As Americans, we take pride in the freedoms we enjoy every day. We wake up with the liberty to pursue happiness as we see fit. We decide what time to rise, what to eat for breakfast, and which path our day will take. We choose where we work, who we spend our time with, and how we spend our leisure time. Our lives are shaped by a series of choices that seem small, but in the grand scheme of things, reflect the essence of our freedom.

The weather is getting colder, Election Day is approaching — it’s the perfect time to avoid falling into an abyss of existential dread by planning your next summer vacation. And Southwest Airlines has some good news for travelers who prefer to depart Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport. The Dallas-based carrier, which handles roughly 70% of BWI’s air traffic, has announced six new nonstop routes between BWI and the West Coast starting in mid-2025.

Growing up in Baltimore, Angela Crenshaw remembered hearing the names of Maryland’s African American history “titans” like Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman. Her school history books, however, only mentioned Tubman briefly, detailing her time spent helping slaves escape on the Underground Railroad. It wasn’t until Crenshaw began working as a park ranger at the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad State Park and Visitor Center in Dorchester County that she truly connected with Tubman’s life and story.

The Annapolis City Council passed a resolution Monday night ensuring that city restaurants can continue seasonal outdoor dining operations next year. The move comes as pending legislation about outdoor dining nears a vote. The resolution, sponsored by Alderman Ross Arnett, a Democrat representing Ward 8, extends a pilot program allowing restaurants to turn outdoor spaces, such as sidewalks and parking spaces, into additional seating during warm weather.

Former President Donald Trump is proposing mass deportation if he is elected, and that could have major economic and social impacts in Maryland, a state where immigration has for years been making up for losses in population and the native-born labor force. Nearly 30% of the state’s population is foreign born, and about 225,000 people are in the state without authorization. Maryland is also home to just under another 250,000 people who are authorized to live in the country but are not naturalized.

The taxman cometh for everyone. Even the state. For the first time in memory — perhaps ever — the Internal Revenue Service audited Maryland government. And it turns out Maryland taxpayers owe Uncle Sam at least $5.4 million for tax year 2020. “This is a new one,” Comptroller Brooke Lierman said at Wednesday’s Board of Public Works meeting where the audit was discussed. “It might be the first time the state has ever been audited. We looked back 30 years and it had not happened before,” she said.

The combine kicked up a cloud of dust as it rolled past, snatching soybeans out of Eastern Shore dirt. Across the road, another combine did the same. It’s a familiar harvest season scene in Kent County, where more than half the acreage is considered prime farmland. Albert Nickerson leaned on the back of his Ford pickup and watched his brother-in-law pilot the giant harvester. Nickerson doesn’t work the land, but his wife is a sixth-generation farmer. His oldest son is seventh. (Photo: Kaitlin Newman/The Baltimore Banner)

Baltimore renters who have lived in the city for at least a year in one of more than 120 neighborhoods can access a grant up to $20,000 to purchase a home in any of those same neighborhoods, thanks to an expanded program from Live Baltimore. The city’s marketing arm, which operates as a nonprofit organization, said in a Wednesday news release that as many as 100 residents could tap into the funding as long as they purchase homes in “grant-eligible” areas. That includes much of East and West Baltimore, as well as neighborhoods south of the Hanover Street Bridge.

As city officials try to keep Hilton Baltimore Inner Harbor afloat, they said they see a new labor contract as an investment in making the hotel more competitive, even though it will likely increase the struggling hotel’s labor costs. But some question whether the struggling city-owned hotel’s problems are too big to overcome. The 757-room hotel overlooking Camden Yards opened in 2008 after the city borrowed about $300 million in bonds to fund the construction of the West Pratt Street building.

Vice President Kamala Harris will pledge to Americans that she’ll work to improve their lives while Republican Donald Trump is only in it for himself as she delivers her campaign’s closing argument Tuesday from the same site where the former president fomented the Capitol insurrection in 2021. One week out from Election Day, Harris’ address from the grassy Ellipse near the White House is designed to encourage Americans to visualize their alternate futures if she or Trump takes over the Oval Office in less than three months.