Congress

Susan Collins finally got her dream job. Fellow Republicans are making it a nightmare.

Published

1 year ago

July 16, 2025

To protect their majority, Senate Republicans are praying Susan Collins decides to seek a sixth term next year. But they aren’t making her life easy right now.

Earlier this month, GOP leaders pushed through President Donald Trump’s megabill while ignoring most of her concerns about safety-net cutbacks that the Maine Republican warned will be “harmful” to her state.

Now, they are barreling forward with Trump’s effort to claw back $9 billion in spending she played a key role in approving. Democrats and even some Republicans warn the maneuver could upend the bipartisan government funding process she now oversees.

Collins mounted a protest Tuesday night, joining two other Republicans in voting to block the Trump administration’s spending clawbacks. Afterward, she said in an interview her vote was in keeping with her longstanding approach to legislating.

“I vote according to what I assess to be in the best interests of my constituents and my country — and I do that regardless of who’s in control of the Senate and who is president,” Collins, 72, said.

Pressed on the recent difficulties her fellow Republicans have given her, she said, “They’re doing what they think is right. I’m doing what I think is right.”

All in all, it has been a disappointing start to the dream job Collins spent decades striving for — chair of the historically powerful Appropriations Committee — and now her power is at risk of being further eroded.

Democrats, mad as hell about the funding clawback, are threatening to withdraw from government funding talks; top Trump administration officials would love to sidestep Congress altogether on spending cuts; and there are few reasons to hope lawmakers are heading toward anything other than a spending patch — or worse, a shutdown — when the fiscal year ends on Sept. 30.

Still, Collins confirmed Tuesday she is still planning on running again, though she has yet to formally launch a campaign. She said she was “pleased” with the strong fundraising she reported this week, collecting $2.4 million in the second quarter of the year and having $5.25 million on hand as of June 30.

But Democrats are holding out hope that the deteriorating environment for bipartisanship on Capitol Hill might cause her to reconsider. More than any other personnel decision, a Collins retirement could upend the 2026 Senate map.

Democrats have a steep road back to the majority, needing to flip an unlikely four seats while also holding onto their own swing seats in Georgia and Michigan. But they view Maine as a top pick-up opportunity, and they would unquestionably have an easier time without Collins on the ballot, potentially allowing them to pour more resources into tougher races.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who recently announced he would retire from his own swing seat, said Collins has a “thankless job” as chair of the Appropriations Committee but also noted the obvious political reality: Without her, Republicans would lose the seat.

“The one thing I am certain of is if Susan Collins is not running for re-election, then that state is even more at risk than North Carolina,” he said.

Maine Democrats are already mobilizing to run against Collins, linking her to the “big, beautiful bill” by calling her the “deciding vote” in the legislation coming up for debate on the Senate floor, even though she ultimately voted against it on final passage. (The vote to start debate was 51-49, so even if Collins had voted no, Vice President JD Vance would have broken the tie.)

“At the end of the day, Donald Trump and Washington Republicans know Susan Collins will have their back,” Tommy Garcia, a Maine Democratic Party spokesperson, said in a statement.

They have taken heart from recent polling showing deteriorating home-state support for Collins, including a Morning Consult survey from April that found 51 percent of Maine voters disapproving of her performance. Separately, 71 percent of respondents to a University of New Hampshire April poll in Maine said that Collins did not deserve to be re-elected, including a majority of Republican respondents.

But Collins, the only Senate Republican from a state won by Kamala Harris, is helped by an obvious rule of political life: You can’t beat somebody with nobody, and so far Democrats have struggled to recruit a big name to challenge her. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and other party leaders are still making overtures to Gov. Janet Mills, who has largely left the field frozen while the party awaits her final decision.

There’s also little expectation Collins would flinch from the political challenge. Her Senate career was all but written off by many political observers in 2020, when polls showed her constantly trailing Democratic rival Sara Gideon. She went on to win by roughly 9 points.

Many in the GOP share Tillis’ view that Collins is about the only Republican who can win a Senate seat in Maine, and she has gotten a wide berth to break with her party because of that. Trump hasn’t lashed out at Collins for opposing the megabill — unlike with Tillis and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul.

“Everybody cuts her a lot of slack,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said on Tuesday night. “She represents … a very blue state. She has to run for reelection this year. She’s the only Republican that can win. And so, you know, she sees the world through a different lens, and she’s always very upfront about what she’s going to do.”

GOP colleagues, he added, “are encouraging her and urging her, doing everything we can to help her to make sure she runs. … She’s got a different calculus, probably than some do in our conference. But there is nobody in our conference who represents a state like hers.”

Democrats’ bet is that Collins concludes that spending another six years in a legislative body whose governing norms have eroded — and a party whose principles she is increasingly out of step with — simply isn’t worth it.

One fellow GOP senator, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said Trump isn’t happy with Collins and might not keep quiet indefinitely.

“He’s very irritated at Susan — very, I can tell,” the GOP senator said of Trump. “But she doesn’t care, because the more Trump gets irritated with her, the better it is for her politics back home.”

Collins “is in an awkward spot” and “gets a pass on a lot of the things that she has to do,” the senator said. But nobody believes Collins’ happy talk about getting government funding back on track, the GOP lawmaker added.

Thune, for his part, said it is his “intention” to “see if there’s a path forward to doing appropriation bills around here.”

“I know Senator Collins … is very interested in a normal appropriations process, and I’m hopeful we can get that back on track,” he said.

But with a 53-seat majority, Senate GOP leaders have already shown their willingness to sidestep Collins. Early in the megabill negotiations she detailed to White House officials, including chief of staff Susie Wiles, what changes she would need to vote for the bill, but leaders didn’t bend the legislation in her direction — and didn’t need to. As with the Trump spending clawback, they calculated they could afford to lose Collins and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), her close ally and friend, by catering to holdouts on the right.

Collins and Murkowski opposed proceeding with the rescissions package Tuesday, emerging unmoved from a last-ditch lunch pitch from White House budget director Russ Vought, who has sought to placate Collins along with other administration officials. Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the former GOP leader, joined them in opposition.

Republicans acknowledge privately that any turbulence in the appropriations process doesn’t help Collins, who has made her gavel and seniority a key part of her home-state image. Just last week, GOP senators had to hit pause on one of the 12 annual funding bills because of a partisan fight over the Trump administration’s plans to relocate FBI headquarters — the sort of dispute the typically bipartisan Appropriations Committee usually expertly resolves.

But they remain confident she’s running and can win despite forcing her to run against large parts of her own party’s agenda. She recently held a campaign event at the National Republican Senatorial Committee, according to one colleague who attended, who described it as a “lobster roll event.”

Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) said he wasn’t worried about Collins, calling her “the greatest politician.”

“She wins by as large a margin as a lot of people in red states,” he said. “She knows her state. She knows how to navigate. I don’t worry about it.”

Calen Razor contributed to this report.

Congress

Trump apparently shares Tom Cotton’s phone number in push to make Daylight Saving Time permanent

Published

1 day ago

October 3, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

President Donald Trump appeared to share Sen. Tom Cotton’s phone number in a Saturday morning social media post imploring the Arkansas Republican to get behind a bill to make Daylight Saving Time permanent.

“Almost everybody wants “The Sunshine Protection Act” to pass, except for Tom Cotton,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “To the Great People of Arkansas, please let your Senator know it would be a GREAT Bipartisan WIN for the United States Senate, and for America, itself.”

The president has spent months personally pushing Senate Republicans to end the practice that sees Americans change their clocks twice a year, cementing more sunlight hours in the evening for all twelve months of the calendar. Cotton, whom Trump called “a friend of mine” in the Saturday post, has long argued that making daylight saving time permanent would leave children, farmers and other early risers in the dark for hours on winter mornings.

One of Trump’s key selling points on Saturday: the PGA tour.

“The PGA TOUR, as an example, needs more Daylight in the afternoon in order to finish their Tournaments,” he said, attaching a letter from PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp endorsing the bill. ”Likewise, regular Golfers, Tennis Players, Hunters and, perhaps most importantly, Farmers who want more Daylight to play or work.

A Blue Light News call to the cellphone number went to voicemail. A spokesperson for Cotton did not respond to a request for comment. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The current version of the bill was introduced in the House in January 2025 by Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.), with Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) leading the Senate version. The legislation would make daylight saving time permanent across most of the country, ending the twice-yearly clock changes. The legislation has been stalled in the Senate since July.

The president encouraged supporters of the bill, dubbed the “The Sunshine Protection Act,” to call Cotton to “let your Senator know it would be a GREAT Bipartisan WIN for the United States Senate, and for America, itself.”

During the 2016 Republican presidential primary, he publicly gave out the personal cellphone number of then-rival Sen. Lindsey Graham after the South Carolina Republican criticized him. Trump, who came to count on Graham as a reliable Senate ally after he won the presidency, revisited the moment during Graham’s funeral in July, acknowledging that sharing the number was something he “shouldn’t have done.”

Kelsey Brugger contributed to this report.

Congress

Sanders to rally for Troy Jackson in Maine

Published

2 days ago

October 2, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Sen. Bernie Sanders will hit the road for Troy Jackson in Maine starting Oct. 10, the first time the progressive leader will stump for the candidate this cycle.

The Vermont independent plans to hold three rallies with Jackson, according to an itinerary shared first with Blue Light News: first in Bangor on Oct. 10th followed by Lewiston and Biddeford on Oct. 11.

The Maine swing will kick off Sanders’ travel for the final stretch of the midterms, covering ground throughout October for House and Senate candidates, POLITICO reported.

“Bernie and Troy know that working people built this country and deserve a government that fights for them,” Jackson spokesperson Dan Gottlieb told Blue Light News. “Susan Collins has had nearly 30 years to deliver, and working Mainers are still getting squeezed while she serves the billionaires and corporate interests who bankroll her campaigns. Mainers don’t need another six years of excuses.”

Sanders campaigned ahead of major wins for progressives in the primary season, speaking at more than 60 rallies since last year’s Fight the Oligarchy tour and endorsing more than 90 candidates up and down the ballot.

He’s also opening his substantial $23 million campaign war chest, POLITICO reported, and contributing hundreds of thousands of dollars toMinnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan’s Senate campaign and others including Angie Nixon in Florida and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison,

Sanders will return to Maine after initially backing Graham Platner’s campaign for Senate. Allegations reported by POLITICO ultimately led him to call on the Democratic nominee to drop out of the race.

Sanders had not formally endorsed Jackson since he clinched the nomination from Platner, though he previously backed Jackson’s initial run for governor.

Congress

Hill: Trump’s ‘lack of favorability’ creating challenging politics

Published

2 days ago

October 2, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

House Financial Services Chair French Hill said he has “no concerns” about winning back his Arkansas seat in the upcoming midterm elections, but the six-term House member acknowledged the political headwinds for his party.

“I consider the atmosphere a very tough political environment right now because of President [Donald] Trump’s lack of favorability at the top, and you know people are concerned about, as I say, what it’s like to live under an inflated economy the last four years,” Hill said in an interview.

Hill is in a solidly red district, according to the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, and said he is up against a “weaker candidate this time than I’ve had in past races.” Polling in the district, however, has shown a tighter race. The two polls done this year placed Democratic challenger Chris Jones ahead of Hill by a few percentage points. Any perceived polling victory for Jones is still well within the margin of error, and one of the polls had a Democratic sponsor.

Stephannie Lane Baker, a spokesperson for Jones, said that “of all the Republicans in Congress, the chairman of the Financial Services Committee doesn’t get to dodge responsibility for this economy. He’s in trouble, and he knows it.”

Additionally, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker’s PAC, Ready for the Fight, committed more than $1 million in television ads through the next five weeks for Jones’ race in Arkansas’s 2nd District, Jordan Abudayyeh, a spokesperson for the PAC confirmed. Overall Democratic spending on advertising for the race was just over $1 million, primarily made up by contributions from the Ready for the Fight PAC, with Republicans spending almost $2.7 million on ad buys, according to AdImpact, an advertising tracking service.

Hill said he has addressed affordability concerns “head on” this Congress.

“My work on housing, my work on the Price Stability Act, my work to try to reduce waste, fraud, and abuse, and drop the federal budget deficit as a percentage of GDP,” Hill said. “All these things can contribute to a more affordable environment for people. So I’ve tried to make that a forefront of my campaign this year.”

Hill was a key architect of the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, a bipartisan housing affordability bill that became law in July. The Price Stability Act, which is unlikely to become law this year, would narrow the Federal Reserve’s current dual mandate of pursuing maximum employment and price stability to focus exclusively on containing inflation.