On a recent night at Ned’s Club Washington, DC—a private members’ club that opened in January after the icy weekend of Trump’s inauguration—a group of DOGE staffers were drinking in the Library Bar. “I think that’s Big Balls,” hazarded a member sitting across the room, trying to determine whether it was Elon Musk’s infamous teenage protégé.
In another room, on a different night, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was reportedly chatting away with his daughter-in-law, Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, also a Trump staffer. He was in the Founders Dining Room, an Art Deco grill with custom dinner settings inspired by the Kennedy White House. It serves beef from the Four Sixes Ranch, as featured in the television series Yellowstone.
Not every night at Ned’s is so peaceful. In March, the Trump acolyte and failed Senate candidate for Arizona, Kari Lake, who was visiting Ned’s as a guest, heckled her election rival, Senator Ruben Gallego, at the elevator bank.
Nevertheless, the club, which says it gets 10 to 20 new applications a day, has gone to the length of not accepting powerful Washington figures who are too triggering. “There could be a scenario where we say, You know what, that person has a reputation for being sleazy, and that’s not O.K.,” says Gareth Banner, Group Managing Director of the Ned, which also has locations in London, New York City, and Doha. “We can uphold those standards even if that person is a Cabinet minister.” Pete Hegseth has yet to be seen dancing on the tables.
The three-story club is located in the former Riggs National Bank building, across the street from the U.S. Treasury and so close to the White House you can see inside some of the rooms from the club’s roof. It has become the unofficial after-party spot for White House events, such as the crypto summit, held in March, and is the preferred stomping ground for those in Trump’s orbit. According to multiple members, hardly a day goes by when someone from the administration such as Scott Bessent or Howard Lutnick isn’t spotted. (Both are members.) Republican donors, members of the Palm Beach set, and tech titans stop by when in town.
Washington, D.C., is full of stuffy members’ clubs with suit-and-tie dress codes and sleepy bars, such as the Metropolitan and the Cosmos Club. It’s easy to understand why a new administration would want to be at a place with a young clientele (30 percent of members are under the age of 40), a slightly more relaxed dress code (anything presentable goes except beanies and baseball caps, flip-flops and dirty sneakers, ripped pants, and athletic wear), live music seven days a week, food made by a José Andrés–trained chef, and expansive views of the city.
But unlike Butterworth’s, a French restaurant on Capitol Hill that has become such a MAGA hotspot at least one Democratic consultant joked she would be killed if she stepped inside, Ned’s Club is determined not to be overrun by one tribe or the other. The club has politically charged artwork on the wall by female and immigrant artists, the Library Bar has striped wallpaper inspired by the décor in the Obama White House, and there is a fierce commitment to an equal gender split. It strives to be an oasis away from the partisan broligarchy of Washington. As such, members include Doug Emhoff, Mark Cuban, Kirsten Gillibrand, Terry McAuliffe, and Kaitlan Collins.
“We have to work hard to make sure everyone feels welcome,” says Banner. “This is not a regular club in a regular building in a regular city at a regular time.” Or as Susanna Quinn—an entrepreneur who sits on the membership committee—puts it, “We have to mix the unmixable.”
In an effort to make the club Switzerland, the team has turned to a variety of tactics, including closely tracking membership data, banning MAGA hats, and carefully arranging seating plans. There is a 25-person membership committee that includes former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway; Zach Leonsis, whose family owns the Washington Capitals and Wizards; DeDe Lea, who runs government relations for Paramount; and former Kamala Harris adviser and MSNBC commentator Symone D. Sanders-Townsend.
The committee also weighs up the applicant’s public behavior. “We take the whole picture into account,” says Joiwind Ronen, the Washington club’s executive director of membership, who previously worked at the Council for Excellence in Government creating nonpartisan spaces. “We really want a membership that is kind.… So lots of people are told no whether they’re in the highest or lowest echelons of power.”
All members have to abide by the same rules. Ray Regan, a private-equity consultant who has been a member since January, says the club’s ban on baseball caps is a good thing. “People wore MAGA hats there during inauguration weekend, and some people didn’t like it,” he says. “They are triggering, and you don’t want this to be a politically charged place.” Regan has turned to wearing cowboy hats and berets instead.
Members and their guests are also asked to put stickers on their phone cameras. “If you’re a Democratic senator who may have run for president, you might not want a photo of you eating dinner at the table next to a big MAGA person,” says Quinn. “If there is no threat of that happening, everyone can just be in the same space.” Some members take the rule so seriously they tell on one another if they spy a photo posted on social media.
The club’s size helps keep the peace, too. “At Cafe Milano, you can only sit in the restaurant,” says Banner, but at Ned’s Club there are three floors, three separate restaurants, two bars, and two lounges. “We can accommodate people who want little to do with each other,” he says.
Banner says his staff keep up to date with current events and know whom to seat separately in the restaurants. “We are tuned in,” he says. “We know who has had a bad history with someone, and we can sort of manage complicated scenarios by managing table allocations in the restaurant and such.”
But perhaps the one thing that keeps the warring political tribes in line is the club itself. “You want to know why there has really only been one incident at [Ned’s Club]?” says Quinn. “The club has the most delicious steak and white wine, and there is the live music and the views, and everyone gets kind of intoxicated by how good it feels to be there, and then they think, ‘I really don’t want to get kicked out.’” Membership costs $5,000 to join, with a $5,000 annual fee.
Vinoda Basnayake, an international lobbyist, club owner, and chairman of the Mayor’s Office of Nightlife and Culture (yes, an actual local-government position), says he is constantly surprised that Ned’s Club’s policies seem to be working. “Three weeks ago, I was at a whiskey tasting at the club, and I was with a Democratic congressman and a member of the Trump administration,” he says. “We were all just talking about the peatiness of the whiskey.”
Alyson Krueger is a New York–based lifestyle writer