<President Donald Trump has found a new front in his war against Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell - and a potential way to rid himself of the nation’s central banker.

Trump has made no secret of his distaste for Powell, whom he nominated to lead the Federal Reserve in 2017, primarily because of Powell’s refusal to lower interest rates, particularly in light of Trump’s decision to levy tariffs. This weekend, Trump announced that he would impose a 30 percent “reciprocal tariff” rate on Mexico, one of the United States’ biggest trading partners, and on the European Union.

Powell has said that the central bank needs time to see what effects tariffs will have on inflation and employment before making a determination on interest rates. This has prompted Trump to call Powell a “stupid person.”

The president can do little to remove Powell. Joe Biden re-nominated Powell for another five-year term in 2021 based on his steady leadership during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, and his term would expire in May. Federal statute says the president can only remove Powell “for cause.”

And it looks like the White House has found a “cause.”

Last week, Russell Vought, the chairman of the Office of Management and Budget and a key architect of Project 2025, sent a letter to Powell criticizing him for running over budget. Vought assailed Powell for supposed renovations to the Marriner S. Eccles Federal Reserve Board Building that houses the Fed, saying Powell approved VIP dining rooms, water features and premium marble.

On Sunday, Kevin Hassett, Trump’s director for the National Economic Council, appeared on ABC’s This Week, where host Jonathan Karl asked Hassett if the president had the authority to fire Powell.

“That’s a thing that’s being looked into, but certainly, if there’s cause, he does,” Hassett said. The director, who worked in the first Trump administration, has been floated as a potential replacement for Powell.

In response, the Federal Reserve took a surprising step during the weekend of putting up a “frequently asked questions” page about the building project. The page denied allegations that the renovation included plans for dining rooms, a VIP elevator or water features for the Eccles Building.

Powell’s tenure has not been perfect. Like many other officials in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, Powell said that inflation would “wane” and famously said that inflation in 2021 would be “transitory.” That was not the case and the nation went through months of rapid price hikes.

He subsequently raised interest rates to break inflation, acknowledging some “pain to come.” But in the coming years, Powell largely succeeded in curbing inflation while the economy added jobs in Biden and Trump’s administrations.

All of this is immaterial though. Clearly, the White House is using the renovation as a pretext to fire Powell for a legitimate policy disagreement. Tariffs are an article of faith for the president and one of his few sincere beliefs on which he has not budged.

But almost every major economist has said that the cost of imposing would go directly to consumers.

And given the fact that it would take a while to see the actual effects of tariffs, combined with the fact that Trump has repeatedly paused them, it would make sense for the Federal Reserve to see what effects the tariffs have on the economy before taking action on interest rates. That runs counter to the president’s desire for every major federal appointee and employee to behave in fealty to his agenda, even though taxpayers do not fund the Federal Reserve, but rather through interest on government securities that it holds.

Almost any time that Trump hints at sacking Powell, the stock market proceeds to take a hit, which seems to cause him to pull back. But if Trump can create a seemingly plausible cause to dismiss Powell, he can finally install someone who is a loyalist to the central bank.

And don’t expect Congress to take action if even the dismissal would on flimsy charges, given almost no Republican wants to stand up to Trump on any legitimate policy.

All of this serves as just the latest test to see how far many ostensibly independent agencies Trump can break, and whether he can do so with the consent of the guardrails on the executive branch.>

<The Trump administration on Tuesday asked an appellate court for permission to continue warrantless arrests in Southern California as part of controversial immigration enforcement efforts.

In a 51-page filing with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, the U.S. Department of Justice requested emergency relief in the form of an immediate administrative stay — as well as a broader stay pending appeal of the underlying case — to pause the temporary restraining orders issued by a Los Angeles-based district court late last week.

The crux of the dispute is both the factual way Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents are conducting immigration sweeps in the nation's second largest city and the executive branch's basic legal authority to conduct such sweeps. One of the government's central arguments is that it was not given enough time to prepare.

"[T]he district court has entered a sweeping, district-wide injunction placing coercive restraints on lawful immigration enforcement affecting every immigration stop and detention," the stay application begins. "The district court thought the issues presented were sufficiently urgent that she afforded the government only two business days to respond to hundreds of pages of submissions and issued the injunction in a written decision only days later."

The plaintiffs filed their underlying lawsuit earlier this month.

Acting fast, U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong — a Joe Biden appointee — set an expedited briefing schedule and, in turn, granted two temporary restraining orders: one for individuals who allege their constitutional rights have been violated by deportation dragnets; the second for attorneys who claim they are being blocked from conferring with their clients, also in violation of the Constitution.

In her ruling, Frimpong chided the government for conducting raids based on the "apparent race or ethnicity" of the people being targeted – as well as other what she found to be other impermissible factors like their language, accent, location, and line of work.

In their stay application, the government says it did not use "skin color" alone at least in relation to one of the plaintiffs – but largely seeks to vindicate the notion that such factors could, in fact, be permissible reasons to arrest someone without a warrant.

"[I]n trying to reduce the Fourth Amendment test to a formula by identifying a list of 'irrelevant' factors, the court grievously erred," the appeal reads. "The Fourth Amendment imposes a totality-of-the-circumstances test, and it is entirely possible that one's language, location, or type of work could be relevant in a particular factual context. Trying to develop bright-line rules in this context is a fool's errand."

This argument somewhat echoes comments made by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Fox News over the weekend.

"We never ran our operations that way," Noem said. "We always built our operations, our investigations, on case work … and that is always how this has been done. It's been done exactly how law enforcement has operated for many years in this country, and ICE is out there making sure we get the worst of the worst off the streets."

While all but steering clear of the race discussion, the government argues the detentions of each plaintiff did, in fact, pass the test for "reasonable suspicion" – arrest without a warrant – under the Fourth Amendment. But, the appeal reiterates, the judge did not allow enough time for the DOJ to fully brief the case.

"Under federal law, the government only conducts warrantless arrest where officers have reasonable suspicion, based on specific articulable facts," the appeal goes on. "But the court's broad, structural injunction will have a chilling effect on that enforcement, because it threatens officers with contempt sanctions if the court retrospectively disagrees with their view of whether reasonable suspicion was satisfied on particular facts. And that risk is potent, given that the court reached its judgment about the past arrests of three named Plaintiffs here, without giving the government a meaningful opportunity to marshal the facts and prove that reasonable suspicion did exist."

The DOJ, in its filling, and in line with the Trump administration's general tenor against injunctions barring its behavior, says the district court clearly overstepped its bounds. And, again, the speed of the judge's work is remarked upon in a negative light....>

<....From the stay application, at length:

[O]n the eve of the July 4 holiday, [the plaintiffs] filed an "emergency" ex parte motion asking the court to impose a straight-jacket injunction that would vastly restrict the government's ability to stop and detain anyone on suspicion of being unlawfully present in the United States. The court gave the government just two business days to respond to hundreds of pages of submissions, and largely rubber-stamped Plaintiffs' proposed order just days later. The result is a sweeping, district-wide injunction that threatens to hobble lawful immigration enforcement by hanging a Damocles sword of contempt over every immigration stop.

The stay application, however, sees the aforementioned sword cutting soon – and deep. The government goes on to warn against the likelihood of a further injunction with even broader terms.

The DOJ argues the current injunction "is indefensible on every level" and "appears to be a first step to placing federal immigration enforcement under judicial monitorship."

"It is untenable for a district judge to single-handedly 'restructure the operations' of federal immigration enforcement," the filing goes on. "And make no mistake, that is exactly what this district court is doing. Indeed, the current injunction is only the start, the court has ordered the government to show cause why it should not also be required to develop policies, compel agents to undergo training, and even share records of each and every stop with the ACLU going forward. This judicial takeover cannot be allowed to stand."

In their opposition to the administrative stay, the plaintiffs say the government is complaining too much after defending itself too little.

"The court below considered a 'mountain of evidence' that Defendants likely are engaged in a pattern and practice of detaining people in the Central District of California during 'roving' immigration patrols without reasonable suspicion that the person to be seized is unlawfully present in the United States," the opposition filing begins. "The court gave Defendants nearly a week to provide contrary evidence, at their request."

And, to hear the plaintiffs tell it, the government has substantially overstated the restrictions currently put in place by the lower court.

"Contrary to Defendants' unsupported attorney argument, the order plainly allows Defendants to continue enforcing the immigration laws, including by engaging in targeted enforcement and voluntary questioning of persons present in certain locations," the opposition motion continues. "But it properly prohibits Defendants from relying solely on four factors to deprive people of their liberty, which this Circuit has repeatedly held cannot suffice for reasonable suspicion: apparent race or ethnicity; Spanish language or accent; location; and occupation.">

<Nine days ago DOJ announced that the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein and his death in a New York jail was over, and no action would be taken. But it’s not over in the minds of Americans. Tonight, on his show “All In,” Chris Hayes related that polling shows 75% of Republicans want the full Epstein files released. Seventy-nine percent of U.S. adults overall are in this camp. The number shoots up to 85% for Democrats. Their motives obviously differ, but in a divided country, the consensus is startling.

Now, there are reports that the Republican base, many of whom are desperately invested in the theory that releasing the Epstein files will reveal that many high-ranking Democrats participated in his provision of underage girls for sex, are calling for a special counsel to conduct an investigation. Right wing influence Laura Loomer has also joined that call.

Is it possible that there is some beef here? Or is it just more spin?

As more and more voices are raised, it’s hard not to wonder who exactly is behind the push. Could it be an effort to distract from the alleged existence of an Epstein list? Or is there some sincerity to it? The entire issue is passably strange. Epstein is dead, and the events in question occurred years ago. But still interest lingers.

Hakeem Jeffries, the minority leader in the House, has suggested that the calls for a special counsel are just a diversionary tactic. His position is that if the files exist, they should be released. He pointed out that Attorney General Pam Bondi has said the list exists and was sitting on her desk a couple of weeks ago. Trump promised during the campaign that he would release it. Jeffries is calling on him to make good on that promise. The Democratic Party seems to think this issue could gain traction against Trump where others have failed, launching a new account on Twitter under the moniker, “Has Trump Released the Epstein Files” where they post daily updates on the situation. This is their pinned Tweet.

@DonaldJTrumpJr: Show us all the Epstein client list now!!! Why would anyone protect those scum bags?

Ask yourselves this question daily and the answer becomes very apparent!! We discussed what looked like an effort to make Attorney General Bondi the scapegoat in this matter in last night’s post. Although Trump came to her defense in a social media post, there still seems to be a major rift between her and the FBI’s leadership, making it hard to know what anyone’s real motives are here.

For the moment, it may be enough to enjoy the unfolding drama and see where this is headed. This has to be my favorite pitch for a special counsel: Appoint (former Congressman and failed Senate nominee) Matt Gaetz to run the show and subpoena Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s convicted coconspirator, to testify.

Maxwell was Epstein’s longtime companion before his arrest and her subsequent conviction. Trump and Melania appear in this February 2000 photo, taken at Mar-a-Lago, with Epstein and Maxwell. Five years later, in January 2005, Trump and Melania were married.

Over the weekend, Trump posted on Truth Social that “One year ago our Country was DEAD, now it’s the 'HOTTEST' Country anywhere in the World. Let’s keep it that way, and not waste Time and Energy on Jeffrey Epstein, somebody that nobody cares about.” His voters don’t seem willing to forgive his about-face, although as with all things Trump, that could change. But the bottom-line truth Trump’s supporters know is that it would be easy for Donald Trump to order the list released, yet he hasn’t done it. Instead of dying down over time, the furor seems to be growing. Grab your popcorn everyone, and let’s see where this leads.>

<Donald Trump’s first term was filled with scandals, failures and tragedies, but the president managed to complete one of his most important goals: Working with a Republican-led Senate, he successfully stacked the federal courts with young, far-right ideologues. By the time Trump left office, he’d installed 234 federal judges — including a third of the U.S. Supreme Court — which created a dynamic Americans will be forced to live with for a generation.

Looking back, however, the president and his team aren’t altogether satisfied. The problem, evidently, is that some conservative, Trump-appointed jurists — many of them handpicked by the conservative Federalist Society — are not quite radical enough. Some have even had the audacity to issue rulings that Republicans didn’t like.

For Team Trump, this became a learning experience of sorts. Sure, his other successful judicial nominees were conservative, but not enough of them were knee-jerk conservatives who could be counted on deliver for the right reflexively and without a lot of fuss or forethought. As NBC News reported last month, the president settled on “a new approach to selecting judges in his second term, departing from his first-term formula of younger up-and-comers, elite credentials and pedigrees in traditional conservative ideology and instead leaning toward unapologetically combative, MAGA-friendly nominees.”

It’s precisely why Team Trump decided that the Federalist Society simply wasn’t MAGA-aligned enough. In fact, a year before Election Day 2024, The New York Times reported that Team Trump had begun looking at Federalist Society members as “squishes.”

And this week Senate Republicans, voting along party lines, confirmed Whitney Hermandorfer, who served as director of the strategic litigation unit in the Tennessee attorney general’s office, marking the first judicial confirmation of Trump’s second term. The Times reported:

It did, indeed. Hermandorfer, who rose to public prominence defending a Republican abortion ban and challenging a Biden administration prohibition on discrimination against transgender students, only has six years of actual legal practice — and as my MSNBC colleague Lisa Rubin recently explained, that’s “roughly half of what the American Bar Association considers necessary to be qualified for a federal judgeship.”

During an exchange with Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware during her confirmation hearing, Hermandorfer conceded that she’d never served as sole or chief counsel in any case, tried to a jury verdict; never served as sole or chief counsel in any case tried to a final judgment; never personally engaged in direct examinations in federal court; never personally engaged in cross-examinations in federal court; never taken depositions; and never defended depositions.

Judge Jane Stranch, whom Hermandorfer was tapped to replace, had 31 years of legal experience before she was nominated for the appellate bench. Hermandorfer, in contrast, graduated from law school 10 years ago, has six years of legal experience and no background doing the sorts of things one might expect a federal appellate court judge to have done.

That’s precisely why Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, described her lack of qualifications as “shocking.”

But in our post-qualifications era, Trump didn’t care, and Senate Republicans, including ostensible “moderates” such as Maine’s Susan Collins, played their role and rubber-stamped Hermandorfer’s nomination.

She is the first far-right judicial confirmation of the president’s second term, but she won’t be the last.>

<House Democrats are hammering President Trump and his GOP allies for pushing to alter Texas’s congressional lines ahead of the midterms, accusing the Republicans of rigging the system to stay in power.

“It’s painfully clear why Republicans are doing this: They know they are going to lose the majority next year,” Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.), the head of the House Democrats’ campaign arm, told reporters Tuesday on Capitol Hill. “Republicans know they can’t win on their failed agenda, so they’ve hatched a scheme to rig the Texas map to try to save their microscopic majority.”

In a rare mid-decade redistricting effort, Texas state lawmakers are expected to consider new congressional lines during a special session of the Texas legislature, which was called by GOP Gov. Greg Abbott. The effort to redraw the Texas map has come at the request of President Trump, who wants to pad the GOP’s thin House majority to ensure that Republicans keep control of the lower chamber during his final two years of his second term.

In a call to Texas Republicans on Tuesday morning, the president urged lawmakers to draw the districts in such a way that Republicans will be able to flip five Democratic seats to the GOP, according to Punchbowl News.

Democrats have bashed the effort, noting that Texas is still reeling from the massive floods that hit the Hill Country region of the state on the July 4 weekend. The floods killed scores of people, including young girls attending a popular summer camp. Democrats say Republicans should be focused on efforts to recover from that crisis, and examine the possible causes, including recent cuts to the National Weather Service championed by Trump.

“Instead of addressing the serious crisis that has affected tens-of-thousands of lives in unthinkable ways, Donald Trump, House Republicans here in Washington and Gov. Abbott are conspiring to rig the Texas congressional map as part of an effort to disenfranchise millions of people in Texas,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said.

“In this country, public servants should earn the votes of the people that they hope to represent,” he added. “What Republicans are trying to do in Texas is have politicians choose their voters.”

Jeffries declined to say if he supports having blue states, like New York and California, pursue their own mid-district redistricting efforts to counter the efforts of Texas and North Carolina. He deferred to the governors of those states.

But he also left the door open to that strategy, and suggested there might be developments on that front coming soon.

“Stay tuned,” Jeffries said.

The justification for drawing the new lines has done little to appease the Democratic critics.

In a recent letter to Abbott and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, Trump’s Justice Department said a new map was needed to remedy four existing districts it deems unconstitutional because they were drawn with racial considerations in mind. Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, urged state Republicans “to rectify these race-based considerations.”....>

<....Texas Democrats say Dhillon’s reasoning is ludicrous, since state Republicans had drawn the existing map just four years ago.

“The absurdity of the justification for this redistricting is that a Republican-controlled legislature, led by President Trump’s campaign manager in the Senate, signed by his loyal follower Gov. Abbott — that that Republican redistricting plan discriminated against white people in Texas,” Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas.) said.

“Not a big problem that we’ve ever had down there in my lifetime.”

Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas), a member of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), said Texas has a long history of pushing discriminatory policies in order to undermine the power of minorities, even as they represent a majority of the population. The new redistricting effort, she said, is just the latest iteration of that campaign.

“They are specifically deciding to splinter the communities of common interest as well as just blatantly say: We’re going to dilute the minority voices,” Crockett said.

It’s not the first time in recent years that Republicans have leveraged power on the state level to tilt the congressional map in their favor, even when it disenfranchised millions of voters. In 2022, Republicans who controlled North Carolina’s state house adopted new districts all but ensuring the GOP would pick up seats in Congress. The map was shot down by the state Supreme Court when it was controlled by Democrats. But after Republicans took power on the court, they reversed the earlier decision and allowed the map to take effect.

As a result, Republicans picked up three Democratic seats in the 2024 elections, swinging an evenly divided delegation — featuring seven Republicans and seven Democrats — sharply in the favor of Republicans, who now hold a 10-4 advantage in a state where party affiliation is roughly split.

“They know that we would be in the majority today if North Carolina hadn’t egregiously redistricted and eliminated three Democratic seats,” said Rep. Katherine Clark (Mass.), the Democratic whip.

“This is a voter suppression effort,” she added. “This is an effort to take away voices when Texans need the help of fellow Americans.”

DelBene warned that the Republicans’ redistricting might backfire on the GOP, diluting the comfortable advantage of some Republican incumbents to the advantage of Democrats hoping to pick those seats up.

“Republicans should be careful what they wish for,” she said.

Jeffries seconded that warning.

“I have no expectation that they’re going to show any political courage. Texas Republicans are likely to continue to act like political punks and bend the knee to Donald Trump’s extreme agenda,” he said. “In doing so, they will jeopardize their own electoral careers.”>

<Thom Tillis isn’t in rebellion mode against President Donald Trump or Republican leadership. He’s simply making clear that he won’t tolerate disrespect from Trump — or anyone else.

The North Carolinian, who announced his retirement in the middle of last month’s grueling debate over Trump’s massive tax and spending cuts bill, is no longer beholden to Trump or the broader world of electoral politics.

He’s not planning on using his perches on three powerful committees to undercut the GOP: He’s preparing to support Trump’s package of extra federal cuts and to advance controversial judicial nominee Emil Bove.

But Tillis also contends that the president is getting bad advice on everything from Medicaid cuts to tariffs, and he’s warning Trump against antagonizing him. It could make for a very interesting next 18 months.

“That’s President Trump’s choice,” Tillis told Semafor in an interview in his office on Tuesday, when asked whether he’ll be a thorn in the president’s side. “I’ve tried to defer to him and show him respect, but I do have a habit of mirroring the behavior that I’m presented with.”

Tillis pointed to a recent confrontation with a bystander who confronted him about his opposition to Trump nominee Ed Martin: “You can just ask the poor guy in the Washington National Airport about seven weeks ago what happens when you get up in this former trailer park resident’s face. There’s no human being on the face of the planet whose behavior I wouldn’t mirror if it’s disrespectful.”

Since his election to the Senate, Tillis has emerged as one of the most active legislators on the floor and one of the most blunt-talking off of it. In quintessential fashion, he’s already worried about his party’s prospects of holding onto his seat.

Anticipating a challenging environment in North Carolina that could make it tough for his potential successors, Tillis had a warning for the president’s daughter-in-law, who’s considering a run.

If Trump’s popularity becomes a drag on the party, he said, “I’d probably say Lara Trump should consider that.”

He’s also quite frustrated with the “amateurs” surrounding Trump in the White House, arguing that many of Trump’s staffers are undermining him.

“The president is getting bad advice from maybe well-intentioned people who have no experience with execution,” Tillis said, calling the April tariffs a “dud” and “objectively a failure” — a prime example of what he says is a White House staff that has fallen short.

“He’s got people working for him that may have convinced him that they live and breathe him, but they’re just surfing a wave for the next hill. I’m not,” Tillis said. “He has nothing that I want. I’m here purely for the purpose of producing good policy and getting more Republicans elected.”

Tillis’ last contact with Trump involved that same message: It came as they texted about the senator’s potential retirement amid his opposition to the steep Medicaid cuts tucked into the party’s megabill.

“‘Mr. President, I hope I’m able to prove to you that I have your best interest at heart anytime I disagree with you. Because I firmly believe that you have people advising you who do not have that as a priority. I do,‘” Tillis said, paraphrasing his message to Trump weeks ago.

White House spokesman Steven Cheung said: “The president has built a world-class team and he is delivering results for the American people every day. That’s why America is the hottest it’s ever been.”

Several Republican senators said in interviews they expected Tillis to be outspoken during his remaining time in office but not to sabotage Trump or his agenda. They pointed to his party-line stances during the Senate’s “vote-a-rama” on the tax cuts bill and his experience as a statehouse leader.

Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., predicted Tillis would “vote for the people of North Carolina. But we’ll find out pretty quick.”

Still, plenty of Republicans complicated the president’s life on their way into retirement. Former Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., tried to use his deciding vote on the Judiciary Committee to overturn Trump’s first-term tariffs, while former Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., deemed the White House an “adult day care center.”....>

<....The ultimate blow came from two retiring GOP senators who voted to convict Trump in his 2021 impeachment trial.

One GOP senator privately said many of their colleagues are hoping Tillis doesn’t become a Trump foil like former Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah.

Tillis’ response: “If the president were to say something about me the way he did about Mitt Romney, people could only hope that I would behave like Mitt Romney. Let’s just put it that way. I don’t take a pass on anybody flexing with me.”

Tillis’ career arc is dizzying. He flipped the North Carolina statehouse in 2010, defeated a Senate incumbent in 2014, won a challenging reelection in 2020, and emerged as an effective bipartisan dealmaker during Joe Biden’s presidency.

He took as much heat as he generated this year, however, starting with his deciding vote to confirm Pete Hegseth as defense secretary in January amid allegations of excessive drinking and sexual misconduct.

Tillis found those charges against Hegseth “interesting” but uncorroborated and said he deferred some of the vetting on the Pentagon chief’s capability to the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“We now know that the committee was probably a little bit generous on how well he could run a large, complex organization,” Tillis said.

A few months later, though, Tillis found a nominee he couldn’t stomach: DC federal prosecutor nominee Ed Martin. While Tillis empathized with the idea that the “idiots” who had entered the Capitol on Jan. 6 had been overprosecuted, he drew a line at the pardon of violent offenders that Trump issued and Martin supported.

Tillis told Semafor that any nominee with similar views that comes through his committee will get the same treatment.

“The only real red line that I have … has to do with anyone who condoned the January 6 attack,” Tillis said. “If you’re coming before any of my committees, and I can deny cloture, you’re never going to get confirmed over the next 18 months. That’s a red line. January 6 is a big red line for me.”

The tax bill presented an even bigger challenge. As soon as the Senate released harsher cuts to Medicaid than the House considered in June, Tillis soured on the bill. That was a problem because Tillis is on the whip team, tasked with helping leaders scrounge up votes for legislation.

He said he found Majority Whip John Barrasso, R-Wyo., on the Senate floor and told him “it probably makes sense for me to get off” the team. Before long, Tillis was in contact with Trump, whom he told that his vote probably wasn’t necessary to pass the legislation.

Trump later criticized Tillis on Truth Social anyway.

“If somebody wants to know why I’m not running, it’s because some bonehead told him to post something and pretend like that was going to affect me,” Tillis said. “It affected me in a way that said: ‘I’m done with this bull****.’

“And I got 18 months to try and do good, up to and including helping the president be successful,” he added. “On my terms.”>

<In 2021, JD Vance accused the government of hiding a Jeffrey Epstein “client list” that the Trump-Vance administration now says doesn’t exist.

“If you’re a journalist and you’re not asking questions about this case,” Vance said, “you should be ashamed of yourself.”

Today, there are arguably more questions than ever – thanks in large part to the bizarre handling of it by the same administration Vance now serves in. Despite hyping the “Epstein files,” the Trump Justice Department now says Epstein indeed committed suicide, and there was no “client list.”

That doesn’t mean there was some broad conspiracy involved. But the administration has done a great job seeding suspicion – particularly among its own base – that it’s now part of the purported cover-up.

So let’s ask some of the kinds of questions that Vance argued were so important four years ago.

1. Why are the documents suddenly so unimportant?

Trump’s strategy for dealing with the backlash basically amounts to: Move along, everyone.

“Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein!?” Trump said last week.

The president added in a social media post Sunday: “Let’s … not waste Time and Energy on Jeffrey Epstein, somebody that nobody cares about.”

FBI Director Kash Patel echoed that line over the weekend, posting on X: “The conspiracy theories just aren’t true, never have been.”

But it would certainly seem to be news to many people around Trump that nobody cares about this and the conspiracy theories are baseless. Trump’s team is stocked with people, including Patel, who previously cast the Epstein saga as a massive scandal-in-waiting that just needed some leaders willing to rip the lid off of it.

Back in February, for example, Attorney General Pam Bondi, hyped soon-to-be-released documents and suggested she had the so-called client list on her desk when asked about it in an interview. (She has since suggested she was referring to other documents.)

“What possible interest would the U.S. government have in keeping Epstein’s clients secret? Oh…” Vance posted suggestively back in 2021.

“Put on your big boy pants and let us know who the pedophiles are,” Patel said in 2023.

“Listen, that Jeffrey Epstein story is a big deal,” now-Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino said the same year. “Please do not let that story go. Keep your eye on this.”

“Who’s on those tapes?” Bongino added in February shortly before joining the administration. “Who’s in those black books? Why have they been hiding it?”

So to recap: The people most directly in charge of this matter – and now insisting there’s no there there – are also the people who assured there was plenty to discover and suggested that things were being covered up.

So the question becomes: Are they admitting they were just wrong then?

(They don’t seem to want to say that. But perhaps tellingly, Bongino told Fox News last month: “I’m not paid for my opinions anymore. I work for the taxpayer now. I’m paid on evidence.”)

And why is something they argued was of the utmost importance now not worth our time? This is a supposed scandal involving powerful people involved in sex-trafficking of minors, after all. How do they square Trump’s comments now with their own past comments? And shouldn’t they at least do more to put it to bed?

2. Is Trump in the Epstein files?

To be clear, this is not the same as asking whether the files show any wrongdoing by Trump.

But it is worth asking if he’s in there – particularly given his administration’s failure to live up to its promises of disclosure.

Trump associated with Epstein, after all, before the two had a falling out. Epstein claimed they had been close. Trump once called Epstein a “terrific guy” and quipped about Epstein’s affinity for younger women. Trump also weirdly wished Ghislaine Maxwell well on more than one occasion while she faced Epstein-related sex-trafficking charges.

“I’m not looking for anything bad for her,” Trump said at the time. “I’m not looking bad for anybody.”

Elon Musk, as part of his dramatic falling out with the president, claimed last month that Trump was indeed in the files.

“Time to drop the really big bomb: (Donald Trump) is in the Epstein files,” Musk wrote on X. “That is the real reason they have not been made public.”

Musk never detailed how he would have gained access to unreleased files, later deleting the post and expressing regret for how far he had gone in some of his anti-Trump posts. Many dismissed it as Musk lashing out, but this was a former top Trump adviser who had lots of access while heading the Department of Government Efficiency. Did he just make it up? Musk hasn’t said that specifically.

It’s also a question that’s apparently real enough that Trump’s own lawyer assured he checked on it....>

<....Last week, David Schoen, who has represented both Trump and Epstein, said he asked Epstein shortly before his death whether he had information to hurt Trump, and Epstein said he did not.

“I specifically asked that!” Schoen posted on X.

Trump has also been less keen than others around him to release the documents. During a Fox News interview last year, he quickly agreed he would declassify documents on 9/11 and John F. Kennedy’s assassination, but he paused before saying he would do the same with the Epstein documents.

He explained that “you don’t want to affect people’s lives if it’s phony stuff in there.”

Asked later by podcast host Lex Fridman why he hesitated, Trump repeatedly said he had not personally gone to Epstein’s island.

“I don’t think – I’m not involved,” Trump said. “I never went to his island, fortunately, but a lot of people did.”

3. What happened to the additional files that were promised?

The big news last week was that the administration said Epstein did kill himself and that there was no client list. But it wasn’t the only reason the true-believers were disappointed.

The administration also effectively closed the matter and said it wouldn’t release anything else, despite having promised plenty more disclosures.

The administration made a show of releasing an initial batch of documents back in February. But the photo op with conservative influencers bombed when it turned out the documents were largely old news.

So the administration promised more was on the way.

“We will get everything,” Bondi told Fox News in early March. “We will have it in our possession. We will redact it, of course, to protect grand jury information and confidential witnesses, but American people have a right to know.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt added in May: “I know the Attorney General has committed to releasing those files. … When she has made a promise in the past, she has kept it and I’m certain that she will, in this case, as well.”

But the administration hasn’t released anything of real significance since then.

Last week’s Justice Department memo said that much of this information was “subject to court-ordered sealing” and that “only a fraction of this material would have been aired publicly had Epstein gone to trial.” It expressed a desire to “not expose any additional third-parties to allegations of illegal wrongdoing.”

“Through this review, we found no basis to revisit the disclosure of those materials,” the memo said.

That’s very different than what was promised. But why the change in tune? Why didn’t they say before that their promises of disclosure were subject to so many caveats?

4. Was Epstein an intelligence asset?

When Bondi sought to explain herself last week, this was one question that she for some reason let linger: whether Epstein had ties to intelligence.

“To him being an agent, I have no knowledge about that,” the attorney general told reporters, before adding: “We can get back to you on that.”

Why is this something they have to circle back on? Wouldn’t this either be something that’s in the documents or not?

This theory doesn’t come out of nowhere. Such questions have been asked for a long time. Then-Trump Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta, who had entered into a controversial non-prosecution agreement with Epstein while serving as a US attorney, talked around the question when it was posed to him in 2019. (Acosta resigned as labor secretary shortly after Epstein’s federal indictment was unsealed.)

Bongino said back in 2023 that he was reliably told Epstein was an intelligence asset for a Middle Eastern country.

And on Monday, former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett saw fit to deny Epstein was an Israeli asset.

“The accusation that Jeffrey Epstein somehow worked for Israel or the Mossad running a blackmail ring is categorically and totally false,” Bennett said.

Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah has pressed the case that Epstein might have benefitted from being an asset.

It’s seemingly a question Bondi should have more of an answer for. But the lack of satisfactory answers seems to be a trend right now.>

<A county clerk in New York on Monday again refused to file a more than $100,000 civil judgment from Texas against a doctor accused of prescribing abortion pills to a Dallas-area woman.

New York is among eight states with shield laws that protect providers from other states’ reach. Abortion opponents claim the laws violate a constitutional requirement that states respect the laws and legal judgments of other states.

Republican Texas State Attorney General Ken Paxton wants a New York court to enforce a civil decision from Texas against Dr. Margaret Carpenter, who practices north of New York City in Ulster County, for allegedly prescribing abortion medication via telemedicine.

Acting Ulster County Clerk Taylor Bruck in March refused an initial request to file the judgment, citing the New York law that shields abortion providers who serve patients in states with abortion bans. A second demand was made last week by the Texas attorney general’s office, which said Bruck had a “statutory duty” to make the filing under New York civil practice law.

Bruck responded Monday that the rejection stands.

“While I’m not entirely sure how things work in Texas, here in New York, a rejection means the matter is closed,” Bruck wrote in a letter to Texas officials.

An email seeking comment was sent to Paxton’s office.

The Texas case is one of two involving Carpenter that could end up testing shield laws.

Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul this year invoked the state’s shield law in rejecting a request to extradite Carpenter to Louisiana, where the doctor was charged with prescribing abortion pills to a pregnant minor.

Hochul, responding to the latest request from Paxton’s office, claimed he was attempting to dictate “the personal decisions of women across America.”

“Our response to their baseless claim is clear: no way in hell. New York won’t be bullied,” she said in a prepared statement. “And I’ll never back down from this fight.”>

<New Hampshire Gov. Kelly Ayotte vetoed seven bills Tuesday, many of which were intended to strengthen parental rights, bucking the conservative wing of her party over hotly contested legislation.

In one action, Ayotte vetoed a bill intended to make it easier for parents and guardians to remove “obscene” books and materials from schools. House Bill 324 would require school boards to create a complaint process for parents and guardians to object to school material deemed harmful to minors. That material could include books, movies, photographs, printed and digital material, plays, and other content.

The governor also vetoed House Bill 148, which would allow businesses and organizations to separate people by biological gender in bathrooms, locker rooms, athletic events, and settings such as jails and mental health facilities.

She vetoed House Bill 358, which would make it easier for parents to apply for religious exemptions to child vaccine requirements in school; House Bill 446, which would require schools to get explicit parental permission before giving students non-academic surveys; and House Bill 667, which would require sex education courses to include “a high quality computer generated animation or ultrasound video that shows the development of the heart, brain, and other vital organs in early fetal development.”

Ayotte also vetoed House Bill 475, which would require the alternative “default budget” option at town meeting to cut spending for unfilled town positions, arguing it would make it harder to recruit and retain town positions. And she vetoed House Bill 115, the bill to create a continuing resolution for the budget in case lawmakers failed to pass a budget; that bill proved to be unnecessary.

The vetoes will require a two-thirds majority in both the House and Senate to overturn, a difficult bar in the House, where Republicans do not hold a veto-proof majority.

And they represent some of Ayotte’s most public — and politically fraught — clashes with Republican lawmakers, many of whom had hoped their stronger House and Senate majorities would lead to victories for socially conservative priorities.

School book removal bill quashed

One of the most closely watched bills vetoed by Ayotte Tuesday would have required public schools to adopt complaint procedures to allow parents to object to, and potentially remove, material deemed harmful from schools.

According to HB 324, such material would be considered harmful if it depicted “nudity, sexual conduct, sexual excitement, or sadomasochistic abuse” and did so “in a manner that is patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community with respect to what is suitable for minors,” the bill states. The material would also need to be inappropriate to the age level of the children it is presented to and to “serious literary, scientific, medical, artistic, or political value for minors.”

Sponsored by Rep. Glenn Cordelli, a Tuftonboro Republican, HB 324 was championed by parental rights advocates as a means to give parents more control over school instruction and to remove graphic depictions of sexual activity. Earlier this year, Cordelli attempted to illustrate that point by reading aloud on the House floor portions of a novel describing sexual assault.

But opponents of the legislation said it could lead to the removal of books that include LGTBQ+ representation and allow one parent to make decisions for all students over what should be included. And teachers unions objected to potential professional consequences for educators laid out in the bill.

In her veto message, Ayotte noted that state law already allows parents to opt their child out of instructional material they object to, as long as they provide an alternative material.

“Current state law appears to provide a mechanism for parents through their local school district to exercise their rights to ensure their children are not exposed to inappropriate materials,” Ayotte said. “Therefore, I do not believe the State of New Hampshire needs to, nor should it, engage in the role of addressing questions of literary value and appropriateness, particularly where the system created by House Bill 324 calls for monetary penalties based on subjective standards.”

Under the required policy in HB 324, parents and guardians could submit written complaints to school principals describing the material allegedly harmful to minors. The principal would be required to conduct an investigation and decide whether the material is in violation and should be removed.

According to the policy, the school would have 10 school days to inform parents of their decision. If parents disagree, they can appeal the decision to the local school board and, ultimately, to the State Board of Education, which has the final say....>

<....That provision drew opposition from the New Hampshire School Boards Association, which said it would threaten local control by giving the state board final decision-making power.

The bill would allow the state Attorney General’s Office, Department of Education, or “any person claiming to be aggrieved” to bring a civil action against a school if it is not in compliance. It would also designate any defiance of an order banning material to be a violation of the teacher code of conduct, which could lead to disciplinary action against educators.

The National Education Association of New Hampshire, the state’s largest teachers union, hailed the veto Tuesday, calling it a “classroom censorship effort.”

“Every student deserves to see themselves reflected in the pages of their books,” said NEA New Hampshire President Megan Tuttle in a statement. “NEA-New Hampshire applauds Governor Ayotte for standing up for the freedom to read in New Hampshire.”

Republicans, some of whom have sparred with Ayotte recently over the state budget, quickly voiced frustration. House Majority Leader Jason Osborne, an Auburn Republican, compared the vetoed bill to the recently passed legislation barring cellphones in K-12 schools.

“Now that kids can’t get porn on their phones while at school, at least they can still find it in the library,” Osborne wrote in a post on X.

Vetoes on biological sex separation bill, religious vaccine exemptions, others In vetoing HB 148, Ayotte followed the path of her predecessor, Gov. Chris Sununu, who vetoed a nearly identical bill last year.

In her veto message, Ayotte said the law ran the risk of doing more harm than good, and brought up concerns about discrimination of transgender people.

“I believe there are important and legitimate privacy and safety concerns raised by biological males using places such as female locker rooms and being placed in female correctional facilities,” Ayotte wrote. “At the same time, I see that House Bill 148 is overly broad and impractical to enforce, potentially creating an exclusionary environment for some of our citizens.”

Her message to veto HB 358 highlighted the importance of childhood immunizations. “While parents must be the final decision makers on what immunizations their child receives, the State already has an established process by which parents can claim a religious exemption, and I see no reason to change it,” Ayotte wrote.

She wrote that by requiring parents to opt in to surveys, rather than opt out, HB 446 would reduce participation in the “Youth Risk Behavior Survey,” an anonymous tool to measure the mental health, and sexual health, and alcohol and drug use of public school students.

Ayotte said she had “heard tremendous concerns about this bill from those on the front lines of addressing our mental health crisis and helping those with substance use disorders, including state and local public health officials, youth mental health professionals, as well as the Governor’s Commission on Addiction, Treatment, and Prevention.”

And she said HB 667 should be developed because it is “not an appropriate role for the State to be mandating such requirements” onto school districts.

House Democrats cheered on the vetoes, though declined to give Ayotte direct credit. “We’re grateful that today New Hampshire chose to protect the rights and dignity of our transgender neighbors — and House Democrats will keep fighting until every Granite Stater can live freely, openly, and safely, no matter who they are,” said House Democratic Leader Alexis Simpson in a statement Tuesday evening....>

<....Republican legislative leaders were silent.>

How curious, and telling.

<As his supporters erupt over the Justice Department’s failure to release much-hyped records in Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking investigation, President Donald Trump’s strategy has been to downplay the issue.

“I don’t understand what the interest or what the fascination is,” Trump told reporters Tuesday.

His problem? That nothing-to-see-here approach doesn’t work for those who’ve learned from him they must not give up until the government’s deepest, darkest secrets are exposed.

Last week, the Justice Department and the FBI abruptly walked back the notion there’s an Epstein client list of elites who participated in the wealthy New York financier’s trafficking of underage girls. Trump quickly defended Attorney General Pam Bondi and chided a reporter for daring to ask about the documents.

The online reaction was swift, with followers calling the Republican president “out of touch” and demanding transparency.

Trump’s comments to reporters Tuesday while returning to Washington from a brief Pittsburgh trip were just the latest in a days-long campaign to quell the uproar. He called the Epstein case “pretty boring” and said “the credible information has been given.”

“I don’t understand why the Jeffrey Epstein case would be of interest to anybody.” he said.

Trying to ‘put the genie back in the bottle’

Over the weekend, Trump used his Truth Social platform to attempt to call supporters off the Epstein trail amid reports of infighting between Bondi and FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino over the issue. He suggested the turmoil was undermining his administration — “all over a guy who never dies, Jeffrey Epstein.”

That did little to mollify Trump’s supporters, who urged him to release the files or risk losing his base.

The political crisis is especially challenging for Trump because it’s one of his own making. The president has spent years stoking dark theories and embracing QAnon-tinged propaganda that casts him as the only savior who can demolish the “deep state.”

Now that he’s running the federal government, the community he helped build is coming back to haunt him. It’s demanding answers he either isn’t able to or doesn’t want to provide.

Asked Tuesday whether Bondi had told him his name was in the Epstein files, Trump said no. He praised her handling of the case and said she should release “whatever she thinks is credible.” But he also claimed there were credibility issues with the documents, suggesting without citing evidence they were “made up” by former FBI Director James Comey and former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, both Democrats. Bondi declined to discuss the Epstein files Tuesday during a press briefing about drug trafficking.

“The faulty assumption Trump and others make is they can peddle conspiracy theories without any blowback,” said Matt Dallek, a political scientist at George Washington University. “The Epstein case is a neat encapsulation that it is hard to put the genie back in the bottle.”

A problem that’s not going away

Last week’s two-page statement from the Justice Department and the FBI saying they had concluded Epstein didn’t possess a client list roiled Trump’s supporters, who pointed to past statements from several administration officials that the list ought to be revealed.

Bondi had suggested in February such a document was sitting on her desk waiting for review, though last week she said she’d been referring generally to the Epstein case file, not a client list.

Conservative influencers have since demanded to see all the files related to Epstein’s crimes, even as Trump has tried to put the issue to bed.

Far-right commentator Jack Posobiec said at Turning Point USA’s Student Action Summit on Saturday he wouldn’t rest “until we go full Jan. 6 committee on the Jeffrey Epstein files.”

Trump’s weekend post called on supporters to focus on investigating Democrats and arresting criminals rather than “spending month after month looking at nothing but the same old, Radical Left inspired Documents on Jeffrey Epstein.” His first-term national security adviser, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, pleaded with him to reconsider.

Other Trump allies continue to push for answers, among them far-right activist Laura Loomer, who has called for Bondi to resign. She told Politico’s Playbook newsletter on Sunday a special counsel should be appointed to investigate the handling of the files on Epstein, who was found dead in his federal jail cell in 2019 weeks after he was arrested.

House Speaker Mike Johnson told right-wing influencer Benny Johnson in an interview released Tuesday that he is “for transparency,” and wants Bondi to “put everything out there and let the people decide.” He said the Justice Department needs to focus on crime and other priorities, including elections and investigating ActBlue, the Democrats’ top fundraising platform.....>

<....Experts who study conspiracy theories warned more sunlight doesn’t necessarily make far-fetched narratives disappear.

“For some portion of this set of conspiracy theory believers, no amount of contradictory evidence will ever be enough,” said Josephine Lukito, who studies conspiracy theorists at the University of Texas at Austin.

Trump and his colleagues set their own trap
The president and many figures in his administration — including Bondi,Bongino and FBI Director Kash Patel — earned their political capital over the years in part by encouraging disproven conspiracy theories.

Now, they’re tasked with trying to reveal the evidence they’d long insisted was there — a challenge that’s reached across the government.

Last week, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin posted on X what seemed like an endorsement of a conspiracy theory that the contrails left by aircraft are releasing chemicals for potentially nefarious reasons. But a second post from Zeldin underscored the fine line the Trump administration is trying to walk by linking to a new page on the EPA website that essentially debunked the theory.

The value of conspiratorial fabrications is they help people get political power, said Russell Muirhead, who teaches political science at Dartmouth College. He said Trump has been skilled in exploiting that.

But the Epstein case brings unique challenges, he said. That’s because it’s rooted in truth: A wealthy and well-connected financier did spend years abusing large numbers of young girls while escaping justice.

So, Trump needs to come forward with truth and transparency on the topic, Muirhead said. If he doesn’t, “large segments of his most enthusiastic and devoted supporters are going to lose faith in him.”

A potentially costly distraction

Trump’s rivals have been taking advantage of right-wing fissures over Epstein.

Democrats sought to capitalize on the controversy, with several lawmakers calling for the release of all Epstein files and suggesting Trump could be resisting because he or someone close to him is featured in them.

The Democratic House Majority PAC on Tuesday emailed a memo that called out some House Republicans by name. It said they are “complicit” with the Trump administration because they had called for the Epstein files to be made public but then voted against a Democratic amendment to force their release.

Conservatives expressed concerns Trump’s approach on Epstein could hurt them in the midterms.

“For this to go away, you’re going to lose 10% of the MAGA movement,” right-wing podcaster Steve Bannon said during the Turning Point USA Student Action Summit on Friday.

There’s also the challenge of governing.

Bondi and Bongino had a tense exchange last week at the White House over a story about Epstein, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a private conversation.

And Loomer, who’s close to Trump, said Friday she was told Bongino was “seriously thinking about resigning.” The FBI declined to comment.

Dallek, the George Washington University professor, said it’s alarming that the country’s top law enforcement officials are feuding over a conspiracy theory.

“It’s possible at some time voters are going to notice the things they want or expect government to do aren’t being done because the people in charge are either incompetent or off chasing rabbits,” he said. “Who is fulfilling the mission of the FBI to protect the American people?”>

<To protect their majority, Senate Republicans are praying Susan Collins decides to seek a sixth term next year. But they aren’t making her life easy right now.

Earlier this month, GOP leaders pushed through President Donald Trump’s megabill while ignoring most of her concerns about safety-net cutbacks that the Maine Republican warned will be “harmful” to her state.

Now, they are barreling forward with Trump’s effort to claw back $9 billion in spending she played a key role in approving. Democrats and even some Republicans warn the maneuver could upend the bipartisan government funding process she now oversees.

Collins mounted a protest Tuesday night, joining two other Republicans in voting to block the Trump administration’s spending clawbacks. Afterward, she said in an interview her vote was in keeping with her longstanding approach to legislating.

“I vote according to what I assess to be in the best interests of my constituents and my country — and I do that regardless of who’s in control of the Senate and who is president,” Collins, 72, said.

Pressed on the recent difficulties her fellow Republicans have given her, she said, “They’re doing what they think is right. I’m doing what I think is right.”

All in all, it has been a disappointing start to the dream job Collins spent decades striving for — chair of the historically powerful Appropriations Committee — and now her power is at risk of being further eroded.

Democrats, mad as hell about the funding clawback, are threatening to withdraw from government funding talks; top Trump administration officials would love to sidestep Congress altogether on spending cuts; and there are few reasons to hope lawmakers are heading toward anything other than a spending patch — or worse, a shutdown — when the fiscal year ends on Sept. 30.

Still, Collins confirmed Tuesday she is still planning on running again, though she has yet to formally launch a campaign. She said she was “pleased” with the strong fundraising she reported this week, collecting $2.4 million in the second quarter of the year and having $5.25 million on hand as of June 30.

But Democrats are holding out hope that the deteriorating environment for bipartisanship on Capitol Hill might cause her to reconsider. More than any other personnel decision, a Collins retirement could upend the 2026 Senate map.

Democrats have a steep road back to the majority, needing to flip an unlikely four seats while also holding onto their own swing seats in Georgia and Michigan. But they view Maine as a top pick-up opportunity, and they would unquestionably have an easier time without Collins on the ballot, potentially allowing them to pour more resources into tougher races.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who recently announced he would retire from his own swing seat, said Collins has a “thankless job” as chair of the Appropriations Committee but also noted the obvious political reality: Without her, Republicans would lose the seat.

“The one thing I am certain of is if Susan Collins is not running for re-election, then that state is even more at risk than North Carolina,” he said.

Maine Democrats are already mobilizing to run against Collins, linking her to the “big, beautiful bill” by calling her the “deciding vote” in the legislation coming up for debate on the Senate floor, even though she ultimately voted against it on final passage. (The vote to start debate was 51-49, so even if Collins had voted no, Vice President JD Vance would have broken the tie.)

“At the end of the day, Donald Trump and Washington Republicans know Susan Collins will have their back,” Tommy Garcia, a Maine Democratic Party spokesperson, said in a statement.

They have taken heart from recent polling showing deteriorating home-state support for Collins, including a Morning Consult survey from April that found 51 percent of Maine voters disapproving of her performance. Separately, 71 percent of respondents to a University of New Hampshire April poll in Maine said that Collins did not deserve to be re-elected, including a majority of Republican respondents. A June poll from Maine-based Pan Atlantic Research, however, found Collins had a net-positive favorability rating.

Collins, the only Senate Republican from a state won by Kamala Harris, is helped by an obvious rule of political life: You can’t beat somebody with nobody, and so far Democrats have struggled to recruit a big name to challenge her. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and other party leaders are still making overtures to Gov. Janet Mills, who has largely left the field frozen while the party awaits her final decision.

There’s also little expectation Collins would flinch from the political challenge. Her Senate career was all but written off by many political observers in 2020, when polls showed her constantly trailing Democratic rival Sara Gideon. She went on to win by roughly 9 points....>