What can we say: like rust, ICE never sleeps, but seems to sleepwalk through a fascist fog. Read about how Frederick fought back. Elsewhere: Streams and rivers increasingly flow uninterrupted as more and more of the Chesapeake Bay area's 6,500 dams are removed (just a token of the US's more than a half-million dams).  The summer's heat death toll in Maryland has nearly doubled from last year's 36, a record on its own. Virginia moves to de-flock the roadways. Nationally, we find after Labor Day that unions are very popular throughout the country but it's a whole lot easier to organize or join in some states than in others. The end of health plan subsidies (Trump, of course) has increased dis-enrollments drastically, leaving thousands uninsured. But TrumpWorld loves big businesses so much it wants to start calling them small businesses so they can horn in on Small Business Administration benefits. Just another week in MAGA land, where Trump is doing his best to keep you from voting.  It's News You Can Use for this week. 

HERE IN MARYLAND

Ice Agents, Protesters Clash In Frederick Neighborhood: Federal immigration agents violently clashed with protesters in Frederick on Friday night, using their vehicles to clear sidewalks and dragging protesters from the front porch of a home they attempted to enter, city officials said. >> From an earlier article: Residents of a quiet Frederick neighborhood are watching as U.S. ICE vehicles have sat outside their homes for more than 36 hours — without knowing why. The vehicles arrived around 6 a.m. Thursday near the Taskers Chance area, according to City Council member Katie Nash. It is unclear whether ICE is looking for a specific person or conducting an operation, or why agents have remained in the neighborhood for so long. Baltimore Banner. >>ICE agents made a vehicle stop Thursday morning that targeted a man the agency called a “criminal illegal alien.” ICE said the man fled from the stop but did not share any additional information about the man or the attempt to apprehend him in their statement to The Frederick News-Post on Friday. Frederick News Post/Capital News Service in The Carroll County Times. >> Frederick Council Prez: Ice Drove On Sidewalk Toward Protesters: Cesar Diaz, president of the Frederick City Council, was at the protest in Frederick over the weekend where ICE agents and protesters clashed. According to witnesses, protestors were there to collect evidence and observe the agents. ICE agents “actually drove their car onto the sidewalk and started driving their vehicles towards the peaceful observers, literally using their SUV to clear the sidewalk,” Diaz said. “To me, that's attempted murder. That is not how law enforcement is supposed to work in this country.” WYPR-FM.

City Community College Staff Fights for First Union Contract: Baltimore City Community College staff stood in the rain Thursday as part of a Labor Day bus tour organized by the Metropolitan Baltimore Council AFL CIO.?BCCC was the second stop. The rally brought together unions in support of BCCC staff fighting for their first union contract. Faculty recently ratified their first union contract after 19 months of negotiations. Staff are hoping to avoid a similar wait. WYPR-FM.

David Rubenstein Buys Ousted Kennedy Center Sculpture: The billionaire philanthropist and Orioles owner David Rubenstein, a Baltimore native who lives in Bethesda, has purchased the abstract sculpture called “Blue” that was removed from the grounds of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts last week, according to two people familiar with the sale. It will eventually be displayed in the Sculpture Garden of the National Gallery of Art, the people said. New York Times. >>The towering sculpture by artist Joel Shapiro was dismantled from the grounds of the Kennedy Center on Wednesday after being on display for seven years. The removal was unexpected; the Kennedy Center gave no advance notice for the decision but said the work was being done at its request. Washington Post.

At Least 59 Have Died From Heat Since May: At least 59 people have died because of complications from heat since the start of May, according to the health department — a sharp jump from the 36 reported heat deaths last year, which was the state’s deadliest year for heat in over a decade. The Maryland health department reports heat deaths from May to September going back to 2012. Baltimore Banner.

Maryland Opens Child Welfare Records To Some Youth Programs: Starting Oct. 1, A new state law will allow coaches, team administrators and managers of youth sports programs to access certain child welfare records when deciding who should be allowed to work or volunteer with children — potentially revealing findings of abuse or neglect that never resulted in a criminal conviction. But the law has significant limits. Baltimore Sun.

Repeat Offender Registry Sought For Squatters: Gov. Wes Moore signed legislation in May that, effective Oct. 1, will make creating a counterfeit residential lease with intent to defraud a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison.But the state still has no reliable way for the next officer, listing agent or neighbor to know whether the alleged squatter has been there before. The alleged repeat offenses outlined in police documents have sparked a call for the General Assembly to establish a repeat squatter offender registry. Baltimore Sun.

THE REGION/THE OTHER 49

Dams give way to better habitat in Chesapeake Bay region -- Once rare, dam removals are becoming increasingly common  More than 6,500 dams dot more than 200,000 miles of waterways draining the Chesapeake Bay watershed. That’s an undercount. Many of them don’t appear on dam inventories. Large or small, dams create a host of problems. They alter habitat, block fish movement, change water temperatures, promote algal blooms and contribute to the decline of native species. Some are safety threats to people. During the 1900s, only 56 dams were removed in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, according to Chesapeake Bay Program data — about one every two years. From 2000 through 2025, though, the pace reached about 10 per year, totaling more than 250 removals. Nationwide, the nonprofit organization American Rivers reported that 100 dams were demolished in 2025 — the fourth highest yearly count on record. But that’s just a fraction of the 558,000 dams estimated to exist. So the organization, which works closely with states on projects, is calling for stepped-up efforts. It set a goal of quickening the pace by 5% — removing 30,000 by 2050, including 4,500 in the Mid-Atlantic. Bay Journal

PUBLIC SAFETY NEXT DOOR: Virginia Sen. Glen Sturtevant (R) will introduce legislation next year to ban automatic license plate reader cameras. Current law allows police to use data collected by the cameras for legitimate law enforcement purposes and to delete the data after 21 days. (WRIC) via Pluribus

New Mexico officials reject Trump post proposing state name change New Mexico Democratic elected officials quickly denounced a Sunday post on Truth Social by President Donald Trump that proposed, visually, changing New Mexico’s name to New America. Trump’s post followed a satirical post that inaccurately claimed he had signed an executive order to that effect, which the fact-checking site Snopes quickly debunked. The satirical post followed Trump’s renaming, by executive order, Lake Ontario and the Gulf of Mexico to Lake America and the Gulf of America, respectively. News from the States

GLOBAL, NATIONAL AND THE FEDS

Labor union membership continues to climb in the United States, though the increase remains sharply divided by the politics of individual states, Stateline reports. 

Last year, the nation added more than 411,000 union members — the largest annual growth since 2008, according to a study by the Illinois Economic Policy Institute and the Project for Middle Class Renewal at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  At the end of last year, more than 14.6 million American workers belonged to a union — about 10% of the workforce, the study said.  While union membership grew across the country, the State of the Unions report found that states that have sought to protect or strengthen collective bargaining rights added three times as many union members as so-called right-to-work states, which prohibit mandatory union membership or dues as conditions of employment. Stateline

HEALTHCARE: Declines in enrollment in Affordable Care Act healthcare plans accelerated through the spring as policy holders confronted higher premiums after the end of federal subsidies. Enrollment in marketplaces in 18 states has dropped 8.5% since 2025, according to the State Marketplace Networkv. Disenrollments are up 33.6% and new enrollments are down 18.4% over last year. (Pluribus News) paywalled

From POLITICO Playbook: HOW WE GOT HERE: “Cyclospora outbreak followed years of declining FDA foreign inspections,” by AP’s Matthew Perrone: “Food and Drug Administration inspections of foreign food sites — including the Mexican farm linked to the ongoing outbreak — are down nearly 35% since 2019, the year before the COVID-19 pandemic, according to agency records reviewed by The Associated Press. The pandemic kicked off a wave of retirements and departures among FDA inspectors that continues to this day.”

Trump’s New SBA Size Standards Call Big Business “Small” — And Main Street Will Pay: A private equity firm with $1 billion in annual revenue, a casino with $744 million, an advertising agency with $543 million, a software company with 3,600 employees — all would qualify as small businesses under proposed SBA size standards put forward by the Trump administration. The Small Business Administration (SBA) is proposing to radically overhaul the standards the federal government uses to decide which companies count as small. The change would immediately bring more than 114,000 additional firms under that designation, making them eligible for federal loan guarantees, contract set-asides, and other support earmarked for small businesses.  It’s easy to see the absurdity of calling a billion-dollar investment company small. But the more consequential problem is what will happen to actual small businesses if the government does this. Scholars who studied previous increases in the SBA’s size thresholds found that, when larger firms in a particular industry became eligible for government contracts and loans, small businesses were crowded out.
Institute for Local Self-Reliance (which has tips on how to make public comments at link).

NOT COOL WITH SCHOOL: Just 32% of American adults say they are completely or somewhat satisfied with the U.S. school system. That’s down 11 percentage points in the last two years and the lowest level since Gallup began asking the question 27 years ago. Democrats are driving the slide, with satisfaction down 19 points since President Trump returned to office. (Associated Press) via Pluribus