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Maryland Loves My Ratty Old Rug More Than It Loves Me

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Al Perrotta is a contributing editor for The Daily Signal. He is the creator of the daily Bananas Republic Substack, former managing editor and writer of The Brew newsletter for The Stream, co-author of "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration" and "Hostile Intent," former vice president and creative director for All Comedy Radio, and writer-producer for the Voice of America.

I just had to show ID at my county dump.

Yes, in order to get rid of my moldy, worn, faded, and generally disgusting old outdoor rug that my wife’s been bugging me for a year to dispose of, I had to hand the landfill worker my driver’s license.“My license?” I blurted. “Well, that’s new.”“Started last week,” he said before scanning the license into a newly installed contraption at road’s edge.

A few hundred yards away to the south, just on the other side of the tree line, rests our local community center. When I go there to fulfil my civic responsibility and American right to vote, nobody asks me for ID. And if Democrats have their way, nobody ever will.

I have to show ID to use the local dump, but not the voting booth.

My ratty old rug means more in Maryland than my vote.

The thought’s enough to leave one down in the dumps.

But Wait, Isn’t Making Me Show ID Racist?  

If I were a Democrat, I’d be framing my complaint differently. Demanding a driver’s license … or shall I say Garbage ID … to discard junk is racist. It’s “Jim Crow 3.0,” to borrow from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. And sexist.

After all, the dump is a public facility. If you can’t provide an ID to prove you’re a local resident … and the Democrats assert that if you are black or a married woman, you are incapable of getting an ID … you must pay extra. The 2026 equivalent of a poll tax.  

Maryland’s freshman senator, Angela Alsobrooks, is a black woman. Does she have any idea the oppression she’d face, the hardship she’d encounter, if made to show ID to use the Calvert County Appeal Landfill? It’s like Bull Connor himself is standing at the gate.

Democracy itself getting hosed.

I have a dream that one day, blacks and women will be marching as one, carrying to the red dumpsters their lumpy mattresses, broken down bicycles, cruddy carpets. We shall overcome the burden of getting an ID.

Clearly, I’m being ridiculous. No one beyond a booze-minded teenager actually believes that getting and presenting a valid ID is a problem. We are forced to identify ourselves all the time for all manner of minor things. The Home Depot up the road wanted my license the other day to return a couple bucks worth of tile spacers.The black woman working customer service did not appear to believe I was enjoying white male privilege by handing over the ID.

And yet suggesting that we make folks prove they are who they say they are when exercising the sacred right to vote has sent the Democratic Party into an apoplexy.

Add to it their demand that Immigration and Customs Enforcement stay away from polling places—a demand so intense it’s a key reason they have Homeland Security shut down in the middle of a war—and you’re left with one conclusion: They want ineligible … in particular, illegal immigrants … to vote.And why is that?  

Maryland Loves Violent Young Illegal Immigrants More Than It Loves Me

It’s bad enough that my ratty rug means more to Maryland than I do, but the evidence has become overwhelming in the past year that Maryland loves illegal immigrants … including criminals … more than your law-abiding servant. (Could the state still be mad at me for leaving when I was young? It’s not my mother … as much as progressives try to be.)The most famous example is Sen. Chris Van Hollen. I’m old enough to remember when local politicians wanted to lock up gangbangers, wife-beaters, and human traffickers, particularly those here illegally. Today, Sen. Van Hollen locks loving eyes at these thugs.

Last year, the Trump administration tried to deport alleged MS-13 gang member Kilmar Abrego Garcia. They sent the euphemistically dubbed “Maryland Dad” back to El Salvador. Van Hollen chased after him like Andrew Walker chasing down Lacey Chabert at the end of a Hallmark movie.

He fought to free Garcia like he’s never fought for the citizens of the state. And this was to set loose on our streets a member of a vicious, demonic gang that earlier this month saw four of its members—all illegal immigrants—indicted for allegedly murdering a 14-year-old boy in a Maryland park.

Gov.—and potential 2028 Democratic presidential candidate—Wes Moore—is little better. Last month, he signed a bill banning local law enforcement from cooperating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Again, this is an example of choosing to coddle criminal illegal immigrants over protecting legal citizens and lawful migrants. Practically guaranteeing more cases like Maryland mother-of-five Rachel Morin, who was abducted, raped, and murdered in 2023 while walking the Ma & Pa Heritage Trail. Her killer, an illegal immigrant who waltzed across Biden’s open border a few months earlier after reportedly killing a woman in El Salvador.

From their war on Voter ID to their vitriol against immigration enforcement, Van Hollen, Moore, and fellow Democrat leaders prove the cartels are more their constituents than card-carrying Americans. Can there be any other conclusion?Democrats have collectively rejected the idea that protecting American citizens, their lives, their property, and their votes is a prime responsibility of government. And that is rubbish.

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.

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