Is there a story that stands out to you? And what did you do to rebuild trust in local government while you were mayor?

My mother was a public servant and so was my father.

And I, like it sounds like my colleagues here on the panel, did watch my parents and my family give.

My father worked for 40 years for the public schools here.

My mother retired as a nurse from St. Elizabeth's Hospital and she had worked at Veterans Hospital for most of her career.

They raised us to believe that faith and family and education was the expectation.

And giving back to the city is where it could start.

And Mayor Bowser?

Right

... uh, as a kid growing up in DC.

And I just saw how, uh, we, the city invested, we reinvigorated the neighborhood, but we exposed another generation of children, uh, to, to baseball.

And I also watched how sad it was when our football team left our city.

That's the next thing we need to do.

Well, we're working on RFK, as you know, and I think the, the very first kind of construction project, it's not the sexy part, it's the infrastructure part, but it's happening.

I sent down, um, what's needed to get that done to the DC Council.

That's gonna happen.

moving up a little bit right now, aren't they? They're

moving up a little bit.

We've delayed it with this budget year, and we're going to keep trying to push it off until the region is equal.

And we were able to do that this year.

We don't think that sales taxes are the way to fund your government because they're so regressive.

And it's just when people who can least afford it pay.

paying the same as people who can more afford it for the same goods, it doesn't allow us to reach our other kind of goals in a community of closing income gaps and education gaps and more people being able to afford housing.

How do you manage all that? It's so vast and you're such a good executive, yet there are certain things that you have total executive authority over and other things that you don't.

I should note that the most violent moment in recent history in DC was January 6th, and it was an attack on the United States Capitol by a lot of people who were doing it in the name of Donald Trump and it included, the people who were hurt included members of law enforcement.

My res- my message to residents is this: we know that access to our democracy is tenuous.

That is why you have heard me and m- many, many Washingtonians before me advocate for full statehood for the District of Columbia.

We are American citizens.

Our families go to war.

We pay taxes and we uphold the responsibilities of citizenship.

And while this action today is unsettling and unprecedented, I can't say that given some of the rhetoric of the past, that we're totally surprised.

That is just not true.

In light of this, should the military parade still go forward? If it was up to you, would you do it?

Well, um, I'm really here to talk about Washington, D.C., how we stay strong politically and economically, uh, and how this is really a unprecedented time, uh, in D.C.

Uh, so as we move forward, I have charged my team with making sure that we are focused on how our economy shifts, um, and every opportunity we have with the federal government, uh, for them to kind of pause the DOGE actions, um, look at the federal footprint, and certainly right-size it, but right-size it, um, with, uh, the notion of, how can we have the most productive, uh, workforce, um, for America? And certainly as the nation's capital, we have special events all the time.

Um, and our role, uh, especially in this case because it's a national special security event, uh, is to support our federal partners in having a safe event.

Uh, could you talk about how you're addressing that problem?

Well, i- it is true that most people wouldn't realize that an approved budget, which our FY25 budget was, um, was basically, um, rescinded, and, um, we had to revert to our '24 budget numbers, which were quite different.

Um, so we worked very hard with the president and Congress, uh, to get that fixed.

Um, in fact, Susan Collins moved a fix.