The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced Wednesday that it is suspending federal funding for select education programs in Maine, citing the state’s refusal to comply with President Donald Trump’s anti-trans directive to exclude transgender students from girls’ and women’s sports. In a letter to Maine Gov. Janet Mills (D), Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said the funding freeze…
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President Donald Trump took to his social media platform Truth Social on Saturday to demand an apology from Maine Gov. Janet Mills, a Democratic, after the two had a heated exchange at the White House in February over an executive order banning transgender women and girls from playing in women’s sports. This new scrutiny on Maine comes as the state has been subject to numerous probes and…
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Donald Trump’s impending return to the White House raised questions about potential new barriers to holding the fossil fuel industry accountable — but it hasn’t deterred two more governments from taking Big Oil companies to court over deception claims. The State of Maine and Ford County, Kansas, filed separate lawsuits against major oil and gas companies and industry trade associations on…
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Lawmakers in Portland, Maine voted unanimously on Wednesday to divest public funds from “all entities complicit” in Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip, making the city the first on the U.S. East Coast to take such a step. Sponsored by the Maine Coalition for Palestine and the Maine chapter of Jewish Voices for Peace (JVP), the newly approved resolution contains a “divestment list” of more…
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On Tuesday, Gov. Janet Mills of Maine signed LD 227, a sanctuary bill that protects transgender and abortion providers and patients from out-of-state prosecution, into law. With this action, Maine becomes the 16th state to explicitly protect transgender and abortion care in state law from prosecution. This follows several bomb threats targeting state legislators after social media attacks from far…
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Two Republican lawmakers in Maine were reprimanded this week for trying to link the expansion of abortion rights and gender-affirming care to a mass shooting that took place in the state last fall. After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, Maine joined a number of states in passing a statutory law protecting access to abortion in the summer of 2023. During debate on legislation this…
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Two Republican lawmakers in Maine were reprimanded this week for trying to link the expansion of abortion rights and gender-affirming care to a mass shooting that took place in the state last fall. After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, Maine joined a number of states in passing a statutory law protecting access to abortion in the summer of 2023. During debate on legislation this…
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The Maine Sheriffs’ Association has come out in opposition to LD227, a shield law that would protect health care providers offering gender-affirming and abortion care to patients from states where such health care is prohibited. LD227 would designate Maine as the 18th state, according to Maine’s Attorney General Aaron Frey, to implement a shield law. Additionally, according to transgender activist…
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Sixteen state attorneys general from various Republican-led states, including Texas, Florida and Kentucky, are threatening to sue Maine if it proceeds with a bill aimed at protecting healthcare providers offering gender-affirming care to patients from states where such care is prohibited. Maine’s Attorney General Aaron Frey responded, saying that he was “thoroughly dismayed” by the threatening…
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The top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee has called on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from upcoming cases on Donald Trump’s eligibility on state ballots in the 2024 election. In an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) said that Thomas should “absolutely” recuse, citing Thomas’s wife’s involvement in the attempted coup…
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Maine Democratic Secretary of State Shenna Bellows on Thursday barred former U.S. President Trump from the Republican 2024 primary ballot, determining that “he is not qualified to hold the office of the president under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment” to the country’s Constitution. Despite several ongoing criminal cases, Trump is currently the Republican front-runner for next year’s presidential…
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Augusta, Maine – Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows intends to announce her decision between the Christmas and New Year’s holidays as to whether former President Donald Trump is eligible for or disqualified from placement on Maine’s presidential primary ballot next year. Bellows could become the nation’s first state election official to disqualify a candidate for federal office.
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Donna Augustine was in tears as she read the letter from Harvard University that winter morning in 2013. Looking around the room inside an elementary school on Indian Island, Maine, she saw other elders and leaders from the four Wabanaki tribes were also devastated as they read that the university was denying their request to repatriate ancestral remains to their tribes.
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This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist’s weekly newsletter here. At the end of October 2017, a severe windstorm swept through the state of Maine, felling trees, knocking down power lines, and wiping out electricity for nearly half a million people. Larissa Smith, a longtime Maine resident who was living in Freeport at the time, lost power at her home for nearly three weeks.
Newly appointed Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) is facing scrutiny for his record on gun violence in the wake of a horrific mass shooting on Wednesday night that killed at least 18 people and injured dozens more. The man suspected of carrying out the mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine, has been described by people who know him as a “gun fanatic.” During his time in Congress…
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Maine is likely not the first state one thinks of as a place to investigate the impunity of the criminal legal system. That’s due to several factors, including but not limited to: 1.) the state’s whiteness, 2.) its small population, and 3.) its remoteness. Yet, the state is rife with examples of the unaccountable impunity of the criminal legal system that are worth studying for abolitionists. Take…
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This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on June 28, 2023. It is shared here with permission under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
Democratic Maine Gov. Janet Mills on Monday vetoed an offshore wind development bill because she opposed an amendment requiring collective bargaining agreements for future projects, drawing condemnation from the state’s largest federation of unions.
“Maine’s climate motto has been ‘Maine Won’t Wait.’ With this veto, Gov. Mills is saying, ‘Maine Will Wait’—for thousands of good jobs, for clean energy, and for the build-out of a new industry,” Maine AFL-CIO executive director Matt Schlobohm said in a statement. “We will wait because the governor is opposed to fair labor standards which are the industry norm.”
“The governor’s ideological opposition to strong labor standards,” said Schlobohm, “jeopardizes the build-out of this industry and all the climate, economic, and community benefits that come with it.”
Mills supported an earlier version of Legislative Document (L.D.) 1847 that originated from her office. Last week, however, the governor made clear that she opposed the addition of an amendment requiring project labor agreements (PLAs)—pre-hire deals negotiated between unions and employers that establish wage floors and other conditions—for the construction of offshore wind ports as well as the manufacturing of turbines and other components needed for wind energy projects.
In a letter to state lawmakers, “Mills argued that mandating a PLA would create a ‘chilling effect’ for non-union companies, discouraging them from bidding on construction,” The American Prospect‘s Lee Harris reported. “Supporters of the PLA provision say that is a far-fetched objection, since the agreements do not ban non-union contractors from vying for jobs. (In fact, that’s one reason some more radical unionists say PLAs do too little to advance labor’s cause.)”
The governor vowed to veto the bill unless the Legislature recalled it from her desk and revised it to the initial version or adopted “language that would ensure that union workers, employee-owned businesses, and small businesses could all benefit.”
“Maine’s climate motto has been ‘Maine Won’t Wait.’ With this veto, Gov. Mills is saying, ‘Maine Will Wait’—for thousands of good jobs, for clean energy, and for the build-out of a new industry.”
In a Friday letter to Mills, state lawmakers told the governor they would introduce “Maine Resident Priority Language” to encourage contractors to first hire qualified workers who reside in the state.
That last-ditch effort to save the bill was unsuccessful, however. On Monday, the final day of Maine’s legislative session, Mills vetoed L.D. 1847, just as the Maine State Chamber of Commerce had urged her to do.
In her veto letter, which repeated language from last week’s threat letter, Mills wrote, “Generally speaking, I recognize the value of PLAs, or collective bargaining agreements, as a tool to lift up working men and women by ensuring that they are paid strong wages with good benefits.”
However, as The Portland Press Herald reported, Mills contended that the legislation’s PLA requirement “was a step too far because more than 90% of workers in Maine’s construction industry—which would compete for these jobs—are not unionized.” The governor “also pointed out that no other New England state requires labor agreements for offshore wind development projects.”
Mills wrote that a PLA requirement “could stifle competition, which could cut out thousands of workers and employee-owned businesses, and could end up favoring out-of-state unions in the region, over Maine-based companies and workers—and I do not believe any of us want to see out-of-state workers being bussed up to coastal Maine to build our offshore wind port while Maine workers are sidelined, sitting at home.”
Jason Shedlock, president of the Maine Building and Construction Trades Council and an organizer for the Laborers’ International Union (LiUNA), told the Prospect: “Right now what we see is the opposite. People leave the state every day to go to other states in New England, to earn family-sustaining wages.”
According to Harris:
Maine’s Building Trades include more than 6,000 workers who routinely struggle to find work nearby.
The construction industry has always involved travel. But Shedlock says part of the case for a PLA is that it will grow Maine’s skilled apprentices and eventually its union halls. If non-union contractors win bids on jobs, he said, they will look to the building trades’ apprentice programs for staff.
Maine Sen. Chip Curry (D-11), the bill’s lead sponsor, said in a statement that he is “disappointed by the governor’s veto.”
It “threatens this new industry, putting good jobs for Maine people and the environmental benefits that go along with offshore wind at risk,” said Curry. “Maine voters understand the opportunity that we have, and they overwhelmingly support an offshore wind industry that guarantees workers good pay and benefits, protects our environment and host communities, and reduces our dependence on fossil fuels.”
“This is a critical issue for Maine’s future,” he added. “I remain committed to working with all parties, including Gov. Mills, to find a path forward.”
Earlier this month, the House voted 73-64 to pass L.D. 1847, and the Senate followed suit with a 22-11 vote. The former margin doesn’t meet the two-thirds threshold needed to override Mills’ veto, but the governor reiterated in her Monday letter to lawmakers that she is still committed to reaching a compromise.
According to Bangor Daily News, “Mills and progressives could come to a deal on the subject as part of a different bill on offshore wind procurement that the full Legislature has not yet acted upon.” That legislation, L.D. 1895, contains the same labor standards, and the governor has already threatened to veto it unless they are removed.
In an attempt to justify her opposition to PLA requirements, Mills warned that robust pro-worker provisions would put Maine “at a disadvantage compared to other New England states,” adding, “It is imperative that investment in offshore wind facilities and projects foster opportunities for Maine’s workforce and construction companies to compete on a level playing field for this work.”
But according to Schlobohm: “Every single one of the 16 offshore wind projects in development or permitting in the Northeast/East coast is being built under these exact labor standards. The same is true for offshore wind ports. It is the industry norm. Why would Maine lower our standards?”
“Funding from the federal government to support these projects is contingent on these exact labor standards,” he continued. “These bills embody the playbook—pushed by the Biden administration—for how we decarbonize in a way that benefits working people and creates a durable transition.”
The Maine Beacon reported Tuesday that Mills’ veto could cause Maine to miss out on millions of dollars in federal subsidies earmarked for offshore wind development.
“We would expect this type of resistance from a Republican governor,” Francis Eanes, executive director of the Maine Labor Climate Council, told The Washington Post. “But to have a Democratic governor impeding the president’s agenda is something that we just didn’t expect.”
As Harris explained: “At stake is whether the offshore wind industry will offer decent work—particularly compared with the industrial-scale solar sector, which promised good-paying careers but has delivered unpredictable temp jobs. In nearly every state, similar fights are playing out as business groups try to beat back labor provisions attached to new federal spending.”
“Labor groups across clean energy are hoping to capture not just installation but manufacturing jobs,” she continued. “Because operations management for offshore wind uses relatively little manpower, retaining the manufacturing is critical. In Scotland, recent reports suggest that heavy investment in offshore wind over the past decade has generated just one-tenth of the jobs promised by government officials, partly because the manufacturing of turbines has been offshored.”
A measure to loosen abortion restrictions in Maine has advanced within the state legislature, with both houses voting on the proposal potentially as soon as this week. The measure — which was proposed by Democratic Gov. Janet Mills and passed by the state legislature’s joint judiciary committee — will allow abortions in certain circumstances, with a physician’s approval, beyond the state’s current…
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With campaign spending on the rise in their city’s elections, voters in Portland, Maine will decide this November on a ballot question that aims to level the playing field for local office seekers.
The ballot question, called Clean Elections, would create a voluntary public campaign financing program for candidates running for municipal office in Portland — one similar to a well-established program offered to candidates for state office in Maine. If approved, the Clean Elections program would make Portland the first municipality in Maine to offer public funding for candidates. The measure would also ban all candidates from taking corporate contributions, prohibit entities under foreign influence from making expenditures related to ballot questions, and enhance transparency of campaign contribution information.
The Clean Elections initiative was approved to appear on the ballot on July 11 by the Portland Charter Commission, a body created in 2020 to review changes to the City Charter. The initiative then received the green light to appear on the ballot on Sept. 1 from the City Council.
The campaign backing the measure, Fair Elections Portland, says it “will put power back in the hands of the people” and empower elected officials to represent the people who elected them rather than special interests.
Though the U.S. Census estimated Portland’s population at a modest 67,000 as of 2020, city elections have become increasingly expensive. The most recent race for Portland mayor in 2019 saw record amounts of money, with candidates raising into the six figures and PACs jumping in to back their preferred candidates. Fair Elections Portland, which is leading the effort on the ballot question, compiled figures showing that overall spending in the 2019 race for mayor was more than double that of the city’s 2015 contest. Over the past decade, candidate fundraising totals have also grown sharply in elections for Portland at-large council seats, district council seats, and school board races, according to data from Fair Elections Portland.
“In 2017, a group of Portland activists started talking about the increasing problem of money in politics at the local level,” said Anna Kellar, campaign manager for the Yes on 3 campaign, the Clean Elections question. “What had always been low-key local elections were becoming much more hotly contested and high-spending, and with that all of the concerns that go along — could ordinary people afford to run, what kind of influence was it buying over local officials?
“With that problem, we were lucky to have a solution right in front of us: we already had strong experience with using a clean elections system at the state level, passed by referendum in 1996, a longstanding and popular program,” Kellar told Sludge. “Candidates for state legislature in the Portland area use it, and there’s a high degree of familiarity with it in the city. A decision was made to head to a charter amendment for a clean elections program.”
In Maine, a voluntary public funding system for participating candidates for all state offices was passed by voters in 1996 as the Maine Clean Elections Act, and strengthened by a referendum in 2015. The program requires candidates to gather a certain amount of $5 contributions from voters in their district in order to qualify, and then commit to only spending money they receive from the state while eschewing all private funding.
From the 2016 to 2020 election cycles, 55% of state candidates participated in the grants program, according to a March 2021 report from the group Democracy Maine. The report also shows that as of the 2020 election, public funding has grown to become the larger share of state campaign spending, after having been dominated by privately-raised funding as recently as 2016.
At its peak, up to 85% of the legislature used Clean Elections, according to Andrew Bossie, the former executive director of Maine Citizens for Clean Elections (MCCE), with seven out of 10 women in office saying that having a public financing option was very important in their decision to run.
In Portland, the Clean Elections program, proposed to start in the 2023-2024 elections, would — similar to the state system — issue funding to participating candidates who prove support from Portland residents, abide by limits on private contributions, and agree to take part in at least one public debate, among other things. As with other public campaign financing programs in states and cities, the city clerk’s office would create a searchable online database of all campaign finance information. Any unused funds in Portland’s system would be returned to the Clean Elections Fund.
A cost estimate prepared by the Charter Committee placed the per-cycle total of the program at about $290,000, an amount substantially less than candidates had been raising for mayor, even before including fundraising for city council and school board positions.
In addition, the Clean Elections question would require the city to adopt rules that ban corporate contributions to municipal candidates for office and prohibit foreign entities from spending on ballot questions, whether by contributing to campaigns or by making direct expenditures. In June of last year, the Maine legislature passed and the governor signed a bill prohibiting corporate contributions to candidates, joining 23 other states and the federal government in the prohibition. Companies may still establish separate segregated fund committees, or PACs, and allow PACs to use their telephones and computers.
The Clean Elections question will appear on the November ballot after a delay of several years spent navigating legal questions. In the summer of 2019, organizations including the League of Women Voters of Maine and Maine Citizens for Clean Elections gathered enough signatures to place a clean elections question on the ballot, with over 8,000 signatures from Portland residents. In September 2019, however, the City Council voted to prevent the citizen’s initiative from appearing on the ballot, mounting an argument that the initiative would instead require a lengthier charter revision process, a decision that triggered years of legal challenges from advocates.
Kellar says that in 2019 the coalition reached the formidable signature threshold with volunteer efforts across the city, “a combination of door-to-door, street corners and farmers markets, and community meetings.” One campaign volunteer led outreach in Portland’s South Sudanese community, and another brought clean elections petitions to Portland arts and music venues.
In the summer of 2020, the city put out a call for a Charter Commission, a process that Kellar said opened up another path for the Clean Elections initiative to be approved to reach the ballot. Kellar says that Fair Elections Portland groups worked closely with commissioners—three appointed by the city council, nine elected by voters—in reviewing the municipal proposal in light of the state’s public financing system.
The Maine Commission on Governmental Ethics submitted a memo in September 2021 to the city’s Charter Commission on best practices for administering a campaign finance program that included guidelines on auditing and bookkeeping.
Because it would approve an amendment to the City Charter, Kellar said, the initiative would provide dedicated funding for the program, insulating the clean elections program from the risk of funding being stripped by the city council from year to year.
“After being caught up in the process since 2019, this ballot question is a return to the core issue: the cost of running for office,” Kellar said. “Let’s talk about the problem of money in politics and how clean elections can fix that. People need to know they have the opportunity to turn out and vote for something really positive that they already support in the state.”
Also this year, voters in Oakland, California will decide on a ballot measure that would create a public campaign financing option called “democracy dollars” for city candidates — a program similarly designed to increase participation in local politics and enable candidates from a wider variety of backgrounds to mount competitive campaigns for office.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
When Erin Primer first heard the news that California was implementing a Universal Meal Program, she didn’t think it was true. For Primer, the director of food and nutrition services at San Luis Coastal Unified School District (SLCUSD) and a long-time advocate of universal meals, the announcement came as a colossal victory.
“It’s been something that we never thought was actually possible, especially at the beginning of the pandemic,” Primer said. “It’s allowed me to be incredibly hopeful about school food.”
On July 9, 2021, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law the Free School Meals for All Act, which pledges $650 million in ongoing funding to give about 6 million public school children in grades K-12 the option of receiving both a free breakfast and lunch every school day starting at the beginning of SY 2022-23. The bill was originally proposed by state Sen. Nancy Skinner and backed by a coalition of over 200 organizations.
The decision to implement universal free school meals is historic. Under the National School Lunch Program (NSLP), students must qualify for free or reduced-price lunch based on household income level. The new bill, however, allows all children — regardless of eligibility — to receive food.
While talks regarding universal meals had been ongoing before the pandemic, it wasn’t until March 2020 that school educators and administration realized the categories surrounding income weren’t sufficient — suddenly, everyone was in need.
“It started very much out of this need to feed people during a time of scarcity and uncertainty, and it’s really allowed us to lean into our food values and express that in our entire program,” Primer said.
California’s decision has already inspired Maine to follow suit, indicating a more significant shift toward greater national food equity.
For the upcoming school year, a family of four in the contiguous states, territories, and Washington, D.C., qualifies for a free meal if they make an annual income of $36,075 and a reduced-price meal if they earn $51,338. Consequently, families that just miss the cut-off may still be struggling financially but would not be eligible for federal assistance; NSLP guidelines also do not take into account the cost of living, which varies from state to state.
In southern California, the new policy will ensure no children fall through the cracks. Menu Systems Development Dietitian for the San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD) Melanie Moyer said of the 97,000 students in her district, 40,000 receive government assistance, with about 60% eligible for free or reduced price meals. Furthermore, there are about 7,000 unhoused students in her district, all of whom will now be able to receive meals without question.
Social stigma is another barrier that prevents many students from taking advantage of school meals.
Zack Castorina, a special education math resource provider at Equitas Academy 4 in the Los Angeles Unified School District, knows hungry students don’t learn as well as fed students do.
“Students continuously compare themselves to their peers in all forms and are aware of where they fall financially within their class,” he said. “By universalizing [meals], students and families feel no judgment in taking food they need.”
Destigmatizatizing school food also means prioritizing the dignity of those consuming it. To do this, Primer believes school districts should have food that is so good that everybody wants to eat it. And that’s what they’ve done.
During the pandemic, SLCUSD kept up with demand by distributing nearly 2,000 pantry-style boxes per week containing loaves of bread, blocks of local cheese, and various local produce. Similarly, SDUSD sources their dairy and bread locally and hosts “Harvest of the Month” to expose their students to foods they may otherwise not taste outside of school.
Food is a racial equity issue, demonstrated by the numbers revealing Black- and Latinx-headed households are nearly three times as likely to experience food insecurity as their white counterparts. This is significant since in California, 5.2% of enrolled students in 2020-21 identified as African American and 55.3% as Latinx.
At the school where Castorina teaches in Los Angeles, 95% of the student population is Latinx, and 92% qualified for free or reduced meals.
“[When I learned about the initiative], I was excited about how it can impact low-income families by taking [off] some of the financial burdens [of] feeding their children,” he said.
Whittier, California, resident and recent California High School graduate Jonathan Pilares ate free school meals along with his 9-year-old sister. He said that having a school lunch was financially helpful for his family in the long run. It also meant his mother would only have to cook once a day.
To Pilares, the bill will reduce barriers to access, ensuring more families are reached.
“Being from a Latino family and a heavily Latino populated area, I know many parents would struggle understanding the forms required by schools, even if they were in Spanish,” Pilares said. “This makes it easier for them to get food for their children without having to worry about the forms and hassle.”
Though by no means perfect in taste or quality, Pilares said he hopes this policy will benefit underprivileged students of all ethnicities in a similar way.
Perusing the daily school newsletter, Moyer has already seen chatter about other states potentially adopting similar policies.
“I think that’s great, because California is not the only state with food insecure children,” she said.
One way to bring further awareness to the issue is through partnerships with state and nationwide legislators. Last fall, SLCUSD hosted state Sen. John Laird and U.S. House Rep. Salud Carbajal to eat a real school lunch and sit in their garden to see where the food is grown; First Partner of California Jennifer Siebel Newsom is also expected to visit in July. In Primer’s opinion, experiencing the food program firsthand will allow politicians to share these stories and find ways for states to jump on board.
“California’s leading the pack. It’s exciting,” she said.
Prism is an independent and nonprofit newsroom led by journalists of color. We report from the ground up and at the intersections of injustice.
Yesterday’s shameful Supreme Court ruling on Roe v. Wade was telegraphed months ago.
But, during the angst-laden wait for the Supreme Court’s ruling on Roe, the court, so radically reshaped during the Donald Trump years, made hay trashing other vital precedents in its stampede to remake the country’s legal priorities in an extreme-right direction. This court will, with the Roe ruling and with a slew of other rulings from the past weeks, go down as arguably the most destructive court in United States history, certainly the most destructive in the post-Civil War era.
The six members who make up the majority on the court must be understood as far right extremists, not “conservatives.” By definition conservatives are not supposed to like sudden, jarring change; they are supposed to put a premium on stability and continuity. This court, by contrast, is a radically activist court, selectively trashing precedents to inject a far right vision of the role of religion in U.S. society, as well as reimagining labor and environmental law so as to harm consumers, immiserate the environment and benefit powerful corporate interests.
In no realm have they done more harm recently than in education. This week’s startling Carson v. Makin decision, in a case coming out of Maine, effectively mandates that schools subsidize parochial religious education institutions at taxpayers’ expense.
The background for the case is pretty straightforward: For more than 40 years, Maine has been providing subsidies to a few residents, who lived in very remote rural areas without easy access to public schools, to send their children to private schools. But, in keeping with state law on the issue, it has limited the funding to “nonsectarian” schools. Recently, two sets of parents sued, arguing that the state should fund their children’s attendance at Christian schools.
Had precedent held any weight whatsoever, this case wouldn’t have made it past first base. After all, roughly three dozen states have long had constitutional provisions, known as Blaine Amendments, many of them dating back to the 19th century, banning the public funding of religious schools.
The Blaine Amendments are a critical pillar supporting the notion that states have an obligation to fund non-religious education institutions available to all children. They are — ironically, given that this week’s Maine-originated ruling essentially struck them down — named after a 19th century Republican politician in Maine, James Gillespie Blaine. They were pushed federally from 1875 onward, when Congress passed a law requiring all new states to add a Blaine Amendment into their state constitutions.
In 2004, in Locke v. Davey, seven of the nine Supreme Court justices ruled that a state-funded university scholarship program in Washington State could exclude theology majors, owing to the fact that the state’s Blaine Amendment prohibited stated funding for religious “worship, exercise, or instruction.”
That Supreme Court-endorsed wall separating public funding from religious education started to break down in the following decade, as the court’s composition shifted rightward.
In 2020, the Supreme Court chipped away at the separation of church and state, when, in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue it allowed to stand a Montana law providing tax credits to people who wanted to contribute to a scholarship fund for parents sending children to religious schools. But that ruling simply said a state may provide such credits; and, moreover, it only provided for indirect state funding of religious schools.
Now the court has gone much further: The Carson v. Makin ruling is far more radical in its implications than the Montana case was. It essentially asserts that if states do choose to have a program to subsidize some private schools, they must include in that program direct subsidies for religious schooling as well, and, in so doing, it lays the groundwork for what could soon become a concerted legal effort to undermine the principle of universally available, secular, public education.
In a six-three ruling issued Tuesday, the Supreme Court declared that the Maine restrictions were discriminatory against religion and against religious people, and ruled the law — which emerged out of the bedrock principle of separation of church and state — null and void.
“Maine has chosen to offer tuition assistance that parents may direct to the public or private schools of their choice,” page 3 of the majority opinion, penned by Chief Justice Roberts, notes. “Maine’s administration of that benefit is subject to the free exercise principles governing any public benefit program—including the prohibition on denying the benefit based on a recipient’s religious exercise.”
Religious schools don’t have to adhere to state standards or abide by anti-discrimination laws — the schools involved in the lawsuit don’t accept gay students. Moreover, religious schools don’t have to teach secular subjects, such as science, that would be mandated in any public school.
In his dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer argued that this ruling, which mandates Maine to fund religious schools, opens the door to a broad-based assault on the concept of universal, secular, education. “What happens once ‘may’ becomes ‘must’?” he asked of his colleagues. “Does that transformation mean that a school district that pays for public schools must pay equivalent funds to parents who wish to send their children to religious schools? Does it mean that school districts that give vouchers for use at charter schools must pay equivalent funds to parents who wish to give their children a religious education?”
Those same states, set to ban abortion now that this radical-right Supreme Court has given them the green light by overturning Roe, already have disproportionately influential religious-right movements.
How long will it be, now that the Supreme Court has so weakened the ability of states to withhold public education dollars from sectarian schools, before one or another legislative house or right-wing governor looking for a radically disruptive educational policy to champion, backs the notion of widespread state payments to religious schools?
How long will it be before states or individual school districts start proposing educational “reforms” that have the effect of utterly undermining secular public schools and ultimately replacing them, or at least complementing them, with growing networks of sectarian education institutes?
Given all the other major stories competing for the headlines this week — from the overturn of Roe, to congressional hearings into the insurrection of January 6, to the war in Ukraine, to inflation, to primary season — it’s unlikely that Carson v. Makin will make it onto the public’s radar, but it should.
With this ruling, largely flying under the radar, the Supreme Court has just set the stage for ferocious battles over the future of publicly funded education in the U.S. over the coming years and decades.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
The workers at the Augusta Chipotle are forming a union.
The workers at the restaurant in the state’s capital filed for recognition as an independent union, Chipotle United, on Wednesday, according to the Maine AFL-CIO.
That comes just a week after the Chipotle workers staged a two-day walkout in protest of what they called unsafe working conditions.
Chipotle workers told the Kennebec Journal last week that low staffing is a big concern for them. Two workers are often doing the food preparation work of six people, and the restaurant will be staffed with three to four people when at least seven are needed.
In a letter to the chain’s national management, they called those demands “unreasonable” and said they jeopardize the safety of customers and themselves.
The post Augusta Chipotle Workers Have Formed A Union appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
When you think of workers hamstrung by the “independent contractor” label, you probably don’t think of Maine lobstermen.
But it turns out that lobstermen—a title claimed by women as well as men who catch and sell lobster for a living—have something in common with warehouse temps and Uber drivers. As independent contractors they’re denied the collective bargaining rights and various other workplace protections and benefits afforded (to some) by U.S. labor law.
And the strategy they used to confront low wages is one that similarly exploited workers might want to try too: they teamed up with a union to set up a worker-owned co-op.
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A Maine ballot referendum to halt the construction of a $1 billion cross-border corridor of high-impact electric transmission lines from Canada attracted more than $89 million in funds through ballot campaigns, more than any other referendum in Maine’s history, OpenSecrets’ analysis of campaign finance disclosures showed.
Supporters of the corridor poured more than $63 million fighting the ballot measure, dwarfing around $26.1 million raised by ballot committees opposing the corridor and supporting the measure’s passage.
Maine voters ultimately passed the ballot measure to halt the corridor’s construction on Nov. 2.
Maine Question 1, the ballot measure that has now halted the construction of the cross-border corridor, attracted more spending than any referendum in Maine’s history.
While the majority of Mainers who turned out to the polls voted to stop construction, construction on the corridor reportedly continued the day after vote and the project is unlikely to see spending halt anytime soon since it’s likely money will be spent in upcoming legal battles as well as overcoming other hurdles.
The ballot measure’s passage marks the latest spar in a fight over the potential environmental and economic impact of the project, as well as the potential for undue foreign influence due to the companies involved in the project.
The 145-mile long transmission corridor, dubbed the New England Clean Energy Connect, would be owned by Central Maine Power Co. and used by Hydro-Québec to transmit electricity from hydroelectric plants in Quebec to electric utilities in the U.S.
The government-owned company stands to make more than $12 billion from the project. The Quebec government’s Premier François Legault says he is still “confident” the project will still be completed despite the vote.
The project has been years in the making, facing staunch opposition from both environmental groups concerned with the impact the corridor could have on wildlife and fossil-fuel interests that could lose regional power market share if the corridor is built.
Groups funded by U.S. companies with stake in the construction of the corridor contributed heavily to the record-breaking cost of the ballot referendum.
Topping the list of donors supporting the ballot initiative is Florida-based energy company NextEra Energy Resources LLC, OpenSecrets data shows.
While NextEra is the world’s largest operator of wind and solar projects, more than half of the company’s energy-generating capacity comes from nuclear reactors or plants that run on natural gas and other fossil fuels.
The company’s New England power plant and nuclear facility might face increased competition from the influx of power from the corridor.
NextEra is the top donor to Mainers for Local Power, the main funder of a Say No to CMP Corridor, a ballot committee run by Say No to NECEC, the nonprofit behind the upcoming ballot initiative.
Other top contributors opposing the construction are Calpine and Vistra, which each operate multiple natural gas plants in New England.
Top donors pouring $63 million into opposing the referendum included NECEC Transmission LLC, NECEC’s U.S. parent company, the U.S. affiliate of Hydro Quebec and CMP’s Clean Energy Matters.
Foreign Agents Registration Act records reveal more details of spending by the subsidiary of the Canadian company that would benefit from the measure passing, OpenSecrets analysis found.
The U.S. affiliate of Canadian public utility company Hydro-Quebec, HQ Energy Services, built an army of foreign agents in the leadup to the Nov. 2 referendum. Those foreign agents reported more than $2.5 million in payments as part of the influence operation since 2020.
The FARA records note that the disclosures were made out of an abundance of caution.
April 2020 registration records for Blaze Partners detail their activities retroactively dating back to December 2019 with the goal of “a positive outcome on this ballot question when it comes to vote in November 2020.” When the 2020 vote did not take place, the contract was extended and services continued. Services included work “strategies to educate and inform Maine voters,” digital advertising, social media and “general campaign efforts,” according to FARA records.
HQ Energy Services also enlisted foreign agents from Forbes Tate Partners in 2020. Forbes Tates’ FARA registration records from July 2020 show the high-powered lobbying firm was hired for “research, surveys, polling, and message development” and ended up conducting a range of public opinion surveys of voters in 2020 elections as well as providing other services related to voter targeting, ad tracking and social media.
HQ Energy Services signed a contract extension increasing their spending and detailing a new plan of action on Nov. 2, 2020, just days after opponents of the corridor received permission to start collecting signatures for a 2021 referendum, FARA records reviewed by OpenSecrets and first reported by Foreign Lobby Report show.
In August, the U.S. affiliate of the Canadian public utility company extended its signed contract through November with Forbes Tate worth up to $2.4 million to provide “digital advertising, voter outreach, and related research services” in Maine ahead of the election.
As Election Day and the referendum neared, HQ Energy Services’ spending on foreign agents accelerated. More than $1.67 million went to advertising, text messaging and other related services from May 28 through Aug. 31, FARA records filed Sept. 30 show.
In December, former Sen. Al D’Amato’s (R-N.Y.) firm, Park Strategies signed a $17,500-per-month contract to represent Hydro-Quebec’s interests as a subcontractor to Forbes Tate related to another project in New York.
The initial contract directs foreign agents at the firm to help entice “grassroots/grasstops advocates, stakeholders, and organizations to share messaging through earned/social media and advocacy activities” from November 2021 through January 2022 in support of the Champlain Hudson Power Express project in New York.
The project involves construction of a 340-mile underground and underwater transmission line to carry 1,250 Mw of hydroelectric power from Canada to the U.S.
The firm is also expected to draft pen op-eds, brief reporters and organize virtual editorial board meetings.
The U.S. affiliate of the Canadian company’s spending on the ballot referendum has not been without controversy.
In January 2020, Hydro-Quebec admitted to violating state ethics laws by spending $100,000 to influence Maine voters without filing the necessary disclosures with the state’s ethics commission and was fined $35,000.
The Canadian company’s role has also sparked debate about whether companies with foreign government ownership should be allowed to spend on ballot referendums. Some opponents of the corridor’s construction have argued the company, whose sole shareholder is the government of Quebec, should be barred from spending on a ballot measure because of the risk of foreign interference.
“Foreign governments seeking to influence U.S. policy should not be allowed to circumvent diplomatic channels by spending money to directly influence policymakers,” Republican state Sen. Rick Bennett of Oxford, Maine told lawmakers during a public hearing in March, noting that in this case the policymakers are Maine voters, who are able to create laws with ballot measures.
Maine voters could also make a decision on that next year after the state’s governor vetoed a bill to bar foreign funding of ballot initiatives in June.
Maine is not alone in grappling with the issue of foreign money financing ballot initiatives.
This week, the Federal Election Commission ruled foreign donors can finance U.S. ballot measure committees under federal campaign finance law, first reported by Axios.
Since the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) regulates “only candidate elections, not referenda or other issue-based ballot measures” and referenda are held on issues, the FEC found that ballot initiatives are closer to issue advocacy, citing the Supreme Court’s 2012 ruling in Bluman v. FEC that the foreign national prohibition is “closely tied to candidate advocacy and does not ban foreign nationals from engaging in issue advocacy.”
This means foreign companies can directly spend to influence voters and policy at the state level even while they cannot legally spend to influence candidates for public office — an idea that has already attracted criticism from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.
Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) condemned the decision for “further opening the floodgates to foreign money,” predicting that other countries like China may see the order as an invitation to start spending on ballot initiatives as part of their already robust influence operations.
Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) called the foreign funding of ballot initiatives “a significant flaw in current federal election finance law, which could lead to hostile nations further influencing our democratic process if left unaddressed,” adding, “Congress must immediately take corrective action to explicitly ban foreign influence in campaigns, ballot initiatives, and elections of any kind.”
Democratic FEC commissioner Ellen Weintraub told the Washington Post, “This should not be viewed as open season for foreigners to try to influence ballot initiatives that affect our voting process,” arguing that the scope of the rules should be clarified by federal statute.
A federal law could expand the types of elections covered by FECA’s foreign money to include ballot referenda.
A bill proposed by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) on Wednesday, the Stop Foreign Interference in Ballot Measures Act, would do just that. A House bill with the same name and text was also introduced by Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) in March. Following Gillibrand’s proposal, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) told Axios of plans to introduce similar legislation.
The FEC’s decision does not preclude states and local governments from implementing their own rules outlawing foreign funding of ballot committees.
At least seven states have already passed laws prohibiting foreign nationals from funding ballot initiatives, and Maine is one of several other states considering new legislation that would prohibit foreign nationals from financing ballot initiatives.
A federal law, however, could put a stop to foreign spending on state or local ballot initiatives whether or not the state or municipality has laws against it.
U.S. affiliates of foreign companies already spend millions of dollars on ballot measures across the country, and even on American elections to elect federal candidates for public office.
Foreign-connected PACs, the PACs affiliated with foreign-owned companies, doled out more than $24 million on U.S. elections during the 2020 cycle with around $10.7 million going to Democrats and $13.4 million to Republicans.
Recent FEC opinions and court cases have underscored the distinction between foreign companies and the U.S. affiliates of foreign companies spending on elections.
In April, the FEC failed to find reason to believe a $500,000 donation to former President Donald Trump’s inaugural committee from CITGO, a Venezuelan-owned oil company, violated the ban on political contributions from foreign nationals. In a statement of reasons, the FEC’s Republican commissioners argued that no violation occurred and that a Delaware-incorporated affiliate of the Venezuelan-owned oil company had “separate corporate personhood” from its foreign parent company.
The Supreme Court’s June 2020 decision in USAID v. Open Society further emphasized that “foreign organizations operating abroad have no First Amendment rights.” While the case itself did not directly involve campaign finance issues, the sweeping statement could have far-reaching implications and campaign finance considerations were strongly present during oral arguments in the case.
Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who wrote the Court’s opinion, noted during oral arguments that if the Supreme Court ruling against the federal government’s ability to limit free speech of foreign corporations in other contexts may “unleash foreign affiliates of U.S. corporations to pump money into” elections.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
This week, the United States Supreme Court rejected an emergency appeal from Maine residents seeking to block a mandate requiring health care workers in the state to obtain COVID-19 vaccines by the end of this month.
The Court has previously rejected requests for injunctions on laws or policies at the city level, or by universities that required such mandates. This latest action is the first time the Court has acted on a state-wide mandate on vaccines.
The order from the Court, authored by Justice Stephen Breyer on Tuesday, noted that petitioners could still attempt to undo the mandate through the U.S. First Circuit Court of Appeals.
“The application is denied without prejudice to applicants filing a new application after the Court of Appeals issues a decision on the merits of the appeal, or if the Court of Appeals does not issue a decision by October 29, 2021,” Breyer wrote in the order.
A panel within the First Circuit court also rejected an emergency stay of the policy on Friday, but a legal appeal to a lower court’s order affirming the legality of the mandate could still be filed.
Maine Gov. Janet Mills (D) announced the policy in early September, saying it would be enforced for all health care workers in hospitals and nursing homes in the state. The workers affected by the mandate have until October 29 to get vaccinated, or risk losing their jobs.
“Anyone who is placed in the care of a health care worker has the right to expect – as do their families – that they will receive high-quality, safe care from fully vaccinated staff,” Mills said last month.
As a result of the mandate from Mills, dozens of health care workers have left their posts, which has led to an “acute shortage” of nurses, according to Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston. But the majority of health care workers in the state have complied with the order.
Polling shows that Americans overwhelmingly want workers in a number of industries to be vaccinated for COVID-19, particularly within the health care industry. An August Associated Press-NORC poll, for example, found that 62 percent of Americans believe hospital and other health care workers should be vaccinated, while only 19 percent said they opposed the idea.
President Joe Biden has proposed a new rule that would require health care workers across the country to be vaccinated if they work for a health care group or company that receives federal Medicare or Medicaid funding. According to a Gallup poll last month, 63 percent of Americans back that provision of the president’s proposed mandate.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Bangor, Maine – people were present on May 8th (the day before Mother’s Day), at the demonstration against Trident nuclear weapons at the Bangor submarine base. Five demonstrators blocked the main highway entrance into the base for over 20 minutes and were cited by the Washington State Patrol.
At around 2 pm on Saturday, the five demonstrators entered the highway carrying two large banners stating,“CONGRESS WANTS $1 TRILLION FOR NUKES–What will be left for our children” and “TRIDENT THREATENS ALL LIFE ON EARTH” and blocked all incoming traffic at the Main Gate at Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor. They were removed from the highway by the Washington State Patrol.
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March 15 is the day in 1820 that Maine, the Pine Tree State, joined the Union. With the Missouri Compromise, which involved Maine’s free state status, the conflict over slavery became all the hotter. Continue reading
The post As Maine Goes, So Goes the Nation appeared first on BillMoyers.com.
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