By Michael Shepherd - May 11, 2022
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Good morning from Augusta. There are 34 days until Maine's June primaries.

What we're watching today

After a leaked ruling and escalating chalk protests in Bangor, the U.S. Senate has no path forward on abortion rights. It has a been a wild eight days or so since Politico published a leaked U.S. Supreme Court decision that showed a conservative majority ready to overturn abortion rights granted under Roe v. Wade and a later landmark case on the issue.

Maine Sen. Susan Collins, one of just two Senate Republicans who support abortion rights, has been at the center of debate after her 2018 vote for Justice Brett Kavanaugh and her predictions that he and other conservatives on the court would not overturn Roe. He is reportedly one of the five justices on that side of the issue, a decision on which is still being finalized by the court.

Collins called the police on Saturday after a plea for her to support the Democratic bill was scrawled in chalk on the sidewalk outside her Bangor home. A city crew washed the messages away, but police said no crime was committed. That response led to more messages on Tuesday. (The senator said Capitol Police have advised her to call police if she sees anything out of the ordinary outside her home in response to threats in recent years.)

None of this has changed the deadlocked Senate's trajectory on this issue. Senate Majority Chuck Schumer, D-New York, is bringing his party's favored abortion-rights measure back up for a vote on Wednesday. It is not even clear if all Democrats will support it, with Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia not saying how he would vote on the measure on Tuesday.

Collins opposed it in February, citing a lack of religious protections for health care workers. She and Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, have their own bill to codify Roe's protections that Democrats argue does not go far enough. Nothing has a sure 50 votes in the Senate right now. Even if all Democrats got behind the Maine senator's bill or some iteration, all other Senate Republicans oppose abortion, so it would not clear the 60-vote filibuster.

Collins still does not want to nuke the legislative filibuster even to pass her bill. That is not just a Collins issue. Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, who caucuses with Democrats, is also wary, even though he backed getting rid of the filibuster to pass a voting-rights bill. Some other Democrats would be wary as well.

"What goes around comes around," King told CNN's Manu Raju on Tuesday. "We could undo the filibuster, pass a nationwide bill that we like, and they could do it next year in the opposite way. I think that's a concern."

When you game all of this wrangling out on the legislative end, the filibuster is the ultimate thing hanging over any legislation. Today's vote does not seem likely to teach us anything we do not already know.

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News and notes

— Gov. Janet Mills was pictured on the red carpet at the Kentucky Derby on Saturday. Her trip was paid for by the Democratic Governors Association, which held events around the race, according to Alex Raposo, the governor's campaign manager. Mills was wearing a lobster fascinator hat made by a woman-owned small business in Portland that the governor used as "an opportunity to promote Maine and Maine lobster," her campaign said.

— Mills will be in Greenville instead of Louisville on Wednesday. Beginning at 10 a.m., she has several stops planned across Piscataquis County, including a visit to Northern Light C.A. Dean Hospital and sweeping down Route 6 to end her day with meetings on economic development issues in Dover-Foxcroft.

— Former 2020 U.S. Senate candidate Lisa Savage is on the cover of this month's "Beer & Weed" magazine, smoking (you guessed it) weed. Here's your soundtrack.

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What we're reading

— After arguments before Maine's high court, here are the three questions that will decide the fate of the imperiled Central Maine Power Co. corridor.

— The Hampden-based school district banned conservative activist Shawn McBreairty from its property after he played an obscene recording at a school board meeting late last month.

— Maine's university system professors union is lobbying for changes to the hiring process after the system did not disclose to a search committee that incoming University of Maine at Augusta President Michael Laliberte faced no-confidence votes from students and faculty at his current institution.

— Here's a guide to the type of house $300,000 can buy you across Maine.

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📷 Lead photo: Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, speaks to reporters at the Capitol in Washington on May 4, 2022. (AP photo by J. Scott Applewhite)

🚫 Correction: An item in Tuesday's newsletter wrongly described a 2020 ruling by Maine's high court on an anti-corridor referendum that year. It deemed it unconstitutional.

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