Free Republic

As America continues to be gripped in protest and anger over the shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man who was shot in the back by police in Kenosha, Wisc., Black Lives Matter protesters in Maine were planning to "stand up against racial injustice" on Saturday in Portland. But as of Saturday morning, organizers announced the event has been postponed. "We want to be clear, we are not postponing because those who threatened us have 'won.' But we also have to reckon with the reality of living black in Maine, and how when push came to shove, White Maine and...

Sara Gideon staffers donated to the Minnesota Freedom Fund, which bails out rioters... At least seven staffers for Maine Democratic Senate candidate Sara Gideon donated to a bail fund that releases looters and other violent criminals from jail. Gideon's staffers posted on social media about their donations to the Minnesota Freedom Fund, a group that pays criminal bail for protesters and looters regardless of whether they were violent or which crimes they committed. The donations came after individuals involved with anti-police demonstrations began looting and burning businesses in Minneapolis. ... Local reports have indicated the fund has bailed out individuals...

Bill Cohen, a Republican who spent more than three decades representing Maine in Congress before becoming secretary of defense during former President Bill Clinton’s second term, has endorsed Democrat Joe Biden for president. “We have a choice in November,” Cohen said in a statement released by the Biden campaign Wednesday. “Whether to go back to our dark past or reach for who we aspire to be -- a country where it doesn't matter where you came from, how you worship or who you love, a country where everyone matters.” Cohen, 79, served in the House of Representatives from 1973 to...

KENNEBUNKPORT, Maine — Former President George W. Bush on Friday backed Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine in his first public endorsement of the 2020 election cycle. [Cut] “She’s honest. She’s forthright. She brings dignity into a world that has gotten really ugly. The political world is uglier than I can ever remember it,” Bush said after he and his wife, Laura, had lunch with Collins at the family’s summer home overlooking the ocean. Bush called her “smart and capable,” “very influential” and “pretty darned independent.”

A federal judge in Oregon denying a request by three Christian schools in that state to reopen... "vehemently opposed" That's what US Attorney General William Barr has to say about the notion of a pardon fro former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden..... The sentencing today for actress Lori Loughlin and her husband Mossimo Gianulli in the "college admissions bribe scandal". She sentenced to two months and he to five months by a federal judge.... California wildfires rapidly expanding today with Governor Gavin Newsom looking for help from as far away as Canada and Australia..... And California's Governor Gavin Newsom...

The Mills Administration has updated prevention checklists for several types of businesses under stage three of the state's reopening plan. Affected businesses include restaurants, movie theaters, gyms, museums and campgrounds. In movie theaters, so called household groups that do not have to adhere to distancing requirements may consist of to up to 10 people. Most of the updates are just a few additions or clarifications to previously released checklists. For example, front-of-house staff in restaurants who choose to wear face shields must now wear them upside down so that they are attached at the collar instead of the forehead, so...

Maine Dems argued legislation was racist. ... Gideon leveraged her leadership position in the Democrat-controlled legislature to kill two separate bills that would have criminalized the practice of severing the clitoris of infant girls and sewing their vaginas shut. ... Under Gideon's leadership, Maine Democrats argued that the bill was racist toward the state's large immigrant community from Somalia, a country where the practice is "nearly universal" according to the United Nations ... Gideon's efforts have helped make Maine one of only 12 states that have not banned female genital mutilation. Such a legacy threatens to complicate her cultivated image...

More than $28,000 worth of gold bars discovered on Chinese nationally illegally entering the United States in Maine. MITY, Maine – While conducting operations near Amity, U.S. Border Patrol Agents from the Houlton Border Patrol Station apprehended a 36-year-old Chinese national who was found to have illegally entered the United States from Canada. On Tuesday, August 4, agents from the Houlton Border Patrol Station encountered a female subject who admitted to being a Chinese national illegally present in the United States. Agents were able to verify the location where she illegally entered the United States by matching foot prints belonging...

The Manhattan fashion executive killed by a great white shark in Maine retired from her successful career four years ago and hoped to spend her days staying active and spending time with her family, a longtime colleague told the Daily News. "She had a great career. She had it all," Julie Dimperio Holowach's longtime boss and colleague Karen Murray told The News. The 63-year-old Manhattanite was vacationing in Maine and swimming in the Casco Bay off Bailey Island Monday afternoon when the shark mauled her in front of her daughter. Read more here: https://www.thenewstribune.com/news/nation-world/national/article244568592.html#storylink=cpy

The Maine Marine Patrol says they are investigating the death of a woman Monday afternoon near Bailey Island. According to Marine Patrol and NEWS CENTER Maine who spoke with witnesses at the scene, a woman was swimming off the shore near While Sails Lane when she was injured in what appeared to be a shark attack. Marine Patrol says the woman was pronounced dead at the scene. The investigation is ongoing and no other information is available at this time, Marine Patrol says.

(CNN)Sen. Susan Collins declined last week to back President Donald Trump for reelection, saying she would focus on her own race while suggesting that she only picked sides in 2016 because she was not on the ballot. "I was not up for reelection," the Maine Republican told reporters, referring to the 2016 race, when she publicly voiced her opposition to Trump's presidential campaign. "I didn't have my own race to worry about at that point." But a dozen years ago, as she was running for reelection, Collins endorsed Republican Sen. John McCain over then-Sen. Barack Obama. She served as a...

Planned Parenthood has targeted Republican Main Sen. Susan Collins with a six-figure media buy highlighting Collins’ support for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, according to the Hill. The nation’s largest abortion provider launched the ad campaign against Collins Thursday with an ad that criticizes the senator’s support for Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court in light of his dissenting vote on a recent abortion ruling. “Susan Collins trusted Brett Kavanaugh to protect safe, legal abortion,” says a female narrator in the ad, first reported by The Hill. “But she was wrong. Kavanaugh voted against abortion the first chance he got....

Former national security adviser John Bolton and his newfound opposition to President Trump have become a campaign issue in the Republican primary in Maine’s Democratic-controlled 2nd Congressional District, a top GOP target this fall. “John Bolton lies about President Trump, and now, his henchmen are doing the exact same thing to Trump conservative Eric Brakey,” says a new ad from the Protect Freedom PAC. “They’re scared of Brakey because they know he will stand with Trump, fight to drain the swamp, and advance an America First agenda.” The group’s spokesman, Michael Biundo, urged Maine Republican voters to “ignore the Bolton...

The Lincoln Project, a Republican super PAC, in a new ad slammed some of President Trump’s top GOP allies in the Senate, accusing a slate of Republican lawmakers of “cowardice” and “betrayal.” The ad, released Wednesday, states, “Someday soon, the time of Trump will pass. This circus of incompetence, corruption and cruelty will end. When it does, the men and women in Trump’s Republican Party will come to you, telling you they can repair the damage he’s done. They’ll beg you to forgive their votes to exonerate Trump from his crimes, ask you to forgive their silence, their cowardice and...

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, refused to say whether she’ll vote for President Trump in November and signaled that she would not campaign against presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden. The self-proclaimed moderate Republican from Maine told the New York Times this week she does not campaign against former colleagues. Biden and Collins worked together in the Senate. “I do not campaign against my colleagues in the Senate,” she said of Biden, adding that she knows him “very well” from their days in Congress together. “My inclination is just to stay out of the presidential and focus on my own race,” she...

he senators skipping out include Chuck Grassley of Iowa, Mitt Romney of Utah, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. The lawmakers gave varying reasons for why they won't be at President Donald Trump's renominating convention. Some of those senators are not among Trump's favorites.

The "Never Trump" coalition of Republicans fighting to oust President Trump from the White House is making a risky play, just as the president's lackluster poll numbers are raising concerns on the right -- they're going after Republican senators too. The effort is being led by The Lincoln Project, a media-savvy outfit that spends most of its time hammering the incumbent president with scathing TV and digital ads. But along with targeting Trump, The Lincoln Project is now weighing in on the races of GOP senators facing tough reelections this year. ... The spot characterizes Daines – who’s facing a...

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senators Rand Paul (R-KY), Angus King (I-ME), Mike Crapo (R-ID), and Mike Lee (R-UT) reintroduced the bipartisan Fifth Amendment Integrity Restoration (FAIR) Act, S. 4074, to protect property owners’ rights, defend innocent Americans, and restore the Fifth Amendment’s role in civil forfeiture proceedings. “The federal government has made it far too easy for government agencies to take and profit from the property of those who have not been convicted of a crime. The FAIR Act will uphold the Fifth Amendment and ensure government agencies no longer profit from taking American citizens’ property without due process....

GOP rallies around Trump after firing of Manhattan US attorney BY ALEXANDER BOLTON - 06/22/20 08:05 PM EDT — GOP rallies around Trump after firing of Manhattan US attorney Senate Republicans on Monday largely defended President Trump following his controversial decision this week to fire Geoffrey Berman, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. Senate Majority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.) said Trump was within his right to fire Berman, who was involved in a number of politically sensitive investigations that touched on Trump and his advisers. “It’s kind of like previous firings, I would say,” Thune said....

The Department of Justice today filed a statement of interest in a Maine federal court in support of a lawsuit filed by campgrounds in Maine—and New Hampshire residents who wish to enjoy them—challenging a measure by Governor Janet Mills in response to COVID‑19 that treats Maine residents more favorably than out-of-state residents when they seek to patronize campgrounds and RV parks within Maine. The Statement of Interest is part of Attorney General William P. Barr’s April 27, 2020 initiative directing Assistant Attorney General Eric Dreiband for the Civil Rights Division, and the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan,...