Some years deserve to be thrown straight into the trashcan. They are Annus horribilis, 365 days of pain that deserve to be forgotten.
This is my “best” of 2025 in Washington, DC. My favorite photos, moments and memories from the year.
2025 began with a crash. The perfect viral video, in which Trump supporters on their way to celebrate January 6th (yes, celebrate) wiped out on an icy highway. God was not on their side. And it was a preview of what was to come.
A bout of brutally cold air forced Trump’s inauguration indoors, to the disappointment of the fanatics who had descended upon DC to cheer his return. I watched from the comfort of home as chuds lined up for hours in the cold and left behind a huge mess.
The naïveté and wishful thinking that existed before the Inauguration was astonishing to witness. I talked to a local official who didn’t believe that Trump would pardon the January 6th rioters. But he did that on the first day, setting free the violent men who had attacked police officers. They immediately started committing new crimes, including rape, kidnapping and child sex abuse.
While our leaders may have surrendered in advance, the people didn’t. The Resistance wasn’t dead and hit the streets with protests that grew in number and power as the year progressed.
The most heartbreaking one I witnessed was the vigil for USAID. This agency, which saved children from starvation and generated so much goodwill for this country, was fed into the woodchopper by Elon Musk. A crowd gathered outside the USAID HQ to applaud the employees as they left the building for the last time.
How can the President eliminate an entire agency that Congress funded? What happened to the power of the purse? Our leaders ceded their authority to Trump with barely a whimper.
Yet, we are not without power. One of the funnest demonstrations I witnessed in 2025 was the Tesla Takedown parties outside Tesla in Georgetown. These were dance parties animated by a spirit of joy. The people were able to strike back against Musk and make his brand toxic. Even more toxic than his vehicles and their propensity to explode and kill their owners.
Trump promised a Golden Age. Instead, his tariffs drove prices up and budget cuts made life more difficult for ordinary folks.
In DC, we got a Golden Age of Street Art. Amazing artists hit the streets overnight, with utility boxes and construction sidings turned into impromptu art galleries. The art was ephemeral. You had to see it before it was wiped away.
I particularly like the work of Absurdly Well, like this quote from AOC: “Hope is something you create.” I saw this while biking home one day and it really hit me. You gotta work for it.
Also, a shoutout to another artist, Biketifa aka ArlingtonAF aka Will.
He created a version of the Virginia state flag with Trump being trampled underfoot. But that wasn’t enough for him so he created his own zine where he satirizes life in Arlington, VA.
Check out his gift shop for the flag and more.
Don’t surrender in advance – it’s literally in the textbook of resisting tyranny. Mayor Bowser spent all year surrendering to Trump, starting with the destruction of Black Lives Matter Plaza, a gift to MAGA racists.
White supremacists got another gift from the Trump administration as the statue of Albert Pike was returned to his plinth in Judiciary Square. Pike was a Confederate general who was considered a traitor not just by the Union but the Confederacy, too.
The US Park Police spent a lot of time on statues. They guarded the Pike statue and destroyed the Epstein-Trump Friendship Statue. The regime sent more than a dozen officers with a truck in the middle of the night to wreck it. It had a permit to be on the National Mall but the Park Police (the worst police) break the law with impunity.
Someone important really didn’t like the statue of Trump and Epstein holding hands. Who says that art doesn’t have power? The good news is that the artists retrieved it, repaired it and put it back up away from the grasping arms of the Park Police.
The year was full of comically absurd moments, like RFK Jr bathing in a stream in Rock Creek Park. Stream is a generous connotation. He took a dip in a trickle of water downstream from a Safeway. I went to see for myself. It’s a drainage ditch.
Or the Trump Army parade, which was a sad affair of soldiers casually strolling down Constitution Avenue on a brutally hot day. Trump wanted a Soviet-style military event but what he got was long, confusing and boring.
But the most absurd was the Sandwich Guy Case. Late one night on U Street, after the bars let out, a man threw a Subway sandwich at a police officer from one of the myriad of agencies that Trump sent to occupy the city. Attorney General Pam Bondi made a federal case out of it, dispatching an armed convoy to arrest him like they were going after a drug lord. They used a drone to get overhead shots and made a video – how much of our taxpayer money did that cost?
All this attention turned Sandwich Guy into a folk hero, commemorated with Banksy-style posters and banners.
A grand jury refused to charge him with felony assault so the regime took him to court over a misdemeanor.
And lost. Thank god for the jury system. This was merely one of a string of legal defeats suffered by the administration.
The Epstein files was one of those controversies that percolated all year long. I’m old enough to remember six months ago when MAGA wanted these files released. Pam Bondi said she had the client list on her desk! But once they found out that Trump was in the files, they switched their position. Don’t release the files!
Trump sent the National Guard to DC, though crime in the city has been declining for years. I saw them on the National Mall, around Dupont Circle and raking leaves by the White House.
They weren’t the only armed men on the streets. ICE busily kidnapped people to meet their quotas, setting up checkpoints on major roads like New York Avenue and prowling the alleys of Mount Pleasant in unmarked vehicles. They also tore down an anti-ICE banner and left behind a dildo.
Who wants to risk being disappeared if you don’t have the right papers? Or even if you do? A REAL ID isn’t proof of citizenship. If you’re stopped by ICE, how do you prove that you’re a citizen?
Unsurprisingly, people stayed out of DC. Trump claimed that restaurants have never been busier but this is a lie. Business declined. They call it the Trump Slump.
Some traditions went on, like Bike to Work Day and the DC Bike Party. Also, artists painted the 15th Street bike lane. Somehow, the administration missed this one. They’ve been destroying painted crosswalks around the country (not just the gay ones) though studies have proven that just a bit of paint gets drivers to slow down.
The car-free festival known as Open Streets has shrunk to a fraction of its past glory (another indignity committed by Mayor Bowser) which is too bad, because the Capitol Hill edition highlighted this beautiful, tree-lined neighborhood.
DC got a new museum too!
The Milken Center for Advancing the American Dream is a relic from a more hopeful time, like the 1990s, filled with Oprah-style aphorisms that if you work hard and play by the rules, you can make it in America. It’s a beautiful illusion.
Across the street, reality hits you in the face, where Trump demolished the East Wing of the White House to build a gold ballroom paid for by a list of secret donors. It’s hard to believe in the American Dream when laws, norms and traditions are being trampled by the greedy rich.
Yet, there is hope. In September, there was a huge Free DC rally that brought together thousands of people united against the assaults on the nation’s capital. “Free DC! Free DC! Free DC!” echoed off buildings downtown.
It’s become a movement. In the literal sense, as the DC Freedom Run saw hundreds of people running from 14th and U to the Mall and back to protest the Trump takeover of DC.
Refuse Fascism has had events all year long, including the latest where they attempted to surround the White House with crime scene tape for the criminal inside.
In October, the No Kings demonstration brought together more than 7 million at more than 2,700 events in all 50 states.
In DC, No Kings stretched for blocks down Pennsylvania Avenue. I couldn’t see the stage but I could hear Bernie Sanders.
The end of the year looks a lot different from the beginning. Democrats won in Miami for the first time in nearly 30 years. They won big in Virginia. Indiana Republicans defied death threats to crush Trump’s redistricting efforts.
The Resistance isn’t just in DC. It’s in the states. It’s everywhere now.
250 years ago, we overthrew a tyrant. Next year, we celebrate that achievement. And we’re going to do it again.
