Making Maine voters consider life without her in Congress has been a staple of Collins' messaging since 2020. Now it’s at the center of her pitch to voters who may be ambivalent about electing her to a sixth term.

For @npr: Gov. Janet Mills is trying to make the electability case, but she trails Graham Platner in polls, money and, arguably, message. And his movement-based campaign is seemingly ubiquitous in #mesen 📻✍️ www.npr.org/2026/04/21/n...

An increasingly bruising primary between the two leading Dem candidates vying to topple Republican Sen. Susan Collins has both contenders dipping deep into their campaign coffers, while Collins has so far spent little on her reelection bid via @npr.org 📻✍️ www.npr.org/2026/03/26/n...

Analysis by AdImpact shows spending in Maine Senate race is already above $37M with 8 months until election. On pace to shatter the 2020 state record of more than $200M. It's accelerated by the Dem primary where Platner and Mills are battling to face Sen. Collins. 1/

Trailing in polls, Mills' attack ad leans heavily on one of her strengths to try to expose a potential weakness in her opponent’s resilient candidacy: women voters. It's a confrontational tack in a party primary, outracing the armada of PACs that often assume that role buff.ly/xWOWag9

ICYMI: How a novel debate in the Maine gubernatorial race looked like the social media fight that made it happen -- and why it seemed to capture our current political moment. 🔊 📻 buff.ly/kcfmKm2?

At times, the debate between Republican Bobby Charles and Democrat Troy Jackson resembled a fight one might witness on Facebook — angry and personal. https://www.mainepublic.org/2026-02-26/this-novel-maine-gubernatorial-debate-was-born-from-a-social-media-tussle-will-there-be-more

One of the big surprises in the UNH poll showing Platner with a huge lead over Mills is how one quarter of the Dem respondents self-identify as socialists. Is that really representative of the Dem primary electorate? I dunno, but ... 1/2 scholars.unh.edu/cgi/viewcont...

Crowdsurfing. Not sure there’s a better metaphor for his campaign.

Maine U.S. Sen. Susan Collins asks DHS to pause ICE surge in Maine, Minnesota, calling the operations too sweeping and indiscriminate. buff.ly/SpKPGzF

details illustrate how the company faces greater scrutiny from regulators than previously known. It also reveals the complexities of investigating fraud in a $5.4 billion program that is largely monitored for irregularities by a small program integrity unit

Senate Leadership Fund says it’s dumping $42M in effort to defend Sen. Susan Collins. Here’s our guide to the groups spending big on MESEN. We’re updating regularly. www.mainepublic.org/politics/202...

🎄

A previously unreported and recently completed audit found that Gateway Community Services overbilled MaineCare by more than $1 million. The state says such suspensions are imposed when there's suspected fraud: www.mainepublic.org/politics/202...

I wrote about Rob Reiner's shockingly good performance in The Wolf Of Wall Street in this, but it's striking how many different films and parts Defector staffers wanted to write about. He was a mensch, but he was also just everywhere in the culture for 50 years. defector.com/defectors-fa...

A constellation of deep-pocketed outside groups is already poised to spend big to affect the outcome of the 2026 Maine U.S. Senate race that could determine which party controls the chamber after the midterm elections. Some of these groups are already running ads 🧵

ICYMI: In interviews Platner has been open about his post-combat struggles. Now he’s talking about it more frequently at his heavily attended town halls. It seems to be making his campaign more resilient, his supporters more devoted. Listen 🎧📻

Worth your time to read this Laura Loomer piece. Includes a peek at the pay-to-play influencer machine Laura Loomer’s Endless Payback www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

Wrote about the Dems’ shutdown backlash against Sen. Angus King and others. One of the clearest examples yet that they’re experiencing a tea party-like moment — with the ACA helping it along. www.mainepublic.org/politics/202...

The longest federal government shutdown in U.S. history is over. But with little to show for it, the mostly Democratic politicians who ended the standoff now face intense backlash:

Platner has a new campaign manager. A local guy. Never done it before. www.mainepublic.org/politics/202...

Been to several of these now. The stump varies on delivery — he’s ditched the notes and pretty much riffs — but essentially the same message. What I noticed tonight, though, is the questions are getting tougher

Graham Platner at the Chocolate Church in Bath. Full house. Seats 300. Begins by calling on attendees to support local food banks amid shutdown and suspension of SNAP assistance.

Jared Golden made the announcement in a lengthy column published in the Bangor Daily News in which he lamented the increasing hostility in the nation's politics and threats against him and his family:

Gun rights groups have long held supremacy over Maine’s gun laws. The Lewiston mass shooting brought new scrutiny. Two years later, voters approved a red flag law that supporters say could have prevented the tragedy. www.mainepublic.org/politics/202...

In Sept, Graham Platner said the response to his campaign has been "surreal." Reality has arrived over the past week. Now comes a test of Maine Democratic primary voters' risk aversion. buff.ly/0aayG5f

For nearly two months, Graham Platner’s bid for the U.S. Senate was marked by momentum and bravado as the political newcomer drew big crowds to his town halls and he channeled Democratic voters’ hopes for a newer, brasher kind of candidate:

Really interesting pollster note in the UNH survey. Tries to account for Mills performance v Platner with declining approval. Her approval was +4 in August before she got in the race but flirting with it. It dropped to -12 once she got in. Did approval fall because she got in? buff.ly/ehktz3M

Coast Guard Buys Two Private Jets for Noem, Costing $172 Million www.nytimes.com/2025/10/18/u...

Proponents of Question 2 argue the existing law — often referred to as Maine’s yellow flag law — is a failed experiment that was not used to stop a gunman in Lewiston from killing 18 people and injuring and traumatizing countless others in 2023 despite warnings about his deteriorating mental health:

NEW: A dramatic voiceover video the White House and Donald Trump shared last week claiming to show "chaos" in Chicago is littered with outdated footage from Florida, Texas, South Carolina, Nebraska, California and Arizona, an AFP investigation found. factcheck.afp.com/doc.afp.com....

EMILY’s List out with the quick endorsement.

Mills says her confrontation with Trump in February helped push her into the race. To unseat Sen. Susan Collins, she'll have to win a potentially difficult Democratic primary via @npr.org www.npr.org/2025/10/14/n...

Mills was reportedly recruited by Democratic Senate leaders after her high-profile confrontation with President Donald Trump in February, in which she told the president she'd "see you in court."

ICYMI: Oyster farmer and veteran Graham Platner hopes his message lands with Maine voters via @npr.org 📻 🎧 one.npr.org/i/nx-s1-5565...

The Trump appointee accusing the president’s political foes of mortgage fraud skipped over his agency’s inspector general when making criminal referrals,, bypassing rules meant to ensure that federal officials don’t abuse their power for partisan purposes. www.reuters.com/world/us/tru...

Seeking to tap Democrats' anger over Trump, former Maine Secretary of State Matt Dunlap launches primary challenge against Rep. Jared Golden. buff.ly/giO4Tmb

Dunlap's campaign launch is trying to tap Democrats' frustration with Golden's approach to President Donald Trump:

How it looked in print ...

Today's court ruling has thoughts on masked ICE agents: "This Court has listened carefully to the reasons given by Öztürk’s captors for masking-up... It rejects this testimony as disingenuous, squalid and dishonorable. ICE goes masked for a single reason -- to terrorize Americans into quiescence."

NEW: DNC Chair Ken Martin tells me @npr.org special election results show Democrats are on the right track for 2026, and tells detractors to "stop bitching" and help the party's efforts. More on Martin's view that Democrats are winning -- even when they lose.

This is what I’ve been reporting on for months. Agencies are taking money and repurposing it against Congressional instructions, and there’s no way to know what they are taking the money from or what they are using it for.

Graham Platner is attacking Collins and leaders in the national Democratic Party, who he describes as proxies for a political system abandoning the working class and enriching corporations and wealthy interests:

A note about the crowd: campaign says there were 850 there. I couldn’t count from where I was. But the place couldn’t fit anymore people. There people listening from the parking lot and in the street behind this stage

Graham Platner at a town hall in Ellsworth. A hometown crowd of sorts, but they’ve packed this small brewery.

Experts say the FCC commissioner's conduct—testing how far the agency can go to limit speech without ever quite formally censoring it—is flatly unconstitutional. That won't make it stop. www.wired.com/story/brenda...

The group was formed as a response to upheaval at the U.S. CDC where Health and Human Services secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is carrying out his decades-long campaign to limit vaccines. It hopes to share resources to ensure vaccine access while planning responses to public health emergencies:

A House Oversight Committee hearing produced a flood of bizarre claims about cloud seeding, chemtrails, and solar geoengineering. Proven, human-driven changes to the weather were dismissed. www.wired.com/story/the-do...

Good thread about today's Monarez hearing from a first-rate public health reporter.

NPR is tracking the record number of Congressional lawmakers who have announced they do not plan to run for reelection to their current seats in 2026. That number currently stands at 10 senators and 27 House members.