By Michael Shepherd - Feb 25, 2022
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Good morning from Augusta. State and legislative offices are closed because of the snowstorm. Here's your ambient soundtrack.

What we're watching today

A new Supreme Court nominee is coming and Maine's senior senator is among the Republicans most likely to back them. President Joe Biden will nominate U.S. Circuit Court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson on Friday to the Supreme Court position being vacated by retiring Justice Stephen Breyer, CNN reported this morning. She was the focus of speculation after Biden reiterated a long-standing promise to nominate the first Black woman to the high court and reportedly accepted the offer in a Thursday call.

This nomination is Biden's first and it should not carry the political stress of the picks made by former President Donald Trump. Breyer is a liberal justice who is being replaced by a Democratic president. His party also has control of the Senate, albeit by a 50-50 margin that leaves no room for error on major issues.

The person to watch in the Maine delegation is Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican who became the focus of Democratic ire after she backed Justice Brett Kavanaugh after the most fraught confirmation battle in recent history. Collins has backed every high-court nominee to come before the Senate during her tenure except for Justice Amy Coney Barrett, whom she opposed for procedural reasons.

Top Democrats looped Collins in when setting the schedule for this nomination process in part because she is one of the Republicans most likely to vote for a Biden nominee. It has often been cited that the Maine senator was one of three Republicans to back Jackson for her Washington, D.C., circuit spot in June.

But Collins has also singled Biden out for criticism around the pick. While she has said she would welcome the first Black woman on the court, she called the president's handling of the nomination "clumsy" and said the explicit pledge to nominate a Black woman was "overly political."

"The idea that race and gender should be the No. 1 and No. 2 criteria is not as it should be," she told The New York Times early this month. "On the other hand, there are many qualified Black women for this post and given that Democrats, regrettably, have had some success in trying to paint Republicans as anti-Black, it may make it more difficult to reject a Black jurist."

Collins' stance on Jackson's nomination is not likely to alter the trajectory of Jackson's nomination in the 50-50 Senate, but her initial comments today may well be a preview of how much breathing rooms Democrats will have to advance their pick.

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What we're reading

— In Presque Isle on Thursday, Collins called on Congress to unite against Russian leader Vladimir Putin's "heinous" invasion of Ukraine and said she would support stronger sanctions. It comes after congressional negotiations around sanctioning Russia broke down over quibbles about timing and order, leaving U.S. policy in the hands of the Biden administration.

— Senate President Troy Jackson of Allagash, the state's best-known labor Democrat, broke with the state employees' union on Thursday to delay consideration of a bill aimed at stopping the closure of a Department of Health and Human Services call center in Wilton. Sen. Russell Black, R-Wilton, who is sponsoring the measure, said he was told by his party leaders that Jackson was having trouble supporting the bill because of their past dispute on a logging issue. A Jackson spokesperson said to take such Republican characterizations with "a grain of salt," but she did not directly dispute this one.

— Workers at Maine's biggest hospital say patients are assaulting them more than ever. It is an another side effect of an interconnected health care system with weaknesses laid bare during the pandemic. Alongside hospitals, behavioral health agencies have struggled under worker shortages leaving people needing psychiatric care in emergency rooms longer. Workers at Maine Medical Center in Portland called on administrators to increase staffing after a recent spate of assaults. The hospital advocated for state policy changes.

— Maine reached what Gov. Janet Mills called an "unwelcome milestone" on Thursday, crossing 2,000 COVID-19 deaths. The last 1,000 came much faster than the first 1,000, but deaths have sharply declined this month in a trend that is expected to continue for the foreseeable future with transmission tracking downward across the state and country.

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Follow along today

11:30 a.m. Collins and independent Sen. Angus King will be at the University of Maine in Orono for an event celebrating an engineering lab's production of a 3D-printed vessel for the U.S. Department of Defense.

1 p.m. King will speak about leadership in a campus event sponsored by UMaine Student Government in Williams Hall.

7:30 p.m. The European Union's ambassador to the U.S., Stavros Lambrinidis of Greece, will be speaking as part of the Camden Conference, a Maine foreign policy summit that is all virtual this year. His address on diplomacy coincides with Russia's escalating Ukraine invasion. Register here.

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📷 Lead photo: President Joe Biden calls on reporters for questions while speaking about the Russian invasion of Ukraine in the East Room of the White House on Thursday, Feb. 24, 2022, in Washington. A portrait of George Washington is in the background. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

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