Tag Archive for: Maine

‘He Lost Me’: Jonathan Turley Rebuts Biden’s ‘Assault On Democracy’ Speech In Less Than 60 Seconds

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George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley said that President Joe Biden’s speech about democracy “seemed rather conflicting” in the details Friday.

Biden claimed former President Donald Trump promised an “assault on democracy” during the Friday speech near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, saying defending democracy was a “central cause” of his administration. During the speech, Biden cited the riot at the Capitol building during the certification of the electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021.

“He lost me in the specifics,” Turley told Fox News host Martha MacCallum. “He talks about democracy being on the ballot but the ballot isn’t very democratic, his own party is trying to strip ballots of Donald Trump’s name to prevent people who want to vote for what appears to be the leading candidate for the presidency from doing that.”

WATCH:

Democratic Secretary of State Shenna Bellows of Maine ruled Trump was ineligible for the office of President of the United States Dec. 28, citing the 14th Amendment’s “insurrection” clause. The Colorado Supreme Court ruled Trump was disqualified from appearing on the ballot in the 2024 election in a 4-3 decision Dec. 19. The Supreme Court took up Trump’s appeal Friday.

“So when he’s talking about the freedom to vote and have your vote count, his party is actively trying to prevent that and saying, really, you’re not just voting for me, just think you’re voting for democracy,” Turley continued. “For those people, they really feel like, if we vote for you, do we get democracy back next time? Are we going to have all of the candidates on the ballot? I don’t think that effort will succeed.”

Turley also pointed out the Biden administration’s efforts to censor critics. United States District Judge Terry A. Doughty of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana issued an injunction July 4 prohibiting Biden administration officials with multiple agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Health and Human Services, from contacting social media companies to push for “the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech.”

The Supreme Court is considering whether to hear an appeal from the Biden administration.

“It’s worth noting when he talks about the freedom of speech, the Biden administration I have written before, is the most anti-free-speech administration since the administration of John Adams,” Turley said. “I mean, his administration has carried out what a federal court called an Orwellian censorship program with the help of social media companies.”

“Part of the speech was, in fact uplifting, but then when you got down to the details, it seemed rather conflicting for this president,” Turley concluded.

AUTHOR

HAROLD HUTCHISON

Reporter.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

COREY LEWANDOSWKI: Donald Trump Is A Juggernaut That Can’t Be Stopped

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That’s right. Let’s face it, many have tried to stop Donald J. Trump, but few, if any have been successful. Yes, it’s true I’ve heard all the stories about who “could” beat former President Donald Trump, Gov. Ron DeSantis, former Gov. Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy, etc. etc. etc., but the reality is none of them are going to beat him.

Trump’s biggest concern, that is until the Supreme Court weighs in, is liberal, self-aggrandizing individuals who are using the power of their office to keep him off the ballot. Let’s take for instance the Secretary of State of Maine, Shenna Bellows.

Now, just to be clear, she was NOT elected by the people of Maine to be the Secretary of State. She didn’t win an overwhelming majority and come to office with a mandate. No, no, she was “elected” by the legislature.

Ms. Bellows determined that Trump, a former president of the United States, and the current front runner for the Republican nomination for president will not be allowed on the ballot in Maine because he “took part” in an insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021.

Not only is that complete nonsense — it’s not based on any sort of fact of law. As we all know, Trump, for all the charges that have been brought against him so far, has never even been charged with the crime of insurrection. So, why is Ms. Bellows attempting to keep Trump off the ballot?

Simple, Trump’s campaign is a runaway train that can’t be stopped. He has a historic lead amongst those polled in the upcoming caucus state of Iowa.

According to the Real Clear Politics (RCP) average Trump has a 32.7% lead over his closest competitor in Iowa. Also, according to RCP, in my home state of New Hampshire, Trump maintains a lead of over 20 points to his nearest rival.

Moreover, in the key battleground states — those five states that will determine the outcome of the next presidential election, Trump is beating Joe Biden in every single one — and it’s driving the left crazy. They simply can’t allow it. They must DO something, anything. But what?

They have decided to make up and convict an individual of a charge he has never been charged with. That’s how they justify keeping Trump off the ballot.

They are so afraid he is going to win again their Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) has gotten in the way of basic logic.

Let’s face it, the media can only do so much to prop up Sleepy Joe. For years the media told us Trump can’t win — the polls no longer bear that out.

Trump currently holds a 2.2% lead over Joe Biden in the RCP average. For years the media told us Biden would unite the country and we would prosper financially — again, didn’t happen.

Here we are, at the beginning of 2024. The unofficial start of the campaign and things are breaking Trump’s way.

The issue of Illegal Immigration is paramount to most Americans — this helps Trump. President Biden’s epic failure to secure our southern border has had a catastrophic impact on our country — even liberal mayors and governors in blue cities and states have had enough.

Biden’s approval rating is woeful, with 40.5% approving and 55.9% disapproving of the job he’s doing. What’s even worse for the Biden Administration is that only 25.1% of respondents believe the country is on the right track while 67.3% says we are headed in the wrong direction.

With the electability argument against Joe Biden out the window and prominent members of the democrat establishment like David Axelrod and Jennifer Palmieri raising alarm bells over Biden’s chances for a second term – Donald Trump just keeps getting stronger and strong.

I am looking forward to the primary season getting fully underway. I will relish Donald Trump’s dominance in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.

Then in early March, it’s super Tuesday. A day that will unequivocally establish President Trump as the GOP nominee in 2024. The only thing that could stop President Trump now is the continued disenfranchisement of voters by people trying to keep Trump off the ballot.

I always say the American people are smart. They see what people like Shenna Bellows and others are trying to do by attempting to keep Trump off the ballot in their states.

This will only embolden the electorate to come out and support Trump more enthusiastically. The result will be Donald J. Trump as the 47th President of the United States. Happy 2024 America.

AUTHOR

COREY LEWANDOWSKI

Corey Lewandowski is a former Trump 2016 campaign manager and 2020 senior adviser.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Meet The Left-Wing Activist Politician Who Kicked Trump Off The Maine Ballot

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Democratic Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, the woman responsible for kicking former President Trump off the state’s 2024 election ballot, is a longtime left-wing activist and Democratic politician.

Bellows unilaterally removed Trump from the ballot Thursday night under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, barring individuals from running for office if they engaged in an insurrection. The former president has not been charged with, or convicted of, engaging in an insurrection.

Bellows became Maine’s Secretary of State in January of 2021 after she was elected by the legislature following two terms in the Maine senate from 2016-20, her official bio states. Her second term began in January of 2023 and goes for two years.

From 2005-13, Bellows was the executive director of Maine’s branch of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), a left-wing legal group, until she ran for senate in 2014 and lost handily to current Republican Maine Sen. Susan Collins, who came out against Bellows’ ruling.

Bellows advocated for ranked-choice voting, same-sex marriage and same-day voter registration during her time leading Maine’s ACLU chapter. She got her start with the ACLU in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks as an organizer in the activist group’s Washington, D.C. office, an archived bulletin shows.

Before the ACLU, Bellows graduated from Middlebury College. She lives with her husband Brandon in Manchester, Maine, in the central part of the state. Middlebury is renowned as one of the most progressive liberal arts colleges in the northeast, and has been the subject of multiple political controversies regarding free speech on campus in recent years.

As a state senator, Bellows represented parts of Kennbec County, Maine, in the southern part of the state and chaired the Labor and Housing Committee. Ahead of the 2020 presidential election, Bellows expressed support for then-Democratic candidate Joe Biden and said America must restore its civility.

Bellows called the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot an “insurrection” and called for Trump’s impeachment for his conduct leading up to the riot. “The fundamental right of any American citizen to vote freely, fairly and to have their vote counted is the premise of our democracy. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights are not values to be compromised away,” Bellows previously stated in a Jan. 4, 2022 social media post.

She appeared on CNN Thursday to defend her “unprecedented” decision to remove Trump from Maine’s ballot based on the insurrectionist ban.

“So — again, I am so mindful – and I said this in my decision – that it is unprecedented. No secretary of state has ever deprived a presidential candidate of ballot access based on Section Three of the 14th Amendment. But no presidential candidate has ever engaged in insurrection and been disqualified under Section Three of the 14th Amendment,” Bellows asserted. Her comments echoed an earlier press release her office sent out explaining the decision.

Maine is the second state to remove Trump from its presidential ballot after Colorado’s supreme court ruled on Dec. 19 to disqualify Trump from its GOP primary. The Colorado Republican party is appealing the 4-3 decision to the Supreme Court, allowing Trump to remain on the ballot pending the highest court’s decision.

Trump is the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, according to the RealClearPolitics state and national polling averages.

“The Maine Secretary of State is a former ACLU attorney, a virulent leftist and a hyper-partisan Biden-supporting Democrat who has decided to interfere in the presidential election on behalf of Crooked Joe Biden. We are witnessing, in real-time, the attempted theft of an election and the disenfranchisement of the American voter,” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement.

“We will quickly file a legal objection in state court to prevent this atrocious decision in Maine from taking effect, and President Trump will never stop fighting to Make America Great Again.”

AUTHOR

JAMES LYNCH

Investigative reporter. James Lynch can be reached on Twitter @jameslynch32.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

‘It’s Not Right’: Blue City Struggles To Keep Up With Homeless, Migrant Crises

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  • The city of Portland, Maine, is scrambling to keep up with a homeless crisis, along with arrivals of migrants in need of city services.
  • The city continues to open up new shelter space and move migrants out to other areas, as well.
  • “The influx of asylum seekers has grown every year since Portland became a sanctuary city and currently the homeless shelter is full of asylum seekers,” Carol Waig, who runs nonprofit My Fathers Hands, which helps the homeless population in Portland, told the DCNF.

PORTLAND, Maine — What’s happening at the border isn’t staying at the border. Thousands of miles north, Maine’s largest city faces a two-pronged crisis as a crush of illegal immigrants has overcrowded homeless shelters and created sprawling tent cities where crime and open drug use run rampant.

The city received more than 1,000 migrants between January and April, according to the city, many of which receive housing and public resources. There are currently around 225 tents making up Portland’s homeless encampments, and individuals inside the encampments, as well as an advocate for the homeless, told the DCNF that there aren’t enough resources to address both problems.

“The influx of asylum seekers has grown every year since Portland became a sanctuary city and currently the homeless shelter is full of asylum seekers,” Carol Waig, who runs nonprofit My Fathers Hands, which helps the homeless population in Portland, told the DCNF.

There were roughly 4,400 homeless individuals in the state of Maine as of January 2022, compared to roughly 2,000 in 2021, according to the Maine State Housing Authority, which says the sharp increase is “likely reflective of a surge in asylum seeking immigrants.”

The city recently created a new emergency shelter to free up 100 to 125 beds, according to its website. It also began busing migrants out of Portland in August, sending them from a temporary emergency shelter in a basketball arena to motels in other areas of the state, Lewiston and Freeport, according to the Associated Press.

“Our staff have been completely at capacity in terms of who they’re able to shelter and assist,” Jessica Grondin, city spokesperson, told the AP at the time.

“People from other countries come here, automatically get housing, get free care, free everything, it’s not right,” Bryce, who said he is homeless in Portland and that he came to the U.S. legally and went through a 10-year citizenship process, told the DCNF of the influx of migrants.

One large homeless encampment in Portland is filled with needles, naloxone used to reverse overdoses and needle disposal containers, the DCNF observed. Drug use is rampant among the camp, one of its residents, who went by Harold, told the DCNF.

“We’re human beings, we don’t want to be here, we really don’t want to be here, we don’t want to live outside, we don’t want to freeze the fuck out every night. Winter time on the Atlantic Ocean in Maine, do you think that’s comfortable when it’s below zero?” Harold said.

Some of Portland’s homeless have been offered shelter and haven’t taken the offers, Grondin told the DCNF.

“Through our [Encampment Crisis Response Team] process we have offered more than 150 shelter beds to people who are in encampments, but have not had overwhelming success in getting people into the shelter,” she said.

“We have expanded our outreach by using our own shelter staff and hiring outreach workers in order to get people into shelter as our focus is on getting people inside,” she continued. “It is our hope that our outreach efforts are successful so we can get people into shelter beds and other resources given that cold weather is now here.”

The migrant arrivals are also expected to continue given Democratic Maine Gov. Janet Mills’ August order to create an “Office of New Americans” and bring in 75,000 new workers by 2029.

The city continues offering assistance to both migrants and the homeless, Grondin said in a statement to the DCNF. Both migrants and homeless qualify for the state’s General Assistance program that provides help paying for housing, fuel, utilities, medical care and burial costs.

City shelters housed an average of 1,200 individuals every night as of June, according to the city website. Some families are also being housed in a contracted hotel.

The city also opened a shelter, the Homeless Service Center (HSC), in March for 208 single individuals, in addition to the city’s family shelter, according to Grondin, who added that the city council in Portland recently “approved expanding capacity at the HSC by 50 beds.”

It is working to provide 120 beds at the HSC that the homeless in Portland’s encampments will have priority to take, Grondin said.

“Our goal is to connect those in encampments with those beds,” she said.

A spokesperson for Mills didn’t respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.

AUTHOR

JENNIE TAER

Investigative reporter.

POST ON X:

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Maine Governor Wants 75,000 More Migrants to Commit Crimes Americans Won’t

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30-year-old Mohammed Sheik and 23-year-old Keyt Hussein were both shot to death.

Maine Gov. Janet Mills has a plan.

Maine Gov. Janet Mills signed an executive order Wednesday intended to establish a new migrant resettlement office, telling the Portland newspaper the administration’s goal is to attract 75,000 new workers to Maine.

The governor announced the goal as part of the press strategy for rolling out an executive order that will eventually create the “Office of New Americans,” a state office that will assist with migrant resettlement and integration throughout the state.

Mills told the liberal Portland Press Herald newspaper that the goal of attracting 75,000 migrant workers to Maine is part of her plan to supply businesses in Maine with “New Mainers” to fill job vacancies.

New Mainers from Somalia have a very important role to play in segments of the Maine economy. Like joining ISIS.

Lewiston woman discovers her ex-husband joined ISIS and was killed in Syria. She’s angry that some are blaming her, labeling her and her children terrorists

Or gang violence.

The Maine State Police Department have identified the two men killed in Lewiston over the weekend. 30-year-old Mohammed Sheik of Auburn and 23-year-old Keyt Hussein were both shot to death.

75,000 more inbound.

You just can’t count on ‘Old Mainers’ to join ISIS or commit random street crime. That’s what the ‘New Mainers’ are for.

AUTHOR

DANIEL GREENFIELD

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

MAINE: Democratic Senate Hopeful Repeatedly Killed ‘Racist’ Bills to Outlaw Female Genital Mutilation

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My latest in PJ Media:

The most revolting news item of the week comes from Maine, where, according to the Washington Free Beacon, “Democratic Senate candidate Sara Gideon repeatedly killed bills to outlaw female genital mutilation during her tenure as the speaker of the Maine House of Representatives.” In amassing this shameful record, Sara Gideon has become Exhibit A of everything that is wrong about identity politics, the Democratic Party, and the Left in general.

The Free Beacon notes that Gideon’s determination to enable the barbaric practice of female genital mutilation (FGM) is abundantly established. She “leveraged her leadership position in the Democrat-controlled legislature to kill two separate bills that would have criminalized the practice of severing the clitoris of infant girls and sewing their vaginas shut.”

Why on earth would Gideon do something as heinous as this? The answer is simple and predictable: “Under Gideon’s leadership, Maine Democrats argued that the bill was racist toward the state’s large immigrant community from Somalia, a country where the practice is ‘nearly universal’ according to the United Nations.”

It’s racist to outlaw FGM? Well, of course it is, because Sara Gideon needs the votes of Maine’s rapidly growing Somali community, and that’s as far as her moral calculus goes. The Free Beacon notes that “Gideon’s efforts have helped make Maine one of only 12 states that have not banned female genital mutilation,” and that “such a legacy threatens to complicate her cultivated image as a champion of women’s rights, one built on her consistent support for abortion access and the #MeToo movement,” but Gideon has shown in opposing efforts to criminalize FGM that she doesn’t really care about women’s rights at all. She poses as a women’s rights advocate when seeking donations from well-heeled Leftists, but she likely knows that those same Leftist donors won’t be concerned in the least about her wanting to allow for the preservation of a time-hallowed Somali cultural practice. After all, any other course of action would be “ethnocentric” and “Islamophobic,” right?

There is much more. Read the rest here.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Maine: African Muslim Refugees Charged in Brutal Murder

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Except apparently it was so brutal that the case (and the autopsy) has been sealed from the media for at least a week! Or, why else would it have been sealed?

Diversity is strength alert!

The story is here at World Net Daily:

Authorities in Portland, Maine, have arrested three Somali-American men in connection with the brutal killing of a man inside his apartment, then moved quickly to seal the case from public view.

Police arrested Abil Teshome, 23, Mohamud Mohamed, 36, and Osman Sheikh, 31, on Thursday. All three are charged with the murder of 49-year-old health-care worker Freddy Akoa.

Mohamed-Mohamud

Mohamed Mohamud, one of three suspects charged in the killing of Freddy Akoa in Portland, Maine. Credit/Portland Press.

[….]

The killing “wasn’t random in nature,” said Police Chief Michael Sauschuck, indicating the alleged killers knew their victim.

The U.S. State Department, in cooperation with the United Nations high commissioner for refugees, has sent 1,379 Somali refugees to Maine since 2002, with 1,010 of them going to Portland, according to the State Department’s refugee database. Records prior to 2002 are not kept online, but the U.N. has been sending Somali refugees to the United States since the early 1990s with the full support of the U.S. Congress, despite the fact that hundreds of them have turned out to be jihadists or criminals.

There is much much more from reporter Leo Hohmann who tells us about how the case is sealed for at least a week from media review.

By the way, my first thought, when I saw the original news yesterday, was that the case involved rival gangs fighting over drugs, but the victim, Freddy Akoa, another immigrant (most likely a Christian, but we don’t know that yet), was by all accounts a successful middle-aged man (with a loving family) working in the health care industry.

Readers often want to know how we know if someone got into the US as a refugee.  For some ethnic groups we don’t know, but virtually all of the Somalis in the US and those in Maine are here as refugees or the children of refugees.  Some may have come illegally, but the Refugee Admissions Program of the UN/US State Department is responsible for the vast majority of Somalis in your towns and cities.  By the way, the accused have not been publicly identified as Somalis yet, but the names of at least two of them are common Somali names.

Hohmann also reports on the bill introduced recently by Rep. Brian Babin of Texas which seeks to suspend the refugee program until questions about the cost and impact on national security have been examined.

Continue reading here.

Maine the welfare state!

We have written a lot about how Somalis got to Maine with the help of Catholic Charities, the primary resettlement agency in the state. Here is a post from 2009 about how Somalis were attracted to Maine welfare.  For years that post was one of our top most-read posts.

The primary resettlement agency in Maine is Catholic Charities.  However, we don’t know if the accused arrived in Maine with the help of a resettlement contractor or were secondary migrants who were resettled somewhere else in America and then moved to Maine to live in one of the Somali enclaves there—in Portland or Lewiston.

Learn about one of the leading figures in Portland promoting more African resettlement for Maine, here.

See our very extensive archive on Maine by clicking here.  There are more murder and crime stories in the archive.

In addition to refugee resettlement, Maine has become a desired state for asylum seekers to head to as it is one of the few states that gives welfare to those seeking asylum who have not yet been granted permission to stay.

RELATED ARTICLE: Buchanan: Immigration the issue of the 21st Century

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of Osman Sheikh, 31, one of the African Muslims in court.