(Zero Hedge)—Maryland’s tax-and-spend Democrats—obsessed with a far-left progressive agenda, ranging from condoms for kids to gender identity to reparations to climate change to criminal illegal aliens—have pushed the state closer and closer to the brink. The self-created financial mess unfolding in the state predates President Trump’s second term and derives from leftist activists who have seized power in recent years and squandered taxpayer funds.
Now, Maryland’s financial credit profile is deteriorating—for the first time in decades—after Moody’s downgraded the state’s creditworthiness to Aa1 from AAA, according to Fox Baltimore.
Since 1973, Maryland has maintained a top-tier credit rating, long seen as a reflection of fiscal discipline and responsible governance. However, far-left Democrats in Annapolis have chosen to run deficits to fund their progressive pet projects. This credit downgrade puts Maryland on the disastrous pathway toward becoming “Illinois 2.0.”
The move by Moody’s ends more than three decades in which Maryland held the highest bond rating from the three rating agencies: Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch. Moody’s had given Maryland a AAA rating every year since 1973 — until Wednesday. Prior to Wednesday’s announcement, Maryland was one of 14 states to have the highest rating from the three major agencies — Fitch, Moody’s and Standard & Poors. –Maryland Matters
About a year ago, Moody’s downgraded the state’s outlook from stable to “negative,” citing significant concerns about looming structural deficits due to Annapolis’ out-of-control education spending.
Moody’s assessment of Maryland’s deteriorating creditworthiness comes as Democrats in control of the General Assembly and the governor’s seat struggle to tame a projected $3.3 billion deficit through cuts, cost shifts, and $1.6 billion in taxes and fees.
Democratic leaders in Maryland—including Governor Wes Moore, Senate President Bill Ferguson, House Speaker Adrienne Jones, the state treasurer, and the comptroller—are pointing fingers at federal cutbacks tied to President Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) initiative as the source of the state’s fiscal strain.
“To put it bluntly, this is a Trump downgrade. Over the last one hundred days, the federal administration’s decisions have wreaked havoc on the entire region, including Maryland,” the joint statement from Gov. Moore and others stated, adding, “Washington, D.C. received a credit downgrade. Thousands of federal workers are losing their jobs. Actual and proposed cuts to everything from health care to education will continue to exact an incalculable toll on Maryland and states across the country.”
But this deflection by Maryland Democrats masks years of unsustainable progressive policy decisions not rooted in financially sound decision-making.
Meanwhile, Maryland’s economy remains heavily exposed to government spending because roughly 20% of its GDP is tied to government spending: 10% from local government, 6% from the federal sector, and 4% from state operations (as of 2023). In such a heavily government-reliant economy, even modest reductions in government activity can have outsized effects, yet those cuts take time to work into the system.
Republicans have criticized Gov. Moore and Democrats for their previous spending binge…
“A year ago, Moody’s changed Maryland’s fiscal outlook to ‘negative’ due to our looming deficits and Blueprint spending. This was well before President Trump’s reelection and before any federal retrenchment,” Republican House Minority Leader Jason Buckel said via a statement, adding, “Foisting the blame anywhere but at the feet of the excessive spending championed by Maryland’s Democratic party is, at best, disingenuous.”
“Governor Moore promised to make this ‘Maryland’s Decade,’ but he and Maryland’s Democratic supermajority keep putting all their eggs in one basket, banking our entire economy on the federal government instead of building a diversified, competitive private sector,” said Republican Senate Minority Whip Justin Ready.
“Since well before Governor Moore, Maryland governors—Democrats and Republicans alike—protected this AAA rating as a symbol of our financial integrity,” said Republican Senate Minority Leader Steve Hershey.
Hershey noted, “But in just over a year, Governor Moore’s administration has eroded that legacy through unchecked spending and a lack of serious fiscal discipline. His feel-good messaging can’t cover up the fact that the choices made under his leadership have left Maryland weaker, not stronger.”
Maryland Loses AAA Bond Rating: Senate Republican Leaders Say “We’re Paying the Price for Failed Leadership” pic.twitter.com/c6kDYjFQtK
— Maryland Senate Republicans (@MDSenateGOP) May 14, 2025
In February, we noted:
Our recent conversation with a large asset management firm in the region revealed the state’s dire fiscal situation and how their clients are being told not to add Maryland munis to their bond portfolio. Some clients are being advised to find residency in conservative states amid fears Democrats will enact out-of-control tax hikes as the state implodes.
Even though Maryland still holds one of the highest possible credit ratings, the slippery slope has begun for the state as unaccountable Democrats have done everything in their power to ignore taxpayers to prioritize illegal criminal aliens, woke, and climate change nonsense.
Maryland’s demise via a series of reporting pieces:
- June 5, 2024: “Self-Created Hole”: Education Reforms Push Maryland Toward Financial Cliff
- July 13, 2024: Maryland “Can’t Import Itself Out Of Energy Crisis” Amid Urgent Need To Boost In-State Power Generation
- November 28, 2024: Maryland’s Death Spiral: Reckless Democratic Lawmakers Spark Budget Crisis Fears As “Deep Recession” Looms
- February 23: Maryland Democrats’ ‘Extremist’ Green Agenda Sparks Power Bill Crisis Crippling Households
- February 27: Maryland Democrats “Clearly In Denial” As State Faces Twin Crises
- March 5: Maryland Dems Lose All Sense Of Reality: Focus On Condoms For Kids, Reparations As Crises Pile Up
- March 29: Maryland Democrats Pass “Sleep Tax” – Is A Thinking Tax Next?
- April 3: Far-Left Maryland Lawmakers Pass Reparations Bill While Financial Crisis Looms
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Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
