Midday

Tom's Newsmaker guest today is Maryland's senior senator, Ben Cardin.

Senator Cardin is a longstanding member of the Foreign Relations Committee. President Joe Biden is reportedly considering sending troops to NATO countries near Ukraine, NATO is sending ships and aircraft to the area, and the State Department is beginning to draw down personnel from the US embassy in Kyiv. Is an invasion inevitable? And if it happens, what further actions should the US and NATO take?

And here at home, Republicans are united in their opposition to federal action that would restore provisions of the Voting Rights Act. Democrats can’t find consensus on a way forward. There may be a possibility of bipartisan action on reforming the way votes are counted in the Electoral College.

Voting rights is just one of several issues important to most Democrats that have been stalled by Republicans and two Senators in their own caucus. What’s the future for bills to extend the child tax credit, address climate change, subsidize child and elder care, and reduce the cost of prescription drugs?

Senator Ben Cardin joins us for the hour. And we welcome yo0ur questions and co0kmments fgor the Senator.

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

It's another edition of Midday on Ethics.

Two weeks ago, a surgical team at the University of Maryland Medical Center transplanted the heart of a genetically altered pig into a 57-year-old man, David Bennett. Mr. Bennett, so far, appears to be doing well.

Xenotransplantation, or transplanting animal organs into humans, has long fascinated physicians and scientists, and the success of the operation in Baltimore has raised the hopes of many in the medical community that major breakthroughs in xenotransplantation are imminent.

It's also raised a score of ethical questions, and when ethical questions present themselves, we turn to our good friend, Dr. Jeffrey Kahn, the director of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics.

Dr. Jeffrey Kahn joins us on Zoom from Baltimore.

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

It’s another edition of Midday with the Mayor.

Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott joins us once a month here on Midday to discuss important issues affecting the city and its people.

The news of the death of DaShawn McGrier, a Safe Streets violence interrupter in East Baltimore, was another tragic reminder of the intractability of the violence that some Baltimore neighborhoods continue to experience year after year. McGrier was one of three men who were killed Wednesday night on E. Monument Street. A fourth shooting victim remains in the hospital.

Tom talks with the Mayor about what this latest tragedy means for the city and for his holistic approach to violence reduction. They also discuss new initiatives to reduce crime in known hot spots, the Gun Trace Task Force Report, and the Mayor's priorities as he begins his second year in office.

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

We welcome your questions and comments for the Mayor.

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

It's time again for our weekly visit with Midday theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck, who joins Tom with her review of the new touring production of the hit 2018 Broadway musical,The Prom, now on stage at Baltimore's Hippodrome Theatre.

Billed as "a musical comedy about big Broadway stars, a small town, and a love that unites them all," The Prom's touring company comes to Baltimore helmed by a Tony Award® -winning director and choreographer, Casey Nicholaw (Mean Girls, The Book of Mormon). And the musical's creative team — book co-writer Bob Martin (The Drowsy Chaperone), co-writer and lyricist Chad Beguelin (Aladdin), and composer Matthew Sklar (Elf) — were all Tony Award nominees. In 2019, the musical earned seven Tony nominations in all, and won that year's Drama Desk Award for Best Musical.

The Prom continues at The Hippodrome through Sunday, January 23. Follow the show link for curtain times and ticketing.

Please note that The Hippodrome requires patrons to show proof of vaccination for admission, and to wear masks during the performance. Read the Hippodrome's COVID Safety protocols for more details.

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Now, we turn our attention to a scathing report issued last week that gives a comprehensive account of the failure of the Baltimore Police Department to identify and root-out the corrupt cops who continually broke the law for years as part of the Gun Trace Task Force.

Joining Tom now is journalist Justin Fenton. He covered the unfolding GTTF story for the Baltimore Sun, and he’s written a book about it called We Own This City, A True Story of Crime, Cops and Corruption. An HBO series based on the book will air this spring. He's continuing his coverage for The Baltimore Banner, a new media platform that is scheduled to launch in a few months.

Justin Fenton joins us on Zoom from Baltimore.

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

The Maryland State Health Department is reporting nearly 8,900 new cases of COVID-19 in the past 24 hours. 68 fewer people are currently hospitalized for COVID, knocking that number below 3,000 for the first time in a while. Positivity rates that were closer to 30% a couple of weeks ago are now reported to be 18%.

We’ve been reporting these findings for two years. How accurate are the numbers that the Health Department collects, and if they are understated, as most experts assert that they are, how should they be used to shape public policy around issues like testing, mask mandates, and vaccine authentication?And what should we make of the heated political rhetoric that still surrounds the debate about the origins of the Coronavirus?

We're pleased to welcome back to the show Dr. Gigi Gronvall, an immunologist and Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. She recently published an article in the journal Survival with recommendations about what governments and scientific institutions should do to address uncertainties about the origins of the COVID-19 virus.

We'll discuss those possible origins, and her policy recommendations, as Dr. Gigi Gronvall joins us on our digital line from Baltimore.

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

Tom's guest is the acclaimed photographer, Mel D. Cole. Celebrated for his compelling images of music and soccer celebrities, his new book of photographs marks a dramatic change of focus. It's titled “American Protest: Photographs 2020–2021.” It features stunning scenes from the Black Lives Matter protests that erupted across the country following the May 25, 2020 police killing of George Floyd.

Also published on Cole's website are photo and video essays about events in New York City and Richmond, Virginia, as well as powerful images he captured of the insurrectionist assault on the US Capitol on January 6th, 2021.

Mel D. Cole joins us on Zoom from New York City.

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

It’s been a couple of months since vaccines were approved for young children, ages 5-11, but parents are not rushing to get their kids inoculated. Nationally, only about 17% of kids have gotten their jab so far. And with the arrival of the omicron variant, hospitalizations for children under the age of 18 have rocketed to the highest they’ve been since the pandemic began.

Today on Midday, a conversation about the impact of COVID on kids, particularly those with disabilities. Tom's guest is Dr. Brad Schlaggar, a pediatric neurologist, and the president and CEO of the Kennedy Krieger Institute here in Baltimore. Kennedy Krieger is one of the world’s most highly respected centers for the neurological, rehabilitative and developmental needs of children, adolescents and adults.

We welcome your comments and questions for Dr. Bradley Schlaggar, who joins us on Zoom from his office in Baltimore.

For information on Kennedy Krieger's vaccine clinic for people with disabilities and their caregivers, click here.

(Full disclosure: Dr. Schlaggar also serves on the WYPR Board of Directors.)

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

Tom's guest today is Dr. Thomas Scalea. He’s a professor of Trauma Surgery and Director of the Program in Trauma at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. And for the past 25 years, he's been Physician-in-Chief of the R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center at the University of Maryland Medical Center (UMMC).

For Dr. Scalea and his staff, the terrible numbers of homicide and non-fatal shootings that have plagued Baltimore for many years are not abstractions. Many of the victims of these shootings are rushed to Shock Trauma right after they are attacked. Many are saved because of a variety of techniques developed at Shock Trauma to treat serious injuries, techniques that have been adopted all over the world.

Dr. Scalea and his team have also cared for tens of thousands of people injured in car accidents and falls. He has traveled to Haiti and China to help earthquake victims, he has trained thousands of US Air Force personnel, and he has worked with military physicians in Afghanistan.

We welcome your questions or comments for Dr. Scalea.

Dr. Thomas Scalea joins us on Zoom.

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

“A man has not begun to live until he can rise above the narrow confines of his own individual concerns, to the broader concerns of all humanity.” — Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. speaking at the New Covenant Baptist Church, in Chicago, Illinois, on April 9, 1967.

Dr. King would be murdered in Memphis less than one year later.

Today on Midday, on this Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday and MLK Day of Service, we’ll meet three people for whom every day is a day of service.

Tom's first guest is DeRay Mckesson, a Baltimore native who has risen to national prominence as an activist on behalf of social justice. He is the host of Pod Save the People, the author of On the Other Side of Freedom: The Case for Hope and one of the leaders of Campaign Zero, whose mission is to eliminate police violence. DeRay McKesson joins us on Zoom from New York.

Tom speaks next with Chaplain Asma Inge-Hanif. She is a nurse practitioner and activist who has worked in underserved communities for more than 30 years. She heads the Muslimat Al Nissa Shelter, one of the nation's only shelters for Muslim women fleeing domestic abuse, and directs the Inge Benevolent Ministries and Healthy Solutions Holistic Health Center.

Tom's final guest today is Rev. Dr. Alvin Hathaway, who recently retired as pastor of Baltimore's historic Union Baptist Church. The veteran community organizer is now working to restore a historic school building in his West Baltimore community — PS 103 Henry Highland Garnet School — into a new community center to be known as the Justice Thurgood Marshall Amenity Center.

Rev. Dr. Hathaway joins us on Zoom.

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Tom takes a moment during today's Day of Service tribute to remember Dante Barksdale, an outreach coordinator for Baltimore City's Safe Streets program who was shot to death on the Sunday of MLK Weekend one year ago:

"As I said just after he was murdered, as a 'violence interrupter,' Dante dedicated the last ten years of his life to de-escalating disputes and intervening in situations where he convinced people who were considering violence to consider an alternative. He repeatedly placed himself in dangerous situations, using his skill, intelligence and compassion to show people a better way; a safer way; a way forward.

"He was trying to make Baltimore better. He refused to give up on young people who had, in some instances, given up on themselves. Dante knew the pressures and stresses that people in communities of color experience, and how those challenges can sometimes lead to bad decision-making. He knew about this because of his own life experience, and because of his empathy and his love. Several months after Dante was killed, another Safe Streets volunteer, Kenyell Wilson, was shot to death in his Cherry Hill neighborhood.

"Dante Barksdale was 46 years old. Kenyell Wilson was 44."

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And this news about the passing of another notable figure. On Sunday night, Vice President Kamala Harris and Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III announced the death of one of the last remaining Tuskegee Airmen. Brigadier General Charles McGee, who flew 409 fighter combat missions in WW II, the Korean War and in Vietnam, has died at the age of 102."

— Tom Hall

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