Politics

Steuart Pittman will straight up tell you. If you’re rich, he wants to raise your taxes. “I understand not wanting to pay taxes. Most of us feel that way. But most of us don’t have the resources to hire lobbyists or pour large sums of money into political campaigns. The folks who do those things are the ones creating tax cuts for the wealthy and loopholes for their corporations. They change the rules to benefit their interests, and their wealth grows.”

Two Democratic candidates for Maryland’s open United States Senate seat laid out their priorities and weighed in on a wide array of national, international, and local issues in a crowded church auditorium on Friday night. “Economic opportunity is my first priority,” Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks told an audience of several hundred assembled at Ebenezer A.M.E. Church in Fort Washington, about 10 miles away from the U.S. Capitol.

A super PAC formed to support the mayoral campaign of Sheila Dixon and largely funded by two donors has started spending its piles of cash on TV ads. The Better Baltimore PAC sent $160,870 to Canal Partners Media, an Atlanta-based national TV ad firm that claims to be President Biden’s lead buying agency, on Monday. It sent $20,000 to Washington, D.C.-based RSH Campaigns the same day.

An organization whose chairman challenged the validity of the 2020 presidential election vote count has filed a suit in federal court alleging Maryland’s voter rolls are inaccurate. United Sovereign Americans, a nonprofit Missouri corporation, says the Maryland State Board of Elections’ rolls contain thousands of voters of questionable status, including some with no certified address and others who died or moved away.

To Kathi Green, the odor wafting through her Carroll County community each growing season smells like rotting flesh. “If you’ve ever smelled a dead animal that’s sat around for a day or two?” Green said. “It’s overbearing. It just takes your breath away.” Over the past two years, the stench has started in March, when farmers across the state are allowed to begin spreading fertilizer on their fields after a winter hiatus.

A recent Alabama Supreme Court ruling that equated frozen fertilized embryos to children has shaken up the national conversation around reproductive health care and abortion access, which had already gained urgency after Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022. Potential impacts of that ruling could be factors in the election of Maryland’s next U.S. senator, as the top contenders vie for voters.

Senate leaders Friday said Maryland’s fiscal 2025 budget will continue to protect key priorities without the need for tax increases. The Senate Budget and Taxation Committee finished work on a $63.1 billion budget proposed earlier this year by Gov. Wes Moore (D). The revised spending plan is expected to be before the Senate with a final vote next week. Senate President Bill Ferguson (D-Baltimore City) said revenue write-downs announced a day earlier will not require raising taxes this year.

State Democrats plan to prohibit book banning, combating campaigns by conservative groups to remove books from public schools and libraries that are often written by or about LGBTQIA+ people and communities of color. Lawmakers are pushing for guardrails against challenges to books with content “contrary to the belief systems of a very small group of people,” state Senate Majority Leader Nancy King said during a press conference Friday.