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Earlier this week, I spoke to Platner, who told me that his journey into politics began, in high school, when he read work by the historian Howard Zinn. Following graduation, he enlisted in the Marine infantry; after serving for four years, he went to George Washington University, where he discovered the writing of the anarchist scholar David Graeber and the historian Greg Grandin. He did another stint in the military, including a tour of duty in Afghanistan, and came back to the United States disillusioned with the American project, especially its foreign policy. He started listening to podcasts, most notably “The Majority Report,” hosted by Sam Seder and Michael Brooks. This was around 2016, and while Platner supported Bernie Sanders and his policies, he was in a “time of deep frustration and isolation,” he said, before he returned to Afghanistan, in 2018.
Platner does see his campaign as an extension of Sanders’s, he said—maybe not exactly in terms of its rhetoric so much as in its animating force. He talked with me for a while about the long history of economic-populist political movements in America, and about how they died out after the Vietnam War, as labor lost power during the Reagan Administration and a new type of liberal politics was formed under Bill Clinton. Platner argues that the old momentum did not totally dissipate but merely needed Sanders to kick it back up. “Those underlying problems never got fixed, and so the energy has just remained there,” he said. “The inequality is still there and all the underlying structures are still in place.” His campaign, like that of Sanders, is rooted in “movement politics,” he said, and in “building power through organizing.”
The problem with the dirtbag left wasn’t that it was uncouth or edgy or rude—those were its selling points—but, rather, that it could sometimes feel too intellectual, insider-y, and a bit too close to the élites that it was always criticizing. When populist rabble-rousing comes from fancy professors, writers, and podcasters who went to private school, you don’t take it all that seriously. Sanders had given them a vehicle for political change, but, in the years between his runs for President, much of the online left fell into a blinkered, Noam Chomsky-inspired form of media criticism—at times, it seemed as though they believed that the greatest threats to their socialist-ish, decidedly metropolitan utopia could all be found in the opinion sections of the Times and the feature well of The Atlantic. They flagged bad headlines and dog-piled on clumsy tweets from journalists, accumulating some influence in the process, but mostly among people like me—a left-leaning journalist at a fancy magazine who lives in one of the most expensive cities in America.
Meanwhile, the electoral legacy of the Sanders insurgency had been carried most notably by a trio of women of color: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, and Ilhan Omar. Each of these politicians has achieved national prominence, but one could imagine how their identities might place a ceiling on any national ambitions. What was needed, one might conclude, was a rural white guy, perhaps one who had served as a grunt overseas and had an unassailably salt-of-the-earth job—say, an oyster farmer. Someone who could credibly talk to the alienated, broke people of America about economic redistribution.
Platner, it turns out, had even more in common with the enfants terribles of the online left than people initially realized. Like them, he posted a lot online. He did so anonymously, and used offensive language that was meant to provoke a reaction. Having read his Reddit archive, I believe that his posts—which, in addition to homophobic language, include a question about Black people’s tipping habits—were mischaracterized in the early news coverage. He was not some reactionary who is now posing, for whatever reason, as a liberal; in most of his posts, Platner was writing about military stuff, and about being the only lefty in his platoon. He also discussed his disenchantment with the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan and spoke out, on several occasions, about racist and violent police practices. Granted, he was not typing out words that might be suitable for an appearance on “Meet the Press.” Platner sounded like someone who had listened to a lot of leftist podcasts.
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Jay Caspian Kang
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A chill will be in the air across much of the country for this year’s Halloween trick-or-treaters. The good news is we will see mostly dry conditions in time, but a few spots could still see rain lingering into the night.
For much of Halloween, it will be a wet and windy day across the Northeast. Thankfully, much of the rain will clear in time for trick-or-treaters by sunset with only a few showers across Upstate New York and the northern parts of New England.
For those heading out, be sure to bring an extra layer and hold on to those witches’ hats! A gusty northwest wind will bring temperatures down into the 40s and 50s along the coast with even colder temperatures farther inland (30s) after sunset. Winds could even reach 30-40 mph at times closer to the coast.
The forecast is a lot less frightening for the Southeast, which will see clear skies and no chance of rain. However, it will be cool with temperatures slipping into the 50s in areas as far south as Central Florida.
Most of the Central U.S. will also see dry and cool weather Halloween evening. The only exception will be parts of the Northern Plains, where some scattered showers may continue.
Temperatures will range from the 30s and 40s in the Northern Plains to the 50s and 60s across Texas and the Mid-South.
Dry weather is likely for almost the entire West with high pressure in control. The only region that may be wet will be the coastal parts of Washington, where another atmospheric river is expected to move onshore.
It will also be cool in the Pacific Northwest with temperatures falling into the 40s and 50s. Milder weather is expected in the Southwest.
Our team of meteorologists dives deep into the science of weather and breaks down timely weather data and information. To view more weather and climate stories, check out our weather blogs section.
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Meteorologist Ian Cassette
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It’s 3:58 p.m. on Wednesday afternoon, and Graham Platner’s campaign is sending me shirtless photos. I’m about to drive an hour to Ogunquit, Maine to attend Platner’s first town hall since the surfacing of unsavory and offensive deleted Reddit posts kicked off a week of tumultuous headlines for the oyster farmer turned politician, the Bernie Sanders–anointed Democratic front-runner in the senate race to unseat Susan Collins. And in this case, sending half-naked photos to a journalist isn’t the latest scandal—it’s fact-checking backup.
In the two days since Platner’s campaign revealed that, for years, the candidate had a chest tattoo that starkly resembled a “Totenkopf” used in SS insignia and neo-Nazi iconography, the story has lived several online lives. By the time Platner spoke to me about it Wednesday morning, he had already gotten the tattoo covered with a Celtic knot and a dog. In a video posted that day to his campaign Instagram, Platner once again claimed that he only recently learned of the tattoo’s “stark resemblance to a symbol that is used by neo-Nazis,” and that “the idea that I’ve been going around with something like that utterly horrifies me.” The controversy puts a fine point on questions of “cancellation” and accountability that the left has been grappling with for years. In the comments, a tattoo artist and 2023 Acadia National Park artist in residence named Mischa Ylva Ostberg, who uses the pronouns they/them, took credit for the cover-up, writing, “People are capable of change, reflection, and growth. I know his character because he plays a vital role in my small community everyday.”
But in other corners of the internet, the cover-up spawned more controversy. On Bluesky and X, users debated whether the new tattoo might also have neo-Nazi connotations—white supremacists having coopted various runic symbols—and pointed out that a different tattoo, partially visible in an image of Platner from a local news interview, included the numbers 1919. Online sleuths wondered if this could be code for “SS,” S being the 19th letter of the alphabet—but Platner’s full tattoo, a photo of which his campaign shared with Vanity Fair and other outlets, tells a different story. The full picture shows a mountain overlaying crossed pick-axes with the letters TFC, an abbreviation for the Appalachian Mountain Club’s professional White Mountain trail crew (“Trail Fucking Crew”). The tattoo also includes two years: 2002 (when Platner worked the trails) and 1919 (the date the Mountain Club founded its first crew). Amid the tattoo turmoil, the Advocate ran a story looking back at more posts Platner wrote between 2016 and 2021, which “include homophobic slurs, anti-LGBTQ+ jokes, and sexually explicit stories denigrating gay men.” Platner apologized for the posts, calling them the “indefensible” product of having “talked a lot of shit on the internet,” and saying that he had testified earlier this year at a local school board meeting in defense of protection policy for LGBTQ+ students.
Around 600 people turned out for Platner’s town hall in Ogunquit, population 1,577; many of them traversed rainbow crosswalks on their way into the town’s Leavitt Theater. A torrential downpour gave way to a golden sunset. As the crowd filed into the 500-seat theater and its overflow areas, country musician Griffin William Sherry sang and played guitar, including a song called “We Will Fight”—which he said he’d written for his wife on June 25, 2022, the day after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision.
Soon, Platner’s mother, restaurant owner and former DNC delegate Leslie Harlow, took the mic. It was her first time at one of Platner’s town halls. “Geez, Ma,” she joked, imagining her son’s response. “We’ve been doing this for a month. What?” She shared stories of Platner’s upbringing, including his parents’ dismay when he told them, following his high school graduation at the onset of the Iraq War, that he had enlisted. With visible emotion, she described how disappointed she was to see politicians fail to show up to Camp Lejeune, the Marine Corps Base in North Carolina where families could visit servicepeople between deployments.
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Keziah Weir
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Maine is small: O’Connell put me in touch with a childhood friend, Jesse Einhorn, whose parents, as it turns out, know Platner’s. Einhorn wants to speak with people who know Platner personally before making any decisions. “I’m keeping my mind open, though, because I think that none of it is objectively disqualifying,” he said. “And look, I’m Jewish, so I am kind of hypersensitive to all these things.” He’s on the same page as his father, David Einhorn—a retired lawyer who practiced in Bar Harbor and used to play tennis with Platner’s father. “I think a lot of people would not recognize a skull and crossbones as associated with the Nazis,” said the elder Einhorn. “It’s a tattoo. I don’t think it’s significant.”
Below, Platner describes how he covered up the tattoo, gives his thoughts on where the oppo research against him is coming from, and shares what he’d rather be talking about instead.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Vanity Fair: Your former political director has described you as a military-history buff, and said that you now know what your tattoo means—even if you didn’t when you got the tattoo. At what point, exactly, did you realize what the symbol means?
Graham Platner: Oh, when this all came out.
Who told you what it means?
Even last week, a few weeks ago, somebody asked me if I had a white supremacist tattoo, and I laughed at them. I thought that was the dumbest thing I’d ever heard.
When you say someone—someone from the media? Someone from your campaign?
Someone—[it] would’ve been a question if I had a white supremacist tattoo. And I said, of course not. That’s insane, because I’m not now, nor ever have been, anyone that—in fact, I’ve lived a life dedicated against antisemitism. This is a core of who I am as a person, which, I will say, makes all of this, essentially, doubly insulting. But then late last week, someone reached out to the campaign—I forget from what news outlet—saying there was this story that I have some kind of white-supremacist–slash–hate tattoo. I want to make this clear: I joined the United States Army with this tattoo. I went to MEPS [Military Entrance Processing Stations]. When you join the service, you get checked for gang and hate tattoos. I went to work for the State Department as a contractor with a full physical, which does the exact same thing. I have had this tattoo for 18 years. My sister-in-law is Jewish, and so is my extended family.
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Keziah Weir
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Maine U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner revealed Tuesday that he was tattooed years ago with an image widely recognized as a Nazi symbol, but he dismissed the connotation and chalked it up to a drunken Marine’s attempt at fearsomeness. He said he plans to have the tattoo removed.
Platner is the latest Democratic candidate to shrug off dark revelations about their past, reflecting a new era in politics and an example set by President Donald Trump, who has forged ahead undaunted by controversies that would have been campaign-ending discoveries only a decade ago.
The new revelation about Platner comes close behind the discovery of a series of controversial online statements, including one in which he dismissed sexual assault in the military. It also follows a pattern set by Jay Jones, this year’s Democratic nominee for attorney general of Virginia, who has refused to drop out of the race even after text messages surfaced in which he suggested in 2022 that a prominent state Republican should get “two bullets to the head.”
Jones apologized for the comments, which also included the suggestion that his then-Republican opponent’s children face the same fate. Jones has stayed in the race for the Nov. 4 Virginia election, saying it’s up to voters to judge his qualifications for the office. The scandal over them has spilled over into the governor’s race, where Democrat Abigail Spanberger has had to address it repeatedly.
Platner, a Democrat and oyster farmer, had sparked buzz among progressives in Maine, notably since two-term Gov. Janet Mills last week entered the Democratic race for U.S. Senate. The two Democrats are vying for the chance to challenge 30-year incumbent Republican Sen. Susan Collins.
Platner attempted to explain his past online comments in a video posted to social media last week. In it, he addressed not only his previous comments dismissing military sexual assaults, but also his questioning Black patrons’ gratuity habits and criticizing police officers and rural Americans.
“I see someone I don’t recognize,” he said in the five-minute apology video.
Platner sought to further distance himself from the comments, posted online between 2013 and 2021, during an interview on the Democratic podcast Pod Save America that was posted Tuesday, describing them as the ramblings of a recent military veteran.
“That was a moment in time when I had not yet been exposed to things, and I had an opinion or I had thoughts that were colored by my experience in the service,” he said during the podcast.
But Platner himself brought up the tattoo, which he says he received in 2007, when he was in his 20s. He said he got it in Kosovo while on leave with the Marines during a night of drinking. A video aired during the podcast shows Platner dancing shirtless with the tattoo visible on his upper chest.
He said he and his fellow Marines chose “a terrifying looking skull and crossbones off the wall because we were Marines and, you know, skulls and crossbones are a pretty standard military thing,” Platner said.
The prominent antisemitism advocacy group, the Anti-Defamation League, reviewed the video and recognized the image in the tattoo as a specific symbol of Hitler’s paramilitary Schutzstaffel, or SS, which was responsible for the systematic murders of millions of Jews and others in Europe during World War II.
“This appears to be a Nazi Totenkopf tattoo, and if true, it is troubling that a candidate for high office would have one,” Oren Segal, the Anti-Defamation League’s senior vice president of counter-extremism and intelligence, said in an email response to an Associated Press inquiry. “We do understand that sometimes people get tattoos without understanding their hateful association. In those cases, the bearer should be asked whether they repudiate its hateful meaning.”
In a statement to The Associated Press late Tuesday, Platner said: “It was not until I started hearing from reporters and DC insiders that I realized this tattoo resembled a Nazi symbol. I absolutely would not have gone through life having this on my chest if I knew that – and to insinuate that I did is disgusting. I am already planning to get this removed.”
Platner added that in the 20 years since he got the tattoo, he enlisted in the Army, “which involved a full physical that examines tattoos for hate symbols. I also passed a full background check to receive a security clearance to join the Ambassador to Afghanistan’s security detail.” The notion of his tattoo as a Nazi symbol never came up, he said.
But a former top Platner staffer said he should have known.
“Maybe he didn’t know it when he got it, but he got it years ago and he should have had it covered up because he knows damn well what it means,” Platner’s former political director Genevieve L. McDonald, who quit the campaign last week, said in a Facebook post Tuesday.
Platner is running against Mills in next year’s primary.
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has endorsed Platner, was sticking with the candidate, telling reporters on Tuesday that Platner is “an excellent candidate.”
“I’m going to support him,” Sanders added.
The episodes, including Jones’ explosive revelations in Virginia, follow a decade of Trump rewriting the standard for what can derail a campaign.
Trump won the 2016 presidential election even after recordings surfaced that had been made 11 years earlier of him speaking to an “Access Hollywood” reporter in which he boasted in lewd terms about making sexual advances toward women who were not his wife. Trump also referred to “very fine people, on both sides” of a 2017 episode in Charlottesville, Virginia, where a woman who was protesting against a white nationalist demonstration was run down and killed by a white supremacist in his car.
More recently, Trump was elected to a second, non-consecutive term in 2024 after being twice impeached during his first term and later being convicted on 34 criminal counts in a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election through hush money payment to a porn actor who said the two had sex. Trump denied the allegation.
“I think there’s a sense among Democrats that if Republicans can ignore calls to bow out, why can’t we?” said Todd Belt, director of the Graduate School of Political Management at George Washington University.
During an attorney general campaign debate last week, Jones raised the very issue, referring to Trump’s speech urging his supporters to contest the 2020 presidential election, which he lost, before many of them stormed the U.S. Capitol in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot.
“What about when Donald Trump used incendiary language to incite a riot to try to overturn an election here in this country?” Jones said.
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Thomas Beaumont, Kimberlee Kruesi and Patrick Whittle
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Maine Democratic Senate candidate and former Marine Graham Platner denied that he was a “secret Nazi” on Monday after revealing he has a tattoo that resembles a Nazi Germany symbol.
Platner’s campaign shared a video with the “Pod Save America” podcast that showed Platner lip-syncing to Miley Cyrus’ “Wrecking Ball” at his brother’s wedding about a decade ago. In the video, Platner is shirtless and appears to have a skull tattoo on his chest that resembles the “Totenkopf,” a symbol of the SS, or Schutzstaffel, under Adolf Hitler.
“I am not a secret Nazi,” Platner said. “Actually, if you read through my Reddit comments, I think you can pretty much figure out where I stand on Nazism and antisemitism and racism in general. I’d say a lifelong opponent.”
REPUBLICAN LAWMAKER DIRECTS INVESTIGATION AFTER SWASTIKA VANDALISM DISCOVERED IN DC OFFICE
Graham Platner, a U.S. Marine and Army veteran and oyster farmer, in August launched a Democratic run for the U.S. Senate in Maine against Sen. Susan Collins. (Graham Platner campaign)
Platner said that he got the tattoo in a Croatia parlor after being “very inebriated” with his fellow Marines in 2007. He insisted that skulls and crossbones were a “pretty standard military thing” and that he got the tattoo prior to joining the Army and getting a security clearance.
“At no point in this entire experience of my life did anybody ever once say, ‘Hey, you’re a Nazi,’” Platner said. “It never came up until we got wind that in the opposition research, somebody was shopping the idea that I was a secret Nazi with a hidden Nazi tattoo. And I can honestly say that if I was trying to hide it, I’ve I’ve not been doing a very good job for the past 18 years.”
Platner quickly faced backlash for the video, including from the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC).
“This comes less than a week after he was caught: advocating for political violence, saying Black people don’t tip, calling all police ‘bastards,’ calling Maine’s lobstermen ‘pieces of sh*t.’ What’s next…,” the group wrote on X.
‘MAINE’S MAMDANI’: MAINE GOP CHIEF ISSUES WARNING ABOUT NEW CHALLENGER LOOKING TO OUST SUSAN COLLINS
Graham Planter is looking to run against Sen. Susan Collins but has to first win the Democratic primary against sitting Gov. Janet Mills. (Mark Makela/Getty Images)
Although Platner suggested he did not think the symbol meant anything beyond a skull and crossbones, his former political director Genevieve McDonald reportedly wrote on Facebook that he “knows damn well what it means.”
“This is seriously the dumbest timeline,” McDonald wrote. “Graham has an anti-Semitic tattoo on his chest. He’s not an idiot, he’s a military history buff. Maybe he didn’t know it when he got it, but he got it years ago and he should have had it covered up because he knows damn well what it means.”
She added, “The vault is open for the GOP to f—— crush any dreams we had in the general and literally everyone I know is fighting with each other on social media. We cannot be this painfully stupid.”
Graham Platner’s former director reportedly claimed that he knew “damn well” what the symbol meant. (Graham Platner Senate campaign)
Fox News Digital reached out to Platner’s campaign and the NRSC for comment.
Platner, who is attempting to take on longtime Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, recently came under fire last week after Reddit posts of his from 2018 resurfaced. In one post, he wrote that “all” police are bastards and called himself a “communist.”
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In a separate post, he argued that if people “expect to fight fascism without a good semi-automatic rifle, they ought to do some reading of history.”
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PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — One of the rarest whales on the planet has continued an encouraging trend of population growth in the wake of new efforts to protect the giants animals, according to scientists who study them.
The North Atlantic right whale now numbers an estimated 384 animals, up eight whales from the previous year, according to a report by the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium released Tuesday. The whales have shown a trend of slow population growth over the past four years.
It’s a welcome development in the wake of a troubling decline in the previous decade. The population of the whales, which are vulnerable to collisions with ships and entanglement in fishing gear, fell about 25% from 2010 to 2020.
The whale’s trend toward recovery is a testament to the importance of conservation measures, said Philip Hamilton, a senior scientist with the New England Aquarium’s Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life. The center and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration collaborate to calculate the population estimate.
New management measures in Canada that attempt to keep the whales safe amid their increased presence in the Gulf of St. Lawrence have been especially important, Hamilton said.
“We know that a modest increase every year, if we can sustain it, will lead to population growth,” Hamilton said. “It’s just whether or not we can sustain it.”
Scientists have cautioned in recent years that the whale’s slow recovery is happening at a time when the giant animals still face threats from accidental deaths, and that stronger conservation measures are needed. But there are also reasons to believe the whales are turning a corner in terms of low reproduction numbers, Hamilton said.
The whales are less likely to reproduce when they have suffered injuries or are underfed, scientists have said. That has emerged as a problem for the whale because they aren’t producing enough babies to sustain their population, they’ve said.
However, this year four mother whales had calves for the first time, Hamilton said. And some other, established mother whales had shorter intervals between calves, he said.
In total, 11 calves were born, which is less than researchers had hoped for, but the entry of new females into the reproductive pool is encouraging, Hamilton said.
And any number of calves is helpful in a year of no mortalities, said Heather Pettis, who leads the right whale research program at Cabot Center and chairs the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium
“The slight increase in the population estimate, coupled with no detected mortalities and fewer detected injuries than in the last several years, leaves us cautiously optimistic about the future of North Atlantic right whales,” Pettis said. ”What we’ve seen before is this population can turn on a dime.”
The whales were hunted to the brink of extinction during the era of commercial whaling. They have been federally protected for decades.
The whales migrate every year from calving grounds off Florida and Georgia to feeding grounds off New England and Canada. Some scientists have said the warming of the ocean has made that journey more dangerous because the whales have had to stray from established protected areas in search of food.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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An elderly woman was seriously injured in a head-on crash in southern Maine on Sunday night, and the driver of the other vehicle has been charged with operating under the influence.
Shortly after 6 p.m. Sunday, the Sagadahoc County Sheriff’s Office responded to a report of a head-on crash involving two vehicles on Route 1 in Woolwich near the intersection of the southern entrance to Weston Road.
A Ford F-150 traveling south on Route 1 had crossed over the center line into the southbound lane, colliding with a Toyota 4Runner, the sheriff’s office said. The pickup truck careened off the road, and the Toyota was spun around, coming to rest in the southbound breakdown lane with extensive damage.
The driver of the Toyota, identified as 71-year-old Deborah Webster, of Round Pond, sustained serious injuries and had to be extracted from the vehicle. She was later to Maine Medical Center in Portland by a medical helicopter.
The Ford was driven by 33-year-old Porter Sickels, of Biddeford. He sustained minor injuries in the crash and was taken to Mid Coast Hospital in Brunswick and later released.
Sickels has since been arrested for aggravated operating under the influence with serious bodily injury, according to the sheriff’s office. He is being held at Two Bridges Regional Jail on $10,000 cash bail and is scheduled to be arraigned later this week.
The crash remains under investigation by the sheriff’s office.
A portion of Route 1 in the area of the crash was closed for just over three hours, reopening to traffic around 9:30 p.m.
Woolwich, a town with a population of about 3,000 people, is located about 35 miles northeast of Portland.
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Marc Fortier
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BOOTHBAY HARBOR, Maine (AP) — Republican lawmakers are targeting one of the U.S.’s longest standing pieces of environmental legislation, credited with helping save rare whales from extinction.
Conservative leaders feel they now have the political will to remove key pieces of the Marine Mammal Protection Act, enacted in 1972 to protect whales, seals, polar bears and other sea animals. The law also places restrictions on commercial fishermen, shippers and other marine industries.
A GOP-led bill in the works has support from fishermen in Maine who say the law makes lobster fishing more difficult, lobbyists for big-money species such as tuna in Hawaii and crab in Alaska, and marine manufacturers who see the law as antiquated.
Conservation groups adamantly oppose the changes and say weakening the law will erase years of hard-won gains for jeopardized species such as the vanishing North Atlantic right whale, of which there are less than 400, and is vulnerable to entanglement in fishing gear.
Here’s what to know about the protection act and the proposed changes.
Why does the 1970s law still matter
“The Marine Mammal Protection Act is important because it’s one of our bedrock laws that help us to base conservation measures on the best available science,” said Kathleen Collins, senior marine campaign manager with International Fund for Animal Welfare. “Species on the brink of extinction have been brought back.”
It was enacted the year before the Endangered Species Act, at a time when the movement to save whales from extinction was growing. Scientist Roger Payne had discovered that whales could sing in the late 1960s, and their voices soon appeared on record albums and throughout popular culture.
The law protects all marine mammals, and prohibits capturing or killing them in U.S. waters or by U.S. citizens on the high seas. It allowed for preventative measures to stop commercial fishing ships and other businesses from accidentally harming animals such as whales and seals. The animals can be harmed by entanglement in fishing gear, collisions with ships and other hazards at sea.
The law also prevents the hunting of marine mammals, including polar bears, with exceptions for Indigenous groups. Some of those animals can be legally hunted in other countries.
Changes to oil and gas operations — and whale safety
Republican Rep. Nick Begich of Alaska, a state with a large fishing industry, submitted a bill draft this summer that would roll back aspects of the law. The bill says the act has “unduly and unnecessarily constrained government, tribes and the regulated community” since its inception.
The proposal states that it would make changes such as lowering population goals for marine mammals from “maximum productivity” to the level needed to “support continued survival.” It would also ease rules on what constitutes harm to marine mammals.
For example, the law currently prevents harassment of sea mammals such as whales, and defines harassment as activities that have “the potential to injure a marine mammal.” The proposed changes would limit the definition to only activities that actually injure the animals. That change could have major implications for industries such as oil and gas exploration where rare whales live.
That poses an existential threat to the Rice’s whale, which numbers only in the dozens and lives in the Gulf of Mexico, conservationists said. And the proposal takes specific aim at the North Atlantic right whale protections with a clause that would delay rules designed to protect that declining whale population until 2035.
Begich and his staff did not return calls for comment on the bill, and his staff declined to provide an update about where it stands in Congress. Begich has said he wants “a bill that protects marine mammals and also works for the people who live and work alongside them, especially in Alaska.”
Fishing groups want restrictions loosened
A coalition of fishing groups from both coasts has come out in support of the proposed changes. Some of the same groups lauded a previous effort by the Trump administration to reduce regulatory burdens on commercial fishing.
The groups said in a July letter to House members that they feel Begich’s changes reflect “a positive and necessary step” for American fisheries’ success.
Restrictions imposed on lobster fishermen of Maine are designed to protect the right whale, but they often provide little protection for the animals while limiting one of America’s signature fisheries, Virginia Olsen, political director of the Maine Lobstering Union, said. The restrictions stipulate where lobstermen can fish and what kinds of gear they can use. The whales are vulnerable to lethal entanglement in heavy fishing rope.
Gathering more accurate data about right whales while revising the original law would help protect the animals, Olsen said.
“We do not want to see marine mammals harmed; we need a healthy, vibrant ocean and a plentiful marine habitat to continue Maine’s heritage fishery,” Olsen said.
Some members of other maritime industries have also called on Congress to update the law. The National Marine Manufacturers Association said in a statement that the rules have not kept pace with advancements in the marine industry, making innovation in the business difficult.
Environmentalists fight back
Numerous environmental groups have vowed to fight to save the protection act. They characterized the proposed changes as part of the Trump administration’s assault on environmental protections.
The act was instrumental in protecting the humpback whale, one of the species most beloved by whale watchers, said Gib Brogan, senior campaign director with Oceana. Along with other sea mammals, humpbacks would be in jeopardy without it, he said.
“The Marine Mammal Protection Act is flexible. It works. It’s effective. We don’t need to overhaul this law at this point,” Brogan said.
What does this mean for seafood imports
The original law makes it illegal to import marine mammal products without a permit, and allows the U.S. to impose import prohibitions on seafood products from foreign fisheries that don’t meet U.S. standards.
The import embargoes are a major sticking point because they punish American businesses, said Gavin Gibbons, chief strategy officer of the National Fisheries Institute, a Virginia-based seafood industry trade group. It’s critical to source seafood globally to be able to meet American demand for seafood, he said.
The National Fisheries Institute and a coalition of industry groups sued the federal government Thursday over what they described as unlawful implementation of the protection act. Gibbons said the groups don’t oppose the act, but want to see it responsibly implemented.
“Our fisheries are well regulated and appropriately fished to their maximum sustainable yield,” Gibbons said. “The men and women who work our waters are iconic and responsible. They can’t be expected to just fish more here to make up a deficit while jeopardizing the sustainability they’ve worked so hard to maintain.”
Some environmental groups said the Republican lawmakers’ proposed changes could weaken American seafood competitiveness by allowing imports from poorly regulated foreign fisheries.
This story was supported by funding from the Walton Family Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Maine Democratic Gov. Janet Mills appeared to announce the launch of her campaign for the Senate on X on Friday, but then quickly deleted the post.
In a since-deleted announcement video, the 77-year-old Maine governor asked, “Folks, do you want Democrats to take back the Senate? Well, I’m Gov. Janet Mills, and I’m running to flip Maine’s Senate seat blue.”
In the video, Mills took aim at incumbent Sen. Susan Collins, a moderate Republican, saying she has “sold out Maine and bowed down to special interests and to Donald Trump, but that ends now.”
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The video directed supporters to donate to an ActBlue page that has also since been deleted.
On the donation page, Mills touted her bona fides, saying, “I’ve spent my career standing up for Maine families as prosecutor, Attorney General, and Governor. I’ve taken on Big Pharma, expanded health care access, and took Donald Trump to court – and won.”
Democratic Gov. Janet Mills delivers her State of the State address Jan. 30, 2024, at the State House in Augusta, Maine. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)
After the posts were deleted, reactions started to flood in online.
“In a now deleted tweet at 4:30pm on a Friday before a holiday weekend, Janet Mills confirms she is in fact running for Senate … Some poor digital staffer is about to get fired!” posted National Republican Senatorial Committee staffer Joanna Rodriguez.
A progressive political commentator named Jack Cocchiarella commented, “If you thought democratic politics was missing geriatric candidates with no charisma, wait until you meet 77 year old Janet Mills Chuck Schumer’s pick for Senate. She posted this launch video today then deleted it after two hours.”
Mills’ announcement has been long anticipated. She is seen as the favored candidate by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
The top Democrat in the Senate urged Mills to run and sees her as the best candidate to defeat Collins, the only Republican senator up for re-election next year in a state the Democrats carried in the presidential election. A Collins defeat would be essential for the Democrats to have any chance of winning back the Senate majority.
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, pushed back against Majority Forward, a Democratic PAC aligned with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., for ads that suggest she has spent her career in Washington trading stocks to enrich herself. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
But before she reaches the general election, Mills first has to navigate a likely competitive and divisive primary among a crowded field of contenders that includes a much younger rising star on the left who’s backed by longtime progressive champion Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
Mills, a former elected county district attorney and former state lawmaker, made history serving as Maine’s first female attorney general.
She later won election in 2018 as Maine’s first female governor, and, in 2022, she comfortably defeated former Republican Gov. Paul LePage by double digits to win re-election.
While she will be considered the frontrunner for the Democratic Senate nomination, thanks in part to her vast name recognition in blue-leaning Maine, she could face a serious challenge from 41-year-old Graham Platner, a U.S. Marine, Army veteran and oyster farmer who launched his campaign in August.
Platner, who hauled in over $3 million in fundraising during the first six weeks after declaring his candidacy, is backed by Sanders, the two-time Democratic presidential nomination runner-up, who recently stopped in Maine to headline a campaign rally.
In a warning to Mills, Sanders said on social media last week that “Graham Platner is a great working class candidate for Senate in Maine who will defeat Susan Collins.”
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Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., has thrown his support behind Graham Platner, a U.S. Marine, Army veteran and oyster farmer who launched a Democratic run for the Senate in August. (Joe Maher)
“It’s disappointing that some Democratic leaders are urging Governor Mills to run. We need to focus on winning that seat & not waste millions on an unnecessary & divisive primary,” Sanders added.
Other candidates vying for the Democratic Senate nomination include Dan Kleban, a co-founder of the Maine Beer Co., and former congressional staffer Jordan Wood, who raked in roughly $3 million during the July-September third quarter of fundraising.
Phil Rench, a former senior engineer for Elon Musk’s SpaceX, is running as an independent candidate.
Collins first won election to the Senate in 1996 and won comfortable double-digit re-elections in 2002, 2008 and 2014.
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President Donald Trump and Maine Gov. Janet Mills clashed at the White House over executive order compliance earlier this year. (Pool via AP; Win McNamee/Getty Images)
She chairs the influential Senate Appropriations Committee.
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In her 2020 re-election, Collins faced off against Democratic State House Speaker Sara Gideon in a hotly contested race that became the most expensive in Maine history. While polls indicated Collins trailing her Democratic challenger, she ended up winning the election by more than eight points.
Fox News Digital reached out to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
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