Nearly 150 bills signed into Maryland law, with some focusing on criminal justice reform
The latest round of new state laws comes after the governor signed 94 bills after the end of the 2025 legislative session in early April.
While the bills have been signed by the governor, many do not go into effect until later in the summer or fall of 2025.
New bills on criminal justice reform, public safety
Several of the bills signed into law this week focus on criminal justice and prison reform.
The Second Look Act gives convicted criminals a chance to request a shorter prison sentence if the crime occurred while they were between 18 and 25 years old.
The bill allows incarcerated individuals to request that their sentence be reduced if they meet certain criteria, like having served at least 20 years of their sentence.
Gov. Moore also signed SB181, which requires the Maryland Parole Commission to consider the age of an incarcerated person when deciding if they should be granted parole.
Another bill, HB775, requires the Commissioner of Corrections to notify certain representatives when an incarcerated person dies in a correctional facility. It also requires the Department of Public Safety and Correction Services to comply with certain federal regulations.
The Organized Retail Theft Act of 2025 was also signed into law this week. The bill cracks down on people who commit thefts in multiple counties in an effort to stay below Maryland's $1,500 theft threshold.
142 bills signed into law
Of the 142 bills that Gov. Moore signed Tuesday, some also focus on the rising use of Artificial Intelligence, like HB956, which creates a workgroup to monitor and make recommendations about the regulation of AI.
Another bill, SB305, focuses on the rise of cryptocurrency. The bill establishes requirements for virtual currency kiosk operators and allows the Commissioner of Financial Regulation to investigate and enforce those requirements.
Here are some of the other bills that were signed into law this week:
Buddy's Law increases the amount of compensation from $10,000 to $25,000 for the owner of a pet that was injured or killed by another person or pet.
The Maryland Secondary Market Stability Act establishes a workgroup to study and make recommendations about licensing requirements for those who provide financial services.
SB186 establishes the Invasive Blue Catfish Pilot Program to slow the spread of the blue catfish in the Chesapeake Bay.
SB550 authorizes Baltimore City leaders to impose a property tax on vacant and abandoned properties owned by certain organizations that would otherwise be exempt.
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GOP criticizes Moore's request for funds to hire federal employees amid hiring freeze
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The spin master in charge of feeding Gaza
The desperate plight of starving Gazans has captured the world's attention. Children are dying of malnutrition. Over 1,000 Palestinians have been killed while attempting to receive aid. The United Nations World Food Program has found that one-third of Gaza's roughly 2.1 million residents are not eating for multiple days in a row. More than 100 international aid organizations — including Doctors Without Borders, Save the Children, and Oxfam — signed a letter last week saying that 'restrictions, delays, and fragmentation under [Israel's] total siege have created chaos, starvation, and death.' And more than 30 countries, including Israel's allies, issued a joint statement earlier this month condemning 'the drip feeding of aid and the inhumane killing of civilians, including children, seeking to meet their most basic needs of water and food.' So who is overseeing this disaster? A public relations professional, the Rev. Johnnie Moore, with little experience in humanitarian aid. 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Today, Explained co-host Sean Ramewaram spoke with Arno Rosenfeld, enterprise reporter at The Forward, the largest Jewish news outlet in the United States, about Moore's background and how he's navigating the crisis. Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There's much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify. Tell us more about the guy who's in charge of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), Johnnie Moore. Johnnie Moore is an evangelical leader with a long history in Republican politics. He graduated from Liberty University and then worked in communications for them for a number of years. That's the university founded by Jerry Falwell, a big evangelical mecca in the country. And then he went from that into PR. He was running a boutique PR firm that got acquired recently by a larger firm, and they do work for both Marriott Hotels and also Focus on the Family. It's not exclusively conservative religious causes, but it includes that. And then he's had various roles in the government. So he was an evangelical adviser to President Trump during his first campaign. He prayed with Trump in the White House… Prayed with Trump! Didn't know Trump was a big prayer. Well, he's surrounded himself with these leaders. And Liberty was a big part of burnishing his conservative evangelical bona fides during that first race. So he has a long history there. And Moore held various posts in the government. He was on the committee that the US has to promote religious freedom around the world. So he's traveled around the world to defend the religious liberty of Muslims in China and different groups in different countries in the Middle East. He was involved in some of the diplomatic work with Saudi Arabia with Trump. He met with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman a number of years ago. So Moore has had long ties to the Trump administration, and now he is in this new role as a humanitarian. Everything makes sense up until '... and now he's in this new role as a humanitarian.' Because, as you're saying here, he's basically a PR guy. How does he go from PR flack in the Trump administration to in charge of maybe one of the most consequential humanitarian missions on the planet? The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is a very strange entity, but the most direct answer to your question is that Moore has a long history of supporting Israel, of traveling to Israel. He's deep into the world of Christian Zionism. Of course, a lot of Israel's strongest supporters in the United States are evangelical Christians. And so he comes out of that world and has these ties. And I think for a variety of reasons, when they were looking for someone to take over this organization after the executive director stepped down in May after only a few weeks on the job, they brought Moore in to burnish its reputation. He's been on a big media tour. So he's leaning into his PR expertise in this new role. What's he saying on his big media tour? His argument is basically that the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is the victim of conspiracy theories promoted by the United Nations, which wants to hoard all of the aid and the glory for delivering food for themselves. He's also claiming that Hamas is on their own PR tour and has snookered all of these reporters around the world into repeating lies about the humanitarian situation in Gaza. So, basically, GHF is doing great work. They're doing the most Christian thing possible, in his words, feeding people. And unfortunately, the entire international aid community at the behest of the UN and perhaps also Hamas just has it in for them. It's very unfair, but they're not going to let that stop them from doing the Lord's work. What does he have to say about all the dead Palestinians? The dead Palestinians as a result of starvation or as a result of being shot while trying to get food from his organization? The second one. His argument is, again: It's very tragic. They never want anyone to lose their lives. He said that they complain often to the IDF when the IDF shoots at people queuing for aid. He said the IDF has taken responsibility for those incidents. He said Hamas has also attacked GHF employees and Palestinians trying to get aid from GHF, and that Hamas has not taken responsibility for that. He said that more people are being killed trying to get UN and World Food Programme aid than have been killed trying to get his organization's aid. It depends a little bit how you parse the statistics. I don't think that's true, but that's what he's been saying in these public appearances. Is he convincing anyone? One of the things that's important to understand about his role and what the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is intended to do is that there is a segment of Israel supporters in the United States that live in a little bit of an alternate reality. And I think his job is to convince those people that Israel and the United States are not responsible for Palestinian civilians starving in Gaza. So, for example, the piece that I wrote was about him addressing the American Jewish Congress. And his argument to them was basically: Yes, there is a humanitarian crisis. We are doing everything in our power. The United States and Israel are doing the right thing. Unfortunately, all these other aid groups are just letting food rot. He's a charismatic guy. He's good at talking to these audiences. So I do think it's a convincing message for that audience. It's just a very specific audience. Does it tell us something, though, that this is the kind of person that was put at the top of this operation, that it wasn't someone with deep experience in aid, but instead someone who would fight the PR war around the effort? It's another good question because Cindy McCain, John McCain's widow, runs the World Food Programme. So it's not totally unprecedented to have people who have a public profile and political connections in these figurehead roles atop humanitarian organizations. But Cindy McCain, after a lot of pressure, has become increasingly critical of the Israeli government. That's what people thought might happen with GHF. It's not just that Moore has these political connections or that he doesn't have deep expertise in humanitarian aid, but his job is to defend the United States and Israel, which is incredibly unusual. It's not anything that I've seen an aid organization do in the past. Certainly sometimes they speak out politically here or there, but they're not typically primarily promoting what almost seems like a political agenda. And that's a lot of what we've seen Johnnie Moore do, even as he insists the politics are the worst possible thing for humanitarian aid and he doesn't want anything to do with them. A lot of Israel supporters in the United States are liberal. They do care about civilians in Gaza, and they're very alarmed by what they're seeing in the news about starvation in Gaza. And so I think those people desperately want to be reassured that Israel, the Jewish state that they support, is not responsible for mass starvation and civilian suffering in Gaza. And he's presented a very compelling narrative to them. That's a lot of the role that he's playing right now. And I think that he's playing it well.
