Blog Posts
The death count goes on and on in Gaza. Israel is illegally blockading all food and humanitarian assistance and has been for weeks. Israel continues to destroy homes in the West Bank and draws up plans for annexing new areas. Gaza is still being pummeled by American bombs. What are you doing to stop the genocide - what else can it be called at this point?
I would agree with you, in many ways, that the whether the nominee would be your selection is not the critical criteria. However, their respect for the institutions of the government, for your authority as the legislative branch, the authority of the judicial branch and their adherence to the constitution are key elements to consider. In Vought’s case, though he served in the first Trump administration, his views on all of these key elements have continued to radicalize and he has not been shy in public speeches, written comments and his work on Project 2025 to make clear his disdain for civil servants, his desire to prevent legal and institutional challenges in a second Trump term, his refusal to acknowledge Trump’s defeat in 2020 and his commitment to an imperial view of the presidency. He has spoken of those convicted for crimes committed on January 6th as political prisoners. He describes himself as a Christian nationalist on a crusade against the status quo and has nothing but scorn for “checks and balances”. Watch his 2023, 2024 speeches available on ProPublica.
If these statements and beliefs are not enough to make you seriously question his appointment to the cabinet, it strikes me that you are not living up to your responsibilities as our representative in Congress. Please, reclaim your responsibility to serve your constituents. Speak out, question, vote.
Town Hall with Jared Golden
“The fundamental weakness is empathy,” Elon Musk recently told radio podcast host Joe Rogan. “There is a bug, which is the empathy response.”
Sums up a lot, doesn’t it. Between that and The Art of the Deal where the objective is to win, to get your way, to dominate…
In the human sphere, these are not successful strategies. Humans, at root, are relational, empathetic, starting with fierce mama love and the extraordinary power of birth, giving life to another. Communities work because of mutuality, respect, and care beyond one’s own immediate boundary. Society, on a wider scale, needs government, civic groups, churches and other community groups to build that out further. Empathy is the gift and practice of being able to see ourselves in the other, the other in ourselves. In reality, even for Elon and Donald, the truth is that we depend on each other to live.
Dear Representative Golden,
You are serving our country in a historic time. This is a Constitutional Crisis. Our democracy is being dismantled right before our eyes. What you, our other Congress people, our courts, and our citizens do NOW will determine if our democracy survives or dies.
This is NOT business as usual. This is not simply “let’s try to work across the aisle.” This is a coup from within. A billionaire has been elected president, who flaunts his egregious crimes—
The resumption of Israeli attacks on Gaza is inhuman, inexcusable, immoral, and illegal. The four I’s. And yes, sadly, we continue to be complicit by our aid and by the encouragement of our president and administration and by their flagrant disregard of international law, the Geneva conventions and every scrap of basic moral decency.
Simultaneously, the administration is attacking dissent to Israel’s outrages, conflating anti-aggression and anti-war speech with anti-semitism. How low can you go. And the cruelty and scope of our in-country attacks on freedom of speech is breath-taking, breath-taking.
I’m expecting you to speak out, to speak up, to stand against Israel’s illegal and immoral attacks on the Palestinian people. I expect you, as my representative, as the people’s voice in Congress, to lead the criticism or these aberrant and loathsome foreign and domestic policies, to be present at free-speech rallies, to work with your colleagues to stop our government's attacks on free speech and to demand an end to aid for Israel so long as their attacks continue.
I’ve been trying to wrap my mind around Musk’s attack on the civil service, efforts he claims he makes to rid the government of waste, fraud, corruption and an evil deep state of unelected bureaucrats. He seems to think civil servants have been spontaneously generated in their offices to interfere with the workings of democracy, like a virus or parasite.
The truth is that civil servants are the people whom we have hired to work for us to accomplish goals and services that Congress has legislated across many administrations. Many have devoted decades to serving us in jobs that we, through our representatives, created.
It’s so telling in President Trump’s executive orders and Musk’s actions what their values are. The utter disregard, hostility and contempt they have to civil servants is stunning. These are the people we’ve hired to do the work that Congress over many different administrations has mandated. Have they taken time to hear what that work is, who the workers are - many of whom have devoted much of their working lives to the work Congress has legislated? No, just dispose of them like so much trash – the people that we hired to do our work.
Dear Senator King,
How dare they talk about these thousands of workers who make government function as trash, evil doers, as inefficient and lazy. Trump always projects out onto others his sins. I watch as programs that I care about and know tiny pieces of are closed down. USAID, the CFPB, the FBI and DOJ. Staff who, in many instances, have dedicated many years of their lives to do the work requested of them, are now flung aside, disposable to the whims of billionaires.
I've never seen officials as callous, cruel, disrespectful, and wrong as those at the helm now. They seem intent on the demolition of our institutions and, already controlling vast amounts of wealth, intent on cementing their power over Congress' and civil society.
Dear Senator Collins,
So many issues...but let's just focus on the CFPB for a moment, the agency Musk has wanted to delete, the one that you voted to establish but have also expressed concerns about.
It’s a really a David and Goliath story. The U.S. financial industry controls 22.3 trillion dollars (2022 figures) in assets and puts huge investments into lobbying Congress and the president, developing new “products’, and squelching resistance through fine print agreements and forced mediation. After the financial collapse of 2007-2008, millions of Americans lost their homes. Let me say that again, millions of Americans lost their homes.
The government gave multi-billion dollar bailouts to some of the largest financial institutions. Consumer advocates pushed for some relief for homeowners with some minor success but were able to push Congress and the President to create the CFPB to protect consumers going forward and to impose stricter regulation on the finance industry.
The CFPB has been remarkably effective in protecting consumers from fraud and unfair lending practices, returning more than $21 billion to consumers since its founding in late 2010. Follow the money in both directions. Consumers have been protected from fraud on so many level. Banks have been forced to comply with fair lending practices. Just look at the lobbying and political contributions of the financial industry to Congress and you’ll see how effective the CFPB has been.
Dear Senator Collins,
I don't see on your website info on your speaking out about the likely illegal attacks on programs and agencies that Congress authorized by Musk and the Trump administration. We need your voice. I listened to Angus King's remarks on the Senate floor before the vote on Vought's confirmation. I was gob-smacked that it didn't move a single Republican to vote against him. Nor you.
Thank you, Senator King, for your vote against Vought and for you brave, eloquent, and accurate speech on the Senate floor. Where is our other Maine senator in this fight?
It's hard to keep up with the pace of chaos - I remember a high school principal telling me once about a mill near him growing up, how it took years to design and build it but only seconds to destroy it.
I'm hoping that you'll bring the CFPB to the spotlight - it's one of the unheralded success stories, in my view, of government regulation. Tens of billions of dollars have been returned to defrauded individuals and banks overseen to prevent the worst abuses. Also, it's not funded by income taxes. I know that it's been on the radar of finance and industry since its inception and has bravely, steadily worked to keep to its mission. Please help efforts to prevent Musk from "deleting" it. I see his minions got access yesterday and notice their homepage content is gone.
So many issues. You can't be getting much sleep. I'm certainly not.
Thanks again.
A dear friend in Portland helped found a medical sister city project, Konbit Sante, between Portand, Maine and Cap-Haitien, Haiti in 2000, where they have helped build and expand medical care to this area of a quarter million Haitians on the northern coast. It's been an incredibly difficult but successful venture and has been vital to both Haitian and Maine citizens as well as a sign of hope for the world. The recent, possibly illegal shut down of USAID has caused one of Konbit Sante's programs - the only one funded by US government funds - to close. It was a program that offered maternal, infant and child health care. According to Konbit Sante,
As a direct result of this mandated stoppage:
Thousands of children will no longer receive essential vaccinations and vitamins.
Community health workers will no longer run family planning clinics, educate women about their pregnancies, or monitor the conditions of expectant mothers and infants.
Thirty workers in all, including community health workers, nurses, lab technicians, and support staff, are no longer working at Fort Saint Michel.
My thanks to the Senators who are holding the senate floor in filibuster to slow the confirmation process of Trump's nominees. So much conflict of interest, so dangerous a time, so blatant the attempts of the administration to illegally dismantle the agencies and programs that you, Congress, have enacted. I beg you to vote against Vought's confirmation and to find the courage to join the filibuster and start thinking of how to disrupt the dangerous excesses Trump and Musk are trying to get away with. And please work to get Musk out of our business - he has no right to be in the our Treasury, stealing our data, shuttering agencies, firing employees, offering deals.
Dear Senator Collins,
A fork in the road...It seems so indeed. A non-elected, non-confirmed billionaire seems to be in charge of ending programs that Congress enacted, laying off and firing federal workers, stopping government funding.
What was your job again?
I so fear that our president, twice impeached, felony convicted, provocateur of the January 6th attacks - a man unable to abide by the laws and norms of our country - is now making every effort to seize congress's power and finish consolidating his control over the Supreme Court. There aren't many guardrails left, are there? In spite of the fact that so many of your colleagues loathe the man and his relentless bullying and divisive words and actions, despite many of them having been in the Capitol on the day of his attempted insurrection - fearing for their lives - they seem, from this distance, to have become obsequious court fools to the man, fearful (not without reason, I grant) and enabling.
But again, What is your job?
Dear Senator,
I am grateful that you voted against Pete Hegseth's nomination for Secretary of Defense. It is sad that the President would pick someone whose only real competence for the position was his fealty to the President, not his abilities, history or experience. It is a dangerous time when the main qualification for positions seems to be loyalty to the man not the country. I only hope that you will work tirelessly to convince two more of your colleagues to join you in voting against Hegseth's approval when it comes to floor for a final vote.
Dear Representative Golden,
How terribly disappointing that you voted to enact the Laken Riley Act which accelerates the process of stripping due process from residents. You co-sponsor a bill to make sure that silencers canbe used by gun owners, citing among other reasons the confusion of the ban, the overreach. My God, the Laken Riley Act is a terrible overreach, allowing for indefinite detention of folks accused of a crime, any crime no matter how minor, convicted or not. To quote Paul Simon "Sorrow is everywhere you turn -- And that's worth some money, think about it, that's worth some money." What a boon for the private prison industry, what a nightmare for civil rights and due process, what a merciless and cruel act.
The murder of Laken Riley was a terrible act of violence but the Act will not prevent violence but will continue to accelerate people's fears, people's divisions. We need real solutions to immigration reform but not the demonization of those seeking shelter, safety, asylum in a world gone mad with violence and vengeance. You must do better than this, Representative. The Laken Riley Act is a complete red herring bill and does nothing to solve real problems.
Dear Senator Collins,
Who would have thunk it, another four year term with Donald Trump at the helm. And, as before, though he is uniquely unqualified to lead any government, being completely absorbed with his own interests and power, he has the singular gift of of being a substantial mob head, a real "Don", able to intimidate those around him into submission, whether through election "primarying", to tweeted threats against critics, their families, their freedom or by aggregating government control and using it against those against him or even just those who remain neutral. And my, isn't it breath-taking to see senator after senator succumb to these threats, embrace his unqualified, dangerous cabinet picks, crawl to Mar-a-Lago to curry favor - all in the good company of tech tycoons, oil executives and more.
I know you remember only too well the chaos, greed and narcisism of Trump's first four years. Being a team player, you tried to ask hard questions and occasionally would speak out, but were often so willing to give the benefit of the doubt to the man - in spite of his long track record of misogyny, moral and financial bankruptcy, pathological lying, vindictiveness, extortion and chicanery. Eventually, after January 6th, you, too, recoiled and voted to bring him to task, though you, alas, were unsuccesful in that attempt.
Dear Senator King,
You’ve been a steadfast supporter of Israel and have spoken out strongly on Israel’s right to defend itself after the horrendous attacks of October 7.
Israel is the military superpower in the Middle East, but has always been in a precarious and difficult situation with its neighbors. As one Israeli statesman said, “we jumped out of a building on fire and landed on another people.” In it’s attempt to keep its own people safe, Israel has brought increased oppression and fear to its Palestinian neighbors. Not an easy situation for any of the parties.
I know he used this analogy more than once but in April of 2009 Obama remarked "moving the ship of state is a slow process. States are like big tankers, they're not like speedboats. You can't just whip them around and go in a new direction. Instead you've got to slowly move it and then eventually you end up in a very different place." I think the same is true of the economy.
Dear Senator Collins,
In situation after situation, crisis after crisis, opportunity after opportunity, you have let down your constituents in Maine. During President Trump's tenure, you most often went along and enabled him, rarely spoke out against constitutional outrages beyond "I think he's learned his lesson now." In backing Mitch McConnell's blockage of Merritt Garland during Obama's presidency to voting for Trump's radically conservative justices pushed through by McConnell, you have continued to foster a system that allows minority rule and extreme attacks on civil rights and democracy itself. Except for rather narrow "feel good" legislation and bills that directly bring money into Maine, you have simply been a cog in the wheel. We elect Senators to represent the people but also to use the insight from their position of power to lead, especially through difficult times...
