Rosslyn, Virginia, sits on a bluff above the Potomac River overlooking one of the most beautiful cities in the world or, as Team Trump calls it, “The Swamp.” President Donald Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign recently leased a floor of elevated office space here for the their semi-headquarters. (The primary HQ will be Trump Tower in New York.) For the several years between now and the 2020 election, Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale and his colleagues will be able to look down upon the people of Washington in real time.

They had a lot of empty space to choose from among the many tall office buildings that make Rosslyn look more like a modern city than Washington does. It got that way by not being included in the District of Columbia—the result of political decisions that propelled the two neighboring cities in vastly different directions over the centuries. After all, Rosslyn wasn’t always this glossy—far from it.

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Arlington County—formerly known as Alexandria County—didn’t used to be independent from the capital. In 1790, President George Washington needed congressional votes to pass Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton’s financial program. He secured one of those votes by promising Alexandria’s congressman—a member of the powerful Lee family—to include his town within the new District of Columbia. That meant that Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson had to rejigger the plan for the District, swiveling the Constitution-mandated 10-mile-square around until it encompassed the little town and 25 square miles of its hinterland, making Alexandria County part of D.C.

This constitutionally, legislatively and judicially confirmed three-party contract existed for over 50 years until some Alexandria businessmen and politicians determined in 1846 that it had been a bad deal. Most importantly, Alexandria’s major business, the slave trade, was being outlawed in the District. By way of a hastily organized and barely advertised referendum, the leaders authorized themselves to unilaterally withdraw from their binding contract with the District of Columbia and Maryland. D.C. lost a voteless population and, thanks to its new county, Virginia gained a seat in congress.

Among the unintended consequences of the county’s separation from the District was that the Virginia edge of the Potomac River suddenly became the border between two different police jurisdictions. Gambling barges and floating houses of prostitution soon found moorings along the Virginia riverfront because the Washington police would not tread on Virginia soil to reach the boarding ramps for the bobbing pleasure palaces. There was no effective municipal government or police force on the Virginia end of the Aqueduct Bridge, the new shortcut from Georgetown, so eventually, the river-borne vice spread into Rosslyn, whose largest legitimate business was a brewery.

The county was a local embarrassment for more than half a century from the 1850s until 1904, when a few leaders began to express the will of a growing middle-class population in opposition to the local crime machine. Their efforts at restructuring the government culminated in the 1920s, when the progressive County Manager form of governance was instituted and the county began about 40 years of prosperity and population growth. In 1920, Alexandria County’s name was also changed to Arlington County—in honor of Arlington House, which George Washington’s step grandson, George Washington Parke Custis, had built on the hill behind Rosslyn as a private memorial to the first president that that could be seen from across the Potomac. Arlington Cemetery had also been created on Custis’ property during the Civil War.

Over the years, Rosslyn’s pool halls, saloons, brothels and gambling houses were replaced by lumber and coal yards, auto repair shops and oil storage tanks. The Aqueduct Bridge was replaced by Francis Scott Key Bridge in 1923, and Rosslyn’s ugly reputation improved, but didn’t rise above the level of pervasive seediness, as typified by the pawnshops that still lined its streets into the ’60s. The most popular restaurant in Rosslyn for many years as it was rebounding was “The Pawnshop.”

Some small amount of city planning took place in the 1950s. One plan called for Key Boulevard to cut through a lumber yard to connect it with Fort Myer Drive. At that time one of the lumber yard’s owners, William P. Ames, wanted to replace the small frame chapel that he and some fellow Methodists attended nearby. One result of the county’s negotiations with Mr. Ames was that, instead of a street going through his property, a church was placed there, with a gas station as a kind of perpetual endowment built underneath it. So now, when you turn right off Fort Myer to go up Nash Street, you are confronted by the Arlington Temple United Methodist Church, with a steeple and cross up above, a sanctuary in the middle, and a couple of sets of gas pumps down below.

During the federal government’s expansion following the Korean War, Congress opened up competition for leasing office space outside of Washington on lower-priced land. Rosslyn was so unattractive in so many ways that it had a great price-to-location ratio. Instantly qualified as developable real estate, Rosslyn’s prosperity depended upon getting a lot of office space built in a hurry.

Enter the Pomponio Brothers. A young Arlingtonian and his even younger twin siblings made the space that the government needed, both right across the river in Rosslyn, and just downriver in the Arlington railroad yards that were suddenly transformed into Crystal City. The Pomponios acquired control of under-used properties and built 15 of the stubby buildings known locally as high-rises in Rosslyn during the ’60s. The federal Heights of Buildings Act of 1910 had given D.C. a unique character at the cost of real estate value. The land across the river was not only far cheaper than in the District, but it was unconstrained by federal height limits. County planning policies incentivized developers to plan expansively.

Unfortunately for the Pomponio brothers, the constrained financial conditions of the ’70s introduced closer inspection of the books to the process of development. Ultimately, all three brothers spent time in jail for their imaginative interpretation of tax law. But the threesome had helped boost Rosslyn and Crystal City into becoming major regional office building enclaves—all before the brothers were 40 years old.

For many years, Arlington’s planners required developers to widen and improve the streets in front their properties. When different projects were underway on both sides of a street, drivers often had to swing back and forth across the centerline to get onto a paved surface. When finished, Rosslyn’s widened streets helped get auto traffic through the new canyons of concrete and glass, but they offered little to pedestrians. The planners’ solution to dull utilitarian streets was a system of skywalks connecting buildings above the level of the traffic. Separation of vehicular and pedestrian traffic had become an unchallenged article of faith among modernist planners early in the 20th century, and Rosslyn’s characterless streetscape was ripe for the experiment on a pretty large scale. Concrete pedestrian bridges ultimately connected scores of Rosslyn’s second floors during their heyday, but people just didn’t like them—or use them. Many were removed early on, but many stayed in place until their sites were redeveloped after 2000. There are still a couple of the pedestrian bridges in place to help people get to Arlington Gateway Park, lying between Rosslyn and Key Bridge—and surrounded by many lanes of traffic.

The automobiles for whose convenience Rosslyn seemed to be developed needed to be housed on a large scale, and so most every office building built a garage to store its own population’s vehicles. But after hours, the garages of office buildings were usually deserted. Deep Throat selected the garage beneath a pair of office towers at 1401 Wilson Boulevard for meeting Bob Woodward in 1972 and ’73. He probably figured that a deserted garage in Rosslyn was going to be even more deserted than its equivalent in D.C. He was right.

Arlington planning came of age in the mid-’70s when the Rosslyn-Ballston Corridor was designed to accommodate Route 66 and Metro. Both circulation routes were threaded through the county to serve Rosslyn and four other newly urbanized centers on their way to Falls Church. Rosslyn became a major transit hub for Metro and street transportation. One Metro line also served Crystal City, whose quantity of enclosed new office space exceeded Rosslyn’s.

In the 1980s, a pair of aluminum and glass airfoil-shaped office towers by the architectural firm Hellmuth, Obata and Kassabaum should have led the way in construction of higher quality architecture that acknowledged its position in the regional landscape, but most developers were slow to follow their lead towards better quality design. The increasing price of land eventually brought better architecture into the development mix. Developers justified the necessary rise in price per-square-foot of rental space by the up-to-date overall appearance and feeling of specialness in the lobbies that a design-oriented architectural firm could provide. Much of the recent construction in Rosslyn has been first rate, and projects on the boards are even better, but market fluctuations have always held Rosslyn development on a shortish leash, and several projects are currently looking for optimistic buyers.

Rosslyn has been competing from behind with Crystal City and its neighbors for over a half-century, but now that Crystal City has won the contest for an Amazon headquarters, Rosslyn is no longer in the same league with its nemesis. Development activity in the next few years is going to be centered on South Arlington at the newly-minted National Landing mixed use neighborhood. In the future, Rosslyn’s leasing agents are likely to tout the convenience of its five-minute drive time to National Landing as a great amenity. Rosslyn will continue to improve, for sure, but cheap office space will still be available for any presidential campaign that wants to look down on Washington in 2024.

PORT ANGELES, Wash. — Anti-abortion family planning clinics are increasingly vying for the same federal funds that go to Planned Parenthood, signaling a major change in federal policy being pushed by the Trump administration.

This new front in the abortion wars comes as conservatives have largely given up on completely defunding Planned Parenthood, so they’re trying to use the rules to their advantage, pushing for faith-driven women’s clinics to apply for those same federal funds to push an anti-abortion agenda.

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“They’re getting more sophisticated,” said Kinsey Hasstedt, a policy expert at the pro-abortion rights Guttmacher Institute, referring to “crisis pregnancy centers” and other women’s health centers that oppose abortion.

“Now they have an administration that’s supportive of the work they’re trying to do, and that’s setting the stage to open the door for more sources of funding for these sites,” Hasstedt added. Critics say these clinics can be confusing to women who seek care or advice about a pregnancy without realizing their religious and anti-abortion orientation.

One controversial administration proposal, which could be finalized in the next month or so, would let faith-based clinics compete for Title X family planning funds — much of which now go to Planned Parenthood. That move is being challenged in a federal appeals court.

So-called “crisis pregnancy centers,” which offer limited services such as pregnancy testing, ultrasounds and certain supports for women with unplanned pregnancies, have been increasing in number for several years; there are now about 2,530 of them, according to a mapping project from the University of Georgia College of Public Health — or around 2,750, according to the Charlotte Lozier Institute, the research arm of the anti-abortion Susan B. Anthony List.

Now, some are trying to become an anti-abortion, abstinence-promoting alternative to Planned Parenthood clinics.

“I didn’t recreate the wheel,” said Kathleen Eaton Bravo, the CEO of the Obria Group, a nonprofit chain of clinics that’s now expanding beyond the West Coast. The chain has been adding medical services as part of its long-term vision — one that also lets them bill insurers and qualify for government funds. “I’m using Planned Parenthood’s model, and it’s working.”

Scrapping the quotes from Scripture displayed on their walls, some pregnancy crisis centers are becoming licensed clinics by adding health services like prenatal care, sexually transmitted disease testing or treatment, and “natural family planning” or fertility awareness — though not FDA- approved contraceptives like birth control pills, or condoms, and certainly not abortions or abortion counseling.

The federal government rejected Obria this year for Title X family planning grants because, under the current rules, the Trump administration still requires grantees to include a provider that offers hormonal birth control. Obria plans to reapply, by partnering with a health center that does provide contraception, though not abortion.

“There’s a growing trend of these centers becoming more medicalized,” said Andrea Swartzendruber, an assistant professor who led the Georgia survey of the clinics. So far only a fraction have switched from pregnancy counseling sites to clinics — about a fifth offer STD testing — but the numbers are growing. Lozier’s Chuck Donovan said the number of clinics offering STD testing and treatment had more than doubled over the past decade, to 487 in 2017.

Once licensed, the clinics can bill Medicaid and private insurers, and tap into some federal grants for women and babies’ health. So far they haven’t gotten Title X money — the $260 million federal family planning program — but that could change under the administration policy now being finalized.

Based in Orange County, Calif., the Obria Group is on the front lines of this trend. Bravo, the founder, calls her clinics a “holistic” and “comprehensive” alternative to Planned Parenthood. She recently visited some pregnancy crisis centers in Port Angeles, Wash., a city of just under 20,000 on the Olympic Peninsula, that are going to add medical services as they come into Obria’s fold.

Growing from three centers and a mobile van, Obria now has 30 clinics in five states — the more liberal California, Oregon and Washington and the more conservative Iowa and Georgia — and aims to reach 200 sites by 2021. That would cost about $90 million — $300,000 to $500,000 per clinic for upgrades. Obria would raise a lot of that through donations, but also hopes to finance expansion with Title X funds, according to Mauricio Leone, Obria’s chief operating officer, who is transitioning into a new role as executive director.

Backers of fuller reproductive health services for women see nothing comprehensive or “holistic” about clinics that don’t offer a broad range of contraceptive choices, including condoms, and oppose abortion in all circumstances. They also see the move away from vaguely religious-sounding names — like My Choices or Life Choices — to a more corporate sound like Obria as a way to confuse women who go to these clinics not realizing they will be steered away from abortion as an option.

“Their core is as a ‘fake’ women’s health center,” said Amy Everitt, state director of NARAL Pro-Choice California.

HHS’ embrace of these centers has critics in Congress, too.

“The challenge with this administration is they want to eliminate the ability of women to make that decision on their own, with their families, with their medical providers,” said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) “And that’s the objection I have.”

The build-out of these clinics comes as conservatives, who failed to defund Planned Parenthood in Congress, take their battles to the courts and the states. If they can’t cut off Planned Parenthood completely, they may be able to shift some of the money to places like Obria.

“I love the Obria model because they’re trying to take it to scale,” said Joneen Mackenzie, president of the Center for Relationship Education, a Denver-based organization that promotes abstinence-oriented sex ed. MacKenzie praised Obria’s “corporate-driven” and “professional” structure. The Lozier Institute’s Donovan, who is a member of Obria’s national advisory board, praises the marketing savvy of Bravo, who used to run an engineering contracting company, brings to her mission.

Bravo can survey a crisis pregnancy center, like the My Choices one that’s aligning with Obria here in Port Angeles, and see exactly how to convert it into a licensed clinic with a revenue stream. Turn the room used to store baby clothes and new mom accessories into a lab, she said. Transform meeting rooms into exam rooms, so they have four places, not one, for doctors and nurses to see patients — and bill for services.

A mother and grandmother who harbors deep regrets over her own abortion 38 years ago, Bravo knows that having Obria rely primarily on donations is not sustainable. To bill Medicaid and insurers, Obria needs to install electronic health records and practice management systems. Some of its clinics are already licensed and accredited; others are in the works.

The group also wants to tap into federal grants, and most recently won $450,000 in Title V funding out of the Sexual Risk Avoidance Education program — sometimes still called “abstinence education” — in Obria clinics, public schools and other settings.

Although it’s open to partnering for the Title X money, the Obria clinics themselves have an unyielding stance on contraception — or as Bravo colorfully puts it, they cater to “women who want no drugs, plugs, jellies or jams.”

Her regrets about her own abortion, which came after the birth of her first son, and her return to the Roman Catholic faith led Bravo to the anti-abortion movement. She operated “maternity homes” for homeless mothers, and in 1986 founded pregnancy resource centers in Orange County under the name Birth Choice.

About a decade ago, she began envisioning a more professional, medical version, and Birth Choice started hiring physicians and nurse practitioners in 2006, About three years ago, a branding company she hired came up with the name Obria, and last year she officially established The Obria Group, the umbrella for the national network, and began growing it.

Bravo insists her clinic staff does tell women about their three choices: parenting, adoption or abortion. She won’t refer for abortions, though, think that women can figure that out on their own.

“It’s about her, and not us. We listen to her instead of giving our agenda,” she said, adding that she once fired a nurse at one of her clinics for proselytizing.

But the clinics promote only natural family planning, and although they test for and some treat STDs, they don’t distribute condoms to prevent them.

Abstinence, Leone notes, beats condoms at disease prevention, and he considers hormonal birth control dangerous. He promotes options like Natural Cycles, a mobile phone app approved in August by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, to help women track their body temperature and cycle to avoid pregnancy.

Bravo is unperturbed by those who say Obria can’t be a women’s health clinic if it doesn’t support contraception (other than the natural system) and abortion rights.

Borrowing the language of the abortion rights movement, Bravo defines it as “choice” — no different than having a McDonald’s across the street from, say, Wienerschnitzel. Hamburgers for some, hot dogs for others.

“There’s a huge need for women’s health care,” she said, “and everybody doesn’t have to do it the same way.”

Adam Cancryn contributed to this report.