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

Like the rest of us, the Assembly members must be looking over their shoulders at the US's impotent thrashing in the Persian Gulf and the wreckage it will bring to state budgets everywhere -- let alone Congress. Unless they hustle, Maryland's legislators are heading for a sorry record, with only 600 (0f 2600 filed) bills passed to Gov. Moore by Sine Die Monday compared to "nearly 900" last year with the same number filed. The results -- and the good, pro-working family bills falling by the wayside -- still reflect the grip of moneyed interests on the legislators, especially that of developers and landlords as well as the big power companies. And in an election year, that influence is aggravated as those seeking election or re-election vie for the funds that should be constrained and limited by state law. But dream on. Limited public financing has been put in place by some counties and cities, but the Assembly members have never felt enough pressure to impose that kind of pro-democracy yoke on their own reckless getting and spending. Those campaign-finance bills have been filed every year, every session, and left stuck in committee.

News You Can Use, as typically on Sine Die, features the modest successes and glaring failures of an Assembly with both eyes focused on the elections, plus the pathetic attempts of the Trump administration to find a way to weasel out of a clueless war of choice that has left it -- and us -- isolated from the rest of the world. Good luck to all of us; we will need it.

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

We have to sympathize with members of the General Assembly, even the ones whose stances and votes we generally don't like. How do you take a role in keeping the State of Maryland afloat and surviving when the national "leadership" keeps the engines of the economy in a high state of uncertainty, grinding out a war of choice that persistently has a vanishing off-ramp, and (in the case of Trump) keeps the planet off-balance with his bizarre behavior and mood changes. Nevertheless, the last full week of the session of the session is upon us (and them, too, the legislators) and the lack of certainty about expectations of revenue and costs of running a state leave everyone in a state of confusion.

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

General Assembly members appear to have wrestled Maryland's budget deficit to a draw though maybe only a temporary respite. But as April and the mad rush to adjournment approaches, patches are still being applied and injured constituency groups still in full cry. Meanwhile, Marylanders took up the No Kings cause with anger and enthusiasm, along with an estimated 8 million Americans nationwide, protesting the Iran conflict-of-choice, the often lethal misbehavior of poorly trained ICE goons in disfavored Blue cities around the nation, and the general violation of constitutional rights and the balance-of-power system by Trump's reckless misuse of presidential power. Federal and district judges are sharpening the language in their opinions about the flood of cases rising from Trump's hyper-aggressive seizure of authority, the New York Times suggesting this is a symptom of " a growing sense among district-court judges that President Trump’s second term is an all-hands-on-deck constitutional emergency." No Kings, indeed. It's News You Can Use.

While all sorts of warlike behavior is going on outside US borders -- including those of Maryland -- more contained struggles continue in Annapolis, as we see below. Some high-profile bills are getting high-level attention, in many cases because they don't cost much. Others, more costly, are simmering in committees as we arrive at Crossover Day, a symbolic moment when bills must emerge from one chamber in order to be (more or less) guaranteed full rather than hasty consideration in the other chamber. Longtime observers can already see the first bubbles in the boiling stew that is the last week or two of the session, when the toughest (and often most expensive) legislation gets pummeled and massaged in hopes of achieving passage before that wonderful, unpronouncible moment called sine die, which your Latin teacher would probably have told you should be rendered as "see-nay dee-ay." Oh, well.

On Capitol Hill, Trump has time despite his war to keep a Homeland Security funding compromise hostage, insisting that the tag-end budget bill include his favorite new form of oppression, the SAVE Act -- devoted to making voting proportionally harder for lower-income voters with multiple jobs and little time to stand in line for a passport or birth certificate. To add to the burden, the Supreme Court conservatives appear ready to kick a hole in mail-in voting. Mississippi's law counts votes that are postmarked by Election Day even if they arrive as late as five days later. The Supremes' first argument on that was not confidence-inspiring if you think voting should not be accidentally curtailed by a short-staffed USPS. Speaking of accidents, we keep our fingers crossed as ICE agents try to behave themselves while (hopefully) shortening lines at the TSA checkpoints in major airports. Better use up your miles before the jet fuel runs out.

It's News You Can Use for this Monday.

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