Welcome to a new year of Backchannel. Let’s begin with a question.
Have you ever attended an event — maybe a concert, ballgame, or political speech — and left with a particular image stuck in your mind? It’s as if your brain has singled out one moment and archived it.
When I look back on Maryland politics and sports coverage from 2025, I think about visuals that have been imprinted on me, perhaps because they seemed to capture or reveal something in a single frame.
This happened in downtown Baltimore, at the U.S. Capitol, and even at an Orioles game.
Here are some of those “snapshots,” and why they seem significant:
Congressional sit-in
On a hot July day, Democratic members of Maryland’s congressional delegation sought to inspect conditions inside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facility in Baltimore.
The lawmakers took an elevator to the sixth floor of the Fallon Federal Building and waited in a corridor to be led through a locked door into the detention holding area.
But the acting field office director refused to allow them inside, creating an impasse. Believing they might be there for a while, the lawmakers sat down on the corridor floor, making their visit look like a sit-in.
That image lingered with me. Reps. Sarah Elfreth and Kweisi Mfume and Sens. Angela Alsobrooks and Chris Van Hollen — all Maryland Democrats — sat awkwardly on the floor. Reps. Johnny Olszewski Jr. and Glenn Ivey were also there, but weren’t in the photo I took.
So, why did it stick with me? It’s unusual to see Congress members sitting on the floor. They seemed unguarded. No press secretary was positioning them — for example, in front of an American flag — for effect.
More than that, the photo became fodder for a social media debate.
It garnered 1.4 million impressions after I posted it on X with the caption: “Live. Members of Maryland’s congressional delegation aren’t being let in to tour the Baltimore ICE detention facility. It looks like a sit-in.”
The White House reposted the photo, adding: “Ah, yes, here we go once again. No one defends criminal illegal aliens quite like Democrats.”
The Maryland Democratic Party countered with a post saying Republicans lied by claiming their goal was only to get violent criminals off the street “and now, they are blocking legitimate oversight visits. What are they hiding?”
The photo was setting people off. Republicans poked fun at the representatives and accused them of engaging in political theater. Democrats praised the persistence of the lawmakers, who were unable to tour the facility.
The debate was yet another reflection of the nation’s huge divide, particularly on immigration issues.
A tragic death
I can’t forget the photo from the family of 13-year-old Juliana Peralta. The Colorado girl had been slipping further from reality — from her parents, her friends, and anything she could actually touch — and into a virtual world where an artificial intelligence chatbot she confided in enveloped her with what she mistook for empathy. She took her own life in 2023.
The photo of the girl with the braces and bangs just breaks your heart.
Hope in a dark time
The image in my head is of an erasable board mounted on Olszewski’s House office wall. “In all things, it is better to hope than to despair,” says the statement by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, a German literary figure.
I saw the board on a dark day in September. Conservative commentator Charlie Kirk had been fatally shot the day before, which was just months after Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband were killed.
Congress members seemed challenged to hope for an end to the violence and explosive rhetoric characterizing the national political climate.
Yet another homer
I can still see New York Yankee Cody Bellinger circling the bases in the first inning of an April game at Camden Yards. He was the fourth of the first five New York hitters to hit a homer.
I remember thinking: It’s going to be a long season in Birdland.
Have a news tip? Contact Jeff Barker at jebarker@baltsun.com
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