Today in D.C.: Headlines to start your Monday in D.C., Maryland and Virginia
Good Monday #GoodMonday
Good morning — it’s Monday. Grab your coffee or tea. Forget what happened this year? Here’s a run-down.
Today’s weather: Today, highs should top 50 degrees, before settling back down closer to 40 Tuesday and 45 Wednesday. But as we lean in to 2021, temperatures shoot back up, returning to the 50s on New Year’s Eve and into the 60s on New Year’s Day.
8:37 AM: Dreading or dreaming of a return to the office in 2021
Before the pandemic, Jessica Hullman did not like to work from home.
A computer science professor at Northwestern University, just outside Chicago, Hullman, 40, drew energy from her students, she said. But away from campus, it dawned on her that the same students who fueled her also drained her focus with their frequent interruptions. In her mostly male department, she was often too aware of what she was wearing and how she appeared. Now she views Zoom faculty meetings as a kind of gender equalizer.
“It’s almost like everybody takes up the same amount of space,” she said. “What I realize is that I feel much happier working from home.”
Hullman is in no rush to return to the office.
The pandemic has devastated downtown D.C. Some fear the damage is permanent.
Not so for 25-year-old Allie Micka. Micka moved from Boston to D.C. to start a new job as a solutions engineer at a tech firm — one she admired for its highly social culture. Micka imagined going out for after-work drinks and making lifelong friends. And the office was just as she had imagined — for exactly 10 days, before the coronavirus pandemic descended. Her now-virtual contact with her co-workers feels much too transactional. “As friendly as everyone is, it’s hard to just say ‘hi’ to get to know someone when you have no purpose for reaching out,” Micka said.
She can’t wait to be back in the office again.
The country is deep in the bleakest period of the pandemic, with thousands of Americans dying each day. That reality is not lost on affluent remote workers, who are quick to express gratitude for their own good fortune. They feel guilty complaining about Zoom fatigue and social isolation when they are working in relative safety and comfort.
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By: Sydney Trent
8:17 AM: Virginia’s longest-serving sheriff dies at his Hampton home, officials said
Hampton Sheriff B.J. Roberts, the longest-serving sheriff in Virginia, died peacefully Saturday at his home, according to the city sheriff’s office, which did not provide a cause of death.
Roberts, 70, blazed a trail for Black law enforcement officers in the state after he became Hampton’s first African American sheriff in 1992.
He was elected president of the National Sheriffs’ Association in 2010, becoming the first and only African American to lead the 70-year-old organization, according to the Hampton Sheriff’s Office.
During the first of his six terms in Hampton, Roberts helped improve the city’s overcrowded jail, focusing on preparing inmates to reintegrate into the community, according to news reports.
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By: Antonio Olivo
8:06 AM: Perspective: Dwayne Haskins wasted his latest shot at redemption
The Washington Football Team was done with Dwayne Haskins, and he had to know it. More than 10 minutes remained in a game that could have been his reclamation, and yet the coaches had told him he was no longer playing. He dropped onto the bench and shook his head.
Whatever final chances he had as Washington’s quarterback were blown Sunday with two intercepted passes, a lost fumble and several wayward throws in what would become a 20-13 loss to the Carolina Panthers at FedEx Field. His passer rating was 36.9. There was nothing more for Washington Coach Ron Rivera to see. The player drafted 15th overall last year to be the future of this franchise was finished in the next-to-last game of his second NFL season, pulled for Taylor Heinicke, an undrafted journeyman who has been with the team for less than three weeks.
“We didn’t get anything going,” Rivera said later in his postgame virtual news conference.
It was a phrase that could have described all of Haskins’s time with Washington: the bobbled opportunities, the odd moments that lacked self-awareness and the inexplicable decisions such as the one that came last week when he was photographed partying maskless in a room filled with people — an egregious violation of the NFL’s coronavirus protocols.
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By: Les Carpenter
7:41 AM: For D.C. protests, Proud Boys settle in at city’s oldest hotel and its bar
Located just five blocks from the White House, the Hotel Harrington is the city’s oldest continuously operating hotel and has a long-standing reputation as one of the most affordable hotels in the heart of the District. But over the past few months, the Harrington has been gaining a new reputation: Proud Boys hangout.
The militant right-wing organization that vigorously supports President Trump, which has clashed in violent street battles with members of anti-fascist groups and others who oppose Trump, has made the Harrington its unofficial headquarters when members come to the District. Several hundred Proud Boys recently stayed at the hotel while in town for the Dec. 12 protest of Joe Biden’s election as president.
More protests by pro-Trump groups are planned in downtown Washington on Jan. 6.
Wearing their signature black and gold colors, large numbers of the group spent much of the afternoon of Dec. 12 drinking openly and chanting on the street in front of the hotel at 11th and E streets NW. They ranged in age from late teenagers to 50- and 60-year-olds, though most appeared to be in their 30s and 40s. Others filled the outdoor patio at Harry’s, the hotel bar, where they had gathered on previous protest weekends and on the Fourth of July. Harry’s closed midafternoon, but the patio and street in front of it remained crowded throughout the night.
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By: Joe Heim and Marissa J. Lang
7:30 AM: As hospitals swell, nursing students are tapped to join the front lines for the second time
The past eight months within the University of Maryland Medical System have been challenging, said Stuart Barnett, a nursing assistant and recent Towson University graduate. The demand on hospital staffers hasn’t waned since the pandemic started.
“Nurses, they’re still dealing with the same stuff, if not worse,” Barnett said. “There is somewhat of a stressful atmosphere.”
Before he finished nursing school, the 32-year-old was picking up hospital shifts between classes and working at a coronavirus testing center and field clinic in Baltimore. He had been eager to finish his program so he could devote more time at the facility where “there definitely is a need for nurses,” he said.
People need coronavirus tests. And some infected patients need to be monitored in case their condition worsens. But there aren’t enough health-care professionals to handle the crisis, according to Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R), who this month encouraged colleges and universities to grant health-care students who are in their final semesters and have satisfied graduation requirements an early exit from their programs.
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By: Lauren Lumpkin
7:18 AM: Bad drivers in D.C. could get a warning message from the city
Bad drivers in the District could soon get a serious warning sent straight to their cellphones.
The city is working to identify drivers with a history of traffic violations, such as speeding and red-light camera tickets, to send messages alerting them of their history of infractions while warning of their risks of getting into a fatal crash.
City officials say they hope the pointed messages will deter dangerous road behaviors.
“We know that there is a subset of drivers that are putting others at serious risk with excessive speeding and red-light running,” said Jeff Marootian, director of the District Department of Transportation, one of the agencies leading the effort. “We’re hoping that this creative approach can ultimately reduce serious injury and fatality crashes.”
A team of city data experts is analyzing traffic citation data to identify drivers at a high risk of involvement in a serious crash. The “tailored messages,” they say, will be sent to a sample of those drivers next year. At the end of the 18-month pilot, officials say, they expect to know the answer to a key question: Can targeting messages to high-risk drivers prevent crashes?
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By: Luz Lazo
7:01 AM: Prince William County sheriff fires deputy for ‘disturbing comments’ on social media
A Prince William County sheriff’s deputy has been fired for posting “disturbing comments” to a conservative social media website, the county sheriff’s office announced Saturday. But the former deputy said that he didn’t make the comments and that his account was hacked.
Prince William Sheriff Glendell Hill said he was alerted to the comments on Christmas morning and promptly launched an internal investigation.
Several of the comments advocated violence, including against Chief Justice of the United States John G. Roberts Jr. for allowing the dismissal of a case seeking to overturn the results of the presidential election.
“I find them very despicable, and that’s why I took the action that I took,” Hill (R) said about the comments in a brief interview. “I certainly don’t approve of that, and, of course, it’s against our policy.”
The deputy, Aaron Hoffman, said in an interview with The Washington Post that he did not post those comments, saying the account he had recently opened on Parler, a social media website that has become a favorite among conservatives, was hacked.
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By: Antonio Olivo
6:45 AM: Residents in a D.C. retirement community give back to staff by tutoring their children
This past spring, a few weeks into the pandemic, Monique Sparks’s work supervisor asked how her kids were doing.
Sparks didn’t sugarcoat it. “This socially distant learning is not the best,” she said. It was particularly hard on her older son, Cameron Chance Jr., who was in 10th grade when the virus struck.
“Cameron has always been very quiet, and he’s very shy. He’s not an outgoing person,” she said, adding that the Zoom classes and meetings with teachers online were out of his comfort zone. Even worse, the basketball court, where the teenager felt most at ease and where he had hoped a college recruiter might spot him, had fallen silent.
Sparks is a concierge at Ingleside at Rock Creek, a retirement community in the District, and as it happened, other staff members there were expressing similar concerns. Their jobs required that they show up for work in person, often leaving their children with few resources to navigate remote education.
“This is a real daunting task, trying to do home schooling when they’re not trained to do that,” said Kiersten Parsons, the facility’s independent living administrator. “They’re not able to work from home; they’re in a front-line position.”
After hearing from staffers and from the executive director, who was asking about ways to help them, Parsons had an idea: Why not use valuable resources right there at Ingleside?
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By: Tara Bahrampour
6:29 AM: D.C. man arrested for intentionally inflicting injuries on 2-year-old
A 25-year-old man has been arrested and charged with intentionally inflicting life-threatening injuries on a 2-year-old girl Wednesday evening in Northeast D.C.
Quanice Meniefield from Northeast was charged Wednesday with second-degree cruelty to children. There is also an arrest warrant out for first-degree cruelty to children for Maurice Meniefield, a 28-year-old from Northeast.
The young girl is being treated for her injuries and is in stable condition, according to D.C. police.
Police said an investigation determined that the offense was domestic in nature.
On Wednesday around 5:30 p.m., D.C. police detectives and family services received a report that a 2-year-old child had been physically abused and was at an unknown location. They found her in a residence in the 1200 block of 49th Street NE suffering from life-threatening injuries. She was transported to the hospital for evaluation.
An investigation into the incident is ongoing.
Neither Quanice nor Maurice Meniefield could be reached for comment.
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By: Emily Davies
6:10 AM: D.C.-area forecast: Mild today, cold midweek and then a big warm-up to ring in 2021
The Capital Weather Gang rates today’s weather an 8/10: Sunshine and 50 degrees. A somewhat subjective rating of the day’s weather, on a scale of 0 to 10.
Today: We may awaken to a good deal of cloud cover as a cold front slides through, but we should see increasing sunshine by the afternoon. Cold air is slow to follow the cold front, and highs should still top 50 in many areas. Winds are from the southwest and west at about 10 mph. Confidence: Medium-High.
Tonight: Skies are mostly clear, and chilly air spills back into the region. Lows range from the upper 20s to low 30s, with winds from the northwest at 5 to 10 mph. Confidence: Medium-High.
Tomorrow (Tuesday): A bright and sunny but cold winter’s day. Highs should climb to around 40. Winds from the northwest around 10 to 15 mph make it feel several degrees chillier. Confidence: High.
For other forecasts and more on weather in the Washington region, sign up to receive the Capital Weather Gang in your inbox. (Or, on your smart speaker.)
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By: Jason Samenow
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By: Teddy Amenabar