News You Can Use: Assembly's "Crossover Day" finds lots of work still to do; some bills stuck
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, unpronounceable 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.
