Politics

The Maryland Senate race is already the third most expensive Senate race in the country — and it’s about to get more expensive. MoveOn.org, a political action committee that supports progressive candidates, announced Wednesday that it will endorse Angela Alsobrooks, the Democratic nominee for the state’s open U.S. Senate seat.

In the fall of 2020, incoming mayor Brandon Scott surprised environmental groups and disappointed community leaders by reneging on a campaign promise to support ending the city’s practice of sending trash to a highly polluting incinerator in South Baltimore. He said opposing the renewal of the city’s 10-year contract with the owners of the incinerator (commonly known as BRESCO) was impractical.

The jury in Donald Trump’s New York hush money trial finished its first day of deliberations Wednesday without reaching a verdict after meeting for more than four-and-a-half hours. Jurors will return on Thursday morning at 9:30 a.m. ET to resume deliberations, but the 12 men and women will also again hear from Judge Juan Merchan.

As part of its ongoing effort to replace diesel-fueled school buses, the Biden administration on Wednesday said it will provide approximately 530 school districts across nearly all states with almost $1 billion to help them purchase clean school buses. The initiative, part of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean School Bus Program rebate competition, will give funds to school districts in 47 states and the District of Columbia to help them buy over 3,400 clean school buses. Alaska, Hawaii and Nevada are not part of this round of funding.

Harry Dunn, a former U.S. Capitol Police officer from Maryland who defended the building during the Jan. 6 riot, will join former police colleagues in campaigning for President Joe Biden in battleground states. According to the Biden campaign, Dunn, former Sgt. Aquilino Gonell, and Officer Daniel Hodges are scheduled to appear in battleground states including Nevada, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and New Hampshire between now and June 27, the date of the first debate between Biden, a Democrat, and former President Donald Trump, the presumed Republican nominee.

In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen that drastically changed courts’ framework for evaluating 2nd Amendment challenges, criminal defense lawyers are using Bruen to challenge the constitutionality of their clients’ firearms convictions.

Live Nation Entertainment Inc. is pushing back against an antitrust lawsuit brought by the Justice Department and 30 attorneys general, including Maryland’s, a suit it said makes “absurd” claims and will do little to benefit consumers. “DOJ is not helping consumers with their actual problems,” according to the statement released Thursday by Dan Wall, executive vice president of corporate and regulatory affairs for Live Nation.

Thurmont’s Board of Commissioners has cut the town’s property tax rate as part of a budget for the next fiscal year. The new rate is 29.87 cents per $100 of assessed valuation, down from 32.06 cents per $100, which was approved for fiscal year 2024. The budget that will go into effect on July 1 has about $4.7 million in expenses in the town’s general fund, up from about $4.3 million in the current operating budget.

On the morning of April 8, David Smith sat in a downtown tower his lawyers had tried to keep him out of. It was there, in a law office on Saint Paul Street, that an attorney for Baltimore City Public Schools would finally get to question Smith, executive chairman of Sinclair Broadcast Group and owner of The Baltimore Sun, about his involvement in a lawsuit against the school system.