Martin Di Caro

Martin Di Caro brings 25 years of broadcast journalism experience to the Washington Times. He has won numerous prestigious awards throughout his career in major media markets across the country. Before coming to the Times, Martin was a news anchor at Bloomberg Radio’s Washington bureau. From 2012 to 2017, he covered transportation at NPR member station WAMU 88.5 in Washington, where his work on the yearslong Metrorail crisis earned Martin his second Edward R. Murrow award, which included hosting the radio station’s first podcast, Metropocalypse. Martin worked as a reporter for AP Radio in New York and Washington for eight years starting in 2008. He lives in the Columbia Heights neighborhood of D.C. and his interests include reading history and following his beloved New York Jets. He can be reached at mdicaro@washingtontimes.com.

Latest "History As It Happens" Podcast Episodes

Articles by Martin Di Caro

Associate Justice Clarence Thomas joins other members of the Supreme Court as they pose for a new group portrait, at the Supreme Court building in Washington, Oct. 7, 2022. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

History As It Happens: Clarence Thomas and the 14th Amendment

Were Reconstruction-era legislation and constitutional amendments "race-neutral"? Published July 19, 2023

From left, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, United States President Joe Biden, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and NATO Deputy Secretary General Mircea Geoana stand during a meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Council during a NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, Wednesday, July 12, 2023. NATO leaders gathered Wednesday to launch a highly symbolic new forum for ties with Ukraine, after committing to provide the country with more military assistance for fighting Russia but only vague assurances of future membership. (AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin)

History As It Happens: Ukraine and NATO

Talk of Ukraine joining NATO has come and gone for more than 30 years. The most recent position to wait until the war ends may not bear fruit, either. Published July 17, 2023

In this Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2023 photo, a brick memorializing Alice 'Alse' Young is placed in a town Heritage Bricks installation in Windsor, Conn. Young was the first person on record to be executed in the 13 colonies for witchcraft. Now, more than 375 years later, amateur historians, researchers and descendants of the accused witches and their accusers, from across the U.S., are urging Connecticut officials to officially acknowledge this dark period of the state's colonial history and posthumously exonerate those wrongfully accused and punished. (AP Photo/Jessica Hill)

History As It Happens: Witches no more

Connecticut's move to exonerate 12 people wrongfully accused of witchcraft in the 1600s recalls one of the most bizarre and terrifying chapters in American history. Published July 12, 2023

Dr. Otto Frank holds the Golden Pan award, given for the sale of one million copies of the famous paperback, "The Diary of Anne Frank". A high school along Florida’s Atlantic Coast has removed a graphic novel based on the diary of Anne Frank after a leader of a conservative group challenged it, claiming it minimized the Holocaust. “Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation” was removed from a library at Vero Beach High School after a leader of Moms for Liberty in Indian River County raised an objection. (AP Photo/Dave Caulkin, file)

History As It Happens: Otto and Miep

A new TV series dramatizes the loving friendship between Otto Frank and the young Dutch woman who tried to hide his family from the Nazis. Published July 10, 2023

FILE - Martin Luther King Jr., gestures during his "I Have a Dream" speech on Aug. 28, 1963, as he addresses thousands of civil rights supporters gathered in Washington, Norman Hill helped coordinate the March on Washington, where King delivered his historic speech. Afterward, he decided it was time to change tactics. "I left the Congress of Racial Equality in 1964 because I felt a transition needed to be made in the Civil Rights Movement, from an emphasis on protests to engaging in political action," he said.(AP Photo)

History As It Happens: Our radical Declaration, part three

Annette Gordon-Reed and Joseph Ellis discuss the paradoxes of the American Revolution. Published July 5, 2023

A statue of Thomas Jefferson holding the Declaration of Independence stands in New York's City Hall Council Chamber on Wednesday, October 20, 2021. The 1833 statue of Jefferson will be removed from the council chamber by the end of the year. Some New York City Council members have called for years to remove the statue from the room where they conduct business because Jefferson was a slaveholder. (AP Photo/Ted Shaffrey)

History As It Happens: Our radical Declaration, part two

Historian Jack Rakove explains the pragmatic as well as ideological concerns that drove the final decision to break from Great Britain. Published June 30, 2023

This image shows an 1876 engraving titled "Declaration of Independence, July 4th, 1776" made available by the Library of Congress. On that day, the Continental Congress formally endorsed the Declaration of Independence. Celebrations began within days: parades and public readings, bonfires and candles and the firing of 13 musket rounds, one for each of the original states. Nearly a century passed before the country officially named its founding a holiday. ( J. Trumbull, W.L. Ormsby via AP)

History As It Happens: Our radical Declaration, part one

Historians Sean Wilentz and Jim Oakes assess the radical idea of egalitarianism at the heart of the Revolutionary cause. Published June 28, 2023

Russian President Vladimir Putin is seen on monitors as he addresses the nation after Yevgeny Prigozhin, the owner of the Wagner Group military company, called for armed rebellion and reached the southern city of Rostov-on-Don with his troops, in Moscow, Russia, Saturday, June 24, 2023. The armed rebellion by a powerful mercenary group against the Russian military was over in less than 24 hours, but the disarray within the enemy’s ranks was an unexpected morale-boosting gift for Ukraine – at a time when its armed forces needed it the most. (Pavel Bednyakov, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP) **FILE**

History As It Happens: Prigozhin vs. Putin

Yevgeny Prigozhin's short-lived military mutiny exposed dangerous cracks in the Putin autocracy. Published June 26, 2023

Song Seung-moon stands in front of a memorial to the victims of the carnage of 1948-49: a statue of islanders, their hands bound, being led away to their deaths. (Andrew Salmon/The Washington Times)

History As It Happens: Ghosts of the Jeju incident

Some South Koreans say the U.S. was complicit in the bloody suppression of a left-wing uprising in the earliest years of the Cold War. Published June 21, 2023

Supporters of President Donald Trump participate in a rally in Washington, Jan. 6, 2021. Most Republican candidates running for state legislature this year in Virginia are centering their pitches to voters on issues such as education, the cost of living and gun rights. But among a segment of contenders, former President Donald Trump’s false claims of a rigged 2020 election have become an important campaign selling point ahead of Tuesday’s primary. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)

History As It Happens: The end of Trumpism? Revisited

No matter what he says, does, or is accused of, Donald Trump's popularity among Republicans remains steadfast. Published June 19, 2023

FILE - In this Sept. 13, 1993 file photo President Clinton presides over White House ceremonies marking the signing of the peace accord between Israel and the Palestinians with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, left, and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, right, in Washington. Two years after the groundbreaking handshake on the White House lawn between the two men, Rabin was killed by an Israeli extremist opposed to peace negotiations with the Palestinians at a rally promoting the accords. (AP Photo/Ron Edmonds, File)

History As It Happens: What happened to the two-state solution?

Four scholars argue Israel now exists as a "one-state reality" where Palestinians live in conditions akin to apartheid. Published June 14, 2023

A Hezbollah supporter holds pictures of slain Iranian Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani during a ceremony marking the anniversary of the assassination of Hezbollah leaders, Abbas al-Moussawi, Ragheb Harb and Imad Mughniyeh and the end of a 40-day Muslim mourning period for Soleimani, in the southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Sunday, Feb. 16, 2020. Nasrallah said U.S. President Donald Trump declared war on the Middle East when the U.S. assassinated Soleimani and when the White House announced its plan to end the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. He called on all to resist U.S. influence and its troops presence. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

History As It Happens: Finding Imad Mughniyeh

A new Showtime series spotlights a Hezbollah leader whom most people had never heard of, but who left a bloody mark on world events. Published June 12, 2023

In this Oct. 15, 1974, file photo, G. Gordon Liddy wears a beard and a mustache upon his release in Washington. Liddy posted a $5,000 bond after serving 21 months in jail. Liddy, a mastermind of the Watergate burglary and a radio talk show host after emerging from prison, has died at age 90. His son, Thomas Liddy, confirmed the death Tuesday, March 30, 2021, but did not reveal the cause. (AP Photo/File)

History As It Happens: The Plumbers

A new HBO series depicts the Watergate break-in as a comedy. A renowned expert on the Nixon tapes weighs in. Published June 7, 2023

FILE - German prisoners of war are led away by Allied forces from Utah Beach, near Sainte-Mere-Eglise, on June 6, 1944, during landing operations at the Normandy coast, France. The D-Day invasion that helped change the course of World War II was unprecedented in scale and audacity. Veterans and world dignitaries are commemorating the 79th anniversary of the operation. (AP Photo, File)

History As It Happens: After D-Day

The central place of the invasion of Normandy in popular memory overshadows the enormous difficulties and utter brutality encountered by the Allies after June 6, 1944. Published June 5, 2023

FILE - Ukrainian soldiers pass by houses ruined in the Russian shelling in Bakhmut, Donetsk region, Ukraine, Thursday, Nov. 10, 2022. Despite Russian claims to have captured the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, top Ukrainian military leaders insist the grinding nine-month battle there is not over. Although Ukraine now controls only a small part of the city, Kyiv says its troops played a key role in the strategy of exhausting Russian forces and will carry on with the fighting. (AP Photo/Libkos, File)

History As It Happens: From Grozny to Bakhmut

Russia's destruction of Ukrainian cities is evoking eerie memories of the massive violence of the Chechen Wars. Published May 31, 2023

This photo made available by the U.S. National Archives shows a portion of the United States Constitution with Articles V-VII. For the past two centuries, constitutional amendments have originated in Congress, where they need the support of two-thirds of both houses, and then the approval of at least three-quarters of the states. But under a never-used second prong of Article V, amendments can originate in the states. (National Archives via AP)

History As It Happens: Constitutional myths

A major scholar of the founding era says Americans revere their Constitution while laboring under myths about its meaning. Published May 29, 2023

'Mercy: Humanity in War' by Cathal J. Nolan (book cover)

BOOK REVIEW: ‘Mercy: Humanity in War’

Most Americans do not know the name Franz Stigler. In late 1943, in the air war over Germany, Stigler climbed into the cockpit of his Messerschmitt Bf-109 to pursue a badly damaged B-17. Published May 25, 2023

In this Nov. 25, 1972, photo President Nixon confers with Henry A. Kissinger in New York after the presidential adviser returned from a week of secret negotiations in Paris with North Vietnam's Le Duc Tho. Documents released Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2008, from the Nixon years shed new light on just how much the Nixon White House struggled with growing public unrest over the protracted war in Vietnam. (AP Photo/File)

History As It Happens: Kissinger and Cambodia

As the sage of American diplomats celebrates his 100th birthday, the debate rages over his record in Southeast Asia. Published May 24, 2023

A large group gathers to watch a wreath-laying ceremony at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial on Martin Luther King Jr. Day in Washington, Monday, Jan. 16, 2023. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

History As It Happens: King’s socialism

Martin Luther King's philosophy saw racism, materialism, and militarism as interrelated problems. So why is his criticism of American capitalism overlooked today? Published May 22, 2023

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, right, shakes hands with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida during a joint press conference after their meeting at the presidential office in Seoul, on May 7, 2023. (Jung Yeon-je/Pool Photo via AP, File)

History As It Happens: U.S. hegemony and multipolarity in Asia

American allies are in a difficult spot between a rising China and a U.S. intent on maintaining its primacy. Published May 17, 2023