The administration is describing the pardons as the largest state pardon to date. The governor’s action regarding cases relating to use of paraphernalia make Maryland the first state to take such action, his office said.

The pardons will forgive low-level marijuana possession charges for an estimated 100,000 people, according to The Washington Post, which first reported on the order Sunday night.

Moore plans to sign the executive order Monday morning in the state Capitol in Annapolis with Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown in attendance.

Recreational cannabis was legalized in Maryland in 2023 after voters approved a constitutional amendment in 2022 with 67% of the vote. Maryland decriminalized possession of personal use amounts of cannabis on Jan. 1, 2023. Now, 24 states and the District of Columbia have legalized recreational cannabis.

“The Moore-Miller Administration is committed to promoting social equity and ensuring the fair and equitable administration of justice,” the governor’s office said. “Because the use and possession of cannabis is no longer illegal in the state, Marylanders should not continue to face barriers to housing, employment, or educational opportunities based on convictions for conduct that is no longer illegal.”

Brown, a Democrat, described the pardons as “certainly long overdue as a nation” and “a racial equity issue.”

To read this article in its entirety, visit The Grio

“They call me ‘mzungu maskini,’ or a poor white girl,” she told CNN at her single-room house, a tremor in her voice. “They always say ‘Why are you here? Just look for connections so that you can go to your own people. You don’t belong here. You’re not supposed to be here suffering.’”

Marian believes that her father was a British soldier, but she has never met him. She does not even know his name.

_{Marian Pannalossy pictured at her home. Festo Lang/CNN}

Marian is among a group of mixed-race children whose mothers say they were conceived after rape by British soldiers training in Kenya. Her mother, Lydia Juma, was among hundreds of Kenyan women who filed complaints with the UK military over the years, as documented by Kenya’s human rights body.

“I don’t know why God is punishing me. I don’t understand,” Juma said through tears in a powerful  2011 documentary, ‘The Rape of the Samburu Women.’

Marian, aged four at the time, sat on her lap, sometimes hugging her mother as she wept and recounted how she was violated and the suffering she had endured since.  

To read this article in its entirety, visit CNN

The nine-member court upheld the decision made by a district court judge in Tulsa last year, ruling that the plaintiff’s grievances, although legitimate, did not fall within the scope of the state’s public nuisance statute.

“We further hold that the plaintiff’s allegations do not sufficiently support a claim for unjust enrichment,” the court wrote in its decision.

Messages left Wednesday with a spokesperson for the City of Tulsa and the survivors’ attorney, Damario Solomon-Simmons, were not immediately returned.

The suit was an attempt to force the city of Tulsa and others to make recompense for the destruction by a white mob of the once-thriving Black district known as Greenwood. In 1921 — on May 31 and June 1 — the white mob, including some people hastily deputized by authorities, looted and burned the district, which was referred to as Black Wall Street.

As many as 300 Black Tulsans were killed, and thousands of survivors were forced for a time into internment camps overseen by the National Guard. Burned bricks and a fragment of a church basement are about all that survive today of the more than 30-block historically Black district.

To read this article in its entirety, visit NBC News

Durbin, D-Ill., said Thursday the committee obtained information from Crow that Thomas took three trips, and at least six flights, on Crow’s private jet in 2017, 2019 and 2021. The panel also found evidence of private jet travel during trips to Indonesia and California that Thomas recently disclosed in an amendment to a 2019 financial disclosure report.

The Democratic-led Judiciary panel launched the investigation last year after several reports that Thomas had for years received undisclosed expensive gifts, including international travel, from Crow. The committee has since pushed the Supreme Court to adopt a stronger ethics code as trips by Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito came to light, along with six-figure book deals received by other justices.

The new information “makes it crystal clear that the highest court needs an enforceable code of conduct, because its members continue to choose not to meet the moment,” Durbin said in a statement.

There was no immediate comment from the court on the Senate report. In the past, Thomas has maintained that he is not required to disclose the many trips he and his wife took that were paid for the Texas megadonor because Crow and his wife Kathy are “among our dearest friends,” Thomas said in an April 2023 statement that he was advised by colleagues on the nation’s highest court and others in the federal judiciary that “this sort of personal hospitality from close personal friends, who did not have business before the Court, was not reportable.”

To read this article in its entirety, visit The Associated Press

Harris, speaking on the 10th annual National Gun Violence Awareness Day, marked the occasion by underscoring the need to pass more laws to stop gun violence. The vice president also highlighted the experience of her longtime friend who served as state’s attorney as well as the chief executive in Prince George’s County in the suburbs of the nation’s capital.

“Maryland, this November you have the power to elect leaders who have actually kept our communities safe,” Harris said.

Alsobrooks defeated U.S. Rep. David Trone last month, after the congressman spent about $62 million of his personal fortune to self-finance his campaign. Now, she’s running in a competitive race against popular Republican former Gov. Larry Hogan for a Senate seat that is opening with the retirement of Sen. Ben Cardin, a Democrat.

A Republican has not won a U.S. Senate seat in Maryland in more than 40 years in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans 2-1 statewide. But Hogan is running the most competitive Senate race for the GOP in the state in decades.

To read this article in its entirety, visit The Associate Press

“They feel like two 80-year-old guys don’t mean much to ’em, and I am really afraid that we are going to lose a generation of young people,” Carville told WABC Radio’s John Catsimatidis on Sunday’s edition of “The Cats Roundtable.”

He continued, “That’s my greatest fear for the United States, Cat, is that young people are disengaging.”

One-third of U.S. voters under the age of 40 would support President Joe Biden when asked who they would back if the election were held today, according to an NPR report on a recent GenForward survey at the University of Chicago.

The president also lost support among young Black, Latino and Asian American voters in the age group, as well, according to the survey.

To read this article in its entirety, visit Huffington Post

Donalds seemed to suggest while speaking at a “Congress, Cognac, and Cigars” event in Philadelphia that Black families were better off during the Jim Crow era because they were “together.” He also noted that, “more Black people were not just conservative — Black people have always been conservative-minded — but more people voted conservatively.”

Those remarks made the rounds Wednesday, sparking criticism from others in the Black community — including his colleagues.

Asked Wednesday evening by CNN’s Abby Phillip whether he regretted using that time frame as a reference, he argued that his words were taken out of context.

“Nobody ever made nostalgia,” Donalds responded Wednesday night, in an interview highlighted by Mediaite. “That was never the point. It wasn’t even about that. So where now I’m gonna get my backup is, I didn’t say that. I didn’t even insinuate that.” 

To read this article in its entirety, please visit The Hill

Cannon is planning on holding a sprawling hearing on Trump’s request to declare Jack Smith’s appointment as special counsel invalid, signaling she could be more willing than any other trial judge to veto the special prosecutor’s authority.

The planned hearing also adds a new, unusual twist in the federal criminal case against the former president: Cannon on Tuesday said that a variety of political partisans and constitutional scholars not otherwise involved with the case can join in the oral arguments later this month.

It’s an extraordinary elevation of arguments in a criminal case – filed a year ago this week – that likely won’t see trial until next year, if at all.

Wednesday, Cannon went further, adding a hearing on a gag order request from prosecutors to limit Trump’s rhetoric about law enforcement and allotting more time to hear arguments on the special counsel issue.

Cannon will hear arguments on those issues the week of June 21, as well as on the effort by Trump to throw out evidence in his case that was gathered by the FBI in its 2022 search of Mar-a-Lago or provided by his former attorney Evan Corcoran to a grand jury.

To read this article in its entirety, visit CNN

The possibility that the disqualification fight could stretch to October, as well as an ongoing question about how the Supreme Court’s upcoming ruling on presidential immunity could impact the prosecution, makes it extremely unlikely Trump will go on trial for election subversion in Georgia before Election Day.

Attorneys were informed of the tentative date after the case was officially docketed Monday with the appeals court, according to a notice obtained by CNN.

Briefs from defense attorneys in the case are due in 20 days.

While the court tentatively set an oral argument day, it is not guaranteed. A party to the case has to request an oral argument and the court then decides whether to grant that request. The panel could also decide to forgo oral arguments and rule on the matter based on filed briefs.

A panel of three judges – Todd Markle, Trenton Brown and Benjamin Land – is set to consider the case.

While the case against Trump and his codefendants is still allowed to proceed in the lower court, no trial date has been set.

A spokesperson for the district attorney’s office declined to comment.

The 74-year-old Texas Democrat, who is seeking a 16th term, said in a statement late Sunday that as a member of Congress, she has been honored to be a leader in the fight for justice and equality and will approach this more personal fight with faith and courage.

“I am confident that my doctors have developed the best possible plan to target my specific disease,” Jackson Lee said. “The road ahead will not be easy, but I stand in faith that God will strengthen me.”

Jackson Lee said that it’s likely that she will be absent from Congress occasionally as she pursues treatment, but that her office will continue to serve constituents. She said she is committed to working with congressional leadership to be present for votes.

Jackson Lee first took office in 1995 and won the Democratic nomination in March, just months after losing a bid to become Houston’s mayor. She had sought to be the first Black female mayor of the nation’s fourth-largest city. Jackson Lee’s district includes downtown Houston and some of the city’s historically Black neighborhoods.