I’m a Maryland journalist, through and through.

My first job was at the Maryland Coast Press. I once ran the state’s oldest weekly newspaper, the Maryland Gazette. Now I’m a columnist for The Banner.

Go figure, then, that I was born in D.C. — at the Washington Hospital Center, a scant three months after it opened.

When my folks moved us to Ocean City, my foreign accent marked me for mockery. No bouncy Delmarvaese for me. Water, not woter. House, not hawse. Idea, not idear.

Even now, I have an ear for the District. So, when U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin said the District of Columbia should become part of Maryland, I had to ask.

That’ll never happen, right?

“It’s got to be up to the people of Washington, D.C., what they want to do to try to get through this nightmare,” said the Montgomery County Democrat, another wandering son of the District.

This nightmare, of course, is brought to you by President Donald Trump and his hell-bent-for-destruction Republican Congress.

Think Maryland caught a bad dose of Trump flu in his first 100 days? Federal job cuts, slashed tax revenues and canceled grants look far worse across the boundary stones.

House Republicans tore a billion-dollar hole in D.C.’s local budget, a third of what Maryland faced this year, but in a city with roughly one-tenth of the population.

The narrow GOP majority forced D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser to dismantle Black Lives Matter Plaza, a monument to self-determination, and she’s warning that layoffs and public safety cuts may follow.

“The Constitution of the United States gives the Congress, not the president, full legislative authority over the nation’s capital,“ said Tom Sherwood, a D.C. journalist who’s covered city politics for decades.

In March, Raskin suggested retrocession to protect District residents from Republican ravages.

“I just wanted to express to the mayor my sense that they continue to be mistreated,” Raskin said.

Unless you’re a student of D.C., you might wonder if I meant recession or regression.

Nope. Retrocession is how the District of Columbia could rejoin Maryland.

A little history. I’ll be quick.

In 1791, Maryland and Virginia gave 100 square miles on the Potomac River to the brand-new federal government for a national capital. Efforts to give it back began almost immediately.

By 1847, Virginia-side residents voted to rejoin the Old Dominion, creating the city of Alexandria. That’s why a map of the remaining 69 square miles looks like a chipped diamond.

Another century passed before Congress gave D.C. residents a vote in national elections. In 1973, they got home rule, an elected mayor and council with powers similar to those of a governor and state legislature.

Still without voting representation in Congress, though, many D.C. residents want to become the 51st state. The idea is often coupled with Puerto Rico as 52, a Republican yin to the District’s Democratic yang.

High water came four years ago, when Raskin, D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton and other Maryland and Virginia representatives won a House vote for statehood.

Senate Republicans killed it. Now the party’s worst examples are out for revenge. U.S. Rep. Andy Harris, Maryland’s lone Republican, is holding up a federal budget deal until he gets a guarantee that the city won’t spend local tax money on anything he considers woke.

They’ve put D.C. statehood in a coma, while poor Puerto Rico just had another island-wide power outage.

Even with all this history, retrocession is not a realistic alternative. It would require votes in D.C., Congress and the Maryland General Assembly.

“In order for retrocession to occur, three things would have to happen,” Sherwood said. “Congress would have to want it, the District would have to want it to happen and Maryland would have to want it.

“I don’t think any of these three want it to happen.”

Making D.C. part of Maryland again would realign the power dynamics of Annapolis, a new center of gravity affecting the orbiting interests of Montgomery, Prince George’s and Baltimore counties. The District would supplant Baltimore as the state’s largest city — and probably its biggest headache.

The deal would upend taxes, congressional districts, regulatory authority and schools.

Republicans, the perpetual minority in the General Assembly, would hate it even more than Democrats.

“We would be a total disruption to the politics of the state of Maryland,” Sherwood said.

And yet.

It could be a temporary arrangement, a demi-step toward statehood. That would give Eastern Shore and Western Maryland secessionists ideas, but maybe that’s a good thing.

If we jettison them and absorb Washington, it’s an even swap — 700,000 residents in, 700,000 residents out.

But we’d get monuments, museums and so much more.

Two football teams, the Ravens at M&T and the Commanders at a new RFK (if that deal is approved)! Two baseball teams. Basketball! Hockey! Alex Ovechkin!

Metro could take over MARC and the MTA, Union Station to BWI Airport to Penn Station! We already snagged its former CEO as Maryland’s transportation secretary.

Maryland wouldn’t lose an Air National Guard flight wing; we’d gain two — and still they wouldn’t move from Joint Base Andrews.

Annapolis and Georgetown, party towns separated at birth, reunited at last. Woo-hoo!

“It seemed convoluted to me, but I respect Raskin,” Sherwood said. “So I’ll give him time to explain what he meant.”

I just blew through my monthly exclamation point allotment. It’s not what Raskin meant.

“People who live in our part of the state feel the injustice of MAGA control over people in D.C. and there’s a lot of political fluidity between D.C. and Montgomery and Prince George’s and other counties in our region,” he said.

“I think the basic posture people have is that we want to support our friends in Washington and do what we can to increase their political autonomy and self-government.”

Oh. That. Right, right.

In the eyes of MAGA world, we are all Washingtonians — political opponents whose rights can be stepped on no matter where we live.