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

Teen pregnancy is down, one of the big success stories nationwide, but Maryland is among states getting pregnancy prevention programs funding trimmed under new Trump guidelines. Maryland's school systems, too are $truggling, facing state mandates for teacher pay. And a body that is getting increasing scrutiny from the public and from the relevant public agencies is under fire from many directions. That's PJM, the governing body for our multistate power consortium where the cost to homeowners is growing, well, exponentially. PJM's own governing body, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, is threatening to reform PJM A LOT if the multistate agency doesn't satisfy FERC with its own drastic reforms -- including being more responsive to ratepayers than to the benefit of the power companies.

We note also that our neighboring states are coping with their own shortfalls and scandals (how do we all get in these messes?) and, speaking of perennial messes, only half of the US Congress is in session (the House just too off for a month, with a huge amount of work left undone). But the Senate is stepping up and coping with messes of its own, including confirming Trump agency appointees of very limited qualifications.

As for Trump, he is apparently unabashed about cutting off funding for states that voted for Kamala Harris in 2024. How this will play in the midterms is uncertain. His administration has also declined to award transportation project grants that Congress has approved and appropriated. Just won't do it. The so-far GOP-majority Congress hasn't got mad yet, at least not mad enough to push back.

It's all News You Can Use

Adrian Boafo will be Maryland's next member of Congress.

The election is over. The ads have stopped. The mailers have disappeared from our mailboxes. The millions of dollars spent by outside interests have achieved their goal.

Now comes the part that matters most: governing.

For the people of Prince George's County, this is the moment to pay close attention, not because we expect failure, but because accountability begins on Day One.

Throughout this campaign, many of us raised concerns about what Boafo's candidacy represented. His campaign benefited from an extraordinary influx of outside spending from super PACs and national special interests, transforming a race that initially received little attention into one of Maryland's most expensive congressional contests.

I’ve worked on political campaigns for close to 20 years. The first race I ever staffed was in 2006, supporting then-candidate Donna Edwards in her bid to unseat incumbent Congressman Albert Wynn. What was then a relatively novel storyline, a progressive outsider challenging an establishment insider, has since become a familiar narrative. That race, I now realize, was one of the prototypes.

Early on, I learned a hard lesson about primary electorates: the most reliable voting bloc is older voters. Our target universe was composed mainly of seniors, with some middle-aged voters mixed in. Even before the campaign officially launched, we began voter registration efforts to expand the electorate. But we never lost sight of a fundamental truth: you cannot win without persuading the voters who actually show up.

Today, I look at the progressive electoral ecosystem and see a movement that has abandoned this wisdom. Leftist and progressive campaigns have become over-reliant on the youth vote, a strategy that simply does not match turnout reality. Despite recent electoral wins by socialists and progressive candidates, these victories have often come despite the left’s failure to craft a message that resonates with seniors. Even in winning campaigns, socialist and progressive candidates tend to lose older voters while running up margins with the young. I do not believe this has to be the case.

Fresh from his pathetic attempt on Sunday to edge into the aura of Spain's World Cup championship, Trump announces (surprise!) that "full-scale war" against Iran is on the menu for dizzied gas and diesel customers (and the retailers who must pay more for deliveries). Not much chance of escaping inflationary pressure no matter where you live, but Blue states like Maryland can expect more of the Trump gang's assaults, legal and otherwise, as dwindling MAGA flails for some traction against disaster in the midterm elections. Nevertheless they can't find their agenda with both hands, sending ICE goons out on traffic stops again (Trump's brilliant reversal of his newby DHS director Markwayne Mullin, who saw the risks in every pull-over). And, as we report below, FBI agents appear to be off the task of investigating ICE injuries and deaths to civilians. Convenient.

Here in News You Can Use, we have curated news from states and the feds as well as from Maryland. Readers can get more from Maryland Reporter and Maryland Matters, from whom we gratefully swipe items -- as we do from News from the States . and from many other, less obvious sources. 

NEWS YOU CAN USE is generally posted Mondays but this blog may be  updated as appropriate. New material will be color-accented

Natural disasters and nasty bugs are at the top of Maryland's summertime agenda, including the worldwide heat wave costing lives from Europe to Central Maryland and sourced in a Pacific El Nino. You can plan a summer getaway, but where can you go to get away? It's one world, like it or not. Meanwhile, Maryland's biggest adversary is its own national government,  and the state is pushing back on a number of fronts, as see below. Montgomery County has just put up a portal on its website with real-time alerts on ICE activity. Other states (Texas, Maine) are fighting the unrestrained brutality of ICE; see Megan E's accounts below. New DHS boss Markwayne Mullins' hopes to keep ICE out of the headlines will have to wait until he has better recruits and better training -- or maybe abolishes ICE and just starts over. Lots of news at the national/global level starting with the death of Sen. Lindsey Graham, whose ties to Trump and ability to soothe rancor in the Senate was critical to the few things Congress has been able to accomplish. And the Rappahannock tribe in Virginia has been slowly reclaiming land from which they were evicted centuries ago; they just got some more back. It's News You Can Use; occasionally it's not all bad.

Dear friends and members of the Progressive Maryland community,

It is with deep sadness that I share the passing of our beloved friend and longtime board member, Maria Dennis.