Commentary

With my best friend riding shotgun and my two dogs in the back seat of my Buick Encore, I made the road trip from D.C. to Chicago last month for the ordination and consecration of Paula E. Clark, the first female bishop, and first Black bishop, of the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago. She’s also my mom. I’m incredibly proud of her, but sometimes it amazes me we’re still celebrating women’s firsts.

Howard County voters face an enviable circumstance in choosing between two well-qualified candidates for county executive. The incumbent, Calvin B. Ball III, a Democrat and the first African American individual elected to the post, has an inclusive vision that speaks to the heart of the county’s ethos. The challenger, Allan H. Kittleman, a moderate Republican who held the office before Ball’s election four years ago, has proven himself a dedicated public servant. Each is more than capable of leading Maryland’s most prosperous subdivision.

In her now celebrated exchange with Alabama’s Solicitor General, our newest Supreme Court Justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson, eviscerated his argument that our Constitution is and should be “colorblind.” Rather, she declared, the intent of those who framed 14th and 15th amendments was to be “color conscious” in safeguarding the civil liberties of the 4 million enslaved Black people freed by the Civil War.

On Tuesday, the Environmental Protection Agency caved to Chesapeake Bay-state governors and agricultural interests by failing to enforce the Clean Water Act or impose sanctions on recalcitrant states for violating mandates to reduce bay pollutants. Instead, the annual meeting of the Chesapeake Executive Council with the EPA administrator and bay-state governors turned into a self-congratulatory session where for the third time it was acknowledged that bay states will miss a vital cleanup deadline. The required pollution reductions were set in 2010 when the EPA gave states 15 years to comply. All speakers acknowledged that these reductions would not be met by 2025. Critical bay-choking nutrient reduction would be missed by wide margins — only 42 percent of nitrogen and 64 percent of phosphorus.

Historians may well mark the decade that just passed as one of the most tumultuous Baltimore has ever experienced — with a housing market crisis, civil and racial unrest after the death of Freddie Gray, a mayoral resignation amid political scandal, and a pandemic. On top of all of that, the past 10 years ended with the city’s seventh-straight decade of population loss, based on the 2020 Census. Baltimore actually stands alone among all cities in the East Coast for population declines. Among all cities greater than 400,000 in the U.S. in 2010, only four out of the 40+ in that category lost any population at all. What do we need to do right now so we don’t have the eighth decade in a row of population loss by 2030?

In a world that triggers so much of hopelessness, America stands as a land of hope. People who are already here by birth or by design spread that quality on to others. Many find it reassuring. Therefore, they line up to come here. The ability to provide hope to a hopeless world ordinarily should be considered the best quality one could ask for. Yet, some of the responsible people in the country feel offended by it. They go to great lengths to keep the door closed so that no one can get in. When the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, sends busloads of immigrants to “sanctuary” cities, he thinks he is doing a good thing. Back home, for the newcomers, the situation is desperate.

This month, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in two cases that pose the starkest threats ever to affirmative action in higher education. Central to those cases, involving admissions programs at Harvard College and the University of North Carolina, will be the value of campus diversity, which is the sole justification for affirmative action that the court has endorsed. The notion that racially diverse student bodies improve campus intellectual life has been roundly attacked by both liberals and conservatives. But the Roberts court should not be quick to dismiss diversity’s value and dismantle affirmative action. Because we have evidence that diversity works.