Washington, D.C
‘I’ll remember for the rest of my life’: WorldPride DC comes to a close – WTOP News
WorldPride D.C. is now a wrap. The three week festival brought millions of people to the nation’s capital.
WTOP is marking Pride Month by showcasing the people, places and important issues in the LGBTQ+ communities in the D.C. area. Check back all throughout June as we share these stories, on air and online.
WorldPride D.C. is now a wrap. The three week festival brought millions of people to the nation’s capital.
On the last day of the festival, WTOP spoke to both D.C.-area residents and people who traveled to the District to be a part of only the second WorldPride in the U.S.
“I’m loving it here!,” said Angel Creek, a first-time WorldPride attendee. The Chicago native was joined by fellow Howard University student Venus Burrell.
Creek said her favorite parts of WorldPride were the outfits, the amount of color and the small businesses who had tents at the festival.
One D.C. business that once again was turning heads at the festival was Jimmy Trendy. Owner Jaime Quintero told WTOP that as a local business owner, he felt a duty to support the community and be there.
“This year has been amazing, because it’s WorldPride,” Quintero said.
The three week festival has been two-and-a-half years in the making thanks to the work from the Capitol Pride Alliance, which produced WorldPride.
Ashley Smith, board president of Capital Pride Alliance, told WTOP that 500 volunteers helped with the three week festival.
“The volunteers, the staff, the board, the whole nine, really trying to pull all this together, and our partners, that’s the only way we were able to do it,” Smith said Saturday.
One of the partners was the Mayor’s Office of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Questioning Affairs and its director, Japer Bowles.
Social media influencer Jose Romero, known as @DCHomos, who’s also marketing executive producer for Capital Pride Alliance, said he was impressed with the D.C.-area’s LGBTQ+ community, who lent a helping hand.
“The new volunteers, so many people that haven’t volunteered before, are here, welcoming the world and making this happen,” Romero said.
One of those welcomed was Devin Plant, who traveled with friends to join the celebration in D.C.
“You don’t have anything like this in Maine,” Plant said. “I think we have one singular gay bar in the whole state.
Plant joked that there are so few gay people in his hometown Bangor, that if he opens a dating app, he knows everyone on it.
This was Plant’s first trip to D.C. since he was in middle school.
“This historic event is probably something that I’ll remember for the rest of my life,” Plant said.
Another thing Plant said he won’t forget for a while is the sunburn he received during the parade, joking that there isn’t as much sun in Maine.
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Parents explain why they bring their children to WorldPride
One of the most impressive displays during the parade, which had 300 groups marching, was a 1,000-foot Pride Flag — said to be the world’s largest.
D.C.-area resident Allison Moody, who helped carry the giant Pride Flag, said it was stitched by the original creator of the Pride Flag, Gilbert Baker.
So, how big was the parade’s crowd size?
Smith said he had received estimates of 1.5 million attendees observing the parade as it moved along 14th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW. The streets are much bigger than the traditional route though D.C.’s Dupont neighborhood.
Last year, the parade used the same route as a test run for this year’s WorldPride — and it seems like this new pride route is permanent.
“There may be some changes to it slightly, but we’ll try to keep it the same route as much as
we can,” Smith said.
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TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WCTV) – Seventy-two veterans took a trip Saturday to our nation’s capital to visit memorials honoring their service in the armed forces.
This year marks the 12th trip to Washington, D.C. for Honor Flight Tallahassee.
Early Saturday morning, veterans and their guardians met to take a charter flight up to D.C.
Throughout the day, veterans were taken to the World War II memorial, as well as the Korean and Vietnam War memorials. The veterans also visited Arlington National Cemetery and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
More Tallahassee news:
The day ended with a wonderful welcome home celebration.
Our Jacob Murphey, Julia Miller, Taylor Viles, and Grace Temple accompanied the veterans, capturing moments from throughout the day.
The team will have live coverage from Washington, D.C. on Monday to share more from the day’s events.
We will continue to have coverage throughout the month of May, leading up to our Honor Flight special on Memorial Day.
To keep up with the latest news as it develops, follow WCTV on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Nextdoor and X (Twitter).
Have a news tip or see an error? Write to us here. Please include the article’s headline in your message.
Be the first to see all the biggest headlines by downloading the WCTV News app. Click here to get started.
Copyright 2026 WCTV. All rights reserved.
4 things to know about the weather:
- Chances of rain in the morning
- Gusty Sunday
- Chilly Monday
- Temps will rise again through the work week
Download the NBC Washington app on iOS and Android to check the weather radar on the go.
After a nice and warm Saturday, changes arrive for part two of the weekend.
The first half of your Sunday will have a chance for showers. Winds will pick up with our next system and are expected to gust to about 20-30 mph. Cooler air will settle in, and lows Sunday night fall into the 40s.
Highs temps Monday will reach only into the mid to upper 50s.
However, temperatures will rise through the week, so you won’t need your jackets every day.
QuickCast
SUNDAY:
Showers, then partly cloudy
Wind: NW 10-15 mph
Gusts @ 30 mph
HIGH: Lower 60s
MONDAY:
Partly cloudy
Wind: NW 10-15 mph
Gusts @ 25 mph
HIGH: Upper 50s
Stay with Storm Team4 for the latest forecast. Download the NBC Washington app on iOS and Android to get severe weather alerts on your phone.
Washington, D.C
‘It’s a twilight zone’: Iran war casts deep shadows over IMF gathering in Washington
The most severe energy shock since the 1970s, the risk of a global recession and households everywhere stomaching a renewed surge in the cost of living – hitting the most vulnerable hardest.
In a sweltering hot Washington DC this week, the message at the International Monetary Fund meetings was chilling: things had been looking up for living standards around the world. But then came the Iran war.
“Some countries are in panic,” said the fund’s managing director, Kristalina Georgieva, addressing the finance ministers and central bank bosses in town for the IMF and World Bank spring meetings. “The sooner it [the Iran war] ends, the better for everybody.”
Such gatherings are not typically used to fight geopolitical battles. “You don’t get people shouting at one another at these things,” one senior figure remarked. But, as a record-breaking April heatwave swept the US capital, no one could ignore the mounting damage from the Iran war.
Those familiar with the mood over breakfast at a meeting of the G20’s representatives on Thursday, which included Donald Trump’s treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, and the outgoing US Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell – said the atmosphere in the room was sombre amid an open exchange of serious views.
“It is such a twilight-zone meeting,” said Mohamed El-Erian, a former IMF deputy managing director who is now chief economic adviser at the Allianz insurance group. “There are several shadows hanging over it: one is the shadow that comes from concern about the global economy as a whole.
“The second is that some countries are going to be particularly hard hit, and it’s mostly countries that very few people are talking about. But the third concern is the adding of insult to injury: the fact that the US, which started a war of choice, is going to be hit, but by a lot less than elsewhere in relative terms.”
Before Thursday’s breakfast, Rachel Reeves had started her day with an early-morning jog. Joined by her counterparts from Spain, Australia and New Zealand for a run down the iconic National Mall, she posted an Instagram selfie with a not-so-subtle dig: “Friends that run together – work together.”
A day earlier, the chancellor had told a CNBC conference that she thought “friends are allowed to disagree on things” as she criticised Trump’s Iran war as a “mistake” and a “folly” that had not made the world safer.
Speaking at a venue just steps away from the White House, before a one-on-one meeting with Bessent, she said this “fair message” was needed because UK families and businesses were feeling the pain from higher energy prices triggered by the conflict.
Those close to Reeves insist her meeting remained cordial. Britain and the US have significant shared interests in AI, financial services and trade. The chancellor also said the UK government had little time for the Iranian regime.
But with the IMF having warned on Tuesday that the Iran war could risk a global recession – in which Britain would be the biggest G7 casualty – it was clear Reeves had travelled to Washington ready to pick a fight.
“I’m struck by how vocal she has been and the words she used,” said one global financier. “We know the disagreement between Bessent and [European Central Bank president] Christine Lagarde earlier in the year. But that was in private.”
At a cocktail party held at the British ambassador’s residence for hundreds of diplomats and financiers – including the Bank of England’s governor, Andrew Bailey, the chief executive of Barclays, CS Venkatakrishnan, and dozens of senior figures – this transatlantic tension, weeks before King Charles’s US state visit, was a major topic of conversation.
The other, in the balmy residence gardens, was one of its former occupants, Peter Mandelson, as revelations about the former ambassador’s appointment threatened to further rock the UK government.
Before the war, the agenda for the IMF had been about global cooperation; the adoption of AI, jobs and work to eradicate poverty. Each of those tasks had now been complicated, but not least the task of countries working together.
For many at the meetings, the focus was on forging closer global cooperation without the world’s pre-eminent superpower.
“Everybody is talking about how you hedge against American decisions,” said David Miliband, the former UK foreign secretary, who now runs the International Rescue Committee. “You can’t do without them, because they’re 25% of the global economy. But, in a lot of fora, they’ve pulled out.
“So everyone has to think, how does one structure international cooperation? The old west is not coming back. And so everyone has to figure out how to position themselves for that world.”
For those gathering in Washington, there was irony in the fact that they were meeting in the halls of institutions founded, under US leadership, to promote global cooperation after the second world war. The whole idea of the Bretton Woods institutions was to avoid the dire economic conditions and warfare of the 1930s and 1940s. Yet this year’s meeting was taking place amid these intertwining problems.
In their conversations about the best economic policy response to the shock of conflict, the economists also knew the real power to make a difference lay two blocks across town from the IMF and the World Bank – behind the security cordons and construction equipment blocking the White House from public view. “It is not clear they can do anything about it,” said El-Erian.
Still, with a booming economy driven by AI – including Anthropic’s powerful Mythos model, the topic of much conversation – most countries cannot afford to completely break off US ties.
“People want to find ways to insulate themselves from the mess. But, on the other hand, they admire the US private sector,” El-Erian said. “The best way I’ve heard it put, is: they want to go long the private sector and short the mess. But it’s almost impossible to do.”
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