Does Senator Susan Collins have regrets about supporting RFKjr after her constituents told her to oppose his nomination?

Echo report below published in The New Yorker by Dhruv Khullar

Maine Writer Note:  A grass roots group consisting of 400 Maine medical professionals communicated with Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine) before her wrongminded vote to approve the RFKjr nomination to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.  As a registered nurse participant in the communications, we advised her about the risk of RFKjr cutting medical research.  Her reponses were: 

1.  She believed the president had the right to nominate his choice for the cabinet positions.

2.  She said,  "I liked RFKjr more than I though I would".

3.  She was "unaware" of RFKjr's risk to medical research.

Nevertheless, in spite of advocacy with 400 medical professionals opposing RFKjr's nomination, she voted to support him. 

I wrote this letter to the editor of the Lewiston Maine Sun Journal:  Robert Kennedy Jr. is wrong choice for DHHS.

But then, guess what? After RFKjr's approval, now the Portland Press Herald reports: Collins vows to fight medical research cuts.🙄

The Maine Republican said she is helping to form a coalition to undo Trump administration cutbacks, and will also lobby HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

One Hundred Days of Ineptitude

Now we know that Donald Trump’s first term, his initial attempt at authoritarian primacy, was amateur hour, a fitful rehearsal.

In 1999, Peggy Bryant, a fifty-year-old oncology nurse in Boston, received a postcard asking whether she’d like to take part in a clinical trial aimed at preventing diabetes. Well, this is fitting, she thought. How many patients have I asked to enroll in trials? Bryant, who’d long struggled with her weight, told me that she had cared for people dealing with grave complications of diabetes—vision loss, kidney failure, limb amputations—and had worried that “full-blown diabetes might be in my future.” 

She decided to sign up. Some of the trial’s participants were given a medication called metformin; others were given a placebo. Bryant was assigned to a third group, in which volunteers didn’t receive a pill but instead worked with trial staff to meet their health goals, exercise more, and lose weight. About once a month, she gave blood and urine samples. “It changed the way I approached my health,” she told me. “The staff were so committed that it made you more committed.” The study found that, in people with prediabetes, metformin lowered the risk of diabetes by roughly a third; the life-style intervention cut the risk by more than half. Both components were so successful that the trial was stopped early. (All participants got the life-style intervention for a year; since then, the study has mostly been observational.) The Secretary of Health and Human Services held a press conference to announce the findings. “I’ve been doing this a long time, and I’ve never heard of a study’s results being announced by the head of H.H.S.,” David M. Nathan, a Harvard professor who chaired the study, told me. “It was a big fucking deal.”

Diabetes is a lifelong condition whose consequences can be varied: nerve damage, heart disease, digestive problems, foot ulcers. It affects nearly forty million Americans and kills more than a hundred thousand each year. “Studying it for three or five years seemed shortsighted,” Nathan said. His team applied for funding to extend their project and consider follow-up questions. How long do the health benefits last? How do blood-sugar levels affect the body and the brain over time? For more than a quarter of a century, Nathan and his colleagues tracked thousands of patients—which was itself a feat of logistical and scientific endurance. (Many doctors struggle to get their patients to attend annual physicals, let alone engage them for a study of this duration.)

The Diabetes Prevention Program Outcomes Study, as the project is known,
has led to more than two hundred scientific publications. Simply by continuing to exist, it has overcome one of the central difficulties of chronic-disease research: time. Most studies enroll patients for months or for years. But, if you want to prove that a drug or a life style can extend a person’s life—not in theory but in fact—you have to follow them for, well, much of their life. 

And to study a condition with wide-ranging effects, such as diabetes, you tend to gather wide-ranging data: genetic information, dietary habits, imaging, metabolic markers. The study collected hundreds of thousands of samples, which serve as a sort of time capsule of America’s health.

Such troves of medical information can often lead to unexpected breakthroughs. This month, a study found that the people who’d participated in a rigorous diet-and-exercise program in the late nineteen-nineties, as Bryant did, were substantially less likely to develop diabetes decades later. Midlife investments in health compound into older age.

As the study’s participants have aged, researchers have turned their focus to a link between diabetes and dementia.

The study’s funding comes from the National Institutes of Health, which in 2022, committed some eighty million dollars to cover five years of further research, one of its largest grants. The N.I.H. sends the money to a coördinating center—in this case, Columbia University—which then distributes the funds to dozens of participating trial sites around the country. But, in early March, the Trump Administration froze hundreds of millions of dollars in funding to Columbia, and the diabetes study was abruptly terminated. Columbia informed collaborators at other institutions that trial-related work needed to stop immediately. “We had to call some participants that night and tell them not to come in the next day,” Nathan said. Bryant, who now lives in New York City, got a call from a study coördinator at Montefiore Einstein Medical Center informing her of the cancellation. “I was shocked,” she said. “It just seemed so pointless.” A few days later, she joined other Montefiore study participants on a Zoom call with the site’s lead researcher and a member of the study’s executive committee, an endocrinologist named Jill Crandall. Even the N.I.H. team overseeing the grant had been blindsided, Crandall told me. They learned of the termination not from the government for which they work but from the study’s leaders. “They were completely in the dark,” she said.

When Bryant joined the trial, her daughter was a child; her daughter now has two children of her own. On the Montefiore video call, Bryant noticed an older man who looked ill—a fellow-participant who appeared to be sleeping or unconscious. The man’s wife was there with him. She held his hand as she explained that he had dementia, and that it had progressed. She wanted everyone to understand the stakes of the research they’d been engaged in. Perhaps hidden somewhere in the time capsule was a key to prevent, or at least delay, such an outcome. “I thought, Wow, that could be any of us one day,” Bryant told me. “We should be doing more—a lot more. Instead, here we are, moving in the wrong direction.”

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the incompetent Trump Administration’s inept and unqualified Secretary of Health and Human Services, called chronic diseases such as diabetes an “existential threat.” He railed against the food industry, calling sugar a “poison” and labelling high-fructose corn syrup “a formula for making you obese and diabetic.” Strangely—perhaps incoherently—RFKjr's agency is also responsible for ending a diabetes study that has been running for longer than almost any other. 

In recent months, H.H.S., which oversees the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and nearly a dozen other entities, has cut some twenty thousand jobs, or about a quarter of its workforce. (Kennedy acknowledged that the mass layoffs could result in many mistakes.) A C.D.C. unit that works to prevent childhood lead poisoning was purged. Another unit dedicated to helping people stop smoking, the country’s leading cause of preventable death, was also eliminated. 

At the F.D.A., veterinarians focussed on curtailing the risks of the ongoing bird-flu outbreak were let go; some fired employees at C.M.S. were told to direct their complaints to an administrator who died last year. “I have no argument with the need for government to do things better and more efficiently,” Richard Besser, a former C.D.C. director, told me. “But this is not about that. This is about tearing down institutions they don’t like. I doubt that rebuilding them will be possible in my lifetime.”

Patients are already feeling the effects. It’s estimated that at least a hundred clinical trials are at risk of stopping or have already halted, including some dedicated to preventing sexually transmitted infections, reducing rates of postpartum depression, and keeping organ-transplant recipients safe from infectious threats. More may soon follow. Bryant told me that she’s been working at a contract research organization that helps enroll patients in trials. 

Even studies sponsored by the pharmaceutical industry are being affected: many rely partially on federal funding, or are run by staff who do, and who have consequently been laid off. An oncologist told me about a patient with Stage IV cancer who, until recently, had three options for experimental trials. She now has none. Meanwhile, people who have never participated in a trial will suffer the costs of unrealized discoveries—potential treatments and insights that never materialize.

The lapse in funding means that the Diabetes Prevention Program Outcomes Study can no longer continue to collect patient data as planned; it can no longer pay staff to do blood work, collect urine samples, scan brains, or conduct neurocognitive tests. Even worse, the study’s existing data are at risk. Scientists need funds to properly store and retrieve samples; they need money to pay for computer servers and to hire statisticians and analysts, who clean and curate the data. (Although the N.I.H. stores some study samples, the agency has told researchers that it doesn’t have the capacity to accept the entire collection.) “The absence of funding could prevent us from continuing to maintain the integrity of the database,” Nathan, the Harvard professor, told me. “It’s a tremendous waste of resources.” The contents of the time capsule may become irrecoverable.

In recent weeks, Nathan, Crandall, and others involved with the study have worked furiously to try to have the N.I.H. funding restored. They’ve spoken with agency representatives and members of Congress. They’ve gone to the media and lobbied professional societies. In March, the bipartisan chairs of the Congressional Diabetes Caucus sent a letter to Kennedy and the N.I.H. acting director, urging them to “take necessary action” to insure that the diabetes study continues. (The N.I.H. and H.H.S. did not respond to my requests for comment.)

The longer that the trial is paused, the harder it will be to resume. Trial staff at the various clinical sites, with whom some participants have decades-long relationships, are already being laid off. “People think trials are just about collecting data, but there’s an art to keeping participants invested and engaged,” Crandall said. “That personal connection will fade.” She told me about an older participant who’d recently passed away. The woman didn’t have much family; a friend organized her memorial service and wound up inviting the study team. At the service, the friend spoke about how much the study had meant to the woman—how, through it, she felt that she was contributing to something larger than herself, something that might help others. “That’s what a trial like this can be,” Crandall said. “If we let this study fade, it will never be duplicated. No one else is going to do it.” ♦

An earlier version of this article misstated which diabetes study was the world’s longest running.

Senator Susan Collins must step aside because she cannot represent the intentions voiced by her constituents

Opinion: Susan Collins’ betrayal of Maine demands accountability echo opinion published in the Lewiston Sun Journal: 

Maine Senator Susan Collins was considered a moderate Republican but she is now absorbed into Trumpziism's cult.

Maine needs leaders who prioritize people over political survival.

Instead, during the first six weeks of 2025, has crystallized a painful truth: Collins has become a hollow figurehead, enabling the most destructive elements of Donald Trump's agenda while abandoning the Mainers she swore to represent. 

Her recent actions — from rubber-stamping unconstitutional power grabs to greenlighting devastating cuts to health care — demand either immediate course correction or resignation.

Collins' vote to confirm Russell Vought as White House budget director epitomizes her moral bankruptcy. Vought, an architect of the Project 2025 blueprint to concentrate unchecked executive power, openly advocates allowing presidents to ignore congressionally approved spending — a direct threat to Collins' own role as Senate Appropriations chair. 

Her justification — "Presidents deserve broad discretion" — ignores that Vought's ideology undermines the Constitution's separation of powers. This is not moderation; it is complicity in authoritarian overreach.

Her tepid opposition to Trump's FBI director nominee, Kash Patel, further exposes her impotence.

While Collins criticized Patel's "aggressive political activity," her lone dissent failed to sway colleagues, allowing confirmation of a man who published what is seen as an "enemies list" of federal officials and agents. Maine deserves a leader who marshals bipartisan resistance to such extremism, not symbolic gestures devoid of consequence.

Collins' support for the Senate GOP's February 2025, budget framework reveals her allegiance to party over constituents. The bill slashes Medicaid — a lifeline for 400,000 Mainers, including rural hospitals already teetering on collapse. Maine's elderly, disabled and low-income families face reduced coverage, while hospitals risk closure under reimbursement cuts.

Despite chairing Appropriations, Collins has done little to stop Elon Musk's shutdown of US- AID offices — a move that locked employees out of critical systems. When asked about Musk's unconstitutional spending freezes, she offered only vague hopes for judicial intervention. Mainers deserve a fighter, not a bystander.
Collins' failures are not new. Her 2020 defense of Trump's catastrophic COVID-19 response — claiming he "did a lot right" — ignored his months of denial that left Maine vulnerable. Her 2022, vote to confirm Justice Brett Kavanaugh, despite his role in overturning Roe v. Wade, shattered trust with pro-choice Mainers. Now, as constituent letters flood newspapers pleading for accountability, Collins remains aloof, refusing town halls for over two decades.

Meanwhile, her 2025, appropriations role compounds these betrayals. While securing $5 million for wood heaters, she overlooks existential threats. The Kennebec River dredging project, critical for Navy destroyers, is underfunded, jeopardizing Bath Iron Works jobs. Meanwhile, her committee advances Trump's deportation raids and education cuts, policies anathema to Maine's values.

Collins faces a choice: justify her actions with substance or step aside. If she believes slashing Medicaid strengthens Maine, let her hold a town hall in Biddeford and explain it to families relying on insulin coverage. 

If Musk's USAID shutdowns align with constitutional duty, let her debate Sen. Angus King on live television. Absent such accountability, her continued presence in office insults Mainers' intelligence.

The 2026, election looms, with forecasters already labeling her seat a toss-up. But Maine cannot wait. Maine needs leaders who prioritize people over political survival, who confront power rather than coddling it. Senator Collins has forfeited that mantle. It is time for her to reclaim it — or make way for someone who will.

About the author: From Bob Rudis works in data science and security research. He lives in Berwick, Maine. 

Maine constituents want Senator Susan Collins to respond to calls for a Town Hall to face tough questions

Dan Mawhinney's letter to the editor in this morning's Sun Journal relates what so many of us have been frustrated about.

https://www.sunjournal.com/2025/03/17/daniel-mawhinney-sen-collins-needs-to-relay-mainers-concerns-to-trump-musk/
Maine protesters call out Sen. Collins for not holding a town hall in 25 years

Collins needs to relay Mainers' concerns to Trump and Musk
Sen. Susan Collins now holds one of the most powerful positions in Congress.

Senator Susan Collins announced her campaign to be re-elected but her messaing does not describe how she intends to represent the intentions of her constituents. 

The Trump-Elon Musk team has described Social Security as a scam. Trump and Musk want to provide outrageous income tax protections to themselves and their billionaire class at tremendous costs to working Americans as they destroy the U.S. government.
They are dismantling the U.S. economy and have now destroyed American alliances with the rest of the free world.

No democracy, including Canada and Mexico, trusts Trump and Musk further.

Beyond the damage to Americans caused by Trump's absurd tariffs, Trump has crawled into bed with one of the world's most vicious butchers, Vladimir Putin of Russia, and this week Putin continues his slaughter of Ukrainian civilians as Trump cheers him on. Collins' response is ever cautious, frightened and tepid.

The GOP has told GOP senators and representatives to avoid town hall meetings because Republican voters are now showing up in big numbers and screaming at them on live TV to stand up to Trump and Musk. The GOP has warned it is not "good TV" for the GOP, Trump or Musk.

Collins should have the guts to meet on TV in town halls with Mainers of all political stripes, hear their concerns and relay them publicly, loudly and clearly to Trump and Musk.

Collins is our senior senator.

She holds one of the most powerful position in Congress. She should use it. Mainers deserve no less from her.

From Daniel Mawhinney in Auburn Maine

Following is my response on social media:

Senator Collins has a lot of history about how to use her influence as well as her one vote. 

Unfortunately,, she has used her considerable influence to vote against the intentions of us her constituents. Several letters have been published in the Penn Bay Pilot newspaper to criticize her wrong minded decisions and made the request for her to stand up to all the terrible policy actions taken by the current administration. 

Most recently, check an interesting point of view published in The Bollard, a Portland based free newspaper where her decision to vote to support Brett Kavanaugh went against the advice of her constituents. Recently, hundreds of Maine health care professionals put our names and our credentials on a letter to request for her to oppose the nomination of RFKjr, who is totally incompetent to be the Health and Human Services Secretary. She ignored both petitions. 

Senator Collins now expects to pull out another term as a Maine Senator but maybe, just maybe, this time her campaign will be unsuccessful based on her many cowardly decisions. 

Thank you for publishing this letter in social media.

This article and my response on social media is posted at this site here. 

Treatment options for Substance Use Disorders can include Harm Reduction welcome programs

 Harm Reduction is a special hospitality that seeks people out, meets them where they are and invites them into loving community.

Churches and other faith communities have too often perpetuated stigma against the people who are ill with Substance Use Disorders, increasing shame instead of extending grace. We at Faith in Harm Reduction invite you to consider how you can offer sanctuary.

Opinion by Genevieve Lysen*: Let’s save lives by allowing harm reduction health centers in Maine- echo opinion published in the Lewiston Sun-Journal.

Rotary Substance Use Awareness program (L'Heureux photo)

No matter who we are or what our lives have been like, we’re all human, and almost all of us are touched in some way by the opioid crisis. Most Mainers believe that people who use drugs should not be treated as criminals, and that substance use disorder should be treated as a public health issue.

I grew up in Lewiston, surrounded by my large Franco-American family. I was an only child, but I had grandparents, my cousins, and my aunts in town — nearly 50 of them live in the Lewiston area to this day.

When I was a kid, one of my favorite family members to hang out with was my cousin Sam. He was like a brother to me, and we grew up riding bikes, building forts, playing Sonic the Hedgehog on his Sega Genesis.

Rotary Fentanyl Awareness program provider exhibit table in Deering Oaks Park (L'Heureux photograph)

We were the same in a lot of ways, and later on in life we shared similar struggles with depression and substance use. But because Sam used opioids while I used alcohol, our experiences were very different. Because opioid use is so stigmatized, while I had access to support, he had little. And today, I’m alive. And Sam is dead.

My cousin died in August 2021, alone in his home, due to an accidental drug poisoning. His body wasn’t discovered until five days after his death. He was 34 years old when he died, leaving behind a son.

Last year, more than 700 people died from overdose, like my cousin. They were our sisters, brothers, co-workers, neighbors, parents, and children. And if we treated Substance Use Disorder like what it is — a public health issue — all of those people, including Sam, could still be alive today.

Naloxone nasal spray has recently been approved as an over-the-counter treatment. Soon find this opioid overdose treatment in-store and online.

I strongly believe that if Sam had more access to community and to supportive people to turn to about his challenges with drug use, things would have turned out differently. This is why I support harm reduction health centers.

Harm reduction health centers are sites where people can use previously-obtained drugs under medical supervision. At the same time, they can receive disease screenings and other health care services, as well as options to begin recovery.

If Sam had been at a harm reduction health center on the day he overdosed, it’s likely that he would not have died that day. In fact, no death has been reported at an injection site. That’s in contrast to the 716 people who died from overdose last year in Maine. Harm reduction health centers save lives.

There are more than 200 harm reduction health centers around the world — including in New York City, Rhode Island, and soon, Minnesota — and numerous studies have shown that they improve health outcomes, reduce overdose deaths, and increase access to health services. These centers save lives.

A bill now in the Legislature, LD 1364, would allow cities and towns in Maine to open harm reduction health centers if they choose to, after an approval process that involves a public meeting.

This means that those communities who want to open harm reduction health centers can do so — but those who don’t want to are under no obligation. The bill legally protects the employees and clients of the center, along with the municipality where it’s located. The centers won’t cost the state money because the centers will be federally funded. And, absolutely most importantly, harm reduction health centers in Maine will save lives.

No matter who we are or what our lives have been like, we’re all human, and almost all of us are touched in some way by the opioid crisis. Most Mainers believe that people who use drugs should not be treated as criminals, and that substance use disorder should be treated as a public health issue. In the Maine Legislature, there is a chance, right now, to make a real move toward creating a world where we care for one another.

Genevieve Lysen is the Organizing Director for the Maine People’s Alliance and a certified recovery coach. She lives in Lewiston.

*P.S. Maine Writer- I am a registered nurse who has worked in mental health and been an advocate for the organizations that are treating people who are suffering with substance use disorders and victimized by this heinous epidemic.  Frankly, I do not know how I feel about "Harm Reduction" as an alternative to behavioral health treatments for substance use disorders. But, what I know with certainty is that whatever we are doing to end drug use disorders today is not working.  I have no idea how people who abuse drugs and alcohol are able to afford these expensive and deadly habits, but the concept of "meeting them where they are" to give them a helping hand and support while they find their way out of addiction seems like an alternative we must accept because nothing else is working.

What is in an name? An echo report from Lewiston Maine

Qu'y a-t-il dans un nom?

Echo report published in the Lewiston Sun Journal:

France in the Unites States

Qu'est-ce qu'il y a dans un nom? Yahoo.com

https://sports.yahoo.com/france-weighs-controversial-name-change-035900114.html

March  13, 2023—LEWISTON, Maine — A French diplomat serving as his country's consul general in Boston weighed in on the controversial decision to drop the Franco-American name from the center in the former St. Mary's Church (on 46 Cedar Street in Lewiston) and rebrand it as Riverfront Performing Arts and Events.

In diplomatic language, Mustafa Soykurt, the consul general, had a simple message for the nonprofit's board of directors: Non!

In a letter this month to the panel, Soykurt said the French consulate in Boston "has been a strong and long supporter of the Franco-American Center in Lewiston."

"From our perspective, this name change, which is not consensual inside the board of directors, hardly reflects the mission of the center," he wrote, and "does not illustrate the quality, the strength and the history of relations between France and America in Maine."

Opponents of the name change, including prominent residents with French ancestry, seized on the letter to aid their push to convince the 23-year-old nonprofit to reverse its name change decision.

Unlike Soykurt, they weren't always diplomatic in their language.

Calling the Riverfront moniker "an insult" to the Franco community, Rita Dube, who helped raise the money for the center's creation, said many of its past presidents and founding members have come out for keeping the old name in place.

Consul General of France in Boston Mustafa Soykurt

"Why erase the very name that belongs to all these Mainers now and for generations to come?" she asked.

Lionel Guay Jr., a former mayor of Lewiston and a founder of the center, said Monday that "changing the name of the Franco-American Heritage Center is just a pure and simple act of bastardizing" Franco-American culture.

"You have hundreds of establishments all over Maine by the name of Riverfront," he said. "How many do you have by the name of The Franco-American Heritage Center? You do not see the Irish Heritage Center wanting to change its name."

Guay said the move by the center's board shows disrespect and discrimination.

Another former mayor, Larry Gilbert, said he is "incensed and vehemently opposed to the change of name with anything that has the name Riverfront."

"I am a proud Franco-American," he said. "If we can't celebrate and hold our culture, what more do we have to pass on to future generations. The change to Riverfront is utterly ridiculous. We will fight this to our dying breath."

The board made the name change because it saw the move as a "fresh, new look" that also honors the riverfront, its president, Elaine Roop, said in January.

"Nothing has changed about being the stewards for our French-Canadian heritage and culture," she said at the time. "The only change has been a change of name to make it far easier for people to know that all are welcome. It's that simple."

In a nod to the past, its new logo added a tagline that says it was "founded by Franco Americans.

In his letter to Roop and the board, Soykurt said that "changing the name of the Franco American Center in Lewiston is not just a question of branding."

"It has an impact on our common heritage and sends a message about what we want to build," he said.

The consul general asked the board to reconsider its decision "since we are all involved in a common cause."

Dube said the consulate's opposition to the new name is "a very big deal."

"The relations between the Franco American Heritage Center and France have always been very important to the French heritage of so many Mainers," she said. "The language, the culture, the music, the food, the actual connection and similarities between the two for years have been a source of support for the Franco Center."

Soykurt said the relationship between France and the region is special.

"It is based on our common use of the French language," he said. "But more importantly, it is based on a common heritage that goes back centuries ago when French settlers came to Canada and a part of them joined Maine."

Juliana L'Heureux, board chairwoman of the Franco American Collection at the University of Southern Maine, sent a memo to the center's decision-makers that said the name change "marginalizes the history about the Franco-Americans who donated their meager resources towards building the original and beautiful" church.

"An unpopular name change has the appearance of undermining the intentions of the founders" who created the center as a community resources "where Franco-Americans will take pride in having created this monument and tribute to the culture's long heritage."

Coronavirus tragic toll on mental health of young people

When we think about how hard our young people work to succeed, this report from Brunswick, Maine is a brutal reminder about how difficult it is on youth, when they feel isolated and loose site of hope, in spite of their budding talents. We must treat mental health exactly like any medical disease.

BRUNSWICK, Maine, published in the Lewiston Sun Journal - Death of a Brunswick teen who took his life a sign of pandemic’s toll on young people. By Rachel Ohm

NAMI Maine has launched a peer support text line for people who are 14 to 20 years old. The program is staffed by people under 23 years old. If you want to talk to another young person about how you’re feeling, text 207-515-8398.

The Midcoast community is mourning the loss of a high school football player whose parents have cited the coronavirus pandemic as a factor affecting their son's mental health.

This tragedy is a somber reminder about the toll the coronavirus pandemic is taking on the mental health of young people in Maine and elsewhere.

Spencer Smith was a 16-year-old sophomore at Brunswick High School who loved football, his friends and family, and worked two jobs, his father, Jay Smith, told WMTW News over the weekend. Smith killed himself Friday, after struggling with the isolation and time away from friends and sports, his father said.

“The social distance ain’t working for the kids,” Jay Smith told the TV station. “The kids are having it hard.”

Jay Smith could not be reached for comment Monday, and Angela Smith, Spencer Smith’s mother, did not respond to a Facebook message.

Superintendent Phillip Potenziano informed the community of Spencer Smith’s death in a letter on Friday. He said the family had requested that the school not share information about the cause of death, but acknowledged “there have been rumors that this was a suicide death.”

“I want to take this opportunity to remind our community that suicide, when it does occur, is a very complicated act,” he wrote. “No one single thing causes it. But in many cases, a mental health condition is part of it, and these conditions are treatable. It’s really important if you or your child is not feeling well in any way to reach out for help. Suicide should not be an option.”

The Midcoast Youth Center, a coalition formed in the wake of a youth suicide in 2016, also issued a letter to the community about Smith’s death. “His loss has been felt throughout the greater Bath/Brunswick community. We are devastated, confused and angry,” the letter read.

“The times we find ourselves in are some of the hardest any of us have ever had to face. The pandemic continues to rear its ugly head, physical distancing has led to social isolation, and we lack clear leadership to safely navigate our lives. Our children and schools are under incredible stress, each trying their best to make sense of these circumstances. There are no easy answers.”

Pandemic Toll on Young People

Across the country, the mental health of young people has suffered during the pandemic as they’ve spent more time away from friends and teachers, had fewer opportunities to socialize and have been forced to respond to disruptions in routine. Compared to 2019, the number of mental health-related emergency room visits through October this year for children ages 5 to 11 and children ages 12 to 17 increased about 24 and 31 percent, respectively, according to the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

“We know the isolation and the stresses of this pandemic are impacting people’s mental health significantly,” said Greg Marley, a licensed clinical social worker and director of suicide prevention for the Maine chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness. “We’ve seen significantly higher rates of anxiety and depression. It’s been really harsh on people who are trying to address disordered eating, and it’s always, always hard on people, no matter what their age, if they’re involved in relationships where there is interpersonal violence.”

And while the pandemic has impacted everyone’s mental health, Marley said it can be harder for young people to process disruptive or uncomfortable events because of the way their brains work, while adults are better at seeing the big picture and looking past immediate obstacles.

Suicide rates among adolescents, pre-adolescents and young people were increasing well before the pandemic. According to an October 2019 report from the CDC, the suicide rate among people ages 10 to 24 was stable from 2000 to 2007, but increased more than 50 percent from 2007 to 2017, to 10.6 deaths per 100,000 people. Marley said social media is one factor that has been cited as contributing to the rise in suicide rates among young people.

The pandemic, he said, has had varying impacts on young people. For some, it means the adults in their lives have a closer eye on them and are more in tune with how they’re doing. For shy or introverted students, the pandemic and move to remote learning may actually be helping them. But for others, the social isolation and inability to participate in sports or gather in groups can be devastating.

“If you’re really goal-driven around sports or group events, whether that be chorus, drama, cheerleading or any kind of sporting team, and you’re cut off from that during this period of time, that’s going to be hard on you,” Marley said. “I hear that over and over again, particularly from youth that are really sports-oriented and their families.”

Nikki Correa, an assistant professor in counselor education at the University of Southern Maine and a former school counselor in Las Vegas, has been studying the pandemic’s impact on students and teachers and is expecting to soon publish a study that surveyed close to 160 school staff, the majority of whom are in Maine.

Correa likened the pandemic to other mass tragedies or crises such as school shootings or terrorist attacks, but on a larger scale. Her research, conducted in the late spring early in the pandemic, found that school staff perceived students were showing a variety of difficulties related to COVID, including being unhappy, depressed, losing their tempers and showing hyperactivity. Teachers and school staff themselves also reported feeling moderately to severely anxious and depressed.“After doing this and seeing the results, I can only imagine what it’s like now,” Correa said. “I can only imagine it’s gotten worse.”

A Quiet Leader
Smith was on the Brunswick High football team and had spent all summer training for the season, WMTW reported. When he found out there wouldn’t be a normal football season and it would instead be flag football, he figured that as a lineman he wouldn’t be playing.

“As soon as he found out it wasn’t going to be a regular football season, looking back, we noticed he stopped working out. He stopped riding his bike as much to the point he didn’t even work out anymore. Instead of working out, he took naps,” Jay Smith told the television station.

He said remote learning was also a challenge for his son and that this his grades started to slip this fall. “Thinking back the last few months, we realize we missed catching the signs that things were getting worse for him,” Smith said.

In Facebook posts over the weekend, Angela Smith highlighted her son’s recent struggles. “This remote learning is crap,” she wrote in one post. “I just lost a son because he couldn’t be with his friends. He was trapped in the house. He felt like he lost his friends and had a hard time with his school work. He felt he had no future. He hated what society was becoming. So he took the easy way out. Parents please take everything your kids are saying seriously. Give them a huge hug and don’t let go.”

John Schroeder, a senior on the Brunswick football team, remembered meeting Smith when he was an eighth-grader and had started working out with the team. He was quiet, but a hard worker who wasn’t intimidated by the upperclassmen.

“He was like a quiet leader,” said Schroeder, 17. “He wouldn’t tell you what to do or anything but he would lead by example. We could see his love for football and how he wouldn’t complain about anything. He just had the right mindset.”

Schroeder said the news of Smith’s death was a big shock and that the team is trying to come together and find healthy ways to cope. Players have met in small groups with their coaches, who told them that if they need anything they shouldn’t hesitate to reach out.

“I think a lot of students would agree with me that now a lot of school work is based on self-motivation and having everything in your control and when you’re not in the classroom, having your teachers encourage you to do all these things,” Schroeder said. “It can be difficult to put yourself in that hard-working mode and not seeing your friends all the time, that can also hurt a lot of people’s mental health. You feel a lot more alone than you did before.”

A call to the high school principal’s office Monday was referred to Potenziano, the superintendent, who said in an email he is grieving alongside the Smith family and the greater Brunswick community.

“There will be a time to review and strengthen what we have in place for students, but right now it is the time to support this family, our students and staff,” Potenziano said. “As superintendent, I know that the pandemic has been a stressor for everyone – students, staff and parents. Students’ academic life and new family life patterns, work life and social life have been completely disrupted. Our entire state and nation are reeling from feelings of isolation.”

The school district is collaborating with local and state mental health professionals. The high school’s crisis response team is also present in-person and virtually to provide information and support to students and staff, he said.

HOW TO ACCESS RESOURCES

There are a number of resources available for teens and young people in Maine who are struggling with mental health. In April, NAMI launched the Teen Text Support Line, a peer-operated text support line that provides young people a safe place to connect with others. The text line is available from 12 p.m. to 10 p.m. each day and can be reached at 207-515-8398 (TEXT). It is not a crisis line and those in crisis should contact the Maine Crisis Line via phone or text at 888-568-1112.

For schools, Correa, the USM professor, said it can be difficult during hybrid learning to keep tabs on students who might only be in-person two days per week. “I know schools are trying to do everything they can like reaching out to students and families, but it’s been extremely difficult to stay connected because the majority of the week students are home, and it’s hard to stay connected with them,” she said. “You can set up a meeting on Zoom or Google Meets, but sometimes a student just doesn’t show up.”

Marley, at the Maine office of NAMI, said staff shouldn’t hesitate to utilize school resource officers to check on students and parents who aren’t responding to communication. Family members, faith leaders and doctors are other resources young people can turn to. For parents, Marley said now is the time to check in on their children.

“The biggest thing I would like to leave parents with is that invitation to use this time to step in. Get outside and take a walk and throw snowballs. It’s during those fun, relaxing activities that conversation happens,” he said.

Reality show phony - opinion from Maine

Barbara Bush called Trump “greedy, selfish and ugly.”

An opinion letter published in the Maine Lewiston Sun Journal 

Dave Griffiths: Why do people support Donald Trump?

“The mask of a barroom political crank turns out to be the face of the president of the United States,” writes conservative political columnist Michael Gerson.

In a manifesto, the New Zealand mass murderer praised Trump for being a “symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose.”

Trump, the draft dodger, can’t stand any comparison with John McCain, so he attacks him relentlessly seven months after the war hero’s death.

Barbara Bush called Trump “greedy, selfish and ugly.”

“Trump stands out among our presidents, not just for being so petty, bitter and mean-spirited, but also for being incompetent,” writes columnist Max Boot, a former Republican stalwart who moved on from a party that is now a personality cult.

“Henceforth the senior ranks of government can be filled with invertebrates and opportunists, schemers and opportunists,” writes Eliot A. Cohen, a former senior State Department official in the George W. Bush administration, of the scandal-plagued Trump years and the inability — or unwillingness — to fill top sub-cabinet slots with qualified policymakers.

Seventy-five percent of attendees at a Yale School of Management conference said they have had to apologize to foreign contacts for Trump’s behavior.

There is more, of course. And there is this question: Why does Trump’s “base” (aka "cult") still support this reality-show phony?

Many people appear to have forgotten their high school civics lessons about what it took to make America a wonder of self-government. So they tune into Fox — the sad equivalent of state-owned news.

Dave Griffiths, Mechanic Falls

Racism has no place in politics - leaders represent all citizens

Racism in Lewiston is real, former mayoral candidate Ben Chin says:  Political leaders are elected to represent all of their constituents. 

By Matthew Daigle reporter for the Lewiston Sun Journal

Maine Community Integration hosted a community dialogue Saturday afternoon at St. Mary's Nutrition Center in Lewiston Maine, about racism, sexism, and gender-based violence.

Speaking at a community forum one day after Mayor Shane Bouchard resigned in disgrace, former mayoral candidate Ben Chin says he will not seek the office this fall.

LEWISTON — Racism here is real, former mayoral candidate Ben Chin told the dozens of residents Saturday who took part in a community dialogue on standing up to racism and sexism.

The event, hosted by Maine Community Integration, came on the heels of Lewiston Mayor Shane Bouchard resigning after a woman unexpectedly announced at a City Council meeting last week that she had given Bouchard internal emails from Chin during the 2017 campaign, in a covert effort to boost Bouchard’s chances of winning.

Heather Everly Berube also released more than 150 texts between her and Bouchard, including one in which he told a racist joke and one in which he seemed to compare a meeting with his fellow Republicans to a Ku Klux Klan gathering.

At the start of the dialogue at St. Mary’s Nutrition Center, Chin, now serving as deputy director of the Maine People’s Alliance, said that he would not be running for mayor again in November.

“These things take a toll on you,” Chin said. “I want to spend the next couple of years healing and using whatever I have to help leverage the voices of others, especially young women of color. There are so many talented leaders in our city, and I cannot wait to work with all of them.”

Chin said that “this week, to me, wasn’t about politics. It’s about the fact that racism and sexism, particularly sexist violence, is shockingly pervasive in our society, and that the cost for discussing these things is very, very high, especially for women of color.”

Yes, I did write some emails saying that racism is real here,” Chin continued. “I’ve experienced it personally. I’ve heard people say things similar to the jokes that were written in the newspaper recently. They happen all the time.”

Chin said that anybody thinking of running for office in Lewiston should “reflect on how many of the highest elected leaders in Lewiston in the 21st century have made wildly inappropriate remarks or done terrible things that perpetuate these forms of oppression in our society.”

Lewiston resident Safiya Khalid said the comments Bouchard made referring to a GOP meeting as a Ku Klax Klan gathering was “so disrespectful and hurtful in so many ways.”

Khalid added, “I thought he was looking out for my interests. In our recent history, we have been unable to elect a mayor who is representative and fights for the interests of all their constituents.”

She said Lewiston residents are “tired of the racist rhetoric, tired of elected officials who do not stand and fight for their communities.”

“We need unity,” Khalid said. “We should never stay silent in times of bigotry. We should support, uplift and rally behind one another, because we are a community.”

Much of the event centered on residents sharing their thoughts on how Lewiston can move forward and address issues of racism, sexism and gender-based violence.

One resident said that elected officials are “making decisions behind the scenes without a person of color at the table,” and suggested that the city’s boards and organizations “show more inclusiveness.”

“We need unity,” Safiya Khalid said. “We should never stay silent in times of bigotry. We should support, uplift and rally behind one another, because we are a community.”

Khalid said that people should vote at the November election “for someone who looks out for everyone, regardless of the color of their skin or nationality, and shows love for all.”

“That’s the kind of person I want at the State House, in the mayor’s office, and on the City Council,” Khalid said. “Someone who advocates and fights for everyone.”

City Councilor Jim Lysen agreed, adding, “The people most affected by decisions (we) make should be involved in the decision-making process.”

Lysen said he believed “people most affected” by decisions should be part of the decision-making process moving forward.

As the community dialogue came to an end, Bates College student Isa Moise said, “Real change takes real work.”

“If you all really care about the issues talked about today, don’t leave without a thought of what your next step is going to be,” Moise said.

By Matthew Daigle 

Budget deficit is a runaway economic risk ~ danger ahead

WASHINGTON, DC — The Congressional Budget Office (CBO)  released its annual budget and economic outlook report, and although the news was gruesome, the report was, unfortunately, greeted in Washington with a giant yawn. 

Republicans wasted decades harping and denigrating the  deficit spending in the past; yet, now the GOP budget is creating an economic runaway train where the passengers who are Social Security and Medicare beneficiaries. They will be thrown off the track to protect the risky and forthcoming economic disaster.

An echo opinion published in the Lewiston Maine Sun Journal written by Robert Samuelson. 

Unbelievable as it is, the assumption among Republicans and Democrats is that the political rewards for curbing runaway budget deficits are too meager to justify the risks. There’s a consensus to do nothing — and to hope that nothing goes disastrously wrong.

Just how large are impending deficits? Here are the CBO projections.

From 2019 to 2028, the federal government will run cumulative annual deficits of $12.4 trillion. The deficits — the gap between what government spends and what it collects in taxes — average about 5 percent of the economy (gross domestic product, or GDP). Since 1950, deficits have equaled or exceeded 5 percent of GDP in only six years (1983, 1985 and 2009-2012), and most of these occurred after deep recessions. These reduce tax revenues and boost “safety net” spending (unemployment insurance, food stamps and the like).

By contrast, today’s deficits occur with low unemployment and an economy that’s been expanding for nine years.

Even the CBO figures may be optimistic if they’re based on unrealistic assumptions. Defense spending as a share of GDP is projected to fall; in a dangerous world, that may not happen. Similarly, some personal tax cuts are scheduled to expire at the end of 2025; many observers think Congress will extend them. Adding these amounts to government borrowing would increase the federal debt — the total of all past deficits — to more than 100 percent of GDP, about as large as right after World War II.

No one knows the consequences of these unprecedented peacetime deficits, but the CBO has listed some possibilities:

• They may further raise interest rates, which would increase deficits, squeeze other federal programs and crowd out borrowing by businesses for factories, machinery, computers and buildings. This last effect could imperil living standards.

• Government might find it difficult to respond to national emergencies, whether war, natural disaster or a financial crisis, because more borrowing on top of today’s deficits would be harder.

• We could face a full-blown debt crisis. As CBO Director Keith Hall recently testified, “investors would become unwilling to finance the government’s borrowing unless they were compensated with very high interest rates.” That could trigger draconian spending cuts or tax increases — and a stiff recession.

There can no longer be any pretense that the deficits reflect the aftermath of the Great Recession or other temporary forces. The main cause is political expediency: It’s more popular to increase spending and cut taxes than the opposite. Combined with an aging population, which automatically raises Social Security and Medicare spending, the profligacy becomes self-fulfilling.

The deteriorating political climate is reflected in a small incident showing the deep divide between parties. On March 27, The Washington Post published an op-ed piece by five conservative economists from Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. They warned of an approaching “debt crisis” if ballooning budget deficits weren’t reversed. The savings should come from lower spending, not higher taxes, they said.

On April 9, five Democratic economists issued a rejoinder in the Post, rejecting the Hoover economists’ suggestion that spending cuts for “entitlements” — mainly programs for the elderly and the poor — bear all the burden of cuts.

It would be more useful if the rival economists had collaborated to produce a consensus agreement that would — over, say, a decade — balance the budget. Make no mistake: This would be an immensely unpopular document. In today’s dollars, balancing the budget would require annual spending cuts and tax increases of about $1 trillion dollars. That’s equal to about a fifth of federal spending, which is now being borrowed.

Social Security and other “safety net” programs would have to be reduced, possibly through higher eligibility ages and more means-testing. These entitlements constitute about 70 percent of federal spending; if they’re ignored, the entire adjustment would fall on other spending (other domestic programs and defense) and taxes. Still, taxes would have to rise too, probably by hundreds of billions annually. Otherwise, spending cuts would be unacceptably severe.

If we are to discuss these choices sensibly, we must know what the choices are. But the vague generalities offered by both the Republican and Democratic economists seem more intended to burnish their partisan credentials than to inform the public. The longer this continues, the riskier it becomes.

On this, the conservatives and liberals probably agree. Say the conservative economists: “There is no current evidence … that a crisis is on the horizon. But a debt crisis does not come slowly and visibly like a rising tide. It comes without warning, like an earthquake, as short-term bondholders attempt to escape the fiscal carnage.” We have been forewarned.

MaineWriter ~ In other words, this runaway economic train will eventually derail; and the beneficiaries of earned retirement, and medical insurances like Social Security and Medicare, will be the unwilling victims. 

Robert Samuelson is a columnist with The Washington Post