Washington
DC Council chairman optimistic about stadium deal — but hurdles remain
The chairman of the D.C. Council said he believes the Council will approve the deal to bring the Washington Commanders back to D.C. — but it’s going to take longer than the team and the mayor have agreed to.
After months of delays, Mayor Muriel Bowser sent her 2026 budget to the Council. It includes funding for the stadium development and her 2025 supplemental budget, which includes $400 million in cuts imposed by Congress.
Since the announcement that Bowser and Commanders owner Josh Harris reached a deal to bring the team back to D.C., the big question has been: Will the D.C. Council approve the deal to spend more than $1 billion of D.C. taxpayer money?
On Thursday, Council Chairman Phil Mendelson — who has opposed public funding for the stadium — said a stadium deal will likely be approved.
“Let me be clear. I think that we, I think that ultimately, the Council will agree with the stadium. But I think that we can make the deal better,” he said. “It’s what the Council has done with every stadium proposal in the past. But this all takes time. We don’t even have the documents concerning the stadium.”
Mendelson warned there are still some obstacles, with the first being timing: The deal signed by the mayor and the team calls for Council approval by July 15 or the Commanders can pull out.
Mendelson said he doesn’t see a way the Council can approve the Commanders deal — and the budgets — until late July or early August.
“I think the July 15 deadline, which was negotiated without any collaboration or discussion with the Council, is going to be very difficult,” he said. “The members met yesterday to discuss what the budget schedule would look like, and that’s going to be difficult.”
Mendelson also expressed concerns about the financial impact of the deal for taxpayers, but he is optimistic those can be worked out.
“I have found the Commanders to be very cooperative, and they want to get this deal done, and we want to get this deal done,” Mendelson said.
The Commanders deal is far from the biggest issue facing D.C. residents in the budgets just submitted by the mayor. Both budgets will include hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts, including about $400 million in cuts imposed by Congress that have to be made before October.
Mendelson has a sober warning to D.C. residents about what those cuts will mean: “I think they should be bracing for bad news, but I don’t know exactly what that looks like. And when I say bad news, that there will be service reductions. There’ll be contracts frozen and probably some furloughs.”
The Council plans to hold public hearings on both the stadium deal and the budget cuts in coming weeks.
If the District misses that July 15 deadline to get the Commanders deal approved, the team and the District could agree to extend that deadline, or the team could opt to restart negotiations with Maryland or Virginia.
On September 11, 2025, after 11 years at the Washington Post as an editor and columnist, I was fired via email.
In the aftermath of the Charlie Kirk killing, I did what I have always done— and was expected to do — as a public voice and columnist on race, gender, and culture: I commented on America’s racial double standards in public discourse when it comes to political violence. You can read my posts below.
And then this post of mine:
The very next day, I was fired from my job at the Washington Post without so much as a conversation.
According to the termination letter from the Post, the company cited these two Bluesky posts, claimed that I disparaged white men, accused me of ‘gross misconduct’, and that my Bluesky posts “potentially endanger[ed] the physical safety of our staff”.
You can read the letter for yourself here.
In October, along with the Washington Post Guild and the Washington-Baltimore News Guild, we filed a grievance against the Post, challenging the termination.
So, I have some updates…
The arbitration hearing will be this Thursday, June 4, in Washington, D.C.
As the last remaining Black full-time staff columnist in the Washington Post’s Opinions section, I was very aware of what my firing represented for diversity in newsrooms.
While newsroom diversity is absolutely critical, it is not the only principle at stake. I am fighting for journalists’ rights to do their jobs, to comment on matters of public concern without fear of censorship, retaliation, or political pressure.
And this is a battle well worth having.
I am thankful for the support of the Washington Post Guild, my lawyers at the Washington Baltimore News Guild, as well as Norman Eisen and the legal support from the Democracy Defenders Fund.
And of course, I am deeply grateful to my readers, followers, friends, mentors, and the industry peers who have supported me throughout my career and through what has been one of the most personally and professionally challenging periods of my life.
The stakes are high, but I’m ready.
Let’s go.
-Karen
Jordan Selesnick won the Regional Championship at SCG CON Washington DC with Azorius Momo on Sunday.
Creatures (25)
Lands (21)
In a field packed with Izzet Prowess and Mono-Green Landfall, Selesnick put the power of Azorius Momo on display — proving the power of strong metagaming and mulligan decisions. Selesnick regularly dug for better opening hands in tight matchups, allowing his deck to have starts similar to those in Modern as opposed to Standard. After an 8-1 start on Day 1, Selesnick cruised to the No. 1 seed in the Top 8 with a record of 12-1-2.
Once in the Top 8, Selesnick only dropped a single game in route to a dominant performance. He defeated Stephen Snelson, on Izzet Spellementals, 2-1 in the quarters before clean 2-0 wins against Alexander Kans, on Selesnya Aggro, and Matt Xu, on Mono-Green Landfall.
Selesnick showed off both types of powerful draws the Momo deck can have in the finals, blinking a Quantum Riddler into play on Turn 2 in Game 1, and landing a copied Sage of the Skies on Turn 2 in Game 2. With the fast starts and utility offered from Starfield Shepherd, Selesnick had no problem navigating the mid-games for fast wins facing down strong starts from Xu.
Creatures (20)
Lands (26)
Selesnick took home $20,000 and the title of champion, while Xu earned $10,000. The Top 32 finishers earned invites to the upcoming Pro Tour in Amsterdam, though Selesnick and Xu also punched their tickets to the Magic World Championship.
Izzet Prowess made up almost 25 percent of the 1,198 players on Day 1, followed by Four-Color Control at 10 percent, thanks to its strong showing in the most recent Regional Championships. Mono-Green Landfall was next at just under nine percent, while Mardu Discard and Dimir Excruciator rounded out the Top 5 decks.
Day 2 consisted of 285 players that reached 18 match points on Day 1. See how the archetypes converted below.
View the Top 8 decklists from the Regional Championship. For all the decklists from the event and final standings check out the Melee page for the tournament.
SCG CON will be back in action next in Las Vegas on June 26-28.
LONGVIEW, Wash. (KPTV/Gray News) – Officials say they have found the remains and identified all of the missing workers following a chemical vat implosion at the Nippon Dynawave paper mill on Tuesday.
The Cowlitz County Coroner’s Office released the names of those killed, bringing the death toll to 11:
- 52-year-old Gilbert Bernal of Kelso, Oregon.
- 29-year-old Tyler Covington of Castle Rock, Oregon.
- 27-year-old Brad Covington of Castle Rock, Oregon.
- 48-year-old Robert Wilson of Clatskanie, Oregon.
- 54-year-old Dale Miller of Portland, Oregon.
- 35-year-old Jared Ammons of Longview, Washington.
- 38-year-old Braydon Finkas of Cathlamet, Washington.
- 26-year-old Clinton Doran of Kelso, Oregon.
- 51-year-old John Forsberg of Longview, Washington.
- 58-year-old Norman Barlow of Vancouver, Washington.
- Dillon Miller, taken to a Portland hospital; coroner has no other information.
Officials say a 900,000-gallon tank containing a highly destructive chemical called white liquor imploded at the facility just after 7:15 a.m.
Roughly 600,000 gallons of the substance rushed through work areas at the plant on Tuesday when the tank ruptured.
Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson called it “the deadliest industrial tragedy in modern Washington state history.”
Multiple people, including a firefighter, were injured and taken to area hospitals for treatment following the implosion. Some of those injured were also brought to the Oregon Burn Center.
Investigators were looking into what caused the tank to implode in the first place and whether there’s a risk of it happening again.
The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board said it would begin an investigation into the implosion after the recovery efforts are concluded.
Officials said some of the chemical had made its way into the Columbia River and they have received reports of dead fish near the site’s spillways.
The Washington State Department of Ecology and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency were monitoring air and water quality and working to assess any other environmental impacts.
Copyright 2026 KPTV via Gray Local Media, Inc. All rights reserved.
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