








(Linda Davidson/The Washington Post)
Tyler McGloghlin of Grundy, Va., hugs his mother, Sheila, who is stressed out over money and her failing health. Sheila McGloghlin gets $500 a month from disability and is supporting her son and daughter-in-law. Tyler McGloghlin is not employed and has, at times, turned to holding a sign on the side of the road and pleading for money to help feed the family. Since 1996, the number of working-age adults receiving federal disability payments has increased significantly across the country, but nowhere more so than in rural America.
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(Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
President Trump talks to reporters on the White House’s South Lawn on Nov. 21 before departing with his family for his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., for Thanksgiving. Trump’s visits to his own properties for official business and leisure were frequent during his first year in office.

(Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

(Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
ABOVE: White House press secretary Sean Spicer answers questions from members of the news media, seen reflected in an exit sign, during a briefing on Feb. 14. Spicer’s time on the job was marked by shouting matches with the press corps, and he was famously caricatured on “Saturday Night Live” by the actress Melissa McCarthy. BELOW: President Trump’s decision to install financier Anthony Scaramucci, talking with reporters outside the West Wing on July 25, as White House communications director was said to have prompted Spicer’s resignation on July 21. Scaramucci was fired by Trump 10 days after starting his job, a move that was made at the urging of John F. Kelly when he became White House chief of staff.

(Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, take in the pre-inaugural “Make America Great Again! Welcome Celebration” at the Lincoln Memorial on Jan. 19. The couple were both heavily involved with the Trump campaign and, as White House advisers, took on prominent roles in the first months of the Trump administration.

(Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Blue light bathes the White House on May 15 in honor of police officers killed in the line of duty. President Trump offered strong support for law enforcement, saying officers have been subject to “unfair defamation and vilification,” an apparent allusion to Black Lives Matter and other civil rights movements that arose in the wake of high-profile police shootings of black men.

(Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
Former FBI director James B. Comey leaves the Hart Senate Office Building on June 8 after testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee on the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

(Zach Gibson/Bloomberg News)

(Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
TOP: The investigation led by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, seen leaving the Capitol on June 20, has picked up steam in recent weeks and appears to have expanded beyond Russian campaign interference to encompass a range of issues, including contact between Russian officials and Trump aides during the transition period after the election. BOTTOM: On Nov. 14, Attorney General Jeff Sessions arrives for a House Judiciary Committee hearing, during which he testified on what he knew about the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russians and insisted that he had “always told the truth.”

(Melina Mara/The Washington Post)
House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), working in his Capitol Hill office on April 27, spent much of the year deflecting questions about President Trump and insisting that he was focused on the GOP legislative agenda, but in November he said that the party stands with the president.

(Alex Wong/Getty Images)

(Melina Mara/The Washington Post)
TOP: President Trump, talking with Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) in the Oval Office on Sept. 6, briefly aligned himself with Democratic congressional leaders on some key fiscal issues, but that bipartisan cooperation failed to endure. BOTTOM: From left, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) are joined by other members of Congress as they announce details of the Republican Party’s tax overhaul plan on Capitol Hill on Sept. 27.
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(Amanda Voisard for The Washington Post)
Organizers of the Women's March on Washington said that as many as half a million people gathered in the nation's capital on Jan. 21 to mount a roaring rejoinder to the inauguration of President Trump.

(Sarah Voisin/The Washington Post)
Aisha Bain, 38, of Baltimore has the names of African Americans who died from violence written on her face. She was marching on Jan. 21 in Washington with the organization Move to End Violence.

(Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
A limousine set ablaze by protesters burns in downtown Washington on Jan. 20, the day of President Trump's inauguration.

(Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
Protesters stand in front of the Trump International Hotel in Washington on Feb. 4 after the "Peace for Iran" rally, for which thousands gathered in Lafayette Square to protest the administration's travel ban, which denied entry to the United States to those from several Muslim-majority nations.

(Evelyn Hockstein For The Washington Post)
Chanting “White lives matter,” “You will not replace us” and “Jews will not replace us,” several hundred white nationalists and white supremacists carrying torches marched in a parade through the University of Virginia campus in Charlottesville on Aug. 11. The march lasted 15 to 20 minutes before ending in skirmishes when the participants were met by counterprotesters at the base of a statue of Thomas Jefferson, the university’s founder.

(Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
Visitors are seen reflected in the glass of a case of Civil War artifacts at the Richmond National Battlefield Park's Civil War Visitor Center on Aug. 28 in Virginia. In the wake of the events in Charlottesville, there have been discussions in other cities such as Richmond over the presence of statues honoring Confederate figures. Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy from 1861 to 1865, is steeped in Civil War history and sites.
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(Ryan M. Kelly/Charlottesville Daily Progress)
A Dodge Challenger plows into people who were counterprotesting the Unite the Right rally held on Aug. 12 in Charlottesville, Va., by white nationalists. The alleged driver, James Alex Fields Jr., 20, of Ohio, was charged with second-degree murder in the attack, which killed Heather Heyer, 32, of Charlottesville and injured 19.

(Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)
Rosanne Solis, photographed in her Sutherland Springs, Tex., home on Nov. 7, was shot through her shoulder in the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs on Nov. 5. Twenty-six people were killed after Devin Kelley, 26, entered the small white church and began firing. In the days after the shooting, residents of the town of 600 cited their faith as the source of their strength and said they saw prayer as a way to help their community heal.

(David Becker/Getty Images)
People try to flee to safety on the Route 91 Harvest country music festival grounds Oct. 1 in Las Vegas after a man began shooting from the 32nd floor of the nearby Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino. Police officers who stormed the shooter’s hotel room said they found an “armory” of guns and ammunition inside.

(Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
The Las Vegas Strip is seen on Oct. 4, three days after Stephen Paddock, 64, killed 58 people and wounded hundreds more after he opened fire on concertgoers at the Route 91 Harvest festival in the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. Paddock has been described as a man of considerable financial means and an avid gambler, but investigators have yet to determine a motive for his shooting rampage.

(Justin Lane/European Pressphoto Agency/EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
Crushed bicycles are seen in Manhattan on Oct. 31 after a pickup truck sped down the crowded Hudson River Park Bikeway, killing eight people and wounding 11. The alleged driver, Sayfullo Saipov, a 29-year-old immigrant from Uzbekistan, was shot and wounded by the police before he was arrested.

(Press Association via Associated Press)
Emergency workers tend to the wounded inside the Manchester Arena in Manchester, England, on May 22 after a suicide bomber attacked pop star Ariana Grande’s concert as it ended. The explosion killed 22 and injured more than 100; many were young people.

(David Ramos/Getty Images)
A damaged van is surrounded by police officers in the Las Ramblas area of Barcelona on Aug. 17. Sixteen people were killed and scores were injured after the van plowed into a crowd in the tourist district. The suspected driver was fatally shot by police four days later in the Spanish countryside.

(Agence France Presse/Getty Images)
People in Egypt gather around the bodies of some of the more than 300 worshipers who were killed Nov. 24 in Sinai after a bomb blast ripped through a Sufi mosque. The attack took place as weekly Friday prayers began, and up to 30 gunmen opened fire on those who fled the mosque after the explosion, survivors and officials said.
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(Felipe Dana/Associated Press)
Zeid Ali, 12, left, and Hodayfa Ali, 11, comfort each other after their house was destroyed during fighting between Iraqi forces and Islamic State militants in Mosul on June 24. The cousins said some of their family members were trapped under the rubble. The Islamic State lost the last of its strongholds in Iraq and Syria in 2017, with its forces scattered and severely diminished.

(Alice Martins for The Washington Post)
A fighter with the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces looks through a hole in the wall toward a position thought to be held by an Islamic State sniper in Raqqa, Syria, on June 12.

(Felipe Dana/Associated Press)
Fleeing civilians walk past the heavily damaged al-Nuri mosque as Iraqi forces continue their advance against the Islamic State in Mosul’s Old City on July 4.

(Andrew Quilty for The Washington Post)
Children of a woman named Shaguftar play with neighbors — also from families displaced by conflict — in the yard of their house in the Surkh Rod district of Afghanistan’s Nangahar province in July. They have lived there since fleeing their home in a different district in Nangahar after Shaguftar’s husband, Mohammad Karim, a chef working for the Afghan government, was killed by fighters with the Islamic State in Khorasan, or ISIS-K. The insurgent group formed in 2014 and soon made inroads into the eastern Afghan province, taking control of villages in the southern hills and moving toward more populated areas. The U.S. military and Afghan security forces have been conducting operations against ISIS-K throughout 2017 in an effort to eliminate the group from Afghanistan.

(Emilio Morenatti/Associated Press)
Migrants and refugees stand on the deck of the rescue vessel Golfo Azzurro after they were picked up by workers with the Spanish nongovernmental organization Proactiva Open Arms on the Mediterranean Sea on June 16. More than 600 people were attempting the journey across the Mediterranean to Europe in packed boats from Libya. The route is one of the deadliest in the world for migrants, and more than 3,000 people who tried to make the journey this year are dead or missing, according to an estimate by the United Nations’ refugee agency.

(Lorenzo Tugnoli for The Washington Post)
Migrants stand in a shower room at the Tajora detention center on May 23 in Tripoli, Libya. Abuse of migrants has become systematic in Libya, raising questions about European agreements to pay the North African country to stem the flow of humanity — mostly Africans fleeing poverty, war or persecution.

(Fred Dufour/Agence France Presse via Getty Images)
Rohingya refugees wait for food at the Kutupalong refugee camp in Bangladesh on Oct. 7. More than half a million Rohingya, members of a Muslim minority ethnic group in Burma, have crossed the border to neighboring Bangladesh since Aug. 25. They are fleeing indiscriminate violence, carried out by the Burmese military, that has been widely condemned as a form of ethnic cleansing.
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(Stuart Palley for The Washington Post)
Daniel and Cindy Pomplun were fast asleep as the wildfire's flames approached their home in Santa Rosa, Calif., early on Oct. 10, having missed the evacuation order given hours earlier. As flames destroyed their home, the couple took refuge in the swimming pool, standing shoulder deep in the water and draping wet towels over their heads to survive the night.

(Stuart Palley for The Washington Post)
The Central LNU Complex fire burns before sunrise Oct. 14 east of Santa Rosa. Blazes across Northern California in October burned more than 245,000 acres and left 44 people dead.

(Pablo Ramos/Associated Press)

(Rebecca Blackwell/Associated Press)
TOP: A man is rescued from a collapsed building in the Condesa neighborhood of Mexico City after a magnitude-7.1 quake struck on Sept. 19, killing nearly 400 people. Volunteers, police officers and firefighters used trained dogs and their bare hands to search through the ruins for survivors. BOTTOM: An altar to the Virgin of Guadalupe is covered with debris inside the home where Larissa Garcia, 24, lived with her family in Juchitan, in Mexico’s Oaxaca state. The family members, all of whom survived, were trapped under rubble after a magnitude-8.1 earthquake on Sept. 7 that killed scores.

(Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
Mia Herman sits on a fire hydrant on a flooded Miami street on Sept. 10.

(Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post)
Gladys Rivera Rodriguez is overcome with emotion on Sept. 29 as she stands in a bedroom in her home, which had its roof ripped off when the storm struck the isolated mountain community of Caonillas. Days after residents cleaned up the debris, they had no way to travel the blocked streets to leave the area and had received no aid from local or federal officials.

(Salwan Georges/The Washington Post)
Workers assisting with cleanup efforts approach Codrington, Antigua and Barbuda, on Sept. 24. The town of Codrington and the island of Barbuda were among the parts of the Caribbean leveled by Hurricane Irma; within weeks. Hurricanes Jose and Maria added to the misery.

(Adrees Latif/Reuters)
People help push a boat that is being used to evacuate residents from a flooded neighborhood in East Houston on Aug. 28. Hurricane Harvey dumped more than four feet of rain on parts of the area over several days in late August, killing dozens and displacing tens of thousands.
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(Ulises Ruiz Basurto/European Pressphoto Agency/EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
A picture taken with a slow shutter speed captures an eruption at the Colima volcano in Mexico in January. The volcano, which is on the border of the states of Colima and Jalisco, about 300 miles west of Mexico City, is the most active in Mexico. The Colima volcano had seen an increase in activity in previous months, with eruptions sending ash and smoke more than a mile into the air. The cloud of ash can also generate lightning.

(Shamil Zhumatov/Reuters)
The Soyuz MS-05 spacecraft, carrying Paolo Nespoli of Italy, Sergey Ryazanskiy of Russia and Randy Bresnik of the United States, blasts off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in southern Kazakhstan on July 28. The three-person crew was being ferried to the International Space Station for several months of research and was to return to Earth in mid-December.

(Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post; Note: Multiple exposures were combined to produce this image.)
Nowhere did the total eclipse of the sun on Aug. 21 last longer than it did in Hopkisville, Ky., where those who gathered were treated to 2 minutes 40 seconds of totality.

(European Space Agency/NASA/European Pressphoto Agency/EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
An image captured by the Hubble Space Telescope and released in October shows what happens when two galaxies crash into each other and merge. The cosmic knot, known as NGC 2623 or Arp 243, is about 250 million light-years from Earth. The crash caused gas clouds to become compressed and stirred up, in turn triggering a sharp spike of star formation. The tails extend for roughly 50,000 light-years from end to end.

(Jody Martin/Reuters)
People gather to look at a towering iceberg off the coast of Ferryland, Newfoundland, on April 16. Icebergs are commonly seen off the north shore of the Canadian province, which lies in what is known as “iceberg alley,”, but an unusually persistent pattern of winds from the north and northeast pushed this one closer and closer to the south shore before it ultimately ran aground.

(Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)
Alexander Lacey, the "big cat" trainer, gave an emotional speech to the crowd at Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Uniondale, N.Y., and thanked them for their support after he finished his lion and tiger act on May 21. He then had a quiet moment with his favorite lion as the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus ended its 146-year run.
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2016: The Year in Photos
From political upheaval at home and abroad to natural disasters and terrorism, these are the images that drove the debates of 2016.