Free Republic

(The Center Square) — Maine is required to release its voter lists to a conservative group that's conducting audits of recent elections to probe for fraud following a new federal court ruling. A U.S. Court of Appeals ruling in Boston sided with lawyers for the Virginia-based Public Interest Legal Foundation, which filed the lawsuit, who argued that federal law allows data to be available for public inspection. The three-judge panel cited a provision of the National Voter Registration Act requiring public disclosure of "all records concerning the implementation of programs and activities conducted for the purpose of ensuring the accuracy...

Maine’s Democrat secretary of state, Shenna Bellows, is so determined to promote “trust in our free, safe and secure elections” that she wants to make sure voters in the state aren’t allowed to vote for the leading GOP contender, former President Donald Trump. After Trump appealed Bellows' unilateral decision to keep his name off the Republican primary ballot, Superior Court Judge Michaela Murphy called for a hold on her decision while the nation waits for the Supreme Court to weigh in on a similar situation in Colorado.Waiting for the nation’s top court to render judgment was just too inconvenient for...

Maine is on the docket to becoming a "sanctuary state" for children seeking to undergo life-alternating transgender treatments. In an effort to create a "safe space" for teens, Maine's state legislature is eyeing a bill that would give authorities the right to take custody of kids away from parents and guardians who oppose allowing medical providers to impose "gender-affirming care" onto their children. The "Act to Safeguard Gender Affirming Health Care" would allow a "court to take temporary jurisdiction because a child has been unable to obtain gender-affirming health care or gender-affirming mental health care." LD1735, brought forth by Rep....

A bill being debated in Maine’s state legislature would give authorities the power to take children away from parents who oppose allowing medical providers to impose “gender-affirming care” onto their children. The bill, LD1735, is explicit about this startling new power In its summary, for instance, directly states, “The bill authorizes a court to take temporary jurisdiction because a child has been unable to obtain gender-affirming health care or gender-affirming mental health care.” There seems to be no provision made for religious objection. Parents would have no parental rights on the issue; either they allow their children to be exposed...

The Maine Superior Court on Wednesday ordered Trump back on the ballot pending a decision from the US Supreme Court. President Trump appealed Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows’ 2024 ballot ban to the state superior court on Tuesday. “Former President Donald Trump’s legal team on Tuesday appealed Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows’ ruling that deemed him ineligible from appearing on the state’s GOP primary ballot to Maine’s Superior Court, the state’s top trial court,” ABC News reported. Maine’s psychotic Democrat Secretary of State Shenna Bellows unilaterally barred Trump from the 2024 ballot because she decided the former president...

A Maine judiciary committee is moving to create a 'safe haven' for teens seeking sex changes and protection from their parents but critics have slammed the bill as 'state-sanctioned kidnapping.' The 'Act to Safeguard Gender Affirming Health Care' would enable certain out-of-state teens to access hormone blockers or surgery without their parents' consent regardless of their own state's laws.

“The error is significant”: South Portland Faces $4 Million Budget Shortfall After Mistakenly Failing to Increase Property Taxes Enough Edward Tomic The City of South Portland is working to close a $4 million shortfall in their current fiscal year budget they identified earlier this month — a gap the city attributes to mistakenly not taxing residents enough to support the City Council-approved budget. According to the city, South Portland’s current mill rate is $14.14, meaning property owners must pay $14.14 out of every $1,000 of their property’s assessed value. But it should have been raised to $14.69 this past summer...

Maine House Speaker’s Plan to Give Illegal Aliens Driver’s Licenses is Dead – For Now Edward Tomic A bill proposed by Maine House Speaker Rachel Talbot Ross (D-Portland) that would have allowed illegal aliens to obtain driver’s licenses was shot down by the Legislature’s Transportation Committee during a Tuesday afternoon public hearing. The bill, LD 1138, would have removed the requirement to prove legal presence in the U.S. in order to obtain a Maine driver’s license or state identification card. When opening the public hearing on the bill, Transportation Committee Chair Rep. Lydia Crafts (D-Newcastle) said that Talbot Ross had...

The Maine Wire Maine Court Orders Secretary of State Bellows to Revisit Trump’s Ballot Eligibility After SCOTUS Decides Colorado Case Libby Palanza The Maine Superior Court on Wednesday ordered Secretary of State Shenna Bellows to revisit her decision blocking former President Donald Trump from Maine’s primary ballot pending the Supreme Court’s issuance of an opinion in a similar case out of Colorado. Secretary Bellows will need to release her updated ruling within thirty days of the Supreme Court publishing its ruling in Trump v. Anderson, a case concerning former President Trump’s eligibility to appear on Colorado’s presidential primary ballot later...

Maine officials are coming under fire after handing a $132,000 contract to a racial justice group, only for it to conclude with a 30-minute webinar on 'problematic' place names. Taxpayers footed the bill for the lecture as part of the state's employment of non-profit Atlantic Black Box (ABB), which claims to 'engage the public in the collective rewriting of our regional history.' In footage of the webinar this week, ABB founder Meadow Dibble urged attendees to acknowledge suffering caused by 'white settler people' as she rattled off place names Maine residents should feel offended by.

BRUNSWICK, Maine (TND) — Maine has begun paying rent for homeless immigrants living in apartments located in the town of Brunswick. The state budgeted nearly $3.5 million to provide 60 migrant families in Brunswick with two years of rent. Maine expects the immigrants to “gain the means” to pay housing costs through state “support” and “guidance.” The state is also supplying $100,000 to dozens of Brunswick migrants for a year’s worth of asylum application and work authorization assistance. The legal support seeks to ensure immigrants receive work approval “as soon as possible” so they can “provide for themselves,” reduce pressure...

Maine’s taxpayers are footing the bill for new apartments built specifically for newly arrived border crossers and illegal aliens who will have at least two years’ worth of rent paid for. This week, Maine officials in Brunswick unveiled new apartments that will go to border crossers and illegal aliens who will have their rent paid for at least two years, News Center Maine reports:

A new pro-abortion law took effect in Maine on January 1, preventing private health insurance companies in the state from carrying deductibles or co-pays for abortions. LD 935, An Act to Remove Barriers to Abortion Coverage in Private Insurance, was signed by pro-abortion Gov. Janet Mills (D) over the summer along with numerous additional pro-abortion bills. It prohibits private insurers from imposing “deductible, copayment, coinsurance or other cost-sharing requirement” for any patient who undergoes an abortion. Warning: Images below may be disturbing to readers. Abortion is not health care Maine’s law gives abortion priority above other “health care” — but...

Faculty said they felt trapped in an ‘alternate reality’ when trying to navigate the college’s ‘toxic’ DEI environment.. College students attending universities with restrictive speech codes are used to walking on eggshells and keeping their heads down on campus out of fear of committing social suicide or experiencing violence. In the disordered world of contemporary higher education, Jewish students receive limited, if any, support from school administrators amid explicit calls for violence against them, while other students face punishment for banal infractions like rolling a “free speech ball” around campus. But if you are shocked at how students are subject...

After nearly three weeks of hand-wringing from all sides, Donald Trump is back on the Colorado primary ballot. The news was announced by Jena Griswold, Colorado's Secretary of State, on Friday evening, claiming that the Supreme Court's acceptance of the case was the catalyst for the reversal. See: Colorado Supreme Court Votes to Boot Trump off the Ballot Using the 14th AmendmentColorado’s 2024 Presidential primary ballot is certified. The United States Supreme Court has accepted the case, and Donald Trump will appear on the ballot as a result.— Jena Griswold (@JenaGriswold) January 5, 2024This represents a major reversal for Griswold...

Maine has now become the second state in as many weeks, following a December 19 Colorado Supreme Court decision, to make the determination that President Donald Trump cannot appear on the ballot in the 2024 election. In a unilateral decision, the unelected secretary of state and far-left activist, heretofore unknown Shenna Bellows, disqualified from her state’s ballot the leading presidential candidate and presumptive nominee for the GOP. Rejecting any pretense of acting in accordance with due process or the rule of law, Bellows reasoned that our “sacred” democracy would only be preserved if she took it upon herself to reject...

1. Trump isn’t going to save us. Even if he did everything he says he’ll do, he’s still Israel-first and frankly he’s not intelligent enough to out-smart his son in law Kushner, let alone all the other israelis and arabs trying to trick him. 2. Only one state has to keep him off the ballot. 3. It doesn’t really matter because they can just rig the election again and the right will do nothing just like last time.

(Dec. 29, 2023) — Well, faithful P&E readers, here we go again. Yesterday, on Dec. 28, 2023, Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows – a registered Democrat and perhaps one of the most anti-President Trump, pro-progressive and biased governmental officials in the nation – issued her 34-page “decision” determining that Mr. Trump’s name would be excluded from the Maine presidential primary election ballot. As for her political preferences, this should give one a small hint. And with regard to the image of Brandon and Shenna Bellows now “going viral” on social media platforms, note that Bellows explains that “President Biden...

Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows ruled Thursday to disqualify former President Donald Trump from the 2024 ballot under the 14th Amendment because he’s an “insurrectionist” for inciting the Jan. 6, 2021, riot—drawing Trump’s ire, as he claims Bellows, a Democrat who’s spoken out against Trump in the past, is biased against him.

Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows on Saturday said her home was the target of a swatting call and she has received threats since her ruling Thursday that Donald Trump is ineligible to appear on the state’s ballot in the Republican primary in 2024. “This behavior is unacceptable. The non-stop threatening communications the people who work for me endured all day yesterday is unacceptable,” Bellows, a Democrat, wrote on Facebook Saturday afternoon. “It’s designed to scare not only me but also others into silence, to send a message.” The Maine Department of Public Safety issued a statement Saturday confirming the...