There was a time when the Potomac River was a political fault line dividing two great powers. Shifting alliances, political maneuvers, betrayals, and turnarounds – this was not the Civil War but the time of the Powhatan and Piscataway paramountcies and the tribes loyal (or not) to them. It was a time of kings and emperors, ambition and downfall.

Jazz Lewis wound up at the University of Maryland, not by luck or privilege, but by the strings of a guitar. A Prince George’s County native, now a Maryland House delegate, Lewis said he paid for his college degree with a mix of scholarships and money earned from stints with his church band. As one of the first men in his family to attend college, he said higher education was by no means a given; he earned it.

 

The Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s Office published the office’s first-ever strategic plan on Tuesday aimed at creating a number of tools for victims and witnesses and modernizing aspects of the office. The 23-page plan will guide the agency’s priorities over the next three years and “embodies the office’s commitment to justice, integrity and rebuilding the public’s trust” to ensure fairness, transparency and accountability, Baltimore City State’s Attorney Ivan J. Bates said.

Baltimore Police and city leaders are not in a rush to shut down a pro-Palestinian protest at Johns Hopkins University unless it gets out of control. Police said in a statement that the “City of Baltimore strongly stands with every person’s First Amendment rights.” Protesters set up an encampment and organized rallies on Monday and Tuesday on the Homewood campus.

 

A transportation project along Frederick’s Golden Mile has received a $485,000 federal grant to promote safer pedestrian and bicycle transportation in the city. The multi-modal project along the section of Frederick’s West Patrick Street known as the Golden Mile has received the grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Baltimore City Public Schools is rolling out weapons detection scanners at more high schools this week. This comes after the district piloted the systems at four high schools, including Mergenthaler Vocational-Technical High, Patterson High and Carver Vocational-Technical High schools and the Excel Academy at Francis M. Wood High School.

 

The police chief in Prince George’s County, Maryland, now has the authority to create and enforce additional youth curfew zones under a resolution passed Tuesday by the county council. Under the resolution, business owners throughout the county can request Police Chief Malik Aziz to create and enforce a curfew for kids aged 16 and under, just like the one established last week at National Harbor by County Executive Angela Alsobrooks’ emergency declaration.

Montgomery County residents living near or along the future Purple Line can find out the latest information about the project to build the light-rail line that will travel from Bethesda to New Carrollton during virtual community meetings scheduled in May, according to project officials. “Progress of the Purple Line has reached an exciting period, and our team looks forward to sharing this progress with the public,” Purple Line Senior Project Director Ray Biggs II said in a press release.

 

At the site of the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse, crews plan to refloat and remove the grounded Dali container ship within roughly the next 10 days, allowing more maritime traffic to resume through Baltimore’s port. The ship, which lost power and crashed into one of the bridge’s supporting columns, has been stationary amid the wreckage since the March 26 collapse.

Maryland’s new state superintendent of schools, Carey Wright, positioned her tenure as one built on honesty and transparency in an introductory news conference Monday. Among her first actions is creating a task force to examine the Maryland Report Card, the state’s accountability system that measures schools’ performance.