Politics and power

It’s spring the year before a Baltimore election — meaning consultants, elected officials and their potential challengers are quietly maneuvering to identify viable candidates.

Maryland is still on track to set up a marketplace for recreational cannabis sales beginning July 1, but House and Senate lawmakers have differences to work out.

A boisterous crowd gathered at the State House to celebrate significant progress this year — a new law will expand coverage for gender-affirming care for people with Medicaid insurance — but they noted that much more work is ahead in making the state safe and inclusive for trans Marylanders.

On Thursday, delegates and senators wouldn’t meet face-to-face to hash out differences on education spending. By Friday, they’d reached a deal.

As a condition of the 43-4 confirmation vote in the Maryland Senate, lawmakers will withhold a small portion of the budget for Butler’s office until he submits reports on his progress toward reform.

The Child Victims Act will lift all age limits and time limits for filing lawsuits against institutions such as churches and schools for enabling child sexual abuse. And it undoes a tricky legal maneuver called a “statute of repose” that some believe was snuck into a prior bill, which had the effect of actually insulating institutions from older legal claims.

Baltimore must find ways to rightfully honor writer, orator and abolitionist Frances Ellen Watkins Harper and the power of her legacy, author and Johns Hopkins History Professor Martha S. Jones says.

Maryland has a long history with rye whiskey.

Maryland lawmakers have hit an impasse in their budget negotiations over $2 million for a private school tuition program, the first sign of friction this year in the State House, which is entirely Democratic-run for the first time in eight years.

Trump has denied any wrongdoing in the New York hush-money case and has called the indictment ‘political persecution’

Since November, three states have affirmed abortion protections in their constitutions, including California, Vermont and Michigan.

The FBI and U.S. Marshals have been searching for McGrath for 17 days since he skipped out on his federal fraud trial in Baltimore.

Michael Browning, the former longtime manager of Gunpowder Falls State Park, is charged with raping two former park employees.

The new library — at 100,000 square feet — will be at least twice the size of any other facility in the county library system and include an auditorium, a literacy classroom, flexible community space and a digital lab. The building was designed by English architect Thomas Heatherwick, and construction is expected to begin as soon as 2026.

Housing redevelopment in Baltimore’s distressed neighborhoods would pay for itself with economic benefits such as tax revenues and construction jobs, says Paul C. Brophy, a principal with Brophy & Reilly LLC who specializes in neighborhood revitalization.