Nearly one year after President Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in the hopes of stopping certification of the 2020 election, the Maine House of Representatives debated a resolution commemorating the assault on Congress that ultimately led to the conviction of more than 1,270 rioters.
Three lawmakers spoke, all Republicans. Their objections mostly centered on how the rioters were described — “insurrectionists,” “domestic terrorists.”
The debate was over in about three minutes.
At that time, no Republicans were willing to state on the House floor some of the unfounded claims circulating among MAGA influencers, primarily that the riots were a false flag staged by leftists, the FBI or other enemies to entrap Trump demonstrators into ransacking the Capitol building and attacking police with bats, poles, bear spray and other weapons.
A lot has changed in four years.
This week, the House debated a bill designating Jan. 6 as a “day to remember.” Fourteen lawmakers spoke during a fiery debate that raged for 35 minutes. It would have gone much longer if Rep. Billy Bob Faulkingham, the Republican minority leader, hadn’t called for a truce.
“It’s just becoming mean and nasty and I would just encourage members to end this debate and take it to social media,” he said. “Take it outside. Take it wherever you need to take it ... But we’re not convincing each other in here.”
Faulkingham’s plea came shortly after an exchange between Rep. Barbara Bagshaw, R-Windham, and Rep. Marc Malon, D-Biddeford. Bagshaw attended the “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6 and later joined the crowd that marched on the building as Congress was set to certify the election. She said she didn’t go into the Capitol, but she also claimed a police officer in riot gear was urging the demonstrators to enter the building.
“They were trying to incite violence,” she said.
Bagshaw went on to assert that weapons were laid out for the demonstrators.
"There were weapons put out on the steps," Bagshaw said. "There were pitchforks, people were trying to cause violence. These were not the Trump supporters that were there."
Malon rose to respond, taking particular issue with Bagshaw’s suggestion that “Capitol Police provoked their own attack.”
Capitol Police released 14,000 hours of video of the attack in 2021. An additional 40,000 hours of security footage was released in 2023. Some of it was used to support the criminal charges against the rioters, including 140 separate assault charges against police. Fifteen Maine residents were charged.
Nevertheless, the president and his supporters have maintained that the rioters are patriots and, after their convictions, political prisoners — an assertion backed by assistant minority leader Rep. Tina Smith, R-Palermo. She described the prosecutions as a “witch hunt led by the Biden administration and a corrupt FBI.”
Trump pardoned nearly all 1,600 of those charged or convicted when he returned to office this year, including members of right-wing militant groups convicted of seditious conspiracy. He has floated creating a taxpayer-funded compensation fund for those who were made to pay for $1.5 million in damage to the Capitol as part of their criminal sentences. His Justice Department recently expressed support for the idea.
Meanwhile, some of the rioters are working to profit from their notoriety. The day after the Maine House debated and passed the Jan. 6 remembrance bill, the Washington Post reported how self-described “J6ers” are selling T-shirts, coffee mugs, Confederate flags and other wares.
One example: Adam Johnson, who admitted to a judge that it was “very stupid” to show off the lectern swiped from former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s plundered office, is now selling miniature toy versions of it for $200 apiece.
Against that backdrop, it’s perhaps unsurprising that some Republican lawmakers felt emboldened to share their views of Jan. 6 on the House floor. Republicans in the Senate did not follow suit when the remembrance bill came to the upper chamber on Wednesday, although all of those present voted against it.
A primary for Golden?
When U.S. Rep. Jared Golden first won a seat in Congress in 2018, he was widely hailed by Democrats as the solution to the Trump-friendly 2nd Congressional District.
The Marine and combat veteran was unapologetically pro-abortion rights. He supported Medicare for all. And he knocked off Democrats’ nemesis Rep. Bruce Poliquin, defeating an incumbent in the 2nd District for the first time in more than a century while also becoming the first congressional candidate to win a ranked-choice election.
“I believe in our campaign we've gotten back to our Democratic Party's roots,” Golden said during his victory speech.
The ranked-choice runoff was overseen and called by former Secretary of State Matt Dunlap.
Now, Dunlap, currently the state’s auditor, is considering challenging Golden in next year’s Democratic primary “to provide the direction our nation needs."
We don’t yet have a full picture of Dunlap’s disagreement with Golden’s policy positions, but he has suggested that the congressman has a communication problem with Democratic voters, especially when it came to his vote for the SAVE Act.
The Republican-backed bill ostensibly aims to prohibit noncitizens from voting in elections, but opponents have noted that noncitizen voting is a rare occurrence that’s already illegal in federal elections. No state allows it, although it is permitted in about two-dozen municipalities nationwide.
The bill has angered Democrats and voting rights advocates. That’s partially because it could present barriers for women who have changed their last name if states don’t adopt policies to get around its requirement that people provide a government-issued ID, such as a passport, alongside their birth certificate.
The bill has cleared the GOP-led House, but is unlikely to get through the U.S. Senate.
Still, Golden’s attempt to defend the vote has not gone over well with Democrats, who have flooded his social media and blog posts with bruising replies. The backlash is reminiscent of the blowback Golden received when he wrote a column in the Bangor Daily News last summer predicting Trump’s victory — and that he was “OK with it.”
He has since sided with Trump’s tariff scheme, offering mild critiques of its deployment.
He has generally avoided directly criticizing the president. That, too, has angered Democratic voters at a time when polls suggest that they want more fight from Democratic politicians against Trump’s agenda.
Golden remains an abortion-rights supporter and he opposes a GOP budget blueprint that he warns will slash Medicaid, the health program for low-income people. He has backed off his support for Medicare for All, now favoring a health care model that would not ditch private insurance plans.
That’s enough to earn the ongoing support of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which described Golden as a “stalwart defender of Mainers’ values” who is “uniquely-suited to win tough races” after Dunlap floated the possibility of a primary challenge early this week.
Golden, for his part, issued a statement to the Portland Press Herald, saying Dunlap has a small chance of beating him and “zero chance of beating Paul LePage,” the former two-time Republican governor who announced his candidacy earlier this month.
Meanwhile, Dunlap’s prospective candidacy is generating considerable buzz in Democratic circles. Golden hasn’t faced a primary since he first ran for the seat in 2018, but he might just get one in 2026.
Super PACs lawsuit headed to court
Next week, a federal judge in Portland will hear oral arguments on a voter-approved campaign finance law that could have major national implications.
Last fall, nearly 75% of Maine voters supported a ballot initiative that established a $5,000 cap on annual contributions to so-called super PACs that spend money on candidate elections. While the initiative flew under the radar given the other elections last year, the referendum intentionally made Maine the national test-case in the fight against “big money” in politics.
Supporters hope Thursday’s hearing in U.S. District Court will be the first step toward getting the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. Opponents who sued to block the law, meanwhile, point out that lower courts have consistently overturned such limits on “independent” spending.
Super PACs play an increasingly influential role in elections.
They are political action committees that can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money to support or oppose candidates. But they cannot contribute directly to a candidate, nor can they coordinate their political activity with a candidate’s campaign — hence why they make what are known as “independent expenditures.”
Traditional PACs, by comparison, can contribute up to $5,000 directly to candidates each election.
Super PACs were a byproduct of the 2010 Supreme Court decision in Citizens United that opened the door for unlimited political spending (a form of “free speech,” in the court’s view) by corporations, labor unions and other organizations.
The decision also led to an explosion in “dark money,” which is spending by groups that do not have to disclose their donors. While super PACs are required to disclose donors, the dark money groups who provide them with huge sums of political cash don’t have to say who gave them the money in the first place. And in 2024, dark money groups funneled more than $1 billion to super PACs, according to the campaign finance watchdog site Open Secrets.
All of which brings us to last November’s ballot in Maine.
Question 1 set a $5,000 annual limit on contributions to super PACs that spend money on candidate campaigns. The groups behind the initiative — the national group Equal Citizens and the Maine-based organization Citizens to End SuperPACs — argued that super PACs frequently violate the no-coordination firewall with campaigns. And they said allowing unlimited contributions invites illegal quid-pro-quo transactions between dark money donors and candidates.
“Question 1 to limit super PACs does not limit free speech in any way,” said Cara McCormick with Citizens to End SuperPACs. “Super PACs can still say whatever they want and spend whatever they can. They just can’t take more than $5,000 from any one person under the new law.”
Two Maine-based PACs, Dinner Table Action and For Our Future, are now asking the federal courts to overturn the state’s new law. Working with lawyers at the Institute for Free Speech, they argue Maine’s $5,000 limit clearly violates free-speech protections enshrined in Citizens United and a subsequent case, SpeechNow v. FEC, in the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals, which is widely considered the nation’s second-highest court.
“We challenge an unconstitutional law that severely restricts important free speech and association rights,” said Alex Titcomb, who helps lead both PACs. “The backers knew it was unconstitutional when they advanced it. We hope the court will join every other court to consider the issue and recognize that Maine citizens enjoy the freedom to speak, associate, and advocate without government interference.”
Lawmakers’ work is piling up
The Maine Legislature is headed into what is supposed to be its final month of the 2025 session. Here are just a few the major issues that lawmakers still have to resolve:
- Paid Family Medical Leave: Lawmakers are considering a host of potential changes to the new law allowing many workers to take up to 12 weeks of paid time off to care for a loved one or themselves. Republican bills to scrap the program altogether are nonstarters in the Democratic-controlled Legislature. But lawmakers from both parties have been working with business groups on potentially more minor changes.
- MaineCare funding: Democrats plugged a $118 million gap in the state’s Medicaid program earlier this spring. But Republicans continue to call for substantive changes regarding eligibility and work requirements to put the program on a more sustainable footing. Democratic Gov. Janet Mills also proposed several controversial changes.
- Transgender athletes: The Judiciary Committee has yet to decide what to do with multiple bills to ban transgender athletes from girls’ and women’s sports. Republicans want Maine to fall in line with the Trump administration’s demands to ban the athletes. The question is whether any cracks will emerge in the Democratic caucus when the bills hit the House and Senate floors.
Maine's Political Pulse was written this week by State House bureau chief Steve Mistler and State House correspondent Kevin Miller, and produced by news editor Andrew Catalina. Read past editions or listen to the Political Pulse podcast at mainepublic.org/pulse.
