Politics

Two members of Maryland’s congressional delegation said on Friday that it’s now unlikely that Congress will pay for 100% of the Francis Scott Key Bridge rebuild before the election. Speaking at the Maryland Association of Counties summer conference in August, Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin said Congress was on its way to fully funding the rebuild after the Senate overcame certain hurdles.

Senate candidate Angela Alsobrooks (D) will pay back taxes after improperly claiming homestead and senior property tax credits for homes in D.C. and Prince George’s County. Her campaign said Alsobrooks, who is running for an open Senate seat in Maryland and is currently the chief executive of Prince George’s County, was not aware of the errors. The improperly applied tax credits were first reported by CNN and confirmed by the Alsobrooks campaign.

Elections officials and secretaries of state around the country have sounded an alarm that the postal service might not be equipped to handle mail ballots this year. But Maryland officials say there’s little cause for concern here. “Marylanders can have confidence in the mail-in ballot program,” said Jared DeMarinis, the state elections administrator. “We’ve mitigated as many variables as possible.”

As Maryland officials scramble to meet the state’s ambitious clean energy mandates, they are coalescing around a concept that seemed unthinkable a decade ago: That nuclear energy must be part of the solution. Even environmentalists are coming to terms with the idea. Paul Pinsky, the director of the Maryland Energy Administration, and one of the leading climate advocates in Annapolis during his long tenure in the General Assembly, recalled protesting against nuclear power plants in the 1970s.

Dressed in a creamy green blazer with pink sheath, Kara D. Beverly joined several hundred attendees this month at La Familia Soundstage, a Black-owned event space in Mount Vernon. A hulking screen blaring the presidential debate was the focal point of the dimly lit room. She wore the colors of the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc. to witness the first woman of Black or Asian descent to become the Democratic nominee for president. Kamala Harris is also an AKA and Beverly feels a special sisterhood with her.

Yvonne Briley-Wilson was appointed by Gov. Wes Moore Friday to serve as acting correctional ombudsman leading the new Office of Correctional Ombudsman, according to a news release. Briley-Wilson, an attorney and executive director, will be nominated during the next state legislative session, which begins in January 2025, for Senate confirmation.

Kamala Harris blasted Donald Trump as a threat to women’s freedoms and their very lives, warning in a speech in the battleground state of Georgia on Friday that Republicans would continue to choke off access to abortion if he returns to the White House. The Democratic vice president’s visit came days after ProPublica reported that two women in the state died after they did not get proper medical treatment for complications from taking abortion pills to end their pregnancies.

On a recent Thursday night, the patrons at Verde spilled out the door of the popular Canton restaurant and onto the sidewalk. The neighborhood pizza joint was packed: families huddled around pizzas, friends and lovers dishing over wine, and … members of Councilman Zeke Cohen’s staff having a dinner meeting? Verde’s owners gave $1,000 this year to Cohen’s campaign for City Council president, one of many bars and eateries stitched into Baltimore’s political fabric.