I care less that D.C. carjackings are significantly down in the first half of 2024 compared with a year ago because I’m so sickened by what happened to Leslie Marie Gaines. She was the 55-year-old victim of an unarmed carjacking at the MedStar Washington Hospital Center on Monday afternoon.
Washington, D.C
Opinion | Anatomy of a D.C. carjacking: Two paths cross and an innocent life is lost
It’s one of those events that stops you in your tracks.
Gaines’s day began at the hospital’s rehab facility on nearby Irving Street NW, where she went for physical therapy at approximately 11:15 a.m. It ended at George Washington University Hospital, where she was pronounced dead at 2:38 p.m.
What happened in between leaves me frustrated and mad as hell because the true justice that her family wants for her is impossible. That is, if justice also means showing mercy and compassion to one another. Were a sliver of that present on Monday, Gaines would be alive today.
Court documents detail some of the key events in this case. The documents also point to reasons D.C. police charged Kayla Kenisha Brown, 22, in connection Gaines’s death.
Where was mercy for Gaines on that day?
According to the court records, Gaines and her daughter pulled up to MedStar’s emergency room entrance because Gaines wasn’t feeling well following her physical therapy. Gaines’s daughter went inside to seek wheelchair assistance for her mother, who remained in the car with the engine running, the documents say. But when the daughter returned to the entrance, both the car and her mother were missing.
A D.C. police news release reported that at about 1:11 p.m., Brown walked away from her family at MedStar just as Gaines and her daughter were pulling up. After Gaines’s daughter went inside for the wheelchair, police report, Brown entered the driver’s seat and drove away with Gaines inside the car.
Where was compassion for an ailing mother?
Documents tell us how it ended.
The car, with Brown at the wheel and Gaines in the passenger seat, was observed traveling at high speed when it failed to negotiate a turn at Sixth and D streets NW and collided with a barrier outside the office of the U.S. attorney. Keys in hand, Brown tried to flee on foot and was caught by the police, while Gaines was found unconscious in the front passenger seat. Police provided first aid until emergency medical services arrived to transport her to George Washington University Hospital.
How did Gaines and Brown end up crossing paths? The answer gets at an important part of this story.
This account is also drawn from court documents: Around the time Gaines and her daughter were arriving at the rehab center, police were responding to a 911 call from a woman screaming and asking for help before the line disconnected. Police and emergency medical technicians went to the apartment that the call was made from, where they were met by Brown and her mother. Brown stared at them but didn’t respond to their questions.
Brown’s mother said that her daughter, as summarized by court documents, had “gone out and gotten some sort of drug while out with a man she met on Instagram.” Brown’s father indicated “she had been acting crazy for about three days,” court documents state.
Emergency medical technicians found that Brown’s blood pressure and heart rate were too high for her age and transported her by ambulance to MedStar, where she arrived 12:40 p.m.
After determining that Brown was not a crime victim, the police left the emergency room around 12:46 p.m. That’s where Brown remained until she walked away from her family.
In D.C. Superior Court on Friday, I saw Brown at the defendant’s table in an orange jumpsuit. And I heard Det. Roberto Torres describe the events surrounding the carjacking and Brown’s arrest. Missing was Leslie Marie Gaines.
At the end of the preliminary hearing, the court found that Brown’s actions were “incredibly dangerous” and that she must be “held without bond” until the next hearing. Still, where’s the justice?
I’m not talking about the carjacking charge against Brown; we’ll see what happens with that. I’m thinking of the words of Brown’s mother and father about their daughter going out with a man to get some kind of drug, and her acting crazy, and ask why, if the parent’s representations are true, should I rethink the drug trade, as reformers want me to? This city is full of people in the drug supply chain. And this city is also full of innocent people who end up on the receiving end of behaviors fueled by the poison that drug dealers push.
Ah, but those sellers are likely to be men and women experiencing poverty and selling drugs for survival. Rethink, I’m told.
Instead, I’ll think of Gaines strapped in her daughter’s car. Think of the shoplifting, car thefts, robberies and turf wars plaguing our streets, all fueled by drug-seeking.
Mercy demands we think of all that, not just the dealer and the users. But we don’t give a second thought to people like Leslie Marie Gaines — “an angel on earth,” her sister Erica Gaines called her — who day in and out fall victim to people with substance use disorders. It’s a torment so commonplace that it is ignored — until a car smashes into a wall and an innocent soul is pronounced dead.
Pray Leslie Marie Gaines is at peace. But where’s the justice?
Washington, D.C
The director of the Congressional Budget Office—known for its gloomy national debt data—is very optimistic that a crisis will be avoided entirely | Fortune
Dr Phillip Swagel is an optimist, both by nature and when he looks at the U.S. economy.
This fact is perhaps at odds with what one might assume: Swagel is the director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the nonpartisan agency that offers independent budgetary and economic analysis to Congress.
Very often—an inevitable occupational hazard—the subject of national debt and the interest the U.S. Treasury pays to maintain is its central focus. The numbers are eye-watering: Public debt stands at more than $39 trillion. The interest expense on that borrowing now exceeds $1 trillion a year. Indeed, the latest budget update from the CBO highlights that the government—according to preliminary estimates—paid out nearly $530 billion between October 2025, when the fiscal year starts, and March 2026. This equates to more than $88 billion in interest payments a month, or more than $22 billion a week.
The CBO’s figures are routinely cited by policymakers, think tanks, and lobbyists as alarming evidence that the U.S. needs to find a more sustainable fiscal path or risk dire straits.
Swagel doesn’t subscribe to the notion that the U.S. will face a crisis of its own making. His justification is simple: He was at the Treasury during the 2008 financial crisis, and joined the CBO months before the COVID pandemic began. He has watched as the U.S. economy, seemingly against all odds, has clawed its way out of economic crises before.
That’s not to say Swagel isn’t a staunch advocate of setting the U.S. on a more sustainable fiscal path—rather, he trusts the people in power to do so when the time comes.
Why the optimism?
Among those concerned about national debt are notable names: JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, and Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio. Tesla CEO Elon Musk is also worried about federal spending and has endorsed a plan floated by Berkshire Hathaway founder Warren Buffett that would render members of Congress ineligible for reelection if they allow deficits to exceed 3% of GDP.
On the other hand, optimistic economists suggest that, despite the value of the debt, it’s not actually an issue: the bond market is holding steady, indicating a reliable market of buyers. Likewise, the U.S.’s own central bank buys huge swaths of the debt, meaning, in the simplest of layman’s terms, the economy can essentially print its own money. There are holes in this argument, not least the fact that Fed chairman nominee Kevin Warsh has suggested he would like to reduce the Fed’s balance sheet and may therefore be less inclined to finance borrowing.
Swagel’s positive outlook doesn’t rely on the argument that a crisis hasn’t happened yet, so therefore it never will: “[My optimism] is rooted in my experience,” Swagel tells Fortune in an exclusive interview in Washington D.C. “First being at Treasury during the financial crisis and seeing very difficult times and the country coming together with an effective response—not saying it’s perfect, lots of controversy—but it was effective.”
“The second thing is policymakers are smart, they’re thoughtful. Interacting with members of Congress makes me optimistic. I know you read about all the squabbles … I’m completely aware of this, but the policymakers that are thinking about these things are thoughtful and effective. Not necessarily always effective at passing legislation, but that’s part of our political system, it was set up to make it difficult ot pass legislation.”
Decisions on the horizon
Swagel’s optimism that Congress will be pushed into action will be tested sooner rather than later, likely at some point in the next six years, he told Fortune. This is partly due to the fact that, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) both Social Security and Medicare will become insolvent within that time period.
“Making progress to address the fiscal trajectory would be a positive for the U.S. economy,” Swagel said. “Credible steps would lead to lower interest rates that would make the subsequent adjustment easier, there is a reward to virtue. It’s a positive thing, we can’t go on [with] the scolding narrative. My sense is that members of Congress understand the fiscal situation, it’s not that everyone single one has looked at our one-pager of numbers and understands the debt to the third decimal point, but they understand something needs to be done.”
“It doesn’t have to be done immediately, but at some point reasonably soon.”
Swagel is of the opinion that bond investors haven’t increased risk premiums not because they’re not worried about a fiscal crisis, but because they have priced in preventative action from Congress—in his mind “a vote of confidence that my optimism is not misplaced.”
“As a country, we face up to these problems. It’s not happening now, I’m not sure it’s going to happen in the rest of this year or even the next year, or the next two years. But we will face up to it, and the market in some sense expects us to, because otherwise interest rates would be higher,” he explained.
The Cheesecake Factory
The role of the CBO, to some extent, is to provide policymakers with their options if and when they do choose to take action on federal deficits. It’s a menu not unlike the Cheesecake Factory, Swagel says: Large, inclusive of a range of modifications and options, and delivered without judgement.
“Right now it’s maybe a pick three, and you’re looking at a six or seven course menu,” joked Caleb Quakenbush, director of fiscal policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, in an interview with Fortune. “The longer you delay, the more you’re gonna have to add to your tab, and those options become more expensive.”
Indeed, economists and analysts aren’t necessarily worried about the absolute level of government debt, rather the debt-to-GDP ratio. Depending on whom you ask, the debt-to-GDP ratio stands at around 122% of GDP at present. This measure demonstrates an economy’s spending versus its growth, and the risk associated with lending to a nation that isn’t growing fast enough to handle its spending. To rebalance that ratio, an economy could either cut spending or increase growth—the latter being by far the less painful option.
The growth option is becoming less feasible, Michael Peterson, CEO of fiscal think tank the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, told Fortune in an exclusive interview: “I think it requires government action because we’ve waited so long. We’ve added so many trillions, and the current deficit is so big at 6% that the level of growth you would need really exceeds what is feasible.
“Growth needs to be a part of it, but it’s sort of a vicious cycle. The longer we delay, the more debt we have, the slower growth is going to be. The more we get this under control, I think the greater optimism there is, interest rates go down, more growth comes from that. It’s sort of a virtuous or vicious cycle depending on your policy response.”
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.
-
Culture38 minutes agoWhat America’s Main Characters Tell Us
-
Lifestyle44 minutes agoWe beef with the Pope and admire the Stanley Cup : Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!
-
Technology56 minutes agoThis pasta sauce wants to record your family
-
World1 hour agoMassive 7.5-magnitude earthquake hits off Japanese coast, tsunami alert issued
-
Politics1 hour agoUS military announces another deadly strike against ‘narco-terrorists’
-
Health1 hour agoCancer tied to woman’s vaping habit since age 15 as she’s now given just months to live
-
Sports1 hour agoPolice report details Zachariah Branch’s arrest days before NFL Draft over sidewalk incident
-
Technology1 hour agoBMW puts humanoid robots to work building EVs