Politics
Republicans need Susan Collins to win reelection. Trump keeps going after her.
Donald Trump said Thursday a Republican senator who is crucial to the party’s chances of keeping the Senate this year should “never be elected to office again.” Susan Collins has seen it before.
Trump issued the Truth Social broadside against the longtime Maine senator and four other Republicans on Thursday after they voted with Democrats to rein in his powers to carry out future military actions against Venezuela, a sharp rebuke of the White House’s unilateral outlook following the capture of Nicolás Maduro.
The president’s online salvo comes as the Maine senator navigates a tough reelection in a blue state that Trump lost by 7 points in 2024. Her bid will rely on a coalition that includes independents and Democrats, many of whom have backed her in the past because of her breaks from Trump and other GOP leaders. But she also needs to turn out Trump’s MAGA base in a year he won’t be on the ticket to juice turnout — a tougher challenge if they’re actively feuding.
Collins told reporters after Trump’s post that she guessed Trump “would prefer to have Gov. Mills or somebody else with whom he’s not had a great relationship” than her — alluding to a confrontation between Maine Gov. Janet Mills and Trump when the governor visited the White House last year. Mills, who is now running to challenge Collins, told Trump she would sue to fight his administration’s actions to restrict transgender youth from sports.
Trump’s attack on Collins was met with laughs from Democrats who said that they, too, would like to see Collins never elected again. She is their top target on a tough Senate map, and if they have any hopes of flipping the upper chamber they need to defeat the shrewd senator.
Mills painted the vote as one of election-year political expediency.
“Susan never does the right or hard thing the first time when it’s needed most — only when it serves her politically. She is always a day late and a dollar short,” Mills said in a statement to Blue Light News. “To the President, I say ‘See you in the Senate!’ Wait until you see what I’ve got in store for your MAGA agenda.”
The campaign of Graham Platner, the other prominent Democrat challenging Collins, did not respond to requests for comment.
Trump’s anger at fellow Republicans has been enough to drive others from office. There is no indication so far the White House is serious about finding a primary challenger to Collins, and they are quickly running out of time if they were to try to do so. But any sustained animosity from Trump toward Collins could still spell trouble for her reelection.
A source close to the Trump administrations granted anonymity to speak candidly told Blue Light News that the general thinking is Republicans will hold the Senate with or without Collins, but didn’t predict a sustained campaign against her: “Like a lot with the president, this is a moment in time, and what is said today does not necessarily hold for tomorrow.”
This is far from the first time Trump has gone after Collins. And criticism from the president ahead of her last reelection bid in 2020 was not enough to tank her.
“Trump has caused no end of problems for Sen. Collins,” said Mary Small, a Republican former state lawmaker in Maine and Collins ally. “I think she’d be in the 70th percentile right now of approval rating if we didn’t have Donald Trump as president. So she’s had to walk a very cautious line.”
Still, blowback from voters loyal to Trump in Maine might be offset by independents and Democrats who appreciate Collins setting her own path, Small said.
“Republicans have never been able to elect someone just on their own,” she said. “She has to have independents support her to get elected, and Democrats.”
Some who’ve been in similar spots say that’s not so easy to manage.
Mike Coffman, the Aurora, Colorado mayor and former five-term GOP congressman, empathized with Collins’ tricky electoral position. Coffman kept Trump at arm’s length during his 2018 reelection bid in hopes of siphoning Democrat support in his swing district, but it wasn’t enough: He lost that race to Democratic Rep. Jason Crow by 11 points in a state that voted for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton two years prior.
“That’s very hard to navigate,” Coffman said of Collins’ relationship to the president. “Because when you distance yourself from Trump you might pick up some support in the middle but you’re going to lose the hardcore Trump supporters whose loyalty is to Trump and not to the Republican Party.”
In Trump’s first term, Collins broke with Senate Republicans to help sink the attempted Affordable Care Act repeal. Then, weeks before the 2020 election — the toughest reelect campaign of her career — Trump blasted her for not supporting his nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. (Collins argued the winner of the 2020 presidential election should get to appoint a new justice.)
Collins still sailed to victory a few weeks later, winning 52 percent of the vote statewide while Trump won just 44 percent.
Democrats are hopeful that the 2026 midterms won’t let her replicate that success. Collins has not had to run for reelection in a midterm with a Republican president since 2002. Trump’s approval rating was 19 points underwater in a Maine poll last month, while Collins didn’t fare much better, at 17 points underwater. That same poll found her tied with both Mills and Platner in hypothetical general election matchups.
When Collins voted in 2021 to convict Trump in his second Senate impeachment trial, she avoided some of the blowback that other GOP senators encountered: Maine Republicans opted not to censure her. No primary challengers have emerged ahead of her 2026 run, with some in the state acknowledging that any alternative to Collins was far more likely to be a Democrat than another Republican.
That hasn’t stopped Trump from criticizing Collins. Just last summer, he posted on Truth Social that Republicans should typically vote “the exact opposite” of the Maine senator, while White House officials privately discussed who they might want to replace her if she opted not to run again.
Former GOP Sen. Mark Kirk, who distanced himself from Trump before losing a Senate race in blue-leaning Illinois in 2016, said he thinks Collins’ longtime popularity in the state will outweigh any attacks from the president. He recalled joking with Collins during a congressional delegation trip overseas about her winning one of her Senate primaries by a “North Korean percentage.”
“Susan Collins has reached that state of nirvana that all of us in the Senate want to reach, to be synonymous with her state,” Kirk said.
“People will say ‘Well, if Donald Trump’s against her, then I’m gonna vote for her,” he added. “My guess is on edge, he will have actually helped her with this.”
Alex Gangitano contributed reporting to this report.
NEW YORK — As South Korea’s largest automobile manufacturer, Hyundai Motor Group is known for its cars. But now, as one of FIFA’s longest-running commercial partners, it’s using the World Cup stage to announce a new focus: robots.
That ambition is clearly laid out in the FIFA Museum presented by Hyundai in New York City. At the iconic 50 Rockefeller Plaza, a robot dog greets visitors at the entrance, nodding its head up and down and shaking its hind. Another humanoid robot, referred to as Atlas, strikes a pose by the door. Above that door, there’s a banner of Atlas rejoicing with its arms up. Inside the building, Atlas stands with a soccer ball in its hands — it’s a popular photo spot with children.
And once inside the elevator leading up to the exhibition hall, the closing doors reveal yet another picture of Atlas, merged into the iconic image of Diego Maradona hoisting the World Cup trophy in 1986. The robots, they are everywhere.
Aside from the museum, Hyundai has also released a five-part documentary on teaching Atlas to play soccer as part of its World Cup marketing. And to cement the role of its robots in the tournament, a number of its robot dogs have been deployed in stadiums to patrol the area for added security.
The incessant display of robots is meant to send a message: Hyundai is now a robotics company — and it wants the world to know. What better place to advertise that than the largest sporting event on the planet?
Hyundai’s robotics ambitions began in earnest in 2020, when the automaker agreed to acquire a controlling stake in Boston Dynamics, the company behind Atlas and the dog-like robot Spot. Since then, the company has increasingly positioned itself as more than a carmaker, describing robotics as a core pillar of its future and investing in robots that can automate factory work and assist with other industrial tasks. The World Cup campaign is the latest step in that bid.
The effort, of course, is not without controversy. Hyundai’s plan to stock its factories in South Korea with robots has met strong resistance from its union, which fears that the humanoid robots will one day replace factory workers. As talks to negotiate wages and the deployment of these robots has stalled, the union overwhelmingly voted Wednesday to authorize a strike. Industrial action from the union, which is considered one of the largest and most influential in South Korea, would be a blow for Hyundai and cost the company hundreds of millions of dollars.
That labor dispute is notable because it could land in the U.S. as well: Hyundai plans to deploy its Atlas humanoid robots in the U.S. by 2028, starting with the Hyundai Motor Group Metaplant America in Georgia, ultimately deploying more than 25,000 robots.
It’s why the PR push for Atlas during the World Cup is so crucial to Hyundai. Hyundai Motor Group is one of FIFA’s select group of global sponsors, ensuring that no other automakers can advertise at official World Cup locations worldwide. When Hyundai renewed its sponsorship contract with FIFA in 2023, it included Boston Dynamics to “showcase future mobility solutions,” as a press release put it at the time.
Within the FIFA Museum, visitors look at the robots with awe rather than the fear associated with job loss and an uncertain future. At a table dedicated to miniature Atlas figures recreating iconic goal celebration poses — Lionel Messi raising his fingers to the sky, Son Heung-min making a camera gesture, Cristiano Ronaldo throwing his arms down — people lean in to take pictures, widening their eyes at the display.
“Mobility and robotics turn every match into a glimpse of new talent, energy, and possibilities,” a nearby sign about Hyundai’s future reads — a promise of optimism that can only be bottled inside the World Cup bubble.
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LOS ANGELES — Despite months of controversy beforehand, Friday’s encounter in Seattle did not turn out to be much of a “Pride Match” at all. Expressions of sexual and gender identity were sparse in the crowd, perhaps due to the random lottery pairing of Iran and Egypt, which have two of the world’s least hospitable societies and most repressive governments towards LGBT people.
Chance has produced a political pairing today that has a much stronger political claim to a “Pride Match” designation: the opening round-of-32 fixture in Los Angeles this afternoon. Canada and South Africa will meet because of the tournament’s bracket architecture, but they are parallel pioneers in gay and lesbian rights — the first two non-European countries to legalize same-sex marriage.
Canada got there first. Courts in its most populous provinces began to rule in 2003 that restricting marriage to opposite-sex couples violated the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, making it possible for gay men and lesbians to marry in much of the country. In 2005, the Liberal Party government led by Prime Minister Paul Martin introduced the Civil Marriage Act, creating a single legal standard for all provinces and territories. It passed a parliamentary vote on July 19, 2005, and became law the next day — placing Canada alongside the Netherlands, Belgium and Spain as the only countries that allowed same-sex marriage nationwide.
South Africa joined them the following year. In December 2005, the Constitutional Court of South Africa ruled that the common-law definition of marriage violated the equal-protection promises of the country’s post-apartheid constitution, which specifically protect people from discrimination on the basis of “sexual orientation.” After the court essentially ordered Parliament to rewrite the law, lawmakers drafted the Civil Union Act, which passed and became law on November 30, 2006.
Now more than three dozen countries allow same-sex unions, including the World Cup’s three North American co-hosts and all of the tournament favorites including Argentina, France, Brazil, Germany, Portugal and England (which along with Wales legalized them in 2014). South Africa, however, remains the only country in Africa.
Canada and South Africa have different constitutional regimes and cultural traditions, but one person links their shared arc as pioneers in LGBTQ+ rights: Montreal human-rights attorney Irwin Cotler, who served on Nelson Mandela’s legal team before becoming Canada’s justice minister. In that role, he was the driving force with Martin’s government to codify same-sex unions through the Civil Marriage Act.
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