Politics

When Anthony Brown stood at the rostrum in the House of Delegates after he was sworn in as Maryland’s first Black attorney general in January, he outlined his priorities for the 2023 General Assembly session. In the months since, the legislature granted Brown’s office statutory authority to enforce federal and state civil rights laws and also give its Independent Investigations Division power to prosecute police-involved deaths and injuries.

Florida lawmakers voted to allow people to carry loaded weapons anywhere without a permit. Several states have fully banned abortion and limited transgender children from participating in sports. Missouri is moving to defund libraries as part of a fight over book-banning. And in Tennessee, there was an effort to expel Democratic lawmakers who led a protest for gun control.

Local civil rights leaders and supporters gathered Wednesday in Annapolis to denounce the recent expulsion of two Black representatives from the Tennessee legislature, a move they described as one of the “most anti-democratic acts in a democratic nation” in recent memory. Late last month, hundreds of protestors gathered in Nashville after a Christian school shooting left three 9-year-old students and three adults dead.

Baltimore plans to resume enforcement of an evening curfew on young residents, a response from Mayor Brandon Scott to surging youth gun violence and the most violent start to a year for teens since at least 2015. The controversial tool has been on Baltimore’s books for more than 20 years but enforced only sporadically. Since the mayor’s announcement Sunday night that the city is “going back to the old days” to enforce curfews, the decision has drawn fire from numerous angles – from advocates for criminal justice reform to the police union to high school students.

Ten minutes before midnight on Monday, the decorous Maryland House of Delegates veered into disorder. Republicans in the minority, furious the Democratic House speaker would not let them talk, demanded that she cede control of the chamber. More than two dozen GOP members marched to the room’s exit in protest, and one yelled into his microphone.

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D) will take his first international trip as governor this week, leaving for London for unspecified trade meetings and to give a keynote speech at forum for global philanthropists, his office said Tuesday. Moore’s speech to the Skoll World Forum in Oxford will be Thursday evening, followed by meetings with companies Friday, his staff said.

The Maryland Attorney General’s Office is set to receive broad new powers, including the authority to prosecute police-involved deaths, under a set of bills that passed out of the General Assembly this session. The office will also be able to investigate and sue over civil rights violations in housing, employment, public accommodations and leasing of commercial property, which was another legislative priority for Attorney General Anthony Brown when he took over the office this year.

Governor Wes Moore last week announced that Maryland is awarding nearly $92 million to expand high-speed internet access to an estimated 14,500 households and businesses across the state through Connect Maryland, an initiative to close the digital divide through the Office of Statewide Broadband. The Connect Maryland Network Infrastructure Grant Program made 35 awards to Internet Service Providers and local jurisdictions to construct new broadband networks to service unserved households.