Baltimore City Council members on Monday let go their last opportunity to neutralize a ballot initiative that could cut their membership by nearly half, leaving six of them without jobs and upending politics at City Hall. Instead of introducing their own counterquestion, the 15 council members are betting city voters will side with them and reject the ballot measure this November.

It started with the screeching tweet. In 2019, Washington Post reporter Chelsea Janes was covering then-presidential hopeful Kamala Harris’ appearance at her alma mater, Howard University. Janes posted on Twitter (now X) that members of Alpha Kappa Alpha, of which Harris is a proud member, “screeched when she mentioned her time there,” adding, “I didn’t expect to hear screeches here.”

 

The race to represent South and Central Baltimore’s 11th District on the City Council had all the makings of a blowout. A little-known part-time football coach who had never run for office and only arrived in Baltimore four years ago was up against a City Hall veteran with a massive war chest and a sprawling list of endorsements — the only city candidate backed by Gov. Wes Moore.

The Republican presidential ticket is two men, Donald Trump and Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance. But women played prominent roles throughout the GOP convention week here — whether speaking on the convention floor or at glitzy events, at celebrations of donors and party activists, or making things happen behind the scenes.

A Baltimore City councilman is taking aim at the citation docket program, introducing legislation for quarterly reporting to the council after what he said were “ethical and fiscal flags” raised at a budget hearing earlier this year. Councilman Kristerfer Burnett, a Democrat representing West Baltimore, has been critical in the past of the docket, a program begun by Baltimore State’s Attorney Ivan Bates, also a Democrat, to manage low-level criminal offenses such as loitering, drinking in public and drug possession.

Gov. Wes Moore on Monday joined the chorus of Democrats in Maryland and across the country endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris to lead the party’s presidential ticket after President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 election a day earlier. Moore also said he has “no interest” in leaving his role to serve as her running mate, as some political analysts had speculated.

A member of the Prince George’s County Board of Education was serving on the board after taking a job with a school system in Missouri at the start of the year. But District 1 representative David Murray only resigned last week — around the time a complaint was filed with Maryland’s Board of Education. Murray’s new job as the chief academic officer for the Ferguson-Florissant School District in the St. Louis area was announced in December.

Members of Maryland’s Prescription Drug Affordability Board expressed frustration Monday on the slow pace of the so-called “cost review” process to determine if six prescription drugs are unaffordable for workers on state health plans. While most of the administrative hurdles have been addressed, staff said it could still take months before the board is at a point where it can officially declare whether a half-dozen medications are unaffordable for Marylanders.

Workers at Maryland-based Bethesda Game Studios, the company behind blockbuster games such as “Starfield,” the “Elder Scrolls” series and the “Fallout” series, have formed a union, according to the Communications Workers of America. A “majority” of developers at the company’s locations in Dallas, Austin and Rockville voted to unionize, according to a post on social media from the union.

It’s a sad sign when a grade of C is at the top of the class. The Policy Center for Maternal Mental Health recently awarded Maryland a C for maternal mental health (“Report: Md. Shows ‘incremental’ gains on maternal mental health, but still needs work”). That made Maryland one of the top 14 states in the country for 2024.