Midday

The Senate Impeachment Trial of President Trump continues today, beginning at 1:00pm EST. WYPR will be carrying NPR's live coverage of the trial. The President’s defense team wrapped up its arguments on Tuesday. The members of the White House team chose to use about 11 hours of their 24 allotted hours. When they concluded their presentation early, it took at least a few Senators by surprise. Today...

Mary Miller is one of 24 Democratic candidates running for Baltimore mayor. This is Ms. Miller’s first run for political office, but she is not new to government. In 2009, as the country plunged into recession, Ms. Miller was appointed by President Obama to top jobs at the Treasury Department. After holding several senior leadership positions, she left the Treasury in 2014 as the first woman to se...

Tom is joined in Studio A by Shannon Wright. She is one of 7 Republicans running for Baltimore City Mayor. She is a former Vice President of the Yonkers NAACP; and also served on the New Jersey NAACP state board of directors. In 2016 she was the Republican nominee in the race for City Council President. She lost in the general election to now incumbent Mayor “Jack” Young. Email us at midday@wypr.o...

Tom’s guest today is Catalina Byrd. She is one of 7 Republicans running for Baltimore City Mayor. Ms. Byrd is a political strategist, community activist, and media personality. In 2017 she was appointed by former mayor Catherine Pugh to serve on the Community Oversight Task Force. She currently serves as the Chair of the Domestic Violence Committee of the Women’s Commission of Baltimore City. Emai...

T.J. Smith, the former Baltimore Police Department spokesman, is Tom’s guest today. He is one of 19 announced Democratic candidates running for Baltimore mayor. Mr. Smith joined the police department with the arrival of Commissioner Kevin Davis and served as the chief of communications from 2015 until 2018. After leaving the Police Department, Mr. Smith served as Press Secretary and Communications...

Today on Midday, a conversation about trucking safety, and efforts to address the serious and persistent problem of fatal truck crashes on America’s highways. Those crashes take the lives of more than 4,000 Americans every year — more than a dozen fatalities every day. Thousands more are injured. And thousands more are left to grieve for the victims. Brian Kuebler is an investigative reporter at W...

It's Thursday, and theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck joins Tom with another review of the Maryland stage. This week, Judy spotlights the North American tour of Cats, currently on stage at the Hippodrome Theater in Baltimore. Cats is Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical staging of poet T.S. Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats. The show opened in London in 1981 and a year later pounced on Broadway, wh...

The Senate gets down to business in the Impeachment of President Trump. Former Maryland governor Bob Ehrlich, Ayesha Rascoe of NPR and Law Professor Mark Graber recap the historic proceedings yesterday in the Senate Chamber. Email us at midday@wypr.org, tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

On Midday today, we're observing the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day holiday by talking with some local examplars of the MLK Day of Service ethic, who've taken the lead in efforts to make Baltimore a better place to live. Joining Tom for this last of three conversations today is the Reverend Alvin Hathaway, the Senior Pastor of Union Baptist Church in Upton, and founder of Green Ambassadors, a private...

On Midday today, we're meeting some local examplars of the MLK Day of Service ethic who've taken the lead in efforts to make Baltimore a better place to live. In the second of three conversations today, Tom talks with Dr. Douglas Robinson, a professor of cell biology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Eleven years ago, Dr. Robinson launched the Initiative for Careers in Science an...

Today is MLK Jr Day, the federal holiday established in 1986 to commemorate the birthday of the slain civil rights leader, Martin Luther King, Jr., who would have turned 91 last Wednesday. For the past 25 years, the national observance of the MLK holiday has been associated with A Day of Service, a campaign to honor Dr. King's legacy of non-violent struggle for social justice by encouraging people...

Today it’s Midday on Tech and our annual review of the Consumer Electronics Show, held last week (January 5-10) in Las Vegas, Nevada. We’ll take a look at the latest innovations in mobility and accessibility showcased at CES 2020, and what the inclusion of "sex tech" at this year’s event means for gender equity. From 8K TVs to self-emptying garbage cans and an AI-driven “City of the Future,” Tom u...

Harry Spikes was an aide to Rep. Elijah Cummings for 15 years, serving most recently as district director. He is also the vice president of the board of directors of the Community Assistance Network, a non-profit organization in Baltimore County that helps individuals and families who are homeless. He is one of 24 Democrats and 6 Republicans running for the seat left vacant by the death of Rep. El...

Saafir Rabb is the CEO of a company called Interculture. He also leads a local non-profit and he was an advisor on the transition team of President Barack Obama. He is one of 24 Democrats and 6 Republicans running for the seat left vacant by the death of Rep. Elijah Cummings. Email us at midday@wypr.org, tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

It's Thursday, and theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck joins us again with another of her weekly reviews of the Maryland stage. Today, Judy spotlights Fells Point Corner Theatre's production of Love and Information, a work by the innovative British playwright Caryl Churchill that's directed here by Deirdre McAllister. First performed in London in 2012, Churchill's Love and Information is a compilation...

Midday's series of Conversations with the Candidates continues with this special Web-only edition: Tom's January 14 conversation with Dante Swinton. He is one of more than a dozen Democratic candidates vying in the April 28th primary election, hoping to become the party's nominee for mayor of Baltimore in the November 2020 general election. Mr. Swinton brings to the mayoral race his experience as...

Today, another in our series of Conversations with the Candidates. Tom's guest for the hour is State Senator Jill P. Carter, one of the Democratic candidates running to fill the the vacancy in the 7th Congressional District created by the death of Representative Elijah Cummings. Twenty-four Democrats and eight Republicans have filed to run in a special primary election on February 4th. Senator Car...

Dr. Maya Rockeymoore Cummings is a public policy consultant who holds a doctorate in political science. She’s the former head of the Maryland Democratic Party and she worked for several years on Capitol Hill. For a brief period, she was a candidate in the 2018 Maryland gubernatorial race. Email us at midday@wypr.org, tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

On today's edition of the Midday News Wrap, a look at three stories topping the news this week. The U-S-Iran Crisis: The US and Iran have been teetering on the brink of war since a U.S. drone strike ordered last Friday by President Trump killed the influential Iranian general Qassim Soleimani and others near the Baghdad airport. After staging a massive public funeral for their assassinated general...

On Wednesday, January 8, the 2020 Legislative Session of the Maryland General Assembly convened in Annapolis. For the next 90 days, state lawmakers will be deliberating over a daunting array of legislative measures, addressing everything from education reform to transportation initiatives, health care, crime reduction, ethics reform, and much, much more. On Tuesday, Midday's Tom Hall spoke with th...

It's Thursday, and time again for a visit with theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck, who regales us each week with her reviews of the region's rich thespian offerings. Today, she spotlights the new touring production of My Fair Lady, now on stage at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. The Kennedy Center show launches the national tour for the Lincoln Center Theater production...

Tom sits down at the State House with Senate President Designate Bill Ferguson and House Speaker Adrienne Jones for a preview of their priorities as the General Assembly begins a historic new chapter. Senator Bill Ferguson is expected to be elected Senate President, succeeding Mike Miller, who held the job for longer than any senate president in the country. Delegate Adrienne Jones will preside ov...

Rushern Baker was the Prince George’s County Executive from 2010 until 2018 -- and before that, a member of the Maryland House of Delegates. Don Mohler was appointed Baltimore County Executive upon the death of then-County Executive Kevin Kamenetz in May 2018, following a long career in county government and the public schools. They join Tom to discuss sweeping changes proposed for Maryland public...

Today, we continue our series of Conversations with the Candidates with people who are running to be the next Mayor of Baltimore City. Tom's guest is City Council President Brandon Scott. Mr. Scott was elected President of the City Council by his fellow members eight months ago, when then Council President Jack Young became Mayor after Catherine Pugh’s fall from grace. As the chair of the Council'...

Today, we continue our series of Conversations with the Candidates who are running to be the next mayor of Baltimore City. Tom's guest is former Mayor Sheila Dixon, who held the office from 2007-2010. She resigned in 2010 following a conviction for embezzlement and an Alford plea in a separate case in which she was charged with perjury. She is one of 15 Democratic candidates running in the April 2...