r/Maine

"U.S. Sen. Susan Collins joined Senate Republicans on Wednesday in blocking a Democratic effort to restore consumer protections rolled back under Pres. Donald Trump, marking the second time in just over a year that she has sided with banks over efforts to limit predatory charges.

The votes targeted a series of policy changes made by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau since the Trump administration took over the agency in early 2025. Those changes weakened oversight of major financial institutions and stripped away protections for consumers, military families and people dealing with medical debt.

Wednesday’s vote continued a broader pattern for Collins on banking issues. In March 2025, she voted to overturn a separate CFPB rule that would have capped overdraft fees at $5. Her votes come as she has accepted nearly $2 million from finance sector donors this election cycle, including more than $500,000 from private equity and investment firms.

One of the resolutions would have restored a Biden-era CFPB policy requiring banks to get a customer’s affirmative consent before charging overdraft fees. Republicans voted the measure down 47-53, with Collins voting against it.

“The Trump Administration is hell-bent on destroying the agency,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee."

Bowdoin College is subjecting me (a founding leader of Bowdoin Socialists, an anti-capitalist, anti-fascist, and anti-Zionist student coalition) to a growing set of charges — including some tied to conduct while I was on medical leave — after I replied "RIP to bro 😿" to a campus email advertising a vigil for Charlie Kirk in September 2025. A fellow student reported the comment as a "direct threat to [their] life."

On February 12, 2026, Bowdoin Socialists published a compilation: "Bowdoin College's Jeffrey Epstein Connections," drawing on the January 2026 DOJ file release, the FCA's 2023 Decision Notice, and the Upper Tribunal's 2025 ruling in Staley v. FCA. One day later, Bowdoin's Director of Student Activities sent a written directive ordering Bowdoin Socialists to cease all online and offline activity on the grounds that we hadn't formally registered. However, student media are "editorially independent of the College and its administration" and the College "has no control over or input on the content of such publications and programming." When I questioned this on February 17, the Director simply replied that he was "passing this along to the Office of the Dean of Students for follow up."

On March 12, 2026, FIRE sent its first public letter to Bowdoin, calling the social media ban on Bowdoin Socialists a violation of our speech rights (at a private college).

On May 15, 2026, FIRE sent a second public letter condemning the ongoing investigations against me personally and demanding all charges be dropped. FIRE assigned a deadline of May 26 to respond.

Despite the ongoing pressure, Bowdoin Socialists is continuing to build out its speaker series for the coming academic year. We have announced two inaugural speakers and are currently in talks with a third:

Mahmood Mamdani is the Herbert Lehman Professor of Government at Columbia University and one of the world's foremost scholars on colonialism and political violence. His books include Citizen and Subject, Good Muslim, Bad Muslim, Neither Settler nor Native, and, most recently, Slow Poison: Idi Amin, Yoweri Museveni, and the Making of the Ugandan State. Professor Mamdani is also the father of Zohran Mamdani '14, the Mayor of New York City, who founded Bowdoin's SJP chapter.

Anthony Fantano is widely recognized as the most influential music critic of his generation. In 2007, he joined WNPR and launched The Needle Drop as a music review blog before moving to YouTube in 2009. The channel has since accumulated approximately 1.2 billion views. The New York Times has called him "the only music critic who matters (if you're under 25)."

Hasan Piker is a leftist political commentator and one of the most-watched livestreamers in the United States. Bowdoin Socialists is currently in talks with Piker about an in-person event at the college.

I know I’m getting ahead of myself and we’re a couple months out from peak blueberry season, but I’m wondering if anyone has any recommendations for farms or places where I can pick my own blueberries! Preferably in southern or central Maine.

We had a few bushes at the house I grew up in and I miss them dearly. Thank you in advance 🫐

​As someone working in higher ed, I was pretty alarmed to learn candidate for Governor Nirav Shah is heavily funded by Independent Expenditure (IE) money from 314 Action. This IE just spent $650,000 on TV advertising for Shah’s campaign. Not only is 314 Action Fund a PAC used to wash AIPAC money towards other candidates down ballot across the country, their IE in Maine to support Shah is heavily funded by Education Reform Now Advocacy (aka Dems for Education Reform PAC). Shah's latest TV ad funded by 314 Action just listed Education Reform Now as their second largest donor. A quick google and I found this NYT article about how Education Reform Now is pushing for school vouchers and incentive pay structures for teachers...this is a straight up right-wing/libertarian education agenda. My mom was a public high school teacher in NH, and these are literally the same programs the right wingers and libertarians are pushing through the legislature. School voucher programs are a classic tactic to defund public education, and teacher incentive pay I personally think is just insane...teachers are already the hardest working people I know, and generally way underpaid. Anyways, as a candidate for Governor who was ranked 3rd by the Maine Education Association, I think this is pretty disqualifying for Shah and gives me no faith in the rest of his agenda. Seems pretty clear by now that establishment Dems shifting right for all these mythical middle-class suburban moderates is not how we win, let alone actually come up with real solutions for working people.

I have been away. Just wondered if she is concerned. Haven’t seen anything.

As the title suggests, I am a 20 year old transgender woman who is wanting to make new friends in or around Unity Maine! I stupidly sheltered myself as a kid and thus have little to no irl friends. I also am not very good at picking up social cues lol.

The University of Maine System plans to award a contract to OpenAI’s education version of ChatGPT. Photo by Kristian Moravec.

Maine’s public university system plans to award its first contract for an artificial intelligence platform to ChatGPT Edu, an OpenAI chatbot tool for higher education, the system told employees and students in an email*.*

The two-year contract will cost about $1.39 million and serve the system’s estimated 25,200 students and 5,600 employees, likely starting in July, according to Ryan Low, the system’s vice chancellor for finance and strategic AI integration. 

The university system said it wanted to provide equal access across departments to AI, and picked a platform that would not use student and staff prompts to train OpenAI’s technology.

Nearly 60 percent of U.S. college students use AI in their coursework on a weekly basis, and one in five use AI daily, according to a 2026 study by the Lumina Foundation and Gallup. 

https://themainemonitor.org/umaine-closing-ai-tool/

As we all know well by now, the housing market is crazy and for anyone starting out it seems almost unattainable! I am sure most people looking for housing are in the same boat as us. The answers are limited because that's just how the economy is right now. I felt the need to come on here and ask some questions anyway for my own piece of mind.

My boyfriend (M35) and I (F30) do not make a lot of money (53k a year combined) and we keep bouncing options around on what to do. We have lived in Maine our whole lives and our family is here. Plus our parents are disabled and need us, so moving too far away from all 4 of them is not an option. I have just slowly started working again after years of taking care of both of my parents who became very sick at the same time. I have been watching the market get worse for years, and I now know that waiting for a better market probably won't happen. After being together for 6 years we desperately need a place of our own before we go crazy from only seeing each other on weekends. It seems we just need to bite the bullet and accept how things are currently.

We are looking for something between our work and each of our parents, which is in the triangle of Bath, Auburn and Windham. We really prefer not being more than 1.5 hours from Bath if we can help it. We have looked into everything from building fresh on a piece of land to buying a fixer upper. We would rather not rent because we feel like we are throwing money at something we will never own. We also need close to 1 acre of land for my boyfriend to have space outside for his work and hobbies. We don't have kids currently so it is just us and the house doesn't have to be big, it just needs to be livable. It seems like something that should be simple to obtain but is proving to be depressing to even think about. We have talked to a few lenders and have talked to a realtor but haven't locked anything in yet. We really aren't sure what to do.

So I am wondering what other people are doing for housing in Maine? What are the best affordable options right now, buying an existing house with land, putting a small stick-built, modular, or mobile/manufactured on land? Is a $200k budget even worth looking into anything new? What are some areas with affordable markets? Does anyone have an insight for the future of housing in Maine? I would like to hear from anyone who has/had our budget range or professionals who have worked with people in a similar situation.

Thanks for reading my rambles and thanks in advance for any information or comments you have!