Today, we begin a regular Friday feature: The Midday News Wrap, in which we'll spend the hour reviewing major local, national and international developments with a rotating panel of esteemed journalists, commentators and community leaders.
Friday marks the end of the first week of the Trump administration, a week marked by a dizzying array of Executive Orders and official memoranda by the President that at times placed him in opposition to his senior team and Cabinet nominees. Trump showed no inclination to change his tone or style following his inauguration, nor did he show an impulse to modify any positions in the face of clear evidence that he is mistaken.
He held a lot of meetings, including with union leaders, perhaps forging an unlikely alliance with organized labor. His first official meeting with the President of Mexico was canceled. His determination to build a new southern-border wall is undeterred. He put the Dakota Access Pipeline back in play. He promised to get rid of 75% of federal regulations. He insisted that his Inauguration Day crowd was the largest ever. (It wasn’t.) He reasserted his description of journalists as “among the most dishonest human beings on the face of the earth.” On his second day in office, some 3 million people protested in cities around the globe.
Closer to home, new Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh is wrestling with the city’s rising homicide rate; Governor Hogan is wrestling with severe structural deficits; we’ll wrestle with what it all means.
To look back at Week One of the Trump Era, Maryland politics and other news of the week, Tom is joined on the Midday News Wrap by Andy Green, the Editorial Page editor for the Baltimore Sun; James DeGraffenreidt, a former chair of the Maryland State Board of Education, a businessman who sits on several corporate boards, and a lawyer; and Kimberly Moffitt, a media critic and associate professor of American studies at The University of Maryland Baltimore County. And we take listeners calls, emails and tweets.
