Platner Drops Maine Senate Bid After Sexual Assault Allegation
Source: Bloomberg Politics · Bias: Center
Summary
Graham Platner suspended his US Senate campaign in Maine following a sexual assault allegation that caused his support from fellow Democrats to collapse.
His exit throws a crucial race for the party into turmoil. (Source: Bloomberg)
Platner Drops Maine Senate Bid After Sexual Assault Allegation
Center
Graham Platner suspended his US Senate campaign in Maine following a sexual assault allegation that caused his support from fellow Democrats to collapse.
His exit throws a crucial race for the party into turmoil. (Source: Bloomberg)
Judge rejects administration’s request to lift injunction secured by several Democratic-led states on 25 JuneA federal appeals court on Saturday declined to allow Donald Trump’s administration to implement in 23 states his executive order that aims to tighten rules for mail-in voting before the November elections that will decide control of Congress.The Boston-based first US circuit court of appeals rejected the administration’s request to lift an injunction several Democratic-led states secured on 25 June from a lower-court judge who concluded that key parts of the Republican president’s order were unconstitutional. In asking the court to pause the US district judge Indira Talwani’s ruling while it pursues an appeal, the Department of Justice argued that because government agencies had yet to finalize actions and policies to implement Trump’s directive, any lawsuit challenging his order was premature. Continue reading...
Three-judge panel of Democratic appointees let stand lower court’s ruling that fee constitutes an unlawful tax A federal appeals court on Friday rejected a bid by Donald Trump’s administration to halt a judge’s order preventing it from imposing a $100,000 fee on new H-1B visas for highly skilled foreign workers.The Boston-based first US circuit court of appeals declined to put on hold a lower court judge’s 8 June ruling in a lawsuit filed by 20 Democratic state attorneys general, striking down the fee on the basis that it constituted an unlawful tax Congress never authorized. Continue reading...
Maine Democrats on Saturday overwhelmingly nominated Troy Jackson, a former state Senate president and logger by trade, as their party’s nominee to challenge longtime Republican incumbent Susan Collins in November’s high-stakes US Senate election.“Well, thank you, Maine,” Jackson, 58, said after securing the votes of 566 of 571 delegates during Saturday’s special Democratic convention at Cross Insurance Center in Bangor. “Today we turn the page, today this becomes a general election campaign, and today we win the work of defeating Susan Collins in November.”“For nearly 30 years, Collins has told Maine that she is ‘concerned’,” Jackson said, referring to the 73-year-old incumbent’s go-to word when President Donald Trump and Republicans attack rights and justice. “She was concerned while she rubber-stamped Trump’s Medicaid cuts and gutted our healthcare.”“She’s concerned when she cut taxes for corporations and the wealthy,” he continued. “Concerned when she confirmed justices who overturned Roe v. Wade. And really tragically, she was concerned when she gave [US Immigration and Customs Enforcement] billions to terrorize our neighbors and murder people in the streets with no accountability.”“But concern does not lower the costs of groceries or gas,” Jackson said. “Concern does not keep our monitoring wards of rural hospitals like down in Lincoln County open. Concern does not restore all the rights that she’s taken away. Maine does not need another six years of concern. We need someone with courage. We need a fighter, and we need a senator who remembers exactly who sent them to Washington.”“So if you’ve ever been ignored, underestimated, pushed around, or told that you have to wait your turn while the rich cut the line, I’m asking you to stand with us in this campaign,” he continued. “If you believe in your heart that healthcare is a right, stand with us. And if you believe that workers deserve power, stand with us. And if you believe our freedoms are worth defending, stand with us.”“And if you believe that Maine deserves a senator who will fight like hell for working-class people, well, stand with us,” Jackson added. “We have a party to unite, we have a movement to build, and we have a senator to defeat.”Jackson’s improbably rapid rise followed former Democratic nominee Graham Platner’s withdrawal from the race earlier this month amid allegations of sexual assault and abusive behavior. Supporters of Platner’s progressive platform warned at the time that they would not back a replacement candidate who did not share the same pro-worker, anti-war agenda.While Collins spokeswoman Blake Kernen called Jackson a “low-energy version” of Platner, Maine Democrats decided the fifth-generation lumberjack fit the bill.“The working class has been left behind and forgotten about,” Shelly Mountain, a former Aroostook County Democratic Committee chairwoman and Jackson delegate at the convention, told NBC News. “He is definitely working class and always—has always—been a champion for the working class.”Progressive politicians, advocacy groups, and labor organizations cheered Jackson’s nomination, with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) saying that “he’s ready to fight for working people and flip this seat.”International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) president Brian Bryant said Saturday that “Troy Jackson knows firsthand what it means to work hard for a living and fight for a better future for working families.”“Throughout his career, he has stood shoulder-to-shoulder with union members and working people, never backing down from a challenge when workers’ rights were on the line,” he added. “He represents the strength of a people-powered movement focused on fairness, opportunity, and economic justice. Troy has our full support as he heads to the general election.”
A bereaved new widow could not gather the will to respond to news that the Pentagon had still not replaced the names of her husband and three other soldiers to the public casualty count of soldiers killed during President Donald Trump’s Iran war last weekend.The Pentagon’s official online list of service member casualties did not include the four soldiers despite the fact that their names were included in a Pentagon press release on the formal transfer of their remains back to the United States on Wednesday. CNN anchor Erin Burnett reported on Friday that a day after the Pentagon suddenly changed its casualty count in the Iraq war, the websites that tracks war casualties still had the wrong number posted with just 14 fatalities listed, despite 18 service members being killed in the Iraq war since Operation Epic. Fury began.Jamiah Gonzalez-Swinton, wife of Sgt. Michael Swinton, could barely offer reactions to the news, however, on CNN’s “Erin Burnett Out Front.”“Now, the Pentagon does say it's a glitch,” Burnett told Swinton. “Has anyone spoken to you about this or told you anything about it?”After a long pause while gathering her nerve, Swinton replied: Um, nobody. Nobody has reached out yet.”“Um. Wow. Um. I kind of don't have words for that,” Swinton added after another visible effort.Earlier in the interview, before collapsing into emotion, Swinton described Sgt. Michael Swinton as “a big mush ball” for his new daughter. “It was beautiful to see their bond. Their bond was so strong,” she said, adding that her last video with her husband was three days before his death, but that the conference “felt different.”“He just sounded different,” she told Burnett. “Like, I don't want to say he sounded scared, but the way he spoke, he, you know, he said that he loved me. He wanted to talk to our daughter, and he was asking me if I was okay. And the conversation didn't even last a minute. And I just I was like, man, even the time of day that he called was really early in the morning for him. And it wasn't like him to call at that time. So, it just, the whole thing just felt off.”“I know that you said in those final days he sounded exhausted. Do you think that that he knew that things really had just become so much more dangerous in these past days,” Burnett pressed.“Um, I didn't share this yet, but he had sent me a message and he said, ‘you know, if I die, just make sure that my kids know that I love them.’ And that was maybe a month before this happened. So, I think we all knew that things were getting pretty serious. I just didn't think this would be the outcome. I don't think any of us did,” Swinton said.Trump, who unilaterally started the war with Iran, has himself ducked the draft and military combat during the Vietnam War through numerous educational and then medical deferments. After graduation in 1968, he avoided military service with a 1-Y medical deferment, which he said was due to a problem with his foot, earning him the name “Captain Bone Spurs” among critics. - YouTube youtu.be
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