Midday

As the 2020 election vote-counting continues in Arizona, Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada and Alaska, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden is inching closer to being declared President-elect. Early this morning, Biden overtook President Trump’s early lead in Pennsylvania, as mail in-votes from the Philadelphia area are tallied. Pennsylvania election officials expect to complete their canvassing of ballots by the end of the day.

In Georgia, as mail-in votes from the Atlanta metro area are added to the totals, Mr. Biden has earned the lead in that traditionally red state. Officials there announced an hour ago that they plan a recount. In Arizona, a state that has already been called for Mr. Biden by Fox News and the Associated Press, Biden maintains a lead that has grown smaller in the last several hours. In Nevada, Biden’s lead is just over 11,000 votes.

At this hour, neither the Associated Press nor any of the networks have declared Mr. Biden the winner, but Mr. Trump’s path to victory grows more unlikely with each passing hour.

Yesterday evening, the President took the podium at the White House Briefing Room and delivered a shameful, barely coherent diatribe in which he made claims so voluminous and false that NPR and other networks quickly cut away from his remarks to keep misinformation off of the air.

The Trump campaign has filed suit in several state courts to stop the counting of votes. Several of those suits have already been thrown out.

Later in this hour, Tom speaks with The Washington Post White House reporter Anne Gearans about the President's controversial response to the increasingly dire re-election prospects.

But Tom's first guest is Kim Wehle. She is a law professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law, and the author of What You Need to Know About Voting and Why. She joins us on Zoom.

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

Yesterday, a record 104,000 new cases of COVID-19 were reported in a single day. As infections surge, health officials in many areas once again fear that their health systems will be overwhelmed. England and Europe are in a second national lockdown.

Dr. Leana Wen joins Tom for the hour to examine what's behind this new wave of infections.

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

The status of the 2020 national election is inconclusive, but we can conclude that the country remains sharply divided over the best way to navigate the serious challenges that lie ahead for America. In the early morning hours today, Joe Biden encouraged his supporters to “keep the faith,” predicting confidently that he will prevail when all of the votes are counted.

Soon thereafter, President Trump addressed his supporters in the White House, asserting that the election was a “fraud on the American public,” and “an embarrassment to our country...We were getting ready to win this election,” he said. “Frankly, we did win this election.”

It is a predictable playbook for Mr. Trump that he presaged over the past several months, using his rallies to prepare the soil to plant the seed of distrust in the electoral process...

Regardless of which candidate ultimately prevails, he will inherit a country that is sicker than it was just weeks ago, in ways both physical and psychological. If Mr. Trump wins, the country will be faced with a moment of reckoning unlike any other moment in our history. If Biden prevails, his efforts to unify the nation will face fervid opposition.

There were no surprises in local contests. All the incumbent members of the Congressional delegation won re-election easily. Voters strongly repudiated a well-funded campaign in the 7th district by Kimberly Klacik, choosing incumbent Kweisi Mfume by a margin of 45 points.

And, as Jean Marbella noted in the Baltimore Sun, “as two Septuagenarians battled for the White House, Baltimore sent its youngest Mayor ever to City Hall.” Baltimore City Council President Brandon Scott is our Mayor elect. Two other young politicians, Nick Mosby and Bill Henry, will join Scott in a troika that represents a complete overhaul of city-wide leadership.


We’re going to talk about last night and the road forward with two keen political observers. Later this hour, Tom is joined by Farai Chideya, a multimedia journalist, author, broadcaster and scholar. She's also the creator and host of the new show, Our Body Politic, which airs Tuesday nights at 9 here on WYPR.

But we begin with Jayne Miller, the chief investigative reporter with the 11 Investigates I-Team at Baltimore's WBAL-TV.

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

As the final voters cast their ballots on this final day of this extraordinary and historic election, we want to turn our focus to one of the most crucial tenets of the political process: local journalism. In the words of the iconic media tycoon William Randolph Hearst, “News is what someone, somewhere, doesn’t want reported. All the rest is advertisement.”

As The Washington Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan reports in her timely and important book, Ghosting the News: Local Journalism and the Crisis of American Democracy, there are more and more communities around the country that no longer have locally based reporters, who know what’s important, who know who to talk to, and who know how to hold people accountable.

The national newspapers -- The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal -- are thriving, as are cable news channels and other national news outlets. But local news operations are hurting, badly. More than 2,000 newspapers have closed in the last 15 years. Today, more local newsrooms are being gutted or shut down forever, often by corporate owners who care little about journalism, and who are fixated on cost-cutting to improve profits.

Margaret Sullivan joins Tom on Zoom to explain why those newsrooms matter.

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

Of the 200 largest papers by circulation in the United States, 70% of them are owned by hedge funds. A number of ideas are being considered to help restore local ownership of local papers, including legislation that would provide incentives for hedge funds to sell their newspapers to local buyers.

Tom's next guest today is Jon Schleuss, the national president of the NewsGuild, a division of the Communications Workers of America trade union. The NewsGuild represents more than 20,000 journalists and media professionals across the United States and Canada, including the newsroom employees of the Baltimore Sun.

Mr. Schleuss (pronounced "shloyce" ) got his start in journalism a decade ago as an online editor and manager of a staff of journalists at the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. He later worked part time as a reporter and weekend host at the local NPR station. In 2013 he joined the Los Angeles Times as a reporter, and five years later led the campaign to secure union representation at the Times, whose newsroom had been non-union for all of its 140 years.

Mr. Schleuss's union has been closely involved in the Save Our Sun campaign to protect the Baltimore Sun from continued cuts by its current owner, Tribune Publishing and its controlling hedge-fund partner, Alden Global Capital, and to press the company to sell the paper to a journalism-centered coalition of local buyers. The NewsGuild is also working with other newspapers and with digital newsrooms across the country facing similar corporate pressures.

Jon Schleuss joins Tom on Zoom.

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

WYPR reporter Emily Sullivan joins us with the latest on the candidates making their final push before polls close tomorrow night

John Willis, former Maryland Secretary of State discusses early voting numbers in a historical perspective and talk about a multi-million dollar lobbying campaign by the gambling industry to push for sports betting.

Plus, Sam Novey of Baltimore Votes and Ashiah Parker of the No Boundaries Coalition join Tom with an update on their organization’s efforts to get out those last-minute voters.

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

African American participation in COVID-19 vaccine trials is critically low despite the pandemic's disproportionate impact on Black communities.

From the Tuskegee Study to Henrietta Lacks, centuries of anti-black racism and discrimination in American healthcare have led to chronic distrust of medical research among African Americans.

Tom’s guest is Dr. Freeman Hrabowski, president of University of Maryland Baltimore County, and a longtime civil rights activist. He and his wife, Jacqueline, have enrolled in a Phase 3 COVID 19 clinical trial at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, and they are vocal proponents of more African American participation in the research process.

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

Today, it’s another installment of Midday on Higher Education, our series of conversations with the leaders of the region’s colleges and universities. Tom's guest today is McDaniel College President Roger Casey, who announced recently that he’ll be stepping down next June after a decade at the helm of the 153 year-old institution.

McDaniel is an independent, four year, co-educational college. Dr. Casey is its 9th president. He is one of the longest serving college presidents in the area, having begun his tenure at McDaniel in 2010. McDaniel has campuses in Westminster, Maryland – about 40 miles northwest of Baltimore -- and in Budapest, Hungary.

In addition to his leadership role at McDaniel, Dr. Casey has been active in both state and national academic affairs: he’s currently the chair of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities. He is the immediate past-chair of the Maryland Independent College and University Association and sits on the Board of the American Council on Education.

Last year, The Daily Record named Dr. Casey to its list of “Influential Marylanders.” Roger Casey joins us today on Zoom.

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

Now, a conversation with New York Times investigative reporter Chris Hamby about his new book, Soul Full of Coal Dust: A Fight for Breath and Justice in Appalachia, just pubished by Hachette Books (Little Brown). The book builds on Hamby's 2014 Pulitzer Prize-winning series of reports about how a resilient Appalachian mining community fought back against a resurgence of black lung disease, the indifference of coal industry executives, and the complicity of doctors at Baltmore's prestigious Johns Hopkins hospital.

In 2017, Hamby was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in international reporting for his accounts of how multinational corporations use aggressive legal tactics to pressure governments around the world. He has reported on a wide variety of subjects, including labor, public health, the environment, criminal justice, politics and international trade. His work has also been honored with Harvard University's Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting, two White House Correspondent's Association awards and UCLA's Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism, among other honors.


Before joining The New York Times in 2019, Hamby was an investigative reporter for BuzzFeed News, and he previously worked for The Center for Public Integrity. He has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Richmond and master’s from the University of Missouri School of Journalism. A native of Nashville, Tenn., he lives and works in Washington, D.C.

Chris Hamby joins us today on Zoom.

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

A few weeks ago on this program, host Tom Hall spoke with the director of the Baltimore Museum of Art, Christopher Bedford, about the museum’s plans to "deaccession," or sell, three major works in its collection to raise as much as $65 million dollars to fund the BMA’s diversity and equity programs. The proceeds of the deaccessioning will be used to purchase art by women and people of color, and to give salary increases to museum staff, including the security guards and others who are currently making about $13.50 per hour.

The public auction of two of the works, paintings by Clyfford Still ("1957-G") and Brice Marden ("3"), was scheduled for this evening at Sotheby’s auction house in New York. Ever since it was announced earlier this month, the plan to remove these works from the BMA’s collection and sell them in the private art market has been vehemently opposed by many in the art world. Yesterday, a professional organization that maintains guidelines about criteria that must be met for a museum to deaccession works from its collection sent an e mail indicating that the BMA, and other museums, are not adhering to those guidelines...

In addition to the auction of the paintings by Still and Marden, the BMA plan includes the sale of a large silk screen by Andy Warhol, titled "The Last Supper." As of yesterday, it was unclear whether or not that sale would move forward. Sotheby’s had guaranteed a sale price of the Warhol work of at least $40 million dollars. The Still and Marden paintings are expected to earn between $12 and $18 million dollars at auction.

Copyrighted images of the three paintings being sold by the BMA can be seen in the slide show, above.

Criticism and legal challenges to the plan have come from some current and former board members, and some prominent art critics. We will hear from one of those former board members today.

We had also hoped to speak today with Clair Zamoiski Segal, who serves as the chair of the BMA Board of Trustees, but she is meeting with the Board of the BMA at this hour, and unable to join us.

Tom's first guest is Laurence Eisenstein. He’s a lawyer, an art collector and a former BMA trustee. Mr. Eisenstein has been closely involved in the efforts by opponents to stop the deaccession of these three paintings and press the museum to find other ways to fund its diversity and equity programs. Laurence Eisenstein joins us on Zoom.

Later in the show, Tom talks with Cara Ober, the founding editor and publisher of BMore Art, a highly respected journal of the Baltimore arts scene, about what lessons can be learned in the current controversy about the relationship between an art museum and the community it serves. Some of Cara's recent writing on the issue can be found here.

We also welcome listener calls and comments via email and Twitter.

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