As the once and future Prez assembles his gang of miscreants and oligarchs, Red states are wallowing in the possibilities while Maryland and other Blue states in gangland's sights are assessing Trump's intentions based on the people with whom he is populating his billionaires' paradise. Trump's intentions do not look like any kind of government we are used to, or can even imagine.  And in Maryland: MoCo to keep burning trash; Jamie R makes his move; the state needs to double mental health personnel; fossil fuel lobbying crimping climate plans (?); democratizing Assembly replacements; bracing for deportations in the state's Hispanic communities. See the details in News You Can Use for this week.

HERE IN MARYLAND

Del. Wilkins Now Supports Bill To Allow Special Elections To Fill Legislative Vacancies: Legislation to move toward a system of special elections that would allow voters – rather than the county committees of the two major political parties – to fill mid-term vacancies in the Maryland General Assembly will soon be reintroduced in Annapolis, in advance of the 2025 legislative session. In previous attempts to pass the bill, it died when it reached the House Ways and Means Elections Subcommittee where it ran into resistance from the subcommittee chair, Del. Jheanelle Wilkins, who has now said she supports the measure. MoCo 360.

State Needs Many More Behavioral Health Workers: Maryland needs to increase the number of behavior health care workers by about 50% to meet current demands, a “significant problem” that only gets worse in coming years unless the state finds ways to boost the workforce. Maryland Matters/via MD Reporter.

Jamie R Making His Move: Midday Monday, POLITICO Playbook sez "Meanwhile, NYT’s Annie Karni reports that Rep. JAMIE RASKIN (D-Md.) has decided to make a go at unseating Rep. JERRY NADLER (D-N.Y.) on Judiciary: Raskin has started to call members about it."

Climate Advocacy Group Again Spotlights Fossil Fuel Lobbyists In State House: The national climate advocacy group F Minus is at it again, with a new report spotlighting what it sees as the lack of oversight of fossil fuel lobbyists in the Maryland State House. Maryland Matters/via MD Reporter

Justice Reform Advocates Optimistic For Second Look Act: Desmond Haneef-Perry, 41, who serves on various statewide organizations to help reform the state’s criminal justice system, is just one of the criminal justice reform advocates hoping for a better outcome next year for the bill informally called the Second Look Act, which stalled in the House in the last legislative session. Maryland Matters/Via MD Reporter

 Hispanic Towns Face Uncertain Future: Rocio Terminio-Lopez of Brentwood is one of three Latina mayors leading neighboring, largely Hispanic, Prince George’s County towns where at least one-third of the residents are foreign born. They live in a county, and a state, with generally immigrant-friendly laws. But the mayors still hear concerns about what will happen under a second term for President-elect Donald Trump, who has promised mass deportation of undocumented migrants. Maryland Matters/via MD Reporter

Mo Co Plans To Continue Using Garbage Incinerator: Despite years of pleas from nearby residents to shut it down, Montgomery County plans to continue to use an incinerator in its western area to burn about 550,000 tons of county garbage every year until, likely, 2031, a county official said. Washington Post.

THE OTHER 49

Next Census Will Gather More Racial, Ethnic Information: The U.S. Census Bureau and a growing number of states are starting to gather more detailed information about Americans’ race and ethnicity, a change some advocates of the process say will let people choose identities that more closely reflect how they see themselves. Maryland Matters

TRUMP: California lawmakers will open a special session today to consider laws to protect the state from a second Trump administration. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) has asked lawmakers for more money for Attorney General Rob Bonta’s (D) office in anticipation of litigation against the incoming administration. (Associated Press)

And Not Just Cali: Blue states prepare for battle over Trump’s environmental rollbacks From Stateline

Incoming Congress Will Have Record Number of Black Members: The 119^th Congress that will be sworn in next year will have a record number of Black lawmakers, including Angela Alsobrooks, the first Black woman to be elected a U.S. senator from Maryland. There will also be an unprecedented number of Democrats in the Congressional Black Caucus — 62 in total. In addition, there will also be five Black Republican lawmakers. WTOP-FM.

ENERGY: Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) has sued investment giants BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street, alleging the firms broke antitrust laws by using ESG practices that raised energy costs. The suit alleges the firms pressured coal producers to cut output. (Dallas Morning News) Texas will argue that making available or touting climate-friendly companies for investment constrained coal use for power generation.

Numbers: At least 95: The number of women who will hold senior leadership posts in state legislatures next year. Women will serve as House speakers in ten states and Senate presidents in four states. (Pluribus News)

Dollars: $58.08: The estimated cost of a Thanksgiving dinner for ten, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation — the lowest cost in five years and down from a high of $64.05 in 2022. The decline in cost was led by a drop in turkey prices. (Pluribus News)

NATIONAL AND THE FEDS

Republicans’ big idea for remaking public education hits voter resistance
Texas and Tennessee are among states moving forward with plans to expand taxpayer-funded private school scholarships. An aggressive Republican campaign to pump hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars into private education is continuing across the country, even after voters in three states rejected the idea.

DOGE scavengers aim to abolish consumer finance protection arm
Elon Musk last week called for the elimination of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, one of the nation’s most powerful watchdog agencies, signaling it could be scrapped as part of a planned review of government spending ordered by President-elect Donald Trump. NEW NEWS MONDAY NOON from POLITICO Playbook: At the CFPB, officials are discussing which rules they should try to finalize before Republicans take over and potentially enact sweeping rollbacks, NBC’s J.J. McCorvey reports. Some staffers think the Biden administration’s work could be harder to unravel than it looks. But new rules now could be repealed via the Congressional Review Act, which would stymie future officials from pursuing them."

Zephyr Teachout writes, in The Guardian, “as Democrats think about how to counter the Trump administration, they need to accept a very simple lesson from the last eight years. Big tech and big business are part of the political opposition working on behalf of Donald Trump, not the Democrats’ allies working against Trump and Trumpism.”

MORE playing defense in the federal gov (also from POLITICO Playbook mid-Monday) "DEPT. OF TRUMP-PROOFING: Sens. ELIZABETH WARREN (D-Mass.) and RICHARD BLUMENTHAL (D-Conn.) have asked Biden and Defense Secretary LLOYD AUSTIN to issue a policy directive restricting the federal government from deploying troops domestically, NBC’s Courtney Kube scooped. Such a move could be reversed by Trump, but the senators say taking the first step now could make it politically costlier for the Trump administration to use the military against protesters.And here is Megan E’s weekly dispatch from People’s Action, where she is Director of Federal Affairs.

“Trump announced [last] Monday that he will sign an executive order placing a 25% tariff on all imports from Canada and Mexico, along with an additional 10% tariff on imports from China, in purported retaliation for drugs and migrants crossing US borders.” Canada and Mexico are both close allies and important trading partners to the U.S. Tariffs and President Biden’s investments seeking to incentivize US production and supply chain sourcing from allied countries and away from U.S. reliance in China over the last few years made Mexico rise above China as our top trading partner. Mexico’s President Sheinbaum has warned against the tariffs, which violate international trade agreements, She warns that Mexico could put its own tariffs on imports from the U.S. and that these tariffs will kill jobs on both sides of the border. Sheinbaum also pointed out that Mexico’s drug cartels continue to receive weapons from the U.S. 

These tariffs are likely to raise costs for consumers but that does not mean that they will not be popular. Trump’s tariffs on imported steel both increased US production and drove up the costs and the price of products, like cars, that use steel. Yet, they were popular in key working-class areas of the country that believed at least Trump was trying to address the problem of manufacturing leaving the U.S. He could also use them to leverage concessions from other countries that he can claim as wins.

Regardless of how Trump’s tariffs shake out, it is clear that he seeks to deliver small gains to some working-class constituencies while giving major handouts to corporations and billionaires, particularly those that funded his campaign. He received a lot of money from top donors in the oil and gas industry, for example, publicly promising to reward oil and gas executives in exchange. He’s starting with the appointment of oil and gas executive Chris Wright to lead the Department of Energy. 

Read this Guardian article by Astra Taylor, “Democrats should stop mocking Trump’s ground game and start learning from it” that highlights the awesome organizing work of Firelands Workers United! 

In Megan’s email today.... ISSUE UPDATES:

Issue Update: Elections

The US needs more working-class political candidates | Dustin Guastella and Bhaskar Sunkara from The Guardian -- Union mechanic Dan Osborn’s independent campaign outperformed Kamala Harris by 14 points in Nebraska

Issue Update: Climate

The New Republic The Answer to Democrats’ Class Problem Is Staring Them in the Face

The climate crisis offers one of the strongest fields imaginable for proving fealty to the working class against rapacious elites.

Issue Update: Healthcare

Dr. Oz Nomination Seen as Potential Boon for Medicare Privatization | Common Dreams

"Dr. Oz wants to fully privatize Medicare," warned one advocacy group. "That’s why Donald Trump put him in charge of Medicare."

Issue Update: Democracy

Walmart the latest big corporation to scale back DEI policies after pressure from conservative activists

Walmart is rolling back its diversity, equity and inclusion policies, joining a growing list of major corporations doing the same after coming under attack by conservative activists. [And note above in our states roundup that Texas is suing its natural allies, big Wall Street hedge funds, for promoting ESG investments and therefore allegedly raising electric power costs.]

[Proven solutions: “Native American communities {pre-Columbian} were elaborate consensus democracies, many of which had survived for generations because of careful attention to checking and balancing power.” See The Conversation, “How Native Americans guarded their societies against tyranny”]

Can Wall Street Billionaires Deliver on Trump’s Blue-Collar Promise? New York Times

The president-elect has named wealthy financiers for key economic positions, raising questions about how much they will follow through on promises to help the working class.

In solidarity, Megan

…AND GLOBAL

A two-year effort to reach a global agreement on plastic pollution collapsed. The final round of talks, in Busan, South Korea, fell apart after ambitious plans for phasing plastic out altogether were shot down by oil-producing countries that said they went too far. The goal should be “to end plastic pollution not plastic itself,” Kuwait said, arguing plastic “has brought immense benefit to societies worldwide,” BBC News reports. The UN estimates that less than 10% of the roughly 9 billion tons of plastic produced globally since 1950 has been recycled, millions of tons end up in the sea, and the fossil fuels needed to make it emit huge amounts of carbon. Yet plastic has advantages: From a climate standpoint, it reduces food waste. Semafor