Gov. Wes Moore pledged to work with the Trump administration to advance the interests of Marylanders, but also vowed to push back if needed. Photo by Steve Crane.
Gov. Wes Moore pledged Thursday to work with the incoming Trump administration to advance the interests of Marylanders, even as he put down a marker and vowed to push back against the new Republican administration when necessary.
“We will vigorously defend the interests of all Marylanders, and we are ready to push back on this new White House when necessary,” Moore said. “But where we can find common ground, we will, not only as a matter of principle but as a responsibility to the people we represent.”
The comments came during brief remarks at the start of a Cabinet meeting Friday in the State House, before reporters were ushered out of the room without the opportunity to ask questions.
It came just three days after President-elect Donald Trump, written off as a political pariah after he was voted out of the presidency four years ago, completed a stunning comeback, winning both the popular vote and the Electoral College votes that will put him back in the White House on Jan. 20, 2025.
A supposedly dead heat of an election, that experts predicted could take days or weeks to decide, had been called for Trump by 8 a.m. Wednesday morning.Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, conceded on Wednesday afternoon, and the latest tally showed Trump with 312 electoral votes to Harris’ 226; it takes 270 to win.
Harris easily won deep-blue Maryland and its 10 electoral votes, garnering 1.6 million votes to Trump’s 961,215, according to the latest numbers Friday from the Maryland State Board of Elections. Moore, who spent a considerable amount of time campaigning for Harris in battleground states that the Democrat ultimately lost, acknowledged the sting of the election results, saying it was not “a result that a majority of Marylanders hoped for.”
“I know there are people in our state who voted for Donald Trump, and there are people in our state who voted for Kamala Harris,” Moore said. “The common denominator is that they are all Marylanders. And they will all be defended, they will be protected, and they will be heard.”
Sen. Stephen S. Hershey Jr. (R-Upper Shore), the Senate minority leader, welcomed the governor’s “commitment to find common ground with the incoming Trump/Vance Administration.”
“We are also committed to helping our Democratic colleagues navigate this relationship for the benefit of all Marylanders,” Hershey said in a prepared statement. He then said that the message of the presidential election also applies in Maryland: Voters are worried about their daily lives and their budgets and don’t want higher taxes or more government regulation.
While typically short on details, Trump’s campaign promises included proposals for sweeping reductions to the federal government — including elimination of the Department of Education — and a crackdown on immigration that would include mass deportations beginning on day one of his administration.
Trump’s hand has been strengthened by Republican wins that gave the party control of the Senate and are on the verge of letting the GOP maintain control of the House.
Critics have questioned the feasibility of many of Trump’s plans. But Maryland elected officials have already started worrying about what a second Trump administration could mean on federal projects like Baltimore’s propose Red Line, the Francis Scott Key Bridge replacement, the relocation of the FBI headquarters from Washington, D.C., to Greenbelt and more. They are also expressing fears about the possible loss of federal jobs, a major factor in the state’s economy.
Moore ticked off an alphabet soup of acronyms for federal agencies housed in Maryland, including the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, NASA and more, before pledging to defend those agencies and the jobs they provide.
“The federal government is our biggest employer, and we have around 140,000 federal employees in our state,” he said. “These Marylanders are essential to our national competitiveness, and they are the bedrock of our economy. Decisions made in Washington directly affect them, and we need to keep these Marylanders in the front of our minds in everything we do.”
Abortion-rights advocates celebrate Question 1 win, now worry about a federal abortion ban
Moore also pledged to protect the constitutional right to reproductive freedom that Maryland voters overwhelmingly approved on Tuesday. More than 74% of voters backed Question 1, which adds abortion protections to the state constitution.
Trump bragged on the campaign trail about appointing three of the six Supreme Court justices who voted in 2022 to overturn Roe v. Wade, the nearly 50-year-old ruling that recognized a federal right to an abortion. But he also said it should be left to states to regulate abortion, and said he would veto any attempt to pass a nationwide abortion ban.
But abortion-rights advocates in Maryland are already worried that Question 1 could be undermined by Trump and a Republican Congress, and Moore said Friday that his administration would push back against any federal attempts to weaken abortion rights.
“The people of our state voted resoundingly to codify the right to choose into the Maryland Constitution. That right will be honored and respected in the state of Maryland,” he said.
Moore said his administration began planning in February “for all possible” post-election outcomes, whether it be Trump, Harris or President Joe Biden, who dropped his reelection bid this summer. He said his administration has “run and pressure-tested countless scenarios” and that the state is “prepared for all possibilities.”
In the meantime, he said, the state will continue working with the Biden administration, which has a little more than another 10 weeks in office before turning the government over to the Trump administration on Jan. 20.