Danielle J. Brown, Maryland Matters

There were repeated references to “my friend” from here or “the gentle lady” from there, but the niceties were overpowered by the shouting and the finger-pointing Wednesday during a second day of debate on Maryland's fiscal 2026 budget.

The House ultimately approved the $67 billion budget for next year, after three hours of debate — which was on top of seven hours of testy back-and-forth Tuesday when House Democrats beat back a series of Republican amendments.

While Wednesday’s debate was shorter, it was no less heated, with the highlight — or lowlight, perhaps — coming in a shouting match between two Democrats that eventually pulled in the speaker.

“I know this is not popular, as a person in the majority party … I stand here because I feel like I don’t have a place in this place anymore — I don’t. And it’s for some of these reasons in this very budget,” said Del. Sheree Sample-Hughes (D-Dorchester and Wicomico).

“It doesn’t look like what the Eastern Shore is in need of,” she said in explaining her “no” vote on the budget, which includes more than $2 billion in cuts and $1 billion in tax increases.

When House Speaker Adrienne Jones (D-Baltimore County) tried to tell her the allotted two minutes of floor time was up, Sample-Hughes steamrolled over the Speaker.

“And you know what, I’m not even going to talk about the budget stuff anymore, and yes I know that’s what the purpose is – I get that,” Sample-Hughes said. “This institution is not for everybody … ”

When Del. Stephanie Smith (D-Baltimore City), the House Parliamentarian, called a point of order to remind the delegate that her time was up, Sample-Hughes pushed right on through, leading Smith to shout over her. That didn’t stop Sample-Hughes, who was trying to press how the budget would affect her constituents.

“Parliamentarian, I hear you, but enough is enough,” Sample-Hughes said. “When I have an 80-year-old woman calling me saying she’s working with candles to light her house–”

As Jones brought the gavel down, Smith issued another warning. “The two minutes for the gentle lady,” she said, pausing for emphasis, “are over.”

“I can count,” Sample-Hughes shot back.

“Yes, but you must sit down,” Smith said. “You no longer have the floor.”

“I understand, the one last thing I will say,” Sample-Hughes continued, “and I was not trying to be controversial –”

“People are allotted two minutes to explain their – I can talk louder; do you want to do that?” Smith shouted, her frustration growing. “Sit down.”

“Let’s keep calm,” Jones jumped in. “You had your two minutes.”

Sample-Hughes yielded but not before saying, “Two minutes is up, but the passion for the people continues” — a line that drew a smattering of applause from House Republicans.

It was not the first flare-up of the day: Several delegates engaged in pointed remarks over the “core values” of Republicans and Democrats as they argued over what should be cut or preserved as the state works to close the $3 billion deficit for fiscal 2026.

“I’m disappointed that the minority party wants our citizens to go it alone based on their proposals on this budget. They want every man to fight for themselves,” said Del. Malcom P. Ruff (D-Baltimore City), citing a series of failed amendments Republicans proposed Tuesday.

Del. Malcolm P. Ruff (D-Baltimore City). (Photo by Bryan P. Sears/Maryland Matters)

Ruff said that despite $2.5 billion in spending cuts, he is proud that the proposed budget still funds programs in education and raises salaries for state workers.

“This is what our budget and our morals and our values are about — stand 10 toes down,” he said, raising his voice to a level that Del. Jason Buckel (D-Allegany) later described as yelling.

“I appreciate my friend from Baltimore City, but I don’t appreciate being yelled at,” Buckel said. “If I did it too, you wouldn’t like it as much.”

But as Buckel’s comments went on, the volume of his comments also rose at times.

“We’re the only state in our damn region that has a multibillion-dollar budget deficit and needs to raise billions of dollars in taxes to do the same stuff that they do in Richmond,” he said raising his voice at the end.

“I don’t know if we know how things work here in Maryland,” he said. “They seem to know how they work in Virginia. They seem to know how they work in Pennsylvania, and Delaware and West Virginia. But we can’t seem to get it done here in Maryland.”

Despite the shouting and two hours of debate, the House voted 100-39 to approve House Bill 350, the main part of the budget , with Sample-Hughes joining Republicans to vote no.

About an hour later, the House voted 93-46 to approve the second prong of the budget in House Bill 352. In addition to Sample-Hughes, Democratic Dels. Brian Crosby of St. Mary’s County and Heather Bagnall of Anne Arundel County joined Republicans opposing the bill.

Gov. Wes Moore claimed in a 2006 document that he earned a Bronze Star for his service in Afghanistan, a medal that he never received, according to a report Thursday in The New York Times.

In a 2006 application to the White House Fellowship program unearthed by The Times, Moore claimed that as a result of his work as a director of information operations during the war in Afghanistan, “the 82nd Airborne Division have awarded me the Bronze Star Medal and the Combat Action Badge.”

His resume with that application also claimed that Moore, then a captain in the Army, had received the Maryland College Football Hall of Fame Award. There is no such award.

Both misstatements were explained away in the Times’ story by Moore’s superiors at the time — his commanding officer in Afghanistan and a coach on the Johns Hopkins University football team, where Moore was a player — as additions they insisted he make, on the expectation that he would receive the honors.

In a statement Thursday in response to the article, Moore said he was sorry he had not spoken up before this to correct the record. But he also went on the offensive, saying he would “once again, set the record straight, as people hunt for new ways to undermine my service to our country in uniform.”

“Over the last few weeks, our country has grown used to seeing what it looks like when a veteran’s integrity is attacked for political gain,” said the statement from Moore, who has been called on in recent weeks as a proxy to defend Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz over questions about Walz’s military record.

“It was an honest mistake, and I regret not making that correction,” Moore said about the claim of having earned a Bronze Star. “But do not think for a moment that this attack on my record holds any bearing on how I feel about my service, my soldiers, or our country.”

This is not the first time questions have been raised about Moore’s military record. In past interviews, with Gwen Ifill and Stephen Colbert, Moore was introduced as a Bronze Star recipient and he did not correct the misstatements, according to the Times.

Questions about the Bronze Star also came up during Moore’s 2022 campaign for governor, and he insisted at the time that he had never claimed himself to have won the award, only that he failed to correct the mistake in others.

“Of the hundreds of interviews that I have given, the idea of pulling together a couple where I did not correct a reporter or correct an interviewer, it just continues to highlight a measure of desperation in the attacks,” Moore said during an April 2022 campaign event.

Moore told the Times that he forgot he had claimed on his White House Fellowship application to have won the Bronze Star, and that it was a surprise to him when he saw the paperwork this week.

The reaction from Maryland elected officials who had seen the story, including some who are military veterans, was similar to Moore’s explanation: It was a simple mistake that Moore compounded by not correcting it in the intervening years, they said.

Sen. William C. Smith Jr. (D-Montgomery County), a lieutenant commander in the U.S. Navy Reserve, noted that it was Lt. Gen. Michael Fenzel, who was a lieutenant colonel and Moore’s superior in Afghanistan at the time of the White House application, who told Moore to put the Bronze Star on his application.

Fenzel told the Times that while the medal had not been awarded at the time, he and every other officer who needed to sign off on the award had done so, and he assumed it was coming through. Fenzel said he only learned this week that the medal was not awarded.

“When you’re evaluating someone, you should make sure you understand the full record,” Smith said Thursday of the latest furor. “As you look at the full record, you see a brigade commander signed him off to get [Moore] processed.

“He has been cleared all the way through for that. He has not misrepresented his record in any form or fashion,” said Smith, the chair of the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee.

Most of Moore’s defenders focused on his service and said that should be weighed against the Bronze Star claim.

Sen. Nick Charles (D-Prince George’s), who served in the Air Force from 2001 to 2006, defended Moore in an Instagram post.

“While on Active Duty in the Air Force. I served with some brave men and women. Now, here at home I’m proud to serve and stand with a brave Governor, @iamwesmoore. Wes, we are with you, and you have air cover from me,” Charles’ post said.

Other Democrats rallied around the governor.

Del. Diana M. Fennell (D-Prince George’s), a member of the legislature’s Veterans Caucus, said Thursday that she had not looked closely into the issue, but trusts Moore’s account.

“I believe whatever he said, because he’s such a wonderful person,” she said. “He was in the military and that’s what matters.”

Smith called Moore not only “a veteran who has served in a combat zone putting his life on the line, but he has been the most pro-veteran governor we have ever had.”

“He has used his position as governor to further the interest of all veterans in Maryland. Not only did he put his life on the line leading troops in a combat zone, but he’s now continuing to serve veterans,” Smith said. “To my mind, he’s a patriot and his service should be honored and commended.”

But Doug Mayer, a political strategist with Strategic Partners and Media, said that while the Bronze Star on the White House application may be a minor infraction, it “could speak to his [Moore’s] character” in a larger way. Mayer, who served as communications director for former Gov. Larry Hogan (R), pointed to other questions that have been raised about Moore, including claims that his memoir, “The Other Wes Moore,” exaggerated the amount of time he spent in Baltimore growing up.

“What I hope this does, for everyone’s sake, is rip off the Band-Aid of invincibility and nonsense that surrounds this guy,” Mayer said.

State Senate Minority Leader Stephen Hershey (R-Upper Shore) said questions of Moore’s integrity are a concern — but not the biggest concern he has with the Democratic governor.

“Honestly, I’m more concerned about how he’s governing the State of Maryland than I am about this,” Hershey said in a text message Thursday.

Maryland Matters is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Maryland Matters maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Steve Crane for questions: editor@marylandmatters.org. Follow Maryland Matters on Facebook and X.

With schools set to start in a couple weeks, most parents of kindergartners are working to make sure to get required vaccinations for their children before sending them off to school.

But not all parents. Over the last decade, more parents have opted their children out of vaccination requirements through the use of nonmedical religious exemption – especially in recent years following the COVID-19 pandemic.

The number rarely rises above a percent or two of an incoming kindergarten class, typically accounting for no more than a couple hundred children per year. But that means that in the years since 2002, a total of more than 10,000 kindergartners have attended public and private schools without vaccination records, according to historical data from the Maryland Department of Health.

The rising percent of religious exemptions in recent years may point to increasing rates of vaccine hesitancy among families, said Daniel Salmon, a professor and director of the Institute for Vaccine Safety at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

“We’ve seen a post-COVID increase,” Salmon said. “With COVID … things got really polarized with more misinformation and disinformation. Vaccinations became a very political topic. And that’s not helpful.”

Maryland law requires that children have a handful of vaccinations when they enter kindergarten, in order to protect themselves and their classmates from transmissible diseases, such as measles, polio and chickenpox, among others. Children can be exempted if there is a medical reason they cannot receive a vaccine or a religious restriction against it.

The process to invoke the religious exemption in Maryland is simple. Parents can just sign a form that says: “Because of my bona fide religious beliefs and practices, I object to any vaccine(s) being given to my child.”

Elizabeth Elliott, president of the Maryland Association of School Health Nurses, said she understands the need for exemptions, but she said it is also important that as many children as possible be vaccinated.

“Herd immunity is really important for those of us – kids, staff members, families – in a school community that, for medical reasons, can’t be vaccinated,” Elliott said. “It’s incumbent upon the rest of us to vaccinate ourselves and our children to protect those of use who can’t have the vaccine because it’s unsafe.”

But tracking vaccine hesitancy is a tricky task, according to Salmon, and there are many factors that contribute to why some families don’t get their kids vaccinated.

“It’s really hard to answer that question based on data, based on how you measure vaccine hesitancy,” he said. “So the best measure we have is the proportion of children entering school who have a nonmedical exemption.”

The earliest data readily available from the state is from the 2002-2003 school year, in which 0.2% of kindergartners got a religious exemption, or about 126 kids out of roughly 63,000 entering kindergarten that year.

The rate increased steadily over the years: Ten years later, for example, about 0.6% of kids had religious exemptions, resulting in about 419 kids not receiving vaccinations in 2012-2013.

Religious exemptions spiked in 2019-2020 when 2.7% of kindergartners, or 1,641 kids, opted out of vaccination requirements. The COVID-19 pandemic went into full swing in the spring of 2020, so those families would have opted out prior to the the rise in cases in the United States.

Since the 2021-2022 school year, at least 1 percent of kindergartners in Maryland had a medical exemption – a couple hundred a year.

While the percent and numbers have increased, Salmon believes the numbers are not rising high enough for major concern.

“It’s a pretty small number,” he said. “I guess it’s a big increase by percentage, it’s a fair number of kids, but the absolute numbers are fairly small.”

He also noted that a state average does not tell the entire story of vaccine hesitancy.

“It’s also misleading because the exemptions tend to cluster geographically, socially, and the state average can can’t capture that social, geographical cluster issues,” he said.

In the last school year, there were higher concentrations of religious exemptions in some of Maryland’s more rural counties. The highest rate of religious exemptions were in Worcester (4.21%) and Cecil (3.75%). But Baltimore City also ranked high for religious exemptions, at 2.05% of kindergartners.

Maryland tends to fall behind the national average of religious exemptions, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2022-2023, the national average for nonmedical exemption was 2.8% of kindergartners, compared to Maryland’s 1.4% for that year.

Salmon notes that there are many factors since the pandemic that have led to more parents seeking out exemptions from vaccination requirements.

“There’s not a simple answer. It’s a mixture of people not being aware of the diseases … people worried about the safety of vaccines, often full of misinformation and disinformation,” he said. “We need to do a better job of communicating to parents more broadly, listen to people’s concerns and be empathetic and address them with the best available science.”

Elliott added that there are other underlying reasons why some families seek a religious waiver.

“What I often see now is families signing the religious objection because it’s too difficult to get to their children their vaccines … It’s not surprising to hear, ‘Well, I just couldn’t get to the clinic.’ So they just signed the religious waiver,” she said, noting that this issue gets more common in middle school.

Elliott agreed with Salmon that the best way to reach families who are hesitant about vaccinating their kids is to be is to be understanding and respectful. She said that as a school nurse, it is part of her responsibility to help families understand why vaccines are important for health and safety in a school setting.

“We are the ones that will view the records and ensure compliance and reach out to families,” she said. “It is a state requirement that students are immunized. And we spend lots and lots and lots of time picking up the phone and having those conversations, politely and respectfully, informing those parents.”

Maryland Matters is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Maryland Matters maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Steve Crane for questions: editor@marylandmatters.org. Follow Maryland Matters on Facebook and X.