Posted on 07/15/25
| News Source: Maryland Matters
Baltimore, MD - July 15, 2025 - Baltimore’s federal delegation gathered in City Hall Monday to highlight progress on some of the city’s longest-running struggles, such as lowered crime rates, fewer vacant properties and reductions in overdose deaths.
But the successes were overshadowed by recognition that actions from the Trump administration could disrupt future progress in those areas.
“It’s great to be here with the best federal delegation in the country,” Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott told reporters after a meeting with some of Maryland’s top Democrats. “Especially right now as congressmen across the country are voting to raise costs and strip them of their basic rights and needs, and we are grateful to have this team fighting for us.”
The conversation was part of an annual check-in by members of Congress on how the city is faring and how the federal delegation can help further the city’s goals. Scott was joined by Sens. Chris Van Hollen and Angela Alsobrooks, both Democrats, and Reps. Kweisi Mfume (D-7th) and Johnny Olszewski (D-2nd).
Scott highlighted continuing declines in the city’s homicides and nonfatal gun injuries in recent years. Recently, the mayor’s office announced that Baltimore has recorded a 22.7% decrease in homicides and a 19.6% decline in nonfatal shootings since last July
Other crime statistics have also come down. Compared to last year, auto thefts have dropped 34%, robberies are down 22%, arson is down 10% and carjackings are down 15%, according to recent data from city officials.
“Today is not a cause for celebration – (it is) for recognition of where we are and where we have come and the work that remains for us to go further,” Scott said.
Scott also noted recent progress made on reducing the number of vacant properties throughout the city, noting there are now fewer than “13,000 vacant properties citywide … after two decades of being stuck at around 20,000.”
The members of Congress who joined him each praised Scott for his part in helping to make progress in those areas, but they warned that broad federal cuts and other decisions from the Trump administration pose a threat to those efforts.
“Baltimore is a strong, resilient and caring city,” Olszewski said. “And it is one of the many cities across this country that are deeply under attack by an administration who seems to relish heartless, cruel and often illegal activity in its assault on the people of this country.”
Olszewski referenced the recently approved budget reconciliation legislation that will usher in more than $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid and food-assistance programs nationwide over the next 10 years.
Mfume added that those cuts will “affect all of us, but it’s particularly going to affect people here in Baltimore.”
“It’s going to affect children, small children, and pregnant mothers and others who are trying to feed their children — this is where I draw the line with this administration,” Mfume said. “We can’t punish children who are hungry because we don’t like the politics of the city or the people or the parents.”
Scott said that those cuts to Medicaid and other health-based programs could impede intervention efforts to help people struggling with addiction and overdoses, such as in the recent mass overdose event that occurred in Baltimore last week.
He said that investigations on what caused the mass overdose event that led to 27 people needing medical services to recover are still on going.
“All these cuts that are coming to Medicaid, to Medicare, all these things … it’s going to impact every single part of the medical system,” he said, “when you talk about treatment for addiction, behavioral health and substance abuse treatment, specifically.”