It’s the Midday News Wrap, our regular Friday review of the week's top local, national and international news stories, with a rotating panel of journalists, commentators and community leaders.
President Trump gave a widely praised speech on Tuesday night to a joint session of Congress. Various news outlets have identified more than a dozen false or misleading statements in that address. The Washington Post is keeping track of such things. They’ve accumulated 187 factually inaccurate statements by the President in his first 40 days in office. Still, many people think the President quieted some skeptics with his performance in front of Congress.
Newly confirmed U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from any investigations into contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian diplomats and operatives during the campaign. He didn’t say anything about playing no part in investigating contacts that might have occurred after the election. For the moment, Republicans are relieved, but Democrats are demanding that Sessions resign.
The person who would take over any investigation of the Russian contacts would be the Deputy Attorney General. President Trump has nominated the current US attorney for Maryland, Rod Rosenstein, for that position. His confirmation hearing is scheduled for Tuesday.
On Wednesday, Rosenstein announced the indictment of 7 Baltimore city police officers on racketeering charges, including allegations that the officers extorted money from witnesses, stole money acquired in raids, and filed fake overtime claims. The officers were part of an elite unit in charge of getting guns off the street. Five of the seven are in jail today, having been denied bail Thursday.
And in the MD General Assembly, Delegate Dan Morhaim faced a vote of reprimand this morning for ethics violations.
On the Midday News Wrap panel today: Farai Chideya is a journalist and fellow at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. She’s also the author of The Episodic Career: How to Thrive at Work in the Age of Disruption. She joins us on the line from Cambridge, MA.
Jayne Miller joins us in Studio A. She’s the award-winning lead investigative reporter at Baltimore's WBAL-Television.
Dr. Kaye Wise Whitehead is in Studio A as well. She's an Associate Professor of Communication and African & African-American Studies at Loyola University-Maryland, and the founding executive director of the Emilie Frances Davis Center for Education, Research, and Culture. She’s the author of several books -- most recently, Letters to My Black Sons: Raising Boys in a Post Racial America.
And Erin Cox, State House Bureau Chief for the Baltimore Sun, joins Tom by phone from Annapolis with details of the House of Delegates' unanimous vote Friday afternoon to reprimand Del. Dan Morhaim.
