Commentary

Nobody asked me, but any bystander who says they saw Ivan Bates leading Marilyn Mosby in the Democratic primary for Baltimore State’s Attorney going into the final count is a big liar-liar-pants-on-fire kinda liar. All predictions I heard had the incumbent drawing about the same level of support that she drew in 2018, with Bates and Thiru “Third Time’s A Bomb” Vignarajah splitting the rest. Bates’ showing is a welcome surprise. Nobody asked me, but, however disappointed, Mosby should feel relief with a loss in the primary. That outcome would allow her to devote her full attention to beating the federal rap.

t’s not Larryland or Harryland. It’s Maryland. But the state named for a queen is not going to elevate a woman to its highest office anytime soon. From Harriet Tubman to Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D), Maryland’s women have shaped our nation. On Tuesday, its voters once again stubbornly denied women the power to lead us into the future. “I always said that though I was the first, I wanted to be the first of many,” Mikulski said in a 2010 interview, when she recalled her 1986 fundraiser, “Bebop for Barb.”

With Baltimore caught up in a cacophony of conflicts over the quality of its public schools, the safety of its streets, a shrinking population and what to do about young Black men squeegeeing car windshields for tips, how delightful to hear that the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra has named Jonathon Heyward as its next music director. Mr. Heyward, 29, will likely be the only Black American conductor to lead a major U.S. symphony when he takes over the BSO post in the fall of next year.

Over the past several weeks, the debate about squeegeeing has reached a fever pitch. Some have called for mass arrests of squeegee kids. Others, such as Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott, are trying to help them find better jobs. Much of this conversation misses the larger picture. Squeegeeing on its own is harmless: Even if you don’t give them a cent, if you are polite, almost all the squeegee kids will treat you with respect. In a city rife with extreme poverty, squeegeeing is a decent way to earn.

My husband and I have several frozen embryos in storage somewhere in suburban Rockville, Maryland. Over the past decade, this possibility to expand our family one day has held a place in our hearts. But now, we are rushing to fill out the paperwork to thaw and respectfully dispose of our embryos — before they potentially gain legal personhood status in this country.

While the dust isn’t quite settled from Maryland’s primary election, at least one outcome is abundantly clear: Gov. Larry Hogan, Maryland’s two-term Republican governor and an aspiring presidential candidate who continues to poll exceptionally well in his home state, just got thoroughly repudiated by voters from his own party. In the governor’s race, they rejected Mr. Hogan’s hand-picked successor, former Commerce Secretary Kelly Schulz, in favor of Dan Cox, the Donald Trump-backed, one-term delegate from Frederick County who participated in the Jan. 6 insurrection.

As the shock wears off from the U.S. Supreme Court’s overruling of Roe v. Wade, many are rationally asking whether the five conservative judges warped the rule of law into the rule of the religious right. They didn’t. Why? Because Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Thomas Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas and Amy Coney Barrett simply don’t have that much power. The Supreme Court cannot wreck our lives in a single ruling, let alone single-handedly replace the rule of law with brutalist right wing politics.

Thomas Jefferson famously declared: “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” Jefferson knew that local papers were vital to a thriving democracy, and that notion is as true today as it was at our nation’s beginning. Americans know it, too. They trust their local news outlets, even in this highly fractured and partisan time.