Politics

Angela Crenshaw has been appointed director of the Maryland Park Service, becoming the first Black woman to lead the organization. The veteran ranger has headed the state park service in an acting capacity since April. Josh Kurtz, Maryland’s secretary of natural resources, praised Crenshaw and Rachel Temby, the newly appointed deputy director, as “exceptional leaders who are ready to guide the Maryland Park Service forward and ensure equitable, sustainable, and safe access to our incredible state parks.”

Frederick County Board of Education member Jason Johnson has launched a campaign to represent Maryland’s 6th District in the U.S. House of Representatives, becoming the first independent candidate in the race. Maryland’s 6th District includes all of Frederick, Washington, Allegany and Garrett counties and northern Montgomery County.

U.S. Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger said Monday he would back U.S. Rep. David Trone in Maryland’s Senate race next year — lending Trone the support of one of the state’s longest-tenured congressmen while three others in the mostly Democratic eight-member delegation have endorsed Angela Alsobrooks. Ruppersberger, a former Baltimore County executive who was first elected to the House in 2002, is the first major Democratic official in the Baltimore area — or across the state — to endorse Trone in the May 14 primary.

When parents fall on hard times and find their salary is not enough to provide for their children, they may be able to get help from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program to keep kids fed and housed while they work to improve their economic situation. But The Maryland Center for Economic Policy, a progressive nonprofit research and analysis organization, claims that the anti-poverty federal program does not currently sufficiently lift families out of their low-income economic status, and may even perpetuate negative stereotypes of people on welfare.

Bobby Goodfellow of Ridgely’s Delight lives so close to Oriole Park that he can hear fans react to a Gunnar Henderson homer before the sound delay reaches is TV. But on the night the Orioles clinched the American League East, he got even closer. Goodfellow was in the stands and celebrated as the center field video screen flashed a message that Gov. Wes Moore, the Maryland Stadium Authority and the Orioles had struck a deal to keep the team in town for 30 more years — a deal fans would later learn was a nonbinding agreement.

Maryland officials and advocates — fearing a U.S. Supreme Court decision they say could reverse years of precedent around guns and protecting women — will keep a close eye this week on a case that may have wide-ranging implications for victims of domestic violence and the state’s slate of progressive gun laws. The primary question in U.S. v. Rahimi, scheduled for oral arguments, is whether individuals who are the subject of domestic violence protection orders can be forced to surrender their firearms.