Maryland, not heavily engaged with ICE enforcement at the battleground scale of Minnesota and some other states, is nevertheless ramping up its defenses. Trump's wholly vindictive assault against Minneapolis-St. Paul is showing signs of wear but state and national officials -- including some in Congress -- are still trying to temper the damage by legal means. Judges, however, are making long lists of the number of legal rulings that the mock-warriors of DHS are routinely ignoring. Congress is near-deadlock on funding the Department of Homeland Security unless Democratic requirements for controlling ICE tactics get some satisfaction. If it gets more intense we might have to do this twice a week. It's News You Can Use, but don't look away too fast or you might miss something.

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

Right here in Maryland, the slow-building catastrophe of Trump retribution against Blue states adds up, as our legislature works to manage its way through Gov. Moore's proposed tough-love budget. Federal pullbacks in a wide variety of public benefits, from medical care to food assistance to education to the loss of hundreds of thousands of federal jobs by state residents, leave the cupboard pretty bare. Two years in a row of wrenching deficit solutions have shaken the typical good-natured rivalry between progressive groups seeking funding and legislators holding out on funds. Meanwhile, Trump's ICE paramilitary goon squad continues to terrorize populations, not only in Minnesota but in many cities around the nation. And the response is resistance: "ICE out" in Baltimore and at the Grammies, and 9,000-plus Chicagolanders voted to name their newest snowplow "Abolish Ice" -- nearly three-quarters of those who suggested names. It's all News You Can Use.

Anyone, including your correspondent, approaches the keyboard with a heavy heart this week. It feels punk to tap out sentences about resistance while thousands of our fellow humans  are out in subzero temperatures in Minnesota (and this week, everywhere) fighting back against  occupation and terrorism by a  poorly-trained gang of thugs.

Here in Maryland we are much less troubled by that Minnesota not-nice brand of oppression but suffering from the Trump Gang’s discriminatory persecution of many of our fellow citizens and immigrants of various status who don’t look like white billionaires. On top of that, our state budget took a mighty hit from the Big (Un)Beautiful Bill that diverted so much of our tax money to ICE (Trump’s personal armed force) and away from the public-health and premium subsidies that have allowed families to have medical insurance since the Obama administration (as the stories below detail). Our General Assembly is wrestling with the resulting deficit in its session right now (or, actually, after the snow and ice are cleared somewhat). It already looks as though the state’s commitment to a clean energy future will be slowed and the out-of-pocket cost of going to college in Maryland increased.

It’s News You Can Use, sometimes better, sometimes not so great.

We’ll lead by passing along Megan E’s abbreviated message for today.

“Hello People’s Action,

”I hope you’re all hanging in there. I’m in a convening today so this will be short but there are a bunch of mass calls and webinars [involved with People’s Action initiatives to fight back] listed below.

“The Senate is on recess. The House is trying to pass government funding bills. 

“And no, I don’t know if we’re going to invade Denmark. From Punchbowl “As tens of thousands of people lined the streets of Copenhagen Saturday to protest Trump’s threats toward Greenland, the president announced he planned to impose new tariffs on Denmark and seven other European nations for opposing his drive to acquire Greenland.”  Republicans in Congress are pretty much uniformly opposed to this plan but  almost uniformly unwilling to speak up against it (with a couple notable exceptions). “ [Megan is People's Action federal affairs director.]

We can’t beat Megan’s account of GOP fearful subservience to the Glorious Leader at this point. Denmark? Yes, invading Greenland is like invading Denmark. Copenhagen, all that. See our several articles on the one-year “Move Fast and Break Things” behavior Trump has used to keep our eyes fixed on him (in self-defense). Trump is crashing the big billionaires’ party in Davos as we write, and Bloomberg reports that many of those hardnosed billionaires are getting scammed by sharpsters selling elite access passes supposed to bring them within ring-kissing range of Himself. Alas, they’ll be out of pocket and disappointed.

Watch this (Trump) space, as if we could safely ignore it. It’s News You Can Use.

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

As the General Assembly begins its three-month gallop of a session, the new Speaker builds a distinctly more progressive team in the House while Gov. Moore vows to make the state less dependent on the vagaries of federal employment. As the legislators head for Annapolis, events in Minnesota and elsewhere bring nationwide protests against the savagery of ICE agents and the buttheadedness of its leadership (yes, the one under the oversized cowboy hat).

It all comes from the top, of course. The lunatic decrepitude of Trump is more apparent each time he realizes a fantasy (briefly) with an executive order or (violently) by directing military action against Venezuela and threatens others, including NATO allies. We frankly haven't had the fortitude to read through the transcript of his two-hour interview with NYT reporters; when we do, we'll be better able to decide just how far over the cliff he has gone.

States -- including Maryland -- are fighting back, including through the courts.  Much of Trump's worst activity is stuck in traffic and he increasingly voices fear that he will lose control of the US House in the midterms. He is afraid of being impeached but he probably needs to worry less about that than becoming irrelevant. So 2026 is brightening. It's News You Can Use.

So much excitement for 2026's first News You Can Use. Trump finally has an "Osama bin Laden moment" to top Obama's (and distract from Epstein stuff)  although Mar-a-Lago doesn't really have a Situation Room We bet he's building one there now as we speak. States, we see below, are trying to find work-arounds for all the Affordable Care Act premium subsidies now last year's news; many  states (like Maryland) are about to begin legislative sessions and find out how many other things they/we really have to worry about.

But News You Can Use has made it to 2026 and promises to keep you up on outrages and attafolkses at the global/federal, state and local level.

>>>>>>>>>>>>Note: no News You Can Use blog until January so practice your info-scavenging skills...<<<<<<<<<<<<<

It'll be money week in several respects. The General Assembly will have a special session to elect Del. Joseline Peña-Melnyk (D-Prince George’s) as new House Speaker -- but it will also be a flurry of veto overrides. Gov. Moore, who has promised no new taxes to overcome a $1.5BN budget deficit, is juking around with minor budget items to take some of the sting out of what will be pretty rugged overrides. Meanwhile, many states are thumbing their noses at Trump's EO forbidding existing or future state laws that restrict AI, largely on the grounds that the feds have done zilch on this pressing subject. The Maryland Assembly won't have a regular session until January but they are almost guaranteed to have a better 2025 than Congress, which is about to slink home without having done anything about skyrocketing health care premiums for the Affordable Care Act (see Megan E's holiday post below).

It's News You Can Use. See you in 2026, and the best of the holiday season.

Last time the Maryland General Assembly struggled to sort out ambitions and peacefully replace a House Speaker after the death of the beloved Mike Busch, House factions and geography boiled over and there was talk of recruiting GOP members to tip the balance in a supermajority Democratic body. Remembering that, early aspirants to replace departing House speaker Adrienne Jones tripped over each other stepping aside to clear the way for Prince George's/Anne Arundel Del. Joseline Peña-Melnyk to take the vacant leadership seat.

Civility triumphs. What a contrast to the hopeless mess that is the GOP-majority Congress, where battles over the nitty-gritty (and the most trivial opinion roadblocks to a solution) puts the health care of millions of Americans still further at risk. As our People's Action specialist on D.C. doings Megan E outlines below, "the Trump administration's war on poor people" is relentless and the GOP majority in both houses of Congress is kneeling to the increasingly addled Prez. The latest GOP apostate, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green, has illuminated the two-faced nature of the GOP members as they mock Trump in private but fearfully knuckle under in public.

Trump's latest pro-billionaire trick, just today, is to try to pre-empt the efforts of many states to protect their residents from the dangers of corporate artificial intelligence while leaving room for its advantages. While the feds have dawdled in the four years since Chat-GPT began informing/bamboozling its users, states have stepped in. The billionaires of Silicon Valley and their hedge-fund allies are balking, and Trump is listening. He calls them "brilliant" and it's likely they are. But brilliant at what, and at whose expense? It's News You Can Use, so read on below...

With the Holidays here, there a "case of the slows" * in the action around states. Maryland will begin its 90-day legislative session in early January (opening day is January 14)so don't put down your phones quite yet. The Maryland.gov site is "under construction" today, at least as far as legislation filed so far, but the hardworking Department of Legislative Services is beavering away on prep for the 2026 session and has interesting studies and audits to offer -- you can while away your time on that. Don't forget your county delegations to the Assembly will be meeting to discuss upcoming proposals so keep an eye open for that. Note below that as other states slowly assemble law providing for family leave policies, Maryland keeps dragging its legislative feet. 

Meanwhile about 20-ish states' attorneys general are suing the Trump gangsters for their constant flurry of budget cuts (seldom coordinated with Congress, supposedly the budget-and-appropriation branch of government). Our AG Anthony Brown is one of that coalition and as we read below, the serious harm done in Maryland and other states stemming from reckless cuts to housing subsidies would have drastic effects on keeping people securely sheltered during the coldest part of the year.

People's Action DC watcher Megan E also has her assessment of how things are going in DC. The worst news, we all know, had nothing to do with a helpless Congress or disobeyed judges, but with the tragic shootings of National Guard members who were posted to the nation's capital -- quite unnecessarily -- by Trump. His motive was to show off how a president can order people around (including those in uniform) at his whim. The result was the tragic death of a member of the West Virginia guard and life-threatening injuries to another. A suspect is in custody and we may find out his motive. But the suspect had nothing to do with the casual, show-off deployment of guard members in potential harm's way.

It's all News You Can Use. 

*attributed to President Lincoln, speaking of one of his generals

Everybody's in between in News You Can Use this week. The Prez is torn between getting praise and cuddles from Saudi oil barons (and even democratic socialist Mayor-to-be Mamdani!) and getting ripped up by his own base over the Epstein Files (led by the mercurial Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is leaving her House seat for -- where?) Here in the region, fusses over data centers, electric bills and where's the power coming from kind of muddy the waters as many nervously watch the AI bubble to see if it pops, leaving real-estate speculators with big data-center buildings that have no customers, even in the Cloud. In Maryland, the Blueprint for school improvement trudges on while the school population seems to be shrinking. The power bills, on the other hand, are NOT shrinking and it may not be just data center demand but, hmm, greed, incompetence and a still-spineless Public Service Commission. It's all News You Can Use, including lots from the region, the rest of the nation's states, and even some nationwide stuff that is not all about Trump shenanigans. Imagine that.