WASHINGTON, DC – In case you missed it, Karen Tumulty at The Washington Post detailed Senator Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.) first year in the Senate, the challenge she put up against the Administration – especially RFK Jr., her willingness to work across the aisle on behalf of Marylanders, and her north star: building pathways to wealth for hardworking Marylanders.

Notable Quotes

  • “We often talk a lot about poor people, working-class people and middle-class people, but my opinion is that sometimes we obviously don’t know very many of them, because if we did, I swear we would be focused very differently in terms of how we legislated,” she said. Having come from a working-class family and still living in the county where she grew up, Alsobrooks added, “it isn’t theoretical for me.”
  • An early glimpse of what was ahead came when Robert F. Kennedy Jr. visited her windowless temporary office in the basement of the Dirksen Senate Office Building to lobby for his nomination to be Trump’s health secretary. “I knew before even speaking with him he had no background to support his nomination,” Alsobrooks said. What Kennedy was most known for were discredited theories regarding vaccine safety. So she asked him whether he intended to substitute his own judgment for that of scientists at the National Institutes of Health, the nation’s premier biomedical research agency, which is in Maryland and would be under his purview. His answer, as she recalled it: “I will replace bad scientists with good scientists.”
  • On legislation, Alsobrooks has sought out Republican co-sponsors — to the point, she said with a laugh, that she has been known to track them down in the senators-only ladies’ room. Among the GOP senators who have signed on to bills with her: Cynthia Lummis (Wyoming) on one steering more federal money to early detection and treatment of uterine fibroids; Tim Scott (South Carolina), on one allowing beauty industry businesses, including hair stylists, barbers, and nail technicians, to qualify for more generous federal tax credits; Katie Boyd Britt (Alabama), on one to make homeless youth eligible for more services.

Read the full story in The Washington Post here: Angela Alsobrooks on first Senate year: The mission was ‘crystal clear.’

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