Push Notification

Even after rattling off various positive measures of Donald Trump's health in various press conferences, White House physician Dr. Sean Conley has been adamant about not answering one of the most vital questions facing those exposed to Trump in recent days: When was the last time testing showed Trump was not carrying the pandemic virus that would send him to the hospital only a day after the White House admitted he was sick?

That's important, because it would allow those who came into contact with Trump during last Tuesday's presidential debate to know whether they spent 90 minutes in an enclosed space with a COVID-19 carrier shouting at them for most of that time—one of the precise scenarios that experts warn is most likely to result in pandemic spread.

It's also important because all evidence so far points to the White House knowing of Trump's illness at least as of Monday, before the debate. And it's important because the pattern of infections coming out of the White House do not appear to correlate with people who attended the Rose Garden celebration the previous weekend. They appear to more closely correlate with people known to have spent significant amounts of time in proximity to Donald Trump himself.

On Monday, we were treated to a rare sight at the White House: An outdoor press briefing in which Trump spoke at a podium alone, while all other speakers at the pandemic-related briefing used a podium set up on a separate platform well-distanced from Trump's own.

Tuesday's debate featured another unusual sight: Melania Trump alone, among the Trump family, followed debate venue rules and kept her mask on during the full event—only removing it when approaching Donald at his podium for the usual post-debate family visuals. But the Trump family arrived at the debate venue too late to be given COVID-19 tests at the venue, debate moderator Chris Wallace said afterward. "There was an honor system when it came to people that came into the hall from the two campaigns."

There are reasons to believe the White House is lying about the outbreak timeline, and it is absolutely certain that they are hiding key elements of that timeline, as White House doctor Conley did yet again on Monday. The first known illnesses from the White House outbreak are, for the most part, those immediately surrounding Trump himself.

• White House adviser Hope Hicks and assistant Nicholas Luna

• First lady Melania Trump

• Trump's debate prep team member Chris Christie and Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien

• White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany and two assistant press secretaries

But what of the multiple Rose Garden guests who tested positive after the Saturday celebration held for Amy Coney Barrett, including Sen. Thom Tillis, Sen. Mike Lee, pastor Greg Laurie, Notre Dame president John Jenkins, and Kellyanne Conway?

All of them were seen in close proximity to Trump in the Diplomatic Room of the White House, during an indoors reception for Barrett that featured a much smaller group of people. Infections during the Rose Garden event were not, as far as we know, spread evenly throughout the outside crowd. They have appeared predominantly among the most important guests, the ones allowed to sit and the first few rows—and who were invited inside for a more personal meet-and-greet hosted by Trump.

The evidence, then, is that Trump himself may have been the source of infection for most of the COVID-19 cases in his orbit. Whether he was or wasn't, the outbreak was in full swing as of Saturday, during the Diplomatic Room event.

The White House, however, is flatly refusing to tell the public, the Biden campaign, the debate staff and others Trump met with when Trump, who is allegedly as president tested daily or near-daily, was last known to be free of the virus. They either don't know—because they haven't been doing the testing—or they're hiding it because they have a reason to hide it. The White House has also announced that it will not be doing contact tracing of Rose Garden guests, nor will they allow the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention to launch that effort itself.

They are quite insistent on not finding out either the true extent of the White House outbreak, or revealing its origins.

It's reasonable to question whether the White House knew Trump was infected, or suspected it, at least as of Monday, when Trump's press event was set up to have the unusual dual-podium arrangement. It's reasonable to question whether the Trump campaign avoided testing at the venue not out of lateness, but because they did not want testing to be done. It's not just reasonable to assume Trump, a malevolent narcissist, would willingly expose others to his illness for momentary gain: It's proven, both from Trump's pointless but self-celebrating joyride around Walter Reed, unnecessarily putting Secret Service agents in an airtight container with him at the likely height of his own contagiousness, and his immediate removal of his mask upon returning to the White House.

There are very good reasons to suspect that the White House knew or believed Trump to be infected with COVID-19 before the debate with Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden took place, and that the White House covered up his infection to allow the debate to go forward. It is possible that, had Trump not become so physically ill two days afterward as to require public acknowledgement, then hospitalization, the White House intended to hide Trump's infection from the public completely.

This would be unconscionable behavior by itself, but exposing a rival presidential candidate to a deadly disease on purpose brings it past unconscionable and into the realm of the unthinkable. But here we are.

This is not an idle, fringe supposition. Senate Democratic leaders are themselves demanding that the White House explain their secrecy around Trump's initial diagnosis, accusing the White House (correctly) of "deliberately" hiding this information. The press is focusing in on this question as well. It is entirely within the realm of possibility that this White House would cover up a presidential illness even if it caused the possible death of others, and even if it exposed Trump's immediate campaign rival to the same disease. On the contrary, it is the most plausible theory we have as to why the White House is refusing to clarify the timeline of Trump's illness.

White House physician Dr. Sean Conley is explicitly hiding this information—and endangering lives. This is not tenable. If the press cannot scrape an answer from him, Vice President Biden's Secret Service detail might need to go question him directly.

In contrast to President Ronald Reagan, Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona) and others hawkish Republicans of the past — as well as hawkish Democrats like Presidents Harry Truman and Lyndon B. Johnson — President Donald Trump is often described as an "isolationist" who embodies the America First and paleoconservative ideology. But in 2025, Trump is expected to announce an executive order that would give the U.S. Department of Defense a more hawkish new name: the U.S. Department of War.

The Guardian's Hugo Lowell reports that Trump, according to sources, will issue the executive order on Friday, September 5.

"The order will designate 'Department of War' as a 'secondary title,' an administration official said, as a way to get around the need for congressional approval to formally rename a federal agency," Lowell explains. "But the order will instruct the rest of the executive branch to use the 'Department of War' name in internal and external communications, and allows the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and other officials to use 'secretary of war' as official titles. The order — seemingly in recognition of the limitation of the executive action alone — also directs Hegseth to recommend potential legislative moves the administration could take to permanently rename the Defense Department."

Trump, during a recent White House press conference, told reporters, "Everybody likes that we had an unbelievable history of victory when it was the Department of War. Then, we changed it to Department of Defense."

READ MORE: Busted: Susan Collins advanced Trump bill after receiving $2 million from billionaire

But Trump's critics believe that the rebrand is a bad idea.

According to The Guardian, the cost is a major concern — as it could cost taxpayers millions of dollars if signs and letterhead reflect the name change. And Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Illinois), herself a military veteran, argues that the money would be much better spent helping military families. Duckworth also argues that the name change does nothing to help the U.S. from a national security standpoint.

In a September 4 tweet, Duckworth wrote, "Why stop there? Let's rename all Depts after what Trump is inflicting on America. Dept of HHS -> Dept of Hepatitis and Human Suffering Dept of VA -> Dept of Veteran Abandonment Dept of Education -> Dept of Erasure of History Dept of Commerce -> Dept of Corruption."

READ MORE: 'He was an FBI informant': Mike Johnson makes stunning admission about Trump

Read Hugo Lowell's reporting for The Guardian at this link.

During a Thursday, September 4 hearing on Capitol Hill, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was questioned by both Republican and Democratic senators. The Democrats were much more aggressive in their questioning, and some of them let RFK Jr. know that they considered his anti-vaxxer views flat-out dangerous from a public health standpoint. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Washington State) angrily told the HHS secretary, "You are a charlatan."

But not all of the criticism of the Trump Administration's public health policies are coming from Democrats.

During a scathing but sometimes humorous rant on Friday morning, September 5, MSNBC's Joe Scarborough — a Never Trump conservative and former GOP congressman — slammed anti-vaxxers in the MAGA movement as a major threat to public health.

READ MORE: 'He was an FBI informant': Mike Johnson makes stunning admission about Trump

Scarborough told historian Jon Meacham, one of his guests, that the September 4 hearing was "just surreal" and accused RFK Jr., Vice President JD Vance and other MAGA Republicans of "lying about medicine, lying about medical research, lying about what we all knew."

"My God, JD Vance — I'm so glad the Wall Street Journal editorial page called him out yesterday," Scarborough told Meacham. "Basically, JD Vance, one of the dumbest things that, you know, this administration always does — this MAGA base always does — is they take an issue like this and say: Oh, you must be with, like, trans. You must be with mutilating children for surgeries when they're transitioning. He did that. Total lies…. Is he really saying that about the 75 percent of Republicans who oppose what RFK Jr. is saying?"

Scarborough continued, "Does JD Vance really think that 75 percent of Republicans support trans operations for minors?.... There's only so much stupidity you can put up with. I'm so glad the Wall Street Journal editorial page called him out."

The former GOP congressman compared the MAGA movement, anti-vaxxers and the second Trump Administration to the nativist Know Nothings of the 19th Century.

READ MORE: Busted: Susan Collins advanced Trump bill after receiving $2 million from billionaire

Scarborough told Meacham, "Outside of the Know Nothings, what other political movement has produced such backward-looking stupidity?"

When Meacham noted that the anti-vaxxer movement "in some ways, comes out of the John Birch Society" and "Cold War paranoia" of the 1950s and 1960s, Scarborough responded, "It's just a race to the bottom. And these people that are saying it now vaccinated their own children and, I guarantee you, were the first in line to get the COVID vaccine shots. In fact, before (Florida Gov.) Ron DeSantis put his finger in the wind to see which way the political winds were blowing, he was rushing to veterans across the state of Florida so they could get the COVID vaccine shots."

Scarborough argued that in the past, anti-vaxxers were attacked as "hippies," whereas in 2025, anti-vaxxers are "the Boss Hoggs in the Deep South" — a reference to the Boss Hogg character on the late 1970s/early 1980s program "The Dukes of Hazzard."

READ MORE: 'Never been this bad': Young MAGA influencers say their income is 'tanking' due to Trump

Watch the full video below or at this link.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

Born and raised in Queens, President Donald Trump spent much of his life in New York City and made millions of dollars from Manhattan real estate. Trump is an urbanite: he went to college in Philadelphia, owned casinos in Atlantic City, and began living in Washington, D.C. when he first moved into the White House on January 20, 2017.

Trump's strong Queens accent, however, has never kept him from having a strong rapport with rural voters and white southern evangelical Christian fundamentalists — both of whom are crucial parts of his base. Rural America overwhelmingly favored Trump in the 2016, 2020 and 2024 presidential elections.

But according to polling by ActiVote, Trump's popularity in Rural America is slipping.

READ MORE: 'He was an FBI informant': Mike Johnson makes stunning admission about Trump

Newsweek's Kate Plummer, in an article published on September 5, reports that ActiVote finds Trump's "net approval" among "rural Americans" has "declined from +22 percentage points in August to +14 points in September."

"Rural voters are an important voting bloc and are key to Trump's base," Plummer explains. "In the 2024 election, Trump won 63 percent of rural voters, up from 60 percent in 2020, according to AP VoteCast. Any decline in their support might affect the Republican Party more broadly. This will be particularly important when voters head to the polls in the November 2026 midterms…. In its August poll, ActiVote found that 59 percent of rural Americans approved of Trump, while 37 percent disapproved of the president. This gave him a net approval rating of +22 points."

Heath Brown, a public policy professor at the City University of New York, told Newsweek, "It seems that there remain some issues that Americans living in rural communities favor the president a great deal. On others, including the signature tariff policy, rural communities have been hardest hit. Tariffs have hurt farmers, and polling seems to bear this out."

According to Tim Slack, a sociology professor at Louisiana State University, the economy in Rural America is growing worse — not better — during Trump's second presidency.

READ MORE: Busted: Susan Collins advanced Trump bill after receiving $2 million from billionaire

Slack told Newsweek, "President Trump had vowed to 'bring prices down, starting on Day One.' That didn't happen. In fact, in many respects, economic conditions have worsened. And while economic conditions and the cost of living are likely the bigger factors here, it is worth noting that Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid play a significant role in supporting rural Americans. There could be unease about the cutting at the federal level and where that is headed."

READ MORE: 'Never been this bad': Young MAGA influencers say their income is 'tanking' due to Trump

Read Kate Plummer's full article for Newsweek at this link.

Citing state policy on tenure, elimination of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, and the cost of living, Florida faculty laid out their frustrations in a recent survey.

In a Faculty in the South survey conducted by various conferences of the American Association of University Professors, 31% of Florida respondents said they have applied for a job outside of Florida since 2023. That number was 25% among all survey respondents in the South.

The same, 31% of Florida respondents, said they plan to seek employment in another state during the next hiring cycle.

“The governor of Florida threatens at every turn to take funding away so administration at colleges don’t stand up to him or board of education. I no longer have any motivation or creativity to make courses better,” a tenured professor at a public community college wrote.

The survey focused on policy affecting employment, including whether faculty would recommend working in their state to up-and-coming academics, and trends in applications for faculty positions. It included nearly 200 responses from Florida faculty among its nearly 4,000 responses across Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.

The survey concluded with an open-ended question asking faculty to provide examples of how “attacks on higher education are directly impacting your work.” It did not report respondents’ identities beyond basic demographics like gender, race, tenure status, years of experience, and type of institution they teach at.

‘Walking on egg shells’

“Students report any classroom discussion they don’t like directly to the Governor’s office. Everyone is afraid all the time,” one woman teaching at a public four-year school wrote. “I have stopped teaching books that might be in any way controversial. I don’t open up general discussion in class but ask only direct questions that will elicit non-controversial answers. I need health insurance so I can’t just quit.”

The state scanning course materials for disfavored viewpoints was a widespread stressor for many faculty.

Florida DOGE to ‘deep dive’ into state universities, ‘prune’ ‘ideological study stuff’

“Most of the courses I’ve taught for decades now violate state and university mandates,” a man teaching at a Florida tier-one research university said.

As of earlier this year, Florida institutions’ general education courses no longer contained “indoctrinating concepts,” State University System Chancellor Ray Rodrigues proclaimed in January.

Florida universities have conducted a review, required by a 2022 law, of general education courses to ensure that they do not “distort significant historical events or include a curriculum that teaches identity politics.”

“I’m continually worried that the content of my clases [sic] will be flagged as “DEI” because I am a historian of the Caribbean, a region mostly populated by non-white people,” one professor said.

One women’s studies professor described the effect as “Constant anxiety, walking on egg shells trying to anticipate what would be used against me/us.”

More than a third, 34%, of Florida respondents said administrators have questioned syllabi or curricula choices for their courses. Among all states surveyed, half as many, 17%, indicated administrators questioned their curricula.

One professor said that since the state and federal government have made illegal “a wide range of Constitutionally protected components of speech and expression,” “I must break the law in order to tell the truth. Because I’m hired to tell the truth, and because I’m much more committed to the truth than to the law, I break the law. This means I am expecting to be arrested in front of a classroom any day, for actions that are illegal only as a result of the right-wing fad of the most recent decade.”

Nearly three in four, 71%, of faculty in Florida who were surveyed said they would not encourage a graduate student to seek employment in Florida.

“I am going to take early retirement despite a great job and salary. The threats are real and I am exhausted, between fighting this and fighting AI and poorly prepared, lazy, unethical students,” a tenured professor at a four-year public university wrote.

Higher education funding cuts have been the subject of nationwide political debate, including Florida State University reporting that it lost $100 million in federal grants, although $83 million of that has since been reinstated, the school’s president said last week.

About one-in-10, 11%, said they have had a federal contract ended by the Trump administration.

“The loss of vital federal grants has removed opportunities from me and my colleagues,” one professor wrote. “Attacks on LGBTQ students, immigrants, and diversity have also made it difficult to recruit promising graduate students or to guarantee their health and safety. Florida colleges being forced to remove diversity languages has destroyed years of valuable work, overturned an incredible general education curriculum, taken power and governance away from faculty, and wasted a lot of valuable time.”

Tenure troubles

Since 2023, professors in Florida with tenure have been subject to post-tenure review, graded on standards crafted by university trustees relating to research performance, teaching, service, and compliance with state laws and university policies.

Of the nearly-one-third who recently applied for an out-of-state job, tenure and DEI issues, academic freedom, the political climate, and cost of living were among the most common concerns.

Respondents said the number of applications for coworkers’ positions, as well as the quality of applicants, have decreased.

“Our department is trying to improve, but we have had several failed searches in recent years because candidates don’t want to move to Florida because of the broad political climate and the fact that tenure protections functionally no longer exist here,” a tenured public university professor said.

Some faculty said they have not experienced problems with “attacks on higher education,” one stating, “I haven’t felt any — Florida is great!.” Another said, “They’re not, and freedom in the classroom still persists, and I am at a public university in… wait for it… FLORIDA…”

“I find that I’m having to spend more time explaining to students why they need to use evidence to support their views and why clear arguments are important,” a professor at a private institution wrote.

One professor complained that “our board of trustees stacked with heritage foundation members, our president was forced out and replaced by a republican politician.” Course materials face heightened scrutiny, this professor added.

“The climate of persecution, retaliation, and ideological imposition makes it impossible to teach my discipline accurately or well without opening oneself to disciplinary measures,” that professor said. “While New College got a lot of headlines, similar invasions of public universities are happening with no national press, leaving those of us who work here isolated and vulnerable to attack.”

‘Academic freedom is on life support,’ say professors surveyed on tenure, censorship

Gov. Ron DeSantis orchestrated a shake-up of the University of West Florida Board of Trustees in a more conservative light earlier this year and that institution is now led by a former GOP lawmaker.

Results for the survey were collected throughout August and more than 60% of respondents said they are tenured. Last year’s iteration of the survey featured responses from about 350 Florida professors.

“There is a lower threshold of critical thinking because everyone is fearful about what is ‘allowed’ vs. ‘banned’ by law. The fear and the self-censorship is widespread. Our administration, now saddled with a governor-imposed, unqualified hire as a President, is understandably more cautious rather than vocal about protecting academic freedom,” one professor wrote.

Louisiana’s top election official said she has discovered 390 non-citizen registered voters in the state, with 79 voting in at least one election over the past several decades.

The 390 suspected non-citizen voters represent approximately 0.01% of the roughly 2.9 million registered voters in Louisiana.

Secretary of State Nancy Landry, a Republican, said Thursday at a news conference she called that the results are the “preliminary findings” of an investigation her office launched in May after gaining access to the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements database, which the Trump administration rolled out to state and local governments this year.

Landry said her investigators ran names from Louisiana’s voter rolls through the SAVE database and worked with the FBI to confirm their citizenship status. Investigators scoured state voting records going back to the 1980s, she said.

Landry declined to release further details about the suspects of the incidents of alleged fraud, saying her investigation remains ongoing.

In a later interview, Landry acknowledged the possibility that some of her findings could be attributed to errors or outdated information. Suspected non-citizen voters will be afforded due process to determine if they are innocent, she said.

While Landry said voter fraud is “not a systemic problem in Louisiana,” she noted that some local elections have been decided by just a handful of votes. She didn’t say if the newly discovered noncitizen voters impacted any of those elections.

It’s a crime under state and federal laws for noncitizens to vote or to submit false voter registration information. Landry said her office is working with local and federal authorities to determine if anyone implicated in her findings can be prosecuted.

The secretary of state’s investigators have not interviewed or spoken to any of the alleged suspects but have sent out letters notifying them of the findings, she said.

Sen. Caleb Kleinpeter, R-Port Allen, who chairs the Senate and Governmental Affairs Committee, attended Landry’s news conference alongside his counterpart in the House, Rep. Beau Beaullieu, R-New Iberia. Kleinpeter authored recent changes for stricter state elections laws and said he was surprised that only 79 noncitizens have voted in Louisiana over so many years.

Kleinpeter said he thought the number would be higher, adding that even one unlawful vote is too many.

“Every illegal vote counts against a legal vote,” Kleinpeter said in an interview.

Gov. Landry targets ‘noncitizens’ in Louisiana, claiming immigrants pose voter fraud risk

One voting rights advocate questions why the secretary of state would go public with preliminary findings of an investigation before all the evidence has been collected.

Ashley Shelton, who leads the Power Coalition for Equity and Justice, noted that state investigators haven’t spoken to any of the alleged suspects.

“Why do a press conference if you’re not really sure, or you don’t have undeniable evidence that the allegations are true?” Shelton said in a phone interview. “Of course everybody wants elections to have integrity, but there’s a reason why they had to go back to the 1980s to uncover the alleged 79 people.”

Shelton said bigger problems with election integrity stem from the way they are administered and failure to educate poll workers and voters when election rules are changed.

“Voting rights are under attack,” Shelton said. “We have so many elections we can’t even keep count, and there’s no willingness to streamline the process.”

NOW READ: 'Leaving working families in the dust': Donald Trump just got some very bad news

Multiple economic indicators are pointing to a worsening labor market ahead of a critical jobs report due to be released on Friday.

As reported by Bloomberg on Thursday, outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas calculated that American companies announced plans to add just under 1,500 jobs last month, which is the lowest total of announced job additions for any month going all the way back to 2009, when the United States was in the depth of the Great Recession.

What's more, the firm found that announced job cuts last month totaled nearly 86,000, which was the largest August total since 2020, when the United States was in the throes of the global Covid-19 pandemic.

Data from processing firm ADP, meanwhile, projected that the economy only added 54,000 jobs last month, which was below economists' consensus forecast of 75,000 jobs added. Nela Richardson, ADP's chief economist, said in a statement that the labor market has been "whipsawed by uncertainty" caused in part of US President Donald Trump's tariffs, as well as disruption caused by the spread of artificial intelligence.

ADP's survey has traditionally been seen as less reliable than the monthly survey from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), although that might change after Trump fired former Commissioner Erika McEntarfer, whom he accused of delivering negative numbers to hurt him politically, without providing any evidence.

However, ADP isn't alone in predicting weaker-than-expected job growth. Economist Bill McBride noted in a post on Bluesky that economists at investment bank Goldman Sachs are estimating the economy created 60,000 jobs last month, or 15,000 fewer than economists' consensus forecast. Goldman also projected that "the unemployment rate edged up to 4.3% on a rounded basis" last month.

Weekly jobless claims numbers released Thursday also pointed to a weakening labor market, as new claims last week totaled 237,000, above economists' consensus estimate of 231,000, and the highest weekly total since late June.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) pointed to the weak labor market indicators in a social media post and blasted Trump's management of the American economy.

"More bad jobs numbers from Trump's economy," she said. "This is the direct result of policies that only work for billionaires and corporations while leaving working families in the dust."

As she gears up for a tough midterm race against a progressive challenger in 2026, Sen. Susan Collins is struggling to shake her reputation as a sellout to corporate interests. A new report out Wednesday may make that even more difficult.

Collins (R-Maine) was one of just three Republican senators not to vote for President Donald Trump's "One Big Beautiful Bill" Act in July, which slashes over $1 trillion from Medicaid to help pay for tax cuts for the rich and is expected to result in over 10 million people losing health insurance coverage.

But Collins did cast a crucial vote to advance the legislation to the Senate floor. An exclusive report from Tessa Stuart in Rolling Stone gives us damning insight into a possible reason why:

[Collins] cast that vote just one day after private equity billionaire Steve Schwarzman, the chair of the Blackstone Group and a man who will personally reap huge rewards from the bill, kicked in $2 million toward her reelection effort.On June 27, Schwarzman gave $2 million to Pine Tree Results PAC, a Super PAC backing Collins; on June 28, Collins cast a decisive vote allowing Trump's bill to advance to the floor. The vote was 51-49. Vice President JD Vance was present at the Capitol, on hand to break a tie, but was not needed after Collins voted in favor of the bill.
The bill went on to pass the Senate just a few days later, to Schwarzman's presumed delight, since the legislation both extended the pass-through business deduction—treasured by the owners of private equity firms—and made it permanent, allowing partnerships to deduct 20% of their pre-tax income.

Collins' office has strongly denied that Schwarzman's influence had anything to do with her vote to advance the bill. As press secretary Blake Kernen noted, a tie in the Senate would have been broken by Vance, so "the motion to proceed would have passed without her vote."

However, Stuart notes that this was not Collins' first conspicuous donation from Schwarzman or the private equity industry at large.

According to OpenSecrets, Collins' campaign committee and leadership PAC received over $715,000 from private equity and investment firms—more money than any other person elected to Congress during the 2020 election cycle. It included maximum individual contributions from both Schwarzman and his wife.

That number does not include an additional $2 million that Schwarzman donated to her reelection super PAC in 2020. As Stuart points out, this donation came after Collins dropped a proposed amendment to Trump's 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, opposed by private equity. That amendment would have "[made] childcare more affordable, by making changes to the private equity industry's beloved carried interest loophole," Stuart wrote.

While Collins denies that her votes are influenced by the piles of money gifted to her by private equity, one of her most formidable challengers in 2026, oyster farmer and Marine veteran Graham Platner, has often seized on her extensive industry ties to hold her up as the poster child for the "oligarchy" he is trying to unseat from power.

"I believe that input from working people is far more important than input from someone who simply has money," Platner thundered during a Labor Day speech in Portland alongside Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). "I believe that we shouldn't be settling for crumbs while billionaires eat the cookie we baked. I don't think private equity deserves more time with a senator than someone who works two jobs to get by."

If Democrats are going to regain the Senate in 2026, Maine will be an essential state to win, something that looks increasingly possible as approval ratings for Collins have plummeted over the first half-year of Trump's second term.

Nearly 7,000 attended Platner's speech, during which he railed against the five-term senator Collins' long history of casting "symbolic" dissenting votes against her party, like opposing Trump's tax legislation, or voting to codify Roe v. Wade, to posture as a "moderate" without actually disrupting their agenda.

"Susan Collins' charade is wearing thin," Platner said Monday. "No one cares that you pretend to be remorseful as you sell out to lobbyists. No one cares while you sell out to corporations, and no one cares while you sell out to a president, who are all engineering the greatest redistribution of wealth from the working class to the ruling class in American history."

NOW READ:The only people who would mourn Trump's death