Midday

We begin today with another edition of Midday with the Mayor, our monthly series of live conversations with Baltimore City Mayor Brandon Scott, in which he addresses Tom's questions about important issues facing the city.

Among the topics we discuss today are the city's ongoing strategies for fighting crime, City Council battles over the budget, municipal staff shortages, the latest allocations of federal American Rescue Plan funds, and last weekend's celebrations of Juneteenth, the AfrAm Festival and Father's Day.

Mayor Brandon Scott joins us on Zoom from his office in City Hall.

Email us at [email protected], tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

Now, another installment in our series of Conversations with the Candidates: 2022. Joining Tom is Sam Cogen. He is a candidate in the Democratic primary for Sheriff of Baltimore City. Unlike the Baltimore Police Commissioner, who is appointed by the Mayor and approved by the City Council, the Sheriff is elected.

Sam Cogen has had a 25-year career in the Sheriff’s office. He holds a degree from Goucher College in sociology with a focus on criminal justice. He joined the Sheriff’s Department in 1997, and moved through the ranks to become Assistant Sheriff. He is 48 years old, he’s married, and he has a daughter in college. Mr. Cogen resigned from the Sheriff’s department last November to concentrate on a campaign to replace his former boss, the incumbent, John Anderson, who has held the office for 32 years. The winner of next month's primary election will be unopposed by a Republican in the general election.

We invited Sheriff Anderson to appear on Midday to discuss his candidacy. He did not respond to repeated requests.

Sam Cogen did respond, and we are happy to welcome him to the program. He joins us on Zoom from Baltimore.

Email us at [email protected], tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

The House Select Committee investigating the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol continued its series of televised public hearings on Tuesday.

The hearing concluded with emotional testimony from elected officials in Arizona and Georgia and from election workers who were subjected to harassment by Donald Trump and his supporters as the president plotted to overturn his loss in the 2020 election.

Joining Tom now on our digital line is Luke Broadwater, who covers the US Congress for the New York Times.

Email us at [email protected], tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

Welcome to this Summer Solstice edition of Midday. Today is the longest day of the year, and the official beginning of summer, and for all that summer has to recommend it, it is also a time when crime typically spikes in cities throughout the United States.

Like cities across the country, Baltimore continues to reel from brazen acts of violence in communities across our city. A 15 year-old from Howard County has been arrested and charged with shooting into a crowd at the Inner Harbor over Memorial Day Weekend. One person died and two others were injured. 25 year-old Army Reserve Sergeant Ryan Harris was killed near his apartment on Calvert Street. Trevor White, a 40 year-old bar owner who helped develop communities in East Baltimore as part of ReBuild Metro, was killed in Northeast Baltimore. Three weeks ago, 83 year-old Marjorie Tyson was struck in the arm by a stray bullet while she sat in bed reading.

Over the weekend, five people were killed and 10 were injured.

We are running out of ways to describe this level of mayhem. For years, official after official has described crime in Baltimore as “out of control,” as voters elect them, time after time, on their promises to control it.

Tom's Newsmaker guest today is Baltimore City Police Commissioner Michael S. Harrison. He was appointed as our city’s top cop in 2019 after successfully overseeing a decrease in crime as the police chief in his native city of New Orleans.

Commissioner Harrison joins us regularly to let us know what the police are doing to address the problems that according to a recent poll are the top concern of 90% of our citizens.

To reach the Baltimore City Police Department's Illegal Dirt Bikes Tip Line, call: 443-902-4474.

Email us at [email protected], tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

Happy Juneteenth! It’s another edition of our monthly Midday Healthwatch, with Dr. Leana Wen.

The latest surge in the COVID-19 variant known as omicron is beginning to show signs it is receding, but the highly transmissible BA.2 variant has led the CDC to estimate that nearly 60% of Americans have already been infected. For children, the infection rate is even higher: closer to 75%.

And help for our youngest children is on the way. On Friday, an advisory committee of the Food and Drug Administration emergency use authorization (EUA) to the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccines for children under the age of five. The CDC signed off on the panel’s recommendation on Saturday. This comes as a relief to many parents, and it presents a dilemma for many others, who may be vaccinated themselves, but who are hesitant about vaccinating their kids.

Dr. Wen is herself the parent of two children under the age of five. She is a former health commissioner of Baltimore, an emergency physician, and she teaches at the George Washington University's Milken Institute School of Public Health. Dr. Wen is also a columnist for the Washington Post, a medical analyst for CNN, a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and the author of Lifelines: A Doctor's Journey in the Fight for Public Health.

Dr. Leana Wen joins us on Zoom…

Email us at [email protected], tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

(This conversation was originally broadcast on June 18, 2021)

Tom's guest on this archived edition of Midday is the author and historian Annette Gordon Reed. She is best-known for her study of Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson. Her book, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family, won sixteen book prizes, including the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.

Her latest book is a beautiful peroration on the meaning of the holiday known as Juneteenth, which marks the anniversary of a significant historical event: on June 19th, 1865, Major General Gordon Granger issued General Order No. 3 in Galveston, Texas, declaring that all slaves were free, two months after General Robert E Lee had surrendered to Gen. Ulysses S Grant in Appomattox, Virginia. Juneteenth celebrations of this belated emancipation originated among African American communities in Texas, and now take place around the country.

Gordon-Reed's book is at once an homage to her home state of Texas, and a wholly original and fascinating exploration of how history and legend and myth all shape what we learn when we’re young, how our understanding evolves as we grow older, and how social dynamics inform the evolution of societal understanding. Professor Reed writes with erudition and grace, authority and humility, weaving a touching personal memoir into the stark reality of a harsh historical record.

Her book is called On Juneteenth.

Annette Gordon Reed joined Tom on Zoom from her home in New York. They spoke just a few days before President Biden signed a congressional bill making Juneteenth a federal holiday.

Because this conversation was recorded earlier, we can’t take any calls or comments.

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Here's a list of some local public events happening this weekend in observance of Juneteenth:

The historic Hosanna School Museum hosts the Annual Upper Bay Juneteenth Festival in Darlington on Saturday from 12-6pm.

Hosanna School Museum was the first of three Freedmen’s Bureau schoolhouses erected in Harford County. The building was used as a school, community meeting place and church. In 1879, Harford County School Commissioners assumed operation of the school and Hosanna remained an active schoolhouse for African American children until 1946.

Juneteenth Community Walk on Saturday, starting at 10:30am at the Pennsylvania Avenue AME Zion Church.

On Sunday: Freedom Day Festival from11am-6pm at German Park and a Juneteenth Festival at the Dovecote Café in Reservoir Hill.

Juneteenth Festival Sunday from 3-7pm at the Eubie Blake National Jazz and Cultural Center.

The annual AFRAM Festival in Druid Hill Park on Saturday and Sunday.

Email us at [email protected], tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

It's time for another visit with Midday's award-winning theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck, who joins Tom each week with her reviews of Maryland's regional stage. Today, she tells us about Bakkhai, playwright and classicist Anne Carson's new version of the classic Greek tragedy by Euripides, now in a live production at Baltimore Center Stage.

Featuring original music by Diana Oh and choreography by Willa Noel Montague, the play is directed at Center Stage by Michael Donahue, with a cast that also includes Kambi Gathesha, Shauna Miles, Alexander Sovronsky, Christopher Sears and Michael Maloney.

Bakkhai continues at Baltimore Center Stage thru June 19. For information on showtimes and ticketing, follow the the play link.

Email us at [email protected], tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

And now it's Midday at the Movies, our monthly look at films and filmmaking, with two of our favorite film aficianados: Ann Hornaday, a film critic with the Washington Post, and author of the bestselling filmgoers' guide,Talking Pictures: How to Watch Movies; and Jed Dietz, the founder and former director of the Maryland Film Festival and Parkway Theatre.

Ann and Jed discuss some of the newly- and soon-to-be released films that moviegoers in growing numbers are returning to the movie theaters to see, including Top Gun: Maverick, Cha Cha Real Smooth, and director Baz Lurhman's Elvis, an exuberant new take on the life of the legendary rock-n-roll singer.

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Tom also mentions a series of public events happening this weekend in observance of Juneteenth, a federal holiday celebrating the end of slavery and the liberation of Black culture. Here are some of those weekend events we want to let you know about:

The Historic Hosanna School Museum Hosts Annual Upper Bay Juneteenth Festival in Darlington on Saturday from 12-6pm.

Hosanna School Museum was the first of three Freedmen’s Bureau schoolhouses erected in Harford County. The building was used as a school, community meeting place and church. In 1879, Harford County School Commissioners assumed operation of the school and Hosanna remained an active schoolhouse for African American children until 1946.

Juneteenth Community Walk on Saturday, at 10:30 at the Pennsylvania Avenue AME Zion Church

On Sunday: Freedom Day Festival at 11:00am-6:00pm at German Park and a Juneteenth Festival at the Dovecote Café in Reservoir Hill

Juneteenth Festival Sunday from 3-7pm at the Eubie Blake National Jazz and Cultural Center

AFRAM Festival in Druid Hill Park on Saturday and Sunday.

Email us at [email protected], tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

We begin today with a friend and colleague from our partner news organization, The Baltimore Banner.

Emily Sullivan is an award-winning reporter who is a former member of the WYPR news team, and who’s now covering City Hall for the Banner.

Emily Sullivan joins Tom on our digital line to discuss some of the key findings from the Baltimore Banner's new "Baltimore Now" poll, conducted for the Banner in late May by Goucher College.

Email us at [email protected], tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

Today on Midday, we take up an issue that has flummoxed Congress for about as long as gun regulation: that is, immigration, and what to do about the southern border.

At the center of the debate is Title 42, a 1940s-era law that allows federal health authorities to prohibit migration into the US to prevent the spread of contagious diseases.

The CDC — the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia — invoked Title 42 in March, 2020, at the beginning of the Coronavirus pandemic. Critics call it “a border-control tool masquerading as a public health order.” The Biden Administration moved to discontinue the policy, but last month, a Louisiana Federal District Judge ordered that the policy stay in place, in part, because the administration had failed to adequately consider how much migration would surge when the policy ends, and the cost to states to provide services to the migrants who are seeking asylum. That ruling is under appeal.

We begin our discussion today with Sheriff Mark Lamb. He has been the Sheriff of Pinal County, Arizona since 2017. He is a close ally of former President Trump and a vocal critic of the Biden Administration’s handling of immigration. He is the founder of a group of sheriffs called “Protect America Now,” and he is a self-described “constitutional conservative.”

Later in the hour, Tom gets another perspective on Title 42 from two local immigration advocates: Krish Vignarajah, the President and CEO of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, and Ruben Chandrasekar, the executive director of the International Rescue Committee in Maryland.

All our guests join us on Zoom.

Email us at [email protected], tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.