The D.C. Council is set to decide Tuesday whether a man who spent 27 years behind bars for murder should serve on a city commission that drafts and modifies criminal sentencing guidelines — a nomination that is likely to spark heated debate.
Washington, D.C
Should a man convicted of murder help set D.C. sentencing guidelines?
Castón, who did not respond to requests for comment, was released from prison last year, nearly three decades after he killed an 18-year-old man in a 1994 parking lot shooting. In 2021, while still a prisoner, he was elected to the D.C. Advisory Neighborhood Commission, becoming the first incarcerated person voted into public office in the city.
Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D), who nominated Castón to the 12-member sentencing commission, said in an interview that the panel expressed interest in having a previously incarcerated person join the group. Linden Fry, the commission’s executive director, said members began discussing the addition of a person who had been incarcerated after they learned “how other sentencing commissions in the United States have added returned citizen members.”
“A formerly incarcerated, justice-involved individual can offer a relevant and unique point of view unavailable to other members,” Fry said.
But Matthew M. Graves, the U.S. attorney for the District, whose office prosecutes felony cases in the city, questioned Castón’s integrity in a letter to Mendelson. Graves said the nominee would likely advocate for lesser sentencing ranges that would make it even harder for prosecutors to secure prison time for people convicted of firearms violations in the nation’s capital.
At a council hearing in December, Castón said, “If confirmed, I would be a fierce advocate for sentences that balance accountability, public well-being and human dignity.”
The debate over Castón is yet another instance of discord among top local officials about how to ensure public safety and make the criminal justice system more efficient in the District, which has been enduring spikes in violence, including homicides. More people were slain in D.C. in 2023 than in any year since 1997. The Bowser administration, Graves’s office and some judges repeatedly and publicly pointed fingers of blame at one another last year over aspects of the city’s crime crisis.
Minimum and maximum sentences for crimes are established by District law, and D.C. Superior Court judges impose prison time within those ranges. In deciding what a particular sentences should be, judges rely on a manual containing elaborate formulas for calculating an appropriate prison term based partly on a defendant’s criminal background and the specifics of the offense.
The resulting guidelines are advisory, and judges can depart from them — although data published by the commission last year showed that judges’ sentences hewed to the recommendations in nearly 97 percent of felony cases. The sentencing commission governs the manual and any revisions to it.
Castón would be the D.C. Council’s voting representative on the commission. But whether a man with a murder conviction should be part of that process has prompted debate among top D.C. officials, revealing the depths of ideological fissures among some of them. Council member Brooke Pinto (D-Ward 2), chairwoman of the council’s public safety committee, said she would not support Castón’s nomination, suggesting he lacks expertise in “the nuanced landscape of our D.C. sentencing guidelines.”
After Graves outlined his reservations in a letter, Mendelson responded by expressing support for Castón and accusing Graves of blaming the sentencing commission for problems created by the U.S. attorney’s office.
In the days leading up to Tuesday’s vote, Graves and Mendelson sparred in letters over the merits of Castón’s nomination. Gregg Pemberton, the chairman of the police union, also opposed the nomination, while a D.C. police spokesman said the department would work with all members of the commission.
Nazgol Ghandnoosh, a voting member of the commission who was appointed by the Superior Court chief judge, said Castón would add key insight to the group.
“Trying to identify problems with this nomination is completely misguided in terms of having meaningful conversations about what to do about crime,” she said. Ghandnoosh is the co-director of research at the Sentencing Project, a group that advocates to “minimize imprisonment.”
Asked about Castón’s vision for criminal justice and sentencing, Mendelson acknowledged that he did not probe Castón’s positions, saying he was primarily focused on his background as a formerly incarcerated person.
Castón, who has advocated for restorative justice and prison reform, has also done consulting and work with criminal justice organizations such as the Justice Policy Institute, which advocates against mass incarceration and seeks to reduce disparities in the justice system. But Mendelson disagreed that Castón’s appointment as the council’s voice on the commission would be a statement on the direction the council hoped to take criminal justice reform in the city.
“It’s not a policy position but a perspective,” Mendelson said.
Graves, in a Jan. 2 letter to Mendelson, raised questions about Castón’s past. He pointed to a 2021 decision by a Superior Court judge to deny his petition for early release under a D.C. law meant to give fresh chances to people who have been imprisoned for many years. The judge wrote that the court was “highly troubled by a specific characteristic that has been displayed consistently throughout his post-conviction history that seems at odds with any claim to integrity.”
Castón claimed innocence before he accepted responsibility for the murder. Mendelson, in a memo to the Council on Monday, acknowledged that Castón “pursued an innocence claim which was denied repeatedly because it was false.” But Mendelson highlighted a judge’s finding that Castón also made “enormous strides” while incarcerated.
In his letter, Graves blamed the commission for inadequate sentencing outcomes in the District. In 2022, according to Graves, 57 percent of people sentenced on his office’s most commonly charged firearms offense — carrying a pistol without a license — were sentenced to probation. An additional 30 percent received relatively short jail terms.
“These outcomes are a feature, not a bug, of the District’s Guidelines,” Graves said in the letter.
At a Dec. 5 breakfast with the council, Graves expounded on his problems with the existing sentencing guidelines and called for a “wholesale” review of the manual. In that meeting, he specifically criticized a 2018 change by the commission, when members eased sentencing guidelines for people with prior felony convictions who are found guilty of illegal gun possession.
“The fact that this is so defense-friendly really isn’t surprising if you look at the composition on [the commission],” Graves said at the breakfast. “There are voting members on that commission who are explicitly associated with organizations that are in the decarceral movement. … If people are fine with that, that’s fine to have these guidelines. But if they want to change, then you have to look at who are the voting members on the commission?”
Mendelson said it is misleading for Graves to blame guidelines that have been around for two decades.
“Focusing on the sentencing commission is turning the spotlight somewhere else,” Mendelson said, pointing to Graves’s prosecution rate. The U.S. attorney’s office declined to prosecute 56 percent of cases in D.C. in fiscal year 2023, which ended Sept. 30. Graves has pointed to problems with the city’s crime lab, which went two years without certification in some departments, and court decisions that restrict police actions and make prosecutions in gun cases difficult.
The debate over Castón’s nomination comes as every corner of D.C.’s criminal justice system is under public scrutiny. In respond to rising crime, officials began turning away from progressive strategies enacted in recent years. Instead, Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D), new Police Chief Pamela A. Smith and some lawmakers have cited the need for greater accountability, advocating for tougher sentences for adults and juveniles who commit violent crimes.
WASHINGTON — The Federal Aviation Administration received 12,000 applications in 24 hours after its annual air traffic control hiring window opened Friday, a figure Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy described as record breaking amid the agency’s new campaign to recruit video gamers to the job.
In a post on X over the weekend, Duffy said the 12,000 applications marked “the most in one day since the FAA was created 68 YEARS ago!” He told Fox News in an interview Sunday that 11,000 of those applicants were considered qualified and 8,000 have already been sent a skills test required to move forward in the process.
Duffy specifically credited the Transportation Department’s fresh effort announced earlier this month — just a week ahead of the opening of its hiring window at midnight April 17 — to seek out those who play video games to apply.
“To reach the next generation of air traffic controllers, we need to adapt,” Duffy said in a press release on the new campaign at the time. “This campaign’s innovative communication style and focus on gaming taps into a growing demographic of young adults who have many of the hard skills it takes to be a successful controller.”
The transportation chief told Fox News on Sunday that the idea was sparked by a poll the agency took of students at an FAA academy in Oklahoma City in which all but three of the 250 people randomly surveyed said they were gamers.
“And so we thought, listen, there’s a connection here,” Duffy said. “They problem solve, they are spatially aware, they do multiple things at the same time. It is very reminiscent of what air traffic controllers do.”
Since then, Duffy said the agency has reached out to the community, including with a video appearing to target gamers he posted earlier this month. He called the response the agency has received “remarkable.”
“YOU can be the future of air traffic control,” Duffy said in a post on X earlier this month that included the video ad. “It’s not a GAME, its a CAREER.”
The push comes as the FAA has been plagued with air traffic controller staffing issues for years, a reality that has been amplified amid recent government shutdowns, which leave them working without pay until the matter is resolved.
During the government shutdown last fall, Duffy told CNN in an interview that the FAA was seeing 15 to 20 air traffic controllers retiring a day, up from four before the lapse in funding. He added at the time that the FAA was short “about 1,000 to 2,000” air traffic controllers in general and noted he had embarked on an effort to pay experienced people in the position to stay on the job and not retire.
A report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office released earlier this year found that the number of air traffic controllers in the country has declined by about 6% over the last 10 years. The GAO cited government shutdowns in 2013 and 2018-2019, as well as the COVID-19 pandemic, as contributing factors in the decline, noting both disrupted training.
In the report, the GAO also noted that there has been a 10% increase in the number of flights that rely on the air traffic control system over the same period, exacerbating the issue.
President Donald Trump’s 2027 budget proposal to Congress includes a request of a $481 million increase to “continue to support the Administration’s air traffic controller hiring surge, as well as enhancements to aviation safety, commercial space operations, and updates to FAA’s outdated telecommunications systems,” according to a fact sheet from the White House.
There are a number of prerequisites to qualify to be an air traffic controller, including being under 31 years old and being able to “Speak English clearly enough to be understood over communications equipment,” according to the FAA website.
Those interested must also pass a medical exam, as well as the agency’s air traffic pre-employment tests. The FAA notes that less than 10% of all applicants meet all of the requirements and are accepted into the training program.
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).
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