Week in Review: February 16–22, 2026

This was one of the fuller weeks we've had. Three press releases, two testimonies, two Annapolis days, one livestream, and a trip to St. Mary's County.

We also held two social events, Monday at Peabody Heights in Baltimore for our supporters in Baltimore and Wednesday in Gaithersburg with the Maryland Forward Party. About ten people at each, a few new faces at both. Small-table conversations where people talk about what they're worried about and what they think we all deserve. People working on related problems, figuring out whether this campaign fits in the same story they're telling. The Forward Party and the Green Party don't agree on everything, but we agree on multiparty democracy, ranked choice voting, and the basic premise that the so-called two-party system is a trap. Those relationships matter regardless of what happens in November.

In a busy week I love these opportunities to sit down, talk and connect.

Monday: Three Stories for the Week

Monday's media briefing laid out the frame for the week: three things we were watching.

The Potomac. A 60-year-old pipe collapsed in January and sent 243 million gallons of raw sewage into the river — one of the largest spills in U.S. history. E. coli hit 12,000 times safe limits. Shellfish harvesting shut down in Charles County, a majority-Black community 30 miles downstream. The river was already sick before the break: military burn pits, PFAS from Joint Base Andrews, decades of contamination at Indian Head. Moore and Trump are fighting about who owns the pipe. What is lost in the partisan bickering is a real public debate about the health of the river or how we repair Maryland's crumbling and aging infrastructure.

The Inspector General. Maryland is an outlier in our region as a state without a unified office of Inspector General. Meanwhile, in Baltimore, the Mayor cut the city IG's access to records using a legal opinion the AG himself called "boilerplate." Four county IGs warned it could shut down oversight statewide. Both parties attack oversight when it gets close to their people. We want a statewide IG with real independence, and we are looking out for legislation to solve the problem in Baltimore.

The Anthropic deal. We've been covering Maryland's AI partnership with Anthropic since November. The governor mentioned it during the State of the State. The administration briefed both the House and the Senate. This week opened up more questions than answers. Maryland ranks second nationally for AI-exposed workers. Entry-level jobs with high AI exposure are already down 20.5%. We need a comprehensive plan for how Maryland approaches AI usage in government, not opaque agreements with big corporations and wealthy foundations.

The thread connecting all three: the people in charge would rather you not know what's happening. A polluted river gets reduced to a jurisdictional fight. Oversight offices get starved quietly. An AI contract processing public benefits still is not transparent to the public. These aren't failures. These are choices.

Tuesday: Moore Signs the 287(g) Ban

Governor Moore signed legislation Tuesday banning 287(g) agreements between local law enforcement and ICE. That's welcome. We've called for ending these agreements since we launched this campaign.

The problem is what came with it. Sheriffs in nine counties with active or pending agreements immediately said they'd continue cooperating with ICE regardless of the new law. Carroll County Sheriff Jim DeWees put it plainly: "No politician or legislative body is going to tell me that I can't communicate with another law enforcement agency."

And there's a longer story here. Last year, after the House passed a 287(g) ban, Governor Moore and Senate President Bill Ferguson worked together to stop it. For a year, families lived under those agreements when the legislature could have ended them. ICE arrested over 3,300 people in Maryland in 2025 — more than two-thirds with no criminal conviction.

We put out a statement Tuesday. We'll say the same thing we always say: one bill is not a plan. We have a four-part plan: ICE abolition, comprehensive sanctuary protections, state-level accountability, and direct legal challenges from the AG. Read the full statement at gogreen2026.com.

Wednesday: Annapolis

Two bills went to hearing in committee this week.

HB 575 — Student Civic Engagement. Strong Support. This bill would protect students' ability to take excused absences for civic participation: testimony, hearings, advocacy. Howard County already has a policy like this. Maryland already requires a credit in government for high school graduation. We argued the state should back that up with real access to the process.

HB 580 — Montgomery County Ranked Choice Voting. Strong Support. This gives Montgomery County the authority to study and adopt ranked choice voting. Takoma Park already uses it. Greenbelt just adopted it. This is how reform moves: municipalities, then counties, then the state. We testified in favor of the mechanism.

We also put out a press release on HB 979. The short version: in 2010, Maryland voters were asked whether to call a constitutional convention. A clear majority of those who voted on the question said yes. The convention wasn't called because the vote threshold counts blank ballots as no votes. HB 979 fixes that. A Republican from Cecil County and a Democrat from Montgomery County introduced it together. More at gogreen2026.com.

Thursday: The Livestream

Thursday night we covered the three stories: Potomac, Inspector General, Anthropic. And we had two guests who framed the public power conversation in a way I want to make sure you check out.

Amadi Sankara from the Ujima People's Progress Party in Baltimore and Harrison Pyros from We Power DC came on together. They made the case that public ownership of energy infrastructure is about democratic control. Who controls our utility grid, the people or the corporations? In Baltimore and in DC, communities are organizing to take power back from corporations like Exelon .

We also did a segment on the Constitutional Convention: we covered why the 20-year convention mechanism exists, and why fixing the vote-counting standard matters.

The full livestream is archived here, and testimony segments are on YouTube.

Friday: HB 101

HB 101 is the bill we testified on three weeks ago. It would require Maryland Public Television to invite all ballot-qualified candidates to general election debates. Right now, MPT sets a 10% polling threshold. No third-party candidate for governor in Maryland has reached that number since Reconstruction. That threshold protects incumbents, not voters. Thursday's livestream included a segment on public television and public engagement.

I went back to Annapolis on Friday to meet with legislators about it. There's interest. Members on both sides of the aisle see the logic: if you qualify for the ballot, you should qualify for the debate. The challenge now is getting the Government, Labor, and Elections Committee to bring it up for a vote. Crossover deadline is March 17. Twenty-five days.

Saturday: St. Mary's County

We met up with Maryland Green Party co-chair and Green candidate for State Delegate in District 45, and drove to Leonardtown for our first event in St. Mary's County. It was a great chance to build connections and talk about how the campaign can be active in Southern Maryland.

We connected with Pat Elder, the 2022 Green Party lieutenant governor candidate. Pat is a lifelong activist for peace, justice, democracy, and ecological wisdom. He's also an internationally recognized leader in the fight to expose PFAS contamination and its connection to the U.S. military. He's the one who filed the public information request that revealed MDE is sitting on wastewater PFAS data from treatment plants across the state.

We look forward to much more work in Southern Maryland as the campaign rolls on.

Andy Ellis and Owen Silverman Andrews are running for Governor and Lt. Governor because the two-party system is a trap that doesn't work for most people. They're building a campaign that works for every Marylander, so we can build the Maryland we all deserve. Learn more at gogreen2026.com.