The Washington Nationals showed the world in 2024 that their rebuild this time may not be as lengthy as their previous rebuilds.
While they do still have a long way to go to be competitive in the toughest division in baseball, the National League East, their young core has started to make their Major League debuts and prove that the hype surrounding them was justified.
It is only a matter of time before the Nationals are back on the island of relevancy, and these four contracts on their 2025 payroll are massive boons to their success.
All figures accurate as of December 2
Dylan Crews was the No. 2 overall pick of the 2023 MLB draft and quickly rose through the minor leagues before making his Major League debut on Aug. 26.
While his Major League numbers may not look that promising on the surface, it was a small sample size, and when you dive deeper, things begin to look much better.
First, Crews batted .219/.288/.353 with three home runs, eight RBI, 12 stolen bases, and an 82 OPS+ across 132 plate appearances in 31 games.
However, over the last week of the season, Crews batted a much better .286/.400/.429 with no home runs or RBI, three stolen bases, and a 144 OPS+.
The rookie had an xBA of .253 for his time in the Majors and an xSLG of .418, so there was a good bit of bad luck playing into his results.
Crews is under team control for at least five more years, and after seemingly finding his footing at the Major League level to end 2024, it could be off to the races in 2025.
Derek Law is a journeyman relief pitcher, who has been much too good throughout his career to not have a forever home with a contending team.
That was no different in 2024, as the reliever was a free agent until Washington signed him to a one-year, $1.5 million deal on February 21.
Law would go on to pitch to a 2.60 ERA across 90 innings in 75 games with 76 strikeouts and a 155 ERA+.
The 34-year-old is arbitration eligible for one more year and will spend more than one season with a team for only the third time since his Major League debut in 2016.
MacKenzie Gore is an interesting piece in the middle of the Nationals rotation.
He joined the club as part of the trade that sent Juan Soto to the San Diego Padres in 2022 and made his team debut in 2023.
He has improved his production and his innings count in each of his three seasons in the Majors, with an 84 ERA+ across 70 innings in 2022, a 96 ERA+ across 136 1/3 innings in 2023, and a 103 ERA+ across 166 1/3 innings in 2024.
His success this year came from an extra mile-per-hour added onto his fastball, seemingly from using it less throughout the campaign.
In 2022 and 2023, Gore used his fastball 61 percent and 59 percent respectively, but dropped down to 55 percent in 2024, mixing his pitches more, and throwing that pitch harder, leading to more whiffs.
If Gore can continue his string of yearly improvements, perhaps even dropping the fastball usage to 50 percent, he will be an even bigger piece of the team’s rotation.
Left fielder James Wood was another part of the Soto trade in 2022, but he did not make his Major League debut until this year.
Patience proved to be a virtue, however, as the young star produced a promising 122 OPS+ across 336 plate appearances in 79 games.
When Wood connects with the ball, he does not miss, carrying an elite exit velocity (92.8 MPH) and hard-hit rate (52 percent) while pairing those skills with an elite chase rate (21 percent) and walk rate (11.6 percent).
Wood needs to get under the ball more and try and drive it into the gap if he wants to take that next step forward in his game, as he carried a 2.4 launch angle, showing that he got on top of the ball and drove it into the ground more often than not.
With how hard he can hit baseballs if he can improve that launch angle, he will quickly become one of the preeminent power threats in the game today, all at the low low price of league minimum.
This past summer, Nic Burgdorf, a nursing student at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, found himself immersed in the heart of healthcare policy advocacy in Washington, D.C.
Written by Kaylan Petrie, administrative coordinator, UW-Eau Claire College of Nursing
Link to original story: https://www.uwec.edu/stories/uw-eau-claire-nursing-student-advocates-rural-healthcare-solutions-during-washington-dc
CNN
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The epicenter of Donald Trump’s transition is gradually shifting from south Florida to Washington, DC, to prepare for the president-elect’s return to the country’s seat of power, even as he prefers to bask in the afterglow of his electoral triumph from Mar-a-Lago.
Key allies are shepherding Trump’s Cabinet picks through a gauntlet of Capitol Hill meetings, working to assuage lawmakers’ unease amid a tangle of controversies surrounding some of them. Other advisers have decamped to the nation’s capital to set the stage for Trump’s first actions in the Oval Office. And some incoming officials have finally engaged with their outgoing counterparts — a traditionally uneventful handoff delayed this time for weeks until Trump transition leaders signed mandatory agreements with the Biden administration.
People who work on Trump’s advance team have also moved operations to DC, where planning on his second inauguration is well underway. Working out of their new digs in the General Services Administration building, they are working with Secret Service and touring venues for inaugural balls and other ancillary events in anticipation of January 20 as they piece together the lead up to Trump’s White House arrival, sources involved in the planning told CNN.
Trump-aligned groups are also acquiring office space inside the Beltway, looking to capitalize on his win as DC lobbyists are seeking ways to gain access to the incoming administration, people familiar with the conversations told CNN.
The northern migration also includes some of Trump’s longtime staff who stayed by his side after he left office or joined his political operation after he announced his plans to run again. Many of them moved to West Palm Beach as he plotted his political comeback from his nearby estate.
Now, a Florida takeover of Washington is forthcoming and the DC real estate market is flush with these loyalists looking for new homes and to build out their staffs.
“Part of the reason we’re all descending on DC so early is because the nominees were landed quicker, the sub-Cabinet is starting to form, policy teams are in place, and so what’s left is figuring out where the hell we’re going to live and staffing up,” one Trump adviser said. “Everything is oriented to being as ready as humanly possible.”
All the while, Trump remains largely out of sight at Mar-a-Lago — except by those with access to his exclusive Palm Beach club. His scaled-back public schedule has included a quick trip to Paris for the reopening of the Notre Dame Cathedral, and on Thursday he will appear at the New York Stock Exchange. But he has otherwise kept mostly to his palatial estate. Social media posts have captured Trump popping into evening soirees, including at least one wedding and star-studded galas hosted at his venue. At one such event, the conservative group Moms for America named Trump “Man of the Century.” On Tuesday, Trump was slated to attend another gala for America’s Future PAC, led by his former national security adviser, Mike Flynn, where Trump was expected to present allies Kid Rock and Tucker Carlson with awards, according to an invited guest.
Much of the final work of the transition remains based out of the West Palm Beach offices, where a vast operation is underway to help staff the incoming administration with loyalists expected to faithfully carry out Trump’s agenda. A large portion of the process is being overseen by America First Policy Institute, a deeply conservative Trump-aligned think tank staffed largely by former and future administration officials.
Successful conservative influencers, Silicon Valley moguls, lawmakers and business leaders have descended on West Palm Beach to lend their expertise to the transition on building out companies and large-scale operations. Those seeking to join the administration are put through a series of interviews — some one-on-one, others in a group setting — where questions range from the contender’s background, to policy questions to whether or not they believe the 2020 election was stolen, a source briefed on the process told CNN.
The finalists are then presented to Trump, who has preferred to remain at Mar-a-Lago as much as possible for the time being after so much travel on the campaign trail, the source added. He has turned down the majority of requests to attend public events, preferring to wheel and deal on the patio of his resort in between meals surrounded by friends and rounds of golf.
“He’s been very active, but he gets to do it from base camp. He’s happy laying low right now,” the Trump adviser said.
As it is, the West Palm Beach airport is still busy with people flying in to gain an audience with the president-elect.
Trump has so far hosted several foreign leaders, including Argentinian President Javier Milei, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Trump recently dined with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s wife, Sara, at his golf club.
Conservative groups have also rushed to use Mar-a-Lago as the backdrop for their events, giving them an opportunity to rub shoulders with the MAGA elite.
Last month, Trump, Vice President-elect JD Vance and a string of incoming administration officials spoke at the America First Policy Institute Gala. Elon Musk, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Vivek Ramaswamy, Matt Gaetz, Brooke Rollins and Sylvester Stallone, among others, were all in attendance.
Turning Point Action, an organization that played a key role for Trump during the campaign, held a Winter Gala at Mar-a-Lago last weekend, where Trump allies and incoming administration officials heaped praise on the president-elect. The group’s founder, Charlie Kirk, and Trump’s incoming deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller were among those who spoke. Trump’s pick to lead the FBI, Kash Patel; his recently announced White House counselor Alina Habba, who carried a clutch bedazzled with the letters “FJB,” an acronym for “F**k Joe Biden”; and conservative commentator Benny Johnson were among those in attendance. Trump himself was not there, as he was flying back from Paris after the reopening of Notre Dame.
CNN previously reported that Trump hosted the chief executives of Pfizer and Eli Lilly for dinner at Mar-a-Lago last week. Kennedy, Trump’s pick to lead the Health and Human Services Department, and Dr. Mehmet Oz, his pick for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, also attended.
One of the senators key to the confirmation hopes of Trump’s picks — Iowa Republican Joni Ernst — was also at Mar-a-Lago last month. She and the president-elect dined on the patio alongside Musk and Howard Lutnick, the billionaire Wall Street executive Trump tapped for secretary of Commerce, and discussed her involvement in helping the nascent Department of Government Efficiency from the Senate.
Lately, Trump has also welcomed to his Florida home an ever-expanding array of political outsiders as he turns away from traditional Washington and Republican power brokers for counsel. That includes an increasingly influential sect of venture capitalists and right-leaning Silicon Valley executives close to Musk, newly named cryptocurrency czar David Sacks and other billionaire tech entrepreneurs now fully ensconced in his orbit. Longtime Trump adviser Steve Bannon, recently released from prison for refusing to cooperate with the congressional investigation into the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, was recently spotted alongside the president-elect at Mar-a-Lago as well.
Since the election, Trump has departed Florida on only a handful of occasions. Last month, he traveled to New York City for a UFC fight, and also accompanied Musk to a SpaceX launch in Texas.
He traveled back to New York City earlier this month to accept Fox News’ “Patriot of the Year” award and tape an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press.” He then flew directly to Paris.
After his Thursday visit to the New York Stock Exchange, he’ll return to Mar-a-Lago before attending the Army-Navy game in Landover, Maryland, on Saturday.
And while his team is spending more time in Washington, Trump has been there just once since his victory to meet with President Joe Biden at the White House and pow wow with House Republicans near Capitol Hill.
Instead, Trump has largely previewed his plans through social media posts. On Tuesday, for example, he said on Truth Social that under his administration the US government will offer expedited approval to companies planning to invest $1 billion in domestic production.
“GET READY TO ROCK!!!” Trump concluded his post.
CNN’s Kayla Tausche and Alejandra Jaramillo contributed to this report.
Almost one year to the day traffic was permanently halted on the westbound Washington Bridge, state officials announced they have narrowed down the choice of who will replace it to two finalists.
Vying for the state’s contract are the American Bridge-MLJ joint venture, a partnership between firms based respectively in Pennsylvania and New York, and Chicago-based Walsh Construction Company II, Gov. Dan McKee revealed at a State House press conference Tuesday.
“This is good news, and it’s timely,” McKee said.
McKee was joined by Rhode Island Department of Transportation (RIDOT) Director Peter Alviti, Jr. and East Providence Mayor Bob DaSilva for an hour-long press conference about the next steps for the span connecting East Providence to Providence.
State officials halted all traffic on the westbound section of Interstate 195 on Dec. 11, 2023, after engineers discovered broken anchor rods that put the Washington Bridge at risk of collapse. At the time, the bridge carried about 96,000 vehicles a day over the Seekonk River.
McKee’s administration struggled earlier in the year after an initial request for proposals to replace the bridge drew no proposals from any firm. State officials went back to the drawing board to assemble a request for information and a subsequent request for qualifications from would-be bidders. That delayed the timeline, but McKee portrayed the move as necessary to attract “highly-qualified” companies for the high-profile project.
American Bridge Co., of Coraopolis, Pennsylvania, most recently built the San Francisco Oakland Bay suspension bridge. The company’s bid partner, MLJ Contracting Corporation of Great Neck, New York, has worked on restoring the Brooklyn Bridge and was awarded a $79 million contract last June to construct the Port Authority Command Center at the World Trade Center.
The other finalist, Walsh Construction Company of Chicago, worked on the Pearl Harbor Memorial Bridge on Interstate 95 over the Quinnipiac River in New Haven, Connecticut, along with the Interstate 90 Westbound Innerbelt Bridge in Cleveland.
Four prospective bidders in all responded to the request for qualifications issued in mid-October.
Not chosen to advance were Halmar International LLC of New York and a joint venture of New York-based Skanska and Aetna Bridge Co. of Warwick. Aetna has the state’s nearly $100 million contract to demolish the westbound bridge.
Alviti told reporters the two finalists will now start meeting with RIDOT officials to develop the scope of the project. The next step will be to formally issue a request for proposals, scheduled for Dec. 18.
Asked what the new timeline and expected cost for a new bridge will be, Alviti said those details will come out of the bidding process.
Estimates last May pegged the rebuild cost at $368 million and was scheduled to be done by 2026 — a timeline both Alviti and McKee acknowledged was too aggressive and likely led to the lack of bids at the time.
“I’m not going to make any predictions on what these companies are capable of,” Alviti said Tuesday. “Let’s wait and see.”
RIDOT expects to award a final contract by June 6, Alviti said.
The losing finalist will receive $1.75 million to cover costs associated with bidding on the project — an incentive state officials placed to generate interest in the latest bidding process.
Aetna began demolishing the bridge in September, but work was paused for nearly a month to allow state investigators to document its condition as part of the state’s lawsuit against 13 firms that previously worked on it. Work resumed on Oct. 11 and is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2025.
“It’s been a long road with more than a few bumps in it,” Alviti said. “Ultimately, the people of Rhode Island will have a brand new bridge that will be completely safe, it will be efficient, and it will last 100 years.”
McKee also used Tuesday’s press conference to reflect on the year since phones across Rhode Island blared with an emergency alert announcing the Washington Bridge’s closure — during afternoon rush hour no less. The governor apologized for the inconvenience the commuter crisis caused.
“I know that, and I’m sorry you had to go through this, but it was necessary,” McKee said.
“Like you, I certainly wish I had known sooner than Dec. 11 that the bridge had serious issues,” he added. “Like you, I wish I had known right away that no amount of repair work would be enough to salvage the existing bridge.”
I’m not going to make any predictions on what these companies are capable of. Let’s wait and see.
– Rhode Island Department of Transportation Director Peter Alviti
As the westbound bridge closed, gridlock immediately overwhelmed the streets of East Providence. But since the state opened three lanes of travel over both directions of the eastbound bridge in April, Mayor DaSilva downplayed the impact on motorists.
“Traffic has begun to move through the city like it did before,” DaSilva said
McKee said he understands some of the criticism that’s been levied against his administration, but said some of it is unwarranted. He also maintained that no state employee deserved to be fired because of the bridge emergency.
“That might not be the answer that some people want,” McKee said. “They want to see heads rolling. But I’m not going to do that just because of the politics of it and the optics of it.”
Accountability, the governor argued, will come about from the state’s ongoing lawsuit officially filed Aug. 16. The state accuses the 13 defendants of a sweeping set of contract breaches and negligence over decades when contractors failed to detect or report structural problems ahead of the bridge’s abrupt closure.
Defendants in October asked the Providence Superior Court to throw out the state’s lawsuit, claiming McKee’s administration is using the case to shift blame. Motion to dismiss are scheduled to be heard by Judge Brian Stern on Jan. 21, 2025.
McKee, who last March promised a “day of reckoning” will come for taxpayers who have footed the hundreds of millions of dollars worth of bridge work, said he’s confident the case will not be tossed.
“Just like we prevailed in court last week with the truck toll case, I believe our efforts to hold parties accountable for the bridge failure will be successful,” he said.
McKee was referring to the Dec. 6 decision by the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston that allows the state to reinstate its RhodeWorks program tolls for tractor trailers and other large semi trucks using state highways and bridges. The governor said he is still reviewing the decision and is planning to meet with legislative leaders about reactivating tolls across Rhode Island.
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