Opinion

Last month we asked whether DC will be able to meet the financial challenges the Coronavirus scourge will cost the District, specifically major loss of tax revenues.

My friend Amy Phillips is a public defender in Washington. She visited the D.C. jail last week, just before most legal visits were curtailed because of fears about covid-19. I asked her to describe what she saw, as well as her fears and…

As the novel coronavirus pandemic grew, those of us in the criminal justice system recognized that the virus, which spreads easily and thrives where there are large concentrations of people in confined spaces, could be catastrophic for the…

On the postcard, a man and woman stand in front of Ben’s Chili Bowl. She wears a white mask. He sports a baseball cap and an exposed beard.

In his Lenten meditation this week, the Rev. Canon Leonard L. Hamlin Sr. of the Washington National Cathedral asked, “When we are able to reach a point of looking back, will anything be different because of what we have been through?” He…

What a surreal spring it has been.

I’ve been trying to read more during this whole thing. I mean, what else do we have to do, right? So, I’ve picked up Erik Larson’s new book on World War II, England, and the Blitz, The Splendid and the Vile. In his usual quick and punchy…

He wasn’t a man of the cloth, or the District’s highest elected official, but depending on to whom you talked and what you talked about, Benjamin E. Thomas Sr. was the “Reverend” or the “Mayor” — a person held in high regard for his…

Against the backdrop of a pandemic, pictures and videos of crowds at DC’s Maine Avenue Fish Market, commonly known as the Wharf, circulated over the weekend. On the surface, it was painfully obvious that the six feet social distancing…

If you could have peeked into a building on Gallaudet University’s campus on a recent day, you would have seen a 6-foot-3 man crawling on the floor.

It is no secret that jails are particularly vulnerable to the spread of the novel coronavirus. Given the peril that people in jail face, public health experts have called for the reduction of jail populations across the country. In a…

THE D.C. Board of Elections was the butt of national jokes in 2014 when it printed the District flag upside down on its voter guide for the general election. This year, it was embarrassed when it sent mailers to thousands of voters that…

The novel coronavirus and the resulting quarantine have revealed just how much deference we give to the automobile (or to be precise, parked automobiles) in Washington, D.C., to the detriment of nearly every single form of transportation —…

The world is currently facing unprecedented challenges, and the arts can provide a measure of relief. Now that we are unable to interface with our communities physically, we in the field need to be thoughtful about how we move the wellness…

Most people in the District are familiar with the case of Relisha Rudd. In February 2014, the 8-year-old girl was living with her mother at D.C. General, a hospital turned family homeless shelter, when she was abducted. She is believed to…

Shelter in place? Stay at home? Not for these guys, who have no home and want nothing to do with a D.C. shelter.

MARYLAND GOV. Larry Hogan (R) warned this week that the Washington area could soon be as hard-hit as New York City by the coronavirus pandemic. “We’ve doubled over the past just two days, and we look a lot like where New York was just a…

A closer look at the havoc that the pandemic is causing for retail and retail workers

When the District of Columbia’s city councilors handed 36-year-old Mayor Adrian Fenty control of the city’s public schools in 2007, they were hoping for salvation. Or maybe just absolution.

WHEN D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D) saw the $2 trillion coronavirus relief bill drafted by the Senate ahead of Thursday’s vote, she assumed it was an oversight that D.C. was classified as a territory and not a state. The District,…