Commentary

Record high temperatures and record low air quality. The summer of 2023 has barely begun, and it already feels oppressive. If it’s not the Canadian wildfire smoke, it’s the heat, humidity and pop-up thunderstorms plaguing the region. The toxic cloud originating from forest fires in eastern Canada is again infiltrating America, with smoke wafting into Maryland through Tuesday, according to the Maryland Department of the Environment.

During the 2022 legislative session, we were elated by the news that the Maryland General Assembly passed the Healthy Babies Equity Act, which would extend Medicaid coverage to pregnant people who would otherwise be eligible if not for their immigration status. But our moods dampened when we realized it would not be implemented until July of this year. There was already a great need.

Here’s a bold idea. Greenbury Point, 250 acres owned by the Navy that juts into the Chesapeake Bay, should be a centerpiece of a new national park. And more, it should be part of a local network of recreational, environmental and cultural treasures covering more than 1,000 acres from Annapolis to the Bay Bridge. Ridiculous, you say? Hear me out.

The Washington region has three major airports, but only one of them–BWI–is hard to get to by transit from DC. The B30 bus route used to serve BWI, and WMATA’s ongoing Better Bus network update is a great chance to bring it back better than ever. Passengers use all three of our airports at similar rates: each airport serves around 11 million passengers every year, and DCA, BWI, and IAD are the nation’s 23rd, 25th, and 28th-busiest airports in the country, respectively.

The most selfish Americans are those who finance the endless lawsuits of the National Rifle Association and other organizations that want all guns at all times at all costs. In Maryland, they have gone to federal court to try to overturn the state’s gun licensing law and our ban on assault-style rifles. And the gun extremists fight even modest attempts to address our national public health crisis, the common good be damned.

The long and winding road to electing a president in 2024 has a most interesting, unpredictable curve. The curve is No Labels, a national movement whose organizers have branded themselves as concerned citizens working to bring America’s leaders together to develop common-sense two-party solutions to America’s biggest problems. While No Labels does not identify itself as a third political party, it may nominate a No Labels candidate for president in 2024.

The educational and emotional harm done to our children during the pandemic is still being tabulated, but the statistics in both realms continue to tell a terribly sad story. In a world with little good information and many justifiable fears, radical steps were taken in the spring of 2020 to protect the lives of our children and our school staffers and teachers.