The article focuses only on DC and takes pains to draw attention to how it's not associated with the shutdown, but in a way this is all misdirection (or, on the outside, abject ignorance. The phenomenon of progressives making deserts of cities they run is widespread and devastating.

All the way on the opposite coast, and having nothing whatsoever to do with the shutdown, San Francisco is one such wasteland. A guy has even posted a series of startling first-person videos from SF and surrounding cities with such titles as: "every store is CLOSED on van ness San Francisco", "every restaurant is CLOSED in San Francisco", and "every bank is CLOSED in San Francisco". You get the idea.

His channel is here: METAL LEO

“For all practical purposes for D.C., the federal government has been shut down since March 9, 2020,”

Yet everyone in this thread is talking about private businesses.

Why?

https://old.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/18schms/dc_gone_dark/

DC is a business district. They gentrified moat of what little is residential in it, 20+ years ago to flip it's voting base. By that I mean they tore down all the apartments, townhouses, anything that could be considered, " Low income", and replaced it with high end. This effectively flipped the vote.

When I was in high school it was normal for people to be from DC. Not so much anymore. And, if you look at DC public schools they went full covidiot again.