Congress

Jordan Wood joins crowded Maine Senate race

Published

33 minutes ago

July 9, 2026

HARPSWELL, Maine — Jordan Wood, a former Capitol Hill staffer, is the latest candidate to announce a run for the Democratic nomination in Maine’s Senate race after Graham Platner dropped out Wednesday evening.

Wood signaled his interest in running for the seat earlier this week as Democrats across the state scrambled to float their own names to replace Platner on the ballot. Now, he’s making it official.

“This has been a tough week for all of us in Maine who have demanded real change in Washington and in our lives,” he said in a statement on Thursday. “Our campaign will continue to build on the powerful populist movement Graham started, and I welcome every Mainer who believed in his vision to continue to build that better world.”

This is Wood’s second go at a Senate bid this cycle. Late last year, he ended his nascent Senate bid to run in the Democratic primary for the battleground House seat being vacated by Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine). He finished a close third in that contest.

Several of the announced candidates, including former public health official Nirav Shah and former Maine Senate President Troy Jackson, are maneuvering to cement themselves as the standard-bearer of Platner’s progressive outsider mantle. That may prove a harder task for Wood, who faces an uphill battle to reintroduce himself to voters and distance himself from his time working in Washington.

He’s already trying to shed that D.C. connection: “I’ve got a message for Chuck Schumer and the DSCC: Maine doesn’t need Washington insiders picking our senator. That’s a decision for the people of Maine,” he said.

Congress

Capitol agenda: Collins loses her foil in Platner

Published

3 hours ago

July 9, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Susan Collins’ fight to hold onto her seat just got messier.

Republicans had welcomed Graham Platner as a foil to Collins, who is trying to win a sixth Senate term in a state that voted for Kamala Harris in 2024.

But now, while Maine Democrats prepare for an intense two week sprint to replace Platner, Collins’ team will have to start from scratch in their strategy against a new nominee — who may not be known until close to the party’s July 27 deadline to declare one.

And according to a person familiar with the campaign’s thinking, Collins’ team had viewed Platner as a uniquely vulnerable opponent whose personal controversies could help offset a big challenge in 2026: running as a Republican in the era of President Donald Trump.

Polling published in late June showed Collins and Platner in an extremely close race.

“She can certainly win, but they didn’t want to change candidates,” the person familiar with the campaign’s thinking said. “The stuff we already knew about Platner was going to propel Collins to overcome the Trump anchor. Now it’s going to be a Democrat with a cleaner record, presumably.”

Collins didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Republicans are signaling at least one playbook for moving forward: trying to tar any replacement Democrat with Platner by association. POLITICO reported Monday about an accusation of sexual assault against Platner, which he denies.

“Democrats rolled in the mud with Platner, and now they are completely stained by their association with this sick monster,” Republican National Committee Chair Joe Gruters said in a statement.

Now all eyes are on Maine’s Democratic Party, which Wednesday approved tentative plans for a nominating convention.

Platner, for his part, did not immediately endorse another candidate, saying in his withdrawal video Wednesday night the process must be “open” and controlled by the “people of Maine.”

Washington Democrats, meanwhile, are turning their focus to Collins while wanting to avoid the appearance of interfering with the selection of a new nominee.

“Democrats are going to defeat Susan Collins, win Maine, and take back the Senate,” posted Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who has encouraged a Maine-centric process to replace Platner, according to a person familiar, granted anonymity to discuss the situation.

Top Democratic funding groups have also announced they’re jumping back into the race.

“Susan Collins is more vulnerable than she has ever been after voting with Trump 96 percent of the time, being the decisive vote for the justices who overturned Roe v. Wade, and selling out to the special interests that fund her campaigns after three decades in the Senate,” Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Executive Director Devan Barber said in a statement.

What else we’re watching:

— NO END IN SIGHT FOR HILL’S EPSTEIN PROBE: Nearly one year into House Oversight’s Jeffrey Epstein investigation and neither party sees a reason to stop. Oversight Chair James Comer, who had originally hoped to wrap up interviews by August recess, said “it’s probably going to be hard because it seems like … after every deposition we get another name or two that we need to talk to.” That means the congressional Epstein probe could continue for the foreseeable future regardless of who wins the midterms, not only out of hopes of finding a smoking gun but also because the political incentives to keep investigating — for both parties — are impossible to resist.

— DEMS LOOK TO VOTES, DOLLARS IN IRAN WAR PROTEST: Democratic leadership is eyeing ways to check Trump’s ability to wage war in Iran after a successful vote on the issue last month didn’t slow him down. Democrats could force votes on new war powers measures when the chamber returns next week in an attempt to replicate last month’s politically symbolic win. But the party’s best leverage for stopping the war may be money.

Jordain Carney, Sophia Cai, Hailey Fuchs, Connor O’Brien and Leo Shane III contributed to this report.

Congress

‘This is just the beginning’: 1 year in, there’s no end in sight for Congress’ Epstein probe

Published

6 hours ago

July 9, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

The House Oversight Committee’s Jeffrey Epstein investigation will hit the one-year mark later this month, and the saga isn’t ending anytime soon.

No matter which party ends up in control in the next Congress, the Oversight panel will remain under pressure to continue to investigate the late convicted sex offender and the web of power players who may have been complicit in his crimes.

Democrats are making clear that they view the committee’s work under Republican leadership as incomplete and that the Epstein case will be central to their oversight of President Donald Trump’s administration if they win the majority in the midterms.

“This is just the beginning,” Rep. Melanie Stansbury of New Mexico, an Oversight Democrat, said in an interview. “I believe this is the administration’s Watergate. I think that it’s clear that they are complicit in covering crimes and shielding the president from accountability and evading the law, and so I’d like to see all of them in front of the committee under oath.”

Republicans, meanwhile, say that the public’s appetite for answers in the Epstein case won’t be satiated no matter what new details the panel unearths.

“People are never satisfied with the congressional investigation throughout history,” said Oversight Chair James Comer of Kentucky, who, due to GOP term limits, will no longer be the panel’s top Republican in the next Congress.

While he had hoped to wrap up interviews by the August recess, Comer added, “It’s probably going to be hard because it seems like … after every deposition we get another name or two that we need to talk to.”

That means the congressional Epstein probe could continue for the foreseeable future, not only out of hopes of finding a smoking gun but also because the political incentives to keep investigating — for Democrats as well as Republicans — are impossible to resist.

The panel has interviewed more than a dozen people, and none so far have shared any new information culminating in criminal charges. But the panel has made history by making a host of powerful people answer for their willful association with a convicted sex offender — among them Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, the billionaire investor Leon Black and tech mogul and philanthropist Bill Gates. Black and Gates both admitted to knowing about Epstein’s criminal history, at least in part, while continuing to associate with him.

There have been some other revelations, too. Sarah Kellen, a former Epstein assistant, gave lawmakers the names of two men potentially implicated in Epstein’s misdeeds: Hair stylist Frédéric Fekkai and former Miami Beach mayor Philip Levine, who both have denied wrongdoing.

Black, in the middle of his transcribed interview, was slapped with subpoenas that will force him to reappear and hand over nondisclosure agreements that could be tied to Epstein.

And ousted former Attorney General Pam Bondi underscored the extent to which her then-deputy, Todd Blanche, led the Justice Department’s haphazard release of the Epstein files after Congress forced the department’s hand last fall. Blanche — now the acting attorney general vying to lead the DOJ permanently — is expected to be heavily questioned about the matter at his Senate confirmation hearing next week, and House Oversight could separately call him in to speak with the panel in the coming weeks.

Rep. Robert Garcia of California, who is poised to become Oversight chair next year if Democrats sweep the fall elections, noted the ongoing investigation has also set a new precedent: The panel’s decision earlier this year to compel the sworn testimony of former President Bill Clinton, he said, could pave the way for subpoenaing other commanders-in-chief.

That includes Trump, who has drawn scrutiny for his own relationship with Epstein. Democrats have argued the administration has concealed the extent of that relationship, but Trump has maintained that he and Epstein had a falling-out long before Epstein’s death by suicide behind bars in 2019. The president has not been charged with wrongdoing.

There are, however, clear limits to what Congress can do to bring people to account. Already, committee Republicans have recommended that the Justice Department investigate allegations against Fekkai and Levine.

In a statement, a DOJ official confirmed the department had received the recommendation from the committee, and the FBI was looking into it.

“The allegations Kellen made in her interview to Oversight included names of purported perpetrators that she apparently did not raise in her FBI interviews during the course of the investigations into Epstein and Maxwell,” the official said. “The FBI is in the process of confirming that. If, during the course of their review, FBI encounters of evidence of a federal crime, they will investigate that matter.”

Comer hinted that the House Oversight Committee would pursue criminal referrals to the DOJ, too: “We believe there are people that deserve to be prosecuted, and we’re going to do everything in our ability to see that happen. I promised the survivors that.”

Garcia said some witnesses who came to testify voluntarily and were not sworn in under oath would, in a Democratic majority, be called back again to give formal depositions, such as Bondi. Committee Democrats have also expressed an interest in subpoenaing testimony from FBI Director Kash Patel as they explore not just Epstein’s network of associates but the federal government’s uneven handling of the matter.

The Epstein probe will not be over, Garcia pledged, “until they release all the files and until … ideally, criminal convictions out of the DOJ.”

But any referrals would be merely advisory — only the Trump administration can decide who to target with federal charges. It’s also highly unlikely that a sitting president could be compelled to participate in the committee’s Epstein probe through a subpoena.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) suggested that the House effort was only serving to provide cover for the Justice Department to avoid accountability.

“Frankly, bringing all these people in is still part of the charade and the diversion from what should happen, which is, the DOJ should bring charges against people for whom there’s credible evidence,” Massie, who lost his reelection primary to a Trump-backed challenger, said in an interview. “Everything that happens in Oversight is just a part of trying to shellac over the whole thing.”

Massie teamed up last year with Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) to force a vote on legislation requiring the Justice Department to make public all the Epstein materials in its possession. The Trump White House sought to block the measure, and with Republicans not wanting to disobey their president or alienate their base clamoring for transparency, Speaker Mike Johnson sent the House home rather than keep members in town to writhe amid the uproar.

But before lawmakers departed, Democrats forced a surprise bipartisan vote during an Oversight subcommittee hearing compelling the Justice Department to turn over the Epstein files to Congress. That vote launched the Epstein probe at a time when the DOJ was still refusing to cooperate fully on its own — a shift that took place in November, when Trump finally relented and allowed Congress to pass Massie and Khanna’s Epstein Files Transparency Act with near-unanimous support.

Since that time, the rollout of the files has been full of mistakes, including botched disclosures of victim information and excessive redactions. Lawmakers of both parties argue the DOJ has not fully complied with the law.

Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), another Oversight Committee member, said he didn’t know how the Epstein investigation would end but wasn’t optimistic there would be a satisfying conclusion.

“This town moves — I mean, glaciers run past us,” Burchett said. “We’ve been studying the Kennedy assassination, and we’re still getting information on it. … I don’t have a lot of faith in the system. I don’t care who’s in charge. I think that the sewer is too deep.”