Howard County residents are no strangers to Maryland Area Rail Commuter trips across the Baltimore-Washington region. But what today’s commuters might not know is they are riding the same rail system used by famed abolitionist Frederick Douglass nearly 150 years ago. From his post-Civil War-era home in Washington, D.C., Douglass could walk down to the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad depot at 6th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue and catch a train north. He would have disembarked at what is now the MARC Savage and Jessup stations for his visits to Howard County. “[He could] probably be in Howard County, if he caught the right train, within an hour, hour and a half, maybe even less,” said Columbia resident and local historian John Muller, author of the 2012 book “Frederick Douglass in Washington, D.C.: The Lion of Anacostia.”

A long list of Maryland leaders at the federal, state, and local level, many of them Black, stood in front of the entrance to the Greenbelt Metro Station on Friday and spoke into microphones as if there was a speaker connected to the Oval Office. While the audience on hand may have been local media, the intended audience was the Biden administration. Maryland’s elected leaders at all levels were blindsided by the updated scoring system put out by the General Services Administration as it gets ready to choose the site of a new FBI headquarters. Several of them took turns blasting those changes, while also focusing on the president’s pledge to make the federal government more equitable, which was issued through an executive order on Day One.

When Mohammed Choudhury came to Maryland as state superintendent a year ago, he brought experience teaching in districts with robust programs for students learning English as a second language. After working in school systems in Los Angeles and San Antonio, he found the multilingual resources here lacking. For instance, Maryland had fewer dual-language immersion schools, where students can take some core classes in a language other than English, such as taking math in Spanish. And while California and Texas graduated multilingual learners at a rate of more than 70%, according to 2015-16 data from the U.S. Department of Education, Maryland’s rate was 47.5%, one of the lowest in the country.

The city of Baltimore has joined dozens of other municipalities suing manufacturers for their use of “forever chemicals.” The chemicals, called perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, have been used since the 1940s to manufacture a wide range of products, from carpeting to firefighting foam, because they are resistant to heat, water, grease and oil. But PFAS do not easily degrade in the environment, meaning the chemicals have accumulated over time. Also, PFAS can accumulate in the bodies of humans and animals, and some types can cause serious health problems, including reproductive defects, developmental problems in children and certain types of cancer. As a result, industries have phased out the chemicals, though some remain in use. Baltimore filed its suit in U.S. District Court against more than 20 manufacturers that used PFAS, including 3M, DuPont and Chemours, according to a news release Friday from Democratic Mayor Brandon Scott.

A union representing state workers is upset with the decision to move the Maryland Department of Health — and about 1,200 employees — to a vacant complex north of downtown Baltimore called Metro West. The federal government spent about $92 million building Metro West for the Social Security Administration. The complex opened in 1980 but has sat vacant since 2014 when the agency left. Two years later, Towson-based Caves Valley Partners bought Metro West from the federal government at auction for $7.1 million. Under a proposed contract, the Maryland Department of Health would be its first tenant in a decade, with a 15-year lease starting in 2024 that would cost more than $12.1 million annually.

Police officers and new recruits in Montgomery County, Maryland, will now receive extra training to help them better understand the communities where they work and serve. It’s part of the county’s move to increase trust between its diverse residents and law enforcement. County Executive Marc Elrich signed the Community Informed Police Training Act into law Friday after the Montgomery County Council passed the bill unanimously last week. At the signing ceremony, At-Large Council member Will Jawando said the bill is something that has been in the works for about two years, while Elrich noted the county’s arc has been toward change even before reform calls were reignited after the death of George Floyd in May 2020.

Many elections feature an incumbent facing a challenger, but the race for a state Senate seat from District 9 boasts a current Democratic senator waging a fierce battle against a Republican who confidently labels himself a future senator. Katie Fry Hester, a moderate Democrat who ousted Republican Sen. Gail Bates four years ago in a conservative district, is hearing a lot of tough words from the candidate whose mailings bill him as “Future State Senator Reid Novotny.” “Just a short 4 years ago, the far-left incumbent rode the blue wave into office by less than 1/2 of 1%,” reads a campaign email sent out by Novotny. “From there she continued to vote with the left 98% of the time and does not represent this area.”