Anderson edited "Leveraging: A Political, Economic and Societal Framework" (Springer, 2014), has taught at five universities and ran for the Democratic nomination for a Maryland congressional seat in 2016.
America should be moving toward a New Center. Our politics is extremely polarized, and we need a politics that respects the 30 percent to 50 percent of the country which does not align with pure versions of either of the major parties, let alone extremist right-wing and left-wing perspectives. With 43 percent of the country identifying as independents according to a recent Gallup poll, the national dialogue about our red-coat/blue-coat war remains a serious distortion.
The state of Maryland in recent years has been a laboratory of change, deliberately or unintentionally, on the part of voters and politicians. The legislature remains extremely Democratic, where both the House of Delegates and the Senate are ruled by supermajorities. Government House, the home of the governor, has been occupied by Larry Hogan, a moderate Republican. Hogan is thus not to be confused with polarized Republicans on Capitol Hill or extremely conservative Republican governors in a range of U.S. states.
Hogan has fought not to increase taxes and has been pro-business. He is one of the few Republican governors, and Republican politicians in general, who have sharply criticized Donald Trump, both as president and former president. Moreover, Hogan has compromised on budgetary and policy issues throughout his tenure as governor and set a basically calm tone for Annapolis politics.
The Democrats have pushed through major reforms on education and racial issues. They have limited power to affect the annual state budget – as they can cut but not add to the budget except via various indirect ways. Yet they have substantial power when it comes to passing bills about public policy. In their movement toward a New Center, the legislature and the governor frequently do not explicitly agree to major public policies.
The legislature overrides Hogan vetoes on important policies, like paid parental leave. And Hogan at times lets bills become laws without signing them, as he did with a renewable energy bill. In this pattern, the state has been moving in a New Centrist direction as the legislature and governor have pushed and pulled each other in directions they themselves have not always wanted to go.
Maryland, lore has it, is "America in miniature." We have: a combination of urban, suburban and rural life; the Chesapeake Bay as well as beaches, mountains, rivers, lakes and caves; a very high percent of African-American people and minorities in general; the very Democratic counties (Montgomery, Prince Georges and Howard) but the majority of the 23 counties typically vote Republican; the military bases; and now the biotech industry, Michael Phelps and Katie Ledecky.
Maryland is a microcosm of the country.
The state government is neither New York nor Alabama, neither very blue nor very red. It is in the purple category although most Democrats statewide want to return to blue territory throughout the entire government and the Republican voters are hopeful they can retain Government House.
This will be a challenge with an impressive number of candidates in Tuesday’s Democratic primary, including Peter Franchot, Tom Perez, Wes Moore and Doug Gansler. Perez is a fighting liberal and former U.S. secretary of labor; Franchot, the popular comptroller, is an Annapolis insider who is quite progressive but hardly left-wing; Moore is a dynamic outsider with a fresh perspective; Gansler is a former attorney general who has strong progressive and moderate credentials.
Whether you are a Democrat or a Republican, it is hard to argue with former Sen. Barbara Mikulski, who said that Maryland is no longer "cobalt blue."
The voters of Maryland, like the voters of Massachusetts, Connecticut and Illinois over the course of several decades, have frequently selected a Republican governor to either restrain or manage or lead the legislature. They have also elected supermajorities in both chambers of the legislature to push for progressive change on matters of education, health care, transportation and crime.
Because of its diverse population and its balance of industry and farming and tourism; because of its racial strife in Baltimore and progressive calls to fight crime and eliminate police brutality; because it is the home of former Gov. Parris Glendening's Smart Growth Movement as well as the National Anthem; and because it has been balancing progressive and conservative values the last eight years, Maryland is a model for the reshaping, renewal and redirection of America.
A view of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on June 25, 2026. President Donald Trump jolted Republicans during a fiery appearance at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, scrapping a housing bill signing ceremony and clashing behind closed doors with a party rebel who challenged him over the Iran war. Trump had been expected to sign the bipartisan housing.
Only Trump doesn’t care about housing
It was August 15, 2024. Then candidate Donald Trump stepped out of his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club’s columned clubhouse to a gaggle of reporters. He was flanked by tables of groceries and signs showing the rising cost of food. Also on one of the tables was a dollhouse, meant to represent the equally alarming rise in housing prices.
It was a speech about the economy, the single most important issue of the 2024 election cycle, full of promises that went right to the heart of Americans’ anxieties. While former President Joe Biden and then Vice President Kamala Harris were contorting themselves to posture a good economy that just needed more time to recover from the pandemic, Trump was preying on voters’ very real fears of unaffordable gas, groceries, and homes. It was obviously a winning message.
In that speech, Trump promised, “We’re going to open up tracts of federal land for housing construction. We desperately need housing for people who can’t afford what’s going on now.”
As of mid-2023, there had been a housing shortage of nearly four million homes, according to the National Association of Realtors. Americans all over the country were either priced out of buying new homes due to low inventory, trapped in their existing homes by sky-high mortgage rates, or facing exorbitant rent hikes thanks to corporate investors buying up rental properties. Americans needed help, and Trump promised it.
Cut to March of 2026, when Trump reportedly told House Speaker Mike Johnson, “No one gives a sh*t about housing.”
That kind of thinking may explain why Trump this week suddenly announced he was canceling a signing ceremony for the bipartisan “21st Century ROAD to Housing Act,” a housing bill co-sponsored by Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Tim Scott that passed the House 358-32 and was approved in the Senate on Monday.
Trump instead demanded Congress pass the SAVE America Act, his controversial election grievance bill that doesn’t have enough Republican support to get passed in the Senate.
It’s just the latest in a line of policy self-owns where Trump has seemingly intentionally made life more difficult for Republicans hoping to keep their majority. Despite midterm elections occurring in the midst of a blistering economy and an unpopular war, they were surely hoping the housing bill would give them something — anything — to brag about when they returned home to their districts.
And very much to the contrary, Americans do give a sh*t about housing. According to a recent survey by the Bipartisan Policy Center, a whopping 79% say the cost of housing is extremely or very important to them. Eighty-three percent say Congress should take action on the issue — like it just did. Eighty-nine percent say the House and Senate need to work together to pass affordable housing legislation — like they just did. And 63% say they would be more likely to vote for a lawmaker if they helped pass legislation to build more affordable homes and lower housing costs — like they just did.
There aren’t many issues that unite Americans like housing does, and very few bipartisan policy wins Congress can point to, and yet, Trump is holding that bill hostage in order to get his pet project — which doesn’t even have the support of his own party — pushed through.
If you’re trying to make sense of something so nonsensical, as I’m sure many Republican lawmakers are, it’s certainly sad but not actually all that complicated. Trump said what he needed to get reelected and then promptly abandoned his promises in order to pursue his own self-interests, even if those interests are bad for Republicans and bad for voters.
That’s just the kind of guy he is.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.