Politics

Former President Donald Trump is safe following what the FBI says “appears to be an attempted assassination” while playing golf two months after another attempt on his life at a rally in Pennsylvania. Local authorities said the U.S. Secret Service agents protecting Trump fired at a man pointing an AK-style rifle with a scope as Trump was playing on one of his Florida golf courses in West Palm Beach.

There’s a rarified air to the monthly board meetings of the Greater Washington Council of Governments (COG). Elected officials from across the region gather in a bright, airy meeting room on Capitol Hill, far nicer than the grimy government hearing rooms they’re accustomed to, to discuss governing concepts and policy priorities without getting too deep into the weeds most of the time.

In November, Howard County voters will get the chance to amend the county charter to include an office of inspector general. The idea picked up steam last summer after a County Council member proposed it and many spoke in favor of the idea at a public hearing. Now the council is moving forward on two tracks, with the fall referendum and two pieces of legislation set to come before the council.

Baltimore City Council members, union leaders, religious groups and community organizations on Sunday called on voters to reject a ballot initiative to cut the number of council districts, asserting that the measure would weaken the democratic process. People for Elected Accountability and Civic Engagement, or PEACE, collected enough signatures to get the proposal on the ballot. Question H would decrease the number of council districts from 14 to eight.

Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen joined other lawmakers and environmental organizations Thursday to introduce legislation that would hold the nation’s largest polluters financially responsible for the costs of the climate crisis. “The reason we’re all gathered here together is because we all agree on a simple but powerful principle, which is that polluters should pay to clean up the mess they have caused, and those who polluted the most should pay the most,” Van Hollen, a Democrat, said during a Capitol Hill press conference Thursday.

A Donald Trump campaign bus rolled into Maryland Thursday in a visit organized by the Black Conservative Federation. The bus visited Northwood Plaza. The group said it’s committed to getting former President Trump back in the White House. “Yes, we do support Trump. Why? We feel like his policies worked when he was in office in 2016,” said Brenda Thiam with the BCF. “I am a graduate of an HBCU, and he worked hard with the presidents of HBCUs to bring them funding.”

A year ago, the annual dinner of the group Progressive Maryland turned into an impromptu pep rally for U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-8th), who was the keynote speaker. Raskin had already said he wasn’t going to run for Senate in 2024, but many of the activists at the dinner tried to persuade him to change his mind, with chants of “Run, Jamie, Run!”

Nearly two years after fumbling more than $10 million in federal homeless services funds, officials have approved Baltimore’s request to recoup much of the lost money. Mayor Brandon Scott told reporters last week that officials with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development informed City Hall that it had approved the request to get reimbursed for more than $6 million in grant funds the city received in the 2020 fiscal year — money the city had forfeited after blowing a deadline to send in the reimbursement forms.