Politics

Just a few weeks before he was elected governor, Wes Moore participated in an online fundraiser with Hillary Rodham Clinton, the former presidential candidate, senator, secretary of state and first lady of the nation and the state of Arkansas. The moderator asked Clinton — who has spent decades working in or adjacent to government — to give advice to the man who everyone in attendance expected to become Maryland’s 63rd governor.

The House rejected proposed Senate amendments on a high-profile higher education bill Friday and instead appointed conference committee members to help resolve the differences between the two chambers. The House and Senate are at odds over House Bill 1244 and Senate Bill 1022, a measure designed to improve the approval process for higher education programs.

In her first few months as a Minnesota state legislator in 2021, state Rep. Kaela Berg often wondered: “What the hell am I doing here?” A single mother and flight attendant without a college degree or prior political experience, Berg now had a seat at the legislative table, shaping policy decisions in her home state.As she ran against a former two-term Republican representative — a commercial real estate agent — she also was struggling for housing and living in a friend’s basement.

Lawmakers, Moore administration officials and environmentalists have reached a compromise on a data center bill that is enabling a leading green group in the state to drop its opposition to the measure. Gov. Wes Moore (D) has made legislation to help attract the data center industry to Maryland a top priority for this legislative session.

The Maryland Senate approved a Howard County Republican to serve on the State Board of Elections on Friday — but not without debate. “I think one of the qualifications that we need to consider when selecting our members of the State Board of Elections is their temperament. Another is their judgment,” Senate Education, Energy and the Environment Committee Vice Chair Cheryl Kagan, a Montgomery County Democrat, said before the deciding vote.

To community groups and climate-focused organizations, Maryland’s policy on trash incineration is a glaring environmental injustice. To the companies that own and operate incinerators, it’s a windfall. The state classes trash-to-energy plants, like Wheelabrator’s BRESCO incinerator in South Baltimore, as a form of renewable energy – making them eligible for millions of dollars in subsidies despite the carbon emissions and air pollution they release.

Mayor Brandon Scott’s campaign will air its first TV and radio ads this week, selling him, as one grandmother declares, as “the kind of young man we can all be proud of.” The four new ads mark a continued strategy by the campaign to tout Scott’s accomplishments and allude to the corruption scandal of former mayor Sheila Dixon, his chief Democratic primary opponent, without naming her.

Crews working to clear the steel frame of the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge and the 984-foot cargo ship that felled it face “an incredibly complex job” – one that is essential to reopening the Port of Baltimore and recovering the remains that may lie under the wreckage, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore said Thursday. “When you have a chance to see that wreckage up close, you fully understand the enormity of the challenge,” Moore said in a news conference, noting,