u/SuperBry

For those paywalled :

The Twin Cities Media investigative report was damning: Maine was shutting down 35 healthcare agencies after the federal government found $100 million in MaineCare fraud.

The breaking story, with brand-new “investigative findings,” was proof-of-concept for the one-month-old news site. Systemic issues in MaineCare had been “previously uncovered” by Twin Cities Media, the story boasted, and its reporters, who secured comments from Maine political leaders on both sides of the aisle, had succeeded in making change.

Except the Twin Cities Media post contained multiple errors, fabricated sources and came two days after most Maine news outlets published a scaled back, reality-based version of the same story.

So, too, was the attached cartoon image, which listed the vague credit: “By The Twin Cities Media Investigative Team – [Current Date].” And so were most other posts on the Facebook page. And so was every image on its fledgling website.

Its listed reporters, Carlos Mendez and Grace Whitfield and Maryam Hassan and Daniel Okonkwo, who supposedly report in four languages, are not real. The catchy headlines on its website are not clickable. But Twin Cities Media advertises an $8 per month — or $80 per year — subscription offer, anyway, all in support of an organization that lists accountability and transparency as its top two priorities.

Its Facebook posts, which appear to be the only way to read their “reporting,” sometimes get hundreds of likes and comments, especially on Lewiston-Auburn-area news.

Paywall-free, editorially derelict and tuned for social media engagement, AI local news is exploding online in Maine in the age of the attention-grabbing algorithm and declining trust in legacy media. While some avid news readers are skeptical of these sites, others engage unknowingly, with the sometimes misleading, often inaccurate content. Experts say AI news is straining an already-fraying information ecosystem across Maine and the U.S.

Beyond Twin Cities Media, there’s the Portland Post, which prints apparently AI-scraped versions of political stories with a conservative tilt. There’s also the AI-driven Maine Mirror, a purportedly investigative site run by a prominent social media conservative. There’s even hyperlocal investigative pages, like Small Town Accountability in Kennebec County, covering Vassalboro’s local government with ChatGPT as its chief editor. And there’s Laid Back Local, an AI-voiced weekly-ish podcast scraping Maine’s biggest stories.

“(Local AI news) is making it harder to navigate and find information that is real, or know what is real,” Lynn Walsh, the assistant director of the national journalism research group Trusting News, said. “That is the broader impact here.”

A request for an interview with Twin Cities Media’s was declined, but a reporter received an emailed statement that said the site uses “advanced automated technologies and artificial intelligence to assist in gathering, structuring, and formatting our content,” including both articles and images. (This email contained characteristics of an AI-written response.)

“Our processes are designed to filter and verify data points before publication, ensuring that our automated output serves as an informative, reliable community resource rather than a source of unsubstantiated claims,” the statement continued.

The outlet did not respond to follow-up questions about who works for Twin Cities Media, its editorial or fact-checking processes, the reporter names on its website and the lack of disclosure about the use of AI on its social media or website.

The author of the statement signed the email, “editorial moderator.”

HOW TO TELL

This is the thing — AI-driven news sites and social media pages rarely disclose their use of AI.

Like those published by Twin Cities Media on social media, stories by the Maine Mirror — a site with “Truth. Accountability. Transparency.” as its slogan — use only AI-generated images and all the well-studied hallmarks of AI writing.

There’s bullet points and three-item lists.

There’s unadventurous, surgical vocabulary, perfect grammar and a distinct lack of human humor.

There’s punchy, repetitive one-line paragraphs.

But while Ryan Michaels, the conservative commentator behind the site, often reposts the Maine Mirror’s articles and shares his own AI-written monologues, nowhere on the site or social media does he openly discuss or disclose his use of AI in publishing the Maine Mirror.

On his personal Facebook page, he only mentions AI use in an advertisement for a mental health chatbot he set up in 2024, and in an apparently AI-written post about his adoption of the technology, which he said has changed “and even saved” his life.

The telltale sign of an AI publication, Walsh from Trusting News said, is its lack of transparency.

For starters, the Maine Mirror, Twin Cities Media and Portland Post seldom disclose on their websites or social media any use of AI.

News outlets will also usually list reporters, editors, photographers and advertising staff all on their website. She said AI-driven outlets often don’t — take Twin Cities Media’s unnamed “editorial moderator,” for example, or the Portland Post’s nondescript bylines — because there’s rarely more than one or two real people behind the scenes.

“The pushback at this basic level should be, ‘Well, no, but like, who are you?'” Walsh said. “There might be some good reasons why some people don’t want to share their identity, but then there should be some explanation shared about it. These AI accounts aren’t doing that. They’re just kind of giving you very bland, generic answers of titles, numbers, ethics codes, which they can scrape — nothing that’s personal or real.”

The lack of transparency goes deep. Real deep.

Walsh said she’s seeing more AI accounts, especially on social media, focusing on local news in San Diego, where she lives, without ever citing on-the-ground reporting. It’s a national phenomenon now, she said — AI accounts scraping traditionally reported news and repackaging it for social media engagement without named sources or documents.

It’s happening in Maine, too. Twin Cities Media’s Aug. 7 MaineCare “investigative report,” for example, cited sources who had been “blindsided” by the funding suspensions. The page said it found that “even workers successfully transitioning to new healthcare providers are facing immediate financial hardship.”

None of the workers were named. Nor were their agencies. Nor were their hardships specified. The sources and their stories appear to be fabricated — or, to use the proper AI term, hallucinated.

“There’s been an unfathomable amount of garbage on the internet for generations, and I think that the rise of AI just sort of supercharges that,” said Dan MacLeod, the president of the Maine Press Association Board of Directors and the executive editor of the Bangor Daily News. “That means that you can do it at a scale that was unheard of before.”

Often, the stories posted by AI outlets take from other news sources without credit.

On July 27, Twin Cities Media scraped a Sun Journal article about the potential for revival at the Auburn Mall. The post’s first paragraph included the same reference to the 1979 opening of the mall and almost exactly the same comparison to New York City that Sun Journal reporter Christopher Wheelock wrote.

The note at the bottom of the Twin Cities Media post, which continued to closely resemble Wheelock’s story, said: “WE COVER THE STORIES CORPORATE MEDIA MISSES.”

Occasionally, these outlets’ AI can hallucinate entire stories.

The Portland Post published a story in February recognizing Eventide Oyster Co.’s chef Andrew Taylor for his nomination for the 2026 James Beard Best Chef: Northeast award. While he and his co-owner Mike Wiley won the award in 2017, they were not nominated this spring — and nominations were not made public until about a month and a half after the Portland Post’s supposed announcement.

The apparently AI-written post even includes what appears to be an entirely fabricated quote from Taylor.

Walsh said she encourages readers to double-check when an article or social media post or image doesn’t feel quite right. Look at their website to see if there are people behind the post. Check bylines and photos for real names and faces. If you have the time, look up specific numbers or claims made.

“If you cannot verify who is behind the content, that should be a red flag to you to say, ‘OK, one, you know what, I’m not going to follow them regularly. Two, I’m going to verify what they’re saying or what they’re sharing elsewhere,'” Walsh said.

The Portland Post did not respond to questions about the identities of the people behind the publication or the publication’s reporting process. The Maine Mirror did not respond to a request for an interview.

AI AND TRUST

Avid news consumers are wary of the use of AI in journalism.

Trusting News has conducted several surveys with the audiences of news outlets nationwide that show this: about one-third of those news consumers said journalists shouldn’t use AI at all, and about 60% said journalists should only use AI under clear guidelines and policies.

First and foremost, those readers say they want transparency about the use of AI, she said. About 95% of surveyed readers said newsrooms should be open about their use of AI in reporting and writing, and that it was very important to them that newsrooms do so.

But those surveys may have a bias, she said. Mostly, it’s the avid news consumers who engage with surveys about AI disclosure and its use in reporting and writing.

The average news consumer — someone who might only click on a news story once a week, or usually scrolls on social media to stay informed about the world — may not be able to tell if writing looks AI-generated in the first place.

“Most people, scrolling through your feed or your timeline, and you see something that pops up — looks like news to me,” MacLeod, the Maine Press Association board president, said. “A lot of people engage with news that way. There’s a concern about the devaluing of of real journalism and the commodification of it.”

MacLeod said the Maine Press Association, an organization representing Maine’s newsrooms, has yet to receive specific complaints about the proliferation of these AI scraping sites, but that there’s no doubt they will continue to grow.

In just a month, Twin Cities Media has posted hundreds of times and gained 1,500 followers on Facebook. The Portland Post’s Instagram account has almost 3,700 people following it, with short-form videos sometimes reaching tens of thousands of viewers.

More attention on aggregated, scraped AI content presents an opportunity for news organizations to step up, MacLeod said. Real, deeply reported, human journalism, he said, is even more valuable now, in an age where information is instant.

“We’re humans,” he said. “We’re reporters. We know to ask questions. We know what the audience cares about. You can see our faces.”

Full text for those paywalled I:

Frequent flyers in newspaper comment sections often muse about the identities of their opponents, be they local cranks or thin-skinned politicians, during spirited verbal jousts.

Wading into the online fray under Bangor Daily News articles back in 2012 was future Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Troy Jackson, the man behind the no-longer anonymous handle “Canadians for LePage,” according to CNN.

CNN linked Jackson, who has replaced Graham Platner on this November’s ballot, to the account via the email jacksonforsenate@hotmail.com. That email address was used in campaign materials, internal Democratic Party documents and financial disclosure records, CNN reported.

The email was among the user credentials leaked after a 2012 data breach at Disqus, which didn’t acknowledge the breach occurred until 2017. Disqus hosted comments for the BDN. About 24 of his comments remain archived online, according to CNN, but since the BDN stopped using Disqus back in 2019, the context for those comments has been lost.

Under that handle, Jackson adopted the persona of a Canadian logger supportive of then-Gov. Paul LePage, who in 2011 vetoed a Jackson-sponsored bill to ban foreign loggers from cutting wood on public lands. LePage cited concerns about the bill’s constitutionality, and the Legislature upheld that veto.

It’s a sensitive issue for Jackson, a former logger who emerged into the public eye back in 1998 when he helped organize a blockade to protest the hiring of cheaper Canadian labor on this side of the border.

Responding to news that LePage was withholding voter approved bonds, “Canadians for LePage” dismissed concerns about the governor’s action so long as “he approves my H-2 bond so I can come to Maine and cut wood,” an allusion back to the 2011 veto.

But the purported Canadian LePage supporter also dished out criticism of the governor. When LePage’s administration proposed sweeping changes to the unemployment system to address fraudulent claims, Jackson’s alias accused LePage of exaggerating the problem, according to CNN.

“This is another red herring by my countryman, Paul LePage,” Jackson wrote in an apparent reference to the Republican’s time living in Canada in the 1970s.

Jackson’s anonymous online postings may give Democrats deja vu after Platner was dogged by criticism of his posting habit on the website Reddit, including inflammatory statements about rural white people, lobstermen, police and Black people and comments dismissive of women’s fears of rape. But CNN noted that most of Jackson’s surviving posts under the “Canadians for LePage” handle fall under the category of “political trash talk.”

Under one BDN article about LePage’s line-item vetoes for the 2012 supplemental budget, “Canadians for LePage” trolled another commenter, writing: “Could you stop making pipe bombs in your basement, and send me your Communist manifesto. I have to see if you are making this up or reading from something insane.”

While he let loose volleys behind the keyboard, Jackson also feuded publicly with LePage.

The most infamous episode in the LePage-Jackson feud came in 2013 when LePage said Jackson had a “black heart” and that the Democratic state senator gives it to Mainers “without providing Vaseline.”

The governor, who made his remarks to reporters at the State House, went on to say that Jackson should go back into the woods and “let someone with a brain come down here and do some good work.”

Jackson largely brushed off those comments, telling a BDN reporter that: “I don’t have any problem with anyone saying anything about what I stand for. He can say whatever he wants; I just think it’s inappropriate the way he said it. We can be disagreeable without making nasty comments like that.”

On Saturday, Jackson was officially nominated to be his party’s champion in its bid to unseat Republican U.S. Sen. Susan Collins. That came after Jackson effectively clinched the nomination following his sweep of county delegate election meetings the weekend before, securing pledges from more than 450 delegates.

Since then, Democrats have been flooding Jackson with cash to bolster his campaign, which has just over three months to make his case to voters. A recent University of New Hampshire poll gave Jackson a slight edge over Collins in a theoretical matchup, with 2% of voters still undecided.

It will be an uphill battle for Democrats to unseat Collins, who officially announced her historic bid for a sixth term in February. The Republican has handily beaten back challengers, including in 2020 when she defied polls and expectations to secure a fifth term in the Senate. But Collins, who has been ranked the country’s most bipartisan senator, has seen her popularity slump since Trump’s first term in the White House.

If Collins is successful in winning a sixth term, she would be Maine’s longest-serving U.S. senator.

Troy Jackson has long pushed for the rights of the working class, but will now face heightened scrutiny from the national press and the Republican Party on his record and conduct in the Maine Legislature

After last month's primary and well before the most recent allegations surfaced that forced Platner to drop out, I was actively calling for him to step down and had put forth Jackson multiple times as one of our best alternatives. But while I had suggested Jackson may be the right person to carry the platform previously, I have deep concerns about his campaign, and others, pushing so hard right now to lock down rigid slates of delegates. Watching these campaigns scramble to secure closed alignments makes it clear we are losing sight of the bigger picture.

Going into today's meetings with predetermined, rigid slates of delegates is exactly how we throw away our shot at beating Susan Collins. We already let out-of-state money and misleading push polls saddle us with a primary winner who had more red flags than Stalingrad in the '40s, turning what should have been an easy victory into a massive uphill battle. If we do not change course immediately, we are going to repeat the same mistakes that put us on the defensive in the first place.

Instead of learning our lesson, candidates are now organizing homogeneous slates that threaten to let someone with a tiny fraction of support control entire delegations. This bad idea combines a flawed plurality system with a winner-take-all nominating process, allowing a candidate with 30 percent of the vote or less to leverage that minor edge into choosing all of a county's delegates. That approach mimics the exact unfair tactics that mainstream Maine voters have soundly rejected time and again. It completely distorts the real will of the grassroots base and shuts out the collaborative decision-making we desperately need.

We cannot go into the snap caucus assuming we already have our nominee locked down based on a broken primary timeline. The political landscape has shifted dramatically, and the candidate people liked in the past might be entirely wrong for the reality we face today. To give ourselves the best chance next week, we must find a consensus candidate with the absolute broadest appeal. Locking in delegates who are blindly loyal to one specific faction prevents that search from happening, ensuring we stay divided and weak.

The delegates selected today must be independent and entirely willing to deliberate in real time. They need to go into the convention next week with the freedom to listen to every single hopeful while making an informed decision based entirely on the current moment. We can only defeat Susan Collins if we use today's meetings to listen to each other, remain flexible, and deliberately select folks who can carry this strategic mindset into next Saturday.

In the end, it may be Jackson, whose supporters have been some of the most vocal the last few days, it could be Bellows, who while she lost this very race in 2014 is positioned much better in 2026, or hell, it could be Dickerson, who is currently just running a space weather and astronomy forecasting Facebook page. However, we do not need to make a snap decision today to pick them. We have today's meetings where we can get together and talk with our fellow members of the Democratic party and others who choose to attend, watch one more debate (that will hopefully have better audio), and have the delegates come together next Saturday to put forth our best candidate.

The timeline to choose a replacement is already compressed; there is no need to make it even more so.

On Wednesday evening, July 8, 2026, Democratic nominee Graham Platner officially suspended his campaign for the U.S. Senate seat in Maine. His withdrawal follows heavy pressure from local and national party leaders after a sexual assault allegation from 2021 was published by Politico. In an 11-minute video address, Platner strongly denied the claims, calling them "all false" and "not real," while asserting that the timing was orchestrated by the political establishment to force him out before a critical ballot deadline.

For those paywalled:

Graham Platner’s campaign to oust Susan Collins from the U.S. Senate suffered a massive blow on Monday after a former girlfriend alleged that he raped her 2021. Whether it was the final straw or simply too serious to overlook, the allegation prompted many of the progressive nominee’s most high-profile supporters to call for him to step down despite Platner denying it.

Here’s a timeline of past revelations and allegations in Platner’s campaign, starting in the month after he declared his candidacy.

September 2025

Platner faced criticism from conservative pundits over an unearthed column he wrote while in high school critical of media coverage post-9/11 for not describing the “motivations” of terrorists and for calling Israel a “semi-oppressive” state because of its treatment of Palestinian Arabs. That opinion piece, which he co-wrote with classmates, did not condone terrorism.

October 2025

The pace of controversies surrounding Platner picked up this month, starting with the unearthing of his deleted Reddit posts, made under the username P-Hustle. Platner described himself as a “communist” and “a vegetable growing, psychedelics taking socialist,” castigated rural white Americans as “racist” and “stupid,” called all cops “bastards,” and said conservative musician Ted Nugent should “suck a d*ck.”

More posts came to light, including some of the more inflammatory statements that have dogged his campaign ever since. That included his musings on why Black people don’t tip, making light of women’s fears of rape and using homophobic slurs.

Then a video surfaced showing Platner with a skull-and-crossbones tattoo resembling the Totenkopf, a symbol adopted by the Nazi SS during World War II. Platner said he got the tattoo while on leave during a Marines deployment and didn’t know about its associations, a claim a former girlfriend later said was false. He got it covered shortly after the fallout from the initial news reports.

November 2025

Platner faced criticism again after saying he wouldn’t mourn the death of former Vice President Dick Cheney.

February 2026

Platner shared a social media post from Stew Peters, a Christian nationalist and conspiracy theorist who mixes antisemitism with criticism of Israel. The post criticized Democrats and Republicans for their support of President Donald Trump’s war against Iran. After facing pushback, Platner quickly deleted the post.

March 2026

A soldier who Graham Platner once mocked over a viral video of him getting wounded in a Taliban firefight years ago called the U.S. Senate candidate an “entitled brat.”

April 2026

Platner angered disability rights advocates by using the “R-word” in an interview.

May 2026

The Wall Street Journal reported that Platner’s wife, Amy Gertner, told aides shortly after the launch of his campaign that he had sent sexually explicit texts to several women early in their marriage. Gertner, who married Platner in 2023, said she confided in the aide who later leaked the story because she considered her a friend. The campaign decided the texts were a private matter.

Democratic senators met privately with Platner in Washington and pressed him about whether new allegations would emerge. The candidate reportedly told the senators “It’s not a secret I’ve had a messy, complicated life. The worst of the rumors we’ve all heard are not true.”

June 2026

Less than a week after the sexting revelation, the New York Times published a story in which three of Platner’s former girlfriends alleged “toxic” or volatile behavior.

One of the women, Lyndsey Fifield, who dated Platner more than a decade ago, claimed he once yanked her from a taxi, and in another instance twisted her arm behind her back and trapped her in a room. Platner denied the worst allegations but conceded to having been a “bad boyfriend” at the time. His campaign painted Fifield, who has worked for a number of conservative groups and causes, as a “a lifelong GOP operative who’s dedicated her career to electing Republicans.”

July 2026

Jenny Racicot, a former girlfriend of Platner’s who was interviewed in the New York Times story, told Politico that in 2021 he showed up at her home drunk after she had texted him not to come, and raped her despite her objections. Platner called the allegation “categorically false,” but he had postponed several campaign events shortly before the story came out and said afterward that he is “taking the time to reflect on the best path forward.”

Democratic Party organizations and high-profile supporters who stood by Platner through the previous scandals quickly broke from the candidate calling for him to step down, while leading Maine Democrats jockeyed for position to replace him.

For those paywalled:

Progressive social media influencer Cheyenne Hunt was an early backer of Graham Platner’s, endorsing him in the Senate primary last fall. Now, she is involved in an effort directly opposing him.

Hunt, an attorney who heads Reckoning Action, an advocacy group for women’s rights, gained national attention earlier this year when she played a central role in bringing forth sexual misconduct allegations against Eric Swalwell in the California governor’s race. She’s now working with multiple women who have had past personal relationships with Platner, according to two people who spoke to Hunt about her plans. Hunt is providing help navigating the media, and her group is providing pro bono legal counsel.

When reached for comment, Hunt did not provide details of her work involving Platner but said in a statement: “Reckoning Action is bigger than any one moment. We are building a movement to combat misogyny on every front.”

The Platner campaign, asked to comment for this article, said it was working to make sure all voices were heard.

“We are fighting for a Maine where no voice is silenced, everyone is treated with the dignity they deserve, and it is not a burden but a privilege for elected officials to answer to those they represent,” it said in a statement.

Hunt endorsed Platner in October while she served as executive director for Gen-Z for Change, a progressive advocacy group.

But after a report in The New York Times, Hunt rescinded her endorsement. In the report, three of Platner’s former girlfriends — two who were identified by name and one who remained anonymous — described his behavior as “toxic” and “unsettling.” One said Platner “twisted her arm behind her back, shoved her into a bedroom and held the door closed from the other side so she couldn’t get out, telling her to remain there until she was ‘calm.’”

Platner said at the time that he was not a perfect boyfriend, but he denied being physically threatening. He also talked about suffering from PTSD after his military service and battling alcohol abuse. Other past girlfriends told The New York Times they had healthy, happy relationships with Platner. Platner had dismissed past negative stories as politically motivated, coming either from a Republican activist or from a Democratic Party establishment that he said doesn’t want him.

Hunt’s effort indicates that even as he tries to move on from the controversies of the primary campaign and focus on defeating Republican Sen. Susan Collins in November, Platner still has work to do in bringing the party behind him. A recent New York Times/Portland Press Herald/Siena poll found Platner and Collins nearly tied, but a majority of voters did not judge him to have “good character.” Still, the poll found that Platner is performing better with women than Collins is.

“I want to be transparent, I gave Graham Platner a glowing endorsement when he launched his campaign for Senate,” Hunt said in a June 4 social media post. “Despite what he says on the campaign trail, Graham Platner disrespects women.”

After Hunt posted the video, she heard from multiple women, leading her to focus on Platner, the people who spoke to Hunt about her plans said.

Earlier this year, Hunt, who has more than 200,000 followers on Instagram, was one of the most public voices amplifying allegations that Swalwell was preying on young female staffers. She helped create a network connecting accusers with one another after a friend told her about her own experience.

When Reckoning Action launched in late May, Hunt described the organization’s mission as one that helped women expose gender bias and misogyny and hold public officials accountable for workplace harassment and abuse.

Hunt, based in California, is a onetime Democratic candidate for Congress, making a failed bid in 2023 at the age of 26. In 2025, she was director of Gen-Z for Change and once worked as a law clerk for Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn.

Platner, an oyster farmer, is now facing a tight race against Collins. National Democrats are attempting to win back the Senate in the fall and taking Maine is central to their calculation.

But Platner has been besieged with bad headlines for months.

His former political director came forward publicly in June to say that she quit the campaign last fall because she was “disturbed” by what she learned about him. She also disclosed that Platner’s wife had discussed with the campaign that he was sexting with multiple women on a social media site while he was married and that she feared it could be a liability for him. His wife, Amy, stepped forward in his defense and said marriage was difficult, but it was their personal business.

One former girlfriend told The New York Times that Platner knew the meaning behind a Nazi tattoo he has since covered, even though he publicly said he did not know what it meant until recently. And a slew of old posts on Reddit came to light that included Platner downplaying challenges faced by military members in reporting sexual assault and encouraging people not to use substances in order to avoid being raped. In other Reddit posts, he referred to himself as a “communist,” criticized police and called rural, white Americans racist and stupid.

Platner, a military veteran, has since apologized and widely discussed the impact that his tours in Iraq and Afghanistan had on him psychologically.

In a direct-to-camera video he posted on X, Platner said: “For those of you who have read these things and been offended, have read these things and seen someone that you don’t recognize, I am deeply sorry.”

Despite the accusations, Platner decisively won the primary with more than 70% of the vote. He held on to high-profile endorsements, including from progressive icon Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., multiple state labor unions and Planned Parenthood Action Fund.

Platner adviser Rebecca Katz told NBC News last month he had no intention of dropping out of the race. In Maine, a nominee has until July 13 to drop off the ticket, and Democrats would have until later in the month to fill the vacancy.

“The Democrats of Maine have made clear who their choice is, and the rest of the party should honor that choice,” she said at the time.

However, it appears Platner has not been able to win over some Democrats in his own state. That includes Gov. Janet Mills, who ran against Platner initially then dropped out of the race in part due to fundraising issues.

In a campaign call on Monday, Platner told reporters Mills has still not spoken to him since the June primary.

“I still have not been able to connect with the governor. I would love to see a unified front going into November,” Platner said. “We are just going to continue moving forward.”

It is going to get quite contentious, even more so than it has been in the past, over the next few months thanks to this ruling. With provocateurs that have been and will be going from meeting to meeting trying to make the same talking points that rarely have any credibility it is important that folks show up to counter these, quite loud, voices.

This ruling does allow state to enact and enforce bans on transgender students from participating in the sports that match their gender identity, however here in Maine local protections remain firmly intact. Despite the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing individual states to enforce bans on transgender student athletes, Maine law continues to safeguard the rights of all students. The state's inclusive policies are anchored by the Maine Human Rights Act, which has protected access to public accommodations, school facilities, and athletic participation aligned with a student's gender identity for well over a decade. Local school boards should understand that the federal ruling has no authority over Maine's independent state anti-discrimination laws.

Attending your local school board meetings is a critical step to ensure that school districts remain aligned with these state mandates. Some districts may face internal pressure to restrict transgender students from using bathrooms or participating in sports that correspond with their gender identity. However, altering local policies to restrict these rights puts school districts at a severe financial and legal risk. Under the Maine Human Rights Act, schools that fail to provide equal access can be sued for discrimination, a reality underscored by past Maine Supreme Judicial Court rulings that explicitly protected transgender students.

Supporting inclusive policies at the district level protects vulnerable students and shields local schools from costly, losing lawsuits. We need folks to show up to these meetings to remind board members of their legal obligations under Maine law. By reinforcing the fact that state protections override recent national rollbacks, you can help school boards make legally sound decisions that keep public education safe and equitable for everyone.

Rarely have I agreed with Shirley/gettinghighwithcats but he raises some good points about some serious issues and concerns in Maine's cannabis industry.

What a night