Photo illustration by Emma Spainhoward with photograph by Getty Images.
Good morning. We’ll likely get some more snow this afternoon, but it shouldn’t stick around long. A high around 37 today. The snow will turn into a wet, wintry mix tonight, with a low near 32. The Wizards host Houston tonight. You can find me on Bluesky, I’m @abeaujon.87 on Signal, and there’s a link to my email address below.
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I can’t stop listening to:
S.G. Goodman, “Snapping Turtle.” Goodman’s album “Planting by the Signs” was one of my favorite records last year, and this song is a good example of why. Goodmanplays 9:30 tonight withJesse Welles. The show is sold out.
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.
Tell *us* where to go: Typically, we’re the ones giving readers travel recommendations. But this year, we’re asking you to share your opinions, too. Nominate your favorite place to stay in our travel survey, and you could win a $100 gift card—and your picks may end up in our May issue.
Here’s some administration news you might have blocked out:
War in Iran: Hezbollah and Israel traded attacks early Monday as President Trump‘s war in the region widened. The Iran-backed Hezbollah said it fired rockets into Israel because it killed Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei Saturday. (NYT) Trump, who was at Mar-a-Lago, passed part of the weekend phoning media outlets and making announcements on his social media platform. He told the Times he expected the war to last three or four weeks and “offered several seemingly contradictory visions of how power might be transferred to a new government.” (NYT) He told the Atlantic he’d agreed to talks with the Iranians—though Iran said it wouldn’t negotiate. (Atlantic) He told the Daily Mail that the three US servicemembers killed in Kuwait Sunday were “great people.” (Daily Mail) In a video, he braced the US “for a sustained, costly military campaign, a sign America has entered an open-ended war with a rising human cost.” (Axios)
The fallout: Oil prices shot up overnight after three oil tankers got hit near the Strait of Hormuz. (BBC News) The war “risks ending a monthslong period of low prices at the pump and hurting Republicans’ prospects in the midterm elections.” (WSJ) Congress (remember them?) will hold apparently symbolic votes about war powers this week. (Politico) Pentagon officials told Congress there were no signs Iran was about to attack the US. (Reuters) Only one in four Americans polled over the weekend expressed support for the war. (Reuters) Amid the war, lawmakers say the fact that the Department of Homeland Security is still shut down barely registers with most of their constituents. (Washington Post)
Epstein, Epstein, Epstein: Former President Clinton told a GOP-led House panel Friday he “saw nothing, and I did nothing wrong” when socializing with the deceased, disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. (Washington Post) Democrats on the committee said they had the votes to subpoena Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to discuss his relationship with Epstein. (Politico) Epstein maintained a “small stable of loyal medical specialists,” including Eva Dubin, the head of Mt. Sinai’s breast cancer center. (NYT) The Department of Justice declined to pursue charges against powerful men who knew Epstein and whom some of Epstein’s victims said assaulted them. (WSJ) New Mexico’s probe into Epstein’s Zorro Ranch there may prove fruitless: The ranch has a new owner, who’s running for office in Texas, and years have passed. (NYT)
Administration perambulation: A dramatic split between the Department of Defense and the AI company Anthropic occurred because Anthropic “wanted guardrails to stop its A.I. from being used for the mass surveillance of Americans or deployed in autonomous weapons with no humans involved” and DOD…didn’t. OpenAI, apparently unconcerned about those issues, swooped in instead to strike a deal. (NYT) Anthropic’s AI thing or whatever Claude has gained popularity since the split as some users have shunned Open AI’s ChatGPT. (Axios) Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth cut ties with more than a dozen universities and think tanks, citing “wicked ideologies.” (NYT) Trump said he’d consider nominating US Senator Ted Cruz of Texas to the US Supreme Court, “joking that he would easily win confirmation from Democrats and Republicans in Congress alike because they wanted to get him out of the Senate.” (Reuters) Health Secretary RFK Jr. suggested that Americans reeling from high beef prices should eat liver or “cheap cuts of meat” instead. (The Hill) Trump reportedly told FBI Director Kash Patel he was not thrilled with his trip to the Winter Olympics. (NBC News) The Department of Education hung banners on its DC HQ saluting Booker T. Washington, Catharine Beecher—and Charlie Kirk. (The Hill)
The Best Thing I Ate Last Week, by Ann Limpert:
Katsumi, Washington, DC
Photograph by Scott Suchman.
I am still—even after three years—mourning the loss of Logan Circle Spanish restaurant Estadio. It was replaced by the French/Japanese Bar Japonais, which recently ditched the Gallic influences and rebranded itself as Katsumi. This latest iteration has a lot going for it—chiefly the artful sushi from Nakazawa alum Masaaki “Uchi” Uchino. His nigiri is special (that rice!), but I especially loved creative maki like a crunchy roll-up of black porgy, osetra caviar, and onion. Inspo: sour cream and onion potato chips. (1520 14th St., NW.)
Recently on Washingtonian dot com:
• Vince Vaughn committed to the bit and crashed this Alexandria couple’s wedding.
• This wedding was designed to reflect what the couple cherishes: brunch, family, day parties—and football.
Local news links:
• Former President Biden got ensnared in fog-related delays at National Airport on Friday. He was flying commercial to South Carolina. (AP)
• A “sliver” of the National Mall is likely to be included in GSA’s planned sale of the Liberty Loan building on 14th Street, Southwest. (WBJ)
• DC’s tuition-assistance grants will go up. (NBC4 Washington)
• Arlington’s Cherrydale Library could close amid budget concerns. (WUSA9)
• The man accused of fatally stabbing Stephanie Minter at a Fairfax bus stop has a long history of violence, police say. (NBC4 Washington)
• Three people took what appears to be a Fairfax County Fire and Rescue ATV out of a storage building, drove it around on the snow, and damaged it before putting it back, police say. (DC News Now)
• Former Washington Post columnist Colman McCarthy died Friday. He was 87. (Washington Post)
• How did Alexandria’s Episcopal High School become home base for Croatia during this summer’s planned World Cup in North America? It started when a school official looking for tickets noticed that FIFA was looking for host sites. (WTOP)
• Christopher Williams, an astronaut aboard the International Space Station, is from Potomac, went to Montgomery Blair High School, and volunteered as an EMT for the Rockville Volunteer Fire Department. (WTOP)
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Senior editor
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.