Washington, D.C
Couples, community and a bunch of baby animals: Good news from the DC area in 2025
Whether 2025 was the best of times, the worst of times, or both, congratulations: You made it to the end, dear reader, and a fresh start is just around the corner.
Maybe you clicked on this good news article because you want to keep the warm-and-fuzzy holiday vibes going. Or maybe you clicked it because you needed something to pick you up again after one too many hits.
Whatever the reason, let’s take a second to appreciate the good stuff — and no matter how hard times get, there is always some good stuff to be found.
Baby animals were born. Neighbors helped each other through hard times. Problems were solved, and new plans were made.
Cheers to everything we accomplished together in 2025… even if it was just making it to 2026. Let’s take a look back.
We saw some beautiful love stories
Katie Lettie and Vincent Bauer got married at the Arlington Central Library after winning a contest for a free wedding at the library.
Back before Valentine’s Day, the Arlington Public Library announced a contest to host a free wedding for one lucky DMV couple.
In July, that couple — Arlington residents Katie Lettie and Vincent Bauer — tied the knot at the Arlington Central Library location.
It made sense: The pair has the kind of love story you read about in books. The pair has been together for more than a decade, sometimes on opposite coasts, sometimes an ocean apart, according to the library system.
“Arlington was the first place that we were ever able to live that was permanent,” Lettie said. “Or had a sense that like, the future could go on, as the current moment was.”
The couple’s nuptials are a testament to the community they found and built in Arlington, with library patrons, staff, volunteers and local vendors coming together to pull off the wedding.
“This is such an amazing gift,” Lettie said. “It’s such a magical experience. It’s so cool.”
A Northern Virginia couple was so grateful for the care their daughter received in the Inova Fairfax NICU that they decided to have their wedding there. News4’s Aimee Cho shares their sweet story.
Later in the year, in nearby Fairfax County, another couple’s wedding was boosted by a community that lifted them up — and literally kept their family alive through hard times.
Timeshay Brown, a nurse at Inova Fairfax Hospital, and her now-husband Jarvis Parrish, had been planning their dream wedding for October.
But then their baby, Jayla, was born earlier than expected, at just 25 weeks.
“We went to the ultrasound, and the doctor came in and she was like, ‘Well, you’re gonna have this baby today,’” Brown said.
Taking care of baby Jayla became their priority. But amid their long nights in the NICU, Brown and Parrish knew they still wanted to be husband and wife.
Then, Brown had an idea, and her fellow nurses — many of whom had helped care for baby Jayla — ran with it.
Brown and Parrish exchanged their vows in November in the NICU, in front of their baby daughter and the medical team that saved her life.
“Because of you, our daughter will never have to wonder what real love looks like,” Brown told Parrish. “She’ll see it in the way you love me, and the way you protect her.”
Parrish, in return, promised Brown he’s committed to “always being a place of comfort and safety that you can rest your heart in completely.”
You did it, DMV! 1,435 couples came to Anthem Row in Northwest D.C. to break the Guiness world record for most couples kissing under the mistletoe in a single venue.
And about a month later, D.C. broke a world record — and maybe even started to turn the tide on its rocky romantic reputation.
A whopping 1,435 couples turned out to Anthem Row in Northwest D.C. to break the Guinness World Record for most couples kissing under the mistletoe in a single venue.
The Downtown D.C. Business Improvement District (BID) is now the proud owner of that record, beating out the previous record holder of St. Louis, Missouri with just 488 couples.
Community members came together
Speaking of love stories and community: Friends to Lovers bookstore in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia, is an expert in both, at this point.
The romance novels are the main draw of the first romance bookstore in the D.C. metro area, of course. But after owner and founder Jamie Fortin poured her heart into her dream and then watched it go up in flames, Fortin learned that love also comes in the form of community – lifting it up, and being lifted in return.
The store’s first grand opening was in November 2024. But just three days after it opened, disaster struck.
“That night, really, I just got a call at like 11 p.m. that the store was on fire,” Fortin said. “Like I just got a text, ‘There’s a fire,’ in all caps, which was terrifying.”
The inside of the building was torched, and three women-owned businesses inside, including Friends to Lovers, were forced to close the night of Nov. 18.
But then the next day, the business owners from that building gathered with others on the block.
That’s when Fortin, who wanted to build up women and people in the LGBTQ+ community with her business, learned the community wanted to build her up, too.
“We all really rallied together immediately,” she said.
Within a week of the fire, the GoFundMe campaign raised $46,000, Fortin said. Donors ranged from local business owners to grad students sharing what little cash they had pitching in to help Friends to Lovers get back on its feet. Most of them were people who had never been in the store.
“About five months later, we were able to fully open a new location,” Fortin said. “And we are so grateful for where we’re at now.”
Over a year later, the bookstore is thriving, with a new location on Cameron Street and its own booth at the Downtown DC Holiday Market.
There are plenty more examples of communities rallying after chaos caused by forces of nature. Back in June, you may remember, a series of powerful thunderstorms walloped the D.C. area several inexplicable weekends in a row.
If you remember those storms, you also remember the damage they did to several neighborhoods, including one in Arlington. One resident of that neighborhood told News4 that her backyard tree, estimated to be 80 years old, split in two and largely fell on her 90-year-old neighbor’s home.
When the tree came down, it crashed into an area of the house where that 90-year-old typically sits. She was thankfully elsewhere in her home at the time — and other neighbors took her in.
“My neighbors brought her over. They sat her down on their porch and had her relax and called her kids,” the resident said.
“The people here are nice. Everybody watches out for each other,” she continued. “My neighbor who lives on the other side of me is out of town and texted me to see we were OK and if we needed anything.”
“It really says a lot because this is an urban area. But people know each other. We watch out for each other.”
As the region braces for another day of high temps, officials in Montgomery County are making an urgent call for help as the AC goes out at Derwood Animal Shelter. News4’s Walter Morris reports.
And communities stepped up for each other, even for community members with four legs and a tail.
An animal shelter in Montgomery County, Maryland thanked residents for stepping up when its air conditioning went out amid a June heat wave in the D.C. area, and the animals needed temporary foster homes.
About 20-30 dogs at the animal shelter were at high risk in extreme heat due to age or other health conditions and needed to get out of the overheated building as soon as possible.
After the shelter put out a plea on social media, more than 40 animals got temporary foster homes from nearby residents, allowing crews to work overnight to repair the A/C system.
“THANK YOU for all of your help during this crisis,” the shelter said on its website.
Baby animals arrived in D.C.
Giant pandas Bao Li and Qing Bao played in the snow Monday at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo in Washington, D.C.
From dogs and cats to panda bears, D.C. saw plenty of new animals arrive.
The most pandemonium came with the public debut of Bao Li and Qing Bao at the National Zoo in January. The 3-year-old giant pandas made their official debut on Jan. 24, and the zoo’s Giant Panda Cam returned shortly after.
Before the public could go visit Bao Li and Qing Bao in person, the zoo gave us all a sneak peek with some footage of them both playing in the snow, after D.C.’s biggest winter storm in years dropped 5 inches on the District.
The pandas went on a brief hiatus again during the lengthy government shutdown this fall, but their brief absence just made DMV residents all the more excited when the National Zoo reopened.
The zoo’s reopening after the shutdown also brought exciting news about the cheetahs that live at the Conservation Biology Institute in Front Royal, Virginia.
On Oct. 17 and 18, a litter of four new cheetah cubs was born, and they were doing well when the zoo announced their birth after the six-week shutdown ended.
Their mom, Amabala, is a 5-year-old adult cheetah that was also born at the Front Royal facility back in 2020. It was a full-circle moment for an endangered species, and for the conservation program at the zoo.
The baby elephant could arrive anytime between February and March, the zoo said. News4’s Megan McGrath reports.
The good animal news will continue into 2026, too. The zoo announced one of its elephants is pregnant, and sometime this winter the National Zoo will welcome its first baby elephant in 25 years.
It’s not yet clear whether 12-year-old Nhi Linh will welcome a boy or a girl when she delivers her first baby.
It marks a landmark moment for Asian elephants, an endangered species with an estimated number of fewer than 50,000 living in the wild.
Washington, D.C
Trump wants to paint the Eisenhower office building white. Now a key federal agency considers it
President Donald Trump’s proposal to put a coat of white paint on the exterior of a 19th-century historic landmark building next to the White House is slated for a hearing Thursday by a key federal agency he expects to approve what would be a dramatic makeover.
The proposed painting of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building is one piece of a broader plan the Republican president has said will make Washington more beautiful.
Trump is making numerous changes inside and outside the White House and its grounds, most notably razing the East Wing to build a 1,000-person ballroom. Across the street from the mansion, Lafayette Park is closed for renovations that include getting the fountains working again.
The National Capital Planning Commission is scheduled to begin considering the plan on Thursday, according to its meeting agenda. Trump calls for painting all or most of the Eisenhower building’s gray granite exterior with white paint. He last year called the gray a “really bad color.”
Josh Fisher, a White House official, in April told the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts — a separate federal agency that also must approve the proposal — that the Trump administration prefers painting the entire building because the exterior is stained and in “great disrepair.”
The White House also presented an alternative proposal to paint most of the building in white while leaving the granite as is on the base.
Fisher said in April that experts consulted by the government could not guarantee that an exterior cleaning would improve the condition of the building.
But the proposal has alarmed preservationists, architects, historians and others who argue that granite is not meant to be painted and that paint would trap moisture, deteriorate the stone and not solve problems the administration wants to fix.
There’s also scant public support for the paint job.
Hundreds of pages of public comment submitted to the National Capital Planning Commission and available on the agency’s website were overwhelmingly against the plan on the grounds that the granite would be harmed by being painted and that problems would remain, at great expense to taxpayers. Others suggested improved landscaping, lighting and other steps to improve the building’s appearance.
Members of the Society of Architectural Historians sent a letter this week to Will Scharf, a top White House aide and chair of the planning commission, outlining why the project “will adversely and permanently alter this important part of American heritage and should be rejected.”
A report by the planning commission’s staff recommends that commissioners support cleaning the building but said more information is needed to evaluate the proposals to paint the exterior.
Staff also recommends asking the White House to provide information about the type of paint to be used, including where it has been successfully used on exterior granite facades in other projects. It also recommends the White House summarize other ways to achieve the goal, including cleaning the building and/or lighting.
The Eisenhower Executive Office Building is a National Historic Landmark and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. A lawsuit against the proposed paint job is working its way through federal court.
The Eisenhower building sits across a driveway from the West Wing, and its granite, slate and cast iron exterior makes it one of America’s best examples of the French Second Empire style of architecture. It was the original home for the State, War and Navy departments, and it currently houses ceremonial offices for the vice president and offices for the second lady, the National Security Council and other White House components.
At its April meeting, the fine arts commission directed White House officials to return at a future date to present more information, including the results of paint testing.
Law enforcement officers from across North Carolina made a stop in downtown New Bern as part of a multi-day bicycle ride to Washington, D.C.
The riders are part of the Police Unity Tour, an annual event that brings together officers from cities including Charlotte, Durham and Greenville. Participants are cycling hundreds of miles to take part in National Police Week.
The ride is held to honor officers who have died in the line of duty, with each mile dedicated to their memory.
“It is just as much mental as it is physical. We just take it one leg at a time,” said Maj. Brian Harrison of the Durham Police Department. “It’s the stops like this where we get to honor our brothers and sisters in blue that have fallen in the line of duty. They just make it worth it.”
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The group will continue traveling north over the next several days, with their journey ending in Washington, D.C., at the National Law Enforcement Memorial.
Washington, D.C
Leonsis says DC could chase NBA, NHL All-Star games after Capital One Arena makeover – WTOP News
Monumental’s $800 million renovation could position Washington for marquee weekends, but Ted Leonsis warns fans the leagues control the tickets.
Monumental’s $800 million-plus renovation could position Washington for marquee weekends, but the company’s CEO warns fans the leagues control the tickets.
Ted Leonsis has never hidden his skepticism about the glamour of hosting an All-Star Game, often noting that the leagues, not the home teams, run the show and divvy up the best seats.
But with a sweeping, multiyear renovation of Capital One Arena underway in D.C., the owner and chairman of Monumental Sports & Entertainment says Washington is ready to raise its hand again for the NBA and NHL’s marquee midseason showcases.
“When our building is up and functioning, I would hope we’d be considered for an NBA All-Star Game,” Leonsis told WTOP. “The NHL All-Star Game … we’d love to be able to host it.”
The Capitals have hosted the NHL All-Star Game only once — in 1982 in Landover, Maryland. The Wizards last hosted the NBA All-Star Game in 2001 in D.C.
Leonsis said bringing the WNBA All-Star Game back for the first time since 2007 is also on his radar.
Leagues rarely spell out a formula for choosing host cities, but new arenas and major renovations typically help push a market to the front of the line.
With more than $800 million in upgrades planned at the Downtown arena, the Capitals, Wizards and Mystics fit that profile. NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman toured the site this past season and saw the work firsthand.
“Ted took me on a tour of what’s been done and what’s being planned,” Bettman said in January. “What’s going on here is nothing short of spectacular. And sharing our tent-pole events, our special events with the fans in Washington, with the Capitals, the organization, is always on the table.”
The renovation is expected to wrap ahead of the 2027-28 season, meaning any All-Star bid could still be years away.
Capital One Arena is scheduled to close this summer as work continues. Phase two focuses on new and relocated entrances and a reimagined exterior; that portion is expected to be completed in September 2026, with additional exterior work continuing into 2027.
“Then, we’ll be done and we’ll have a pristine, beautiful, great new experience,” Leonsis said. “And then we can start to bid, and I’ll put my hand up for both of those games.”
CEO Ted Leonsis talks with WTOP’s Ben Raby about his desire to bring an All-Star game to D.C.
Leonsis floated 2031 as an intriguing target for the NBA, the 30th anniversary of the last All-Star Game in Washington.
Still, he said fans should understand what comes with it: The league controls the event and much of the inventory.
“I just have to give the fair warning: It’s not our event. It’s the league’s event, and they are catering to the sponsors,” Leonsis said. “Anybody who has held an All-Star Game always ends up with the hard feelings, ‘I’ve been a season-ticket holder for X years, why can’t I sit in my seats?’ Well, I don’t own the building during the All-Star Game. I don’t own the suites. They give them to all 30 teams.”
He laughed at the memory of learning that lesson during the 2001 NBA All-Star weekend in Washington, when he was an AOL executive with company-held courtside season tickets.
“We were expecting at the All-Star Game that we’d have our same tickets,” he said. “Instead, we were moved to the front row upstairs. The league owns the tickets and the inventory, and they are distributing them as they see best.”
If expectations are clear, Leonsis said the region has plenty of reasons to pursue the events — from national exposure to a surge in visitors.
Like the boost local leaders expect from the NFL draft coming to Washington next April, an All-Star weekend can deliver a significant economic jolt for hotels, restaurants and transit.
Forbes reported the 2024 NHL All-Star Game had a $50-$60 million economic impact on Toronto. The 2025 NBA All-Star Game generated $429 million in total event value for the San Francisco Bay Area economy, according to Temple University’s Sports Industry Research Center.
“I think it’s the right thing for the city and the right thing for our team to show off the new building once it reopens,” Leonsis said. “We’ll put our hand up when the time is right.”
More women’s hockey in DC?
Beyond the All-Star talk, there is also buzz around whether Washington could land a women’s professional hockey team.
Leonsis has long touted the growth of women’s sports and owns the WNBA’s Washington Mystics through Monumental.
“We should be the women’s professional sports capital of the world,” Leonsis said. “We want to play that part and be in that role as a leader and innovator.”
WTOP’s Ben Raby asks Ted Leonsis about the PWHL buzz in D.C.
He said he has closely monitored the Professional Women’s Hockey League, which launched in 2024 and has discussed expansion publicly.
This past winter, Monumental hosted a neutral-site game between the Montreal Victoire and the New York Sirens as part of the PWHL’s Takeover Tour. The game drew a record 17,228 fans to Capital One Arena at the time, the largest U.S. crowd to watch a women’s hockey game and chant a loud refrain of “we want a team.”
Leonsis said the interest is real, but timing matters.
“We have a couple more years of renovations, so it’s very difficult right now to speak with certainty about expansion and what they’re doing along our timetable,” he said.
After the Takeover Tour stop, Leonsis said he spoke with PWHL executive Stan Kasten about ways to bring more women’s hockey to the District.
“Stan and I did talk about, ‘Hey, this went very well,’ We enjoyed it, they enjoyed it, the players enjoyed it,” Leonsis said. “We should maybe do two games next year, or three games the season after that. We should start to get into a rhythm.”
A full-time team, Leonsis noted, could depend on how the league structures ownership. The PWHL currently operates as a single entity, with teams owned and operated by the Mark Walter Group.
Sources told WTOP the league could eventually move away from that model, though no timetable has been set and nothing is imminent. The single-entity approach has been framed by the league as a conservative way to build a foundation for long-term success.
“Given the success of this January’s game in D.C., Monumental has interest in hosting future neutral-site PWHL games and is open to exploring opportunities to bring a team to Washington, D.C., if there were flexibility in the ownership structure,” a Monumental spokesperson said in an email.
“We certainly want to stay close with them,” Leonsis said. “My expectation is that we’ll be a big part of the overall women’s professional sports landscape.”
Museum-like art, memorabilia displays at Capital One Arena
(Courtesy Monumental Sports & Entertainment)
Courtesy Monumental Sports & Entertainment
(10, 10, 10)
10, 10, 10
(Courtesy Monumental Sports & Entertainment)
Courtesy Monumental Sports & Entertainment
(Courtesy Monumental Sports & Entertainment)
Courtesy Monumental Sports & Entertainment
(Courtesy Monumental Sports & Entertainment)
Courtesy Monumental Sports & Entertainment
Among the additions at the revamped arena that Leonsis said he’s most looking forward to will be the District Arts Collection — a multimillion dollar curated art and memorabilia collection which will by displayed throughout the arena.
Benefiting from its partnership with cllct — a premier collectible media and marketing services company — Monumental Sports is in the process of gathering historic artifacts that will eventually be displayed for fans to peruse on all levels of the building. The exhibits will include both sports and Americana memorabilia.
“We want to have a museum, we want to have more interactivity through the arena,” Leonsis said.
The issue Monumental has run into when trying to gather memorabilia from their own teams is that very little has actually been preserved by the clubs themselves. It’s a common oversight by many professional franchises, which cllct is working to correct on the fly.
“It’s strange because in some sense, it’s the only part of teams that are worth billions of dollars that isn’t professionalized, because it was never anyone’s job to do it,” said Darren Rovell, the founder of cllct.
Ted Leonsis tells WTOP’s Ben Raby about the exhibit at Capital One.
Leonsis said that when Monumental began its quest to build museum-like exhibits, he figured it would naturally include items from Michael Jordan’s playing days with the Wizards. He soon found out, though, they didn’t have much in-house.
“We had to hire Darren to go into market to get people to sell us Michael Jordan autographed basketballs, Michael Jordan autographed home and away jerseys,” Leonsis said.
“What we’ve been doing now is trying to be very bespoke on our history. Who were the best players? What did they wear their rookie year? What did they wear the year they retired? What did they wear when they scored their 100th goal? We want to build and amass that type of collection and be able to tell the story in a more interactive, lived way,” he added.
Monumental partnered with Rovell in 2025 with the goal of having museum-like installations in place by fall 2027. Rovell is in constant contact with former players about lending pieces and has also identified a handful of big-time collectors of Capitals and Wizards memorabilia, who are planning to contribute to the arena’s collection.
The original goal structures and nets from Alex Ovechkin’s record-tying and record-breaking 894th and 895th goals have already been obtained and will be among the displays.
“Those goal structures are just not pieces of metal,” Rovell said. “They signify so much.”
Rovell said from his experience that game-used memorabilia can draw in even casual fans, who may remember a special date or game from their own memory bank.
“Game-used is really like the emotion,” Rovell said. “That’s what connects you to the moment. We’re also going to (showcase) it in a display that is meaningful. I think sometimes you have game-used stuff that is not displayed in a way that it deserves. This is museum quality stuff and so giving it the gravitas that it deserves, I think, is going to be a mark of the new Capital One Arena.”
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