Smoke Rose Near the White House As the State Department Went Dark Hours Before the Midterms

Unknown gunmen blacked out 45,000 North Carolina residents by shooting up two substations in 2022.

Nearly four years later, the lights went out in the Washington neighborhood where America runs its foreign policy.

It is not the first time the State Department has gone dark, and the history is worse.

One Substation Knocked Out the State Department and the World Bank Block

The power died on the morning of November 2 across Foggy Bottom.

Pepco put the damage at about 1,100 customers, while the city's AlertDC system tallied 1,176.

The State Department told The Daily Wire that multiple facilities were "experiencing an unscheduled loss of electrical power," Newsmax reported.

The department said it was working with Pepco to find out what happened, but nobody would say whether diplomatic business ground to a halt.

Downtown intersections lost their traffic signals.

George Washington University scrapped its morning classes.

Then came the smoke.

Firefighters raced to the 1800 block of H Street NW after reports of smoke curling up out of several manholes.

That is the same block as the World Bank's front door at 1818 H Street, a short walk from the White House.

D.C. Fire and EMS posted on X that Pepco was on the scene dealing with a power surge and outages around the area.

Officials did not tie the smoking manholes to the substation event.

Pepco pinned the outage on an event at its I Street Substation.

At first, the utility could not even offer an estimated restoration time.

Crews finally got every affected customer back online by about 2 p.m., and Pepco said it saw no indication of foul play.

The cause "remains under investigation," Pepco said in a statement quoted by The Gateway Pundit.

What it did not say is what actually broke, or why one substation carried so much of the federal city on its back.

A 2014 Blackout Hit the State Department and the West Wing On the Same Morning

On December 15, 2014, a construction accident severed the power line feeding State Department headquarters.

That same morning, a transformer exploded at the Office of Personnel Management and knocked out the Federal Reserve, the Labor Department, the FDIC, the U.S. Park Police, and the Smithsonian Metro station.

The West Wing briefly lost its lights, heat, and computers.

"Emergency generators allowed some staff to keep working," Fox News reported, while other State Department employees were sent home.

Nearly twelve years later, the same Pepco territory produced another blackout at the same agency.

Pepco Raised Rates and a Substation Still Failed Under Foggy Bottom

Washington families are paying for that grid.

The D.C. Public Service Commission approved a Pepco multiyear rate plan worth $123.4 million in November 2024 – a plan Pepco originally branded its "Climate Ready Pathway."

The D.C. Court of Appeals threw out those orders in March 2026, and regulators turned the rates back on two months later.

Mayor Muriel Bowser nominates the commissioners who sign off on Pepco's rates, and her city got climate branding instead of a substation that holds.

Grid Experts Have Warned That Substations Are Sitting Ducks

The Moore County shooters needed nothing more than rifles and a dark night to cut power to two Duke Energy substations.

That case went unsolved for years.

America has more than 79,000 substations, and plenty of them sit in rural spots with almost no security.

"These are very lightly guarded," Diana Furchtgott-Roth of the Heritage Foundation told Fox News after the North Carolina shootings.

She added that getting close to one takes almost no effort.

Around the same time, at least six substations in Oregon and Washington state were hit in similar attacks.

Mark Mills of the Manhattan Institute told Fox News that grid security always loses the budget fight because, like insurance, it only pays off after disaster strikes.

Every one of those incidents exposed the same weakness – one damaged node can plunge thousands into darkness.

House Oversight Should Pull Every Record On the I Street Substation

Pepco says no saboteur touched the I Street Substation.

That is exactly the problem.

If a breakdown with no bad actor involved can shut down State Department facilities, a trained crew could do far worse on the night before Election Day.

Moore County proved somebody out there already knows how.

The building that runs American foreign policy should have backup that never hinges on a single neighborhood substation.

Republicans on the House Oversight Committee, which holds jurisdiction over the District of Columbia, should demand Pepco's full incident report, every maintenance record for the I Street Substation, and a hard timeline for hardening the grid around federal buildings.

The lights came back on by early afternoon, and Washington should not treat that as the end of the story.

Sources:

• Charlie McCarthy, "D.C. Power Outage Hits State Department, 1,100 Others," Newsmax, November 2, 2026.
• Cassandra MacDonald, "Power Goes Out in DC's Diplomatic District the Day Before Midterms," The Gateway Pundit, November 2, 2026.
• Fox News, "White House, Other Fed Buildings in Washington Lose Power," Fox News, December 15, 2014.
• Andrew Mark Miller, "NC Power Station Shootings Show Major Vulnerability of U.S. Power Grid That Requires Action," Fox News, December 14, 2022.
• D.C. Public Service Commission, "Pepco Multiyear Rate Plan," D.C. Public Service Commission, 2026.