Category: Wires

Phyllis Hammond knew she needed to act the moment she emerged from her walk through the woods. She climbed into her car, tears streaming, and said a prayer.

God use me, in whatever and however way possible, to bring justice.

A week earlier, Hammond, 69, had received a letter from a genealogist with an unsettling revelation.

Her uncle, Amos Hammond, had died in 1921 at the age of 18 at the House of Reformation and Instruction for Colored Children, a segregated juvenile jail in Maryland with a documented history of abuse and neglect. He was among hundreds of Black boys and teens the state buried across the road from the facility in a forest in Prince George’s County.

Hammond had never heard of an uncle named Amos. But the more she learned, the more she realized Amos was family. This spring she visited the graves, marked by crumbling cinder blocks with no names, and left resolved: “I’m going to be that voice those boys didn’t have.”

Hammond began that work this week, when she was recognized by Maryland Attorney General Anthony G. Brown as a voting member of the state’s newly formed Commission on the House of Reformation and Instruction for Colored Children — an investigative body created by lawmakers earlier this year to unearth buried truths the state ignored for more than a century.

“We are determined to be the voice and to take a role in major decision-making throughout this entire process,” Hammond said Tuesday at the first commission meeting. “We are firm and committed in our belief that no decision should be made about our children without full engagement and participation with the families.”

Hammond articulated her priorities: to ensure the commission is independent, unflinching and centered on the wishes of the boys’ living relatives as they weigh whether to exhume the remains, identify them, and determine the children’s true manner of death.

The commission will be chaired by Brown, the first Black attorney general in state history, and is composed of two dozen voting members and another 10 nonvoting advisory members, all with interest or expertise in forensic anthropology, archaeology, state history, juvenile justice policy and civil rights law. Members include Sen. Will Smith (D-Montgomery) and Del. Jeffrie E. Long Jr. (D-Calvert), who sponsored the commission legislation, and Prince George’s County Executive Aisha Braveboy.

In addition to Hammond, two other living relatives will serve on the commission: Dorothy Givens, 83, representing her uncle Fred Ames Jr., and Linda F. Gorham, on behalf of her cousin Richard Saunders.

The Washington Post first reported on the abandoned and overgrown graves a year ago, after former leaders of the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services (DJS) made their existence public. A Post investigation found that at least 230 children died at the House of Reformation between 1870 and 1939, the most comprehensive public accounting to date based on state records, newspaper archives and death certificates.

Black Caucus lawmakers visited the site last August, and its members later championed a law signed by Gov. Wes Moore (D) that allocates $1 million for the commission’s initial budget. The African American Heritage Preservation Program awarded another $200,000 in grant funding.

“This is the state of Maryland, all of us, finally doing what should have been done long ago,” Brown said at the meeting, explaining that the body is expected to submit a preliminary report on its work by the end of 2027 and a final report in December 2029. He told members that the House of Reformation commission may be the most significant investigative body that Maryland has created in the past decade, especially as the Trump administration works to strip recognition of the legacy of racism from the nation’s history.

“We’re meeting at a time when many in our federal leadership are turning away from acknowledging the history that made this country what it is,” Brown said. “That makes what we’re doing here more important, not less. The state of Maryland is choosing to look clearly at a painful chapter of its own history, not to perform accountability, but to actually pursue it.”

The year since the House of Reformation gravesite’s public rediscovery has been both revelatory and fraught, a navigation of tensions over institutional racism, state power and the people impacted by both. Those tensions were made clear at the Tuesday afternoon meeting, where the families reminded commission members that for them, this process is personal.

“We are mourning,” said Gorham, a licensed psychologist. “I know we talked about remains and records, but just know that … we have souls that need to be tended to.”

Running parallel to the commission’s efforts is the Forgotten Children Initiative at Georgetown University — a first-of-its-kind research effort founded by youth justice advocate and former DJS deputy secretary Marc Schindler that is working to identify similar abandoned cemeteries nationwide. He and former DJS secretary Vincent Schiraldi oversaw the state’s earliest efforts in 2024 to uncover the House of Reformation’s history, and Schindler wanted to continue the work after he left the government.

To date, the Forgotten Children Initiative’s lead genealogist, Malissa Ruffner, has contacted 73 potential living relatives for 24 of the boys. Family members for about a dozen of the boys have responded.

Ruffner’s previous genealogical work includes helping to identify the living descendants of the 272 enslaved people who were sold in 1838 by Georgetown’s Jesuit founders. She said that she has been able to find some family members for the House of Reformation children within a few hours and others have taken days — a process that includes sifting through decades of birth and death certificates, state records, newspaper archives, census information and obituaries.

The families identified so far have already developed an intense bond, forged by shared grief and righteous rage. In June, they visited the abandoned cemetery in the woods to hold a funeral — the kind of dignified ceremony the boys did not receive a century ago.

So far, the families have met privately with Brown. They were not in attendance at a May ceremony at the Cheltenham juvenile detention facility where the House of Reformation once stood. That gathering, held by current DJS leaders, state lawmakers and the governor, served as a history lesson for the broader community and ended with the unveiling of a road marker that acknowledges the institution’s segregated past.

“Loving your country does not mean lying about its history,” Moore said that day. “Loving your country does not mean pretending like the awful and dark and bad spots did not happen. It means being able to embrace everything, flaws and all, and say that every day is an opportunity for us to be better.”

Moore said he was “committed” to honoring the boys, including locating the grave of each one in the woods.

That work will likely take years and a great deal more money than the $1.2 million currently allocated, the attorney general said at Tuesday’s meeting. The commission will rely on the expertise of forensic anthropologists and archaeologists who have overseen similar investigations, including Erin Kimmerle, who led a years-long excavation project at the Dozier School for Boys in Florida, a reform facility where officials buried dozens of children who died in state custody.

Kimmerle, an advisory commission member, told the group that they should approach this process with the sensitivity of a homicide investigation.

“For them, the past is the present,” she said of the families. “Historic justice and modern justice are interwoven.”

Gorham emphasized that point.

“It doesn’t matter that Richard, my cousin, died when he was 15 in 1935. I still feel it,” she said. “There’s a really deep thing that’s happening here. If you’re serving, I want you to feel it.”

For Hammond, among the commission’s most important missions is using their power to ensure no child detained in state custody is ever treated the way her uncle Amos was. To crystalize that conviction, she read the room a poem she wrote after visiting the abandoned cemetery for the first time.

“If these woods could talk, I wonder what they would say?” she read. “If these woods could talk, do you think they could share each of these boys’ tragic lives and deaths while entrusted in the hands of the juvenile system? If these woods could talk, could they share the pain and the scars that they endured across their fragile bodies?”

“If these woods could talk,” she continued, “I wonder if these woods would have raised their voices loud and clear against the lawlessness of what they’d seen, heard and became a part of.”

“If only these woods could talk,” she said, “maybe many lives could have been saved.”

The Trump administration unveiled a proposal Thursday to overhaul the regulations for Head Start, the early-education program that serves roughly 700,000 children across the country.

The proposal would eliminate many existing federal rules, shifting some authority to states and local authorities; add new dietary and physical fitness requirements for students; and cap administrative overhead payments. The changes could free up $2.2 billion to serve as many as 268,000 more children, administration officials said.

“It’s a program that works for the most vulnerable, of course, kids in our society,” Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told reporters. “And it’s really important we protect it.”

Over the past few weeks, reports that the administration planned to eliminate many federal regulations have alarmed some Head Start advocates about the future of the program. In June, a report from the conservative Heritage Foundation called on the administration to deregulate the program and eventually eliminate it altogether. And an early draft of a White House budget last year reportedly proposed zeroing out the budget for Head Start, though the final version maintained funding for the program after widespread pushback.

Also last year, the Government Accountability Office found President Donald Trump’s administration improperly withheld about $825 million from Head Start for months.

The Trump administration, however, said the latest proposal is intended to eliminate red tape, cut administrative costs, and create more flexibility for programs.

“We built this rule around trusting local leaders to make the decisions that are best for their local communities,” said HHS Assistant Secretary Alex Adams, who leads the Administration for Children and Families.

Administration officials said the proposal would also strengthen dietary regulations to “provide nutrient-dense, whole foods” for children and require sites to give students at least 30 minutes of physical activity for every 3.5 hours in the classroom.

They also said they hope to free up enough money to serve more children by eliminating other regulations and reducing the cap on administrative costs from 15% to 5%.

“If we get this proposed rule right, we will grow the number of Head Start spots,” Adams said. Officials said the proposal would preserve requirements that programs involve families in children’s learning and recognize parents as children’s primary teachers.

Sen. Patty Murray (D-Washington), a longtime advocate for Head Start, immediately blasted the proposal to remove many federal regulations.

“After Congress and the nation forcefully rejected Trump’s efforts to destroy Head Start, this administration now wants to quietly gut Head Start by eliminating the basic health and safety standards our kids rely on,” she said in a statement.

Khari Garvin, who oversaw the Head Start program during the Biden administration, said he was deeply concerned by the Trump administration’s plans to eliminate many regulations, including those governing class size and teacher compensation.

“It’s the health, safety and quality benchmarks that the federal standards bring,” Garvin said. He said the HHS proposal would “take the program backwards significantly.”

The American Civil Liberties Union said in a statement that doing away with the regulations would violate the laws governing Head Start.

“This proposed rule is an illegal attempt to dismantle the Head Start program by removing the very standards that Congress required to be in place to ensure children receive high-quality early education and comprehensive services,” said Ming-Qi Chu, deputy director of the ACLU Women’s Rights Project. “The administration cannot defy the laws that Congress wrote simply because it disagrees.”

The administration said it plans to formally publish the proposal in the Federal Register on Friday, kicking off a 60-day public comment period. Administration officials would then need to review the comments and issue a final rule, a process that can take months. Any changes could be delayed even further if the ACLU or another organization challenges the move in court.

“This will take a lot of time to implement,” said Tommy Sheridan, deputy director of the National Head Start Association, a nonprofit that advocates for Head Start.

The Head Start program was started more than 60 years ago as part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty. Local sites typically provide free early education, child care, health screenings, and other services for children up to 5 years old from low-income families. Though it has an educational component, Head Start is overseen by HHS, not the Education Department.

Research on the program has found mixed results. A federal study of the modern Head Start program, released in 2010, found most of the benefits faded by the end of first grade. But another study in 2022 found the children of former Head Start participants saw meaningful increases in wages and graduation rates as adults, suggesting the program may have a positive impact across generations.

Some conservatives have long sought to eliminate the program, saying it hasn’t produced enough tangible results to justify the annual $12 billion cost.

“While the program should sunset, it is reasonable at this point to deregulate the program and provide more autonomy to local operators,” said ​​​​Jonathan Butcher, acting director for the Center for Education Policy at the Heritage Foundation, the conservative group behind Project 2025, the policy blueprint that called for the government to “eliminate the Head Start program.”

Trump administration officials also noted that Head Start has gradually shrunk over the years, including a reduction of roughly 100,000 slots for children during the Biden administration.

Sheridan of the National Head Start Association said many sites have been forced to shrink over time because they haven’t received enough money to keep up with inflation. Garvin, the former director of the Office of Head Start, also noted that the Biden administration allowed some Head Start programs to add more infants and very young children, who require smaller class sizes. And some programs needed to spend more on compensation to help attract and retain instructors.

Both the National Head Start Association and the First Five Years Fund, an advocacy group for early-childhood education, said they plan to review the Trump administration’s proposal closely and submit formal comments.

President Donald Trump’s frustration over the Iran war boiled over at Camp David last week, where he demanded answers from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on why he had apparently been misled on extreme munitions shortages that now threaten to limit military options with Iran, two people familiar with the exchange told The Washington Post.

The encounter took place on the sidelines of his Cabinet meeting at Camp David on Friday where Trump vented at Hegseth that he thought the munitions issue “had been fixed,” according to both people familiar with the conversation, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity due to fear of retaliation.

The shortages, particularly in long-range guided missiles and air-defense interceptors, have been part of the reason Trump has pulled back from launching additional massive strikes against Iran in recent days, one of the sources said.

Trump said Monday that he had ordered and subsequently called off “the biggest attack since World War II,” pending claims of new negotiations over the Strait of Hormuz.

The president asserted overnight that the United States has “massive amounts” of munitions, saying in a post on Truth Social that “large amounts are being manufactured and shipped to the U.S. as needed.” The “‘leakers’ of these treasonous statements are being hunted down,” he added.

While the United States has announced new production agreements for some of the most critical munitions, such as Patriot air defense missiles, the munitions themselves can take as long as two years to produce, and there’s no immediate relief in sight for the shortages.

In the first month of fighting alone, the U.S. fired off more than 850 Tomahawk cruise missiles and more than 1,000 Patriot and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) systems, The Post previously reported.

The U.S. also used more than 1,300 of the Army’s tactical ballistic missiles in the initial weeks of fighting, one U.S. official told The Post. The ATACMs stockpile — a short-range missile also in demand by Ukraine — is drained to the extent that there’s basically none left, said one of the people familiar, an assessment also reported earlier this week by Reuters.

The scarcity of defensive munitions has had an impact beyond the Middle East. Ukraine is running out of air defenses, and there are few options with which to replenish from Western stockpiles, leaving them exposed to Russia’s long-range attacks.

The lack of interceptor missiles is also altering how the U.S. decides whether to employ munitions against an incoming threat, based on where it’s assessed to be heading and whether or not it’s “a factor,” the U.S. official told The Post, a change in tactics that was first reported by NBC News.

Back at Camp David, as he was confronted by Trump over the bare weapons stockpile, Hegseth defended himself and blamed his deputy, Stephen Feinberg, for the shortages and for not ensuring Trump was fully apprised of the issue, both people familiar said.

The exchange underscored Trump’s increasing frustration with his defense secretary, who was one of the biggest early advocates for taking military action against Iran, convincing Trump it would be a quick and relatively easy win, according to multiple officials.

“This is 100% fake news. Literally never happened. And President Trump has the utmost confidence in Secretary Hegseth,” said White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt in response to questions from The Post.

More than five months after the start of the conflict, and with 18 U.S. service members killed and hundreds injured, Iran and the U.S. remain at a stalemate, with increasing concern from Arab neighbors about the long-term economic effects of the war and the impact of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

“Secretary Hegseth did not mislead anyone about our munitions posture, and he did not blame Deputy Secretary Feinberg. These claims about depleted stockpiles, internal disagreements, the Secretary’s position on Iran … are equally fictional,” Pentagon chief spokesman Sean Parnell said.

In a July Senate hearing, Hegseth sparred with Democrats over whether he had provided Trump with honest assessments of the Iran war, including the risks an extended campaign would pose for U.S. military inventories.

During the hearing, Hegseth declined to discuss his advice to the president and repeatedly blamed any shortages on the Biden administration’s handling of the military, not on the operations that have occurred under Trump’s watch.

Hegseth, Feinberg and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine have asked lawmakers to provide them $67 billion in additional military funding to help cover the costs of the Iran war, with Hegseth telling lawmakers in testimony last month the request filled an “urgent, necessary” need to refill the military’s stockpiles.

Senate Republicans have yet to agree on a strategy to take up the package.

The administration’s overall defense budget request for the coming fiscal year is a record $1.5 trillion and includes tens of billions of dollars to build missiles. But the proposal has stalled as Democrats object to the massive increase, leaving the Pentagon without a clear path to replenishing critical weaponry.

Ever since Signalgate, where Hegseth sent classified information to a chat group that included a reporter just months after being confirmed to the role, rumors have swirled about how long the defense secretary would remain in Trump’s good graces. The president has consistently praised Hegseth, saying he looks straight out of “central casting” and that “he loves war.”

Since taking office, Trump has launched military operations in seven countries: Yemen, Somalia, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria and Venezuela.

The successful operation to capture former Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro appeared to further secure Hegseth’s position. But the stalemate over the Strait of Hormuz and the massive cost and length of the Iran war has eroded Trump’s confidence in him, one of the people familiar with the Camp David conversation said.

“Secretary Hegseth isn’t going anywhere, and he’s going to continue to work side by side with Deputy Secretary Feinberg to execute President Trump’s agenda,” Parnell said in response to questions about that exchange and the munitions depletion.

Stockpile pressures are not a new challenge. Before the war even started, Caine warned Trump that the U.S. did not have the stockpiles necessary to sustain a prolonged conflict.

But the pace and sheer volume of munitions expended by both sides has rapidly accelerated the depletion of key U.S. offensive and defensive munitions.

From Feb. 28 to April 7, which marked the first day of the ceasefire, the U.S. struck more than 13,000 targets in Iran. It has also defended against more than 8,500 incoming Iranian munitions or drones.

The U.S. launched Operation Epic Fury already facing shortfalls in critical munitions.

In the summer of 2025, it expended more than a quarter of its total inventory of THAAD interceptors during Israel’s 12-Day war and Operation Midnight Hammer, where U.S. forces struck Iran’s nuclear sites. The current conflict “has made those inadequacies even worse,” said Brad Bowman, an Army veteran and senior director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

While Hegseth and the Pentagon have announced numerous new industry framework agreements to rebuild the arsenal, defense firms “aren’t going to start bending metal until you have a contract and congressional appropriations,” Bowman said.

As a result, it could be years before the inventories are rebuilt. “We’re often talking years between spending what we need to spend, getting the contracts signed, and delivery,” he said. “You don’t just flip the switch and suddenly the munition appears in the hands of the warfighter.”

When the Freedom 250 Grand Prix kicks off this month as part of President Donald Trump’s summer celebrations, IndyCar racers will weave at speeds up to 185 mph among federal buildings, the National Gallery of Art, the National Archives, and the Smithsonian Institution’s Hirshhorn, Air and Space, and American Indian museums.

One of those institutions, the National Gallery of Art, has studied vibrations ahead of the race as it prepares for possible effects on its art — but it’s declining to say what it found.

“In preparation for the Freedom 250 Grand Prix, the National Gallery conducted an extensive vibration study and based on the results we have implemented a set of measures to ensure the safety of our staff, visitors, collection, and facilities during the race,” gallery spokesperson Chris Abanavas said in a statement. “While we are not releasing the specifics, I can share that any such measures are only being taken out of a great abundance of caution.”

The study didn’t raise concerns about structural risk to the buildings, Abanavas added. The race will also limit attendance at the free museum to ticket holders to the event’s secured area.

The Smithsonian determined the race, which will take place Aug. 22-23, will not threaten any objects in its collections and has taken no special precautions as a result, a Smithsonian official said. But the institution will monitor the situation before and during the race, so it can protect exhibits if that changes.

While the event is a first for D.C., it is not the first such race to pass through city streets and near museums, which commonly face vibrations from construction, musical events, and large crowds. But some historic preservationists worry the risk to delicate art pieces, historic documents, and priceless murals near the circuit has been underexamined.

In March, the National Park Service consulted with the D.C. State Historic Preservation Office about the IndyCar event, noting that it saw “no adverse effects.” The letter did not mention the museums along the route. (The National Park Service and the National Archives did not respond to a request for comment.)

Some preservationists who spoke with the Washington Post called the analysis insufficient and said a more comprehensive review of potential damage to historic properties or artifacts would have taken years, not months.

“I can’t think of any place in that whole area that goes where the speed limit is higher than 25 miles an hour,” said Michelle Arcari Rose, a former associate general counsel at the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which has sued to stop Trump’s White House ballroom project. “So whereas people think these grand prix races aren’t a problem, we certainly don’t know, right? It’s a huge risk to then unleash cars at 185 miles per hour in a place where we’ve never had cars really going more than 25 miles an hour.”

Mary Okin, assistant director of the nonprofit Living New Deal, sent a letter last week to the National Park Service and other agencies expressing concern that the event was permitted “without meaningful” consultation with “known preservation stakeholders.” The letter and the National Gallery of Art’s vibration study were first reported by the New Republic.

“Such vibrations are well above normal street traffic and even go beyond those of jackhammers, pile drivers, and even freight trains,” she wrote.

Okin is calling for safeguards including temporary sound barriers and damage assessments to help protect buildings such as the Wilbur J. Cohen Building, which sits on the circuit’s south edge and houses fragile New Deal-era murals.

“They’re vulnerable,” said Okin, whose organization has worked on the building’s preservation. “Excess vibrations and sound, as well as the construction of the racetrack itself, could very well cause damage.”

The General Services Administration, the body that manages real estate for the federal government, reviewed the proposed route for potential impacts on its assets and identified no areas of concern, a spokesperson said in a statement.

“The White House and [IndyCar owner] Penske have followed all appropriate protocols and been in close coordination with all relevant agencies to ensure this is also the safest and most secure race for all visitors to enjoy,” said Davis Ingle, a White House spokesperson.

While many major motorsport races are held on permanent road courses or oval tracks, temporary street circuits are a familiar part of international racing.

IndyCar stages several events on public roads in cities such as St. Petersburg, Fla.; Long Beach, Calif.; Detroit; and Toronto, while Formula One also races on street courses in places including Monaco, Singapore, and Las Vegas. The roads are closed, lined with concrete barriers, and transformed into racecourses for the events before reopening to traffic.

One of the closest comparisons with D.C.’s race is the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg, in which the street circuit runs next to the Dalí Museum. A museum spokesperson said the collection has remained safe and secure throughout the event’s history. The museum has not conducted race-specific vibration studies, but its galleries were built to museum standards and the collection is continuously monitored.

Green Savoree Racing Promotions, which organizes the St. Petersburg race, said the museum closes to visitors while racing is underway and reopens after the event concludes. The promoter also noted that the museum is housed in a hurricane-rated building constructed to Florida standards, allowing the artwork to remain in place during extreme weather, and said it was not aware of any additional precautions being necessary during the race.

In a statement, a Freedom 250 Grand Prix spokesperson said race organizers have “tremendous respect for the history and the structures surrounding the racing circuit in Washington, D.C.”

“IndyCar has successfully hosted races on downtown street circuits in urban areas for decades,” the spokesperson said. “With this excellent track record and the thorough preparation we have done for this event working closely with all the appropriate local and federal agencies, we do not anticipate any impact on the structures surrounding the circuit” as a result of the race.

Researchers have started paying closer attention to how vibrations from construction, live music, and major events may affect the art and artifacts inside museums.

One 2023 report studied the effects of vibrations from music and a NASCAR street race on museums in Chicago. In that case, racecars passed a south wall of the Art Institute of Chicago, near galleries holding a Van Gogh exhibition.

Advisers who reviewed data and consulted with NASCAR beforehand told the museum vibrations from the cars shouldn’t pose a major risk, according to the report. Afterward, they found museumgoers’ foot traffic caused greater vibrations in gallery floors than the race outside. (An author of the report declined to be interviewed, and the Art Institute says it works with specialists before any major activity that might cause vibrations.)

On Tuesday, there were few apparent changes at the National Gallery of Art except for enclosures set up around some artworks outside.

The I.M. Pei-designed triangular skylights, which abut a cascading sunken fountain and illuminate the underground cafe, have been boarded up. Between the West Building and the Sculpture Garden, a massive Alexander Calder sculpture made of sheet metal, Tom’s, has been enclosed in a protective barrier.

Some sculptures and installations were boarded up “out of an abundance of caution,” said Abanavas, citing “the increased visitor traffic around the National Mall this summer for events including the Grand Prix.”

As of publication, the Post did not identify significant changes to public collections inside the National Gallery of Art’s East Building, which closely faces the racetrack on Pennsylvania Avenue.