press pool traveling with Trump—flew without knowing the peril they faced. Trump yesterday claimed that the alternate plane he took was in greater danger, “an assertion at odds with the point of switching planes in the first place.” (NYT) US Presidents have deployed misdirection before, but never quite like this. (AP) Susan Page described a ruse President Clinton employed in 2000—though it was one to which the White House made a journalist privy. (Washington Post) The White House Correspondents’ Association, which invited Trump to headline a recent dinner, asked the White House to “work with us on a protocol for handling extraordinary security circumstances in the future.” (CNN) Two US officials said the Iranians knew where Trump was staying in Turkey and that the US had learned there was a threat a surface-to-air missile could be fired at his plane. (NYT)
A different pool: The White House has pressed the Department of Justice to find some way to charge Olympic canoeist David Hearn after it dropped a case against him. Trump believes, despite copious evidence to the contrary, that vandalism, not the botched rush job he ordered on the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, was the reason the work failed. (WSJ) Democrats in the US House of Representatives have requested records regarding Hearn’s case. (Washington Post) Related: DOJ asserted executive privilege over Trump’s conversations with outside advisers, a hedge against a possible Democratic-led House next year. (Axios)
Administration perambulation: ICE intends to equip its officers with “gloves that can deliver painful electric shocks.” (AP) John Phillips, a US citizen from Georgia who was on his way to Vegas, says “three ICE agents in tactical gear stopped him in the jet bridge, pinned him to the wall and put him in handcuffs.” They were apparently looking for an Englishman with the same name. (WSB-TV) The administration ordered Medicaid to stop paying for gender-affirming care, prompting a likely court fight. (NYT) OMB lifted a ban on executive branch employees using TikTok. (Politico) Democrats in Congress called a $25,000 gold ring that representatives of Belgium’s diamond industry gave Trump before he handed them an exemption to his tariffs a “cartoonish bribe” and asked for communication records. (MS Now)
Recently on Washingtonian dot com:
• National Guard troops have deployed in DC for a year now. What, if anything, has their presence accomplished?
• Chef Michael Mina has closed Acqua Bistecca, his glam steakhouse at City Ridge that received a zero-star review from the Washington Post.
• Our guide to the best places to eat, shop, and have fun in Union Market.
• These spa amenities will turn your home into an oasis.
Local news links:
I’m just Ken(Cen): The Kennedy Center has spun up plans to keep the National Symphony Orchestra performing during a planned, and judicially derailed, two-year closure for renovations. (Axios D.C.) A DC judge ordered the Trump-run arts complex to pay $25,000 in court fees to Chuck Redd, the musician it unsuccessfully sued after he pulled out of a planned Christmas concert when the board slapped Trump’s name on the building. (NBC News) The center’s board will meet tomorrow to decide how to proceed with renovations. (Washington Post)
• An ICE agent drew a gun on a Northern Virginia woman who yelled at federal immigration officers in a parking lot on Monday. The officers claimed, as ICE officers have done repeatedly during Trump’s immigration crackdown, that she was threatening him with her car. (NBC4 Washington)
• East Potomac Park is sinking and floods regularly—which may complicate Trump’s plans to build a new golf course there. (Mother Jones)
• A federal judge in Maryland allowed construction on a federal immigration facility in Howard County to proceed as a lawsuit filed by its developer against the county, which revoked permits for the project, continues. (Maryland Matters)
• Montgomery County police say a man has been arrested and charged with the stabbing in July of a stranger at a Silver Spring restaurant named the Angry Jerk. (BethesdaToday)
• Police in Prince William County say a man sneaked into a hotel’s bathroom and attempted to surreptitiously record a woman using it. (DC News Now)
• Capital One Arena will remain named for the financial giant for the next two decades, and its management released renderings of how the venue will look after a three-year-long renovation wraps up next year. (Axios D.C.)
• Thomas Boswell is back, and he has thoughts about the Nationals. (NOTUS)
• Diplo will headline Glow’s block party on Pennsylvania Avenue on October 3. (NBC4 Washington)
• A man whose goats were seized in Arlington is camped near the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge. Authorities say they haven’t detected any other goats with him. (ARLnow)
Maryland rabies update: Authorities in College Park captured a possibly rabid raccoon yesterday. (WUSA9)
Wednesday’s event picks:
• The Arlington County Fair gets going at the Thomas Jefferson Community Center.
• It’s the finale of Strathmore’s Ukefest.
See more picks from Briana Thomas, who writes our Things to Do newsletter.
Andrew Beaujon joined Washingtonian in late 2014. He was previously with the Poynter Institute, TBD.com, and Washington City Paper. He lives in Del Ray.
