BOSTON (AP) — Maxim Naumov came to a stop in the middle of the ice, looked up at the sky and patted his heart. Then he mouthed a few words, in Russian, to his parents:

“This is for you guys. You guys are with me. I love you both.”

Former world pairs champions Vadim Naumov and Evgenia Shishkova died in January when their plane crashed into a military helicopter on approach to Washington, D.C., and fell into the icy Potomac River. A total of 67 people were killed, including more than two dozen who were returning from a development camp following the U.S. figure skating championships in Wichita, Kansas.

Maxim Naumov, who finished fourth at nationals, already had returned home. Since the crash, he has become in many ways the face of the tragedy — or at least its effect on the skating community.

“I don’t think I’ve walked through a hallway and haven’t given a hug since. And I feel that support and love,” he said Sunday. “It’s been beyond anything that I could have ever even imagined. And it helps so much to get through this day.

“It’s overwhelming,” he said. “But it makes my heart so full.”

Naumov, 23, skated in a benefit in Washington earlier this month that raised more than $1.2 million for the victims’ families. Speaking to reporters Sunday after performing at the world championships gala, Naumov said the time that he is on the ice gives his mind a chance to escape the tragedy.

“As soon as I hit the ice, my brain just — I don’t know whether it’s focus or just calmness or stillness or what, but it feels like I tune everything out,” he said. “And I’m just talking with them, and they’re helping me.

“I don’t hear the crowd. I don’t hear the announcers, I don’t hear anything. I just have this internal dialogue and I’m just able to almost be calm and just be in my heart,” Naumov said. “And they’re always there, too. And every time I think of them, especially when I’m on the ice, it really, really helps me get through.”

The world championships, which had previously been scheduled at the home of Boston’s Celtics and Bruins, brought renewed attention to the plane crash and the century-old Skating Club of Boston that has been a home for Olympians and recreational skaters alike.

There was a tribute on Wednesday, sandwiched between the day’s two sessions, and frequent reminders of the tragedy.

Alisa Efimova and Misha Mitrofanov, who finished sixth in pairs this weekend, held up pictures of the Boston club members who died in the crash: two young skaters, their mothers and the two coaches. Reigning U.S. champion Amber Glenn wore a T-shirt honoring the memory of all the young skaters who were lost.

Ilia Malinin, the “Quad God” who won his second straight world championship on Saturday night, finished the show on Sunday with a performance that he said was dedicated to the plane crash victims. He came to the end, red-eyed and choking back tears.

Naumov’s introduction on Sunday identified him as a member of the Boston club and included his three fourth-place finishes at nationals. It didn’t mention the crash, but many in the crowd surely knew his connection: He received not only the polite applause that greeted most of the other skaters, but a second wave, with individuals standing to cheer him on.

Wearing unadorned black pants and a sparkly black top, a gold chain flopping around his neck as he glided across the ice, Naumov gave a gala performance aimed more at emotion than proof of athletic prowess.

The choice of music, Mac Miller’s posthumous 2020 release “That’s on Me,” was intentional. Miller died of an accidental drug overdose in 2018.

“Lately, for some reason — well, not for some reason — but lately I’ve just been listening to Mac Miller’s album ‘Circles.’ Like just over and over and over,” Naumov said. “And knowing the unfortunate story about him as an artist, it’s been very relatable.

“I relate to it, and I feel really deeply and emotionally what he’s talking about in those songs. And it’s also been really helpful for me to almost get my emotions out in that way personally.”

When his skate was over, Naumov took a deep breath, patted his heart again and waved in each direction. His bows were deep and poignant. Leaving the ice after a one-minute standing ovation, he made the sign of the cross.

“There’s a lot of emotions just right now, and it’s hard to even put a name to what I’m feeling currently,” he said. “I just feel so much support, and it’s very overwhelming.

“I have so much gratitude,” Naumov said. “And I’m thankful for each and every single one of those fans.”

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Washington DC has found itself in the crosshairs of Donald Trump and congressional Republicans in recent weeks, with efforts by both to exert more control over the overwhelmingly Democratic capital city.

The president on Thursday signed an executive order he said would make Washington DC “safe, beautiful, and prosperous” by stepping up crime fighting, arrests of undocumented immigrants and the processing of permits to carry concealed weapons. Trump separately directed JD Vance to “remove improper ideology” from the Smithsonian Institution, which has many museums in and around the city.

Weeks earlier, Republicans in Congress approved a $1bn cut to the city’s budget that the mayor, Muriel Bowser, warned would result in disruptive cuts to police, schools and health services. The Senate quickly scrambled to undo the reduction, an effort Trump has since endorsed, but it is unclear when the House of Representatives will act.

“The House should take up the D.C. funding ‘fix’ that the Senate has passed, and get it done IMMEDIATELY. We need to clean up our once beautiful Capital City, and make it beautiful again,” the president wrote on Friday.

The forays into the city’s politics come despite efforts by Bowser to improve her previously tense relationship with Trump, including by jackhammering the Black Lives Matter plaza installed near the White House. While the public-safety executive order had long been anticipated, the budget cut was a surprise that was enacted as part of a federal government spending bill passed hours before a shutdown would have occurred.

Tazra Mitchell, chief policy and strategy officer at the DC Fiscal Policy Institute thinktank, said a cut of that magnitude to the city’s budget would ripple beyond its borders and affect transit and healthcare systems shared with neighboring Maryland and Virginia.

“We’re taught as children, if we make a mistake, we own up to it, and we try to do better and right the wrong that we’ve caused. And what we saw is that the US House had that opportunity and chose not to right the wrong,” Mitchell said.

The legislation, written by House Republicans and making use of Congress’s ability to review Washington DC’s laws, omits language approving its budget for the 2025 fiscal year. That prevents the city from spending its own locally collected tax revenue and forces a reversion to 2024’s spending levels, with likely devastating effects on its municipal services.

“These are local dollars. It doesn’t save the federal government any money. We’re halfway through our fiscal year, and cutting now would be reckless,” Bowser said at a press conference after the spending bill was approved.

While she did not say when the cut would take effect, the mayor warned that “if we had to make a billion-dollar cut right now … we have to go where the money is in our budget to cut that fast. And our top areas of spending are schools, public safety and the human services.”

It is unclear how the language approving Washington DC’s budget was removed from the federal spending bill, but just after it passed the Senate, the Republican Susan Collins described the omission as “a mistake”, and the chamber unanimously passed her legislation to fix it.

In the House, Republican leaders have not said when they will put it up for a vote, and a spokesperson for the speaker, Mike Johnson, did not respond to a request for comment. After Trump weighed in, Punchbowl News reported that the House would likely vote on the measure in early April.

Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the House appropriations committee, tried to get language approving the city’s budget added back in when her chamber passed the spending bill, but Republicans refused. “Speaker Johnson continues to drag his feet on putting the DC funding fix on the floor of the House of Representatives. This should have never happened,” DeLauro said. “President Trump is right to call on the House to take up the bill that the Senate has already unanimously passed.”

Some allies of the president have encouraged passage of the fix, including the National Fraternal Order of Police, which warned of a “quite severe” public-safety impact if the funding is not restored. The right-leaning American Enterprise Institute called the funding cut “deeply unfortunate”, while Ed Martin, the Trump-appointed interim US attorney for the district, told a neighborhood group this week that he had asked Johnson to bring the fix to the floor.

Some aligned with Trump regard the fix as leverage that should be used over the city. Before Trump weighed in, Andy Harris, chair of the far-right House Freedom caucus, told the Hill the measure’s passage should be delayed because his group needs “a little while to come up with a list of what requirements we should put on DC”, and criticized the city for spending “dollars in ways that in the past we thought were pretty foolish”.

Zack Smith, a senior legal fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, outlined in the Daily Signal a series of policies Congress could impose on Washington DC in the fix, including banning non-citizens from voting in local elections, preventing the city from spending money on undocumented immigrants and giving federal prosecutors the ability to prosecute juvenile offenders as adults.

If House leaders agree, it would be the latest instance of congresses, Democratic and Republican alike, interfering in the affairs of a city that many residents believe should be a state.

“It’s not even a budget cut. It’s really like a power grab over DC’s budget,” said Alex Dodds, co-founder of Free DC, a group that advocates for the city’s autonomy. “There’s just no way that people in Congress or this president know what we need better than we do.”

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Just a few days into spring and the D.C. region has its first day in the 80s since November 7th, 2024. 

FOX 5’s Gwen Tolbart says there will be more clouds than sun today, but the warmth will make up for it! There will be a few peeks of sunshine, with exceptionally warm conditions today with temps in the low to mid 80s. 

Winds will pick up later and it will become quite breezy. South/SW 5-10mph, gusting up to 25+mph. Tonight, still mostly cloudy, lows in the 60s a mild night. 

Another warm day on Sunday with highs in the 70s to about 80. We will still see lots of clouds, and a few afternoon showers and perhaps a thunderstorm during the second half of the day, but it does not look like a washout.