Former Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh was sentenced to three years in federal prison Thursday after she pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy and tax evasion related money she received from sales of her self-published children’s book series.
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A Maryland legislator wants to identify affluent suburban neighborhoods and target them for low-income, high-density housing.
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Northrop Grumman donated a Sabreliner jet to a Maryland high school this week to help it launch the state’s first high school aviation program.
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Officials in the state of Maryland have banned a school from their voucher program due to its faith-based views on gay marriage and transgenderism. The Baltimore Sun reported that Bethel Christian Academy responded to the ban with a lawsuit contending officials violated its religious freedom.
The case will now be heard in federal court.
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Multiple school districts across the country are considering busing-style programs to distribute impoverished students equally, but data suggest that such proposals would not reduce an achievement gap between poor students and their wealthier schoolmates, analyses by the Daily Caller News Foundation and others found.
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Following months of national media coverage over the handling of illegal aliens in his custody, Montgomery County, Maryland, Executive Marc Elrich has somewhat reversed a sanctuary policy he signed into law.
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Rep. Elijah Cummings died at 68 at an affiliate of Johns Hopkins Hospital early Thursday as a result of complications from longstanding health challenges, his office said in a statement.
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Benjamin Banneker was much more than just an inventor. As a mathematician, astronomer, landowning farmer, writer, and surveyor, Banneker was one of the most influential African Americans alive during America’s infancy.
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Maryland public school history teachers will add LGBTQ content to high school curricula during the coming years, a lawmaker said.
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On Monday’s Tennessee Star Report with Steve Gill and Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 am to 8:00 am – host Steve Gill talked about the rat epidemic plaguing Baltimore, Maryland and how Donald Trump’s assessment of the city was seen as racist.
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by Matt M. Miller U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is considering opening a detention facility capable of containing hundreds of illegal migrants in Maryland. ICE posted an advertisement on a federal contracts forum in April that it was surveying potential locations for the facility near Baltimore, the Baltimore Sun reported. The facility reportedly would have the capacity to hold 600-800 detainees, according to the Baltimore Sun. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is looking for more detention facility space within 50-miles of its Baltimore field office.https://t.co/xsxxrVO88g — The Baltimore Sun (@baltimoresun) July 18, 2019 The new facility would become the fourth detention facility in the state of Maryland, including centers in Frederick, Howard and Worcester counties. ICE is “continually reviewing its detention requirements and exploring acquisition options that will afford ICE the operational flexibility needed to house the full range of detainees in the agency’s custody,” ICE spokeswoman Justine Whelan said in a statement. The agency will consider the response to the detention facility advertisement to gage whether it would like to move forward with the project, Whelan explained. ICE officials posted the advertisement a few months after the end of a contract with Anne Arundel County to detain…
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The United States Supreme Court began hearing oral arguments Tuesday on a pair of cases that could lead to the Ohio electoral map being completely redrawn. The two cases, Rucho v. Common Cause and Lamone v. Benisekm, could both set precedents that could supersede a similar Ohio case making its way to the Supreme Court. On August 5, 2016, Common Cause, the North Carolina Democratic Party, and a group of voters filed a complaint against Robert A. Rucho “in his official capacity as Chairman of the North Carolina Senate Redistricting Committee,” and several other key members who presided over the drawing of the 2016 North Carolina congressional map. The complaint alleged that the map is an: unconstitutional partisan gerrymander that violates the First Amendment (Count I), the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment (Count II), and Article I, section 2 of the Constitution of the United States (Count III), and also to declare that in adopting the 2016 Plan the legislature exceeded the authority granted by Article I, section 4 of the U.S. Constitution, which provides that state legislatures “determine the times, places and manner of election” of members of the U.S. House of Representatives (Count IV). They also alleged that Democratic votes…
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by Peter Hasson Former Vice President Joe Biden, who is reportedly on the verge of launching his third presidential campaign, has a history of making racially charged remarks. Biden’s history of questionable remarks on race looms as he enters a crowded Democratic primary where racial issues have taken center stage. 1975: Biden Says De-Segregation ‘Codifies The Concept That A Black Is Inferior To A White’ Biden expressed a separate-but-equal view toward racial desegregation efforts in schools during a 1975 interview with U.S. News & World Report reviewed by The Daily Caller News Foundation. When asked if he believed that busing was doing more harm than good, Biden, who at the time was a senator for Delaware, replied, “Absolutely. Examining the concepts we used to rationalize busing six or seven years ago, they now seem to me to be profoundly racist.” “Busing is harmful for several reasons,” Biden added. First, busing, in effect, codifies the concept that a black is inferior to a white by saying, “The only way you can cut it educationally is if you’re with whites.” I think that’s a horrible concept. It implies that blacks have no reason to be proud of their inheritance and their own culture. Second, busing violates…
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by Kevin Daley The Trump administration filed an amicus (or “friend of the court”) brief Wednesday urging the Supreme Court to protect a 93-year-old war memorial in Bladensburg, Maryland, that is shaped like a Latin cross. The court will soon decide whether the cross-shaped World War I memorial violates the First Amendment’s ban on religious favoritism. The justices agreed to take the case on Nov. 3. [ Read the Trump administration’s brief to the Supreme Court ] The Trump administration’s brief emphasizes the need for the high court to clarify its jurisprudence concerning religious displays in the public square. Since 2005 the justices applied two different tests for assessing the constitutionality of sectarian symbols in public settings. Confusion has followed in lower federal courts as to which test should govern the so-called public display cases. That uncertainty, the government says, “encourages challenges to longstanding displays like the Memorial Cross, which in turn fosters the very religion-based divisiveness that the establishment clause seeks to avoid.” “Cases like these cannot help but divide those with sincerely held beliefs on both sides,” the brief reads. “This case presents an opportunity for the Court to adopt a standard for establishment clause challenges to…
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by Fred Lucas Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker went after Democratic and Republican politicians alike while serving as a federal prosecutor and as the head of an ethics watchdog group. Now at the center of a political firestorm in Washington, Whitaker returns Wednesday to Iowa—the state where he made his name in both politics and sports. Whitaker will deliver the opening remarks Wednesday at the Rural and Tribal Elder Justice Summit in Des Moines. The conference will focus on fighting and preventing elder abuse in rural and tribal communities. But on Tuesday, the state of Maryland sued in federal court, claiming Whitaker’s appointment as acting attorney general was illegal because he was not confirmed for the office by the Senate. He was elevated to the post last week after President Donald Trump fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions, for whom Whitaker had served as chief of staff. As a U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Iowa from 2004 to 2009, Whitaker prosecuted some 2,500 criminal cases, including against H-1B visa fraud, government contractors defrauding taxpayers, and drug dealers. Whitaker first made a name for himself in Iowa years before, playing college football for the University of Iowa and competing in…
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by Kevin Daley The American Legion and a Maryland planning commission are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to protect a cross-shaped World War I memorial, after the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found the monument violates the Constitution. Supporters of the petition say the 4th Circuit’s decision compromises war memorials across the country, including those at Arlington National Cemetery. Should the high court take the case, it would likely mark the new conservative majority’s first foray into the culture wars. The American Legion erected a 40-foot tall memorial called the “Peace Cross” in Bladensburg, Maryland, in 1925. A plaque at the base of the monument lists the 49 war dead of Prince George’s County and a quotation from President Woodrow Wilson. The crux of the cross is emblazoned with the seal of the Legion, and the words “valor, endurance, courage, and devotion” appear on each face. In the years that followed, other memorials to county veterans were raised in the Peace Cross’s vicinity. That collection of statuary has since been designated Veterans Memorial Park. The high court has permitted the use of sectarian imagery where it appears in collections of otherwise secular displays. The Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission has administered the…
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by Natalia Castro Residents of Maryland were likely filled with pride when the USA Today state wealth index listed Maryland as the wealthiest state in the country. With the second lowest poverty rate and the highest median household income, one might assume Maryland has an engaged and efficient workforce. Unfortunately, this workforce may not be functioning as effectively as it seems, because Maryland also surpasses the national average in federal government workers. Nationally about 15 percent of workers are employed by some level of government, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In Maryland, that number is 18 percent. While many states across the wealth index surpass the national average for government employees, most are employed by state and local government. Maryland and Virginia top the charts for federal government employees, likely due to their proximity to D.C. Only about 2 percent of workers are employed by the federal government, either in D.C. or satellite offices across the country. In Maryland, more than 13 percent of workers are employed by the federal government. In Virginia, which ranks ninth on the list, 11 percent of workers are employed by the federal government. Hawaii, which ranks third on the list, also…
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by Ken McIntyre “Oh, I think everyone in the county remembers these parties,” Julie Swetnick says with a smile during her nationally televised interview. Um, not me, Julie. I had my first job as a reporter in Montgomery County, Maryland, at the time Swetnick claims Brett Kavanaugh and other teenage boys routinely were drugging and gang-raping girls at a series of house parties in the county, which adjoins Washington, D.C. In fact, I worked for the Gaithersburg Gazette, in a newsroom about a mile south of Gaithersburg High School, where Swetnick graduated in 1980. (I was a 1973 graduate of Magruder High, a rival of Gaithersburg High.) I got a full-time job as a reporter at the widely distributed Gazette after graduating from George Washington University in 1979 and doing an internship there the previous summer. I covered Gaithersburg and Rockville city governments, including the city councils and agencies such as the police departments. (Rockville is the Montgomery County seat.) I never heard word one about teen parties where girls routinely were sexually assaulted, much less where gang rapes were on the agenda, as Swetnick claims of gatherings attended by Kavanaugh, now President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee. In…
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by Evie Fordham Several states including Wisconsin and New Jersey are seeking to copy Minnesota’s model of federal reinsurance program funding that contributed to a 13-percent drop in premium rates in the state from 2017 to 2018. The Minnesota legislature adopted the program, which uses mostly federal funds to help insurers cover people with medical bills typically between $50,000 and $250,000, in 2017, reported Kaiser Health News. The program enables insurers to lower premiums and is a policy encouraged by the Trump administration. Wisconsin Republican Gov. Scott Walker is focusing his campaign on his health care accomplishments, including support for his state’s reinsurance program, reported RealClear Politics. He says premiums will be 11 percent lower than they would have been without the program in 2019, reported HealthLeaders Media. Minnesota’s 2018 reinsurance program received $131 million from the federal government, and many other states have applied or are applying for reinsurance program funding. Alaska and Oregon have programs similar to Minnesota’s in place. The main difference between Alaska’s program, which started in 2016, and other states’ is that Alaska’s covers all costs for people with “highest-cost conditions.” Wisconsin and Maine were approved in July, while Idaho, Louisiana, Maryland and New Jersey are working toward having programs set up by…
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Maryland will sue the Trump administration for capping state and local tax (SALT) deductions in its new federal tax law, the state’s attorney general said Thursday. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act signed by President Trump last year contains a provision capping SALT deductions at $10,000, and Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh said residents across the heavily-taxed state stand to take a hit as a result.
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Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley said Friday that Democrats allowed Republicans to win in state and local races by not competing the past eight years. “There were many so-called active Democrats that I would speak with on the phone trying to impress upon them, when I was chairman of the Democratic Governors Association, that states matter,”…
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A brief video clip showing a Maryland student kicking the chair out from underneath a fellow classmate who is not standing for the Pledge of Allegiance shows what a national political debate looks like in high school form. A Winter Hills High School student in Westminster, Md., is seen wearing an American flag hoodie, cowboy boots…
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A housing development in Maryland is mired in contradicting legal grievances from city officials and residents after it marketed and sold homes only to Muslims. A developer for River Run, a housing development along the Gunpowder river in Joppatowne, Md., filed a lawsuit against Hartford county officials in September, alleging that its refusal to continue issuing…
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The city of College Park, Maryland voted on Tuesday night to grant illegal immigrants the right to vote in its local elections. After a close vote which saw the measure pass with four votes for, three against, and one abstention, illegal aliens, foreigners with student-visas, and green card holders all received a green-light to participate in…
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