Tag: maryland

‘Not appropriate’: Blue-state attorney general paid $570 an hour to law firm that contributed to his campaign

Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown’s office agreed to pay $570 an hour to attorneys at an outside law firm that contributed to Brown’s campaign, records obtained by The Center Square show.

Four additional law firms that received contracts with the AG’s office donated to the campaign of Brown, a Democrat, records show. Together, the five firms and their affiliated political action committees contributed $30,250 to Brown’s campaign committee.

Brown’s office signed the contract with Ballard Spahr LLP of Philadelphia in November 2022. Two years earlier, the firm donated $2,500 to Friends of Anthony Brown, Brown’s campaign committee, according to state campaign finance records. Two months after the contract was signed, the law firm donated another $2,500. The contract also pays paralegals $295 an hour. If renewed, attorney rates increased to $595 an hour and paralegal rates to $315 an hour.

Brown’s office initially refused to release the hourly rates but reversed course Wednesday after The Center Square appealed to the Public Access Ombudsman, a voluntary, confidential mediator.

The Center Square requested the records for contracts with outside counsel since 2023, the year Brown, 61, took office. Brown’s office released two outside-counsel contracts and the names of 81 law firms, lawyers and legal nonprofits with which it entered into agreements.

The redaction was at odds with two recent rulings by the state’s Public Information Act Compliance Board, which held that another government agency should make similar payment information public.

Under the contract, Ballard Spahr may represent multiple state agencies, including the Maryland Department of Transportation and the Department of General Services. A Ballard Spahr spokesman did not respond to two requests for interview.

The office also declined to provide bidding documents or requests for proposals to show how the contracts were issued and the total amounts paid the firms.

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Democrats Rigging Maryland’s Future Elections: Heading For One Party Rule

Maryland Democrats are calling a special session August 3–5 for one reason and that is to change the rules before they break them.

For centuries, redistricting has followed clear standards.
1. Equal population
2. Contiguous districts
3. Compact maps
4. Respect for communities of interest

Maryland Democrats know the maps they want to draw violate those principles, so instead of following the law, they’re trying to rewrite it.

Their plan? Stitch together places like Columbia with the Eastern Shore while carving rural Cecil County out of District 1. Their plan is to dilute rural voices and dismantle real communities to serve a partisan agenda.

Let’s be crystal clear. This isn’t reform! It’s an attempt to rig the system and avoid getting sued for it.

At the same time, the Governor has sadly but not surprisingly injected race into the debate. He is dividing Marylanders instead of defending a fair and constitutional process.

The Democrats in leadership are no better than those they are criticizing in other states.

This is about power and not the best interests of Marylanders. Marylanders should be outraged.

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OUTRAGEOUS! 13-Year-Old Maryland Boy Released on Probation After R*ping Two Six-Year-Old Girls Thanks to Recommendation from This Democrat

A Maryland teenager received a get-out-of-jail-free card despite his involvement in a violent sex crime, thanks to the intervention of a woke state Democrat.

As WBFF reported, the State Attorney’s office revealed on June 29 that a 13-year-old has been released on probation with electronic monitoring despite being found to be involved in the rape of two 6-year-old girls in Calvert County.

The Calvert County State’s Attorney’s Office, which prosecuted the case, recommended that the youth be placed in a secure “out-of-home” facility to receive treatment and counseling.

While this was already an outrageously soft recommendation, what happened next was more shocking. The teen was returned to the home where some of the abuse allegedly occurred.

While the little girls victims no longer live in the home, they still reside in the same county.

Calvert County State’s Attorney Robert Harvey released the following statement, which was obtained by WBFF:

This case highlights everything that is wrong with our juvenile system. There is no accountability; no one’s responsible for anything.

It’s hard to imagine how this disposition makes the world safer for the citizens of Calvert County.

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Biden’s Own Party Heckled Him During A Speech, And Then He Embarrassed Himself

It’s been two years since Joe Biden’s catastrophic debate against President Donald Trump, which ultimately made his party realize they could no longer pretend he was fit for office and forced him out of the race.

Two years later, Biden is still proving how unfit he was, this time stumbling through a combative speech in front of the very people who used to cheer him on.

Biden showed up Saturday night at the Maryland Democrat Party’s Fight Back & Win Summit at Live! Casino & Hotel in Hanover, Md., to deliver a teleprompter-fed attack against Trump.

The crowd was full of party activists, the kind of room that should have been the easiest audience of his career.

Instead, hecklers interrupted him mid-speech, and by the time it was over, he struggled just to make his way off the stage.

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“Genocide Joe!” – Biden Left Confused as Far-Left Protesters Shout at Him During Maryland Democratic Party Gala

Joe Biden got heckled by a protester while speaking at the Maryland Democratic Party’s gala on Saturday night, briefly interrupting his speech and throwing him off. 

As Biden described the history of the Democratic Party and the “story of America” as “a constant push and pull between peril and possibility,” one woman screamed, “Genocide Joe,” sparking chaos in the room.

Loud booes could also be heard as screaming continued. It is unclear how many were involved in the protest and whether the crowd was booing at Biden or the protesters.

Biden looked shocked and confused as he tried to continue his speech.

After the interruption, Biden attempted to recover, slurring through gibberish and ultimately declaring that the Democrats are going to “come out stronger” and win in November.

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Feds Investigate Maryland State Department Of Education Plus Frederick, Montgomery And Prince George’s County

Today, on the fifty-fourth anniversary of the signing of Title IX, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) opened new investigations into the Maryland State Department of Education, Montgomery County Public Schools, Prince George’s County Public Schools, and Frederick County Public Schools (the Districts) in Maryland. OCR will determine whether the Districts violated Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (Title IX) through policies that permit boys to participate on girls’ athletic teams and access girls’ intimate facilities. 

According to the complaint received by OCR, Maryland’s statewide guidance and district-level policies require schools to allow boys to compete in girls’ athletics and to use girls-only locker rooms, restrooms, and overnight accommodations. The complaint further alleges that when girls objected to sharing sex-separated spaces with boys, the Districts placed the burden on those girls to seek alternative facilities, including distant single-user restrooms, rather than enforcing sex-based protections guaranteed under federal law.  

“The practice of allowing students to access sex-separated programs and facilities based solely on self-asserted ‘gender identity’ is deeply troubling and raises significant legal concerns,” said Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey. “Fifty-four years after Title IX was signed into law, the Trump Administration remains steadfast to enforce its promise to protect women and girls. We will fully investigate these allegations and take appropriate action to ensure compliance with federal law.”  

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Maryland Protests Data Center Costs

A group of 80 Maryland state lawmakers are backing a complaint at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission over the PJM Interconnection’s cost allocation for transmission lines that support data centers.

Driven by the way PJM spreads transmission costs, Maryland ratepayers will pay $1.6 billion over the next decade for transmission projects that were approved in the grid operator’s last three regional transmission expansion plans that are designed to mainly serve out-of-state data centers, Maryland’s ratepayer advocate — the Office of People’s Counsel — said in its May 7 complaint.

“While PJM’s rules are unfair for many PJM states, they impact Maryland disproportionately simply because Maryland sits next to Data Center Alley in Virginia,” the Maryland lawmakers said in a Wednesday filing at FERC. “Given the projections of massive data center growth — more than 80,000 megawatts over the next 20 years — PJM is likely to bill Maryland customers billions more for future data center-driven transmission costs.”

The complaint at FERC comes amid an intense focus across the United States on how data centers can affect the electric bills of existing ratepayers through increased generation and transmission costs. The complaint centers on the transmission side of the equation. It contends that FERC is barred from approving transmission cost allocation methodologies that assign costs to ratepayers that won’t gain “roughly commensurate” benefits.

PJM’s cost allocation methodology assigns half of certain regional transmission projects based on a load-ratio share across its footprint, which assumes that all transmission built will benefit the entire grid, according to the ratepayer advocate’s complaint. The other half of transmission costs are assigned via a “solution-based distribution factor analysis,” which fails to capture certain reliability issues caused by data centers, the ratepayer advocate said.

Spreading data center-driven transmission costs across PJM’s footprint could lead to overbuilding, according to the complaint.

“By socializing data center-driven transmission costs to all ratepayers, it insulates states and utilities that attract speculative load growth from overbuilding and stranded asset risk while shifting those risks to neighboring states’ ratepayers,” the ratepayer advocate said.

Further, state-level large-load tariffs fail to address, and may make worse, the misallocation of transmission costs caused by PJM’s transmission cost allocation methodology, according to the complaint. 

Also, recent FERC-approved utility “transmission security agreements” between utilities and data centers are “often confidential, highly variable, and fail to protect existing customers,” the ratepayer advocate said.

The agreements leave ratepayers exposed to transmission costs caused by data centers, according to the ratepayer advocate. “Moreover, they carry potential legal consequences that may prove difficult to unravel,” the ratepayer advocate said. The ratepayer advocate said FERC should order PJM to revise its cost allocation methodology so that data centers pay for the transmission projects that they cause.

As a start, PJM should be required to assign the costs of transmission projects that are designed to serve data centers and other large loads to the grid operator’s zones where the data centers are located, according to the complaint. That would allow state-level large load tariffs to address those transmission costs, the ratepayer advocate said.

“The upstream leakage of a substantial portion of data center driven costs at the regional level to other zones through the current operation of the PJM tariff creates an unjust subsidy for that data center load,” the ratepayer advocate said.

The complaint calls on FERC to order PJM to re-study the baseline reliability projects approved in its last three regional transmission expansion plans to determine the costs caused by forecast load growth from data centers. 

FERC has extended the comment deadline on the complaint to July 27.

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These Are The Six States Celebrating America 250 By Raising Your Gas Tax

The final countdown for America’s 250th birthday is on. Families will be planning road trips, parades, vacations, reunions, and cookouts to celebrate the greatest nation in history. But in six states, politicians have a different idea for the party: raise taxes.

Beginning July 1, drivers in California, Washington, Illinois, Maryland, Virginia, and Mississippi are scheduled to see higher state gas taxes. In other words, as the country prepares to celebrate casting aside a tax-heavy king in favor of freedom, these states will use the occasion to fatten government coffers one gallon at a time.

The worst offenders will be no surprise. California, Washington and Illinois  — we’ll call them the Axis of Glut.

Their governors are often the first to fake outrage when gas prices rise. They blame oil companies. They blame “price gouging.” They blame world events. They blame everyone except the politicians who keep piling taxes, mandates, and regulations onto every gallon drivers buy.

Yet these same states already have some of the worst gas prices in the nation, some of the highest gas taxes in America, and now they are getting ready to raise those taxes again.

California’s gas tax is already the highest in the country and is scheduled to climb again on July 1, from 61.2 cents to 63.4 cents per gallon, under the state’s annual inflation adjustment. The same report noted California’s average price for regular gasoline was nearly $6 per gallon in early June.

Illinois is no better. The state says its motor fuel tax will rise on July 1 because the law requires an annual inflation adjustment. Washington joined the club with a gas tax increase last year and then baked in automatic increases going forward. Starting July 1, 2026, the state’s fuel tax rises by 2% every year unless lawmakers change the law.

This is the dirty hustle behind inflation-indexed taxes. Politicians get to raise taxes without holding a press conference to admitting it. They pass the law once, then every year drivers get mugged by a formula.

As of June 8, the national average for regular gas was $4.164, down 38.2 cents in a single month. That is welcome relief for families, workers, small businesses and anyone trying to get through summer. But the national average would look even better if it were not being anchored down by tax-heavy states that treat drivers like a rolling ATM.

The problem is not limited to the six July 1 tax-hike states. Seven of the ten most expensive states for gas are run by Democratic governors. That is not a coincidence.

Taxes play a major role in the high-price reputation of many of these states. So do their regulatory regimes, special fuel rules, anti-energy policies and climate mandates that make fuel harder to produce, refine, transport and sell.

The result is predictable.

Families, small businesses, truckers, and farmers all pay more. Then the same politicians who helped drive up the cost pretend they are shocked by the bill.

That is not compassion. That is government gluttony.

Supporters claim the money goes to roads and infrastructure. But that excuse only goes so far. Every tax increase is sold as necessary. Yet somehow the burden always lands in the same place: on the people who drive to work, school, church, the grocery store or a summer vacation.

That is what makes the timing so perfect, and so insulting.

America’s 250th birthday should be a celebration of freedom, independence and the rejection of government overreach. The American Revolution was born from the idea that people should not be treated as endless revenue sources for rulers who never seem to have enough.

Nearly 250 years later, millions of drivers will pull into gas stations in California, Washington, Illinois, Maryland, Virginia, and Mississippi and get a reminder that some politicians still have not learned the lesson.

The country is moving toward a better energy future: lower prices, more production, more reliability and less punishment for the people who keep America moving. But these six states are choosing a different path.

America 250 should remind us why this country was born: because free people eventually get tired of being treated like revenue.

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Maryland Sheriffs Sue State to Stop Amnesty State Law

Seventeen Maryland county sheriffs have joined together to sue the state over a new law that gives sanctuary to illegals that the law officers say will make Maryland a more dangerous place to live.

Sheriff Jeffrey R. Gahler, of Harford County, Maryland, and sixteen other Maryland sheriffs, have joined with the  in a lawsuit filed in a federal court to block the state’s newly passed “Community Trust Act” (SB0791).

“It is an intentional state-mandated obstruction of public safety,” Sheriff Gahler said about the new law. “This law deliberately ties the hands of our dedicated local deputies, police officers and correctional officers. It forbids us from sharing information with federal authorities.”

“This issue, ladies and gentlemen, is not about politics. It’s about public safety. And, we believe this law directly hampers our ability to effectively safeguard the boundaries of our respective counties,” Worcester County Sheriff Matt Crisafulli added.

The new law passed in the House of Delegates 92-37 and in the state Senate 32-15 this week and became law without Democrat Gov. Wes Moore’s signature.

The Community Trust Act bans local cooperation with federal immigration officials and maintains that a felony conviction or a judicial warrant must be presented by immigration officers before local law enforcement can communicate with ICE about a suspect’s immigration status.

The lawsuit filed by the group of county sheriffs says that the state’s new law violates federal authority to implement legal immigration policy and is a violation of the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution. It also forces state law enforcement to break federal law by harboring illegal migrants.

In its press release on the lawsuit, FAIR says that “Maryland’s sanctuary law thereby makes it impossible to obey both federal law and state law, it presents a textbook case of conflict preemption.”

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Maryland Gov. Wes Moore Signs Glock Ban Into Law

Governor Wes Moore (D) signed legislation Tuesday banning the sale Glocks and Glock-clones into law, making Maryland the second state to enact such a ban.

On April 9, 2026, Breitbart News reported that Maryland’s House followed the state Senate’s lead and passed a ban on Glocks and other handguns Democrats describe as “machine gun convertible.”

California led the way with such a ban, and as the Golden State did this, Breitbart News pointed out that the Democrat-sponsored legislation was fashioned as a response to the use of “Glock Switches,” which are already illegal. “Glock switches” are federally prohibited plastic pieces that can be affixed to the rear of a Glock slide to make the pistol shoot full auto.

“Glock switches” are popular with gangs and street criminals, therefore California Democrats banned new sales of one the most popular handguns ever made, the Glock pistol.

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