DCist

DC Health Director LaQuandra Nesbitt, who led the city’s response to the pandemic for the past two years, will be leaving her post at the end of July. Nesbitt will be moving onto “endeavors” outside of D.C. government, according to a statement from D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s office on Wednesday afternoon announcing the departure.

Early voting begins tomorrow in Maryland. Here’s what you need to know about casting your ballot. Maryland’s primary election is finally upon us, after months of legal back-and-forth and partisan fighting over newly drawn congressional maps. Local residents have a bevy of choices to make — from selecting...

Tuesday kicked off an already predicted stormy week with a tornado in Prince George’s and Anne Arundel Counties. Between 5:15 p.m. and 6:30 p.m., the National Weather Service tweeted that a supercell, also known as a rotating tornado, was present. The supercell tornado touched down at 5:33 p.m. in...

Rhiannon Giddens directs the Silkroad Ensemble for its July 24 performance at Wolf Trap. The city’s jazz clubs and concert venues may be preparing for the mid-to late-summer slowdown, but it’s still pretty busy, especially as musicians continue to make up for lost pandemic time with tours and other shows. There’s some great music to catch this month on the region’s jazz calendar.

Animal keepers say the tiny Xena is small but fearless. There’s some red panda activity in Virginia, and it’s not a missing one this time. There are three new red pandas at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute (SCBI) in Front Royal. Scarlet, Xena, and Taizong, who arrived in the past few months from from zoos in Michigan and Indiana, are settling in at the 3,200-acre research facility to breed and allow conservationists to study their health.

D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson is trying to reform a short-term housing subsidy program that people experiencing homelessness and their advocates have long criticized for failing to provide participants enough support to secure stable housing. Mendelson and seven of his colleagues introduced legislation last week that would make the temporary...

Before last month’s Moechella gathering at 14th and U Street Northwest, 32-year-old Marcellus Queen had a feeling something bad might happen. “My friends asked me, ‘Oh, you want to go down to Moechella?’ I said, ‘I’m not going down. It’s too [many] groups of people out there,’” Queen told DCist/WAMU. “You know everybody gonna have a gun on them, because everybody’s scared of everybody else.”

George Evans faces off against club member Michael Weaver, AKA “Boy Wonder.”. A few yards down from the Popeyes on Columbia Road in Northwest D.C., nuzzled next to the Metro PCS and beneath a strip of townhomes, a small boom box sits on the sidewalk, blaring a selection of old and new Top 40 music (think: “That’s The Way I Like It”) a few nights a week.

Local abortion funds have seen an influx of donations to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in late June. The D.C. Abortion Fund has received $313,000, compared to $892,376 for all of 2020. The organization noted that 80% of these contributions and grants are going to abortion services. “To date, we have never turned away a single person who was eligible for DCAF funding,” D.C. Abortion Fund states on their website. The majority of the fund’s donations come from individuals, but many local businesses have held fundraisers to help support the organization, including establishments like Showtime, Electric Cool-Aid, Donut Run, and Ivy and Coney to name a few.

On Tuesday, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan directed state police to stop enforcing a state gun law that sets restrictions around concealed-carry handgun permits. The decision to suspend the law comes after a Supreme Court ruling last month that found a similar New York state law restricting the right to carry a handgun outside the home to be unconstitutional. Writing for the conservative majority opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas argued the law violates the Fourteenth Amendment because it prevents “law-abiding citizens” from exercising their Second Amendment right to carry guns in public for self defense.

This story was produced by Street Sense Media. At 18, John Alley left Puerto Rico with a dog, an accordion and the clothes on his back, looking for a fresh start from the island he had called home. Alley first went to New York City, but without connections and nowhere to stay when he arrived, he experienced homelessness there for many years. Twenty years later, Alley, now a Street Sense Media vendor, is still housing insecure, and has been vocal about the discrimination he experienced while unhoused in D.C.

MUSICAL PREMIERE: Head to the regional premiere of the SIX: THE MUSICAL tour, which began this week at the National Theatre and runs through early September. The award-winning show with an all-women cast and band allows the six wives of Henry VIII to tell their story as a 21st century girl-power remix. (The National Theatre; 7:30 p.m.; $60)

Each month DCist will review a few theater performances around the region and give you our critics’ verdict: whether you should see them, skip them, or at least think about it. Want to know what else is playing? Check out our monthly theater preview. In His Hands. Review by...

More than a dozen climate activists were arrested after they blocked Fourth of July traffic on the Capital Beltway’s inner loop for more than 90 minutes Monday. The protest group Declare Emergency claimed responsibility and said they acted to demand action on climate change. Around 12:30 p.m. Monday, the...

Ward 5 Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie has filed paperwork to enter another local D.C. election: this time, an At-Large D.C. Council seat. The news, first reported by longtime D.C. journalist and political analyst Tom Sherwood, comes two months after McDuffie was forced to suspend his campaign for Attorney General after one of his opponents successfully challenged his eligibility for the office.

Welcome back to Overheard in D.C., DCist’s weekly column of funny, strange, and poignant things that our readers and staff overhear and send in. We’ve been doing it since 2006. Check out the archives here. We can’t have Overheard in D.C. without your submissions! Email your Overheards to...

After more than two years of operation, D.C. is dismantling its coronavirus contact tracing program — a network of more than 100 employees tasked with tracking the spread of the virus via interviews with infected and exposed residents. The Washington Post first reported the news. According to a DC...

Several Hispanic families at the Bedford Station and Victoria Station Apartments spent more than 22 hours out on the street due to a power outage. This story was produced by El Tiempo Latino. Lo puedes leer en español aquí. Summer is never welcome in the home of Digna...

The summer slowdown has started for D.C.’s theaters, but there’s still the chance this month to catch several musicals, a bit of Shakespeare, and of course … Capital Fringe! Here are the highlights in our monthly theater preview. BEHEADINGS WITH A BEAT: Henry VIII’s long-suffering paramours get...

The state budgets are passed, the legislation has been signed, and it’s the eve of the new fiscal year in D.C., Virginia and Maryland. And as of tomorrow, there will be some new laws on the books. Here’s a look at some of the legislation going into effect starting...