Progressive Maryland Weekly Memo for Monday, September 22, 2025

Happy Monday and happy first day of fall!

We also want to wish a meaningful and sweet Rosh Hashanah to all of our members who are celebrating today. May this new year bring health, hope, and community.

As the season changes, Maryland continues to show both resilience and resistance in the face of ongoing federal attacks. From the Trump administration’s warnings against DEI-conscious contracting on the Key Bridge rebuild, to the continued losses of federal jobs in our state—Maryland leads the nation with over 15,000 federal positions cut this year—our communities are facing unprecedented challenges. At the same time, our state is joining a coalition of northeastern states to maintain local authority over vaccine policy, standing strong against harmful federal interference.

These moments remind us why there’s so much we’re fighting for, organizing around, and striving to achieve: building a stronger, more equitable Maryland for working families in these trying times under the Trump administration. Our chapters and issue campaigns have been hard at work, and there’s a lot coming up.

Read on for updates, ways to get involved, and important state and national news.

In solidarity,

The Progressive Maryland Team

Here’s what’s in today’s memo:

PMD Events
Campaign Updates
Local Chapter Updates
Ally Events
State & National News

PMD Events:

Join Us for Our Last Rep. Harris Petition Phone Bank – Tonight!

Tonight at 5:15 PM, help us reach voters in Rep. Harris’s district to take action to reach our petition goal. No experience needed — we’ll provide training and support. Join from anywhere! Sign up here.

Task Forces & Issue Campaigns Updates:

Healthcare Task Force:

Telling Stories, Coming Together, and Organizing - More Important Than Ever!

- Telling our stories helps make the case for things like the need for hospital safe staffing. (Our state has the longest ER wait times of all 50 states!) In case you missed it in last week’s Memo, here’s a link to PMD’s Janay Fenner’s story about her grandfather’s hospital stay published in the Baltimore Sun. Thank you, Janay!

- Come Together With Us This Thursday to support Maryland patients and providers who will be hurt by budget cuts!

Join us and our allies at a Celebration of Medicaid’s 60th Anniversary and Rally to Save It : Sign up here! Lawmakers, healthcare workers, community members and PMD’s Healthcare Task Force will be there! We’ll have a table with information about what the state can do and petitions for folks to sign. There will be food and music, too!

- Organize with us as we continue to hold Rep. Andy Harris accountable for his vote for federal funding cuts to healthcare!

If you live in his district or know folks who do please sign and share our petition to him.
If you want to volunteer with us, no matter where you live, sign up here: pgmd.us/hcvolunteer

Email [email protected] for more information.

Local Chapter Updates:

Progressive Harford County

Starbucks Workers United is calling on all local allies to stand with us this October 2nd from 2-3pm on our Mega Practice Picket line outside the N Charles Starbucks location in Baltimore (1209 N Charles St, Baltimore, MD 21201). We would love to have you and all of our allies there to help us make the DMV's practice picket one of the biggest and loudest, so Brian Niccol can hear us all the way from his new $100million dollar office in California!

EVENTS FROM ALLIES:

Baltimore Untied Green Spaces (BUGS)

The workers of Cylburn Arboretum Friends support the Baltimore City community by providing nature education programs and stewarding Cylburn Arboretum, a 200-acre, free-access green space. Their work is vital to fostering a healthy, greener Baltimore.

These workers have chosen to unionize — a protected legal right — as Baltimore Untied Green Spaces (BUGS). However, Cylburn Arboretum Friends’ leadership has chosen to challenge their efforts and have not only refused to voluntarily recognize their union, but have challenged their very right to unionize at all.

Send a letter to the Board of Directors letting them know you support BUGS!

AFT MARYLAND

AFT Maryland is pressuring the President of Baltimore City Community College to stop stalling and sign an agreement for faculty overload pay. Email [email protected] and call McCurdy's office at 410-462-7799 and 410-209-7799 with the following message:

President McCurdy, as a concerned community members, I urge you to do the right thing for faculty and students. Come to an agreement so that faculty can can be fairly compensated for their overload work. We expect the overload pay agreement to be made, signed, and implemented now!

News You Can Use: Data center and vaccine pushback front and center -- and will there be a shutdown?

Marylanders are getting exercised about the wacky thinking tolerated in the Department of Health and Human Services by its equally wacky agency head, RFK Jr. More to come; an announcement from Trump is expected today on Kennedy's odd obsession with autism and its causes. Meanwhile, Marylanders are also getting exercised about data centers, which have the appearance of boosting employment and revenue but (as seen in Virginia, where they are numerous) also overstrain electric power resources and raise rates for residents. How to manage these companions to the AI revolution (maybe by requiring on-site clean-power facilities) is a concern nationwide.

It's fair to ask how much we in Maryland will notice if the federal government has a shutdown. How much of the federal government is left operating, after the depredations of DOGE and Trump's cabinet-level minions? And since Maryland has already taken the biggest hit from federal employees' willing or unwilling exits, how much more hassle can a shutdown bring? It looks like we are going to find out; Dems are so far holding fast on their demand that Affordable Care Act subsidies get extended and Medicaid work requirements be eased (and the Dems actually proposed an alternative bill, rather than just saying "No"!) If spines stay stiffened, we'll see which states throw in the towel first. Red states generally depend on federal funds more than Blue states. It's News You Can Use, where we don't shut up about the shutdown.

Progressive Maryland BlogSpace:

We value creating space for our members to express their thoughts on any issues related to our campaigns. Have an idea for a blog post? You can submit writing, film, graphic design, etc., to be published on our website to the blog moderator, Woody.

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