Over the course of 12 days in November 2016, United Maryland Muslim Council director Mubariz Razvi and his wife were camped at the University of Maryland Medical Center’s shock trauma ward. Their adopted 23-year-old son, Ali Shah, was suffering from sepsis, on life support, and unfortunately, didn’t have much time left to live.

Around a week into agonizing over Shah’s health, a woman saw that the ward doorway was clear, walked into the room, and rudely confronted Razvi.

“She blatantly stood a foot away from my face and said, ‘You don’t belong here,’ and ‘Get out of here,’” Razvi recounts. “The shocking thing was that, if she was in that area, that means that she had a family member in the same ward.”

The situation escalated to a point where the woman threatened to call hospital security on Razvi, who had simply been tending to his family. Razvi turned the tables, enlisting security himself. The woman fled before she could be questioned.

“That is an example of what security systems can do for you when they’re in place,” Razvi says. “It deterred her from going any further.”

Since that event almost three years ago, similar incidents and others much worse have become more commonplace. There has been a stark rise in hate crimes across the country, according to reporting by the FBI. It’s for this reason that religious institutions and community businesses have become more proactive in ensuring the safety of their congregants and patrons. More than $3 million in aid from the same grant program has been provided to these institutions in the past year. But as lawmakers see it, as the danger grows, so too does the need to increase funding to support these efforts.

Earlier this month, Maryland congressmen John Sarbanes, Ben Cardin, and Chris Van Hollen introduced a proposal to quadruple federal funding for the Nonprofit Security Grant Program from $90 million to $360 million in the 2021 fiscal year. The program, established in response to 9/11, is designed to provide security assistance to religious and community nonprofits at high risk of terrorist attacks across the country. Its promotion has been co-signed by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

“Our overriding goal has to be to reduce the number of hate crimes that are being committed,” says Van Hollen, who served as a representative for Maryland’s 8th District from 2003-2017 before being elected to the U.S. Senate. “That’s the most important thing we can do to help reduce people’s fears. But, to the extent that you can provide a more secure environment, people can feel more safe in practicing their religion or going about their daily lives.”

Given the increasing prevalence of hate crimes across the country, government leaders say they need to both institute stronger measures to try to prevent such crimes, while also providing appropriate assistance to respond to attacks.

“It would be irresponsible not to take steps to protect places that we know have been targets of hate crimes,” Van Hollen says. “We need to be confronting [the increase] in two ways. One is to bring the different faith communities together in solidarity to speak out against hate crimes. The second thing we need to do is to provide protection for places of worship and other places that are targeted.”

One of the many reasons there is a sense of urgency surrounding this problem is that it’s not just affecting one community. Elissa Sachs-Kohen, the rabbi at Baltimore Hebrew Congregation for the last 16 years, says anti-Semitic crimes remain an increasing concern in the Jewish community. Baltimore Hebrew Congregation was one of many Maryland institutions that received part of the more than $3 million funds from the grant program in the past year.

“The Jewish community feels more at-risk than it has in many years,” Sachs-Kohen says. “In my Rabbinic tenure, there’s always been a very low-level hum. There are people who hate Jewish people and who might choose to do something about that hatred. It’s no longer a low-level hum.”

Among the suggestions for how to use the funds include increasing physical security presence and surveillance, as well as fencing around places of worship. Leaders also hope that talking about these issues will help members of their communities, and the community at-large, to understand why these attacks are happening and what they can do to combat them.

“I think that what [calls to increase funding] also point to is this has been a neglected area in the past,” Sachs-Kohen says. “Whenever you’re looking at something quadrupling, it suggests maybe that there wasn’t as much as a need before, but it also suggests that we were not doing our due diligence before.”

Van Hollen serves on the Senate Appropriations Committee, and Maryland 2nd District Representative Dutch Ruppersberger, who has also been a part of this initiative, serves on the House Appropriations Committee. The two plan to collaborate with their colleagues to put together a workable funding resolution for the 2021 fiscal year, hoping for approval in both the House of Representatives and U.S. Senate later this year.

Even so, for Razvi, these ideas are short-term solutions to a larger problem, one that he hopes one day will be left in the past.

“With additional funding, I definitely believe it will help us keep houses of worship secure,” he says. “But at the same time, there has to be a change of opinion in the public’s mind that, we might speak a different language, we might look different, but we’re all one humanity and one human race.”

In one of the more poignant moments of the final day of the House of Representatives’ impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump, Baltimore was front and center.

After the House successfully passed both articles of impeachment—citing abuse of power and obstruction of justice—Baltimore native Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi paid tribute to her colleague and friend, the late Congressman Elijah E. Cummings, who served as the House Oversight Committee chair and presided over Maryland’s 7th District until his passing in September.

“There’s one person who isn’t with us in this room, but I know was present all day for the deliberations,” Pelosi said at a press conference following the eight-hour hearing and subsequent vote Wednesday. “He said, ‘When we’re dancing with the angels the question will be, what did you do to make sure we kept our democracy intact?’ We did all we could, Elijah. We passed the two articles of impeachment—the president is impeached.”

The swell of Democratic support for impeachment has grown louder as the process and hearings, in which 17 witnesses testified, has gone on. On Wednesday, an overwhelming majority of Democratic House members voted to impeach Donald J. Trump after evidence and testimony was presented that indicated the president had pressured Ukraine to assist him by declaring they were investigating potential 2020 rival Joe Biden, and the president’s refusal to provide documents following Congressional subpoenas.

Maryland House members were among those who voted along party lines, issuing strong statements in favor of the House’s decision to impeach.

“President Trump took direct aim at the heart of our democracy,” reads a statement from John Sarbanes of Maryland’s 3rd District. “I believe that Americans should decide our elections, not a foreign country. As long as the President continues to invite foreign inference into our democracy, the integrity of the 2020 election remains at risk. We had no choice but to impeach.”

The Republican Party has been united in its staunch opposition to impeachment, put forth by the House’s Democratic majority after a whistleblower. The whistleblower, understood to be an intelligence officer, came forward with allegations Trump was withholding a White House meeting and Congressional military aide to Ukraine, which has been at war with Russia, in exchange for the announcement of a corruption inquiry into Biden—whose son had been on the board of a controversial Ukrainian company. Not a single House Republican voted in favor of either article.

“The articles of impeachment passed on a purely partisan vote by the Democrats prove what a partisan stunt this impeachment sham really is,” said Rep. Andy Harris of Maryland’s 1st Congressional District, in a statement.

Harris also invoked a previous instance in which Eric Holder, the Attorney General under the Obama Administration, refused to answer House subpoenas—stating that they infringed on executive privilege.

Baltimore native Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland’s 2nd District also released a statement, reiterating the need to consider the facts of the case and service the Constitution.

“President Trump has no one to blame but himself,” Ruppersberger’s statement reads. “He violated his oath of office. This is why I support both articles of impeachment. The facts clearly warrant this action to protect the Constitution of the United States.”

The attention now turns to the Senate, which will hold a trial of the president. Only if the president is found guilty of one or more of the articles of impeachment can he be removed from office. There is currently a delay in the transmission of the impeachment documents, however, as Democrats attempt to negotiate the guidelines for the trial.

Pelosi suggested Wednesday night that the House might not hand over the articles of impeachment before it is promised a fair trial. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has suggested that his position on the matter is no different than the White House’s in a trial where Senate jurors are required to be impartial.

“As we go forward, it’s up to the American people to demand a fair trial,” reads a statement from U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen, who previously represented Maryland’s 8th congressional district. “Republican Leader Mitch McConnell has publicly expressed his plan to work in lockstep with the President during the trial and has rejected reasonable requests to allow key fact witnesses to testify. I hope my other Republican colleagues will agree that we have a duty to get all the facts and do justice.”

Locally, a number of Baltimoreans have voiced their support for impeachment. A “Nobody Is Above the Law” rally was held at McKeldin Square in the Inner Harbor a few days ago, one of hundreds held nationwide. Participants were visible to commuters on their way home from work, spirited and making their presence known.

And when the news came down, Steny Hoyer, the House Majority Leader representing Maryland’s 5th Congressional Disctrict, offered a solemn closing argument.

“All of us feel a sense of loyalty to party,” Hoyer said. “It’s what makes our two-party system function. It’s what helps hold presidents and majorities accountable. But party loyalty must have its limits.”

Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced Tuesday afternoon that the House of Representatives will begin a formal impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump. Pelosi’s action—long awaited by many Democratic activists after findings in the Mueller Report—comes in response to startling new allegations that the president recently sought to enlist Ukraine in his personal electoral cause. Namely, undermining current frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020—former Vice President Joe Biden.

Pelosi, the daughter of former Baltimore mayor Thomas D’Alessandro Jr., announced the start of an impeachment inquiry on Capitol Hill following a closed-door meeting with her Democratic caucus.

“The actions taken to date by the president have seriously violated the Constitution,” she said. President Trump, she said, “must be held accountable—no one is above the law.”

Impeachment has occurred twice in U.S. history, with charges brought against Presidents Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton. Neither president was removed or left office. Rather than face a House of Representatives vote on impeachment over the Watergate scandal, President Richard Nixon resigned in 1974.

Even if the House—where the Democrats hold a majority—votes to impeach Trump after their inquiry, forcing a president from the White House requires a conviction in the Senate. In that chamber, where Republicans hold a majority, elected GOP officials have remained in lockstep behind Trump during each controversy of his presidency.

Trump’s alleged efforts to pressure Ukraine into investigating Biden, his potential rival, and his son, Hunter Biden, who served on board of the country’s largest private gas company, were brought forth by a U.S. intelligence whistleblower. Earlier Tuesday, Trump acknowledged he withheld $391 million in military support for Ukraine in the run-up to his July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

The president and his personal lawyer, former New York Mayor and former GOP presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani, have suggested Biden tried to protect the Ukrainian company, and thereby his son, from a corruption investigation. Neither Trump, Giuliani, nor anyone else to date, has provided evidence of illegal activity by either Biden.

Fact checking and investigations by multiple U.S. news outlets have repudiated Trump’s and Giuliani’s allegations that the former vice president attempted to protect his son by advocating for the removal of the former top Ukrainian prosecutor. The current prosecutor general of Ukraine, Yuri Luiseno, has looked into the matter and cleared the Bidens.

Leading up to Tuesday’s announcement by Pelosi, Maryland’s congressional delegation, who had been hesitant to speak out in favor of an impeachment inquiry previously, offered their strong backing for formal hearings.

“We can now see with our own eyes that the President is jeopardizing our national security,” Rep. Elijah Cummings said in a statement, referring to Trump allegedly holding back military aid to an ally in exchange for damning information on an American political candidate. “He admitted to personally withholding military security that Congress appropriated to help Ukraine counter Russian aggression. He admitted to personally urging a foreign actor to dig up dirt on his political rival. And he personally attacked a whistleblower whose protected information is being withheld from Congress in violation of the law.”

In a move described as unprecedented, the Trump Administration’s acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, has refused to share the whistleblower complaint with congressional intelligence committees, even after receiving a subpoena.

Trump tweeted on Tuesday that he would release the transcript of his phone call with the Ukrainian president, referring to the conversation as “totally appropriate.” The release of the whistleblower complaint, which is required to be turned over to Congress, remains another story, however. Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson determined that whistleblower’s allegations involving the president and his contact with Ukraine—of which the July 25 phone call with the Ukrainian president is just a part, according to reporting from The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and The Washington Post—were deemed credible and of “urgent concern.”

The Mueller Report, of course, found multiple contacts between Trump campaign officials and Russian representatives during the 2016 election season.

Fellow Maryland Democratic Rep. C.A. “Dutch” Ruppersberger emphasized his national security concerns regarding the president’s contacts with Ukraine: “As a former prosecutor, I have resisted calls to begin formal impeachment proceedings against the President until we had clear, indisputable evidence that transcends politics,” Ruppersberger said in a statement. “Jeopardizing our national security is where I draw the line. Withholding duly appropriated money meant to aid a country that could be overtaken by Russia is reckless and dangerous. This is yet another example of the President doing Putin’s bidding.”

“President Trump’s actions are a threat to our democracy,” Maryland Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen said in a press release. “His continued disregard for our Constitution and the democratic norms that guide our nation have caused irreparable harm to our country, our standing in the world, and to the Office of the Presidency. As the White House continues to prevent the House of Representatives from exercising their Constitutionally-mandated oversight role, it has become clear that the tools provided by an impeachment inquiry must be employed.”

Maryland Democratic Congressman John Sarbanes said Trump’s alleged conduct, “constitute[s] a direct attack on our democracy and signify an unprecedented new level of corruption and lawlessness in the White House.”

“President Trump’s attempt to pressure a foreign government to interfere in the 2020 election is a blatant abuse of power,” Sarbanes said.

By coincidence, former Vice President Joe Biden was scheduled for a private fundraising event at Citron, a Pikesville restaurant and event space, Tuesday evening, according to reporting by The Baltimore Sun. However, Biden and his team were forced to head back to home to Wilmington, Delaware, after realizing the former vice president would not make it in time because of traffic caused by an overturned a tractor-trailer on I-95.

After a 22-month investigation into President Donald Trump’s possible collusion with Russia, special counsel Robert Mueller’s 448-page report garnered riveting attention across the country Thursday after a redacted version was made public.

The key findings span a range of conclusions, and frustratingly to some, no conclusion in one key matter—the allegations of obstruction of justice.

The report found there were numerous contacts between Trump campaign advisers and Russians affiliated with the foreign government during the run-up to the 2018 election and afterward. But the special counsel did not establish that there was sufficient evidence to indict the president, or any Trump campaign official, with conspiring with Russian intelligence operatives to influence the election.

However, the Mueller investigation did find repeated examples in which the president directed officials around him to halt or derail the inquiry, including attempting to get Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to oust Mueller. Trump’s efforts failed because those officials did not comply with the president’s wishes and demands, according to the report.

“The President’s efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful, but that is largely because the persons who surrounded the President declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests,” the special counsel determined.

Rosenstein, who was nominated by Trump to his position, served as U.S. attorney for the district of Maryland from 2005 to April 2017. Following Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ recusal from the investigation, Rosenstein appointed Mueller, a former director of the FBI, to head the inquiry.

Ron Weich, dean of the University of Baltimore School of Law, said that even without further indictments of president’s campaign team, the release of the report was important and necessary for the American people “to see the full conduct the president and his team.”

“The narrative of the report reveals the campaign willingly accepted and encouraged assistance from a foreign adversary, including [former Trump campaign manager] Paul Manafort, who shared campaign polling information to help Russia influence the election,” Weich said.

Among others, Manafort, former deputy campaign chairman Rick Gates, and Trump foreign policy advisor George Papadopoulos have all already pled or been found guilty of crimes charged by Mueller’s team, though those convictions were not directly related to their campaign work.

Mueller’s team also declined to prosecute the president’s son, Donald Jr., the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, and other campaign members for their participation in the infamous June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower with a Kremlin-connected lawyer, who had promised political “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. In part, investigators said, because they couldn’t prove that they “willfully” violated the law.

In terms of Mueller’s decision not to indict the president on obstruction of justice charges, Weich, who served as an assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice during the Obama administration, noted that according to DOJ guidelines, a sitting president couldn’t be indicted. The decision to remove a president is essentially left up to Congress, which has the power to impeach.

That said, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, who represents Maryland’s 5th District, told CNN that he does not expect impeachment proceedings to move forward.

“Based on what we have seen to date, going forward on impeachment is not worthwhile at this point,” Hoyer told CNN. “Very frankly, there is an election in 18 months and the American people will make a judgment.”

“I think Bob Mueller is a cautious man, a cautious prosecutor,” said Weich, who knows Mueller, the director of the FBI during his time at the DOJ, as well Rosenstein, whom he met after taking over as dean of the law school at the University of Baltimore in 2012. “Both Bob Mueller and Rod Rosenstein have sterling reputations.” Rosenstein will be the commence speaker at University of Baltimore School of Law’s graduation ceremony in May.

Overall, reactions to the report’s conclusions fell largely along well established partisan divides.

U.S. Rep. C.A. “Dutch” Ruppersberger, who represents Maryland’s 2nd District, pointed to “at least 10 instances” in the report in which President Trump attempted to interfere with the Mueller investigation. He encouraged all Americans to read the report, in particular, the sections on obstruction of justice “so they can determine for themselves if the behavior described in this report is becoming of a United States President.”

In a statement, Maryland U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings, the chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Reform, said Congress must subpoena the full Mueller report and all underlying documents. “This report catalogues in excruciating detail a proliferation of lies by the President to the American people, as well as his incessant and repeated efforts to encourage others to lie,” Cummings wrote.

Cummings also criticized current Attorney General William Barr’s favorable summary of the report earlier this month and again during a Thursday morning press conference. “Contrary to AG Barr’s attempts at misdirection, it is crystal clear from the report that DOJ’s policy against indicting a sitting President played a key role in Special Counsel Mueller’s analysis—in fact, it is the very first point in the obstruction section of his report.”

In the report’s conclusion in the obstruction section, the Mueller team said, “while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”

U.S. Rep. Andy Harris, from Maryland’s 1st District, called the investigation “two years of wasted time, energy, and $25 million” in a tweet Thursday. “It’s time we move on from partisan politics to issues Americans truly care about, like securing our border, addressing the opioid crisis, and continuing to grow our economy.”

In terms of how the Mueller report plays out politically, Richard Vatz, Towson University professor of rhetoric and communication, called the investigation document “a perfect Rorschach test.”

“Republicans will take a look and say, ‘See what did I tell you?’ and smile,” Vatz said. “Democrats will take a look and say, “See what did I tell you?’ and smile.

“The president has never had a majority of the country’s support, but [the report’s release] will harden his base,” Vatz continued. “And the 30 percent that despise him will despise him even more. The question will become: If the economy keeps growing and there are no major foreign entanglements, will he get movement from those in the middle when the election comes around?”

“I take some, for lack of a better term, some bad-ass glee in just saying, ‘Women, you know how to get it done. Know your power.’”
—Nancy Pelosi to CNN’s Dana Bash.

The first Native-American women and the first Muslim women were sworn into Congress yesterday. So was the youngest woman ever sworn into Congress. All were part of a record-breaking, 100-plus women taking office Thursday afternoon, none, however, more significant than a 78-year-old mother of five and grandmother of nine from Baltimore’s Little Italy—the daughter of former three-term Mayor Thomas D’Alesandro Jr.—Nancy D’Alesandro Pelosi.

Pelosi, who became the first female Speaker of the House in 2007, is the first in six decades to regain the position.

With so many new Democratic U.S. representatives winning elections and flipping control of the House from the GOP, there had been talk among several Dems of finding someone other than Pelosi to assume the mantel of Speaker of the House. It did not last long. Two weeks after 16 Democrats released a letter opposing Pelosi as the next Speaker in mid-November, the mini-rebellion was over.

“Let me be clear, House Democrats are down with NDP—Nancy D’Alesandro Pelosi, the once and future Speaker of the United States House of Representatives,” said House Democratic Caucus Chairman and New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries during the first session of the new Congress, in the first nod to a Naughty by Nature song—“Down with OPP”—in a nominating speech for House speaker.

Among those giving a shoutout, literally, to Pelosi’s hometown roots was Maryland Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, who yelled, “Born and raised in Baltimore, Nancy D’Alesandro Pelosi!” as the vote giving her back the gavel was announced on the floor of the Capitol.

“Like me, Nancy Pelosi is homegrown Baltimore and she’s never forgotten it—partly because I won’t let her,” Ruppersberger said later.

Pelosi helped Ruppersberger get a seat on the powerful House Appropriations Committee. In October, Pelosi and Ruppersberger visited Towson University, speaking to 200 students about voter engagement and the upcoming midterms. Ruppersberger noted that Pelosi, who has represented California for the past three decades, still had an affinity for Berger cookies, crab cakes, and Old Bay. (Her husband, businessman Paul Pelosi, whom she wed in 1963, is a San Francisco native.)

Fellow Maryland Rep. John Sarbanes also strongly supported Pelosi’s reelection as Speaker, pointing to her experience and skill as the Democrats’ top legislator in the House even before President Trump’s recent government shutdown over border wall funding.

“At this critical moment for our democracy, we need our best generals on the field,” Sarbanes said in November. “Nancy Pelosi is exactly the right person to hold the Trump Administration accountable over the next two years and to guide Democrats as we present a positive, meaningful legislative agenda for the country. She will be an outstanding Speaker.”

Not only did Pelosi’s father serve as Baltimore mayor (he also represented the state in Congress), but her brother Thomas D’Alesandro III served a term as mayor as well.

In a recent visit to Little Italy, she told CNN’s Dana Bash, however, that she learned as much about politics from her mother, Annunciata M. “Nancy” D’Alesandro (née Lombardi), who was born in Campobasso, Italy, a southern region that was home to many of Baltimore’s Italian immigrants. Her mother, Pelosi says, pulled together Little Italy’s women into her father’s grassroots campaign.

“He leapfrogged over the Irish [to become the city’s first Catholic mayor], that was a big deal,” she told Bash. “It took political organizing.”

Pelosi graduated from the Institute of Notre Dame in East Baltimore in 1958—just four years after the other most significant congresswoman in U.S. history—former Maryland Senator Barbara Mikulski, the longest-serving female member of the U.S. Congress ever. She earned a degree in political science from Trinity College in Washington, D.C.

After moving to San Francisco with her husband and young family, Pelosi worked her way up in Democratic Party politics, winning election in 1976 as a Democratic National Committee member from the state before her successful bid for Congress a decade later. Still, she’s never been far from her native Baltimore, especially once she began working in D.C.

In January of 2007, just three days after her first groundbreaking ascension to Speaker of the House, she returned to Little Italy for the ceremonial renaming of the street outside her childhood home to Via Nancy D’Alesandro Pelosi.

When she spoke to the crowd, she highlighted her Italian immigrant ancestors, who came to this country poor, hardworking, and devout, and her own upbringing in the rowhouse at 245 Albemarle Street, according to The Washington Post reporting of the event.

“I wanted to come back here and say thank you to all of you,” Pelosi said. “Every step that I took to the speakership began in this neighborhood.”

More recently, when Pelosi returned to Baltimore in October for her interview with Bash at Sabatino’s—she was rewarded with another surprise. A family portrait with her parents and five older brothers in their rowhouse living room—painted when she was 7 years old and her father was assuming office in City Hall—had just been restored and hung in Germano Piattini, the popular Little Italy restaurant across the street.

The painting had been rediscovered six months before by one of Pelosi’s cousins when the property was being renovated and he turned it over to husband and wife restaurant owners Germano Fabiani and Cyd Wolf. They gave it to local artist and muralist Michael Kirby, who restored the badly damaged canvas.

“When she walked in and saw the painting, she got emotional about it,” Wolf said. “She remembered sitting for it, her mother going upstairs and getting out her white dress. It was the focal point of their living room, she said. You can tell by where she sat, between her parents, and by what she’s wearing—among all those boys, she was the light of the family.”

“I’ve become a big fan over the years,” Wolf added. “I’ve watched her on television and in public and I admire the way she conducts herself. She’s gritty and smart, and she has common sense. She is someone who thinks of what her actions are going to mean to her grandchildren 50 years down the road.”

As she did when she first became Speaker in 2007, Pelosi invited the children on the House floor, including some of her own grandchildren, to stand with her as she received the gavel.