The holiday season is loaded with little luxuries: tasty treats, thoughtful gifts, and—sometime after the last office party but before the inbox deluge that marks the first full working Monday of the new year—some quiet time to sit and read. If you’re looking for good stories that will engage your mind, touch your heart, and make you simultaneously calm down and freak the heck out about the possibility of a ginormous asteroid wiping out human civilization, we have you covered. Here are our favorite longreads of the year: The DC Restaurant Trump Slump Illustration By Dan Page. Business is down. The vibes are tense. President Trump claims DC’s restaurant scene is “booming” since his return to the White House—but insiders tell a different story to our own Jessica Sidman, who discovers that when you terrorize immigrants, throttle the local economy with tariffs and federal workforce cuts, put armed troops on the streets, turbocharge partisan animosity, and have loud n’ proud MAGAs out on the town in deeply blue city, the result for local dining establishments is … not optimal. The Missing Men of Mount Pleasant Photographs courtesy of Larry Martin. Setting out to discover the truth behind three makeshift memorial stones resting before a row of townhouses in a leafy Mount Pleasant neighborhood in Northwest DC, writer Bo Erickson found the deeply moving love story of Chuck and Larry—a pairing that began almost 50 years ago and was so solid in the face of prejudice, so lasting in the face of loss, that it had to be remembered in stone. Editor’s note: everyone at Washingtonian who worked on this story cried when reading it. Inside NASA’s Mission to Defend Earth From Deadly Asteroids Photo-illustration with photographs by Pexels and RawPixel. Our Solar System contains tens of thousands of potentially dangerous asteroids. A single strike could wipe out an entire city, or worse (you could ask the dinosaurs, but alas, they’re all dead). Writer Andrew Zaleski tells the story of the DC-based NASA office that leads worldwide efforts to spot and neutralize these Earth-bound threats—before it’s too late. Does Eleanor Holmes Norton Still Have What It Takes to Fight for DC? Photograph by Magdalena Papaioannou. The District’s only elected representative in Congress, 88-year-old Eleanor Holmes Norton is a local political legend—a “Warrior on the Hill” who has been advocating for DC for decades. In recent years, however, there have been whispers about her continuing fitness for office, and with Donald Trump and Republican lawmakers increasingly meddling in city politics, those concerns have been growing louder. In this profile, our Ike Allen scored a rare in-person interview with Norton, explored the history that has made her so revered, talked to insiders about her seeming decline, and revealed that Norton sometimes failed to recognize colleagues and needed help delivering prepared remarks. The publication of this piece seemed to give local politicians and news outlets permission to follow suit, breaking the dam on what has since become a national story. Inside DC’s Troubled Psychiatric Hospital: “This Place Is Actually Trauma-Inducing” Photo-illustrations by Nadia Radic. In a powerful and alarming investigation, writer Luke Mullins finds that the Psychiatric Institute of Washington—a 152-bed private facility in Northwest DC where the bulk of the city’s involuntary commitments are sent—is rife with alleged violence, misconduct, and systemic dysfunction. Detailing dangerous and disturbing conditions inside PIW, former patients and staff tell Washingtonian that the pursuit of corporate profit is to blame, and that a city government without better options hasn’t done enough to force change. Human Decomposition Has Been a Mystery–Until Now Photograph by Evy Mages. At George Mason University’s “body farm,” forensic scientists are studying human decay, the better to help solve homicides. Writer Matt Ribel goes behind the scenes with the people taking meticulous notes as their donors melt into turmeric-colored puddles. The work is thankless, underfunded, and extraordinarily smelly. But it also has the potential to transform how cases are solved—and drag the field of forensic anthropology, concerned with scientific analysis of human remains, into the 21st century. This DC-Area Lawyer Wants More Americans Betting on Elections Photograph by Magdalena Papaioannou. Pratik Chougule is one of the country’s most outspoken advocates for political betting—a relatively small, definitely growing, questionably legal pastime that is, well, exactly what it sounds like. Just as sports fans wager on the outcome of tennis matches and Washington Commanders games, people like Chougule gamble on who will win electoral races, and all sort of other political outcomes. Their pastime is gaining momentum, and also some support in Washington. Is turning one of the world’s longest-running democratic experiments into DraftKings all in good fun? Or is it a bad bet for our shaky democracy? Inside Washington’s Controversial Addiction to Autopens   Illustration by Greg Clarke. Can’t talk about it. Can’t live without it. From the White House to Capitol Hill, this city relies on autopens. How did a machine that mimics human signatures become so essential—and sometimes contentious? Writer Nancy Scola goes deep on an automated practice that goes all the way back to Thomas Jefferson, and is, as one DC lawyer-turned-autograph dealer puts it, “one of the best-kept secrets in Washington.” How a Top DC Lawyer and High-Stakes Poker Player Risks Losing It All Illustration by Nigel Buchanan. Star Supreme Court lawyer and commentator Tom Goldstein lived a double life as an ultra-high-stakes poker player. He’s now fighting federal charges for alleged financial crimes. Why did one of Washington’s most successful attorneys risk it all to play cards? Writer Trevor Bach looks for answers. 100 Days of Chaos: How Donald Trump’s Return Has Disrupted DC Photo-illustration by Matt Chase. Incredulous. Besieged. Traumatized. Pleased? Here’s how the wild initial months of the second Trump administration landed on the Washington area­—in the words of the people who work and live here. Inside DC’s Gray Resistance Photograph by Evy Mages. If you live in upper Northwest DC, you have almost certainly encountered—and perhaps given an approving honk to—clusters of elder dissidents protesting the Trump regime, the people senior White House official Stephen Miller has dismissed as “elderly white hippies” who are “not part of the city and never have been.” Our Ike Allen spent time with these outspoken senior citizens, who not only have time to demonstrate, but also remember their younger years, an era when “this kind of mass mobilization worked.” What Happens After We Die? These UVA Researchers Are Investigating It. Photo-Illustration with photographs by Polina Sirotina/Pexels. Sun Flare by Adobe Stock. When our bodies perish, can our consciousness persist? Writer Joan Niesen spends time with the University of Virginia researchers who are searching for answers to the biggest question of all, one mysterious near-death experience at a time. Meet the DC Tech CEO With a Flip Phone and No Social Media Photograph by Dylan Bilbao. Danny Hogenkamp is a self-described “Luddite” with a flip phone—used for texts and calls, that’s it—and no social media. And he’s on a mission to get others to unplug more, too. Our Jessica Sidman spends time with Hogenkamp and his fellow travelers, and even deletes all the social media apps from her own phone for a weekend, discovering “something liberating” about the experience. Schools Are Banning Phones. What About Laptops? Photograph by Skynesher/Getty Images. When staff writer Sylvie McNamara’s son was in ninth grade at a well-regarded DC public school, he spent his days watching TV shows and playing games—not on a personal phone, but on a school district-issued laptop. As schools around the area and country ban phones in class in order to help kids learn and bolster their mental health, McNamara asks an important and overdue question: why not laptops, too? Why PETA’s Ingrid Newkirk Is Still Getting in Our Faces Photograph by Magdalena Papaioannou. Four decades after cofounding People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals in her Rockville apartment, the 76-year-old Newark is still crusading for animal rights—and still willing to shock us into paying attention. Before meeting Newkirk, writer Andrew Zaleski expected the activist to be “rigid and sanctimonious.” Instead, he found her to be a “sharp conversationalist and easy to be around,” “the kind of person I wouldn’t mind seeing at a barbecue.” Newark, he learns, “probably wouldn’t even take it personally if I ate a beef burger.”The post A DC Restaurant Trump Slump, the Truth About Autopens, and Killer Rocks From Outer Space: Washingtonian’s Favorite Longreads of 2025 first appeared on Washingtonian. ...read more read less