Washington
These 2 media figures spark a press freedom debate in Washington state Legislature
Former KOMO TV reporter Jonathan Choe, left, and former Fox TV reporter Brandi Kruse pushed Washington state Legislature to change its press access rules.
Courtesy of Jonathan Choe and Brandi Kruse
When the Trump administration announced in February that it would handpick the reporters who get access to the White House — stripping that power from the century-old White House Correspondents’ Association — the association of journalists condemned the move as tearing “the independence of a free press in the United States,” declaring that “in a free country, leaders must not be able to choose their own press corps.”
Yet, just eight days later, Washington state’s own Capitol Correspondents Association willingly chose to give up its own influence over which reporters get access to the Legislature, handing that gatekeeping role solely to the same legislators they cover.
That decision came after two right-wing former Seattle-area TV reporters — Brandi Kruse and Jonathan Choe — sought media credentials to access certain parts of the state Legislature earlier this year. After their requests were denied, they threatened to sue under the First Amendment.
Faced with a choice of either weathering an expensive lawsuit or endorsing the kind of media figures their guidelines had long excluded, the correspondents association took a third option: Tell the Legislature they would no longer perform the screening role they had for decades.
“We don’t have lawyers,” said association president Jerry Cornfield, a reporter for the Washington State Standard. “We chose not to litigate on behalf of the Legislature. It’s their building. They ultimately control access to the chambers. We were not going to fight their fight for them.”
In the weeks since, the Washington state Senate has placed temporary new restrictions on reporters and the state House is weighing its own set of rules.
The fight over press access in Washington state illuminates the mounting pressure on legislative correspondent associations nationwide in an increasingly fractured media landscape. Already weakened from years of newsroom cuts, these associations are being challenged from two flanks: from legislators who want to strip away access from traditional reporters and from independent — and often controversial — media figures who want that same access.
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What plays out in Washington state, whether in the Legislature and potentially the courts, could set a precedent for similar battles across the country.
“Now that there are so many independent journalists out there, politicians are taking it upon themselves to be the judge of who is and isn’t a journalist based on whether they like the political slant of the publication,” said Seth Stern, director of advocacy for the Freedom of the Press Foundation, a nonprofit that advocates for journalists and whistle-blowers.
Blurred lines
Kruse and Choe have broken multiple stories using journalist tools like public records, but their opinionated and aggressive approach often targets populations that conventional journalists sometimes treat sympathetically — unauthorized immigrants, transgender people and other reporters.
For example, where many reporters use the phrase “gender-affirming care” when reporting on the debate around transgender health care, Kruse and Choe call it “mutilation.”
But this latest fight has given Kruse and Choe an opportunity to portray themselves as the true defenders of press freedom and the Olympia press corps as abandoning it.
“I never thought I’d see, from the White House down to the statehouse here, politicians dictating the terms about who gets in and who doesn’t,” Choe told InvestigateWest.
Cornfield argues that the correspondent association was never truly a “gatekeeper.” The ultimate power to choose who gets allowed in the chambers had always rested with the Legislature.
Yet for a half-century, the Legislature had left credentialing decisions up to the press corps. It works the same way in Idaho and Oregon.
Oregon Capital Chronicle editor Julia Shumway, president of the Oregon Legislative Correspondents Association, wrote in an X post last year that their own capitol credentialing processes were crucial so “activists with cell phones and no ethics or standards don’t get to masquerade as reporters.”
In Idaho, a conservative think tank called the Idaho Freedom Foundation launched its own media outlet in 2010, naming it the Idaho Reporter, as a way to get press passes in the Legislature. It was Idaho’s Capitol Correspondents Association that rejected that ploy.
But as the media landscape has changed, these standards have become trickier to enforce.
Until 2009, Washington state’s Capitol Correspondents Association only offered credentials to reporters who worked for newspapers and licensed TV or radio stations. But with the growth of new media outlets, legislative newsletters and reporting nonprofits, the definition had to change.
“It is important that a line be established between professional journalism and political or policy work,” the state’s Capitol Correspondents Association’s updated guidelines said. “Blurring that line would raise questions about the motives of everyone in the press corps, and risk having the Legislature revoke or restrict the access we have maintained in the public interest for many years.”
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That standard required journalists seeking press passes to be working for an entity that is “doing news for the sake of news alone,” specifically excluding someone who works for a “think tank’s blog.”
That requirement appeared to exclude Choe, who’s been covering homelessness for the Discovery Institute, a conservative think tank that got its start by arguing that a divine intelligence was behind the origin of life.
Choe’s coverage has often been controversial in the Northwest. He has been accused of antagonizing — even getting into a physical altercation — with the left-wing protesters he frequently covers.
He was ousted as a KOMO TV news reporter after, without station approval, he produced an upbeat livestream and photo montage of a Proud Boys rally, a far-right organization that has brawled with far-left militants on the streets of Seattle.
Now unshackled from a broadcast news sensibility, enough of Choe’s videos have violated TikTok community standards, he said, that he’s been permanently banned from the platform.
“My content wasn’t brand-safe enough,” Choe said.
But Choe insists he’s still a journalist, pointing out that he’s also a freelancer for right-wing outlets like Daily Wire and Newsmax.
By contrast, when Kruse is accused of having strayed from traditional journalistic ethics prohibiting political activism, she repeatedly insists she’s not a journalist.
In November 2021, Kruse quit her reporter job at Seattle’s Fox 13 to launch her own podcast, telling her audience that she couldn’t effectively do her job when she “had to balance everything I said and did and wrote against this range of mainstream considerations.”
Less than two years later, Kruse not only endorsed Republican gubernatorial candidate Dave Reichert last year, she estimates that she drove about 6,000 miles around the state to speak at his rallies. She estimates she’s been paid to speak at 10 Lincoln Day dinners, the annual fundraisers for local Republican parties.
Brandi Kruse has become an outspoken political activist, including whipping up support for a string of initiatives aimed at reversing laws passed by state Democratic legislators.
Courtesy of Brandi Kruse
She’s officially an ambassador of Future 42, the right-wing nonprofit that sponsors a segment on a “mutually agreed upon topic” each week of her podcast, though she said they don’t have a say over her show’s content.
The Olympia correspondent association’s guidelines, however, specifically exclude would-be reporters “involved with a party, campaign or lobbying organization” from being accredited as a reporter.
But Kruse maintains that being open about her biases actually makes her more ethical than traditional media outlets.
“What’s worse?” Kruse said. “Bias in favor of conservatives and openly admitting it, or having a media press corps that’s biased in favor of the party that’s in power and not admitting it?”
‘Not ideal for anyone’
Two years ago, Kruse reported that Choe was being excluded from some press events, in part because the governor’s office was using the correspondent association’s guidelines to make its own access decisions.
So this year, Choe said, he teamed up with Kruse to take a “preemptive strike” and hire a “high-powered law firm” to challenge the association’s criteria.
After the association decided to simply let the Legislature develop its own standard instead, officials in Olympia scrambled to make new rules. In the Senate, effectively anyone could now get a press pass and sit at the press table, so long as they filled out a form online to identify themselves as a reporter.
But to get access to the Senate’s wings — a crucial setting for journalists to connect with senators — reporters had to secure explicit permission from Republicans to report on the Republican side, and from Democrats to report on the Democrats’ side.
Aaron Wasser, communications director for the Washington Senate Democrats, said that the Senate didn’t even want the job.
“This is something that got dumped in our lap during probably the busiest time of the session,” Wasser said. “As we were passing the rule on the floor, Jerry [Cornfield] was right there, and I’m like, ‘There’s still time to take it back, Jerry!’ … This is not ideal for anyone.”
Some reporters with experience covering the Legislature expressed concerns about the change, but most in the media saw little impact from the new rules. Legislative leaders gave the entire existing Olympia press corps a blanket pass to each side of the aisle.
But when Choe tried to test the new rules last week, holding a new pink press pass — issued by the Legislature to grant him partial access — Wasser himself blocked Choe from attending a Senate Democratic press conference in the wings.
“You’re not a reporter, Jonathan,” Wasser said on video recorded by Choe. “Good luck with your fearmongering.”
The interaction became fodder for a story in multiple conservative publications. Since then, Wasser has acknowledged that he’d screwed up and said Choe is welcome to get access to the chamber as long as he gives a heads-up to legislative staff.
“We’re just kind of trying to figure this out as we go,” Wasser said.
Senate Democratic communications staffer Aaron Wasser regrets his confrontation with Jonathan Choe, where Choe was excluded from a press conference held in the Democratic wing of the Washington state Senate.
Video screenshot
Both Kruse and Choe were officially credentialed to report on press conferences on both sides of the Senate last week.
Bernard Dean, chief clerk of the Washington state House of Representatives, said that reporters who’ve been previously issued press passes have continued to be allowed to operate in the House, but that a formal credentialing process still needs to be developed.
“It does put us in an awkward position of determining who is press,” Dean said. “It’s why multiple states throughout the country rely on the capitol correspondents’ position to issue those credentials.”
Shumway, the Oregon Capital Chronicle editor, has seen how having a Legislature control who can cover them creates problems. When reporting on the Arizona Legislature, she watched lawmakers craft bespoke new rules intended to cut out certain longtime reporters who caught the ire of powerful politicians.
“We also had them inviting absolute cranks — from outlets like the Gateway Pundit — who do not do any kind of fact-based reporting, who were standing alongside us and heckling the actual journalists covering the Legislature,” Shumway said.
If there needs to be access rules, Kruse argued that they should be about decorum or behavior, not about a definition of journalist.
“I would argue that I need more First Amendment protections than a mainstream journalist does in Olympia,” Kruse said. “Whose speech would the government be more eager to suppress: my speech, or a mainstream journalist’s speech? Probably the speech that’s the harshest on them.”
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Free speech rules
At the national level, it’s mainstream journalists who’ve had their access rights come under attack. Both Kruse and Choe say the Trump administration was wrong to ban the Associated Press from certain press events because they refused to call the Gulf of Mexico by the name Trump has insisted upon, the “Gulf of America.”
Last week, a federal district court ruled that Trump had violated the Associated Press’s constitutional rights.
“What is not allowed is viewpoint discrimination,” said Stern, the press freedom advocate. “Journalists can’t be selected for exclusion because of what they say or because of their political slant.”
For the last five years, legal battles have unfolded in multiple states over this issue.
In 2021, the Alaska Governor’s Office settled a media access lawsuit from a nontraditional media personality, a former state Senate candidate who had been denied access to the traditional media’s rotating press pool.
On the other hand, that same year, a 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals case determined that the governor of Wisconsin could, in fact, seek to exclude those with “entanglement with special interest groups, or those that engage in advocacy or lobbying” from press briefings.
But trying to ban journalists who engage in advocacy can get constitutionally dicey fast, Stern said. After all, many newspapers advocate for causes or candidates on their editorial pages. And in the early years of the United States, many newspapers — those that the country’s founders both championed and decried — were explicitly partisan organs of political parties.
“The journalists that the First Amendment was originally intended to protect were not objective by any means,” Stern said. “They were extremely political.”
Lawsuit threats themselves can risk chilling speech. As outspoken as Choe and Kruse have been on the issue, Washington state’s Capitol Correspondents Association has been wary of commenting.
Asked if the current situation was an improvement for press access, Cornfield remained silent for more than 20 seconds before saying he would not address that question on the record, due to ongoing concerns about potential litigation.
“You have more questions, you can keep asking,” Cornfield said. “I’m just going to give you silence.”
InvestigateWest (investigatewest.org) is an independent news nonprofit dedicated to investigative journalism in the Pacific Northwest. A Report for America corps member, Daniel Walters covers democracy and extremism across the region. He can be reached at daniel@investigatewest.org.
This republished story is part of OPB’s broader effort to ensure that everyone in our region has access to quality journalism that informs, entertains and enriches their lives. To learn more, visit opb.org/partnerships.
Washington
Touring Trump’s Washington: How the president is putting his imprint on the nation’s capital
The United States is celebrating its 250th year. And what better way to mark that anniversary than with an American summer staple — a trip to the nation’s capital.
But visitors to Washington will find that the city is undergoing tremendous change, courtesy of President Donald Trump’s takeover makeover.
Since returning to office 17 months ago, Trump has demonstrated a continuing fixation with the District of Columbia. The Republican president has slapped his image and name on buildings, torn down storied structures, altered others, started massive construction projects and deployed armed military personnel.
The traditional tourist sights remain. But with slight detours, an open mind and a critical eye, the ambitious walker can see all the ways the president has pushed to remake the capital.
On the eve of the United States’ birthday, take a trip with The Associated Press across a changing Washington.
A new study found that the National Guard in D.C. has had no effect on violent crime. News4’s Jackie Bensen unpacks it.
First stop: An indefinite National Guard deployment
We start our tour at Union Station and Metro Center, the city’s main transit hubs. Notice the Greco-Roman architecture of the former, the Brutalist design of the latter. Now see the ongoing, indefinite deployment of armed National Guard troops there and in many other parts of the city.
National Guard members from the district and several states have been in the city since August 2025, deployed under an emergency order issued by Trump in what he called a bid to fight crime. Trump has portrayed the deployment as a lifeline for the city. They will be here for most, if not all, of 2026 and are expected to number 5,000 this summer.
FILE – Members of the National Guard walking in the lobby of Union Station in Washington, May 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, file)
It’s not the first time the military has deployed to the capital. Troops were in Washington throughout the Civil War, to quell riots after Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1968 assassination and, famously, hours into the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
But in Trump’s Washington, Guardsmen at street corners and metro stations have become an increasingly normal part of the city’s scenery.
And no one knows when they will leave.
Second stop: Scars left by DOGE
Exit Union Station, take in the view of the Capitol and turn right down Pennsylvania Avenue. There sits a building now synonymous with the Department of Government Efficiency, the Trump administration’s effort to shrink the federal government.
The U.S. Agency for International Development was the first major federal agency targeted by then-DOGE leader Elon Musk in the remake of the federal government, when cost-cutting measures prompted the terminations of tens of thousands of workers. USAID spent billions on humanitarian aid worldwide and was credited with saving millions of lives over time.
By eliminating 90% of foreign aid contracts, the Trump administration effectively cut some $60 billion in funding.
After workers cleared their desks in February 2025, the USAID offices on Pennsylvania Avenue were repurposed for other government uses.
The shuttering of the agency also contributed to a massive increase in unemployment in the region where about one-fifth of the workforce lives.
Many workers still ask: When their lives were upended, what was saved?
FILE – A banner featuring an image of President Donald Trump hangs on the Department of Justice in Washington, Wednesday, May 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
Third stop: Trump’s image staring down
Walking south along any of the numbered streets leads to Constitution Avenue and the National Mall. Banners bearing Trump’s image have adorned the facades of several government buildings over the past 17 months — an uncommon practice for a sitting American president and a highly literal sign of his imprint upon the city.
At the Department of the Interior, his image has equal billing with George Washington on similar banners proclaiming “America’s First” and “America First.”
A mile away, Trump’s face glowers from the storied Department of Justice building, a physical display of Trump’s efforts to exert power over the law enforcement agency that once investigated him. It’s also a striking symbol of the erosion of the department’s tradition of independence from White House control, as the president pushes to prosecute his political adversaries.
Next up: The Reflecting Pool painted ‘American flag blue’
Westward toward the Lincoln Memorial sits the recently repainted Reflecting Pool.
The site has always been a must-see on any tourist’s checklist. But the Reflecting Pool, the scene of historic marches and protests, today also symbolizes Trump’s drive to change Washington.
Trump called the area “filthy” and had workers paint it in a color he has called “American flag blue.” A Washington-based nonprofit that tried to block the move said it undermined the somber tone of the area, which sits near the memorials to Lincoln and to the Vietnam and Korean wars.
Since the makeover, the pool has been fraught with problems, from runaway algae growth to dead ducks and a torn lining. Authorities say vandals have been responsible for some of the problems and arrests have been made. The National Park Service said the liner was intentionally cut with a sharp razor or knife.
Getty Images Getty Images Chipped paint and algae in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool after it was painted blue in Washington, DC, US, on Monday, June 22, 2026. Photographer: Aaron Schwartz/Bloomberg via Getty Images
A walk over the Memorial Bridge across the Potomac River leads directly to the proposed future site of Trump’s 20-story, gold-adorned triumphal arch. Although embroiled in a court battle, like a number of his projects, the arch has been approved by a key federal agency and survey work has begun at the site.
In a city meticulously planned and rich with the symbolism that defines the nation, new construction can unsettle the carefully crafted balance.
The arch, when built, will break up the intentionally designed symbolic sightline between Arlington House, once the home of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, and the Lincoln Memorial, which symbolized the reunification of a divided nation following the Civil War.
Just ahead: The Trump-Kennedy Center
Visible from the site is the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts — known for much of this year as the Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Memorial Center.
Congress named the performing arts venue as a living memorial to Kennedy in 1964, the year after he was assassinated. A law explicitly prohibits its board of trustees from making the center into a memorial to anyone else, and from putting another person’s name on the building’s exterior.
A court decision eventually stripped the center of Trump’s name, but a tarp remains there, obscuring the change.
Getty Images Getty Images A tarp covers the facade of the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC, on June 14, 2026. (Photo by Alex WROBLEWSKI / AFP via Getty Images)
Trump also added his name to the U.S. Institute of Peace, part of a broader series of tributes that has been largely unprecedented for a sitting, living president.
In the middle of it all: A significantly changed White House
No tour would be complete without 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. — the White House. There, gazers can look at the construction site formerly known as the East Wing. It’s now the president’s ballroom-in-waiting as the courts and Congress battle over whether to build it.
The White House has said the $400 million cost would be paid by private donors, but public money — around $1 billion for the entire White House complex, including the ballroom — would be used for security measures. The proposed building has also expanded to a size larger than the rest of the White House. Trump argues the ballroom is necessary for security reasons, and amplified that assertion after the attack on the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in April.
Guests attend a Rose Garden Club dinner hosted by US President Donald Trump (off frame) for American farmers at the White House in Washington, DC, on June 25, 2026. (Photo by Mandel NGAN / AFP via Getty Images)
Not viewable on the tour: the area formerly known as the Rose Garden. Planted by then-first lady Jackie Kennedy, it has been paved over into a patio.
Last stop: Black Lives Matter Plaza no more
Directly north, across Pennsylvania Avenue, is the area of town formerly known as Black Lives Matter Plaza. During Trump’s first term, a more defiant Democratic Mayor Muriel Bowser ordered the painting and naming of the area as a remembrance of the death of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis police.
This combination of images shows Black Lives Matter plaza on 16th Street, NW, near the White House on March 10, 2025, top, as work was beginning to remove signage and markings, and on April 1, 2025, after the work was completed. (AP Photo)
BLM Plaza became a magnet point for years of political activism. Hundreds of protests started, ended or rallied there.
The plaza came down in March 2025 at Bowser’s direction, spurred by threats from Congress to hold the city’s funding. The decision served as an acknowledgment of a major shift in tone under Trump.
That’s the tour, folks. Please enjoy your stay.
Former BYU star, AJ Dybantsa, was selected by the Washington Wizards with the no. 1 overall pick in the 2026 NBA Draft.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Before basketball became such a big part of AJ Dybantsa’s life, he was like any other kid — growing up as a fan of a fictional superhero.
When he was about five, his father bought him a Spider-Man basketball hoop that went on the back of his door.
“I loved Spider-Man growing up. So I just started shooting from my bed with this miniature ball. Then I started playing in the YMCA leagues … ended up falling in love with the game,” Dybantsa said. “So Spider-Man is the reason why I love basketball.”
The Washington Wizards are certainly glad Dybantsa took up the sport and committed himself to it. Two days after taking the 6-foot-9 star out of BYU with the top pick in the NBA draft, the team introduced him Thursday at a hotel overlooking the Potomac River, about 1 1/2 miles south from where the Wizards play their home games.
“Nothing comes easy, but I want to be a piece of the puzzle that is part of the rebuild,” he said. “Obviously, Wizards fans have been waiting for a long time.”
This was the first time the Wizards have picked first in the draft since 2010 when they took John Wall. Dybantsa joins a team that hasn’t won 50 games in a season since 1979 — and more recently managed only 50 victories over the past three seasons combined.
One issue of uncertainty was resolved at the news conference. Dybantsa wore No. 3 in college, but in Washington that belongs to Trae Young. Dybantsa will change to No. 4.
“Previously wore No. 3, but I was the No. 1 pick,” he said. “Wanted to add those up, and we got four.”
Dybantsa averaged 25.5 points per game in college, becoming the first freshman to lead the nation in scoring since his new teammate, Young, did it at Oklahoma in 2017-18.
Washington fans will have a chance soon enough to see what Dybantsa brings on the court, but Thursday’s event was an opportunity to see the type of person they’ll be investing so much hope in. Dybantsa was personable and confident, and he seemed eager to get down to business. That much was clear back at the combine before the draft.
“It was like a job. My dad was like, ‘This is your first job interview,’” he said. “So we decided to dress up. I went to a suit and tie in every single interview. Media availability, that was in a suit and tie. So I just wanted to treat it like a real job.”
That made quite an impression on Wizards general manager Will Dawkins.
“It was a pretty fun first introduction, just to learn the maturity that he brings,” Dawkins said. “We allow opportunities to ask questions. Sometimes you get the standard questions from guys. We didn’t get that from AJ. He’s just curious and mature and asked some really deep questions.”
Dybantsa said he intends to graduate college, finishing his studies online, and he has big plans for how he can make a difference away from basketball. The 19-year-old has already started a foundation aimed at empowering young people.
“My mom’s from Jamaica, my dad’s from Congo. We’re going to start off just sending 20 kids from there to different universities,” he said. “If that’s universities in the continent of Africa, if that’s different universities in Jamaica, if that’s universities in the States, we’re going to try that. But after those, we’re just going to expand all around the world. We just want to help kids all around the world.”
The 2027 NFL Draft in Washington, D.C., will be held April 29-May 1, the league announced Thursday, setting the nation’s capital as the backdrop for what could be one of the deepest classes in recent history.
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell announced in May 2025 during an Oval Office news conference with President Donald Trump, Commanders owner Josh Harris and D.C. mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D), that D.C. was selected as the host site for ’27 and is expected to draw more than a million visitors.
“It will be something that will show the world how far the nation’s capital has come and where it’s going,” Goodell said at the time.
How does the NFL draft work?
Tifo Sports
Although plenty could change over the next 10 months, the 2027 draft has a chance to be the most anticipated in recent memory because of the star power of the class.
Like most drafts, the 2027 group will be largely judged by the quarterbacks. Texas’ Arch Manning is at the top of the list, and if he picks up where he left off last season, he has a great chance to follow in the footsteps of his uncles, Peyton and Eli, and be drafted No. 1. Dante Moore would punch his ticket for the first round with another productive year at Oregon, and scouts are optimistic for the developmental paths of South Carolina’s LaNorris Sellers, LSU’s Sam Leavitt, Oklahoma State’s Drew Mestemaker, Miami’s Darian Mensah and several others.
The class will also likely include former Cincinnati and Texas Tech quarterback Brendan Sorsby, barring any successful legal action after the NFL declined his application and chose not to hold a supplemental draft in 2026.
But the depth of the 2027 class goes far beyond the quarterbacks. Notre Dame’s Leonard Moore could be one of the highest-graded cornerbacks of the last decade. South Carolina’s Dylan Stewart is a twitched-up pass rusher with top-10 traits. And Ohio State receiver Jeremiah Smith is on track to be one of the best overall prospects in recent years.
The three-day event will be spread across multiple sites in the District, with the main stage held on the National Mall in front of the Capitol and the NFL Draft Experience spanning Pennsylvania Avenue NW between 3rd and 7th Streets, in front of the National Gallery of Art.
For nearly four decades, the NFL Draft was held at multiple locations in New York. But in 2015 and ’16, because of a scheduling conflict at Radio City Music Hall, the league moved it to Chicago and has since held it in various NFL cities across the country. The change has turned the draft into one of the league’s most popular, and accessible, events of the year.
The 2024 draft, which D.C. bid to host, was ultimately held in Detroit and brought a then-record 600,000 attendees, a figure topped by this year’s draft in Pittsburgh, which drew 805,000 visitors.
Prior to the 2026 draft, the Steelers and Visit Pittsburgh estimated the event would bring in roughly 500,000 visitors that would generate anywhere from $120 million to $213 million in regional economic impact.
“We’re confident that the return, with the number of people who attended over the course of the three days and really the course of the week, that we’ll be in good shape there,” Steelers VP of business development and strategy Dan Rooney III told The Athletic after the event.
A delegation from D.C. attended the Pittsburgh draft and took the official handoff from the Steelers at the conclusion, setting in motion a busy year in D.C.
Planning for the 2027 draft began four years ago, when Harris and his group of investors purchased the team for $6.05 billion from former owner Daniel Snyder. The group essentially revived details of the team’s earlier bid, which some believe failed because Snyder still owned the team.
NFL Draft host cities are typically announced two years in advance because of the extensive planning required. But having it in D.C. adds even more layers of complexity, much like the Commanders’ new stadium, which will be built on the site of the former RFK Stadium along the Anacostia River.
For one, the National Mall is federally owned and managed by the National Park Service, which typically does not approve permitting for events more than a year in advance.
The last time D.C. hosted the NFL Draft was Dec. 10, 1940, at the Willard Hotel. The draft was 22 rounds back then.
“This is a historic moment for our organization, our fans, and the entire region,” Commanders president Mark Clouse said in a release Thursday. “The Draft has become one of the premier events in sports and entertainment, and with the momentum around football in this area, from the rapid growth of youth flag football to our return to the RFK site, there is no better time to bring it to the nation’s capital.”
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