Midday

After a months-long investigation, a federal grand jury has handed down a four-count indictment alleging that Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby committed perjury on financial forms.

Two counts of the indictment allege that Ms. Mosby falsely certified that she had experienced adverse financial consequences due to the Coronavirus.

The other two counts allege that Ms. Mosby, the city's top prosecutor, made false statements on loan applications for properties she bought in Florida.

Ms. Mosby addressed the charges at a Baltimore news conference at 1pm on Friday.

Tom discusses the legal and ethical implications of Ms. Mosby's indictment today with two scholars at the University of Baltimore: David Jaros, the Faculty Director of the Center for Criminal Justice Reform in the UBalt School of Law, and Roger Hartley, the Dean of UBalt's College of Public Affairs.

But Tom's first guest is A. Scott Bolden, a partner at the Washington, DC law firm of Reed, Smith LLP, who is serving as Marilyn Mosby’s attorney.

Our guests join us on Zoom.

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It's another edition of Midday at the Movies, our monthly look at films and filmmaking. Tom is joined once again by two of our favorite film aficianadoes: Ann Hornaday, the movie critic for The Washington Post and author the best-selling filmgoers' guide, Talking Pictures: How to Watch Movies; and Jed Dietz, the founder and former director of the Maryland Film Festival.

Today, Ann and Jed remember the extraordinary, groundbreaking contributions of Sidney Poitier, the first Black actor to win an Academy Award, who died January 6 at the age of 94.

Then they size up the Golden Globe Awards, which have lost some of their luster in recent years. And they review some of the best films of 2021 and the best new theatrical and streaming releases of 2022.

Among the movies they discuss today are The Power of the Dog, Licorice Pizza, The Tragedy of Macbeth, Don't Look Up, The Lost Daughter and Red Rocket.

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And this note about an event this weekend honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. On Sunday afternoon at 1:00, Jews United for Justice and a consortium of synagogues and other Jewish organizations are presenting on online program called The Enduring Relevance of “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” with the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, Taylor Branch, the activist Tara Huffman, Tre’ Murphy of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and students from the Baltimore School for the Arts. For more information on this event, click here.

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

Every day at 10:00 in the morning, the Maryland Department of Health publishes the latest data about COVID-19 in our state. Between Tuesday and Wednesday, the state recorded more than 11,000 new cases of the virus.

Between yesterday and today, we added 10,587 cases to that frightful total, which does not include results of self-tests that anyone may have administered. The 7-day average positivity rate in the state stands at 25.45%, slightly lower than yesterday, but by comparison, in the first week of November 2021, before the omicron variant raised its nasty head, the rate in MD was 2.92%.

Of all the ways of calculating the severity of the pandemic, most public health officials point to the number of hospitalizations as the metric that sheds light, not just on the number of people who are seriously ill, but also the strain those patients put on the medical infrastructure. As of this morning, MD Hospitals are caring for 3,428 patients with COVID 19. Many have other conditions as well.

That’s far and away the most patients hospitalized at one time since the pandemic began, and hospitals need our help.Tom guest is Bob Atlas, the president and CEO of the Maryland Hospital Association, which represents all of Maryland’s hospitals and health systems.

Bob Atlas joins us on Zoom from Elkridge, Maryland.

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

On Tuesday (January 11), President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris traveled to Atlanta to speak about the importance of voting rights, and the need for federal legislation to overcome the dozens of state laws that have been enacted and the hundreds of laws that are being considered to restrict voting.

Before the President spoke, Vice President Kamala Harris advocated for an end to the filibuster that might clear the path for the passage of the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act. And then, President Biden also called for changes to the filibuster that would make passage of the voting rights legislation possible. This was the first time he had taken that position publicly. It’s a position that is not shared by at least two members of the Democratic caucus. How either piece of legislation actually gets passed remains an open question.

Today on Midday, a conversation about an important and often overlooked dimension in the history of voting rights: the long fight for Black women’s suffrage. Tom's guest is the acclaimed legal and cultural historian, Martha S. Jones. She has written a broad, insightful survey of the unsung heroes of the movement for equality, a movement that started two centuries ago, and which includes scores of remarkable women whose importance and impact are made clear by Dr. Jones’ compelling narrative.

The book is called Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All. Now out in paperback, Prof. Jones' latest book has earned numerous awards, including the L.A. Times Book Prize for History.

Dr. Jones is the Society of Black Alumni Presidential Professor and professor of history at Johns Hopkins University. She’s the author of three books and an editor of a collection of essays called Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women.

Dr. Jones is also the director of the Hard History at Hopkins Project. The Hard History Project aims to closely and honestly examine the history of this world-renowned institution, and reckon with the findings. Those findings are sometimes troubling.

Two years ago, in a Washington Post opinion piece, Dr. Jones presented evidence that contradicted a long-held view of her university’s namesake. Her research led the university to confirm that Johns Hopkins, long thought to be an anti-slavery abolitionist, owned slaves. Six months later, a group of scholars questioned Dr. Jones’ conclusions, and the debate on this issue continues.

And in a related story, last week the Washington Post reported on a new database its staff has compiled documenting more than 1,700 members of Congress from the 18th, 19th and even 20th centuries who enslaved people.

Dr. Martha S. Jones joins us for the hour, on Zoom, from Washington, DC..

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Today, it’s Midday on Tech. The Consumer Electronics Show, better known as CES, took place last week in Las Vegas. It was on-line only last year. It was a hybrid deal this year: in-person and online, and although the crowd in Vegas was considerably smaller than in years past, when it comes to CES, small is a relative term. It still drew 40,000 people. By comparison, in 2020, when the pandemic was still just an occasional news story, 170,000 people showed up to CES.Dana Wollman Engadget.com.jpeg (1200x1200, AR: 1.0)A host of big-name tech companies also opted for a digital rather than in-person presence at the show, including Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta, the parent company of Facebook.Here on Midday when CES is over, we like to catch up with our good friend Dana Wollman, the editor in chief of Endgadget, who shares with us her staff’s picks for the best of CES 2022.

Dana Wollman joins us on Zoom from New York City…

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The surge of cases of COVID 19 caused by the highly transmissible omicron variant continues in Maryland and around the world. More than 3,300 people in Maryland are currently hospitalized because of COVID, and the statewide positivity rate hovers close to 30%.

Yesterday, about one of every three Baltimore City Schools shifted their instruction to on-line only. The plan is to return to in-person classes next Monday.A computer rendering of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

Tom's first guest today is Dr. Letitia Dzirasa, the Commissioner of the Baltimore City Health Department.

Dr. Dzirasa joins us on Zoom from her office in Baltimore.

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

Today on Midday, a preview of the 2022 Session of the Maryland General Assembly, which begins Wednesday.

A number of issues will be front and center as legislators head back to Annapolis, chief among them drawing new boundaries for state electoral offices. COVID will, of course, loom large logistically and legislatively. Federal funds from the American Rescue Plan and the Infrastructure bill have the state operating with a $6 billion dollar surplus at the moment, which will be a tempting target for lawmakers.

The 90-day session will be the final opportunity for Gov. Larry Hogan to place his legislative stamp on Maryland. At this hour, the Governor is holding a press conference to discuss the upcoming session. Eight Democrats and three Republicans are running to replace Hogan next year, who is prohibited from running again because of term limits. With the exception of those lawmakers who are retiring, all Delegates and Senators are up for re-election.

The most high-profile member of the General Assembly to announce her retirement is Tom's first guest today. Del. Maggie McIntosh is the Chair of the Appropriations Committee. She’s been in the House of Delegates for nearly 30 years, and she has been one of the most consequential legislators in modern MD history. Twenty years ago, she became the first woman to serve as House majority leader. She was the first woman chair of the House Environmental Matters Committee. Del. McIntosh became the first woman to chair the powerful Appropriations Committee in 2014, and she was the first openly LGBTQ member of the General Assembly.

Chairwoman McIntosh joins us on Zoom from her home in Baltimore…

Then, we hear Tom's interview with Sen. Cory McCray, recorded last Friday. Sen. McCray represents the 45th District, and he chairs the Baltimore City Senate Delegation. That delegation includes Senators Antonio Hayes, Jill Carter, Mary Washington, Charles Sydnor and Bill Ferguson, the Senate President. Senator McCray is also the first vice-chair of the Maryland Democratic Party.

Sen. CoryMcCray joined us on Zoom.

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(The original broadcast of this program featured musical examples of Paul McCartney’s work. Due to copyright laws, we could not include them on this Webpost or on Midday's podcast. The audio we've posted contains the complete conversation between Tom Hall and Paul Muldoon.)

Rolling Stone Magazine called Paul McCartney's"Yesterday" “the best song of the 20th century.” It’s been covered and recorded by thousands of artists, and it is universally loved.

Paul McCartney wrote it in 1965, when he was 23 and in the middle of his stint with The Beatles. Sir Paul turns 80 in June, and he’s still writing, recording and performing. In a writing career that began in 1956, McCartney has written or co-written more than 400 songs. The lyrics to 154 of them are included in The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present, a new, two-volume set of books that place the words to the songs next to McCartney's back stories for each of them.

Today on Midday, Tom's guest is the wonderful poet Paul Muldoon. Muldoon was tapped by Paul McCartney to help him with the book. Muldoon wrote an introduction, and edited conversations with McCartney into the essays that accompany each song.

Paul Muldoon is perfectly positioned to curate such a collection. He is a song lyricist himself, and a member of a band called Rogue Oliphant. He even teaches a course in songwriting at Princeton University, where he’s been on the faculty for 35 years.

He is also the author of 14 poetry collections and the winner of the Pulitzer Prize. His latest collection is called Howdie-Skelp. We’ll talk about that book as well later in the program.

Paul Muldoon joins us on Zoom from New York…

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Midday theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck joins Tom on Zoom for another of her weekly reviews of the region's thespian offerings. Today, in this Web-only critique, she spotlights Once Upon a One More Time, a fairy-tale musical that's getting its world premiere on stage at the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, DC.

In this satirical musical fantasy, written by Jon Hartmere, a group of classic fairy-tale princesses, gathered at their fortnightly book club, experience a catharsis after reading Betty Friedan's radical feminist manifesto, The Feminine Mystique. With the recorded music of pop princess Britney Spears as their soundtrack, the newly empowered princesses set about redefining themselves in an uproarious assault on storybook sexism.

Once Upon A One More Time, whose 13-member cast is directed by the Creative Team of Keone and Mari Madrid, continues at the Shakespeare Theatre Company at the Harman Center for the Arts in Washington DC until Sunday, January 9.

Click the theater link above for showtime and ticket information.

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

Today, following NPR's live coverage of the remembrances in the US House of Representatives on the anniversary of the January 6th insurrection, Tom is joined by WYPR correspondent John Lee, who shares his report on how some members of Maryland's congressional delegation have reflected on the extraordinary events of January 6th and their implications for the American democracy.

And we welcome our listeners' comments on the January 6th anniversary.

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