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Sen. Collins Must Do More to Truly Stand Up for Energy Assistance
In her questioning she did not challenge the nonsensical reasoning of the Trump administration. Instead, Sen. Collins, who certainly should know better, played along acting as if Trump was normal.
May 23, 2025
Last year, roughly 6 million American families used the Low-Income Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP, to help pay their heating or cooling bills. LIHEAP is a program that helps people from Louisiana to Maine and has an amazingly bipartisan support. This support extends to energy providers.
In April of this year, the staff at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) who run LIHEAP were fired by Secretary of HHS Robert F. Kennedy Jr. One of those fired employees was brought back last week to distribute the remaining LIHEAP funds for the current fiscal year.
Why would Collins thank Kennedy, or anyone else, for simply following the law?
This week Secretary Kennedy testified on HHS spending for the next fiscal year before the Senate Appropriations Committee chaired by Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine. In fiscal year 2025, Maine received $41.6 million in LIHEAP funding.
At the hearing, Collins praised the Trump for administration for releasing the already appropriated funds and asked Kennedy, “Will you work with this committee in trying to restore LIHEAP so that we can avoid, literally, seniors and low-income families not being able to keep warm in the winter?” Kennedy responded:
Yeah, absolutely, and I’m from New England myself. My brother, for 40 years, has run Citizens Energy, which provides low-cost home heating oil to families in New England. And so many people have come to me over the years and said to me, thank you, your brother saved my life because I didn’t have to choose between food and heat. I was on the Navajo reservation three weeks ago, and Navajo President Buu Nygren said to me, at this point, if we cut LIHEAP, Navajo will die from it. So, I understand the critical historical importance of this program. President [Donald] Trump’s rationale and the [Office of Management and Budget]’s rationale is that President Trump’s energy policies are going to lower the cost of energy so that everybody will get lower cost heating oil, and in that case, this program would simply be another subsidy to the fossil fuel industry.
Kennedy went on to add that if there was not a drop in energy prices, he would spend the monies that Congress appropriated. Concluding his remarks, Kennedy said that “Do that, and I will work with you to make sure that those families do not suffer in that way.”
Collins’ advocacy for LIHEAP is positive, and she should be commended for raising the issue with Kennedy. However, her remarks fell drastically short of what is needed at this moment. Collins was pleased that the Trump administration released already appropriated funds and that Kennedy said he would spend any monies Congress appropriated. This is only doing what the law requires nothing more. Why would Collins thank Kennedy, or anyone else, for simply following the law?
In her remarks, posted on her Senate webpage, Collins did not challenge Kennedy and Trump’s assertion that the energy policies of the Trump administration are going to reduce energy prices to the level that LIHEAP will no longer be needed. Even if there is a major drop in energy prices (this is a big if), would that drop make such a difference that LIHEAP would not be needed in the next fiscal year? The answer is obviously no.
It was good that Collins spoke up for LIHEAP. However, in her questioning she did not challenge the nonsensical reasoning of the Trump administration. Instead, Sen. Collins, who certainly should know better, played along acting as if Trump was normal. As she had done many times throughout her career in the Senate, Collins asked for assurances and hoped for the best. When dealing with the Trump administration, this approach is simply not good enough.
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Sanders Endorses Working Class Champion Troy Jackson for Maine Governor
"Troy knows what's going on with the working class of Maine because he's part of that working class," said Sen. Bernie Sanders.
May 21, 2025
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday endorsed Troy Jackson's Democratic gubernatorial bid in Maine, calling the former state Senate president and fifth-generation logger "different" from establishment Democrats who have abandoned the working class.
"The working class is under attack from oligarchs and their friends in Washington and in state capitols across the country," Sanders (I-Vt.) said in a statement. "It's no wonder working folks are angry. They are angry because they feel like no one is in their corner and Democrats just aren't listening to them."
"Fighting for the working class of Maine is not something new for Troy," the Vermont senator continued. "That's what he has done for his entire life as a logger and as a member of the Maine state legislature. Troy knows what's going on with the working class of Maine because he's part of that working class."
Jackson, who officially announced his gubernatorial run on Monday, similarly cast himself as a departure from the Democratic status quo, declaring that "too many" members of his party "have lost touch with working people or shown they're not up to the fight."
"All while Mainers struggle as prices rise, wages stagnate, and greedy corporations rake in record profits to buy off politicians," Jackson said. "I know what it's like to punch a clock, live paycheck to paycheck, be treated like I didn't matter while some billionaire got rich off my back—and how to turn that feeling of powerlessness into action."
Jackson, who served as the president of Maine's Senate from 2018 to 2024, joins a 2026 field that includes Angus King III—the son of U.S. Sen. Angus King (I-Maine)—and Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows.
The candidates are vying to succeed Democratic Gov. Janet Mills, who is term-limited and set to leave office in January 2027.
Jackson supported Sanders' 2016 and 2020 bids for the Democratic presidential nomination, expressing support for the Vermont senator's push for single-payer health insurance, lower prescription drug prices, and stronger union protections.
"That's what every politician in this country should be working for," Jackson said at a 2019 rally for Sanders in Portland, Maine.
In his statement endorsing Jackson, Sanders said that "under the oligarchic and authoritarian regime of Donald Trump, we find ourselves living in an unprecedented moment in modern American history."
"As a result, we've got to respond in an unprecedented way," said Sanders. "We need candidates who, unequivocally, will stand with working-class families against the enormous power of the monied interests."
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2nd-Place Runner in High School Race Rips Maine GOP Lawmaker for Attacking Trans Winner
"I don't feel like first place was taken from me. Instead, I feel like a happy day was turned ugly by a bully who is using children to make political points."
May 15, 2025
A high school runner in Maine who finished second to a transgender competitor at a recent track meet said this week that a Republican state lawmaker's "hateful" crusade targeting trans athletes—not the fact that she had to compete against one—dampened her sporting joy.
Anelise Feldman, a freshman at Yarmouth High School in southern Maine, finished second to Soren Stark-Chessa, a multisport standout at rival North Yarmouth Academy, at a May 2 intramural meet.
"I ran the fastest 1,600-meter race I have ever run in middle school or high school track and earned varsity status by my school's standards," Feldman wrote in a letter to The Portland Press Herald published Wednesday. "I am extremely proud of the effort I put into the race and the time that I achieved. The fact that someone else finished in front of me didn't diminish the happiness I felt after finishing that race."
"The fact that someone else finished in front of me didn't diminish the happiness I felt after finishing that race."
Feldman's letter was prompted by State Rep. Laurel Libby's (R-90) comments during a Fox Newsinterview earlier this month in which the lawmaker, while not naming Stark-Chessa, referred to her accomplishments and accused transgender athletes of "pushing many, many of our young women out of the way in their ascent to the podium."
Feldman stressed: "I don't feel like first place was taken from me. Instead, I feel like a happy day was turned ugly by a bully who is using children to make political points."
"We are all just kids trying to make our way through high school," she added. "Participating in sports is the highlight of high school for some kids. No one was harmed by Soren's participation in the girls' track meet, but we are all harmed by the hateful rhetoric of bullies, like Rep. Libby, who want to take sports away from some kids just because of who they are."
Maine has found itself at the epicenter of the fight for transgender rights as President Donald Trump's administration renews its first-term campaign to roll them back via policies including: redefining Title IX anti-discrimination law to cancel protection for trans and nonbinary people, trying to reinstate the ban on openly transgender people from military service, ending "X" gender markers on passports, banning federal support for gender-affirming healthcare, pressuring schools to censor lessons and materials about trans and nonbinary people, erasing transgender people and stories from government-run institutions and websites, and much more. Bowing to pressure from Trump, the National Collegiate Athletic Association also banned trans women from competing on female sports teams.
This, as hundreds of anti-trans bills have also been passed or proposed in nearly every state in the nation. Maine, however, has been moving in the opposite direction by expanding an anti-discrimination law to protect transgender student-athletes.
This has made the state a target of the Trump administration. Democratic Maine Gov. Janet Mills first stoked Trump's ire for defying his threats to cut off federal funding if she did not ban transgender women and girls from female teams, a move that would violate state anti-discrimination law.
Last month, the U.S. Department of Justice sued the state for rebuffing Trump's efforts to ban trans women and girls from scholastic sports. The lawsuit followed the Department of Education's move to cut off federal K-12 funds for Maine and the Department of Agriculture's (USDA) freeze on $100 million in federal funding over the trans athlete issue. The Trump administration also temporarily forced new Maine parents to register their newborns for a Social Security number at a government office rather than at hospitals, a policy quickly reversed amid public outrage.
Earlier this month, the Trump administration quietly settled with Maine, agreeing to scrap its planned cutoff of USDA funding.
"A few months ago, I stood in the White House and, when confronted by the president of the United States, I told him I'd see him in court," Mills triumphantly said following the settlement. "Well, I did see him in court. And we won."
Libby—who is currently banned from voting on legislation until she apologizes for endangering a transgender high school runner by posting a photo of her winning a race without blurring the face—misgendered trans athletes and portrayed them as violent and dangerous during a legislative hearing earlier this week.
"Girls are being asked to accept second place as their ceiling, not because they didn't work hard enough, but because someone else's belief has been elevated above their right to compete fairly and safely," Libby said.
However, the stats don't support her assertion. None of the 10 fastest times ever run by a U.S. high school girl in either the 800 or 1,600-meter races have recorded by a transgender runner. Nor does any trans runner appear on the list of the 10 fastest athletes in either race.
Stark-Chessa's 800 meter time was 2:43, a full 44 seconds behind the all-time high school girls' record of 1:59. Her 1,600 meter time of 5:57 was over a minute-and-a-half slower than the girls' high school record.
Meanwhile, some of the athletes that do appear in the record book—and their parents—have condemned the backlash against trans competitors, who sometimes face open hostility including incitement to violence.
Opponents of trans women and girls in sport often fixate on genitalia and the notion that unsuccessful male athletes decide to "go trans" in order to escape mediocrity in men's sports.
A peer-reviewed 2023 study noted "the disproportionate focus on the relatively small portion of the population who are trans seems based on the belief that [cisgender] men, who cannot succeed in sports among other cis men, would choose to misidentify as trans women to gain an advantage in sports against cis women."
"However, there are no legitimate cases of this occurring," the paper stresssed.
More importantly, research has shown that trans women who undergo testosterone suppression and gender-affirming medical care do not have any biomedical edge over cis women in sports.
Trans youth do, however, face harassment, violence, discrimination, and other barriers to success and even participation in sports and in general scholastic endeavors. According to the 2022 U.S. Trans Survey, 22% of visibly transgender girls were abused so badly they left shool because of it, while another 10% were expelled.
"The idea that women and girls have an advantage
because they are trans ignores the actual conditions of their lives," Chase Strangio and Gabriel Arkels wrote in a myth-busting ACLU explainer.
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