Commentary

There is a public health crisis being forced upon the transgender community — and lack of access to life-saving health care for transgender Marylanders is one of the biggest barriers we face. Passing the 2023 Trans Health Equity Act (House Bill 283 sponsored by Del. Anne Kaiser with 56 cosponsors and Senate Bill 460 sponsored by Sen. Mary Washington with 12 cosponsors) is a critical step towards correcting this injustice. Maryland’s transgender community, like many transgender communities across the nation, is in a particularly vulnerable place. Widespread discrimination and harassment, victimization, criminalization, and lack of access to resources and care, all leave trans Marylanders with alarmingly high rates of homelessness, joblessness, mental health and substance use challenges, and more.

I had just gotten home from dinner with good friends when I settled in to watch President Biden deliver his State of the Union Address. I should have stuck with the Terp game. It began in a very upbeat, positive, and bipartisan manner.  The President congratulated Kevin McCarthy on being elected Speaker of the House without mentioning that it took nearly a week to earn that gavel. The President turned toward the McCarthy and said, “Mr. Speaker, I look forward to working together.” He also took time to recognize Senator Mitch McConnell as the longest serving Senate leader in history. You could almost hear “Kumbaya” playing in the background.

During the first term of Barack Obama’s presidency, my then 8-year-old daughter asked a simple question. “Why do Black people have a special month?” I responded with a mini-lecture on the trans-Atlantic slave trade, Jim Crow and the efforts of the Harvard-educated historian Carter G. Woodson, who championed Negro History Week. She calmly took it in and responded with another question: “When the bad men were kidnapping people from Africa and turning them into slaves, was the president Black?” I laughed, although her question made perfect sense. The only president she had known was Black; so why couldn’t a Black person have served as president prior to the Civil War? Afterward, I found myself reflecting on her underlying point. Why, in modern America, do we even have Black History Month?

Silicon Valley used to unify the left and right in admiration. Now, Big Tech still brings the two sides of the political spectrum together — but in outrage. This much was evident in this year’s State of the Union address: The White House sees potential for bipartisan cooperation against technology companies. On Tuesday, President Biden mentioned two policy areas in which he’s seeking reform, and in a Wall Street Journal op-ed earlier this year he mentioned three: Section 230, antitrust and privacy. This sounds like jargon, more of interest to D.C. lawyers than average internet users. In fact, each area of reform could have profound effects on how people use the web.

Many BGE customers opened their January bill and balked when they saw the “amount due.” Yes, there was a cold snap and your heater used more energy. Yes, natural gas prices are high because of the Ukraine war. Baltimore Gas and Electric is our regulated utility, and their gas price in January was 93¢ a therm. In 2020, BGE’s gas rate was just 41¢ per therm. But for about 225,000 BGE customers the energy rate “gotcha” is that they’ve enrolled with a third-party deregulated energy supplier, rather than BGE’s regulated energy supply.

I try to imagine what it would be like to stand along a river — say, the Jones Falls as it meanders through Baltimore — and look up from the mesmerizing flow to suddenly see a woman draped in a long cape of plastic bottles. What would I think? Did she rise from the river, like some gritty sprite burdened and barnacled with trash? Is she a cast member from a new post-apocalyptic movie: “Mad Max in Waterworld”? Who is this woman in the Jones Falls, bristling with bottles, and each bottle containing a stick with colored string?

Too bad the biggest headlines coming out of President Joe Biden’s recent State of the Union address had to do with decorum, whether it was Marjorie Taylor Greene’s booing — and the many right-wingers who joined in this act of infantilism — or the beyond-ironic observation from serial fabulist George Santos who posted on social media that Biden was “gaslighting” Americans. Really? At least the latter received a well-earned rebuke of “You don’t belong here” from Republican U.S. Sen. Mitt Romney. The nation had no shortage of evidence that the U.S. House of Representatives (and the state of partisan politics, in general) was a mess before the speech.

Americans are accustomed to tipping for a wide array of services. We understand that our gratuity makes up an important percentage of the wages earned by many different types of laborers: massage therapists, Uber drivers, hair stylists, tour guides, room service providers, valets — the list goes on. Much of the time, we don’t just add a tip because we’re adhering to a cultural norm, but rather because we genuinely want to acknowledge good service and show gratitude.