Commentary

Last Wednesday, voters in Maryland were treated to a double-feature presentation in political pandering. First there was President Joe Biden’s proposal to suspend the federal tax on gasoline and diesel fuel for three months along with a suggestion that governors to do the same. And then there was Gov. Larry Hogan’s nearly simultaneous call on both the state legislature and the state comptroller to suspend Maryland’s motor fuel tax by July 4, the former requiring the General Assembly to meet in special session, the latter for Comptroller Peter Franchot to discover a legal authority that he does not seem to possess.

The long-expected US Supreme Court decision ending constitutional protections for abortions in America was handed down. A rally was called, and people showed up at the People’s Park in Annapolis to lend their voices to this opprobrious decision. Sharon Blugis asked me to speak at the rally. As I watched the various speakers eloquently protest this decision, I thought about my 18-year-old granddaughter, who had no idea that her right to decide for herself may be coming to an end.

No elected Israeli prime minister ever had a shorter tenure than Naftali Bennett. Last week, after a string of parliamentary defections, he announced that he would dissolve parliament and call new elections, Israel’s fifth since 2019, after serving barely a year in office. A day later, he WhatsApp-ed me from Tel Aviv for a phone call about his record. Length, he suggested, should not be mistaken for quality.

Modern constitutional law as we have known it ended Friday. When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and Casey v. Planned Parenthood, it repudiated the very idea that America’s highest court exists to protect people’s fundamental liberties from legislative majorities that would infringe on them. What the dissent aptly called a “catastrophic” decision is not only a catastrophe for women, who now can be forced to carry unwanted pregnancies to term. It is a catastrophe for all Americans — and for people all over the world who have built their own modern constitutional courts on the U.S. model. The tyranny of the majority won the day.

The pandemic has entered a twilight zone, neither causing major disruption to the nation nor vanishing. Everyone is looking forward to a summer without masks or terrifying case spikes. The government has dropped the requirement that international air travelers test before entering the United States. We have vaccines, antivirals and diagnostic tests in surplus. So far, so good. But there is still a nagging uncertainty, one that is not trivial. The biggest unknown is whether new variants will evolve. Omicron was an example of how mutation can deliver an unpleasant one-two punch. It could happen again.

Ignoring research on adolescent sleep and healthy school start times policy recommendations, Baltimore City Public Schools announced its new bell schedules for 2022-2023, which include new school start times for 93 schools to “improve transportation for students who ride yellow buses.” With these times, at least 30 middle and high schools will be starting before 8 a.m. As a sleep researcher and psychologist for over 30 years, these changes concern me deeply. The decision to move bell times means that thousands of BCPSS teenagers will not only be unable to get sufficient sleep or to arrive at school on time ready to learn, but will also put themselves at risk for anxiety, depression, misbehavior, substance abuse and other health consequences.

Legalization of recreational cannabis in Maryland is a done deal. The referendum scheduled on the issue this November will pass. After it does, the real fight starts. The state legislature will have until April 10, 2023, to decide how to regulate the industry. There will be critical debates on taxes and criminal background checks. But the least understood and most important issue will be how Annapolis determines which companies get licenses to grow, process and dispense the product, which in turn will determine who profits from legalization.

I offer a break today from everything awful — school shootings, urban crime, war, earthquake, illness, death, right-wing threats to American democracy — to tell you about a creative effort to enrich the lives of children. It’s what the world needs. During the first year of the pandemic, teachers across the land faced the toughest challenge of their careers: Teaching kids at a distance. Evan Margolis, a tutor in New York City, had it even tougher. All of his young students had difficulty learning. He worried that remote learning would mean no learning at all.