High cost of heating oil caused by Donald Trump's illegal Iran war causes financial harm to Maine voters preparing for winter cold

Rising heating oil costs have become a central issue in Maine's 2026 Senate race, as reported by The New York Times journalist Tim Balk.
 Echo report published The New York Times from Bath Maine.
Spiking💰💰 Costs: Half of all homes in Maine rely on heating oil. The cost to fill a standard heating-oil tank reached approximately

💲1,650, which is up about 80% compared to the previous year. 

Causes: The New York Times reports that the price surge is driven by disruptions in a vital oil shipping corridor linked to the war in Iran under the Trump administration.

In the Maine Senate Race, Spiking Heating Oil Costs Put Susan Collins on Defensive:  Half of homes in Maine rely on heating oil. Rising costs driven up by President Trump’s war with Iran have become central to the state’s Senate race.

As the Senate race in Maine heats up, the state is getting cold.

And for many Maine voters, chilly weather could present a particular challenge this year: New England’s northernmost state is singularly reliant on heating oil, and the price of the product is surging because of Donald Trump’s war with Iran, which has clogged a vital oil shipping corridor.

The issue has started to move to the center of the race between Senator Susan Collins, a vulnerable fifth-term Republican, and her Democratic challenger, Troy Jackson, who has blamed Ms. Collins for the rising fuel oil costs. Their contest could be critical to determining which party controls the Senate.

For Ms. Collins, who initially supported the war but has opposed it for months, the rising fuel costs pose a significant headwind as she works to fend off Mr. Jackson, voters and strategists in both parties say.

“It’s a huge issue up here,” Lance Dutson, a Republican strategist in Maine, said on Tuesday night as temperatures in parts of the state dipped into the 40s. Ms. Collins can point to her work to bring federal heating assistance funds to the state, he added, but that might go only so far in assuaging an “emotional electorate” facing deep financial strain because of the price increases. (Also, this oil assistance is not fee, who will help to pay for the deliveries and how much will people who need help actually receive❓)

In Maine, the cost to fill a standard heating-oil tank as of Wednesday was $1,650, up roughly 80 percent from a year earlier, according to the National Energy Assistance Directors Association, which represents state governments in securing federal money for heating bills.

Although sticker-shocked consumers across the country are feeling the economic impact of the Iran war — when they fill up their car’s gas tank, grab a six-pack of beer at a liquor store or buy some tomatoes at the supermarket — the spiking costs of heating oil are felt uniquely in the frosty northeast.

Just 3 percent of U.S. households use heating oil to warm their homes. But 50 percent of homes do in Maine, according to the state. (The price of natural gas, used to warm most American homes, has remained relatively flat.)

Speaking in the lodge-like hall of the Maine Maritime Museum in coastal Bath one night this week, Mr. Jackson told voters gathered for a town hall-style event that he did “not know how people are going to heat their homes” this winter.

He scoffed at the efforts of Ms. Collins to lobby the Trump administration for the emergency release of oil from strategic reserves, arguing that she was too close to Trump and had “turned her back” on working-class Mainers.

“No one’s going to just sit there and freeze to death — they’ll do things to try and heat their home,” Mr. Jackson said. Referring to the pride Ms. Collins has expressed in her efforts to secure federal funds for fire stations, Mr. Jackson added, “It’s a good thing that Susan Collins got all those fire stations, because we’re going to have a lot of fires.”

Some in the crowd laughed. One woman in the back muttered that the line was not funny.

Ms. Collins tried to get ahead of the issue.  For example, last month, in September, she joined Senator Angus King of Maine, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, in writing a letter to Donald Trump urging the administration to secure the emergency release of heating oil. And she pushed the federal government to increase its funding for heating assistance, joining a bipartisan letter from senators and backing a call by Gov. Janet Mills of Maine, a Democrat, for more federal support.

“I have repeatedly urged the Administration to use every tool available to increase supply and bring down energy costs,” Ms. Collins said in a statement last week.

But in recent years, federal heating assistance programs have not kept up with rising prices. Earlier this year, Donald Trump tried to eliminate a federal program to help poor Americans cover their heating and cooling bills, arguing that the United States needed to prioritize military needs.

Debbe Kelley, 70, an engineer in Windham, Maine, said she thought fuel oil costs, layered on top of broader inflation, had become the most pressing issue in the Senate race.

“The issue that’s going to affect most Mainers is how they’re going to afford to get by this winter,” Ms. Kelley, wearing a long coat, a woven teal alpaca scarf and a dark hat, said as she braced herself against the fall wind outside the town hall in Windham, the sort of politically divided town that could be critical to determining the Senate race.

Ms. Kelley, a Democrat, said that she planned to vote for Mr. Jackson, and that she knew political independents who had voted Republican in the past but were being drawn toward Democrats by the economic conditions. She said it had cost her $1,982 to fill the tank of her house with fuel oil.

“A lot of people are struggling,” Ms. Kelley said. “It’s going to be a very tough year for Maine.”

Donald Trump is weirdly obsessed with Abraham Lincoln envy

Trump Is Locked in a Posthumous Feud With Abe Lincoln
A complete timeline of this shockingly active (and bizarre) rivalry.

Published in New York Magazine The Intelligencer by Margaret Hartmann. 

Donald Trump has serious beef with every living former president. While the Bidens, Bushes, Clintons, and Obamas have made a big show of their post–White House chumminess, Trump’s vicious smears and elaborate conspiracy theories against his predecessors have left him excluded from the ex-presidents club. 

This isn’t all that surprising; Trump’s not one to put aside a good vendetta for the sake of national unity. What is remarkable, though, is that throughout his presidency, Trump has also been actively feuding with Abraham Lincoln.

This rivalry is obviously one-sided, as the 16th president has been dead for 161 years and is better than Trump by just about every measure. That actually seems to be the root of it: In Trump’s mind, Lincoln remains the one obvious exception to his claims of being the greatest president of all time.

I’ve always said I can be more presidential than any president in history,” Trump said in 2019. “Except for Honest Abe Lincoln when he’s wearing the hat.”

Trump talks about Lincoln like he’s a Republican frenemy who might dare to challenge him in the next election, not a long-dead, widely revered historical figure. Though the current president often makes a show of paying homage to “Honest Abe,” Trump regularly lashes out at him too. Trump has disparaged Lincoln’s (nonexistent) poll numbers, downplayed the importance of the 13th Amendment, and blasted his predecessor for not using Art of the Deal tactics to prevent the Civil War.

Here’s a guide to all of Trump’s bizarre attempts to wrap himself in Lincoln’s glory while subtly taking down the “Great Unifier.”

I’ll ‘heal the divisions’ like Lincoln … starting by suing my accusers.

During a 2016, speech at what he called the “hallowed ground” of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, then-candidate Trump claimed that, if elected, he would look to unify the nation like the 16th president.

“President Lincoln served at a time of division like we’ve never seen before,” he said. “It is my hope that we can look to his example to heal the divisions we are living through right now. We are a very divided nation.”

Then, just like Honest Abe, Trump slammed the “totally rigged” political system, attacked the media for misreporting his crowd size, and said of his many sexual-assault accusers, “All of these liars will be sued after the election is over.”

January 2017: During a 2016, speech at what he called the “hallowed ground” of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, then-candidate Trump claimed that, if elected, he would look to unify the nation like the 16th president.

“President Lincoln served at a time of division like we’ve never seen before,” he said. “It is my hope that we can look to his example to heal the divisions we are living through right now. We are a very divided nation.”

Then, just like Honest Abe, Trump slammed the “totally rigged” political system, attacked the media for misreporting his crowd size, and said of his many sexual-assault accusers, “All of these liars will be sued after the election is over.”

‘I don’t know if it’s ever been done before.’

The night before his first inauguration, Trump held a concert at the Lincoln Memorial. He gave Abe a vigorous salute, then started bragging about his own historic achievements.

“This started out tonight being a small little concert, and then we had the idea, Maybe we will do it in front of the Lincoln Memorial,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s ever been done before, but if it has, very seldom. And the people came by the thousands and thousands.”

There have actually been a good number of historic musical performances at the national monument. But sure, no other president has serenaded Abe with the Rolling Stones’ “Heart of Stone.”

‘I can be more presidential than any president’ … except Lincoln.

July 2018: ‘I beat our Honest Abe’ in the polls.

In the summer of 2018, Trump started referring to a “new poll” that had him “over 90 percent,” making him “the most popular Republican in history of the Party.”

During a trip to the U.K., the president bragged about this to The Sun, saying, “You know, a poll just came out that I am the most popular person in the history of the Republican Party. Beating Lincoln. I beat our Honest Abe.”

A few weeks later, even Trump seemed doubtful — with good reason. There were no polls in the 1860s, and we never got to the bottom of what survey he was referencing. 

(See 🤥Trump's lie here.)

September 2018:  The Gettysburg Address was initially ‘ridiculed,’ just like ‘the weave.’
Trump noted, accurately, that some people panned Lincoln’s famous speech when he was alive. Trump suggested that someday people would recognize his oratory genius too.

“You know when Abraham Lincoln made the Gettysburg Address speech, the great speech, did you know he was ridiculed?” Trump said at a Montana rally. “Fifty years after his death, they said it may have been the greatest speech ever made in America … I have a feeling that’s going to happen with us. In different ways, that’s going to happen with us.”

October 2019:  Lincoln in ‘the hat’ is ‘a tough one to beat.’

“I’ve always said I could be more presidential than any president in history. Except for Honest Abe Lincoln when he’s wearing the hat,” Trump said at a rally in Texas. “That’s tough. That’s a tough one to beat.”

May 2020:  ‘I believe I am treated worse’ than Lincoln.

Lincoln is, famously, one of the few U.S. presidents who was killed in office. Yet, Trump has asserted on numerous occasions that he thinks he has it even worse.

Donald Trump made this claim on Twitter in 2019, citing Newt Gingrich. (Trump wasn’t alone in likening himself to Lincoln. Gingrich compared Trump to the “Great Emancipator” in his 2017 book, and Dinesh D’Souza made a whole movie about Trump’s ostensibly Lincoln-y qualities.)

The following year, Trump elaborated on this point during a socially distanced Fox (Fake❗)News interview at the Lincoln Memorial.

“I am greeted with a hostile press, the likes of which no president has ever seen. The closest would be that gentleman right up there,” Trump said, pointing to the marble statue of Lincoln behind him.

“They always said, ‘Lincoln, nobody got treated worse than Lincoln,’” Trump continued. “I believe I am treated worse.”

June 2020: ‘I’ve done more for the Black community than any president,’ except (possibly) Lincoln.

Up to this point, Trump’s comparisons to Lincoln were largely silly and subjective. Then, in June 2020, he got into a one-sided fight with Abe over which of them had done more for Black Americans.

Initially, Trump exempted Lincoln from comments suggesting his policies, such as the First Step Act, were more significant than enforcing Brown v. Board of Education or passing the Civil Rights Act.

But, ultimately, he landed at Trump’s contributions to the Black community: great; Lincoln’s: “questionable.”

“So I think I’ve done more for the Black community than any other president, and let’s take a pass on Abraham Lincoln ’cause he did good, although it’s always questionable,” he told Fox News’ Harris Faulkner. “You know, in other words, the end result.”

Faulkner, who is Black, pushed back, noting, “Well, we are free, Mr. President. He did pretty well.”

Trump replied, “But we are free. You understand what I mean. So I’m gonna take a pass on Abe — Honest Abe, as we call him.”

Trump, who repeatedly defended the Confederacy, says he's done more for black community than any president with possible exception of Abraham Lincoln but then adds of Lincoln: "He did good although it's always questionable, you know, in other words, the end result."

July 2020:  People didn’t know Lincoln was a Republican ‘until I came along.’ A few months into his presidency, Trump said of Lincoln, “Most people don’t even know he was a Republican.”

Three years later, Trump gave himself credit for preserving this arcane bit of Lincoln lore.

“People don’t remember, nobody ever heard of it until I came along, nobody remembered it for a long time, or they didn’t use it, at least. 

I use it all the time: Abraham Lincoln was a Republican,” Trump said in July 2020. “You know, you say that and people say, ‘I didn’t know that,’ but he was Republican. So we’re doing a great job.”

October 2020:  I’ve ‘always competed against’ Lincoln.

During a rally in Pennsylvania, Trump dropped a greatest-hits album of his Lincoln commentary with a new bonus track.

“You know we’re the party of Abraham Lincoln, a lot of people don’t know that,” Trump said. “The great Abraham Lincoln, a man that I’ve always competed against. I said, ‘I can be more presidential than any president ever, except for the possible exception of Abraham Lincoln when he’s wearing the hat.’”

July 2021:  A Washington-Lincoln ticket would struggle to ‘beat me.’  Shortly after losing the 2020, election, Trump talked to Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker for their book I Alone Can Fix It. 

During the interview, he bragged that if it weren’t for the pandemic, even two of our greatest presidents couldn’t have defeated him.

“I think it would be hard if George Washington came back from the dead and he chose Abraham Lincoln as his vice-president, I think it would have been very hard for them to beat me,” Trump said.

December 2022:  ‘This is Donald Trump, hopefully your favorite president of all time, better than Lincoln, better than Washington.’

This is how Trump kicked off a video announcing he was dropping a collection of NFT trading cards.

January 2024:  Lincoln ‘could have negotiated’ to prevent the Civil War.  In his most pointed Lincoln criticism to date, Trump suggested at an Iowa rally that if Abe were truly a great president, there wouldn’t have been a Civil War.

“So many mistakes were made” ahead of the war, Trump said. “See, there was something I think could have been negotiated, to be honest with you. I think you could have negotiated that. All the people died. So many people died.”

Did Lincoln willfully ignore the lessons of The Art of the Deal because he wanted to secure his legacy❓ Well, Trump insinuates, you decide❗

“Abraham Lincoln, of course, if he negotiated it, you probably wouldn’t even know who Abraham Lincoln was,” Trump said. “He would’ve been president, but he would’ve been president, and he would have been — he wouldn’t have been the Abraham Lincoln.”

April 2024:  ‘Never fight uphill, me boys.’

During a rally in Pennsylvania, Trump called Gettysburg, the bloodiest battle of the Civil War, “vicious and horrible” yet “beautiful in so many ways.” 🙄


Then he lamented that Confederate General Robert E. Lee is “no longer in favor” and recalled his famous directive “Never fight uphill, me boys” — which Lee never said.

This wasn’t directly about Lincoln, but it does feel like Trump was trying to one-up the former president by including a (IMO, cheap) pirate impression in his Gettysburg Address.

October 2024:  I’m ‘tougher on the border’ than Lincoln.

While bragging about receiving the endorsement of a Border Patrol union at a North Carolina rally, Trump claimed a group official told him he’s the “greatest president there’s ever been,” even better than Washington or Lincoln.

“He said I’m tougher on the border than Abraham Lincoln, right, than Honest Abe,” Trump added.

October 2025:  A gaudy marble bathroom is ‘appropriate for the time of Abraham Lincoln.’

Trump gutted the White House’s Lincoln Bathroom, then claimed the floor-to-ceiling marble was accurate to the 1860s. But the real Lincoln used an outhouse before he came to Washington. And he was furious when his wife overspent on White House renovations, saying she’d wasted money on “flub dubs for this damned old house.”

Trump’s AI seance with Abe:  Trump posts a lot of weird AI-generated art on Truth Social (the image of him escorting a swole, handcuffed alien around a military base comes to mind). 

During the summer, he repeatedly shared this shot of himself hanging with (imaginary) rivals Washington and Lincoln with no commentary.

September 2026:  ‘Donald J. Trump is six times more popular than Abraham Lincoln.’  In more highly dubious polling news, Trump claimed he is now more popular than “any other President”. But, it turns out Trump misunderstood a report from CNN’s Harry Enten that said when Republicans were asked which president they most admire, 53 percent answered Trump, 18 percent said Ronald Reagan, and 8 percent said Lincoln. Trump did, actually, come out ahead of Honest Abe, but that does not mean he’s “six times more popular” than “any other president.”

In the media’s defense, Trump has given us some reason to think his perspective on Honest Abe is a tad odd.

Measles diagnosed in Pennsylvania has reached 1000 confirmed infections all preventable with vaccine

Echo Philadelphia Inquirer Editorial

The fear and hope of Pennsylvania’s measles outbreak | Editorial
Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. put countless Americans in unnecessary danger. 

Vaccines still hold remarkable power to protect us.

Pennsylvania reached a total of more than 1,000 confirmed measles cases this week, the largest U.S. outbreak in the generation since the disease was all but eliminated from this country. Based on the illness’ fatality rate and the five measles-related deaths recorded in the state as of last week, up to five times as many Pennsylvanians may have been infected.

Sadly, this is likely a mere harbinger of what America faces in an era of unprecedented misinformation and political recklessness.

Measles is both highly preventable by vaccination and highly contagious among the unvaccinated: 99.6% of Pennsylvania’s confirmed infections have been of people who were not vaccinated.

With two of America’s super-spreaders of anti-vaccine disinformation, Donald Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., running the federal government and its health agencies, vaccination rates for measles and other diseases have continued to decline. The worst consequences will disproportionately befall vulnerable communities, such as the state’s highly unvaccinated Amish enclaves, and vulnerable people within them, such as the very young and immunocompromised people the disease has killed.

Kennedy is doing for America what he did for Samoa, the Pacific island nation where he infamously fueled anti-vaccination sentiment during a visit in 2019, shortly before a measles contagion there killed 83 people. Two years later, he appeared in Lancaster County, the epicenter of the current outbreak, to also stoke unfounded suspicion of vaccines.

As health secretary, Kennedy has hardly failed to add some qualification or confusion to his every mention of the vaccine for measles, mumps, and rubella, which is widely administered, safe, and effective. A recent poll by the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center found that fewer than one in three Americans believe he supports the MMR shot. Further undermining confidence in the vaccine, Trump issued an executive order in August calling for it to be split into three shots that aren’t available in the United States while making false claims about the safety of the combined dose. The order also endorsed Kennedy’s attempt to reduce the number of school vaccinations recommended by the government, which was blocked by a federal judge.

Even without legal force, the administration’s anti-vaccination message is unmistakable and corrosive. With 95% vaccine coverage thought necessary to confer population-level protection, known as herd immunity, every additional doubt is dangerous.

Measles outbreaks in Pennsylvania, Texas, South Carolina, Utah, and, most recently, New York — which led Governor Kathy Hochul to declare a state of emergency this week — are the predictable result of the Trump administration’s campaign to discredit the vaccine. Tellingly, Kennedy has responded to Pennsylvania’s plight with even more of the misinformation that caused it, denying the role of the disease in the deaths. 🤥🤥🤥😡

Fortunately, even without the assistance of a responsible federal government, states such as Texas and South Carolina have contained their outbreaks, partly by taking advantage of the accompanying interest in vaccination to boost collective immunity. 

Although the spread of measles to 39 Pennsylvania counties is alarming, Pennsylvania health officials say 53,000 doses of the MMR vaccine were administered to residents last month, roughly double the average, with state pop-up clinics and other facilities boosting the numbers.

The recommended two doses of the vaccine confer a lifetime of prevention for 97% of those who get them. Given the state of our federal health infrastructure, that is a considerable comfort.

Republicans have a moral and legal responsibility to impeach Donald Trump

 The Case for Impeachment: Trump’s contempt for the rule of law subverts democracy.

Echo opinion published in The Philadelphia Inquirer

A politicized Department of Justice erodes the rule of law when a president uses it as a tool to favor some Americans and a cudgel to punish others.

We the people and the rule of law

A breathtaking disregard for the principles and institutions that have underpinned the foundations of our free society for 250 years.

This essay is part of a series called “The Case for Impeachment,” to illuminate how Donald Trump has trampled the rule of law and is a clear and present danger to the republic.

As we celebrate 250 years of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, one bedrock principle of the founding era is now on shaky ground — the rule of law.

John Adams famously wrote that we are “a government of laws, and not of men.” The rule of law means that we, the people, through our elected representatives, enact laws, and that all of us are equally obligated to follow them.

When I served as a U.S. attorney, independence meant not just liberty from the rule of a monarch, but freedom from partisan politics. Now, during our Semiquincentennial, Donald Trump seems to think otherwise.

His scowling face appears on a banner on the building that houses the U.S. Department of Justice. In that same building, Trump declared himself America’s chief law enforcement officer, a shocking departure from chief executives in the post-Watergate era.

Ignoring norms and policies, Trump and his appointees at the Justice Department have injected strongman tactics into the administration of the law. Attorney General Todd Blanche has pointed to language in the Constitution that vests the executive power in a president of the United States to argue that Trump has the authority to direct all executive branch agencies, including the Department of Justice. But Blanche overlooks another provision of Article II, which requires the president to “take care” that the laws be executed “faithfully.”

Instead, we see Trump and his cronies use the DOJ to reward his allies and punish his enemies. In Trump’s first month back in office, he granted pardons to more than 1,500 defendants who were convicted of crimes relating to the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

That was followed by the dismissal of bribery charges against then-New York Mayor Eric Adams in exchange for an agreement to support Trump’s immigration enforcement agenda. 

Calling the deal a “quid pro quo,” Danielle Sassoon, Trump’s own appointee as interim U.S. attorney in Manhattan, resigned, as did eight other Justice Department lawyers.

The department’s Antitrust Division recently approved Paramount’s 💲111 billion acquisition of Warner Bros., but only after the parent company of CBS canceled The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and gutted 60 Minutes after both were critical of Trump.

Baseless charges:  For those who have crossed Trump, the powers of the Justice Department have been used to attack. Baseless charges in the Eastern District of Virginia against New York Attorney General Letitia James, who secured a judgment against Trump’s company in a civil fraud case, and former FBI Director James Comey, who led the agency during its investigation into connections between Trump’s 2016, campaign and Russia, fizzled as courts found that the interim U.S. attorney who brought them was appointed illegally.

Undeterred, prosecutors later indicted Comey again for threatening to kill the president by posting online a photo of seashells spelling out the numbers “8647.” That case remains pending.

Other targets of prosecutors included Jerome Powell when the former chair of the Federal Reserve refused Trump’s demands to lower interest rates, members of Congress who participated in a video accurately stating that illegal military orders may be disobeyed, and members of the intelligence community who investigated Russian election interference in 2016.

A politicized Department of Justice erodes the rule of law when a president uses it as a tool to favor some Americans and a cudgel to punish others. Over time, people tend to grow cynical about the law and lose trust in its stewards, making it more difficult to obtain compliance and hold offenders accountable. Our society becomes less safe and less just, allowing the powerful to prey upon the vulnerable.

As a society, administering the law evenhandedly is essential to the legitimacy of our experiment in democracy. 

We the people must demand a president who pledges to abide by important restraints that have guided prosecutors for the past five decades, and even to codify them into the Code of Federal Regulations to make them more difficult to brush off.

These regulations should make it clear that a president may communicate with the Justice Department about subject matter priorities, but not cases; that prosecutors must refrain from considering partisan politics in charging decisions; and that prosecutors may seek an indictment only if they believe the evidence is sufficient to obtain and sustain an indictment, and not just to “name and shame” a president’s rivals, as Ed Martin said when he was appointed to lead the department’s “Weaponization Working Group.”

Criminal prosecution is intended to protect the public and deter criminal conduct, not to exact revenge for a president who sits above the law.

Our Declaration of Independence was a renunciation of a king. As Thomas Paine wrote at the time of the founding, “In America, the law is king.”

Barbara McQuade, a professor of practice at the University of Michigan Law School, served as U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Michigan from 2010, to 2017, and is the author of “The Fix: Saving America from the Corruption of a Mob-Style Government.”

Donald Trump puts American strategic oil reserves at risk of depletion just to support his illegal Iran war policy that drove up energy costs

Echo opinion letter published in The Mercury News, a California newspaper.

Consequences will outlast Trump’s illegal Iran war
Re: “How the war in Iran is complicating Trump’s agenda at home” (Aug. 8).

America is burning through its oil insurance policy. 

For the first time since 1983, America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve have fallen below 300 million barrels. 

That should be a flashing warning⚠ light, not another statistic to shrug off. In fact, the corrupt Trump administration repeatedly tapped the reserve to soften the consequences of an energy crisis intensified by its own policies and confrontation with Iran. That may provide temporary relief, but it exposes a troubling inability to understand second-order effects: actions abroad disrupt supply, disrupted supply raises prices and Washington responds by draining the emergency stockpile meant to protect us from the next crisis.

The SPR (Strategic Petroleum Reserve) is national insurance, not an endless political pressure valve. With oil above 💲80 and gasoline above 💲4 a gallon (💲6 in California), America now has less strategic cushion precisely when geopolitical risk is elevated.

Trump's failed policies have consequences. Eventually, the reserve runs out before the consequences do.

From Akeem Mostamandy in San Jose, California

Excellent opinion for the overriding reason to defeat Senator Susan Collins

Maine Writer:  Of course Donald Trump is on the ballot❗

The reason Maine must retire Susan Collins from the U.S. Senate | Opinion published in the Portland Press Herald:

The vote comes down to President Trump by Peter L. Murray, a Maine attorney and a member of Maine Lawyers for the Rule of Law. He lives in Portland, Maine.

As the fall campaigns continue to heat up, the former State Senator Troy Jackson-Susan Collins contest has rightfully commanded the most attention of Maine voters.

Susan Collins has represented our state in the Senate for nearly 30 years. She is a veteran among her colleagues and chairs the Appropriations Committee, an important committee for her constituents back home.

Collins has claimed, with some justification, to be a voice for moderation among the baying of her MAGA cult fellow senators. 

In her campaign, she stresses her experience, her political savvy and what she has done for the state of Maine in terms of business for the Bath Iron Works, other federal projects and earmarks.

Her opponent, Troy Jackson, has no such federal track record. His experience so far has been entirely within the state of Maine, where he has worked for conventional Democratic priorities and on improving the lot of working people. He is earnest, dedicated and politically straightforward.

All this having been said, there is one overarching and compelling reason why we Mainers must retire Susan Collins and elect Troy Jackson to the U. S. Senate. Our country is under the domination of a dangerous chief executive. 

So far, the Republican majorities in Congress have failed to restrain any of his erratic and destructive excesses, both in foreign policy and domestic administration.

Donald Trump has felt free to levy war, impose irrational tariffs, antagonize our international allies, oppress and terrify immigrants on American soil, kill civilians abroad without trial and even undertake bizarre construction projects in Washington, all in violation of the law and the Constitution, with a supine and quiescent Congress totally failing to raise effective objection or control. Unless countered and restrained, he will continue this kind of behavior for another two years with who-knows-what consequences.

Only by electing Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate is there any hope of activating our constitutional checks and balances to prevent our country from going further off the rails at the hands of of this modern Caligula.

In the Senate, it is very close. The change of a single Senate seat can spell the difference between a Senate that will bow to the will of Donald Trump and one that will stand up against his worst impulses. Even if Susan Collins imagines that she would not follow the president’s line on every vote, she would be counted as a Republican in determining the leadership of the Senate and in generating its majorities on most legislation.

It has been repeatedly pointed out that regardless of her protestations of independence, she has voted with the president so far over 90% of the time. Those who argue that Susan Collins’ seniority will enable her to do more for the state of Maine need to keep in mind that her seniority will only count if the Republicans maintain control of the Senate, which will mean further chaos and destruction at the hand of an errant president.

We must vote for Jackson, because a vote for Collins is a vote for Trump. We cannot afford to weigh the relative expertise and experience of the two candidates. For this one time, we have to vote based solely on party affiliation.

Persons who wish the status quo to continue, and perhaps worsen, as the president becomes ever more erratic and irrational, can vote for Susan Collins. The rest of us, Democrats, independents and, yes, Republicans who are concerned and horrified by the current presidency, must support her Senate challenger and make sure that he takes her place.

Our experience with or under our current chief executive shows us the urgent need for reform of our constitutional structure to prevent such a political leader from asserting and misusing such power ever again. But in the meantime, in the current crisis, we here in Maine owe it to our country to do everything we can to help restore the effectiveness of our existing checks and balances by retiring Susan Collins and electing Troy Jackson to the United States Senate.

Former NIAID Chief Warns of 'Shameful' Federal Response to Measles"

Interview published on MedPage Today

Former NIAID (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease)  Chief Warns of 'Shameful' Federal Response to Measles. — Jeanne Marrazzo, MD, MPH, discusses vaccine guidance, research upheaval, and the ID workforce.

With federal vaccine policy and infectious disease research undergoing major changes, professional medical societies are stepping in to fill gaps once occupied by federal health agencies.

In a conversation with MedPage Today Editor-in-Chief Jeremy Faust, MD, Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) leader and former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Director Jeanne Marrazzo, MD, MPH, discusses IDSA's role in vaccine guidance, what she calls a "shameful" federal response to measles outbreaks, shifts in research priorities at NIAID, and her concerns about the future ID (infectious disease) workforce.

The following is a transcript of their remarks:

Faust: Hi, it's Jeremy Faust, editor-in-chief of MedPage Today. Today, I'm joined by Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo. Dr. Marrazzo was previously the head of the NIH's National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and now leads the Infectious Diseases Society of America. Dr. Marrazzo, great to see you. Thanks for joining us here.

Marrazzo: It's great to be here, Jeremy. Thanks for having me.

Faust: The IDSA is busier than ever, and in a way, has a higher profile than ever. And I wanted to start, as we come into respiratory virus season, with a question about vaccine policy, and that is in the absence of a functioning ACIP, the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices at CDC, groups like the IDSA are now coming out with their own vaccine recommendations, and this appears to be maybe something that'll be on an ongoing basis. Can you tell us about that?

Marrazzo: Yeah. So, in the absence of trusted sources of information, people have to step up, right❓ So, people have to step up and provide the information that people need. What the idea was behind the respiratory season vaccine guidance is that it would be a coordinated effort between several societies. And it was done quickly and very, I think, nicely, collegially, and resulted in those JAMA articles you saw last week.
Is this going to be a perpetual thing❓ I really hope not. I hope all of this craziness 💥is temporary and that we are just doing our best to plug the leaks in the system. 

I mean, I feel like we are sophisticated plumbers at this point. Will it change things going forward❓ I don't know. Maybe this is a good system to look towards.

We've been pretty homogeneous in what we've relied on, and if we've learned anything in this past year and a half, we've learned that reliance on a single portfolio, whether it's a funding portfolio like the NIH or single information portal like the CDC, comes with some risks.

Faust: Many people watching this will know, but some will not, the ACIP recommendations in the traditional ACIP where it was functional, came after a long process behind closed doors. And basically by the time the public meeting was happening, yeah, sure, the votes were almost always unanimous. That's because the decisions were really made in meetings. And I'm wondering how it would play out in a time when, "Hey, we have some new data. Do we really need RSV [respiratory syncytial virus] every year for certain people?"
And so two questions. ❓❓One, how would that be vetted? And two, just, not to be pejorative, but essentially it's a journal club, but ACIP is not because it had proprietary information through industry and other partners that made it more than just let's all look, see what's out there in the medical literature. It had proprietary stuff that no one else had access to that really did drive these decisions.
Marrazzo: That's right. So are they really two separate things❓ You're right. I mean, the "journal club" you're referring to is sort of the systematic review that VIP [Vaccine Integrity Project] has now sort of staked their claim on and is doing for several things. And the guidance for this fall is pretty baked in with the data that is publicly available and that we have. The review of original data and how that fits in and how it feeds into recommendations is a completely separate beast.

And right now there are conversations ongoing about where people should go to have this done, particularly industry, because they don't really have anywhere to go right now, as far as I can tell. I mean, the working groups are disrupted. They've all been disassembled or completely discontinued. So I think there are a couple of options, but how are you going to make it work the same way?

You alluded to the fact that this work behind closed doors was intense. Experts who can review it who are unconflicted, which is a very important thing, and who have enough stature in the field to essentially "take the place" of what would ideally be the ACIP. There are ACIP members who were let go for unclear reasons who are extremely qualified.

So again, this gets to this whole question of, to what extent should we set up parallel systems to replicate what we had, and are these going to be temporary and stopgap measures or are we going to set up something that may ultimately be an alternative or a better model than what we have❓

So, it's a really dynamic space and it's crazily exciting and crazy making at the same time because you don't really want to be doing it because the system worked, I think, pretty well before. On the other hand, we had no choice and I think we have an obligation to figure this out.

Faust: Just on the news cycle a little bit, tell me your reaction, just as an infectious disease expert, but also as the leader of IDSA, with how HHS is handling their measles outbreaks where they are occurring.

Marrazzo: You mean how they're not handling the measles outbreaks❓

Faust: Well, I mean there's a response. You could say they're not handling it, but tell me about it.

Marrazzo: The CDC director has not made one statement about the fact that there have been at least five deaths in Pennsylvania right now. There are at least six cases of congenital measles that I'm aware of. There are almost certainly going to be in the coming years cases of subacute sclerosing panencephalitis, which if you get measles before the age of 1, you have a one in 600 chance of getting.

With the numbers we're seeing and the likelihood of underestimation, this is going to be a real mess in the future. We also know that measles kind of trashes your immune system for a significant period of time. That's a very unsophisticated immunologic summary of what it does to the immune system. But we do know that there clearly is an immune suppression associated with acute measles, especially in younger children.

So, the fact that HHS has not really sounded the alarm and unequivocally said we need to have all hands on deck to get people vaccinated to make sure pregnant women know that they can't get the vaccine, but there is immunoglobulin they can get so that their babies don't get congenital measles, that's a travesty.

So, I am totally fine going on the record that the response has been extremely underwhelming and frankly shameful.

Faust: In an environment where you're trying to keep things afloat, your organization has talked about the transparency around these kinds of issues. Can you just, for people who haven't necessarily followed this for years, say what it was like before in terms of understanding transparency around say, you have a press release with HIV funding, the kind of transparency that was there in the past and what is the current situation❓

Marrazzo: Yeah, so it's a great example. So you probably are aware of the HIV clinical trials networks, right? They're funded by NIH, so billions of dollars. Billions of dollars have gone into these networks over the last 30-some years.

So, there's the HIV vaccine trial network, there's the prevention trial network, there's the treatment network, and there's the adolescent and pregnant women network. These were supposed to be renewed; they're on a 7-year cycle. Last spring, the announcement was supposed to come out last spring for the renewal applications.

Those still haven't come out. No one knows what the status of those applications are. And these are entities that run clinical trials. So places that run these trials are having to lay off workers. But put your money where your mouth is. If you're going to build on decades of successful, spectacular HIV research, then tell us what you're going to do with the clinical trials networks. And there's really been no messaging about that. So that's a really big one, I think.

The other thing is emerging infectious diseases. When all these grants were sort of selected for review and unfunding, if you look at the areas that were targeted, it wasn't just the DEIA [diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility] kind of things or the gender and minority sort of stuff. A lot of it was around coronaviruses and pandemic preparedness.

So, there's kind of this contradiction about what we expect NIAID in particular to be doing to prepare us for the next whatever it might be or to work on what's going on now like Ebola. It's a travesty really. I mean, another really, really horrible situation there. So I think we would like to know what is the roadmap here and why are we not hearing and jumping in.

Faust: And thank you for leading us right to the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which of course is the institute that you led prior to your current position at IDSA.

What is your sense of the direction of research intramurally, in-house, there right now? And my sense -- tell me if this is wrong -- is that there is a major shift that has occurred since you left. And I'd like you to describe to people what's at stake.

Marrazzo: I don't see that being emphasized because instead what you're seeing is building the agenda around these politically correct buckets, whether it is avoiding emerging infectious diseases or avoiding coronaviruses or avoiding pandemic or avoiding biodefense.

You probably have heard that there's this 💲2-plus billion dollars going to DoD -- the Department of Defense -- that was about a third of NIAID's budget that was for preparedness writ large, which meant you use a lot of that money for things like universal flu vaccine because of course military recruits are exquisitely at risk for the consequences of flu outbreaks.

So, you see all this stuff not only kind of missing in what you would like to see in a comprehensive outward-facing plan that you really got a lot of input in, and instead you've got this thing that reflects, I think, the administration's priorities and omits what the administration has declared in this concept that I call "otherness."

So, if you're in this other category, you don't matter, whether it's transgender, whether you're an immigrant, whatever you are. So, I think that's what's at stake. And that's not even talking about the science that's at stake -- mRNA vaccine platforms. That was one of the things that there was a data call for in the early days of the administration, we had to flag any grant that involved mRNA.

And of course there was half a billion dollars taken from BARDA [Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority] that was earmarked for mRNA research for vaccines and brought back into the intramural program to be applied to the intramural flu vaccine program under Jeff Taubenberger.

Faust: Which if I'm correct, is sort of an old platform, nothing really novel there.

Marrazzo: It's a whole-cell vaccine platform. Exactly. And a lot of people are skeptical that it's going to be the way forward. I think most people think that platforms where you can plug and play the genetic sequence of the viruses as they evolve from the Southern Hemisphere, you can predict it, that's the mRNA vaccine. That's probably what's going to be the future. So, who knows❓ So, there's a lot, a lot at stake.

Faust: Do you think that what's driving this obsession is somewhat political❓ In other words, this is the former agency led by Anthony Fauci❓

Marrazzo: I do.

Faust: I ask because you did succeed him. What do you think the effect of these attacks on Dr. Fauci is just in terms of actually people deciding whether or not they should go into this field at all❓

Marrazzo: Yeah. I just spent 2 days at the University of Maryland at their Center for Vaccine Development, and I can tell you that it's a fantastic place. Postdocs are really not in a good place. So, postdocs for your audience, for those who don't know, are people who generally have their PhD. Sometimes they have their MD, sometimes they have both degrees.

And they are really feeling, I would say, besieged because the funding is being threatened right now, but also the value of their work. I think they're feeling that it's not being perceived the way that it used to be. Scientists, I would say it used to be a wonderful thing to say you were a scientist and you had a lab and you worked with viruses because you wanted to conquer the viruses and protect people from the viruses. It's not so much like that anymore, given all the rhetoric that we've heard.

We know there is a recent poll that came out last week talking about healthcare workers, specifically in public health, people feeling incredibly attacked and stressed as a result of their involvement in the pandemic. And we know that happened, people were targeted.

So, I'm afraid that all of this coupled with the deferred gratification that it takes to have a career in science, as you know, you work in a lab, you don't make much money as a postdoc, you usually have to have a partner who works to support your kids. It's not looking good. It's not looking good for the field.

So, I really, really worry, and I hope we can stoke people's excitement, not just about science, but about doing really important work that we need to do to keep people safe.

Faust: IDWeek is coming up. It's good branding for the Infectious Diseases Society of America's annual scientific assembly meeting research policy. And tell me what's on your radar for what are we going to hear this year at IDWeek that reflects where you see things headed❓

Marrazzo: Yeah, it's going to be great. We're opening the plenary on the first day with a talk from Atul Gawande and we'll be showing his film later in the meeting, "Rovina's Choice." And I really wanted people to see what the effects of this last year have been graphically. And I think, remember a lot of people in ID don't do HIV. A lot of people are very hospital-based.

And so, I think it's important for this audience to really understand how devastating this has been, not just at a personal level, but also in terms of global health and in our reputation as a global citizen. But, I think it's going to be a really good dialogue because what we have not been good at is getting these people in the same room. We're great at our little silos. I mean, our ID meetings are all about antimicrobial resistance and maybe optimizing HIV management, blah, blah, blah.


But boy, have we found out that if you don't talk about the global impact of what we're doing and saying, how we communicate what you're doing and saying, and how intimately we have to work with our public health colleagues, and some of us are public health people, then we are not going to be able to do our job successfully.

So, I would say that's the theme of the meeting. It's sort of like all of us rising together because ... and I've been trying to work on that with other societies too, really doing more because again, one thing IDSA does well is advocate. We do have a good budget for advocacy and policy. We have lobbying status, so we can do that. Not every organization can do that. And I've been really wanting to work with people to help get their footprint out there more using some of our resources.


We also have a very exciting medical student/resident/fellow contingent. So, we're really trying to bring that up because our workforce challenges are pretty serious. We want more people in the field.

Faust: We need them. And thank you for encouraging that work and for pushing the ball forward on all of these issues. And Dr. Marrazzo, thank you for joining us on MedPage Today. Thanks so much.

Marrazzo: Thanks, Jeremy. Thanks for your work. Really appreciate it. Bye.

Produced by Greg Laub, Senior Director, Video, MedPage Today.

Donald Trump and maga Republicans revise history to suit their own ignorant opinions but they cannot erase the truth

Echo opinion letters published in the Boston Globe:

Whitewashing American history by scrubbing information that depicts the events and personalities that shaped it does not erase it. 

Donald Trump’s desire to portray America’s greatness, while omitting or minimizing the mistakes our nation has made along the way concerning slavery, the genocide of indigenous peoples, and other sorry chapters, is an attack on our national memory.

The facts exist. Scholarly research has laid them out in books, film, and various media that will endure beyond this administration. In 1789, this country established a Republic with a Constitution designed to “form a more perfect union.” The American experiment seeks a perfection that it may never fully achieve. Its greatness, however, lies in the constant pursuit of the lofty principles to which it aspires.

The country has made progress on many of those goals, but occasionally it backslides. Looking backward to a nostalgic, if mythical, past, instead of looking forward, is counterproductive.

A nation cannot move forward if it cannot acknowledge its mistakes, learn from them, and commit to avoiding those pitfalls in order to create a brighter future based on justice, freedom, and a government that acknowledges the worth of all of its people and their contributions to the American story.

From William J. Santoro in  Winchester, Massachusetts

“American history, as edited by Trump” describes a shameful travesty — the denial of the full nature of American history — for which taxpayers are footing the bill. When the wealthiest nation on earth chooses not to maintain programs that support health care, food stamp benefits, and the like, while paying to post signs at the Smithsonian Institution and national parks, among other places, denying the realities of our nation’s history, we are all victims of an effort to implement the trappings of authoritarianism.

From Allan C. Greenberg in Bethel, Vermont

Donald Trump has failed to produce more manufacturing jobs with his illegal tariffs. Iowa is another example of promises "not kept"

Skepticism mires Trump’s Iowa steel plant project: ‘Promises are not the same as jobs’

Echo reporting published in The Guardian by Michael Sainato

The project sparked doubts over whether the plant will be built and delivered as promised, given Trump’s record. #PromisesNotKept

Donald Trump has long sought to portray himself as a man of steel, from the White House photoshopping Trump to look like Superman, to enacting tariffs on steel and approving the sale of US Steel to Japan’s Nippon Steel with a ”golden” share given to the US government.

Most recently, the Trump administration announced plans to construct the largest steel plant in the US, a 💲15bn plant in Lee county, Iowa, to be built by India-based Mesabi Metallics.

But, the project and claims surrounding it have incited skepticism over whether the plant will be built and delivered as promised, given Trump’s record and the financial history of Mesabi Metallics’ parent company, Essar Global.

The plant had originally been scheduled to be built in Minnesota, a state that usually votes for Democrats. The shift to Iowa – where Republicans are struggling in the midterms – has also attracted attention.

Doug May, who worked for 43 years as a steelworker at a mill in Granite City, Illinois, characterized the announcement as “political pandering” given the timing and how tariffs are hurting Iowa farmers.

“He pulled the same thing in 2018, just before an election, when he announced that 💲10bn Foxconn project,” May said.

That project, in swing state Wisconsin, failed to produce the jobs Trump and Foxconn had promised.

May argued Trump was using the steel industry as a campaign strategy, while ignoring the work the United Steel Workers have done to push to save the industry, including filing more than 150 trade cases over the past decades to combat unfair trade practices that harm US workers. More than 40 domestic steel producers in the US filed for bankruptcy in the late 1990s.

“We, the steel workers in Granite City, served as the best foot soldiers lobbying Congress, holding rallies and campaigns, to raise awareness to the cheating of foreign steelmakers and the need for stronger trade enforcement during that era,” added May. “Arguably, we played a very important role in saving domestic steel.”

Essar Global first proposed building a steel plant with a $1.65bn investment in the Mesabi iron range in north-east Minnesota when they purchased Minnesota Steel in 2007.

By 2016, Essar Steel Minnesota had filed for bankruptcy, following construction delays and financing issues at its Nashwauk, Minnesota, project, where its iron ore mine, which is supposed to fuel the Iowa steel plant, is located.

In efforts to get rid of its debt, Essar Global sold off assets, including the completion of a sale of Essar Oil for 💲12.9bn to a Russia-controlled energy company.

Mesabi Metallics briefly changed ownership to Virginia billionaire Thomas Clarke, before he lost control of the company in 2018, with Essar Global regaining control, but then losing its mining leases in 2021, when the state of Minnesota revoked them after a missed deadline.

“This plant that has been 20 years in the making,” said Mark Dayton, former governor of Minnesota who dealt with Mesabi Metallics in the state through their bankruptcy proceedings.

“I had, a decade ago, a very bad experience with Essar Steel because they started this plant, raised lots of expectations and hopes up north, and then went into default and went into bankruptcy and the like,” he said.

Dayton said it did look like the plant was “actually proceeding, which is great if they’re going to actually complete building this plant”.

But he added: “I’m skeptical of the announcement in Iowa this close to the election. That’s going to require $15bn of investment. I’d like to see that money on the table from Essar before they start to bring a shovel.”

Some, including May, see echoes of Trump’s Foxconn announcement in June 2018. Ahead of the 2018, midterm elections, Trump described plans by the Taiwanese electronics contract manufacturer to open a gargantuan site outside Milwaukee as “the Eighth Wonder of the World” and said the plant “will provide jobs for much more than 13,000 Wisconsin workers”.

Trump’s promises came as his approval ratings with the public were low, with Democrats poised to take advantage and regain control of the House.

The site currently has about 1,100 employees and became an albatross around the necks of its backers as Foxconn’s ambitious plans failed to materialize.

This time around, Trump’s approval ratings are even lower than they were in 2018, and Democrats are expected to regain control of the House and possibly the Senate.

Trump has claimed “they’ve already started building” the plant, though a local NBC news affiliate in Iowa reviewed county records and disputed this claim.

“The review found no major property purchases tied to the project this year. County officials say they don’t have details from the company about its plans. No permits have come before supervisors,” TV6 Investigates reported.

A site location has not been disclosed by elected officials or Mesabi Metallics, with steel production aimed to begin in 2030. Mesabi Metallics did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

In Iowa, the state’s Sierra Club chapter criticized the special state legislature session called for by the Republican governor, Kim Reynolds, to expand government subsidies the state can provide to Mesabi Metallics for the project. The state government is experiencing budget shortfalls, with more than $1bn in deficits the past two years.

“Any time we step up incentive programs above and beyond what we’re giving, our revenues are going to be downgraded. And I understand there’s going to be jobs and economic activity around this, but the state is hurting financially,” said Pam Mackey Taylor, director of the Iowa chapter of the Sierra Club. “Do we need to really double the incentives that other large projects get to support this steel project❓”

The Iowa governor’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
In a special session, the Iowa legislature approved 💲1.36bn in tax incentives over 10 years to Mesabi Metallics. The steel plant is projected to create 1,750 permanent jobs and support up to 6,000 construction jobs.

The White House did not comment directly on the steel plant’s move to Iowa or on White House senior communications strategist Jason Miller’s past work as a registered foreign lobbyist for Mesabi Metallics.

Mesabi Metallics paid at least 💲240,000 SHW Partners, a government relations firm led by Miller, according to lobbyist disclosure records. The government of India also paid his firm 💲150,000 per month for “strategic counsel, tactical planning and government relations assistance on policy matters before the US government”, with the contract beginning in April 2025.

Miller said the contract with India stopped in June 2026 and claimed the lobbying for Mesabi Metallics was domestic, not foreign, and ended in July 2026.

“Taking a lobbyist who’s on the payroll of a foreign government and companies with huge government contracts and putting him inside the White House will create a three-headed beast of divided loyalties,” said Jon Golinger, democracy advocate at Public Citizen, in a statement on Miller’s appointment to a White House role.

In response to Miller’s lobbying work and criticisms of it, Miller said: “Public Citizen is a bunch of America-hating fake news soy boy losers who prefer new investments go to China and not the US, and respectfully, they can get rekt. 

Not only did I deregister from Mesabi Metallics months ago, I took the additional step of recusing myself from having anything to do with their announcement at the White House.”

A White House spokesperson, Kush Desai, said in an email: “No president has done more to revive American steelmaking than Donald Trump, whose 50 percent Section 232 tariffs on steel is driving record investments into this key sector. Those tariffs, along with the Administration’s other 🤥pro-growth and pro-investment policies, are not going away anytime soon.”💩💩💩