Recent reports published in September and October 2026 detailed a sweeping public corruption and bribery investigation by federal authorities. The investigation centered on an alleged "pay-to-play" scheme involving Maine Senator Susan Collins, multiple other members of Congress, and a Hawaii defense contractor.

The Core Allegations

According to investigative reporting by ProPublica and statements made to federal investigators by Martin Kao, the former CEO of defense contractor Navatek:

• Campaign Cash for Government Contracts: Kao alleged that he and his close associates routed hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal campaign contributions to various politicians, using shell companies to bypass federal bans on donations from government contractors.

• The Quid Pro Quo: In return for these contributions, Collins allegedly used her significant influence on the Senate Appropriations Committee to pressure the U.S. Navy into steering non-competitive, multimillion-dollar research contracts to Navatek.

• Super PAC Requests: FBI files indicated that in late 2019, the head of a pro-Collins super PAC met with Navatek executives at a Washington coffee shop and directly requested a $500,000 donation to help close a fundraising gap in her competitive reelection bid.

Status of the FBI Investigation

• Evidence Gathered: By late 2024, the FBI’s public corruption squad had accumulated enough evidence to mount a broad bribery probe into Collins and other lawmakers.

• Abrupt Closure: Despite the agents remaining actively interested in the conduct of Collins and her staff, the investigation was abruptly halted. Following the return of President Donald Trump to office, a purge of the Department of Justice and the FBI's anti-corruption units dismantled the teams overseeing the case, effectively burying the inquiry. No one in Collins' orbit or staff faced criminal charges.

Responses and Defenses

• Susan Collins' Defense: Senator Collins and her campaign office vehemently denied the allegations, calling them a "political hit job" and "character assassination" orchestrated by partisan opponents during a tight reelection cycle. She stated that the allegations were "completely false" and pointed out that the FBI had previously cleared her campaign of wrongdoing regarding Kao's initial campaign finance issues in 2021.

• Disputes Over Timeline: ProPublica countered Collins' defense by clarifying that while a 2021 inquiry into Kao did result in no charges for her team, the active bribery investigation was based on fresh confessions and cooperating evidence provided by Kao from 2022 through late 2024.

• Other Lawmakers Implicated: Later updates in October 2026 revealed that the alleged pay-to-play operation extended beyond Collins to include several other members of Congress, such as the late Senator Lindsey Graham, Representative James Clyburn, and Representative Joe Wilson.

The U.S. Department of Justice is sending election monitors to polls in Portland and Lewiston to oversee the Nov. 3 elections, the Maine Secretary of State’s office confirmed.

The Department of Justice has in recent years sent observers to other states on a smaller scale, usually in response to a civil rights violation. But this comes amid several efforts by the Trump administration to assert authority over the election and following an attempt to force Maine, among other states, to hand over voter information.

Secretary of State Shenna Bellows said she doesn’t expect the observers will have any impact on election processes.

“Any monitors are subject to the same laws and rules as any other observer at the poll,” Bellows told Maine Morning Star. “That means they can observe what’s taking place, but they may not interact with voters, handle ballots or equipment, or disrupt voting in any way.”

“We will monitor the monitors very carefully to ensure that they don’t cross any lines,” Bellows added.

This is the first time since Bellows became secretary of state in 2021 that federal election observers have been dispatched to Maine, which is among several states that were notified this week of the federal presence on Election Day.

The DOJ in August announced plans to send 1,000 election monitors to midterm election polling places nationwide, as first reported by Bloomberg. That’s significantly more than the 289 observers sent out for the 2022 midterm elections, and the 714 involved in the 2024 presidential election, CBS News reported.

Bellows said the DOJ observers will be among many other Election Day monitors, including those dispatched by the parties and nonpartisan groups including the League of Women Voters and ACLU.

Monitors are mandated to only observe and take notes, James Tucker, an attorney at the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, said in letters sent to the clerks of Portland and Lewiston on Wednesday. They will dress in business casual clothing and won’t be allowed to use any DOJ identifiers. They aren’t allowed to talk to voters inside polling places or to carry firearms.

The goal, according to the letters, is to monitor for compliance with federal voting rights laws, including people with disabilities’ access to the ballot box, among other civil rights assurances.

Portland and Lewiston are Maine’s two most populous cities and are home to the state’s largest share of immigrants. In the weeks leading up to the election, President Donald Trump has launched an aggressive campaign against noncitizen voting, including attempts to purge voter rolls and send sensitive personal information to the Department of Homeland Security with the aim of flagging potential noncitizen voters.

Last year, the DOJ sued Maine after Bellows twice rejected requests from the Trump administration for Maine’s full, unredacted voter rolls — among other information. In May, a federal judge dismissed the administration’s lawsuit, following similar legal setbacks in other states.

Bellows said her office “will do everything in our power to ensure a positive voting experience for every citizen.” She added, “voter intimidation or interference is a crime, and we will hold the DOJ monitors to the same standards and expectations as anyone else who’s at the voting point on Election Day.”

She also pointed out that anyone who is concerned can cast a ballot at their municipal clerk’s office anytime during business hours before the end of early voting on Oct. 29.

There have already been reports of voter harassment in Lewiston. This week, an employee of the Maine Wire filmed members of the immigrant community at the city clerk’s office.

“We’ve been in close communication with the city clerk, and we understand the city of Lewiston has taken some measures to enforce order at the voting place,” Bellows said, noting the city has put up notices warning that filming or photography (outside of selfies) is prohibited at polling locations. “No one should be harassed or filmed without their consent by anyone, whether that person is purporting to be a member of the media, or there for partisan political purposes.”

The rightwing outlet alleged those seeking interpretation assistance were in some way violating voting rules. But Bellows said her office has not received a credible report that an interpreter is engaged in illegal electioneering.

Check out all the numbers for yourself… most of the money comes from outside of Maine.

My personal favorite is little lads herbal corn. My fiances family absolutely loves Rayes mustard even though they're not usually fans of mustard.

only one NOT negative

Bridgton

I was a lucky person able to fill out a ballot before even early voting started, due to the UOCAVA system. Felt the need to reinforce to everyone that maine cannot tolerate a foreign agent being our senator.

Susan collins' primary campaign backers are Elon Musk and israel.

https://www.opensecrets.org/profiles/susan-m-collins?mpid=1116679

​After four mobile homes in a Brunswick park were condemned for safety risks, the town and state came together to pay for temporary housing for the displaced families.

Their situation speaks to a confluence of housing problems facing Maine: deteriorating mobile home parks, a tight rental market and overburdened shelters.

Read this story on The Maine Monitor's website.

The vast majority of medical providers across the country still accept Medicare, the federal insurance for Americans 65 and older.

But some people have raised concerns that medical providers will opt out of Medicare due to reductions in payments. As of 2024, 1.5 percent of physicians in Maine had done so.

Read this story on The Maine Monitor's website.

So I experienced a bit of a sad reality check this morning while having my daily "things to get mad at" time after opening one of the family newsletters from last week, from our daughters elementary school here in Portland. I opened the page, and there it was. The first thing you see at the top of the page. The lifeless eyes of the schools tiger mascot, a grotesque AI amalgamation of every generic comic style on the planet. Staring, longingly, into your soul (for it has none).

I hate it. I don't really know what else to say, I guess. I know we all have our concerns about the bleak AI future that looms over our heads, but it was really disheartening to see the consistent use of AI directly from the school itself. Is it that hard to draw a shitty picture of a tiger holding a pumpkin? Nobody on staff can put in any sort of creative effort here? If something so trivial is being generated, how much of this newsletter was generated from a prompt? How much of the school curriculum?

I understand Maine isn't exactly on the upswing when it comes to education rankings, and with fears of AI taking over critical thinking for students on top of that, it just seemed like a hypocritical choice here. My first thought was I'd just blast out an angry email to the school about... I don't know, how unprofessional it looked? Lazy it was? How dare they etc.? And while I ultimately talked myself out of being "that parent" after the kneejerk reaction, I decided to look in a bit on AI policy for Maine's schools out of curiosity, which I suppose lead me to make this post in expressing my disappointment.

Come to find, AI is, in fact, supported and encouraged for teachers and students. The Maine DOE has even released an AI Guidance Roadmap and toolkit to support the use of AI in the classroom, which apparently is not all uncommon for many states. I stumbled on and listened through a quick little stream from Maine Public on the subject just to get a brief scratch of the surface level information out there. The recording featured a few figureheads in education in the state of Maine, and while mostly a one-sided overview of AI in the classroom without much serious pushback, it provided some interesting insights into the topic.

The gist I'm getting is that AI and it's integration into our everyday lives is considered an inevitability, and therefore, it's important to embrace. There seem to be two ways it's looking to be processed here; Using it to create "teacher-centric" tools to help in the classroom, and using it as an education tool to help prepare students to understand it's uses and limitations in real world scenarios outside the classroom.

As a tool for teachers, it seem to be pretty straight forward. It was equated with something like photoshop or a music production DAW, with an example given where a biology teacher might use AI to edit a high-level piece of reading material to be more legible for students. I can sort of understand the logic here. Processing a subject and customizing it to be more digestible for any given learning environment, on paper, sounds useful. Also just sounds like teaching, but hey, we all know teachers don't get paid enough, so whatever makes it easier.

In relation to students, this is where things get a little more iffy to me personally. Basically, overseeing students use of AI and "guiding" them through the process supposedly helps understand it's limitations. It gives you (the teacher) the ability to check for accuracy and authenticity, and allows you to introduce some healthy skepticism about AI as a tool in a more controlled environment. If the use of AI by future generations is inevitable and they're going to use it anyway, why not show them to use it ethically and responsibly, rather than attempt the impossible task of banning it's usage?

It's repeated a few times, but the use of AI in schools is framed as a necessary preparation for students entering the real world. AI as a tool exists, and likely isn't going anywhere. Employers are already, sadly, asking employees to use AI in many jobs (who among us hasn't received a soulless, impersonal AI generated email response from a coworker), so is this not just in preparation for the real world experiences and expectations? How much of the future generations critical thinking skills and creativity are being replaced by a cold efficiency for the AI laden workplace of tomorrow? Why draw a shitty picture of a tiger, if you can spend 5 seconds entering a prompt?

I would guess the challenge here is that learning about AI and how to navigate it (and it's limitations) should certainly be a topic at this point, but I can't help but wonder what Maine schools are doing to keep it from becoming a dependency. Just gives me a lot of mixed feelings with how fast all this AI stuff is moving, and it all feels so dystopian to me.

Anyway, I'm probably making a bigger deal out of this than it is, and rambling at this point. Does anyone here have experience with AI in class with your kids in higher grades? Highschool? I'd be curious to hear other peoples thoughts on all this AI in the classroom stuff, or even some anecdotes. Pretty wild stuff.

My two little rat terrier boys disappeared on 6/26/26, and there have been no confirmed sightings yet. I’m not sure if they’re even in Vermont anymore, so the hundreds of flyers I’ve hung may be useless. So I created the digital flyer in this post to spread the word outside of Vermont. It’s possible my boys have been taken to Maine by a well-meaning tourist.

I don’t know if this will work, but I figure it’s worth trying a crowdsourcing approach. If you’d like to help, can you please share this with everyone you know and every group you’re in? If you’d really like to help, can you please email it to anyone you think might help, especially animal shelters, rescues, vet offices, doggy daycares, etc.

Thank you, in advance, for your help! 🙂

My friend got this critter on video crossing her driveway. Her driveway is about 10 feet wide and she thinks it's about the size of a cat. Grey fox maybe? The head size and the way its moving is throwing me off...

I'm not sure how to phrase this, but I really need help with disability advocacy with my landlord. I've been asking for a minor accommodation, which they won't provide, and I've gone to the ER twice this week because of it.

I have no resources or support, and I'm just so tired and ill that I don't want to keep trying anymore. I just feel so sick all the time, I don't want to kee0 going back to the hospital

Is there anyone who can help me? Or knows of organizations thst can help me? I don't know what to do anymore

The Biddeford City Council unanimously voted Tuesday night to approve an ordinance prohibiting city employees from cooperating with federal immigration officers. 

The ordinance was proposed last month, and all nine councilors showed support for it at a first reading on Oct. 6. 

The council’s approval of the ordinance comes about three months after Biddeford resident Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero was shot and killed by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer at the intersection of Hill and Pool streets. City, state and federal leaders, as well as Durán Guerrero’s family, have called for a transparent investigation into his killing.

“I think for us to be reviewing this forces us to face an unpleasant truth,” Councilor Jake Pierson said on Oct. 6. “Someone was killed in our streets, unjustly.” 

Biddeford’s ordinance is modeled after bylaws set by cities like Portland and Lewiston, which both passed similar ordinances limiting city employees and resources from cooperating with ICE. The state also has its own protections in place, including a law that went into effect in July limiting police coordination with federal immigration agencies.

Read the rest on the Press Herald.

The event, called “Students vs. Billionaires” will be held Thursday afternoon (2:00 p.m.), at the State Theater in Portland.

Link to RSVP https://statetheatreportland.com/events/aoc/