Impeachment: Maine's delegation, save Collins, demands Trump's immediate removal

Three of Maine's four Congressional representatives are now on record demanding Trump's immediate removal from office for his role in the insurrection and terrorist attacks against Congress and the U.S. Capitol last week.

Senator Angus King (I) weighed in today in a statement blasting Trump as a danger to the republic and calling out the 147 members of Congress's "sedition caucus" who, hours after the deadly attack, voted to, in effect, end democracy by overturning a democratic election lost by the president. Details in this Press Herald story from a few hours ago.

Senator Susan Collins, New England's only remaining Republican Congressional representative, has said she will not be commenting on impeachment because of her role as a "juror" in the Senate trial that will follow.

Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-ME01) was ahead of the rest of the delegation, calling for Trump's removal almost immediately after the attack and co-sponsoring a House resolution to investigate the sedition caucus and consider removal via the 14th Amendment. Details in this Press Herald story.

Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME02) didn't reveal his position until last night, but when he did it was a direct and unequivocal condemnation of the president. (Golden just won a second term in a district that went for Trump by 7 points.)

[Update, 1/13/21: Pingree and Golden voted for impeachment this afternoon. Trump became the first president in history to be impeached twice with 10 Republicans joining all Democrats in a 232-197 vote.]

American Nations and the geography of the pandemic

The geography of the U.S. response to the Covid-19 pandemic follows, like so many other things in American life, the fissures of identified in American Nations to a startling degree. I wrote about this briefly back in early April for Washington Monthly, when there was a notable divergence in the public policy response. With the Trump administration abdicating leadership, we're now seeing the case trends following these regional contours.

With the help of my Press Herald colleague Chad Gilley and the New York Times's county-level case data, we crunched and graphed the numbers and presented the results in this article in this week's Maine Sunday Telegram. There are detailed data tables for each of the eleven "nations" in the sidebar if you click through. It follows the individual liberty vs common good divide I discussed in American Character.

If you're not familiar with American Nations, here's the publisher's book description, a New York Times OpEd on how it trumps the rural/urban divide in US politics; a Washington Monthly piece on how it doomed the Tea Party, another piece on his it drives differences in violence and gun policy, and an analysis of the 2016 presidential election.

Allocations of N95 masks from federal stockpile weren't distributed to states on per capita basis

As states have scrounged for supplies of N95 masks and other critical personal protective equipment, federal authorities have repeatedly said the state-by-state allocations from the Strategic National Stockpile were made on a per capita basis.

This is not the case.

My analysis of the data is in today's Portland Press Herald. Teaser: it's not based on political loyalty or apparent pandemic exposure either, but the federal government is unwilling to explain what logic was in fact used.

Maine's Congressional delegation is largely outraged by the lack of transparency, except for the one Republican of the four, Sen. Susan Collins, whose office wouldn't answer questions about it.

Details in the story.

[Update, 4/23/20: This story was picked up by the national Associated Press wire and also featured in today's USA Today News from the Fifty States feature.]

I wrote on another, distinctly handled, federal stockpile issue last week: the allocation of ventilators.

Covid-19 hospitalizations in much of Maine have flattened

The effort to "flatten the curve" is literally an attempt to reduce the spread of the pandemic so as to prevent a sudden spike in critically ill patients that overwhelms hospitals, their very limited supply of personal protective equipment, and scarce ventilators to keep the most sick alive.

In an exclusive story in today's Portland Press Herald, I report that that effort here in Maine has worked, at least for now.

I collected confirmed Covid-19 in-patient counts directly from the three largest hospital networks in the state back to the start of the epidemic here, broken out by individual hospital so as to reveal the trend lines in different parts of the state. The very good news: instead of the spike Maine hospitals were bracing for two weeks ago, inpatient numbers have crested and flattened almost everywhere, and had a modest decline in several hospitals, including Maine Medical Center, which has handled roughly half of all hospitalizations in this state.

But, as you can read in the story, while this is welcome news in terms of protecting our hospitals, it's in no way an indication that we can safely scale back the social distancing measures that have blunted the disease's spread. And the unfolding crisis in the state's long term care facilities could undo this positive trend if state officials and health care workers are unable to head it off. Indeed, Maine CDC director Nirav Shah told me last night that's the scenario that keeps him up at night.

[Update, 5/1/2020: I revisited the data a week later and a week after that; hospitalizations continued to gently fall or plateau.]

Maine and 37 other states got zero ventilators from the federal stockpile. Why?

In yesterday's Portland Press Herald I tried to answer the question: "Why did Maine -- and 37 other states -- get zero ventilators from the Strategic National Stockpile?"

The answer isn't entirely clear, beyond the fact that the federal stockpile was woefully understocked for a crisis of this magnitude. Many -- but not all -- of the states that did receive  some of the circa 9000 on hand are hot spots. Other places that appear vulnerable got none. Colorado aside, there's not a clear political pattern in ventilator allocation (though that may not be the case for personal protection equipment, a separate issue.)

As you'll read in the story, even when adding in "alternative ventilators" like CPAP machines, converted anesthesia devices and the like, it leaves Maine short if things reach the more dire planning scenarios the Maine CDC has been working with. It all may depend on whether Mainers can slow the spread enough in the coming weeks to prevent a spike in the state's ICUs.

One other Maine coronavirus update from me in today's Press Herald: the Chebeague Island ferry will now transport emergency COVID-19 patients after all.

Decoding the U.S.'s 92 million non-voters

Non-voters are the biggest wild card in U.S. electoral politics, a cohort of some 92 million adults who are eligible to vote, but seldom do so. They’re eclectic, with distinctive blocks that reliably support Democrats and Republicans – but don’t show up to cast their ballots -- and an even larger one that is completely alienated from a political milieu they find bewildering, corrupt, irrelevant or some combination thereof. These blocks are so large that when a campaign is able to motivate even a portion of one, they can swing an election, which is what allowed Donald Trump to reduce the “Blue Wall” of Upper Great Lakes states to rubble in 2016 and Barack Obama to flip North Carolina, Virginia, Florida and Indiana in 2008. What these blocks do in November will likely decide the 2020 election and the survival of the republic as we’ve come to know it.

But who are they? Why don’t they vote? What can motivate them to change their mind?

Lat week, the Knight Foundation released the results of “The 100 Million Project,” the largest and survey of chronic non-voters in history. More than 12,000 were polled across the country, with special emphasis on ten battleground states, followed by in-depth focus group conversations with thousands of them across the country. You won't want to miss what they learned.

I had advanced access to the report and its authors and travelled to Philadelphia earlier this month to report this in-depth POLITICO Magazine story on this poorly understood portion of the U.S. citizenry. Input from Chris Arnade, Ibram Kendi, Meredith Rolfe, Eitan Hersh, Yanna Krupnik, the More in Common "Hidden Tribes" team, and many others. Hope you enjoy.

I last reported from Pennsylvania for POLITICO in 2016, on a very different topic, the redevelopment of the massive Philadelphia Navy Yard.

Colony, a six-part series on Maine's long path to statehood

Maine is celebrating the bicentennial of its statehood this year, but the story of our beginnings lies in the millennia and centuries that preceded March 15th, 1820, the day we regained our independence from Massachusetts. 

Colony, a six-part series that launched in the Maine Sunday Telegram today tells that story. It's a harrowing and little understood saga of war and betrayal, of clashing empires and ethnic cleansing, of an intra-English civil war and a 170 year colonial occupation by Massachusetts of what had been a separate province. These events shaped us as a people and explain some of our culture’s most impressive virtues and most frustrating faults, as well as the still fraught relationship between this land’s real natives and the rest of us whose families came “from away” at some point in the past four hundred years.

This first chapter is on the prehistoric and immediate contact period hereabouts. The series continues each Sunday for the next month and a half.

If you enjoy this series and want more, consider reading my cultural history of Maine, The Lobster Coast: Rebels, Rusticators and the Struggle for a Forgotten Frontier (Viking, 2004) and, on Maine-Wabanaki relations in more recent times, the Portland Press Herald series "Unsettled," also available as an ebook at the usual outlets.

[Update, 3/5/2020: You can read Chapter 2 here and Chapter 3 here.]

"Putin's Favorite Congressman" moves to Maine

Dana Rohrabacher is a surfing enthusiast, cannabis activist, and former Reagan speechwriter who once joined muhajadeeen to attack Russian targets and Afghanistan and arm wrestled a visiting bureaucrat named Vladimir Putin in a DC bar while representing Orange County, California for 15 terms in Congress. In recent years -- to the consternation of some of his fellow Cold Warriors -- he emerged as the most vociferous defender and apologist for Putin and Hungarian strongman Viktor Orban, a friend of British populist Nigel Farage, and a visitor to Julian Assange.

But after losing reelection in 2018, he declared he would be moving to Maine. Now, as I reported last week in the Maine Sunday Telegram, he's here, having moved his family to York full-time. He doesn't appear to be engaging in cannabis politics here in Maine -- where the newly legalized recreational marijuana industry is just getting going -- but he is backing a mentee of his, Republican 2nd District Congressional hopeful Eric Brakey, who I caught up with for the story.

I first became aware of Rohrabacher in 2015, when I was back in Hungary writing this POLITICO story on Orban.

Maine's governor wants the state carbon-neutral by 2045. What will that take?

At the United Nations, Governor Janet Mills pledged to make Maine carbon-neutral by 2045, tasking the new Maine Climate Council to come up with a plan to do so via an executive order.

So what does being "carbon neutral" mean, and what would Maine likely have to do to achieve such a status -- something no other state and only one foreign country has thus far achieved? I explored this in the current edition of the Maine Sunday Telegram, which published last Sunday.

In short: Bhutan, the only country that's already carbon-neutral, is 71% forested and has about 50 people per square mile. Maine is 90% forested and has just over 40 per square mile -- a carbon sink with not that many people and a huge structural advantage right out of the starting block. It's still going to require massive changes in how energy is produced and the types of vehicles and heating devices we use to consume it. Details in the story.

Trump's "judge whisperer" buys Maine mansion, hosts fundraiser for Susan Collins

In this past week's Maine Sunday Telegram, I have the story of how Leonard Leo, executive vice president of the Federalist Society and the man credited with pre-selecting Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch and other conservative justices for the Supreme Court, bought a mansion on Maine's Mount Desert Island and held a fundraiser for Senator Susan Collins.

It features C. Boyden Grey (who co-hosted the Collins fundraiser Aug. 8 and serves on the Federalist Society board) and the Knights of Malta (a Catholic order that has many of the attributes of a sovereign state, including 108 embassies, postage stamps, passports, coins and a seat at the United Nations) and even the W.R. Grace company (the one featured in the book and movie "A Civil Action.")

Mainer on Putin's interrogation "wish list" on the Act that upset Russia

In July,  wrote about how a guy from Maine wound up on Vladimir Putin's list of Americans he'd like turned over for interrogation, a request he made of President Trump at this past summer's summit in Helsinki and one that - to widespread horror - Trump appeared to entertain.

Kyle Parker, raised in Old Town, educated at the University of Maine, was back in Maine this month, speaking to the Midcoast Forum on Foreign Relations about the legislation he championed that Putin so hates: the Magnitsky Act. I caught up with him at the event and shared his thoughts on the Act, why it's effective, why Putin doesn't like it, and on growing up in Maine in Monday's Portland Press Herald.

The Mainer spearheading West Coast fishermen's climate change suit against Big Oil

Last month, a coalition of West Coast fishermen filed a suit against thirty of the world's major oil companies in California Superior Court seeking damages for the latter having allegedly undermined the Dungeness crab fishery via climate change; the suit alleges Big Oil knew about the dangers of climate change for decades, but actively decided the public and decision makers.

The head of the organization that filed the suit, Noah Oppenheim, is a 31-year old scientist from Maine who grew up in Falmouth and did his graduate work at the University of Maine's Darling Marine Center. I wrote on how he found his way to the middle of this high-profile law suit in this week's Maine Sunday Telegram. Enjoy.

I wrote on two other Mainers at the center of national news -- Interior Department whistleblower Joel Clement and Russia expert Kyle Parker -- in the Press Herald recently.

Sen. Collins' stance won't save Roe v Wade, experts say

President Donald Trump will announce his latest nomination to the Supreme Court of the United States in a few hours, a nominee who will need 51 votes to be confirmed by the Senate.

Those concerned that abortion rights will be overturned by the new court have been focused on two Republican senators who say they support reproductive rights: Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Maine's own Susan Collins.

Collins' position on Roe and the confirmation process has been consistent, but easily misunderstood for to those who don't follow her and the court closely. It's central tenant: she will judge the nominee based on their fidelity to precedent, with the assertion that this will protect Roe v Wade because it's "settled law."

In this week's Maine Sunday Telegram, I asked several of the country's leading legal scholars what they thought of this reasoning. Most were unimpressed. Find the details here.

For more on Collins' position on this issue, start here.

Rep. Pingree tours child detention sites in Texas, Rep. Poliquin speaks out against practice

I've been covering the Maine delegation's stance and reaction to the Trump administration's separation of migrant children from their families and the effort to reunify them for the Portland Press Herald.

Two developments:

Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-ME01, is in southmost Texas (where I once lived) to inspect child detention centers there. Here's my dispatch -- still updating at this hour as her tour continues -- on what she's found. [Update, 6/24/18: this story now includes latest information on what bills or legislative actions Pingree, Poliquin, Sen. Angus King, and Sen. Susan Collins are taking on the issue.]

Rep. Bruce Poliquin, R-ME02, who for a time avoided discussing the issue, has taken a strong stance for immediate reunification, backing a new bill to that effect. Details in my story yesterday.

Two ALEC bills before Maine lawmakers would facilitate rewriting of US Constitution

In yesterday's Portland Press Herald, I have another story involving a model text from the American Legislative Exchange Council being introduced in the Maine legislature, and once again it has national implications.

ALEC's state co-chair, a Republican lawmaker from Hiram, has introduced two bills that would have Maine join the tally of states calling for the convening of a constitutional convention under Article V of the US Constitution for the first time since 1787. One of the bills -- having to do with a convention allegedly limited to passing a balanced budget amendment -- would make Maine the 29th state to make the official call, just five sort of the number necessary to compel a convening.

Critics -- including the late Supreme Court justices Antonin Scalia and Warren Burger -- have warned that since there are no rules laid out for how such a convention would function, absolutely anything could happen. As the article reports, a well-funded model convention held two years ago in Virginia passed a number of amendments that would transform all aspects of American life.

How did the texts wind up in Maine? When are they up for floor votes? What on Earth is this ALEC you speak of?  Read on to find out.

I've written about ALEC bills in Maine four other times in the past year, including an effort last year to pass a similar bill,  this article and a follow up  on a bill that would prevent towns from building high-speed broadband networks,  and this article on another that would prevent them from passing pesticide ordinances.

Senator King warns of Russian cyber threat to 2018 midterms

Senator Angus King, I-Maine, came by the Press Herald newsroom last week for a wide-ranging, on-record conversation with myself and my colleagues about everything from the state of the immigration debate to prospects for modest gun control legislation on Capitol Hill and even why he's not interested in joining the Democrats, who he caucuses with.

But the most pressing issue he wanted to talk about was the ongoing threat posed by Russian cyber attacks on our election infrastructure, which he says remain insufficiently addressed ahead of the 2018 midterms. The President, he argues, has not only declined to marshall a cross-government response, he's made matters worse by encouraging the public to regard Russian attacks as a hoax.

It's all in the piece, which ran in yesterday's print edition.

For more background on King's concerns with attacks on our election systems, there's this piece from an extended interview I did with the senator last year. On Maine's system -- relatively invulnerable to such attacks because of its intentionally low-tech design -- start with this interview with the state's top election's official, Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap.

Dunlap, other top state election officials received classified briefing on threats to voter systems

The U.S. intelligence community has been warning elected officials and the public for some time now about the past, present, and future threat Russia has posed to the integrity of election infrastructure. In yesterday's Portland Press Herald, I report on an unprecedented briefing by the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and the office of the Director of National Intelligence on the matter given to Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap and nine other members of the executive board of the national association for secretaries of state.

I spoke to Dunlap for the story, and you can read his thoughts and message in the piece.

Dunlap is known nationally for his role in the closure of President Trump's controversial election fraud commission, on which he was a member. His suit to obtain working documents from the group -- which he says he and other Democratic commissioners were denied -- is still in federal court.

The Russian threat to election integrity was floated and quickly dropped by Dunlap in the early days of the commission, but has been a consistent priority for US Senator Angus King (I-Maine.)

Trump renews push to eliminate LIHEAP, Sea Grant, NEA, other programs

Last year, President Trump tried to eliminate a wide range of programs with an outsized impact in Maine, including Sea Grant, low income heating assistance, community block grants, the National Estuarine Reserve system, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and Legal Services Corporation, a major  funding source for Pine Tree Legal Assistance. Congress ultimately told him to pound sand.

Yesterday, his new budget proposes again to eliminate these and other programs. As I report in today's Portland Press Herald, Maine's Congressional delegation -- from conservative Republican Bruce Poliquin to liberal democrat Chellie Pingree and more centrist US Senators in between --  is not on board.

Bill would stop states from blocking municipal broadband projects

Last year I wrote about a bill introduced in Maine's legislature that would effectively block towns from building their own municipal high speed data networks, even when -- as is often the case in rural Maine -- existing providers have refused to do so for them. The bill, modeled on one created by the American Legislative Exchange Council that has become law in 17 other states and introduced by that group's state co-chair, was ultimately and unanimously defeated in committee.

Now a bill has been introduced in Congress to prohibit states from passing such legislation. I report in today's Portland Press Herald about why its been introduced, what ALEC thinks of it, and how one of its co-sponsors, Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-ME01, has to say about the bill and its prospects in Congress.

Gov. LePage's support for offshore drilling at odds with every New England member of Congress

This month, when the Trump administration unveiled its plan to open virtually all areas of U.S. federal waters to oil and gas exploration, most of New England's elected leaders expressed outrage. Every member of the US Senate and US House from the five coastal New England states signed onto a bipartisan bill to ban drilling in the region, while every governor from Massachusetts to Florida announced their intention to seek an exemption. Florida's governor even got one.

The one exception: Maine's Gov. Paul LePage, who not only didn't join the chorus, he'd written a letter in August asking Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to do just what he did.

In this week's Maine Sunday Telegram I report on the controversy and how LePage's stance on drilling may complicate Maine's effort to get a Florida-like exemption.

I previously reported on oil and gas drilling in our region in late 2015, when Canada leased areas on their side of the border, at the entrance to the Gulf of Maine.