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What we're reading
— A bipartisan group of 20 senators including Republican Susan Collins and independent Angus King unveiled the outline of a gun, school safety and mental health package on Sunday. It falls short of the gun-control legislation that Democrats including Biden want to pass, but it is still a major breakthrough in a Congress long deadlocked on the issue. It also comes with the support of 10 Republicans, enough to break the Senate filibuster.
— Maine had the highest rate of COVID-19 cases in nursing homes of any state in May, but the outbreaks proved far less deadly than they were earlier in the year, showing the continued challenges of the evolving omicron strains and the effectiveness of vaccines.
— This Supreme Court ruling upheld the Border Patrol's sweeping power to operate in inland areas of Maine.
— Every waterfront home on the market in Maine's Lakes Region last year sold over the asking price with many lakefront homes going for double the price of similar ones not on the water. |
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News and notes
— The group funded by Soros continues to spend in the Cumberland County district attorney race in an effort to install challenger Jackie Sartoris and oust incumbent Jonathan Sahrbeck. It has spent $384,000 plus another $56,000 of in-kind contributions, with virtually all of the money going toward mail and advertising on TV, radio and social media.
— Former Gov. Paul LePage and Poliquin were at a Greene grocery store on Saturday to bag groceries and highlight rising costs in their campaigns against Gov. Janet Mills and Golden. LePage's plan to fight inflation has been mostly built around suspending the state gas tax and dumping the 5-cent tax on single-use bags, both of which would result in perhaps $200 in savings over a year for most Mainers if implemented in March.
— Mills was in Jackman on Saturday for the moose permit lottery. Out of a few hundred attendees outside the town office in the arch-conservative area of Maine, about a dozen booed the Democratic governor from the back of the tent, Pete Warner, the BDN's outdoors editor, tells me.
— The governor will be in Portland on Monday to sign an executive order creating a new Cabinet on Aging, which will suggest policy changes aimed at seniors and retired workers in the nation's oldest state by median age. |
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| Inside a prized pipe organ dating back to the 1860s at St. John Catholic Church in Bangor, organ expert Nami Hamada looks into the lower keyboard while collecting information. (BDN photo by Linda Coan O'Kresik) |
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| 📷 Lead photo: Former Rep. Bruce Poliquin and Liz Caruso are facing off for the Republican nomination in Maine's 2nd Congressional District. (Photos by the BDN's Linda Coan O'Kresik and the AP's Robert F. Bukaty) |
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