Commentary

If there’s a lesson for Maryland in last week’s bittersweet humbling of Democrats, it’s in the demographics and not the politics. In scattered elections across the country, voters of color asserted themselves with a convincing determination at the polls, sweeping aside long-held traditions and shibboleths to plant their flags and stake their claims.

If you are between the ages of 18 and 34 and do not have health insurance, the bottom of today’s column is for you. It’s a public service announcement about how to get insured at an incredible discount for a limited time and a limited time only. You’ll find the PSA in the penultimate paragraph. You can jump down and read it now, but, if you do, you’ll miss what I’m about to say about Democrats, Republicans and the quality of American life. It’s up to you.

As the pandemic continues to challenge and change the way we work across all industries, many of us are growing increasingly impatient with the wait for “normal.” Will we ever get back to normal in the court system? What will normal even look like when we get there? In fact, is normal something we should go back to, or should we simply be looking forward for the answer?

This week, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services agreed to Emergent BioSolution’s request to end our 9-year pandemic manufacturing partnership that began after the 2009 H1N1 “swine flu” pandemic. We did not come to this decision easily. Emergent was founded to help respond to and prepare for public health threats. And even though we’re ending this manufacturing partnership with the government, our Bayview facility will continue producing COVID-19 vaccines and treatments for our private sector partners, and we will continue to supply the U.S. government with other needed medical countermeasures.

Maryland’s food system is at the confluence of increasing chronic disease, escalating environmental degradation and growing recognition of racial injustice. Not addressing these challenges will only make them worse. That said, candidates for Maryland’s statewide offices in 2022 have not yet grasped the centrality of food and its production, processing, and distribution to our current and future well-being.

This is a critical week for our future. President Joe Biden is joining leaders from across the world in Glasgow, Scotland for the United Nations Climate Change Conference, also known as COP26, to discuss commitments for addressing our climate crisis. We have joined with 537 state legislators from 47 states and territories in this letter, calling on the federal government to raise our ambition and strengthen our national climate commitments under the Paris Agreement.

When the governor of Idaho was out of state recently, his second in command issued an executive order rescinding the boss’s actions on COVID-19 vaccinations and requirements for wearing masks. Both are right-wing Republicans and they are supposed to be political partners. But Lt. Gov. Janice Mc Geachin is far to the right of the top official, Gov. Brad Little, and she was trying to buff up her bona fides while he was in Texas at a meeting of Republican governors. Little, upon learning of the seditious act — and it was not the first betrayal by his understudy — quickly countermanded the order.

Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson and Martin Luther King Jr. were among the great champions of progressive ideas in the 20th century. But they didn’t exist within an insular, self-validating community whose values and assumptions were often at odds with those of the rest of society. Increasingly, that cannot be said of modern progressivism.

It is almost impossible to overstate the importance of the city’s task force working to address complaints about the state of downtown Frederick at night. The complaints tend to focus on too much noise, or code violations or problems at bars. But the underlying issue, which often goes unmentioned, is fear. And fear can do more to degrade and ultimately destroy a thriving central business district than anything else.