The Memo will be posted here after the email version has been sent. 

Welcome to News You Can Use for this week, capped by the Inglorious Fourth of Trump Triumph.

The Baltimore Sun's relentless pursuit of Gov. Moore's military record vs. his recollections and statements -- pretty obvious to any press observer in Maryland -- gets scrutiny on a professional level from the Columbia Journalism Review up there in New York. The Sun is owned by a very conservative broadcast executive who (by this account) does a certain amount of micromanaging the news content at the once-revered daily. So depending on your politics, this is either fake news from an elite Ivy institution's J-school, or an example of Maryland news practices catching the critical eye of a longtime and respected watchdog of the press. Take a look at the CJR report and pick a side.

We also have other news from Maryland about state efforts to keep our folks' head above water as the Trump administration continues to thin out resources that were appropriated (but not now defended) by a supine Congress. And you may not always enjoy the Beltway, or I-70/270 or I-68, but a new study on the 70th anniversary of the Interstate Highway System includes data on how much it saves in lives, time, money and tanksful of gas or diesel. And how much more the country should be spending to keep it up. Megan E of People's Action, coincidentally, charts in her report how much money Trump is seeking for the military so we can lose more ill-conceived wars. Just think of how many potholes those bucks would fill.

Ignore Trump; try to make July 4 count just the way YOU want it to.

It's News You Can Use for this week. Read on. 

The news surrounding tomorrow's Maryland primary burbles around the likelihood that many races will be decided tomorrow, not in November. Lots of money is changing hands to the benefit of favored (maybe, compliant) candidates and some of it appears to be coming from behind aliases. The deadline is closing in for a possible special session of the Assembly to ease the path to reapportionment, still a source of unease.. Big races are coming up tomorrow around the country, too, while Trump's approval hits new lows amid global supply-chain shocks. "We need plot twists," Trump avows, but he may be too tied up to twist. Fun times. It's News You Can Use.

The Memo will be posted here after the email version has been sent.

Because the news is so fast-moving this morning, what with maybe-VI day and all, we have sidestepped any coverage of the MMA bouts on the White House grounds in hopes that folks will forget everything about them except maybe  the rain delays. Maryland's tribulations are consumer inflation, first of all, and second the time it will take (under the best of circumstances) to get the wretched oil moving through our new favorite Google-map location, the Strait of Hormuz. There's  reason overall to be optimistic about the way renewable energy is catching up with the Petro Power, but the speed with which inflation erupted when the tankers got stuck reminds us we still have far to go.

Some timely election-finance gossip from POLITICO also reminds us that Maryland is hardly immune from a ruckus about who's giving what to whom, and the state is still wrestling, county by county and locale by locale, with how to handle data centers, which offer a quick hit to local employment and successfully separate construction unions' interests from those of their fellow workers in other trades. It's News You Can Use. Read on...

The Memo will be posted here after the email version has been sent.

Welcome to News You Can Use, a Monday roundup of news about federal follies, the pushback or acquiescence from some states, and the goings and comings of laws, ideas and behaviors in our home statte of Maryland. As usual, we start with events here at home.