Emily Badger
@emmbadger.bsky.social
New York Times journalist covering cities and urban policy for The Upshot. emily.badger@nytimes.com, ebadger.21 on Signal
The Trump administration is sitting on more than $7 billion meant for big transit construction projects around the country: www.nytimes.com/2026/07/27/u...
Congress Budgeted Billions for Big Transit Projects. Trump Isn’t Spending It. (Gift Article)
“It’s hard to look at the last year and see anything other than a deliberate slowdown of these grants.”
nytimes.com
NCPC staff says the Height of Buildings Act *does* apply to Trump's arch -- but that he can still build it to 250 feet. He just has to make the arch itself shorter and the statue 40 feet taller...
Did you all realize that the National Mall is slightly crooked compared to the rest of D.C.'s L'Enfant street grid? The McMillan Commission did that!
Careful planning is Washington’s whole thing: symbolic sightlines; monuments that speak to one another; columns, rooflines and axes aligned just so. The whole city is supposed to be a work of civic art. Trump’s projects test this 235-year-old idea: www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
Washington Has Been Carefully Planned for Two Centuries. Now Trump Has His Own Designs. (Gift Article)
The city is unlike any in America for its accumulation of intricate details, a whole that is a work of civic art.
nytimes.com
Tomorrow the Commission of Fine Arts will take another look at Trump's proposed arch, including renderings of it viewed from around the area. Here is its winged statue, peeping over the trees from the National Mall.
The East Wing demolition is now making it difficult for the government to argue in the Arch lawsuit that no injunction is needed because construction isn't imminent. Judge Chutkan just doesn’t believe it, when the president himself has said he wants the arch by July 4th.
Catching up on this thorough and thoughtful @philipkennicott.bsky.social piece on Trump's designs on the capital, until now a city of simple symmetry and unfussy architecture: www.washingtonpost.com/style/2026/0...
Column | Trump is the biggest threat to D.C.’s architectural splendor since War of 1812
President Trump’s garish, piecemeal changes to Washington’s urban design and architecture are poised to destroy symbolism upheld for centuries.
washingtonpost.com
The National Capital Planning Commission is scheduled to vote today to approve the president's ballroom. As of March, this is where the project stood. By this afternoon, it will jump to the "final" step. (NCPC is no longer showing this tracker on their website tho.)
NCPC has posted an addendum to the ballroom plans incorporating the removed stairs as the president showed Sunday night. No new renderings, detailed plans, dimensions, landscape. Just the images Trump showed. www.ncpc.gov/files/projec...
NCPC says they're still voting on the ballroom on Thursday, despite this ruling. Unclear tho, what plans they're voting on -- the ones they saw earlier this month, or the changed ones the president revealed on Air Force One on Sunday.
Emily Badger@emmbadger.bsky.social · 4mo agoFederal judge rules construction must stop on the president's ballroom until Congress authorizes it: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
Federal judge rules construction must stop on the president's ballroom until Congress authorizes it: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
We’re reading @birdyword.bsky.social fascinating “The Land Trap” for the next Reading The City book club at Solid State in DC, on April 1. If you’re one of those people who is *always* trying to talk about Henry George, this month's book is for you!
Good @heatherknightsf.bsky.social and Soumya Karlamangla story about the dire situation for BART in SF: www.nytimes.com/2026/03/10/u...
The Bay Area Considers the Unthinkable: Life Without BART
nytimes.com
Great @jonathanmahler.bsky.social story on the new politics of housing in the Mamdani era: www.nytimes.com/2026/03/06/m...
The Upshot is hiring a data graphics/multimedia editor. Come work with us and make weird things that help people understand the world! job-boards.greenhouse.io/thenewyorkti...
This 3D model by the NYT of the proposed East Wing ballroom really makes clear how out of scale it is with the rest of the complex...
We've been tracking nearly 200 lawsuits against the Trump administration over its attempts to leverage federal funding to impose the president's agenda. The most startling pattern: The administration seems entirely undeterred when it loses in court. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
Trump Has Been Sued 198 Times for Withholding Funding. It Hasn’t Stopped Him. (Gift Article)
Immigration demands for highway dollars, D.E.I. rules for homeless grants: how Trump has tried to wield spending to get his way.
nytimes.com
A federal judge finally ruled today that the Trump administration acted illegally in trying to shut down New York's congestion pricing program, via @stefanoschen.bsky.social + Winnie Hu www.nytimes.com/2026/03/03/n...
Congestion Pricing Wins in Court After Lengthy Battle With Trump
nytimes.com
Great @natecohn.bsky.social piece on what "affordability" really means to people in this moment, drawing on our most recent polling: www.nytimes.com/2026/01/28/u...
"The second Trump coalition has unraveled." via @natecohn.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2026/01/22/u...
Many months later, the Social Security Administration acknowledged in court that DOGE employees at the agency shared sensitive data in violation of security policies last spring, just as critics and privacy advocates feared at the time: www.nytimes.com/2026/01/20/u...
DOGE Employees Shared Social Security Data, Court Filing Shows
nytimes.com
Latest NYT analysis of video footage from the Renee Good shooting capture Ross firing the 2nd and 3rd shots at her after his body is visibly clear of the path of her vehicle. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/15/v...
Long before construction jobs became dominated by immigrant workers, the appeal of those jobs for American workers began to collapse. Only *then* did immigrants start to fill them. From a *great* story by @rondakaysen.bsky.social + Rob Gebeloff: www.nytimes.com/2026/01/14/u...
“He’s tended to turn the other cheek, and he’s reached a moment where he can’t.” www.nytimes.com/2026/01/12/b...
Fed Changes Course and Takes On Trump’s Political Fight
nytimes.com
A long-awaited update of federal employment data shows crippling staff reductions in some federal agencies and offices: www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
220,000 Fewer Workers: How Trump’s Cuts Affected Every Federal Agency (Gift Article)
New data offers the first clear view of the impact of the buyouts and firings.
nytimes.com
The Times' Visual Investigations team is the best at trying to find clarity when clarity is hard to come by. Their view on the Minneapolis shooting yesterday: www.nytimes.com/video/us/100...
Video: Videos Contradict Trump Administration Account of ICE Shooting in Minneapolis
An analysis of footage from three camera angles show that the vehicle appears to be turning away from a federal officer as he opened fire.
nytimes.com
My favorite evidence that congestion pricing in New York has reshaped peoples’ behavior: we can see a surge of people trying to enter the zone before the price kicks up at 5 a.m., and after it decreases at 9 p.m.
Love these little @aliciaparlap.bsky.social graphics that illustrate the absurdist ways DOGE claimed it saved money, at the end of a year of trying to chase their accounting. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/23/u...
Remarkably few of the immigrants arrested in big-city ICE operations have had violent criminal records, via Albert Sun: www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
