Did you all realize that the National Mall is slightly crooked compared to the rest of D.C.'s L'Enfant street grid? The McMillan Commission did that!

Careful planning is Washington’s whole thing: symbolic sightlines; monuments that speak to one another; columns, rooflines and axes aligned just so. The whole city is supposed to be a work of civic art. Trump’s projects test this 235-year-old idea: www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Tomorrow the Commission of Fine Arts will take another look at Trump's proposed arch, including renderings of it viewed from around the area. Here is its winged statue, peeping over the trees from the National Mall.

More detailed renderings now available for Trump's proposed arch: www.cfa.gov/system/files...

The East Wing demolition is now making it difficult for the government to argue in the Arch lawsuit that no injunction is needed because construction isn't imminent. Judge Chutkan just doesn’t believe it, when the president himself has said he wants the arch by July 4th.

Catching up on this thorough and thoughtful @philipkennicott.bsky.social piece on Trump's designs on the capital, until now a city of simple symmetry and unfussy architecture: www.washingtonpost.com/style/2026/0...

The National Capital Planning Commission is scheduled to vote today to approve the president's ballroom. As of March, this is where the project stood. By this afternoon, it will jump to the "final" step. (NCPC is no longer showing this tracker on their website tho.)

NCPC has posted an addendum to the ballroom plans incorporating the removed stairs as the president showed Sunday night. No new renderings, detailed plans, dimensions, landscape. Just the images Trump showed. www.ncpc.gov/files/projec...

NCPC says they're still voting on the ballroom on Thursday, despite this ruling. Unclear tho, what plans they're voting on -- the ones they saw earlier this month, or the changed ones the president revealed on Air Force One on Sunday.

Federal judge rules construction must stop on the president's ballroom until Congress authorizes it: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

We’re reading @birdyword.bsky.social fascinating “The Land Trap” for the next Reading The City book club at Solid State in DC, on April 1. If you’re one of those people who is *always* trying to talk about Henry George, this month's book is for you!

Good @heatherknightsf.bsky.social and Soumya Karlamangla story about the dire situation for BART in SF: www.nytimes.com/2026/03/10/u...

Great @jonathanmahler.bsky.social story on the new politics of housing in the Mamdani era: www.nytimes.com/2026/03/06/m...

The Upshot is hiring a data graphics/multimedia editor. Come work with us and make weird things that help people understand the world! job-boards.greenhouse.io/thenewyorkti...

This 3D model by the NYT of the proposed East Wing ballroom really makes clear how out of scale it is with the rest of the complex...

We've been tracking nearly 200 lawsuits against the Trump administration over its attempts to leverage federal funding to impose the president's agenda. The most startling pattern: The administration seems entirely undeterred when it loses in court. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

A federal judge finally ruled today that the Trump administration acted illegally in trying to shut down New York's congestion pricing program, via @stefanoschen.bsky.social + Winnie Hu www.nytimes.com/2026/03/03/n...

Great @natecohn.bsky.social piece on what "affordability" really means to people in this moment, drawing on our most recent polling: www.nytimes.com/2026/01/28/u...

"The second Trump coalition has unraveled." via @natecohn.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2026/01/22/u...

Many months later, the Social Security Administration acknowledged in court that DOGE employees at the agency shared sensitive data in violation of security policies last spring, just as critics and privacy advocates feared at the time: www.nytimes.com/2026/01/20/u...

Latest NYT analysis of video footage from the Renee Good shooting capture Ross firing the 2nd and 3rd shots at her after his body is visibly clear of the path of her vehicle. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/15/v...

Long before construction jobs became dominated by immigrant workers, the appeal of those jobs for American workers began to collapse. Only *then* did immigrants start to fill them. From a *great* story by @rondakaysen.bsky.social + Rob Gebeloff: www.nytimes.com/2026/01/14/u...

“He’s tended to turn the other cheek, and he’s reached a moment where he can’t.” www.nytimes.com/2026/01/12/b...

A long-awaited update of federal employment data shows crippling staff reductions in some federal agencies and offices: www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

The Times' Visual Investigations team is the best at trying to find clarity when clarity is hard to come by. Their view on the Minneapolis shooting yesterday: www.nytimes.com/video/us/100...

My favorite evidence that congestion pricing in New York has reshaped peoples’ behavior: we can see a surge of people trying to enter the zone before the price kicks up at 5 a.m., and after it decreases at 9 p.m.

Love these little @aliciaparlap.bsky.social graphics that illustrate the absurdist ways DOGE claimed it saved money, at the end of a year of trying to chase their accounting. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/23/u...

Remarkably few of the immigrants arrested in big-city ICE operations have had violent criminal records, via Albert Sun: www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

May need a taller chart soon.

A federal judge says the government has exceeded its authority in deploying the DC National Guard in the District to deter crime -- and by calling in the guard from states around the country to participate: ecf.dcd.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show...

Republicans worried that steep Medicaid cuts in their big tax bill would shutter rural hospitals. To pass it, they included a $50B rural health care fund. But a very different group of hospitals will bear the brunt of the law: large urban safety-net hospitals. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/18/u...

This Kirsten Soltis Anderson phrase will stick with me: swapping "McDonald’s Drive-Thru Guy for Golden Ballroom Guy" www.nytimes.com/2025/11/07/o...

Smart Eliza Shapiro story about the six-figure economic precarity in New York that has helped fuel Mamdani's rise: www.nytimes.com/2025/11/07/n...

There are now cement trucks entering the White House construction site, which is not what you'd expect for a project that hasn't been reviewed by anyone yet. The White House has previously said no NCPC approvals are needed yet because they're just doing demo, not construction.

Good morning. We crunched 4.6GB of trade data to find out how much of U.S. imports are getting tariffed (quite a bit) www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Zohran Mamdani's focus on public transportation - and on affordability in general - paid off in a big way. Lots of fascinating insights in this map (free link) www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

NJ election is the first real measure of Latino support since last year. A test of whether the Trump discontent in polls is re-shaping behavior heading into '26: will Sherrill come in closer to '21 or '24 in Hispanic bellwethers? Here are cities to watch. Note '24 vs. prior.

A federal judge ruled today that the U.S. DOT violated the constitution by trying to coerce states to cooperate with ICE if they want federal transportation dollars.

DOJ lawyers have told two federal judges the government will make partial SNAP payments this month. Then Trump said today the government won't pay anything until the shutdown ends: www.nytimes.com/2025/11/04/u...

The One Big Beautiful Bill ratchets up work requirements for Medicaid. In the process it will force states to pay millions more to Equifax to verify that residents qualify for the program. Wild story by @sangerkatz.bsky.social @asmaaelk.bsky.social and Sarah Kliff www.nytimes.com/2025/11/03/h...

Unlike other projects the Trump administration has canceled during the shutdown to punish Democratic-leaning places, disruption to SNAP will touch every corner of the country, including many communities that support the president. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/31/u...

The Trump Administration has rearranged funds to pay for the parts of government it values most during the shutdown. In court, it is now saying it won't do that for food assistance. via @tonyromm.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2025/10/30/u...

A US Drug Enforcement Administration agent said the DEA made “high-level arrests” of 171 Sinaloa Cartel members across New England in August. A Globe investigation found that many of the DEA’s targets were addicts, low-level dealers, shoplifters, and homeless people.

“Kids dressed in Halloween costumes walking to a parade do not pose an immediate threat to the safety of a law enforcement officer. They just don’t. And you can’t use riot control weapons against them.” www.nytimes.com/2025/10/28/u...

Can fast buses in New York actually be free? @stefanoschen.bsky.social + Larry Buchanan and I take a close look at an idea that has helped propel Zohran Mamdani's campaign for mayor. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Picture of the East Wing demolition of the White House taken on my flight out of DCA.

Counterpoint: One of the more endearing things about the White House is that it's small. You walk up to it, and it's just... a startlingly modest building in scale... where a real-life family actually lives. You can get close to them, peer into their back yard, see them as human.

One of the potential upsides of autonomous cars is that they could drive *better* and more safely than humans do. What's the point of programming them to have human-like sloppiness, making rolling stops and disobeying traffic laws? www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

Remarkable photo via @washingtonpost.com of the White House undergoing demolition, after the president vowed that his new ballroom would leave the existing building untouched. www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

Portland leaders are trying to push back against ICE by targeting its... conditional use permit. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/20/u...