Photo illustration by Emma Spainhoward with photograph by Getty Images. Good morning! Today could hold your last slack Friday afternoon for some time. It’ll be sunny with a high of 42 after yesterday’s conversational snow; a low of 30 tonight. There’s a chance of snow this weekend. You can find me on Bluesky, and there’s a link to my email address at the bottom of this post. I can’t stop listening to: “Falling” by Julee Cruise. RIP David Lynch. Here’s some Trumpworld news you might have blocked out: • Official Washington once viewed Stephen Miller as “a racist, and as an irritant.” Soon he “will re-enter government with even more trust and credibility with the president, fewer internal rivals and a more expansive team reporting to him.” (NYT) • President-elect Trump and his team have mapped out many routes around Congress, if necessary. His immigration plans have “shifted away from talking about widespread deportations, focusing instead on prioritizing deporting migrants who crossed the border illegally and have a criminal record and those who already have orders for removal by a judge.” (WSJ) • Elon Musk, Dana White, and Hulk Hogan are among the scheduled speakers for Trump’s rally in DC Sunday. (NBC News) • Some intelligence community veterans are not particularly optimistic about how Kash Patel might run the FBI. (Washington Post) • Kristi Noem‘s confirmation hearing is scheduled for 9 AM. (US Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee) • Trump has appointed Jon Voight, Mel Gibson, and Sylvester Stallone to be his “Special Ambassadors” to Hollywood. (Politico) • Nancy Pelosi will skip the inauguration. (Politico) DC Councilmember Robert White will attend, because, he says, “I cannot risk the incoming president feeling slighted by DC and taking that out on the city.” (Martin Austermuhle) • Rudy Giuliani has reached a settlement with former Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Wandrea “Shaye” Moss. Andrew Giuliani believes that under the agreement, his dad’s World Series rings will stay in the family. (AP) • New York Mayor Eric Adams went to Mar-a-Lago. (NYT) Hidden Eats by Ike Allen Dandelion salad at Eat a Lao. Photograph by Ike Allen. Eat a Lao Laotian cooking is on its way to becoming an essential DMV cuisine, thanks to a small class of ambitious restaurateurs. Ing and Angkana Rumphan just joined that pack by opening Eat a Lao, in the same Rockville Pike strip mall as A&J. The menu subheadings are intriguing. Under the section “Hmong Salads Jiggle Jiggle,” the salad called “Dandelion” contains no bitter wild greens—rather, it’s meant to resemble the flower visually. Tiny, chewy pork-and-peanut meatballs perch atop halved peeled tangerines, arranged in a floral circle around a skein of lettuce, red onion, and pickled veggies. Under the heading “Vientiane Night Market,” try one of the huge sampler platters that consist of varying arrangements of fried, grilled, and cured meats (chicken wings, sweet Lao jerky, lemongrass-y sai oua sausage, crispy pork belly) along with crudités and an aggressively funky, spicy, refreshing papaya salad. Recently on Washingtonian dot com: • Our inauguration package from this month’s print issue is out with lots of info about the new era that’s upon us. • I interviewed Jack Blanchard, the British journalist who’ll anchor Politico Playbook beginning on Monday. • Some nice-looking open houses this weekend. • We got your cute panda merch right here. • There are indeed Inauguration Day food and drink specials. • You can own a piece of Crisfield Seafood, the beloved Silver Spring restaurant that closed last month. • Puppy yoga, bunny meditation among the fitness and wellness classes you can take. Local news links: • The Washington Post has a “Big Hairy Audacious Goal”: to”reach 200 million paying users.” Currently it has fewer than 3 million subscribers, and the New York Times has around 11 million. (There are 334 million people in the United States, I just checked.) (NYT) • Feds allege SCOTUSblog publisher Tom Goldstein used funds from his boutique law firm to pay gambling debts, didn’t declare poker winnings on his taxes, and hired women with whom he was involved for no-show jobs. He intends to “vigorously contest” the charges, his lawyers say. (NBC News) • A pickup fell into the Potomac after a collision on Memorial Bridge last night. Crews rescued one person. (ARLnow) • Deer rescued. (Washingtonian Problems) • The boards are back downtown, sigh. (PoPville) • Could DC get a 10 cent bottle deposit? (Brianne K. Nadeau) • A maritime training facility might pull into port here. (Bisnow) • A DC police captain filed a suit saying the Metropolitan Police Department demoted him illegally after he applied for parental leave. (Washington Blade) • A 20-year-old besotted by Nazi ideology got eight years for crashing a U-Haul truck into a White House gate in May 2023. (WUSA) • You never know who you’ll meet in This Town. (Elissa Slotkin) • A look at how DC’s new open caption law, which requires movie theaters to deploy on-screen captions at some screenings, has rolled out. (Washington City Paper) • Arlington authorities arrested Timothy C. Pollock and charged him with setting fires outside three bars in Crystal City. (ARLnow) • Some Hill staffers want a 32-hour workweek. (Nicholas Wu) Weekend event picks, by Briana Thomas: Friday • Listen to soul-stirring music at Sixth & I’s MLK Shabbat (Free) • Two powerhouses of Mexican classical music, Carlos Miguel Prieto and Jorge Federico Osorio, come to DC (Through Saturday, $17+, Kennedy Center). Saturday • Honor Martin Luther King Jr. Saturday at the MLK Holiday DC Peace Walk & Parade, a DC tradition for more than 40 years. Peace rally and assembly begins at Shepherd Park at 9:30 AM, followed by a procession to Entertainment & Sports Arena at 10:30 AM. • Anacostia Riverkeeper partners with Pope Branch Park Restoration Alliance for a weekend cleanup. Sunday Rare Essence , EU feat. Sugar Bear, and DCVybe play the Howard Theatre ($55). Read more of Thomas’s picks. Thanks for reading. See you Monday.The post Elon Musk and Hulk Hogan Will Speak at Trump Rally, DC Could Get a Bottle Deposit Program, and the US Will Send Ambassadors to Hollywood first appeared on Washingtonian.