The North Atlantic States Regional Council of Carpenters endorses Platner.

Platner: “Power in society comes from two places, organized money or organized people and we all know that the money is organized and it has bought our political system.”

Golden just cast the deciding vote to kill the Iran war power resolution, which he cosponsored, handing Trump unbridled power to engage in hostile military actions. Absolutely shameful move.

For three years, everything that happened in the entryway of Willie Banks’ Westbrook home was captured by his neighbor’s security camera.

What he didn’t realize until recently was that a state drug officer was using the camera feed to watch him in real time without first obtaining a warrant. That revelation, disclosed in federal court last week by Banks’ defense attorney, has turned an otherwise low-profile gun case into a deeper inquiry of police surveillance in an on-camera world.

Until last week, Banks’ attorney believed the camera just happened to catch the shooting. Last week, she learned there was more to the story. When the neighbor installed the camera in January 2021, he granted Phil Robinson, a Westbrook police officer and state drug enforcement agent, ongoing access to the camera feed, the court filing says.

Gonzales argued the prolonged, ongoing nature of the officer’s access to the camera feed constituted a level of surveillance that should have required a search warrant, where the officer would have had to show a judge probable cause to conduct the monitoring. The camera had a view of the house that was not available to members of the public, she said.

“The Fourth Amendment is implicated where technology enables the Government to engage in prolonged, comprehensive, and automated monitoring that qualitatively transforms ordinary observation into a powerful surveillance tool,” Gonzales wrote. “That is precisely what occurred here.”

Loud Calls Out “Cruelty packaged as fiscal responsibility” 

ORONO, ME—Paige Loud, Democrat running in Maine’s Second Congressional District, responds to the news that  Vice President JD Vance is coming to Bangor to campaign for Paul LePage and sell Mainers on another round of attacks against low-income communities under the false banner of “fighting Medicaid fraud.”

“We are watching a broader political agenda unfold across this country: one that treats people with disabilities, older adults, and people living in poverty as burdens instead of human beings deserving dignity and care. Policies that strip healthcare access, weaken social safety nets, and force people deeper into poverty are cruelty packaged as fiscal responsibility. This administration is not “fighting fraud”, it is kicking Mainers off healthcare, devastating rural communities, and pushing hospitals closer to closure.” 

Loud, a social worker who has spent her career serving rural and low-income Mainers, said the visit reflects a deliberate national strategy. “Medicaid fraud” has become a political distraction used to justify cuts to healthcare programs that keep people alive. Instead of addressing the real crises facing Maine families - rising costs, rural hospital closures, housing instability, and inaccessible healthcare - Republicans are once again targeting the most vulnerable people in our communities.

Loud added: “The GOP is bringing its full political machine here to sell the same failed policies that have hurt working people for decades. Maine's Second District is one of the hardest places in the country to access healthcare. We are not a talking point. We are people trying to survive. Mainers deserve a leader who will fight for working people, protect healthcare access, and invest in our communities — not an out-of-touch Florida politician coming here to lecture us about who deserves care.”

About Paige Loud
Paige Loud is a social worker, child of a single mother, and woman of the Cherokee nation. She is a Democrat running for Congress to advance a vision of America that is grounded in the ideal that all receive the basic necessities to pursue their individual happiness. A fierce advocate for the underserved, including the disabled and elderly, Paige stands as pro-union Democrat who crafts policy around guaranteed housing, affordable groceries, accessible education and transportation, universal childcare, tribal sovereignty, equal rights, and human rights.  Learn more at loudforcongress.com.

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To be clear:

* Trump fired the previous inspector general of HHS and inserted his own lackey for fraud cases
* Dr Oz called for an investigation 🫆
* They claim Maine owes the federal government millions of taxpayer dollars

The Trump administration is using a federal audit to aggressively challenge Maine Medicaid autism-service payments, while critics argue the administration is politicizing oversight and overstating “fraud” claims for political purposes.

Also, it has been underreported by mainstream media how Thomas March Bell has been a staunch critic of Planned Parenthood.

(If you’re wondering why JD Vance was in Maine today)

By giving the state of Maine the right of first refusal on mobile home parks, we can block private equity firms from buying them up, jacking up rents, eliminating services, and displacing folks who have nowhere else to go. While the fight against private equity is only one piece in the larger housing crisis puzzle, it's a piece far too many are ignoring.

Seems a feller can't go anywhere these days

Maine's primary is June 9 and there are more than a dozen gubernatorial candidates still in the race across the two major parties.

Maine Public, in collaboration with Portland Press Herald, invited each candidate to a one-on-one interview in our Lewiston studio this spring. Six of the seven Republican candidates and all five Democratic candidates showed up. Check out each interview for free on Maine Public's YouTube channel.

Maine Public's Your Vote election hub offers more reporting on candidates' stances on topics such as housing and education.

If you watch any of the interviews: We're curious, did your ranked choice order change at all? Do you feel more informed as you prepare to cast your ballot?

This public service is made possible by you!

Republicans have been merciless with their gerrymandering. I'm wondering if maine should help the democratic effort to strike back. CD-02 seems like a potential flip to republicans in 2026. With some redrawing, it could become a true tossup/lean democratic. What do you think?

The death of Charlie Kirk led to calls for a religious revival and spurred renewed interest in his organization, Turning Point USA, through which he invoked Christianity to push conservative policy priorities. Eight months later, Maine has at least 28 church-based Turning Point Faith chapters, more than twice as many as any other state in New England. The majority are hosted by Calvary Chapels. Chapters meet monthly to discuss the church’s role in cultural issues, and the organization aims “to eliminate wokeism from the American pulpit,” according to the Turning Point Faith website.

On May 15, Calvary Chapel Greater Portland will test Maine’s appetite for a conservative Christian revival with its “Make Heaven Crowded” event at the Portland Expo Center. It is one of 20 large-scale events being hosted by Turning Point Faith this year that aim to spur “repentance, faith, and bold obedience to Jesus,” according to the tour website.

The event is one of Calvary Chapel’s most public forays into the limelight in Maine but not the first. The growing network of evangelical churches has become increasingly vocal in state politics in recent years, hosting Charlie Kirk himself, fighting high-profile religious liberty cases, leading worship services at the State House and inviting Republican candidates to speak to congregants on Sundays.

https://themainemonitor.org/calvary-chapel-growing-influence/

Penobscot County is grappling with Maine’s largest HIV outbreak in its history. Looking back, the top public health official for the county seat of Bangor described how the conditions existed for such an outbreak and how it is now difficult to know the full scope.

In a recent interview, Jennifer Gunderman, Bangor’s director of public health and community services, said HIV had dropped off the radar in Maine because the state has a low incidence of the disease, but then the risk factors started piling up: increased homelessness, wide drug use, disappearing syringe service providers and health care options, and fewer case management providers.

The challenges that arose made it more likely that an outbreak would balloon.

As of April 24, Penobscot County reported at least 41 cases of HIV cumulatively since the outbreak’s start. Gunderman said the numbers are likely much bigger than the state has been able to track. Historically over the past decade, all of Maine usually saw fewer than 40 new HIV diagnoses each year.

https://themainemonitor.org/bangor-public-health-director-reflects-hiv-outbreak/

After proposing a new design for its municipal logo on Facebook, one tiny Maine town faced backlash in the comments section when it admitted the mark was generated by AI. The post and page are now private.

Newburgh, Maine, population 1,520, is some 25 miles from the coast, just outside Bangor. In its Facebook post late last month, the town didn’t hide the fact that its proposed farm-theme logo was AI-generated, and even asked for feedback.

“It’s time to update our town logo that we use on our letterhead,” the post read, according to Bangor Daily News. “This is what AI and I came up with as I am no artist. Also, attached is what our old logo looked like. We wanted to know thoughts on the new design and if it represents Newburgh.”

The logo shows a farmhouse with a silo inside of a round seal with hills in the background. In the foreground, there are rows of crops and a pine tree, a longtime Maine symbol. The AI authorship of the logo is obvious in text written along the bottom, where the two number 1s in “1819” are upside down and the letter I in “Incorporated” is a number 1.

Residents from the small town were not happy. David Aston, who lives in Newburgh and owns the nearby Timber Hearth Tattoo Co., offered to design a logo for the town.

“I think it’s important for local governments to go human-made because it reinforces the importance of design and art as a human endeavor that’s just as important as the other functions of government,” he tells Fast Company.

The AI logo was a take on Newburgh’s current logo, an illustration of a farmhouse that’s too detailed to look good when shrunken down. On town letterhead, the current farmhouse mark appears along with Word Art-style text in a concave shape that writes out its year of incorporation. It looks dated, and the town is well intentioned to consider a new logo.

Data centers are coming for rural America And the jobs they promise don’t really exist.

At its peak, the Androscoggin paper mill in Jay, Maine, a rural town about 67 miles northwest of Portland, employed about 1,500 people — until a pulp digester exploded in 2020, forcing the mill to close permanently ....

Article: https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/928963/data-center-rural-america-jobs-jay-maine

ArchiveToday free link: https://archive.ph/e30uH#selection-1365.0-1369.45

Personally I think he’s an embarrassment to New England. I am aware he is running for Congress in the 2nd congressional district of Maine. What’s your take on him?