Midday

Today on Midday, it’s Midday with the Mayor, with Annapolis Mayor Gavin Buckley . He was born in South Africa, grew up in Australia, and after a successful career as a restaurateur in Annapolis became the Mayor of the state’s capital city in December, 2017. A Democrat, he has announced that he will stand for re-election in November of this year. He joins Tom today to discuss the many c...

Yesterday was the final day of arguments for the current term of the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court will meet on several non-argument days and in conference before releasing their decisions sometime this summer. In his latest book, Ian Millhiser argues that the current conservative majority on the Court has the potential to radically alter American law and public policy. Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanau...

It’s Day 100 for the Biden Administration. Last night, the President made his pitch for going big with a package of legislative fixes for everything from our crumbling infrastructure to poverty and unemployment. He did not shy away from addressing how to pay for his multi-trillion-dollar proposals, following-up on a campaign pledge to raise taxes on people who make more than $400,000 a year,...

Optimism is in the air. Yesterday, the CDC issued new guidance about mask wearing outside, and other perks for people who have been fully vaccinated against the Coronavirus. The Baltimore City Health Dept is reviewing the CDC guidance, and they may adjust their mask ordinance. But most experts say that unless you are in a crowd of strangers, if you’ve had a vaccine, you don’t need a ma...

Last Sunday, C. Fraser Smith , one of Baltimore’s most respected journalists, passed away after suffering a stroke on April 11th. Fraser had been WYPR’s Senior News Analyst and a fan favorite of listeners to WYPR, and readers of the Baltimore Sun and the Daily Record. Here’s a Fraser essay broadcast on WYPR in November 2015. And here's a link to Fraser's last guest appearance on...

Tom's next guests are featured in a new documentary about an extraordinary Jewish theologian and activist. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel was a mentor, friend and colleague of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and one of the most influential religious scholars and public intellectuals of the 20th century. The new documentary , by filmmaker Martin Doblmeier, will air on PBS May 5. Tomorrow afternoon, the I...

We begin today by keeping you up to date with the ever-changing news about the Coronavirus. Last Thursday, Governor Larry Hogan announced that Maryland led the nation in lowering the number of COVID-19 cases, and that our state had the lowest transmission rate in the country. The statewide positivity rate has fallen steadily for the last several days. At the same time the Governor was heralding th...

Tom's guest today is Justin Fenton , who covers crime and police accountability for the Baltimore Sun . Under the best of circumstances, those are two distinct beats. But for the last four years, Fenton has been covering one the biggest policing scandals in American history, in which the criminals were cops. The Baltimore Police Department ’s Gun Trace Task Force was created in 2007, designe...

Tom's next guest is Dr. Elizabeth Letourneau . She's the director of the Moore Center for the Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse , and a professor in the Department of Mental Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. For more than two decades, Dr. Letourneau has been researching clinical practices and legal policies related to adult and adolescent sexual abuse of children. She's...

Tom's guest today is Wes Moore , the best-selling author, social activist and the host of Future City here on WYPR. Along with Erica Green of the New York Times , he wrote an excellent book last year about the 2015 uprising in Baltimore sparked by the death of a 25 year-old Black man named Freddie Gray, from injuries he sustained while in police custody. The book is called Five Days: The Fiery Rec...

President Joe Biden is hosting dozens of world leaders at a virtual climate summit at the White House today. Having rejoined the Paris Climate Accord , this morning, the President pledged to an even faster pace for reducing US carbon emissions than the US had previously committed to. Today on this Earth Day edition of Midday, we’re going Back to the Garden with Denzel Mitchell of The Farm Al...

Convicting cops of murder is a rare event, but McMillan’s testimony, the testimony of other eyewitnesses and experts, and the horrifying tape of Derek Chauvin resting his deadly knee on George Floyd’s neck proved to be insurmountable evidence for a defense of what many people considered indefensible. Welcome to Midday. Today on our program, reactions to the guilty verdicts in the trial...

After a shooter killed eight people at three spas in the metro Atlanta area a little more than a month ago, he headed to Florida to continue his murderous rampage. Police apprehended him before he could kill more people. Since that day, up until the early morning hours of Sunday, when three were killed and two were wounded at a bar in Kenosha Wisconsin, there were 50 mass shootings across the Unit...

President Joe Biden enjoys an approval rating of more than 60%. But in a poll released two weeks ago by The Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, only 42% of Americans approve of Mr. Biden’s handling of immigration. Last Friday, the Biden administration announced it will limit the number of refugees allowed into the United States this year to the historically low...

Closing arguments are underway in Minneapolis in the trial of Derek Chauvin. The case is expected to go to the jury sometime today. The litany of young African Americans who have been killed by current or former police officers in high profile cases is heart-wrenching: Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, Ahmaud Arbery, Stephon Clark...

In this year’s unprecedented Maryland General Assembly session , members of the state Senate sat divided by plastic barriers. House of Delegates sessions were held in two different buildings. But the physical divisions occasioned by precautions to prevent the spread of COVID 19 did not portend insurmountable political divisions. Republican Governor Larry Hogan called it the best session in h...

Today, another in our frequent series of conversations with the political leadership of the city of Baltimore. We've had regular check-ins with Mayor Brandon Scott, Comptroller Bill Henry, and members of the Baltimore City Council, as well as the Council President, Nick Mosby, who is Tom's guest, once again, for the full hour today. The Council’s most recent legislative initiative aspires to...

(Originally broadcast on February 19, 2021) Today, on this archive edition of Midday, Tom speaks with the award-winning writer, Chang-rae Lee. He is the author of six novels. The Surrendered , which he published in 2008, was a Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Another book, On Such a Full Sea was a Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the winner of the Heartland Fiction Prize. H...

Now, we continue our recap of the 2021 Session of the Maryland General Assembly, which concluded, Sine Die , at midnight last night in Annapolis. In addition to a billion-dollar stimulus bill, and a budget that got a big boost from the federal government’s American Rescue Plan, the legislature passed a package of historic police reform measures, along with many other bills. Joining Tom for a...

Last night, the Maryland General Assembly finished the work of its 2021 Session, a session unlike any other, given the pandemic’s effect on how business was conducted, and in several respects, what business was conducted. We begin today with a look back at the 2021 Session. A little later, Ovetta Wiggins, who covers the Statehouse for the Washington Post and Rachel Baye, WYPR’s Stateho...

Use of the coronavirus vaccine developed by Johnson & Johnson is being put on hold, following six cases of blood clots that may be related to the vaccine. The FDA and CDC have recommended pausing the use of the J&J vaccine , a recommendation that the state of Maryland and the City of Baltimore have announced they will implement until further information about the potential risk of the vacc...

Tonight marks the beginning of Ramadan , Islam's month-long observance of fasting, prayer and family celebrations. Tom's next guest is a Muslim activist and author who emigrated to the United States from Pakistan in 2003. She’s written a book about her experiences in the United States, as she has assimilated into American culture, and risen to leadership positions in the American Muslim Comm...

It’s Midday with the Mayor, another in our regular series of live conversations with Baltimore City Mayor Brandon Scott. Voters will weigh-in on returning the Baltimore police department to local control in a referendum in an upcoming election. Mayor Scott’s efforts to re-imagine public safety in Baltimore include forming a task force to consider how to cut the budget of the BPD to re-...

Tom's next guest is the internationally acclaimed violinist, Jennifer Koh . Before the pandemic took hold, she was concertizing around the globe, in demand as one of the most brilliant artists of her generation. But when the pandemic began, bookings vanished. A New York Times profile published the day after Christmas referred to the “Cultural Depression” that Jennifer and legions of ot...

Tom's first guest today is the author of a book about three accomplished Black women, Alberta King, Louise Little and Berdis Baldwin . It’s part biography of these women, and part clarion call for recognition of all Black women. Anna Malaika Tubbs writes that erasure, misrecognition and historical amnesia are, sadly, part of the formation of African American female identity, and her book is...