Maryland Gov. Wes Moore marked the first anniversary of Roe v. Wade being overturned by visiting a Planned Parenthood clinic and pledging to keep the state a safe haven for abortion care. “The forces that are actively working to roll back rights, they are busy now. … The thing we are really standing in unison and saying is: Not in Maryland,” the Democratic governor told The Baltimore Banner after touring the Annapolis clinic on Friday.

As his mother aged, Skip Boyles would drive her to the eye doctor, where she underwent treatment for a little-known eye disease that eroded her vision and added extra burden to her later years. He had hoped to avoid the same fate — but after Boyles’ father contracted the same debilitating disease near the end of his life, the younger Boyles began waiting for age-related macular degeneration to knock at his door, too.

The owners of Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. will pay $2 million in back rent after the eatery abruptly closed last year in Harborplace’s Light Street pavilion. The payment was detailed this month in settlement filings of a lawsuit by the Harborplace receiver over the national restaurant’s departure and failure to pay rent for more than two years and caps a sometimes bitter 10-year run for the seafood eatery.

Over 300 laws are set to go into effect Saturday — the same day that cannabis will be legalized for adult recreational use. Lawmakers scrambled to pass emergency legislation to set up a taxation and regulatory system ahead of the impending legalization date to allow the first round of licensed retailers to have their businesses up and running.

We’re just a week and a half away from Maryland’s new recreational cannabis laws taking effect. Ahead of it, police are asking people to know the risks, especially behind the wheel. The Maryland Cannabis Commission recommends waiting six hours after consuming marijuana before driving. Baltimore County police are asking everyone to be a responsible user and know that cannabis could impair your ability to safely operate a vehicle.

 

 

Five years ago, the newsroom in Annapolis where I was editor was attacked. Five people were shot to death. In the aftermath, as I’ve recently been reminded, I started asking what we could do to prevent the next mass shooting. There were good answers. Mike Busch, then the speaker of the Maryland House of Delegates, told me he’d seek a ban on ghost guns. It passed three years after he died in 2019.

Frederick County Executive Jessica Fitzwater on Thursday announced the formation of a work group to examine county law pertaining to data centers and other related issues. Fitzwater also announced that she signed an executive order directing the Department of Planning and Permitting to pause, for nine months, any individual zoning map amendments that would change a landowner’s property to general industrial or limited industrial.

 

Kate Mercer and Sara Gordon grew up a block apart in their eclectic Cabin John neighborhood. They celebrated birthdays together, had sleepovers at each other’s homes, and ice-skated together on the C&O Canal when it froze over. Their moms were in the same book club and sewing circle. Now, Mercer, 34, and Gordon, 35, are moving back to the houses that their moms still live in and own. But this time, the longtime friends are bringing their husbands and kids with them.

A venerated political leader celebrates his 84th birthday. A widower for over a quarter century, he’s about to get married. His longtime chief of staff is leaving his office for another job. And his extraordinary career is going to be toasted at a massive political gala that’s being headlined by the most powerful Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.

Jane Austen once wrote that human beings seldom provide the complete truth to anyone and when they try, it’s usually a “little disguised or a little mistaken.” But e suspect the author of “Pride and Prejudice” never saw a financial disclosure form. The boundaries there are a great deal more straightforward than those involving social standing in novels written centuries ago.