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July 2, 2025

Chestertown Spy

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Archives Food and Garden

Adkins Arboretum Mystery Monday: Guess the Photo!

June 30, 2025 by Adkins Arboretum Leave a Comment

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Happy Mystery Monday!  Can you guess what is pictured in the photo below:
The answer to last week’s mystery is blue-eyed grass, Sisyrinchium angustifolium, pictured in the photo below.
Blue-eyed grass is a tiny, but mighty flower that is native to 60% of the United States and the eastern half of Canada. It thrives from Maine to Texas. Blue-eyed grass grows in woodlands, forests, meadows, sand hills, and swales.
Despite its name, blue-eyed grass is not a grass, it’s a member of the iris family. Its stiff, narrow, blade-like leaves form a fan shape, similar to other plants in the iris family.
Noted for its violet-blue flowers with yellow centers, the long-lasting blooms measure 1″ in diameter. In late-Spring, the flowers develop into seed heads shaped like round balls that hold several tiny seeds. The black seeds can be carried short distances by wind. When conditions are just right, blue-eyed grass will happily self-seed, but it also spreads via underground rhizomes.
Mystery Monday is sponsored by the Spy Newspapers and Adkins Arboretum.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Filed Under: Archives, Food and Garden

Adkins Arboretum Mystery Monday: Guess the Photo!

June 23, 2025 by Adkins Arboretum 2 Comments

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Happy Mystery Monday!  Can you guess what is pictured in the photo below?
The answer to last week’s mystery is poison ivy, Toxicodendron radicans, pictured in photo below:
Poison ivy is native to every State except California, Alaska, and Hawaii. It can grow as a small plant, a shrub, or a climbing vine and it is resilient! It thrives in soils of all textures, including clays, silts, loams, sand, and more.
All parts of the poison ivy plant, including the stem and roots, contain and secrete a nonvolatile, colorless oil, urushiol, that affects the skin. According to the American Academy of Dermatology, about 50 million people get a poison ivy rash each year, making it one of the most common allergies in the United States.
If a rash doesn’t occur with first contact, it likely will with second contact. In addition, the body doesn’t build immunity to urushiol. The more times the skin is exposed to it, the worse the break out.
Urushiol oil is very durable, lingering for five or more years after the poison ivy plant has died. Inhaling urushiol oil from the smoke of burning poison ivy likely means a trip to the ER.
Poison ivy flowers are rather inconspicuous and usually not noticed by gardeners, but they also carry urushiol oil. The subsequent fruits are smooth, greenish-white berries that form in clusters about the size of currants. Birds and other wildlife eat the berries and spread the seed in their droppings, spreading poison ivy just about anywhere.
Poison ivy has compound leaves with three leaflets, giving rise to the old saying, “Leaves of three, let it be,” although the leaves are more accurately described as leaflets.
In vine form, poison ivy sprouts thousands of brown hairs that grasp the bark of its host tree. As the vine climbs toward the canopy and matures, the stem gets woodier and increases in diameter.
Mystery Monday is sponsored by the Spy Newspapers and Adkins Arboretum.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Filed Under: Archives, Food and Garden

Is the Governor Patching Over a Crisis of His Own Making by Clayton Mitchell

June 16, 2025 by Clayton Mitchell 2 Comments

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“When the music’s over, turn out the lights.”

– The Doors (When the Music’s Over)

Wes Moore is back at it again, slapping a press release on a problem he created and calling it leadership. 

The Governor’s latest announcement of a $19 million energy relief initiative, reported by Bria Overs of the Baltimore Banner, is being billed as a major act of compassion. It is not. It is a smokescreen for a green agenda that has driven electricity prices through the roof and put thousands of Marylanders in a daily struggle between food and power.

Let’s be clear about what this program is and is not. It is not state money, despite the public relations framing. It is not ongoing assistance, and it will not solve the structural problems Maryland families face. 

As Baltimore-area financial expert Tyrone Keys rightly put it, “What Governor Moore is not saying is that this fund is being provided via a charitable contribution from BGE/Exelon to the United Way. So (A)… It’s a tax deduction for Exelon [and] (B)… It’s one time relief for those who are behind on their bill. Without more supply and with demand growing the problem of Marylanders not being able to afford power will persist. This sham fund is a band aid on an arterial bleed.”

That “arterial bleed” is a crisis born from Moore’s aggressive closure of in-state energy production. The looming shutdown of the Brandon Shores power plant, recently delayed until 2028 under a “Reliability Must Run” order, was not Moore’s decision but PJM’s. PJM, the grid operator, had to step in because of fears of blackouts. That’s right… blackouts. The green dream had to pause not because Moore suddenly saw reason, but because the experts feared mass grid failure.

The real cost of that delay? A billion-dollar transmission project to pull electricity from Pennsylvania into Maryland for a state that once powered itself. And who pays for those billion dollars? You do, in the form of surging monthly utility bills that no rebate will undo.

Moore’s press office proudly announced that grants of $250 to $750 will be offered to select BGE customers starting July 1, with administration by the United Way and other nonprofits. As Overs reports, this is targeted toward residents defined as ALICE: asset-limited, income-constrained, and employed. In other words, people who are working but still cannot afford basic needs. 

That population is growing fast, and Moore’s energy policies are accelerating the slide.

Keys, in a scathing social media post, dropped the hard math that no one in Annapolis seems willing to confront. BGE takes in at least $250 million a month from ratepayers. This so-called relief fund equals 7.6 percent of one month’s revenue. And that is before Exelon takes its tax deductions at the state and federal level. This is charity theater, designed to distract from the fact that the Moore administration’s energy strategy is a fiscal and moral failure.

Delegate Steve Arentz cut straight to the heart of the matter in a recent social media post: “This does nothing but use the dollars from ratepayers to appear like he’s done something to fix the problem. More smoke and mirrors, a cheap Band-Aid. We should be looking at real cuts for ratepayers. Our policies on energy in Maryland are not viable. The PSC approves Exelon’s rates; they set the profit for these companies. Why aren’t people seeing this and demanding actions that make sense for all ratepayers? No accountability from the Governor on this except to take credit for giving you back a small token of Exelon’s profits while skyrocketing rates are getting pushed onto ratepayers.”

And yet, the Governor is out there saying, “Marylanders are counting on us to put the interests of the people first.” If that were true, he would not have pushed for policies that undermined in-state generation, bypassed local governments to jam through utility-scale solar projects, and left our grid dangerously dependent on other states. Instead of building reliable and affordable energy, Moore built a public relations strategy based on press conferences and posturing.

Bria Overs reported in The Baltimore Banner that ratepayer frustration boiled over earlier this year, especially after BGE forecasted a 12.4 percent increase in gas and electric bills by June. Then came the kicker… another increase hit ratepayers on June 1. 

What changed? Maryland’s supply situation worsened, and costs went up. Tyrone Keys nailed it: “Maryland’s energy crisis and [Moore’s] approach to it proves he doesn’t give a damn about poor people.”

You will hear Governor Moore talk a good game about compassion, justice, and equity. But the reality is this: policy is not measured in speeches. It is measured in outcomes. Moore’s energy agenda has hurt working families, small businesses, and seniors on fixed incomes. The Customer Relief Fund does not change that. It is a press release masquerading as reform.

There is a woman in West Baltimore choosing between rent and heat. There is a family in Salisbury keeping the lights off to save money for groceries. There are thousands of Marylanders who will not be helped by a one-time credit but are burdened month after month by Moore’s destructive energy policies.

This is not compassion. This is political cover. Marylanders are not fooled but they are paying the price.

Clayton A. Mitchell, Sr. is a life-long Eastern Shoreman, an attorney, and former Chairman of the Maryland Department of Labor’s Board of Appeals.  He is co-host of the Gonzales/Mitchell Show podcast that discusses politics, business, and cultural issues. 

 

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Filed Under: Archives

Adkins Arboretum Mystery Tuesday: Guess the Photo!

June 10, 2025 by Adkins Arboretum 1 Comment

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Happy Mystery Monday!  Can you guess what is pictured in the photo below?
The answer to last week’s mystery is deerberry, Vaccinium stamineum, pictured in the photo below:
Deerberry is a very common, native deciduous shrub that grows in sandy, well-drained soil and xeric communities such as dry oak woods, pine barrens, savannas, dry pine ridges, sparsely wooded bluffs, sand hills, thickets, and clearings. It often grows in conjunction with rhododendrons and azaleas, which share similar acidic soil requirements.
Deerberry’s nodding, bell-shaped flowers produce from April–June. They’re greenish-white and pink tinged. The stamens are prominent, as indicated by the Latin name stamineum. The fruit of deerberry dangles in loose clusters. The berries are sour and largely inedible for humans, unless they’re sweetened. The berries ripen from late–Summer to early–Fall and are enjoyed by birds and mammals.
Deerberry and blueberry are both members of the same plant family, ericaceae, and share similar characteristics, but also have key differences. For instance, deerberry fruit is typically larger and has a more tart flavor than blueberries.
Deerberry’s foliage turns a variety of colors through the seasons.
Mystery Monday is sponsored by the Spy Newspapers and Adkins Arboretum.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Filed Under: Archives, Food and Garden, Food and Garden Notes

The We Are One Alliance; A Talk with Heather Mizeur

June 3, 2025 by James Dissette Leave a Comment

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This is a long form interview with Heather Mizeur

Is it possible in a polarized society for two people at opposite ends of the political spectrum to breach the chasm and recognize each other’s humanness?

That’s the question Heather Mizeur has been asking for a decade. For the former Maryland legislator, Democratic congressional candidate, and longtime civic leader, a question she is approaching again with her newly relaunched nonprofit: The We Are One Alliance.

The multi-faceted We Are One Alliance was born from Mizeur’s belief that the way we engage in politics must change if we are to heal as a nation—and as individuals.

The journey began in 2017 with the founding of Soul Force Politics, a nonprofit created in the aftermath of the 2016 election. At a time when political polarization was reaching new extremes, Mizeur sought to build a space for compassion, dialogue, and common ground. “I wanted to show people ways that we can bridge the divides and come together in a common-sense way to solve problems in our communities,” she says.

During her 2022 run for Congress in Maryland’s First District, Mizeur temporarily paused her nonprofit work—but carried its philosophy into every aspect of her campaign. Her motto, “We Are One,” became a call to remember our shared humanity, even in the face of fierce ideological differences.

“We’re humans, often with similar dreams and shared struggles,” she reflects. “Politics has turned into what divides us when our democracy calls us to come forward and work together in ways that allow civil discourse again.”

With the guidance of her board of directors, she expanded the organization under a new name—the We Are One Alliance—to reflect a broader mission encompassing a family of initiatives, each rooted in healing, community, and soulful resistance.

One of the flagship programs is Operation Thriving Acres, a therapeutic horticulture and farm therapy project hosted on Mizeur’s farm outside of Chestertown. Inspired by conversations with veterans during her campaign Mizeur developed a nature-based retreat program that is now drawing interest from across the state.

“When they nurtured something that was living, it helped lower their trauma,” she says. “They were giving their attention to something life-giving instead of life-taking. Politics divides us, but the land heals us.”

Through partnerships with the Maryland chapters of Disabled American Veterans and VFW chaplains, the program has already begun hosting small retreats and gatherings.

Another program, Inward Expeditions, offers immersive group retreats to destinations like Costa Rica, where participants engage in deep reflection, self-care, and leadership training. “Some of this work is done best in community,” she explains, “but there’s also a need for solo journeys of the soul.”

The Sacred Dreams Project extends the Alliance’s reach internationally, through a partnership with Zimbabwean educator and humanitarian Dr. Tererai Trent. Together, they are building water wells, gardens, and sustainable infrastructure for rural schools.

Another cornerstone of the Alliance is the revival of Soul Force Politics as a learning platform. Through online courses, monthly community challenges, and writings published on her Substack (“The Honorable Heather Mizeur”), Mizeur is helping others cultivate inner resilience, clarity, and grounded presence.

Mizeur reimagines the idea of resistance. “Resistance, energetically, doesn’t work,” she says. “When you push against something, it pushes back.” Instead, she offers a path of soulful defiance—one that allows kindness to meet cruelty, calm to meet chaos, and joy to meet despair.

“Our power resides in the pause between stimulus and response,” she explains. “And that’s the army I’m looking to build—people who are ready to respond in non-reactive but fiercely loving ways.”

The We Are One Alliance is, in Mizeur’s words, “a living ecosystem” of hope, restoration, and vision, connecting land, politics, humanity, and the soul.

“At its core,” she says, “our mission is to restore faith in the heart of humanity, one connection at a time.”

The We Are One Alliance has launched weareonealliance.org, a comprehensive portal showcasing its diverse programs, including Soul Force Politics, Inward Expeditions, Operation Thriving Acres, Sacred Dreams Project, and personalized coaching and mentoring. At the heart of the initiative is the “Community” page—an ad-free, algorithm-free, and troll-free private social platform designed to foster meaningful, heart-centered engagement. Beginning in June, the Alliance will introduce “Soulful Challenges” and launch “Soul Force Sundays,” a weekly live video gathering for reflection and support amid challenging times. Supporters can also follow the Alliance’s ongoing work on Substack under T(he Honorable Heather Mizeur). All contributions are tax-deductible, supporting the mission of the We Are One Alliance, a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.

This video is approximately fifteen minutes in length.

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Filed Under: 1 Homepage Slider, Archives

Adkins Arboretum’s Mystery Monday: Guess the Photo!

June 2, 2025 by Adkins Arboretum Leave a Comment

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Happy Mystery Monday!  Can you guess what is pictured in photo below?
The answer to last week’s mystery is Copes gray treefrog, Hyla chrysoscelis, pictured below.
Cope’s gray tree frogs are native to North America, and are especially abundant in the southeast. They are adapted to woodland habitats but will sometimes travel into more open areas to reach a breeding pond. These frogs inhabit all elevations of wooded areas near temporary and permanent waters, such as swamps, ponds, lakes, old fields, thickly wooded suburban neighborhoods, farm woodlots, and mixed or deciduous forests.
Variable in color from mottled gray to gray green, the skin of Cope’s gray tree frogs resembles bark. They typically measure 3.2–5.1 cm long. As a member of the genus Hyla, they possess advanced toe pads, allowing them to adhere more strongly to vertical surfaces, like glass, metal, and primarily tree bark.
Cope’s grays rest in damp, rotten logs, or hollow trees, emerging to feed. Tree frogs tend to be “sit-and-wait” predators, consuming caterpillars, beetles, flies that wander by. Tree frogs produce mucus secretions that are foul tasting and cause burning sensation and inflammation. While these secretions are thought to be anti-predator functions, it is possible that they also function as antimicrobial agents.
In Winter, Cope’s gray tree frogs hibernate on land, and may be found under woody debris logs, roots and leaf litter. When gray tree frogs hibernate, they appear rigid. They have a high freezing tolerance due to glycerol in the blood. During hibernation, 80% of the body freezes and the eye becomes opaque as breathing and heartbeat are temporarily suspended. Their high tolerance for freezing temperatures has enabled gray tree frogs to expand their territory northward towards higher elevations. Cope’s gray tree frog can survive temperatures as low as 18°F.
Mystery Monday is sponsored by the Spy Newspapers and Adkins Arboretum.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Filed Under: Archives, Food and Garden, Food and Garden, Food and Garden Notes

Shelter by Laura J. Oliver

June 1, 2025 by Laura J. Oliver 4 Comments

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Editor’s note: Join us for Spy Night with Laura Oliver, who will be reading her work in the Stoltz Listening Room at the historic Avalon Theater in Easton this Wednesday evening, June 4. Doors open at 5:30 pm.

I’m in a standoff with a house finch looking for affordable housing. The blossoms from three hanging baskets on the porch drape in pink and purple profusion but yesterday the impatiens began bobbing around as if someone short was lost in a cornfield. Suddenly, a finch popped out and flew to a powerline. A second later, she was back with a beak full of grass. She landed on the plant hanger, studied me a minute, then darted into the flowers as if down a submarine hatch.

Nooo, I implored her through the living room window. Do NOT build there! (These things seldom end well.)

When she emerged and flew off again, I went outside and climbed up on the porch railing to see into the basket. I plucked out a little stash of grass and tried to wave her off as she returned to watch me from the lilac. She’d brought her husband with her. Actually, they’re not married. They’re just living together until the kids are grown, and like many males in the animal kingdom, he was the flashier dresser.

I took the basket down and put it under a porch chair. Surely, they’d give up and find better real estate. But as soon as I rehung the impatiens, I saw telltale movement beneath the pink blossoms—like cats under a blanket. I climbed up on the railing a few hours later, and the birds erupted from the basket. Peering in, I saw they had already crafted a beautiful nest—it was perfectly round—an astonishing geometry, like the precise roundness of a carpenter bee hole—like the roundness of the moon—of all the planets and stars we have ever discovered. And now I don’t have the heart to dismantle it. It looks like the homesteaders are home.

I became a first-time homeowner by naivety. Mr. Oliver, a Navy Lieutenant, was stationed on the USS Pharris out of Norfolk. There was no way we were going to live in Virginia for more than a year or two, but we didn’t want to live in a concrete box of an apartment. We’d rent a house! But when we walked into the rental office, the agent on duty, who was only on duty because she had no clients, looked up and saw Mr. and Mrs. Dopey Stupid standing there. “Rent?” she asked, “I have a swell idea! Why don’t you buy?”

We looked at each other. “Use our one-time VA loan credit to buy a house we’ll only own for a year? Okay!! Thanks, Pam!”

A few weeks later, the ship deployed to the Med, and we owned a two-bedroom, one-story house in which I would live alone for a year. At the end of that deployment, we would offload the house for exactly what we had paid for it after replacing the entire heating system.

Our next house was back in Maryland — an effort to amass equity this time. A brown stucco with mustard yellow trim and an infestation of elder beetles— it was love at first sight—which is never about looks but always about chemistry.

(You can come back to this later.)

It had a corner fireplace, the huge wavy-glass windows of an early Victorian, a stained-glass foyer window, and an attic in which we found a steamship ticket to the Emma Giles.

As much as we loved that house, with one baby in tow and another on the way, three years later, we went house shopping for a bigger one. Mr. Oliver’s mother, a real estate agent who had never sold a house, saw us coming. “Hey,” she said, “There’s a three-acre lot in our neighborhood for sale, and the adjoining property owner is moving. Cool idea! He’s built an airplane hangar for his Cessna 152 his buyers don’t want. Why don’t you buy the lot and have his airplane hangar moved onto it? You can turn it into a house!” She was making this suggestion to someone whose parents had made a house from a barn. She knew her audience.

“What a swell idea!” exclaimed Mr. and Mrs. Dopey Stupid. “Let’s buy an airplane hangar!”

Which is what the house finch’s home seems to be. An airplane hangar. There have been touch-and-go landings, wave-offs, and flybys. They buzz the tower, and at least one crow has landed like a B52 bomber. I ran him off. I’m on neighborhood watch now.

Mother to any, mother to all. Parent to any, parent to all– if the world would just allow it. I’m protecting some brazen birds when I want to adopt teenagers who got passed over until adorable aged out to adolescence or take in fostered siblings so they will not be separated or orphaned children in Ukraine. I want to feed Gaza. Now. Yesterday. But I’m on bird duty. Like you, I hold that discrepancy, that disparity in stunned bafflement. What do I do with this inadequacy? This helplessness?

The longing to shelter must live in all of us. Which means the sadness of our inability to do so   does as well.

My mother once wrote, “The sky keeps teaching the ocean to be blue.” As if love is a tutorial and humans are the students who don’t advance. And it is all so vast that our efforts to help, to heal, feel insignificant. The ocean is not even blue. It’s only scattering light, and the sky becomes the blackness of space.

You want to do more, to give big, so give small. Offer whatever you can from wherever you are.

Give new meaning to shelter in place.

For tickets, go here.

Laura J. Oliver is an award-winning developmental book editor and writing coach, who has taught writing at the University of Maryland and St. John’s College. She is the author of The Story Within (Penguin Random House). Co-creator of The Writing Intensive at St. John’s College, she is the recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award in Fiction, an Anne Arundel County Arts Council Literary Arts Award winner, a two-time Glimmer Train Short Fiction finalist, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her website can be found here.

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Filed Under: 1 Homepage Slider, Archives, Laura

The Dumbing Down of America – It’s a Major Brain Drain by Maria Grant

May 27, 2025 by Maria Grant 5 Comments

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In a matter of a few short months, Trump and his DOGE team have cancelled hundreds of research initiatives that had the potential to cure diseases and address climate change issues. 

Academics and other researchers who are experts in their fields are leaving America in droves and relocating to Canada, Europe, Australia, and yes, even China. The best and the brightest high school students who had once put American institutions as their first choices for college are scratching this country off their lists and changing their top choices to colleges outside the U.S. Already at least two professors at Ivy League universities have transferred to the University of Toronto. 

Massive firings have taken place at the National Institute of Health (NIH), the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Center for Disease Control (CDC), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Science Foundation (NSF), the U.S. Geological Survey, and, of course, the Agency for International Development (USAID). Grants have been rescinded. Projects have been cancelled. 

In addition, Trump is making college students’ professors’ and administrators’ lives a living hell by jeopardizing the quality of education, their safety, and their livelihoods. Plus, the repayment obligations of student loan borrowers will increase dramatically. 

One of the most impacted sectors affected by all these cuts is medical research. When clinical trial research gets cancelled, momentum in valuable findings halts. People who were in the midst of participating in these trials who could possibly benefit from new findings are left high and dry. Such trials evaluate new medications, new procedures, new medical devices, and new behavioral interventions. NIH is the largest funder of this research and about 60 percent of its funding goes to various academic medical center campuses. 

Just a few examples of the research that was underway are studies on pediatric cancer, brain cancer, dementia, postpartum depression, melanoma, birth control, long COVID, and diabetes. Once these trials get shut down, it’s extremely difficult to restart them. Researchers lose their jobs. Equipment is dismantled. Tracking long-term effects of various trials is no longer possible. 

I read one article that highlighted the USAID clinical trial in Africa involving birth control devices where AID employees were frantically calling women urging them to get to a hospital immediately as no one would be available to track their results and outcomes. The fact that these projects were shut down with absolutely no advanced notice is reprehensible. 

Canada, Europe, Australia, and China are wasting no time in recruiting researchers, scientists, and college students. They have active campaigns to lure them with promises of increased research funding, paying for travel to their countries, support in finding housing, and more. One example is the University of AIX-Marseille in France, which has launched a Safe Place for Science Campaign offering a program where scientists can work on health, climate, and astrophysics initiatives. 

When Trump announced that he was going to revoke Harvard’s ability to enroll international students (now on hold as courts opine on the legality of this action), the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology immediately offered these Harvard international students unconditional admission with additional support for visa assistance, college credit transfers, housing, travel, and more. 

Just when I was bemoaning the fact that Trump’s policies couldn’t get much worse, they just did. Virtually every advantage that we have had over other countries is disintegrating before our eyes. Thanks to NIH research scientists, the Covid vaccine was developed in less than 12 months. Last month Trump fired the scientist who may have been responsible for saving his life. 

When you review academic papers on how to prevent brain drain, they suggest things like improving economic conditions, fostering inclusive environments, investing in education, creating incentives, encouraging international collaboration. In short, their advice is literally the polar opposite of everything Trump is decreeing with his endless executive orders. 

America is beginning to mobilize against many of these actions, but clearly, we need to do more. Thousands are attending town halls, protesting in the streets, joining groups like Indivisible to capitalize on best practices, combining forces with other groups, writing to their senators and representatives, and supporting, and promoting court pushbacks. 

The writer Isaac Asimov once wrote, “There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.” 

Let’s just reflect on a fraction of the ignorance and incompetence that this administration has exhibited in recent weeks. 

Trump shows an image of dead white farmers who he says are from South Africa. In reality, the image is from Reuters footage in the Congo. 

Trump’s so-called free Qatari “flying palace” cost about $1 million for its flight to Palm Beach so Trump could check it out. It costs about $25,000 an hour to operate. Costs to retrofit the plane for his use are estimated to run in the hundreds of millions. 

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem is unable to define the meaning of habeas corpus.

 HHS Secretary RFK Jr. blames environmental toxins for autism. 

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy blames the Biden administration for all transportation screw ups that occurred in the last two weeks, even though when he represented Wisconsin in Congress he voted against additional funding for the FAA. And then the Trump Doge team fired approximately 400 FAA employees.

A Congressional hearing took place to vet Trump’s choice for IRS Commissioner, Billy Long, a former auctioneer and major league poker player who holds no CPA designation, has no auditing experience, no college degree, and no finance background. He has what he calls a CTBA (Certified Tax and Business Advisor) credential which one can obtain if one goes to a three-day program from a firm called Excel Empire in Florida. I might add that when Long was a Missouri congressman, he called for the abolishment of the IRS.

And as we all know, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth now manages almost 3.5 million people, (he formerly managed a nonprofit with fewer than 30 people, incurred severe cost overruns and was asked to step down), blames the editor of The Atlantic for being on the classified Signalgate chat rather than his own incompetence.

Heaven help us!

Maria Grant was principal-in-charge of the federal human capital practice of an international consulting firm. While on the Eastern Shore, she focuses on writing, reading, music, and nature. 

 

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Filed Under: 3 Top Story, Archives, Maria

Swimmable ShoreRivers Program bacteria testing program returns!

May 24, 2025 by ShoreRivers Leave a Comment

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ShoreRivers is pleased to announce its Swimmable ShoreRivers bacteria testing program has returned for the season, and that weekly results from this annual program will once again be available this year in both English and Spanish.

Every summer, ShoreRivers deploys a team of community scientists to monitor bacteria levels at popular swimming and boating sites to provide important human health risk information to the public. Their samples are then processed, according to standard scientific protocols, in ShoreRivers in-house labs. The program follows the Environmental Protection Agency’s standard protocols for collecting and analyzing samples and makes public the results of that testing to let people know about current bacteria levels as they make their plans for recreating in our waterways. Results are posted every Friday, between Memorial Day and Labor Day, at shorerivers.org/swim and on both the organization’s and its individual Riverkeepers’ social media pages.

A second page, shorerivers.org/swimmable-shorerivers-espanol, was set up last year to share this program with the Spanish-speaking community, and 14 signs can be found at public sites around the Eastern Shore that explain the goals of the Swimmable ShoreRivers program and show users where to find weekly results in both English and Spanish. These signs (and the program at large) are made possible thanks to funding from the Cornell Douglas Foundation, and ShoreRivers’ Riverkeepers will continue working with local county officials to install more.

 

 

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Filed Under: Archives, Health Notes

Andy Harris stands alone as “Present” for vote on Budget Reconciliation Bill

May 23, 2025 by Maryland Matters 6 Comments

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Maryland Rep. Andy Harris (R-1st) was the only House member to vote “present” on the bill, which passed by a one-vote margin, 215-214. Two Republicans voted against the measure and two more did not vote, but every other Republican voted for the bill and every Democrat in the House voted no. Harris said in a social media post shortly after the early morning vote Thursday that he voted present “to move the bill along in the process,” even though he believes there are still cuts to be made.

This report has been updated.

The U.S. House early Thursday approved the “big, beautiful bill” that Republican leaders spent months negotiating with centrists and far-right members of the party — two distinct factions that hold vastly different policy goals — over intense opposition from Democrats.

The 215-214 vote ships the package to the Senate, where GOP lawmakers are expected to rewrite much of it, before sending it back across the Capitol for final approval, a process likely to stretch through the summer.

President Donald Trump, who said he backed the House version, would then need to sign the legislation, which under the complicated process being used by Republicans can pass with just a majority vote in the GOP-controlled Senate.

Trump called on the Senate to pass the legislation as quickly as possible, writing in a social media post that “(t)here is no time to waste” and that the bill is “arguably the most significant piece of Legislation that will ever be signed in the History of our Country!”

Speaker Mike Johnson said minutes before the vote that he expects lawmakers to give the measure final approval before the Fourth of July.

“Now, look, we’re accomplishing a big thing here today, but we know this isn’t the end of the road just yet,” Johnson, R-La., said. “We’ve been working closely with Leader (John) Thune and our Senate colleagues, the Senate Republicans, to get this done and delivered to the president’s desk by our Independence Day. That’s July 4. Today proves that we can do that, and we will do that.”

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., argued against the legislation, saying it “undermines reproductive freedom, undermines the progress that we have made in combating the climate crisis, undermines gun safety, undermines the rule of law and the independence of the federal judiciary. It even undermines the ability of hard-working and law-abiding immigrant families to provide remittances to their loved ones, who may just happen to live abroad.”

Jeffries raised concerns with how the proposals in the bill would impact the economy and the federal government’s financial stability.

“Costs aren’t going down. They’re going up. Inflation is out of control. Insurance rates remain stubbornly high,” Jeffries said. “Our Moody’s rating, our credit rating, has been downgraded, and you’ve got people losing confidence in this economy. Republicans are crashing this economy in real time and driving us toward a recession.”

Ohio’s Warren Davidson and Kentucky’s Thomas Massie were the only Republicans to vote against passing the bill, which members debated throughout the night prior to the vote just after daylight in the nation’s capital. All Democrats, who dubbed it “one big ugly bill,” were opposed. Maryland GOP Rep. Andy Harris, chairman of the Freedom Caucus, voted “present.”

Massie spoke against the bill overnight, calling it “a debt bomb ticking.”

“I’d love to stand here and tell the American people: We can cut your taxes and we can increase spending, and everything’s going to be just fine. But I can’t do that because I’m here to deliver a dose of reality,” Massie said. “This bill dramatically increases deficits in the near term, but promises our government will be fiscally responsible five years from now. Where have we heard that before? How do you bind a future Congress to these promises?”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a briefing later in the day that Trump wants Davidson and Massie to face primary challenges next year during the midterm elections.

“I believe he does,” Leavitt said. “And I don’t think he likes to see grandstanders in Congress.”

The 1,116-page package combines 11 bills that GOP lawmakers debated and reported out of committee during the last several weeks.

The legislation would:

  • Extend the 2017 tax law, including tax cuts for businesses and individuals;
  • Bolster spending on border security and defense by hundreds of billions of dollars;
  • Rework energy permitting;
  • Restructure higher education aid such as student loans and Pell Grants;
  • Shift some of the cost of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program food aid program for low-income Americans to state governments; and
  • Overhaul Medicaid, the nation’s program for health care for low-income people and some people with disabilities.

The bill would make deep cuts to Medicaid spending, reducing the program by $625 billion over 10 years under the latest estimate by the Congressional Budget Office.

The budget measure would also raise the debt limit by $4 trillion.

A new Congressional Budget Office analysis released late Tuesday showed the package tilted toward the wealthy, projecting it would decrease resources for low-income families over the next decade while increasing resources for top earners.

Republicans hold especially thin majorities in the House and Senate, meaning that nearly every GOP lawmaker — ranging from centrists who barely won their general elections to far-right members who are more at risk of losing a primary challenge — needed to support the bill.

Balancing the demands of hundreds of lawmakers led to nearly constant talks during the last few days as Johnson struggled to secure the votes to pass the bill before his Memorial Day deadline.

Any deal Johnson made with far-right members of the party risked alienating centrist GOP lawmakers and vice versa.

An agreement finally came together Wednesday evening when GOP leaders released a 42-page amendment that made changes to various sections of the package, including the state and local tax deduction, or SALT, and Medicaid work requirements and nixed the potential sale of some public lands.

Tax cuts

House debate on the package fell largely along party lines, with Democrats contending it would benefit the wealthy at the expense of lower-income Americans, including millions who would lose access to Medicaid.

Republicans argued the legislation is necessary to avoid a tax hike at the end of the year, when the 2017 GOP law expires, and to curb government spending in the years ahead.

Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith, R-Mo., said the tax section of the package would halt a tax increase for many that would have taken place after the vast majority of the provisions in that law expire at the end of this year.

“Working families, farmers and small businesses win with this bill,” Smith said. “We expand and make permanent the small business deduction and increase the child tax credit, the standard deduction and the death tax exemption.”

The legislation would increase the tax rate for colleges and universities with substantial endowments, which would match the corporate tax rate, he said.

Massachusetts Democratic Rep. Richard Neal, ranking member on that tax-writing committee, said the legislation would lead the United States to “borrow $4 trillion and with interest payments over the next 10 years, $5 trillion, to justify a tax cut for the billionaire class.”

Neal said that the wealthy would see a greater benefit from the GOP tax provisions than working-class Americans.

“If you made a million dollars last year, you’re going to get $81,000 of tax relief. If you made less than $50,000 Guess what? Not quite so lucky,” Neal said. “But you know what? $1 a day goes a long way, because that’s where the numbers land.”

Neal said Democrats would have worked with Republicans to extend the 2017 tax cuts if the GOP had capped them for those making less than $400,000 a year, with people making more than that going back to the higher rate.

Child tax credit

The child tax credit will increase to $2,500, up from the $2,000 enacted under the 2017 tax law. The refundability portion of the credit, or the amount parents could receive in a refund check after paying their tax liability, will remain capped but will increase with inflation by $100 annually. As of now, the amount a parent could receive back per child stands at $1,700.

While Republicans hailed the increase as a win for families, critics say it continues to leave out the poorest families as the refund amount is dependent on how much a parent earns. The credit phases in at 15 cents per income dollar, one child at a time.

“The Republican bill will leave out 17 million American children who are in families that don’t earn enough to receive the full child tax credit,” Rep. Suzan DelBene of Washington said Wednesday in the House Committee on Rules. Her amendment to make the tax credit fully refundable was rejected.

On the House floor Thursday morning, DelBene criticized the bill as a “big, broken promise.”

SALT

Republicans from high-tax blue states declared victory on the increase in the SALT cap, or the amount of state and local taxes that can be deducted from federal taxable income. After long, drawn-out disagreement, Republicans representing districts in California, New Jersey and New York secured a bump to $40,000, up from the $10,000 cap enacted under Trump’s 2017 tax law.

However, the cap comes with an income limit of $500,000, after which it phases down. Both the $40,000 cap and the $500,000 income threshold will increase annually at 1% until hitting a ceiling of $44,000 and $552,000.

Rep. Mike Lawler of New York said during debate that he “would never support a tax bill that did not adequately lift the cap on SALT.”

“This bill does that. It increases the cap on SALT by 300%,” Lawler said. “And I would remind my Democratic colleagues, when they had full control in Washington, they lifted the cap on SALT by exactly $0, zilch, zip, nada.”

Medicaid work requirements

Energy and Commerce Chairman Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., said his panel’s bill would ensure Medicaid coverage continued for low-income families, individuals who are disabled and seniors through new work requirements and other changes.

“This bill protects coverage for those individuals by ensuring ineligible recipients do not cut the line in front of our most vulnerable Americans,” Guthrie said. “The decision by left-leaning state governments to spend taxpayer dollars on people who are ineligible for the program is indefensible. Medicaid should not cover illegal immigrants, deceased or duplicative beneficiaries, or able-bodied adults without dependents who choose not to work.”

The policy change would require those who rely on the state-federal health program, and who are between the ages of 19 and 65, to work, participate in community service, or attend an educational program at least 80 hours a month.

The language has numerous exceptions, including for pregnant people, parents of dependent children, people who have complex medical conditions, tribal community members, those in the foster care system, people who were in foster care who are below the age of 26 and individuals released from incarceration in the last 90 days, among others.

New Jersey Democratic Rep. Frank Pallone, ranking member on the committee that oversees major health care programs, said the Republican bill would not only cut funding for Medicaid, but also for Medicare, the program relied on by seniors and some younger people with disabilities.

“Republicans are stripping health care away from people by putting all sorts of burdensome and time-consuming road blocks in the way of people just trying to get by,” Pallone said. “The vast majority of people on Medicaid are already working. This is not about work. It’s about burying people in so much paperwork that they fall behind and lose their health coverage, and if someone loses their health coverage through Medicaid, this GOP tax scam also bans them from getting coverage through the ACA marketplace.”

While the GOP bill doesn’t directly address Medicare, he said, a federal budget law, known as the Pay-As-You-Go Act, would force spending cuts called sequestration to that health program.

“The Medicare cuts will lead to reduced access to care for seniors, longer wait times for appointments, and increased costs,” Pallone said.

States to share in food aid costs

House Agriculture Committee Chairman Glenn “GT” Thompson, R-Pa., pressed for support for his piece of the legislation, saying changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, are needed.

“SNAP is the only state-administered welfare program that does not have a cost-share component, and while the federal government funds 100% of the benefit, states are tasked with operating it,” Thompson said. “The only problem: They aren’t operating it well.”

He also cheered several of the package’s tax provisions, saying they would benefit farmers.

“The one big, beautiful bill makes permanent and expands the Trump tax cuts. It also prevents the death tax from hitting over 2 million family farms,” Thompson said. “It locks in the small business deduction, helping 98% of American farms stay afloat.”

Minnesota Democratic Rep. Angie Craig, ranking member on the panel, wrote in a statement that the proposed changes would “make America hungrier, poorer and sicker.”

“At a time when grocery prices are going up and retirement accounts are going down, we must protect the basic needs programs that help people afford food and health care,” Craig wrote. “As a mother and someone who needed food assistance at periods in my own childhood, I condemn this attempt to snatch food off our children’s plates to fund tax breaks for large corporations.”

Border security, air traffic control, EV fees

House Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman Sam Graves, R-Mo., said his piece of the package would combine “critical investments in border security, national defense and modernization of America’s air traffic control system, while eliminating wasteful spending and other deficit reduction measures.”

“Specifically, this bill addresses long overdue needs in the United States Coast Guard, which for over two decades has received less than half of the capital investment necessary to effectively carry out its critical missions,” Graves said.

The transportation section of the package, he said, includes $21 billion for the Coast Guard and $12.5 billion to modernize the air traffic control systems while establishing a $250 annual fee for electric vehicles and a $100 annual fee for hybrid vehicles that would go toward the Highway Trust Fund. That account has traditionally been funded through a gas tax.

Washington Democratic Rep. Rick Larsen, ranking member on the transportation panel, said he wanted “to continue historic funding for transportation, infrastructure, and stronger and healthier communities.”

“Unfortunately, this reconciliation package leaves very little room for those investments,”  Larsen said.

“This bill causes immediate harm by yanking money from locally selected projects that our constituents in Republican and Democratic districts alike are counting on,” he added. “And for what? To help pay for the tax cuts for the richest Americans and largest and largest corporations.”

House Education and Workforce Committee ranking member Bobby Scott, D-Va., urged opposition to what he called the “big, bad billionaires bill,” saying it would lead to a massive reshaping of higher education aid.

“The bill not only can increase the deficit, it has 4 million students who will lose their Pell Grants, 18 million children could potentially lose their free school lunch, 13.7 million people are set to lose their health care and everybody loses when the National Institutes of Health research is cut,” Scott said.

Natural Resources Committee Chairman Bruce Westerman, R-Ark., said his portion of the legislation would “generate over $20 billion in savings and new revenue for the federal government, primarily by direct royalty and lease fees from the sale of oil, gas, timber and mine resources, while curbing wasteful spending.”

“Our title reinstates onshore and offshore oil and gas lease sales, holds annual geothermal lease sales and ensures a fair process for critical mineral development nationwide,” Westerman said. “We’ve also directed the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management to utilize long-term timber sale contracts.”

The Trump administration released a Statement of Administration Policy on Wednesday urging GOP lawmakers to approve the legislation, when it still appeared several members of the party might delay or even block the bill in the House.

“The One Big Beautiful Bill Act reflects the shared priorities of both Congress and the Administration,” the SAP states. “Therefore, the House of Representatives should immediately pass this bill to show the American people that they are serious about ‘promises made, promises kept.’

“President Trump is committed to keeping his promises, and failure to pass this bill would be the ultimate betrayal.” 

 

Jennifer Shutt and Ashley Murray – Maryland Matters

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

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