Category: Nation & World

Only keen-eyed visitors will notice some of the subtle changes to George Washington’s Mount Vernon home, like a new finishing on the mantle in the former president’s study or the reworked underground framing of the house.

But curators say each minuscule change to the sprawling Virginia estate can help visitors better understand the nation’s past, and therefore their place in the world today.

Construction fences have lined the back of the mansion for the better part of two years as work continues on a $40 million project to restore the building to its 18th century integrity. Though work is ongoing, the first and second floor of the home are now open to the public for the first time since January 2024.

Heading into America’s 250th anniversary, Mount Vernon President and CEO Doug Bradburn said bolstering authenticity at the estate is more important than ever.

“You cannot understand the United States of America’s founding without the indispensable George Washington,” Bradburn said. “You can’t understand him without Mount Vernon.”

Washington lived at the estate along the Potomac River with his wife, Martha, for the last 45 years of his life. When he inherited the mansion, it stood at about 3,500 square feet. The serene view of the Potomac welcomed Washington home after he led American forces to victory in the Revolutionary War. He retired to Mount Vernon after serving as the nation’s first president.

By the time Washington died in 1799, he had expanded the dwelling to more than triple that size, with more than 20 rooms. Most of the work was performed by people enslaved on the estate, officials have said.

The estate passed down through family members after Washington’s death until the Mount Vernon Ladies Association secured it in 1860. Since then, the nonprofit has worked to restore the remaining 500 acres of property to how it appeared when Washington died. The association has never accepted any government funding, and it solely relies on earned income and donations.

Nearly 1 million people visit Washington’s home, located about 20 miles south of the nation’s capital, each year.

“We believe in the power of place,” said Anne Neal Petri, regent of the Mount Vernon Ladies Association. “We want to engage the visitor in ways that the history books just can’t achieve.”

This bout of rehabilitation is the largest in Mount Vernon’s history. Born from necessity after centuries of termite damage detached the building from its foundation, there wasn’t a single piece of original 18th century woodwork left underground, said Thomas Reinhart, director of the estate’s preservation.

Only parts of Mount Vernon closed during the restoration. The extensive grounds, Washington’s tomb and the quarters for enslaved people remained open. The renovations focused only on Washington’s living quarters, called the mansion.

To rebuild the mansion’s wooden frame, workers harvested white oak from the property, similar to how Washington would have sourced wood for the original construction. Only now, every piece of wood that touches masonry has added termite shields.

“Termites are quite tenacious,” Reinhart said.

From preservation carpenters, engineers, archaeologists and collection curators, it’s estimated about 350 people have worked on the restoration so far. Besides the structural changes, specialists throughout the house restoration performed paint analysis on doorframes and trims to make them accurate.

The most noticeable visual differences are on the second floor, in the most intimate area of the house.

Step into Washington’s bedroom, and visitors will see walls newly enveloped by a soft blue wallpaper with a bright floral design featuring a birdbath and two bright orange lovebirds.

After referencing preserved documents, Amanda Isaac, a curator at the estate, said historians chose a replica 1790s French wallpaper based on a design that existed when Washington remodeled the home.

She said with the most recent changes — which also included tearing the walls down to the studs and replastering them with historically accurate techniques — is a room that most resembles how the home looked when the Washingtons lived at Mount Vernon. It has nine of the original furnishings of the room, including the exact bedframe Washington died on.

Perhaps the largest undertaking is still ongoing.

Underground, droves of people are still working to restore a cellar spanning the entire footprint of the house. That part of the home is being refinished to look like it did when it housed the enslaved Lee family, who served the Washingtons as valet, cook and butler. The estate is also adding an underground bunker to store an upgraded HVAC system created to better preserve and maintain the home.

Though it’s been centuries since Washington walked the property, signs of his life are still littered around the land. While excavating the cellar, archaeologists discovered 35 glass bottles of preserved berries, 20 of which are still intact and now on display at the Mount Vernon museum.

As the country looks to the future, Mount Vernon serves as a fixture of the past, forever reminding the nation how far it has come.

“You can’t go to Rome without seeing the Colosseum, and you can’t go to Washington, D.C., without seeing Mount Vernon,” Bradburn said.

Secret meetings between Ukraine’s top peace negotiator and FBI leaders have injected new uncertainty into the high-stakes talks to end the war there, according to diplomats and officials familiar with the matter.

Over the last several weeks, President Volodymyr Zelensky’s lead negotiator, Rustem Umerov, flew to Miami three times to meet with President Donald Trump’s top envoy, Steve Witkoff, and discuss a proposal to end the nearly four-year conflict with Russia.

But during his time in the United States, Umerov also held closed-door meetings with FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino, according to four people, who like some others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential conversations.

The meetings have caused alarm among Western officials who remain in the dark about their intent and purpose. Some said they believe Umerov and other Ukrainian officials sought out Patel and Bongino in the hopes of obtaining amnesty from any corruption allegations the Ukrainians could face. Others worry the newly established channel could be used to exert pressure on Zelensky’s government to accept a peace deal, proposed by the Trump administration, containing steep concessions for Kyiv.

Ukrainian Ambassador to Washington Olha Stefanishyna confirmed Umerov’s meeting with the FBI and told the Washington Post he “only covered national security related issues” that could not be disclosed publicly.

An FBI official said the Umerov meetings included discussion of the two countries’ shared law enforcement and national security interests. The topic of white collar corruption in Ukraine came up in one of the meetings but was not the main focus, the official said. Any suggestion that Patel’s discussions were inappropriate is “complete nonsense,” the official added.

The two FBI leaders have criticized Ukraine in various public comments. Patel in March questioned the scale of U.S. aid to Ukraine and urged Congress to investigate whether any U.S. funds sent there were misused. Bongino has accused Zelensky of covering up the allegedly corrupt activities of President Joe Biden’s son, whose board seat on a Ukrainian energy company has faced intense scrutiny. Trump “is very suspicious of Zelensky, because of what he and some of the people in his government did to sweep under the rug the Joe Biden madness,” Bongino said in February.

A White House official said “U.S. officials regularly communicate with world leaders about national security issues of shared interest.” The official added that Trump’s national security team has been “speaking with both the Russians and the Ukrainians to facilitate a deal to end the war” and that anyone raising concerns about the FBI meetings “are not privy to these diplomatic conversations and have no idea what they are talking about.”

A representative of Zelensky’s office declined to comment on any specific meetings but insisted that “it is stupid to link everything to ‘corruption.’”

The New York Post noted Umerov’s meeting with Patel in an article published Nov. 28. Bongino’s meeting with Umerov has not been previously reported.

The discussions are happening at a critical moment for Ukraine. It is under pressure by the Trump administration to agree to an end-of-war proposal with huge implications for the country’s borders and territorial integrity.

It is also facing its most far-reaching corruption scandal since Zelensky took office in 2019. Ukrainian investigators alleged last month that $100 million had been stolen from the country’s energy sector through graft and kickbacks.

Eight people, including Zelensky’s former business partner, are accused of embezzlement, money laundering and illicit self-dealing. Zelensky’s top aide, Andriy Yermak, the second most powerful person in Ukraine, resigned in late November after his house was raided. Another close former ally of Zelensky, Oleksiy Chernyshov, who served as deputy prime minister, is accused by Ukrainian authorities of receiving $1.3 million in kickbacks.

“They do have a massive corruption situation going on there,” Trump told reporters this week, noting that the scandal was generating calls for elections in Ukraine. “People are asking this question: When do they have an election?”

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 prompted Kyiv to enact martial law, including the postponement of presidential and parliamentary elections.

There is speculation inside and outside Kyiv over whether Umerov, who also serves as Ukraine’s national security adviser, may be implicated in the expanding embezzlement investigation, particularly as the country’s anti-corruption officials expand their probe into the defense sector. Umerov previously served as Ukraine’s defense minister.

“I was surprised they sent him to negotiate given what’s being said about his potential involvement in the scandal,” said Angela Stent, a former intelligence officer in the George W. Bush administration and scholar at Georgetown University.

Ukrainian opposition lawmaker Volodymyr Ariev told the Post that it was irresponsible to keep Umerov on as top negotiator while he’s under a cloud of suspicion. “A person who has grown a tail with corruption allegations shouldn’t chair fateful negotiations until they cut the tail,” Ariev said.

Umerov’s defenders say he is an asset to Kyiv: His easygoing demeanor and proficient English have created a better rapport with U.S. officials than they had with Yermak, whom Zelensky relied on heavily before he resigned.

But his FBI meetings have raised suspicion among Ukraine’s Western backers given the presence of Patel, who became a focal point of Trump’s first impeachment, which centered on the president’s threat to revoke U.S. aid to Ukraine to extract information on Hunter Biden’s activities in the country. Trump was acquitted by the Senate.

Fiona Hill, a former Trump administration official, testified before Congress that Patel had involved himself in Ukraine issues in a manner that went beyond the scope of his job as a White House adviser, according to what she was told by colleagues. The impeachment report released by House Democrats also highlighted Patel’s discussions with Rudy Giuliani before the Trump administration’s suspension of $400 million in military aid to Ukraine.

Hill told the Post for this report that Patel’s reemergence is “likely to be viewed with even more concern and consternation in Europe.”

Patel has always denied he had a back channel with Trump on Ukraine during his first term and said his discussions with Giuliani were unrelated to Ukraine.

FBI officials have worked for years with Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau, or NABU, to help the government in Kyiv overcome endemic corruption stemming from its Soviet past. But high-level meetings between a top Ukrainian negotiator and the director of the FBI are not common.

“It is unusual for someone in that job to have a meeting with the leadership of the FBI,” said Sam Charap, a former State Department official and scholar at the Rand Corporation.

A common theme of Trump’s Ukraine diplomacy, particularly as he has expressed frustration about delays in getting to a deal, is expanding the number of aides assigned to work on the issue. Besides Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Witkoff, a real estate magnate and longtime friend, Trump has also enlisted his son-in-law Jared Kushner and Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll, an ally of Vice President JD Vance.

The growing number officials involved in the talks has caused miscommunication and confusion surrounding the deal’s terms and what the United States supports.

Several U.S. officials support a proposal in which Ukraine withdraws from Donetsk in eastern Ukraine in exchange for other areas under Russian control, such as the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.

Earlier this week, Zelensky pushed back against the idea of Ukraine relinquishing any territory. “Under our laws, under international law — and under moral law — we have no right to give anything away,” Zelensky said after meeting with top European leaders. “That is what we are fighting for.”

But as negotiations have stalled, Russian forces have made advances in the East, exploiting Ukraine’s shortages in ammunition and fighters. It also continues to bomb Ukraine’s electrical infrastructure, triggering rolling blackouts and raising fears of widespread outages this winter.

Trump has made clear his patience is wearing thin, and that if Ukraine doesn’t negotiate for land it could end up losing even more on the battlefield.

“You’re losing thousands of people a week,” Trump said. “It’s time to get that war settled.”

The white package that arrived at Mattias Krantz’s home in Sweden after a five-hour flight contained an octopus that Krantz saved from becoming someone’s meal.

Krantz’s hopes for the octopus, which he named Takoyaki, were high — maybe unreasonably so. Within about six months, Krantz wanted Takoyaki to play the piano so well that the animal could perform “Under the Sea” and the theme from the movie Jaws.

Krantz, who typically makes YouTube videos playing instruments he modifies, had long wanted to teach piano to an animal. Krantz said octopuses, whose eight arms can each act somewhat independently because of the neurons inside them, had the most potential.

But the task proved more difficult — and fulfilling — than Krantz imagined, requiring hundreds of hours and a wealth of patience. His YouTube video detailing the teaching process has more than 6 million views.

“It was probably the worst thing I’ve ever done, and maybe the coolest thing, but also the worst ever,” Krantz, 28, told the Washington Post. “I never pushed myself to such limits.”

Krantz purchased Takoyaki from a Portuguese fishery in March; he did not buy the octopus from a Korean market as is depicted in his YouTube video. Once Krantz got the octopus into his home, he dumped the creature into a roughly 110-gallon tank containing rocks, sand, and dog toys. The tank was connected to machines that filtered water and removed octopus waste.

“You’re going to be the greatest pianist the sea has ever known,” Krantz told Takoyaki, which he nicknamed Tako.

But first, Krantz had to earn Tako’s trust.

On the first day in its tank, Tako hid behind rocks and didn’t eat the small crabs and mussels Krantz had fished off Sweden’s southern coast. Tako began eating on the second day, and soon Krantz gave Tako a simple task to judge whether the octopus was up for the piano challenge: Take a plastic lid off a glass jar containing crab and shrimp. Tako passed the test after about three days.

Krantz then designed a piano key on his computer, 3D-printed it and set it down in the tank. When Tako touched the key on the second day, Krantz gave the octopus a treat. But Krantz wanted Tako to push the key to play a note, so he added a white lever that Tako wrapped its arms around and pulled to make a sound (Tako also broke the key off its mount a few times and hid it under rocks).

After that first success, Krantz built Tako a 15-key piano — a process Tako seemed to watch closely by pressing its body against the glass. But when Krantz placed the piano in the tank, Tako sat on it instead of playing it.

So Krantz tried different approaches.

First, he added a blue underwater speaker that allowed Tako — whose species has poor hearing — to feel a vibration when the octopus played a key. Tako began playing random notes, Krantz said, but he wanted Tako to play particular keys to form a melody.

Krantz added symbols to the keys he wanted Tako to play — circles, crosses, and stripes — which Tako didn’t respond to. Krantz even added pictures of an orange crab to the keys. The octopus was interested in the pictures but not in playing the keys.

But one thing seemed to grab Tako’s attention: movement. When a bubble formed in the tank, Tako chased it.

So, with fishing wire, Krantz wiggled the lever on the keys he wanted Tako to play. It worked — despite Tako also spending time playing the wires like a harp. (Marine scientist Jenny Hofmeister said octopuses are attracted to movement because it might signal prey.)

After a week, Tako played two notes in a row. After two weeks, Tako played a pair of notes simultaneously.

But in the following weeks — after about four months of training — Tako plateaued.

Plus — as expected from an octopus — Tako wasn’t focused on learning the instrument. Tako wrapped its arms around the GoPro camera in its tank, squirted water at Krantz, and, once, escaped the tank and hid in a cupboard.

Krantz lost hope that Tako could learn to play.

But Tako stared at the piano, which sat on the ground beside the tank, throughout the day, appearing to want to play at the usual 6 p.m. training time, Krantz said. So Krantz experimented with a new strategy.

“The one thing I’m really good at is insane stubbornness,” Krantz said.

In early August, he placed an acrylic tube inside the tank and inserted a crab — Tako’s favorite treat — at the top. When Tako played a key, Krantz lowered the crab closer to the bottom of the tube. Krantz called his device the “crab elevator.”

Tako initially tried to retrieve the crab by swimming into the tube and attempting to pull the crab down. But once Tako saw the crab inch closer after playing a note, the octopus became more motivated to play. After a few weeks, Krantz gave Tako the crab once the octopus played seven or eight keys.

In mid-August, Krantz began playing chord progressions on his acoustic guitar and simultaneously wiggled keys for Tako to play so they could perform together. Krantz fed Tako after each recital.

Krantz never taught Tako to consistently play the right keys at the right times. Sometimes the piano sounded good; other times, not so much. Tako played the keys to “Baby Shark” — even if it was off tempo, Krantz said.

But the fact that Tako could play keys at all was like a “fever dream,” Krantz said.

Hofmeister, the marine scientist, said Tako probably didn’t know he was playing the piano; he was motivated by food.

Octopuses are smart in their own ways: They change colors based on their surroundings, build dens with stones, use makeshift weapons, throw objects at targets, and eject ink clouds when they’re in danger.

“The octopus is not perceiving rhythm,” Hofmeister said. “It’s not perceiving, you know, tempo. It wants to do the steps it has to do to get the crab.”

She said teaching an octopus to play the piano perfectly is nearly impossible.

But in addition to creating music, Krantz received another benefit from the process: a friend. He has kept Takoyaki — the name means grilled octopus — as a pet.

Octopuses typically live for a year or two, and Krantz said Tako, which he estimated to be about 14 months old, now sleeps most of the day. But that hasn’t stopped Tako from continuing to practice its unique skill; the octopus plays piano about every other day.

The recitals still leave Krantz in awe.

“I can’t believe I sit here,” Krantz said last week, “and play with an octopus.”