Midday

On our program today, another update from Annapolis and the 2021 General Assembly. We’re going to concentrate on tax policy. Last week, the legislature overrode Governor Larry Hogan’s veto of legislation that passed last year to impose a tax on Digital Ads. A well-funded coalition of business owners called Marylanders for Tax Fairness strenuously oppose the digital ad tax, calling it a tax on small businesses.

Later in the program, we’ll be joined by Ned Atwater, a business advocate and restaurateur who runs a group of six restaurants here in Baltimore.

But Tom’s first guests today are Delegate Stephanie Smith from Baltimore and Delegate Vaughn Stewart from Montgomery County. They are both Democrats, and they are part of the Maryland Fair Funding Coalition, which supported the digital ad tax. The coalition is also working on a few different pieces of legislation that will change the state tax code.

Delegate Stewart, Delegate Smith and Ned Atwater join us on Zoom…

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

Last summer, many people pointed to California as a model for how states handled the spread of the Coronavirus. But by the beginning of the new year, California had become the epicenter of the pandemic in the United States. We turn now to Dr. Jen Chang, an HIV primary care physician working in the Department of Infectious Diseases at Kaiser Permanente at the Los Angeles Medical Center. Dr. Chang is also a sub investigator for the Pfizer vaccine trial.

Dr. Chang did her undergraduate work at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, and she worked for a time with Tom Hall as a producer on WYPR's old Maryland Morning program in the mid 2000s, before she headed off to medical school.

She joins Tom from Los Angeles on Zoom.

(This conversation was pre-recorded, so we couldn't take any calls.)

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

Our topic today is in-laws, and how the relationship between children who are married, and the families of their spouses, are affected and informed by a number of different factors. Parents of the person you hold dear matter while you’re dating, they matter while you’re married, they matter when you have kids yourself, and they matter when those parents are of the age when they need care from you.

A new book looks at those different stages, as well as the effects of age, gender, sexual preference and other factors that influence the nature and success of these relationships.

The book is called In-Law Relationships: Mothers, Daughters, Fathers and Sons. Tom's guests today are the authors: Dr. Geoffrey Greif, professor; and Dr. Michael Woolley, associate professor, on the faculty of the University of Maryland School of Social Work, part of the University of Maryland, Baltimore.

Listeners were invited to call, email or tweet us about their in-laws, be they older or younger: Do you get along pretty well? If so, why? Do you get along, maybe, not so well? Let’s talk about that too.

Geoffrey Greif and Michael Woolley join us on Zoom.

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This programming note from the Promise Heights Initiative at the University of Maryland School of Social Work: Next Monday, February 22, the Initiative will sponsor a public, on-line conversation between Dr. David Satcher, former Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and a Surgeon General of the United States, and Andrea Brown, Executive Director of the Black Mental Health Alliance. They’ll talk about stigmas around mental health in the African American community. It starts at 2:00pm, next Monday afternoon. For more information, click here.

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

Going into the final stage of the US Senate's second Trump impeachment trial on Saturday morning, most observers expected closing arguments from both sides, and a vote to acquit that would surprise no one. There was about an hour or so of drama when that script wasn’t followed, and House Managers introduced the possibility of calling witnesses, but that was sorted out fairly quickly, and they proceeded to a vote. More Republicans voted to convict Donald Trump than many had anticipated would, but despite a 14-vote margin, House Managers were 10 votes short of the two-thirds majority needed for a conviction.

Today, on this President’s Day edition of Midday, analysis of what happened, and what it means for the presidency and our republic, moving forward.

Tom's guest is Kim Wehle, a law professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law, a former Assistant US Attorney, and the author of two excellent books, How to Read the Constitution-And Why, and What You Need to Know About Voting-And Why.

Kim Wehle is also the host of an Instagram Show called #Simple Politics.

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

Today on Midday on the Arts, we’re going to talk about the impact of the pandemic on one part of the creative economy: classical music.

The Brookings Institution estimates that 2.7 million jobs and $74 billion dollars in wages have been lost in the fine arts overall. More than $150 billion dollars in sales have vanished into the ether since the onset of the coronavirus.

Like their counterparts in jazz, pop music and the theater world, classical musicians and the organizations they work with have been contending with months of COVID-induced cancelations, and it’s widely expected that theaters and concert venues will be among the last to open once the virus has been curtailed to the point when it’s safe to congregate in crowds again. What will musicians and musical organizations need to do, to bounce back from the body blow that has been COVID 19?

Tomorrow, the Peabody Institute will host the first of three on-line panel discussions that take-up how the landscape of the performing arts will change after the pandemic. The symposium is called “The Next Normal: Arts Innovation and Resilience in a Post-COVID World.”

Fred Bronstein is the Dean of the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University. He’s moderating the panels. Marin Alsop is in her final season as the Music Director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. She’ll be part of the lineup that includes the composer Tom Dolby, the pianist Steven Hough, the opera director Peter Sellars, and others. Fred Bronstein and Marin Alsop join Tom for the hour today, on Zoom. Listeners are welcome to join us as well.

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

Former president Donald Trump's second impeachment trial, on charges of incitement to insurrection, is set to begin in the U.S. Senate tomorrow (February 9). For a preview, we turn to an esteemed constitutional scholar and presidential historian whose work has been cited in Supreme Court opinions more often any other active legal scholar's. Akhil Reed Amar is Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale University Law School. He has won awards from both the American Bar Association and the Federalist Society. He hosts the podcast, Amarica’s Constitution, and he is the author of the forthcoming book, The Words That Made Us: America’s Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840, to be published this May.

His most recent opinion piece -- suggesting some potent witnesses for the Senate trial -- appears today in the New York Daily News.

President Joe Biden and the Democrats have been in a hurry to wrap up negotiations on their $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan -- with or without Republican support -- in part because the impending impeachment trial will pose a powerful distraction for lawmakers in both chambers.

The Republican opposition to the Biden plan is premised, in part, on the cost. We also note the cost to the American taxpayer that Mr. Trump and his supporters have created in their insistence on fabricating assertions about the validity of the election, and the riot at the Capital last month. From legal fees the government has had to pay in frivolous lawsuits, security for poll workers whose lives have been threatened, repairs to the Capital building after the insurrection and the thousands of National Guard troops deployed to Washington since January 6, the Washington Post estimates that the government has already spent more than a half a billion dollars.

And what will the cost to democracy be if Mr. Trump is acquitted of the impeachment charge he faces tomorrow?

WYPR will carry NPR’s coverage of the historic proceedings tomorrow, right after Midday, at 1:00pm Eastern.

Akhil Reed Amar joins us on Zoom…

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

Letrice Gant joins us once again. She is a co-organizer of Baltimore Ceasefire 365. Four times a year, the community-led organization holds a Ceasefire Weekend, to honor those who have died of violence, and to reach out to those who perpetuate the violence, acknowledging the troubles they often face that lead them to harm or kill others.

The latest Ceasefire Weekend, observed February 5-7, coincided with the Healing City Summit and training in trauma-informed care that the City Health Department conducted with members of the City Council and their staff.

Letrice Gant joins us on Zoom, as we discuss the Baltimore Ceasefire movement, and also take our weekly note of the Names of Baltimore's Fallen.

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

Tom's guest today is Celeste Headlee. She is an award-winning journalist, a consultant on diversity and inclusion, and the author of two books, including We Need To Talk: How To Have Conversations That Matter. Her Tedx Talk has been viewed more than 23 million times, and she is heard frequently as a host on NPR and American Public Media.

Celeste Headlee is an expert at moderating difficult conversations around matters of race and inclusion.

We’re going to have one of those difficult conversations today.

Last summer, Ms. Headlee organized Zoom calls with hundreds of current and former employees of public radio stations across the country to discuss their experiences at their stations and in their newsrooms.

Many of us who work in and listen to public radio want to think of our institutions as valuing racial equity and equality. The journalists of color who work in public media told Celeste Headlee that there is little reason to believe that public media is somehow immune to the sickness of racism. Just as White supremacy shapes the culture at large, White supremacy shapes the culture of public media, as well.

Last month, Ms. Headlee, in conjunction with members of what has been organized as the Public Radio Anti-Racist Partnership, published an open letter in Medium entitled An Anti-Racist Future: A Vision and Plan for the Transformation of Public Media. It offers detailed analysis and suggestions for righting the wrongs of the past, hiring, training and staff retention, changing how we cover news, and standards of accountability. The letter was signed by more than 200 individuals and stations in the NPR system.

Celeste Headlee joins us on an Internet line from Washington DC.

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

It’s Midday with the Mayor. Tom's guest for the hour today is the Mayor of Baltimore, Brandon Scott.

On Tuesday, Mayor Scott sent a letter to Maryland Governor Larry Hogan expressing his great impatience with the pace of vaccinations so far, complaining that the state’s vaccine rollout has been, in Scott’s words, “uncoordinated to say the least.” And yesterday, Democrats in the MD Congressional Delegation sent the Governor a letter complaining about inefficiency and inequity and calling for a “course correction.”

What can Baltimore do to get shots into arms, given the shortage of doses? And, what is the city doing to convince those who are hesitant to take the vaccine that it is in their best interest, and the city’s overall interest, for all of us to get inoculated?

Mayor Scott also announced recently that the police department will adjust its Micro Zone strategy to reduce violence. In these first few weeks of 2021 this year, the City has experienced fatal and non-fatal shootings at a rate that is slightly higher than this time last year. He’s also initiated a new plan to fix the water billing system, and he has introduced a new website that graphically tracks the progress of his administration.

Mayor Brandon Scott joins Tom on Zoom, and addresses listener questions and comments.

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

Now, a conversation with Dr. Niloofar Haeri, a linguist and a professor of anthropology at Johns Hopkins University and the author of six books on language and culture. Her latest is a fascinating study of the prayer practices of women in the Islamist state of Iran, and the inextricable relationship between prayer and poetry in Iranian culture. The book, Say What Your Longing Heart Desires: Women, Prayer and Poetry in Iran, raises profound questions about what it means to be religious and how religiosity affects and informs society at large.

With so many of our impressions of Muslim culture framed around terrorism and caricatures of Islamic rituals, this book examines a central tenet of Iranian culture in revelatory ways and asks important questions that could be posed to believers in any religious tradition. What is the difference between ritual prayer, prescribed in the tradition, and improvised prayer in which the supplicant prays in her own way, in the context of her own experience? Can prayers go well, or go badly? What does it mean to pray with, or without, “presence of heart?”

Professor Niloofar Haeri joins Tom on Zoom…

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