Washington, D.C
White House targeted in ‘swatting’ attack while Joe Biden is away
The White House on Monday became the latest victim of a growing US problem of “swatting”: the summoning of large numbers of law enforcement personnel and other first responders to a hoax emergency incident.
Multiple Washington DC fire and ambulance crews rushed to the White House following an emergency call that was received at 7.03am, a spokesperson for District of Columbia fire and emergency medical services said. Joe Biden was not at the residence, and the call was later traced to a fake number.
The spokesperson said a “significant” number of personnel had reached the site when the call, which reported a fire and a person trapped, was determined to be false a little more than 15 minutes after it was received.
The Secret Service referred requests for comment to the DC emergency services. CNN reported details of the dispatch radio call reporting a fire at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, made at 7.04am, one minute after the phone call.
The criminal act of swatting has become prevalent in recent weeks, with an increasing number of politicians, judges and other prominent officials targeted.
Among the most serious incidents was eight days ago when police responded to a false call of a shooting at the Washington DC home of Tanya Chutkan, the judge overseeing the federal election subversion case against Donald Trump.
The Metropolitan police department quickly figured the call was a hoax, but not before dispatching several units to the residence of Chutkan, who has received several other threats since being assigned to Trump’s case last year.
Chutkan was the second judge in charge of a Trump trial to have been targeted this month. A bomb threat against Arthur Engoron, the presiding judge in the former president’s civil financial fraud trial in New York, was also considered to be a swatting incident.
Other recent prank incidents have been aimed at three members of Congress, the Florida Republican senator Rick Scott, the Georgia Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Maine’s secretary of state Shenna Bellows, who removed Trump’s name from the 2024 presidential ballot last month for inciting the January 6 insurrection.
Merrick Garland, the attorney general, described swatting as “deeply disturbing” in remarks before a private meeting with justice department officials this month to address violent crime.
“These threats of violence are unacceptable. They threaten the fabric of our democracy,” he said.
Biden is set to return to the White House on Monday afternoon after spending much of the weekend at Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland, and attending a Martin Luther King Jr Day commemoration in Philadelphia on Monday morning.
The Associated Press contributed reporting
Jaemi Theatre Company, a new AAPI-led theater company based in Washington, DC, officially launches this spring with its inaugural project, BAAL, a staged reading at the 2026 Atlas INTERSECTIONS Festival on Friday, March 6, at 7:30 PM at the Atlas Performing Arts Center.
Founded by Artistic Director Youri Kim and Artistic Associate Juyoung Koh, Jaemi Theatre was born out of a recognition that DC, one of the largest theater markets in the United States, had no company dedicated to centering Asian stories or led by Asian artists. The name “Jaemi” comes from a Korean word meaning “fun,” and in its Sino-Korean form, 在美, means both “to live in America” and “to live in beauty.”
“I kept hearing from companies that it was hard to find Asian actors, and I heard it so often that I started to believe it myself,” said Youri Kim. “But through building community with other AAPI theater artists in the area, I realized the talent was always here. What was missing was the infrastructure to connect us. Jaemi is that infrastructure.”
BAAL, an original work written by Youri Kim (not to be confused with Bertolt Brecht’s 1918 play of the same name), is a body horror drama set in a dystopian city where the air is toxic and birth is outlawed. In the city of Baal, citizens are forced into an impossible choice: terminate or sacrifice a family member. The play uses the language of biological mutation and bodily control to examine how systems of power decide who gets to exist and on what terms, questions that resonate deeply within AAPI and immigrant communities navigating structures that seek to define, contain, and assimilate them. The staged reading features a cast of seven and an original sound design.
BAAL plays as a staged reading Friday, March 6, 2026, at 7:30 PM in Lab Theatre II at the Atlas Performing Arts Center (1333 H St NE, Washington, DC). Tickets ($29.75) are available online.
Looking ahead, Jaemi Theatre plans to host a founding party and fundraiser this fall, and will launch an Asian Writer Play Submission program in the second half of 2026. The program will pair playwrights from selected Asian countries with Asian playwrights based in DC for a workshop development process, building a pipeline that connects diasporic voices across borders.
For more information, visit yourikimdirector.com or follow @jaemitheatre on Instagram.
About Jaemi Theatre Company
Jaemi Theatre is a newly formed AAPI-led performance initiative based in Washington, DC, co-founded by Artistic Director Youri Kim and Artistic Associate Juyoung Koh. “Jaemi” is Korean for “fun” and, in its Sino-Korean form, means “to live in America” and “to live in beauty.” The company creates interdisciplinary performance rooted in diasporic imagination and radical storytelling. Jaemi is a home for the unfinished and the unassimilated, where performance holds contradiction without needing to resolve it.
Sunday, March 1, 2026 6:36AM
SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — The San Francisco Ballet board has voted to cancel its upcoming performances at the Kennedy Center.
The company is scheduled for a four-day run in Washington D.C. in May.
Petition urges SF Ballet to cancel Kennedy Center tour stop as company opens 2026 season
Last year, Pres. Donald Trump overhauled the Kennedy Center’s board, including naming himself the chairman.
That led several artists to cancel scheduled performances.
A statement from SF Ballet says the group “looks forward to performing for Washington, D.C. audiences in the future.”
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At 97, Veteran Harley Wero wasn’t up for a trip to the nation’s capital, so volunteers from the Western North Dakota honor flight brought the trip to him. Wero, his wife Muriel and their daughter Jennifer got to experience Washington, DC, without ever leaving their home.
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