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What we're reading
— Two Maine elected officials were found on leaked membership rolls of the Oath Keepers, a far-right group linked to the Capitol riots of Jan. 6, 2021. One of them, Gorham Town Councilor Ben Hartwell, said he joined the group briefly eight years ago but never got involved with it or met members.
— Sen. Susan Collins is on the cusp of helping win over the 10 Republicans needed to pass a bill protecting the federal right to same-sex marriage, with a major LGBTQ-rights group expecting it to succeed.
— Cost increases mean the University of Maine needs $26 million more to begin an athletic facilities makeover. While most of the massive project will be funded by the Alfond Foundation, the money is not in hand yet.
— Police want those protesting regularly outside the Northeast Harbor home of conservative judicial architect Leonard Leo to use chalk instead of paint to scrawl their messages on sidewalks.
— A University of Maine at Fort Kent basketball coach quit his job with the kind of email you have always thought about writing but probably never have, signing off with "all the best, to most of you." Here's your soundtrack. |
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| 📷 Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, speaks during a Senate Rules and Administration Committee hearing to examine the Electoral Count Act on Aug. 3, 2022, at the Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP photo by Mariam Zuhaib) |
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A Maine senator is trying to get the federal government to lower the cost of a cancer drug.
— Sen. Angus King, a Maine independent who caucuses with Democrats, joined a Tuesday letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra urging him to take steps to lower the cost of Xtandi, a prostate cancer drug developed in part due to federal grants but remains up to six times more expensive in the U.S. than it is in other countries.
— King, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts, and a Democratic congressman from Texas want the department to do this by scheduling a hearing on a request for the government to invoke "march-in rights" that allow it to issue or take over patents on drugs that it helped develop.
— This has never been done by the federal government and would be controversial in the pharmaceutical industry. Advocates have lobbied the Biden administration to interpret march-in rights liberally to no avail so far.
A group of lawmakers looking at reestablishing parole in Maine meets today.
— Maine was the first state to repeal parole in 1976, but a commission examining reinstating it meets today at 1 p.m. Watch it.
— It came out of a bill from Rep. Jeff Evangelos, I-Friendship, that looked to restart the system as part of helping imprisoned people integrate easier into society. While it was supported by advocates including the American Civil Liberties Union of Maine, Attorney General Aaron Frey opposed it, noting that parole was repealed because sentences given by judges often bore little resemblance to the ones imposed under the old system.
— The original bill did not have the support to get through the Legislature, but Mills allowed a version forming the commission to pass into law in February. |
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