Commentary

President Biden has declared January as National Human Trafficking Prevention Month. Yet, some of the worst government-sanctioned human rights abuses are committed against child trafficking and sex crime victims right here in the United States. I was in elementary school and only 11 years old when I met the man who robbed me of my childhood. Coming from a home and community where drugs and abuse were the norm, I was an easy target for a man with sinister intentions.

Legislators are frequent targets of social media attacks, harsh critiques and general unpleasantness. Accordingly, when legislators get something clearly right, we are obliged to take the time to offer praise. One area in which legislators have been getting it more right than wrong in Maryland is clean energy, especially with respect to the growing pervasiveness of offshore wind and attendant investments in our economy.

Every year, scores of Marylanders make New Year’s resolutions, especially to improve their health and wealth. In fact, 55% of Americans plan to make health-related New Year’s resolutions this year, while 53% have vowed to improve their financial well-being, according to a recent UnitedHealthcare survey. What are the most common resolutions for 2022? Among people making health resolutions, the survey found that 26% hope to lose weight, 24% are planning to exercise more and 21% intend to eat a healthier diet.

Here’s why I support a vaccine passport: Because it’s time for people who follow best practices and science — a vast majority of our state by any measure — to be able to return to their daily lives and routines. As the coronavirus evolves, so must our strategies. We cannot continue in this climate where the small percentage of the unvaccinated determine the course of life for the overwhelming majority of people who did the right thing and got vaccinated. We must work collaboratively to find the best solutions that ensure the safety of all Marylanders.

It was only three months ago that surgeons successfully attached a kidney from a genetically altered pig to a human recipient. Since then, new successes continue to pile on. In December, the kidney procedure was successfully repeated. Then, earlier this month, we celebrated another huge leap forward in such xenotransplantation: Surgeons successfully transplanted a pig heart into a human patient who lives in the Baltimore area. For this accomplishment, congratulations are in order.

“Can Metro’s new leader fix problems he says are ‘worse than I thought’?” The answer to that question we posed, in February 2016, remains in doubt. But this much seems certain as Mr. Wiedefeld, 66, who gave notice Tuesday that he would retire this summer, wraps up what will be a nearly seven-year stint as head of one of the nation’s three busiest transit systems: Notwithstanding lingering problems and a pandemic that has left every transit system reeling, he has pointed Metro in the right direction.

In real estate development and financing, when you hear the word “preservation” I already know what you’re thinking – rehabilitating old buildings is expensive, and the red tape to adaptively reuse them can be extensive. However, neither of those issues has to prevent a project from successfully moving forward thanks to a tax credit that has been around for decades.

After Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema made it clear that they were not in favor of altering the filibuster to pass voting rights legislation, essentially dooming the bills to failure and ensuring that Republicans could continue their efforts to unleash an era of modified Jim Crow, the best the White House could say not to sound completely defeated was that they were going to keep fighting.

Imagine that, in her version of the famous Grant Wood painting, Heather R. Mizeur posed as a high school student with her welder-farmer father with a pitchfork in front of their “American Gothic” house in the prosperous agricultural township of Blue Mound, Ill., which had a population of 537 in the 1980 census. No doubt her high school had a Future Farmers of America chapter. Now working the 34-acre organic farm called Apotheosis Farm near Chestertown, on the gorgeous Eastern Shore, Mizeur runs for the Democratic nomination in the 1st congressional district primary. According to her campaign website, her family has been farming for seven generations.