Politics

Republican gubernatorial nominee Dan Cox said Thursday he was seeking to intervene in Maryland election officials’ legal effort to count mail-in ballots early in the upcoming November election — a move that election workers and observers have pushed for, but one that Cox claims would break state law. Cox, a lawyer and freshman delegate who has sued state government in the past, said he filed a motion opposing the Maryland State Board of Elections’ petition ahead of a scheduled hearing on the matter next week in Montgomery County Circuit Court.

Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby’s federal perjury and mortgage fraud trial is now set to begin March 27, more than a year after she was originally indicted and months after she will have left office. U.S. District Judge Lydia Kay Griggsby ordered the new trial date Thursday, a day after postponing Mosby’s trial for a second time. The two-term Democratic prosecutor was scheduled to start trial Monday.

Former adviser to President Donald Trump and conservative pundit Kellyanne Conway will headline an annual fundraising event for the Maryland Republican Party next week, the party announced Thursday. She will replace South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, a potential Republican presidential candidate in 2024, as keynote speaker because Noem recently underwent back surgery.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, speaking Thursday at the IRS New Carrollton Federal Building, laid out her vision for a modernized, responsive, tech-savvy tax collection agency equipped to manage 21st century challenges. Yellen said the agency plans to hire 5,000 new customer service representatives to vastly improve taxpayer service before the next filing season, using part of the money from a recent $80 billion infusion of funds from the so-called Inflation Reduction Act.

Democrats are punting a vote to protect same-sex and interracial marriages until after the November midterm elections, pulling back just days after Majority Leader Chuck Schumer vowed to put the Senate on the record on the issue “in the coming weeks.” The delay was requested by key senators who have been negotiating changes to the legislation and comes at a time when many Republicans have been signaling opposition.

The Mayor’s Squeegee Collaborative held its first community conversation on Tuesday night. The group has been meeting since mid-July to try and resolve issues involving squeegee workers in Baltimore. There was no clear solution presented at the meeting, rather it was about hearing from the public about possible solutions to the longstanding challenge of city youth who squeegee.

Republican U.S. Rep. Andy Harris abruptly switched gears on Wednesday, pulling out of an October debate with Democratic challenger Heather Mizeur over his insistence that the Libertarian Party candidate be included. The campaign of Harris, a conservative seeking a seventh term in the 1st Congressional District, had released a statement earlier in the day to The Baltimore Sun, saying he “won’t pull out if a third-party candidate can’t attend, but he will nonetheless insist on them being invited to debates.”

U.S. District Court Judge Lydia Kay Griggsby ordered a postponement Wednesday of Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby’s upcoming perjury and mortgage fraud trial in part because of Mosby’s delayed disclosure of expert testimony. Mosby, who will leave office in January, was scheduled to begin trial Monday and the postponement comes after the defense failed to disclose the details of its expert witness testimony by Griggsby’s mandated July 1 deadline. Mosby’s defense sent its last disclosure, at Griggsby’s direction, to prosecutors late Friday night.