On Tuesday night, voters cast their ballots in favor of abortion access in Missouri, Nevada, and Virginia, reflecting the continued popularity of the issue across red, blue, and purple states, even as it fell out of the political conversation compared to other topics this cycle. 

All told, the abortion rights victories in this latest election will strengthen or preserve abortion protections for millions of women of reproductive age, as well as thousands of others traveling from more restrictive areas for care. With the latest results, there are now 14 states where voters have backed abortion rights in ballot referendums since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022.

Abortion rights advocates saw their one big loss of the night in Idaho, where a citizen-led ballot initiative to challenge one of the nation’s strictest abortion bans failed. The measure aimed to legalize abortion up to the point of fetal viability (typically between 22 and 24 weeks of a pregnancy) and in medical emergencies. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints came out against the measure in September, while national reproductive rights groups largely avoided investing in the campaign. 

 “We will see more doctors leave the state as a result of this election,” Melanie Folwell, executive director of Idahoans United for Women and Families, said in a statement. “And, most urgently, women will continue to suffer needlessly under one of the most cruel abortion bans in the nation.” 

The anti-abortion movement was not prepared to fight ballot measures that protected access in the 2022 midterm cycle, calling the five out of five losses they endured that night a “wake-up call.” In the 2024 cycle, anti-abortion leaders spent more money and leveraged new tactics, including in Florida, where Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis actively attacked the proposed ballot measure to reverse the state’s near-total abortion ban. He directed his state agencies to threaten local TV stations with criminal penalties if they aired ads in support. 

Still, seven out of 10 passed that year — and the latest results on Tuesday suggest there still is a significant group of voters who personally oppose abortion, or have reservations, but are unwilling to support sweeping bans and were comfortable with Roe v. Wade’s protections.

The anti-abortion movement released statements acknowledging their “devastating” losses this cycle. “The pro-life movement must double down on our education and grassroots efforts so Americans can feel confident in rejecting abortion extremism, knowing women and the unborn are protected,” said Sarah Zagorski, a spokesperson from Americans United for Life. 

Ballot measures have become a key tool for abortion rights advocates since the Supreme Court overturned Roe. Where they’ve won, activists have turned around and used those victories to go after restrictions still on the books. In Arizona, a 2024 ballot measure win set advocates up to strike down the state’s 15-week ban the next year, and a February 2026 ruling cleared the way for abortion pills by mail and telehealth and ended mandatory counseling, ultrasounds, and waiting periods. In Colorado, where voters in 2024 lifted a decades-old ban on public funding for abortion, lawmakers followed up by extending coverage to Medicaid recipients and public employees.

But the ballot measure strategy has limits. In many states with abortion bans or early gestational limits, for example, citizens have no way to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot at all; only the legislature can. And of the ban states that do allow it, just two, Arkansas and Oklahoma, haven’t yet voted on abortion. Oklahoma organizers abandoned their effort in late 2022, and Arkansas’s was thrown out in 2024 over how signatures were gathered.

Even a ballot measure win isn’t permanent: Missouri lawmakers forced a repeal vote this year on the amendment voters passed in 2024, and while that effort failed this week, it revealed how even state constitutional protections can be reopened. Ballot measures have restored access where the rules allow it, but to restore access for everyone, Congress will need to take action. 

Here’s a closer look at what happened last night.

The abortion rights ballot measures and their results

1. Virginia: Question 1

The measure established a new constitutional amendment for a right to reproductive freedom, defined as “the ability to make and carry out decisions related to one’s own prenatal care, childbirth, postpartum care, contraception, abortion care, miscarriage management and fertility care.” The state can still restrict abortion for women in their third trimester unless the fetus is deemed nonviable or a physician determines abortion is necessary to protect the life, mental health, or physical health of the mother.

It passed.

Know more: Abortion is already legal in Virginia through the second trimester, and third-trimester abortions currently require three physicians to approve an abortion, determining that continuing would “irremediably” harm the patient’s life or health. The new constitutional amendment will change that requirement to just one physician, which advocates say will help those who face emergencies in rural areas with fewer doctors. Certain life-threatening complications are only discovered, or only develop, later in a pregnancy. Opponents of Question 1 argued this change will reduce safety and have filed a lawsuit to challenge the amendment from being enforced. 

Activists say their new constitutional amendment will help ensure that Virginia stays a safe haven for access, even if the state turns back to Republican control in future years. Every Republican in Virginia’s legislature voted against putting Question 1 on the ballot. The number of abortions provided in Virginia increased by nearly 114 percent from 2020 to 2025, partly because so many people living in the South now travel there for care. 

2. Missouri: Amendment 3

The measure would have repealed the constitutional right to reproductive freedom that Missouri voters approved in 2024, and barred gender transition surgeries and puberty-blocking drugs for minors. The measure would have also prohibited abortion except in cases of “medical emergency, fetal anomaly, rape, or incest” and only allowed abortions in cases of rape or incest prior to 12 weeks of gestation.

It failed.

Know more: Missouri, which was the first state to completely ban abortion after Roe fell, became the first state in 2024 to overturn that ban. On Tuesday, voters rejected Missouri lawmakers’ attempt to overturn that repeal. The measure drew protest from some anti-abortion activists too, who argued that it didn’t go far enough because it stopped short of criminalizing pregnant women. Lawmakers also paired the abortion ban with a prohibition on gender-affirming care for minors, a new tactic for the movement, which in past cycles has argued that abortion rights amendments would let young girls transition without their parents’ consent.

3. Idaho: Proposition 1

This measure would have created a statutory right to reproductive freedom and privacy by establishing that the state can regulate abortion after the point of fetal viability, except in medical emergencies. The measure would have also clarified that the state can’t interfere with personal reproductive healthcare decisions, including childbirth, contraception, fertility treatment, miscarriage care, and abortion.

It failed.

Know more: National progressive groups did not invest as heavily in Idaho’s abortion rights ballot measure, with some groups like the ACLU reportedly steering clear because they did not think it went far enough to expand access. “ACLU national basically said, ‘We don’t like your policy. It’s not ambitious enough,’” the executive director of Idahoans United for Women and Families told the Spokesman-Review in September. (Asked for comment, Carolyn Ehrlich, the ACLU’s acting director of ballot measures, confirmed they did not back it. “Every campaign cycle, we carefully evaluate where the ACLU can make a meaningful difference,” she told me, adding that the group must “balance our vision for the future with our own limited resources and political analysis.”)

In 2024, national groups including Planned Parenthood, the ACLU, and Reproductive Freedom for All also declined to invest in measures in Arkansas and South Dakota on grounds that the proposals did not go far enough. 

In 2025, 850 abortions were provided to Idaho residents via “shield laws” from telehealth providers in other states, while more than 1,600 people traveled out of state to end their pregnancies. Idaho lost more than a third of its 268 OB-GYNs practicing obstetrics between August 2022 and December 2024, according to a study published last year. While the ballot measure failed, roughly 25 percent of the more than 100,000 petition signers for Proposition 1 were registered Republicans.

4. Nevada: Question 6

The measure would establish a state constitutional right to an abortion, and for the state to regulate abortion after fetal viability, except when medically determined to “protect the life or health” of the pregnant patient.

It passed.

Know more: Abortion is already legal in Nevada until 24 weeks of pregnancy, but advocates wanted to lock that right in the state constitution, where it would be more difficult for lawmakers to undo. Voters approved this same measure in 2024 with 64 percent of the vote, but because Nevada requires citizen-initiated amendments to pass in two consecutive elections, they had to organize for it again. Supporters of the amendment massively outspent anti-abortion opponents. 

Democrats won a critical US Senate seat on Tuesday, as Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins conceded her long-held seat to Democratic challenger Troy Jackson just after midnight. 

Collins, who has been serving for nearly 30 years, has for years been able to beat back rivals in her increasingly blue state, where residents valued her ability to bring home federal funds and buck her Republican Party when it seemed to count. Her ability to win even against unfavorable conditions has earned her the reputation of being something of a “unicorn” in national politics.

This year, however, she could not escape the long shadow President Donald Trump cast over her state. Collins was the only Republican senator up for reelection in a state Trump lost in 2024, and a late October poll from Marist found just 42 percent of likely Maine voters approved of the president’s performance, while 58 percent disapproved. A Fox News poll from August found that more than half of Mainers felt Collins voted with Trump too often.

While Collins did have some notable breaks with Trump — including voting to convict him after January 6 and to stop his Canadian tariffs — she lacked good answers on Mainers’ rising costs.

In the Marist poll, 46 percent of likely Maine voters said their family finances had gotten worse over the past year. The cost of living was also the top issue for Mainers in the final Times/Siena poll before the election, released this week, with 51 percent of voters trusting Jackson on it, compared with 44 percent for Collins. 

Collins’s slide could also be seen in the polls over the past few months. The Times/Siena survey had her up 49 to 46 percent in September, with Jackson leading in the latest one, 51 to 45. Collins’s favorability also dropped 3 points in that time.

Two other issues shaped the race in Maine.

One was abortion. While nationally reproductive rights played a much lower-profile role compared to 2024 and the 2022 midterms, with candidates running far fewer ads on the subject, Maine was a notable exception. As Vox reported in September, abortion rights was the second biggest focus of campaign ads in the state, after Trump and healthcare. Planned Parenthood made its biggest ad buy of the 2026 cycle there against Collins, and a super PAC aligned with Senate Democrats spent 41 percent of its TV, streaming, and digital money in Maine on abortion-related ads.

The logic was that it was the first time Collins would face voters since the overturning of Roe v. Wade, and despite identifying as pro-choice, her Senate vote was pivotal in confirming Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. A spokesperson for Planned Parenthood Votes told me in September that abortion is “the number one negative in Maine voters’ mind,” even as fewer than half a percent of Mainers would call it their top issue. It didn’t help that over the summer, Collins doubled down on her vote for Kavanaugh, saying she did not regret it.

Throughout the campaign, Democrats made a point of emphasizing that Collins continued to confirm anti-abortion judges, as recently as this fall. While historically Maine voters have given Collins a pass on certain votes because she’s been skilled at bringing home federal dollars, advocates bet that they could convince some voters that Collins’s Kavanaugh vote revealed something important about her character and trustworthiness. One of Planned Parenthood’s ads featured a woman who voted for Collins pledging to “not make the same mistake twice.” 

The second major issue to shape the race was healthcare costs, one of the biggest issues facing Republicans nationally this cycle. Some Republicans warned last year that their party would face backlash in the midterms for gutting Medicaid, with even Trump warning his party to avoid going “too crazy” on cost-cutting.

Republicans are facing blowback for the party’s vote last year to gut Medicaid by roughly $1 trillion over the next decade, a move that the Congressional Budget Office estimates will leave more than 7 million Americans without health insurance by 2034. Though Collins ultimately voted against the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, she helped the package get to the Senate floor. When defending herself against attacks that she shared responsibility for Medicaid’s gutting, she pointed to her advocacy for including in OBBBA a new $50 billion rural healthcare fund. But critics said that the new fund does not offset the Medicaid cuts, which are estimated to strip $137 billion from rural healthcare systems. 

“Senator Collins is like an arsonist who helped set the fire, and then she wants credit for bringing a cup of water to put it out,” Troy Jackson said in their October debate. 

And it’s not just Mainers on Medicaid who are worried about healthcare costs. Employer healthcare plans are expected to rise next year by more than 8 percent, and a KFF annual employer survey found the average American worker is paying more than $600 more toward a family plan this year than in 2025. An AARP Maine poll from October found that 80 percent of voters age 50 and older said the cost of healthcare would factor into their vote. Jackson led by 3 percentage points among all voters in that survey, though Collins was ahead by 9 points among those 50 and older.

The European Commission has reiterated that Poland’s parliament must have the right to appoint new judges, lending support to Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk in an escalating confrontation over the country’s Constitutional Tribunal.

The dispute pits Tusk’s government against President Karol Nawrocki over efforts to reverse judicial changes introduced by the nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) government between 2015 and 2023, which drew condemnation from European courts over concerns about judicial independence.

Nawrocki, elected with PiS backing in 2025, has refused to swear in some Tribunal judges elected by the current parliamentary majority, while the court’s PiS-linked leadership has prevented them from working.

The Commission said it was closely monitoring developments and, in a carefully worded statement to POLITICO, appeared to show support for Tusk’s position.

“The Polish Constitutional Tribunal needs to be able to function in accordance with the Polish constitution and the case law of the Court of Justice of the EU,” Commissioner for Democracy, Justice and the Rule of Law Michael McGrath said.

“This matters for every Polish citizen, and it is for the Polish authorities to ensure that,” McGrath added, stating that “the Venice Commission has been clear that appointing the new judges lies within the power of the Sejm [Poland’s lower house of parliament].”

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk vowed Saturday night not to back down on the dispute. “In some matters there can be no compromise,” Tusk said in an address to the nation, comparing calls for reconciliation to a thief demanding to keep half the contents of a stolen handbag.

“We have waited too long for the treasure of an independent, democratic Poland to be frightened into retreat,” Tusk said.

The prime minister also targeted Nawrocki, who turned his plane around mid-flight en route to Senegal and returned to Warsaw, where he pushed his way into the Tribunal shortly after midnight Saturday, confronting judges challenging its leadership.

“In a state governed by the rule of law, a politician cannot enter a court or tribunal and give orders or intimidate judges, even if he is the president,” Tusk said.

He pledged to ensure the Tribunal could operate independently and safely.

In his statement to POLITICO, McGrath stopped short of endorsing Friday’s suspension of Tribunal President Bogdan Święczkowski and his deputy Bartłomiej Sochański, a move that triggered the latest spat.

Judge Anna Korwin-Piotrowska, taking charge of the Tribunal, suspended Święczkowski and Sochański after they blocked judges elected by the Tusk-led parliamentary majority from work for months. 

Nawrocki denounced the move as an unlawful takeover and held talks with parliamentary leaders Saturday, boycotted by Tusk’s Civic Coalition and its government ally, the New Left.

Korwin-Piotrowska has convened an assembly of Tribunal judges for Tuesday, potentially setting up another confrontation over who controls the court.

Gerardo Fortuna contributed to this report.

Poland’s constitutional court descended into turmoil Friday evening as judges barred from hearing cases moved to oust the institution’s nationalist-linked leadership, sparking accusations of a coup and tense protests.

Anna Korwin-Piotrowska, a judge with the court, ordered its president Bogdan Święczkowski and his deputy to be suspended for a month and announced she was taking charge. Święczkowski rejected her authority, accusing those involved of a “coup d’état,” while his deputy was turned away at the building’s gates.

The showdown marks an escalation in Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s struggle to undo the judicial overhaul carried out by the nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) former government. During its eight years in power, PiS filled the Constitutional Tribunal with its appointees, including Święczkowski and his deputy, placing it at the heart of Poland’s confrontation with Brussels over the rule of law.

Outside the tribunal, protesters clashed with police, who said objects had been thrown at officers and three people detained after climbing over the court’s fence. Police said they had deployed to maintain security following warnings of threats to judges and staff, but had not entered the building.

PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński took part in the protest and tried to force his way into the court building. He accused Tusk of staging a “coup” against the court and turning Poland into a “police state,” and demanded presidential intervention.

President Karol Nawrocki, a PiS ally and rival of Tusk, interrupted his official trip to Senegal, declaring, “At a moment like this, the president must be in Poland.”

Tusk was defiant. “Restoring the rule of law is our duty,” he wrote on X. “After years of PiS lawlessness, it’s a difficult, sometimes painful process that requires decisive action. There is no other way.”

The tribunal, which can strike down legislation, helped impose a near-total abortion ban under PiS and challenged the supremacy of EU law. Last December, the EU’s top court ruled that it failed to meet European standards of judicial independence.

But efforts to change the court’s makeup have met resistance. Nawrocki refused to swear in five judges elected by Tusk’s parliamentary majority. They took their oaths in parliament instead, but Święczkowski barred them from hearing cases.

Justice Minister Waldemar Żurek blamed the turmoil on Święczkowski, who he accused of turning the institution into his “private fiefdom” and preventing newly elected judges from doing their jobs.

“And now the judges have spoken,” Żurek told POLITICO.

Żurek, who also serves as Poland’s prosecutor general, said he submitted five requests to lift the immunity of Święczkowski and his deputy, backed by 50 volumes of case files. He defended Korwin-Piotrowska’s move as a decision by a legally appointed judge, insisting that the government had nothing to do with it.

People’s Party leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo on Friday pledged to carry out sweeping right-wing reforms on social issues in Spain, promising to rewrite abortion and euthanasia laws if he wins the Nov. 29 election.

“My main objective is to get [Prime Minister Pedro] Sánchez out of government and start a new chapter in my country,” Feijóo said in an interview on Spain’s Cadena SER radio network, vowing to undo eight years of Socialist rule.

The center-right leader, whose PP has led polls for years, confirmed he would consider forming a governing coalition with far-right Vox if election results required it.

“I cannot rule out doing what the Spanish people tell me,” Feijóo said, acknowledging the polls which currently indicate the PP would need Vox’s support to secure a parliamentary majority. “If they tell me to provide stability with [Vox], I will do so.”

If such a partnership is needed, Vox is expected to demand a deputy prime minister post and at least one ministry, as it has in regional coalitions with the PP. POLITICO’s Madrid Playbook this week reported on speculation that the far-right party could be given the agriculture portfolio, but Feijóo said he had held no formal talks on allocating ministries.

During the interview, the conservative leader vowed to revise Spain’s abortion law, which was amended in 2023 to allow minors over 16 to terminate pregnancies without parental consent. Feijóo said he was keen to involve legal guardians in the decision, arguing that “many 16-year-old girls who have their parents’ support will not want to have an abortion.”

It’s unclear whether that measure would satisfy Vox, which has sought to completely repeal the current abortion law and rejects abortion as a legal right.

The PP leader also pledged to restrict access to euthanasia, which Spain legalized in 2021 for adults with serious, incurable illnesses or severe, chronic and disabling conditions under strict safeguards. “Spain must become the country where it is easiest to sustain life,” he said.

Feijóo also promised to scrap the standalone Equality Ministry as part of a broader effort to reduce the size of government. He insisted the move did not undermine his commitment to feminism. “I grew up in a house with more women than men. How could I think that a woman doesn’t have the same rights as a man?” he said.

Feijóo declined to explicitly commit to further increase the minimum wage, which has risen eight times under Sánchez, from €735 a month in 2018 to €1,221 today. His goal, he said, was to raise “the average wage, so that people’s purchasing power improves.”

ROME — Former paratrooper General Roberto Vannacci portrays himself on social media as a Roman legionary and charioteer. He has declared he prefers women “without skirts” and posted an AI-generated image of a female junior minister with exaggerated cleavage.

None of these projections of masculinity and anti-woke culture are clumsy gaffes. The insurgent far-right star of Italian politics is making a deliberate play to the so-called manosphere to transform himself from an internet provocateur into a heavyweight political force.

For Italy’s first female prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, Vannacci now poses a serious problem as she needs to decide whether he is an asset or a liability. With elections expected next spring, his National Future party is polling at about 8%, making him a potentially crucial factor in building a right-wing coalition.

“It is disgusting to think you can manipulate the image of a woman for such deplorable propaganda,” the center-right junior minister in Meloni’s coalition whose image was manipulated, Matilde Siracusano, told POLITICO.  “I don’t think we have ever sunk this low, especially from someone aspiring to be a national political leader.”

Vannacci’s provocations may look like familiar trolling from a politician who has built his reputation on saying the unsayable. But behind them lies a broader political project, tapping into the grievances of young men who feel alienated by feminism and progressive culture.

Emanuele Pozzolo, a National Future parliamentarian who defected from Meloni’s Brothers of Italy, believes young men have become increasingly constrained in their relationships with women.

“I think young Western men are very often almost castrated in their instinct for dealing with women,” he said, arguing that even legitimate romantic approaches risk being treated as aggression. 

“The cultural problem is that sometimes everything seems to be harassment, everything abuse, everything violence,” he added, while stressing that genuine abuse must be punished.

Mediterranean patriarchy

Vannacci combines inflammatory online messaging and an alpha-male persona with a political program that promises to restore traditional roles for men and women. National Future even has a name for its preferred social order: “Mediterranean patriarchy.”

Its political program calls for the formation of “strong men” capable of controlling their emotions and passions, protecting women and sacrificing themselves for society. It opposes the recently introduced crime of femicide, condemns feminism, and declares the defense of life “from conception to natural death” and the “natural family” among its non-negotiable values.

The architect of this vision and principal author of the program is Lorenzo Gasperini, a conservative Catholic philosophy teacher from Tuscany, who has opposed vaccines and abortion rights on social media and blamed feminism for violence against women.

The result is a political offering that combines different traditions: conservative Catholic ideas about family and sexuality, older Italian ideas of virility and the much newer online politics of male grievance.

The manifesto seeks to put traditional family values into practice with proposals to pay parents who leave work to raise children, and reward parents of large families with tax exemption and public sector jobs.  

Some proposals echo Benito Mussolini’s fascist-era “Battle for Births,” which offered similar incentives while promoting motherhood as a patriotic duty.

Luca Sforzini, a former Vannacci ideologue who has since broken with him, said the Mediterranean label was a clever piece of marketing.

“It’s like talking about the Mediterranean diet,” he told POLITICO. “You think of Italian food, mozzarella, tomatoes, olive oil.” The result, he said, was to conceal a patriarchal model with men above women behind “bucolic, positive images. It’s monstrous,” he said.

Pozzolo rejected the suggestion that the program advocates for male supremacy.

“It is exactly the opposite,” he said. “When we talk about Mediterranean patriarchy, the main idea is to recover, preserve and pass on the responsibilities of being a man within the family and society.” Men, he argued, had a duty to show women respect, love and protection, while rejecting violence or coercive control.

He defended the “without skirts” remark as “extremely funny” — picking up on a reference to Deputy Prime Minister Antonio Tajani advocating long skirts — and not remotely offensive, comparing Vannacci’s ability to connect with ordinary Italians to Silvio Berlusconi’s. 

At a recent rally in the Umbrian city of Orvieto, Vannacci defended the Mediterranean patriarchy concept as not “oppression and possession” but “duty, fidelity, sacrifice,” and said it was the family model that had allowed “us to prevail over the last 2,000 years.”

Elisa Ercoli, president of the women’s rights organization Differenza Donna, condemned the program as “a return to the supremacy of the white, cisgender alpha male, and the woman as his handmaiden.”

Appealing to alphas

Vannacci, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, became a media sensation in 2023 with the self-published book “The World Upside Down,” a broadside against immigration, feminism and homosexuality. In it, he told gay people: “You are not normal, get over it.”

Lionized by fans as a defender of common sense against progressive politics, he received more than half a million votes as a candidate for the anti-immigration League in the 2024 European elections, before founding National Future in February.

Polling analysis suggests that about 62% of National Future’s prospective voters are male, including strong support among manual workers and the unemployed.

Pozzolo denied National Future was deliberately targeting male voters, insisting the party’s ambition was to reach Italians of all backgrounds who felt unrepresented.

Federica Formato, a lecturer at Brighton University in the U.K., who studies gender and the far right, said Vannacci was “testing the waters” to see whether he can reach a younger male audience, tapping into what she described as the “aggrieved entitlement” of young men.

A career soldier, he has repeatedly portrayed himself through images of physical strength, competition and military prowess. On social media, AI-generated versions proliferate of Vannacci as an ancient Roman in scenes recalling the Ridley Scott epic Gladiator.

For Formato, the Roman imagery projects “virility and hyper-masculinity,” while Vannacci’s army background itself helps construct the image of an “alpha male.”

Humor, memes and deliberate provocation are particularly effective with a younger online audience, Formato said, allowing relatively complex ideological messages to be reduced to instantly comprehensible images. “He is not naive,” she said. “He says things to provoke and get more attention.”

That presents Meloni with a headache. Vannacci’s party is drawing voters from her Brothers of Italy and Matteo Salvini’s League, while offering a more uncompromising platform on immigration, social issues and foreign policy.

Yet Vannacci has opened the door to an alliance with Meloni if she needs his votes. He has described National Future as a natural partner for the center-right, while insisting that any deal must respect his party’s principles. With Italy’s new electoral law offering a parliamentary majority bonus to coalitions winning at least 42 percent of the vote, those votes could matter.

That presents Meloni with an uncomfortable choice: Keep Vannacci outside the coalition, or bring into her government a movement whose appeal rests partly on the grievances of men who believe feminism has gone too far.

For Formato, Vannacci is exploiting a space in Italian politics that has so far lacked a figure capable of turning those grievances into an organized political constituency.

Vannacci, with his promises to restore traditional masculinity, appears determined to occupy it.

“There is an empty chair,” she said.

Liechtenstein’s Hereditary Prince Alois vetoed a bill on Tuesday that would have legalized abortion during the first 12 weeks of a woman’s pregnancy, blocking a citizens’ initiative co-signed by a quarter of voters and passed in the micro-state’s parliament.

Performing an abortion is currently illegal in the principality, unless the pregnancy presents a severe risk to the pregnant woman’s health or if it is the result of a sexual assault. Women seeking an abortion usually travel to clinics in neighboring Austria or Switzerland, which campaigners say adds uncertainty and an unnecessary financial hurdle to the process.

The bill was introduced by the Fristenlösung citizens’ initiative, which collected almost 5,000 signatures — about a quarter of the state’s registered voters. It proposed decriminalizing abortion up to 12 weeks’ gestation, and to lift a ban on providing information about abortion.

The bill “is not suitable for adequately protecting unborn life as a central legal interest,” a statement from the princely house reads. Alois had already indicated in June he would veto the proposal on these grounds.

“We’re disappointed, but not really surprised,” Tatjana As’Ad, a campaigner for the initiative and a co-managing director for the Free List, Liechtenstein’s progressive opposition party, told POLITICO. “It was clear his decision was fixed in June and that there was no way we would change it.” She added campaigners met Alois on Tuesday morning, but that there was no indication he would announce his veto shortly after.

“We are frustrated because it feels like everything we did since June was decorative,” As’Ad said.

Liechtenstein, a small Alpine principality of about 40,000 people, has an atypical political system associating referendum-led direct democracy with a monarchy where the reigning prince retains extensive executive powers. Alois’s absolute veto right was itself confirmed by a 2012 referendum. He used it for the first time to block the abortion bill.

“The promise of dualism” between democracy and the monarchy “that the Liechtensteiners are trusting has got some cracks,” As’Ad said.

She added that the parliament’s decision to vote through the bill and send it directly to Alois for assent, instead of calling for a referendum, “spared” the hereditary prince from a “conflict” with his people.

She said her campaign’s biggest win was a clarification from Liechtenstein’s government that the ban on “information” about abortion was in effect a ban on “advertising” the practice.

“In the end, everything is going to be the same,” she said. “Women affected are still here. There is a majority in favor and it’s still here. Abortions are still going to happen, and [Alois] just decided where they would be going to happen.”

Liechtenstein’s princely house did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

On Monday, alongside First Lady Melania Trump, President Donald Trump signed an executive order establishing the Women’s Health Division at the National Institutes of Health and a White House Women’s Health Task Force. According to the White House, the aim is to support policy reforms to ensure that women’s research is well-funded and that women have access to “stage-specific prevention, diagnoses, treatment, and care.” 

At first glance, the action is in line with what women have long been advocating for. But in reality, the order is a startling setback, reversing an order signed by Joe Biden pushing for women’s research while advancing the Trump administration’s fertility-focused, pronatalist agenda.

Melania Trump is a key part of this effort. In addition to championing the executive order, she also signed it — a purely symbolic act, as the formal role of first ladies is ceremonial. (In an historic first, she also signed an executive order with her husband in 2025 that expanded resources for the foster care system.) But symbolism matters, and Melania Trump is lending her signature and voice to an action masquerading as a boon for women.

In speaking at the signing ceremony, held in the Rose Garden at the White House, the first lady called the event “a transformative moment for women in America. Beginning today, we will change the reality of women’s health.”

That remains to be seen. The White House Women’s Task Force established by Donald Trump promises to work towards creating a federal government that recognizes and works to rectify medical conditions that affect women throughout their lives by enacting “necessary policy and regulatory reforms to ensure timely and state-specific prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and care for women.”

For many women who have faced systematic gaslighting from doctors who claim that our real physical symptoms are solely psychological, or a lack of funding and real-life effects of diseases largely affecting women being severely behind in clinical trials or lacking funding, this sounds like a good thing. As the order reads, “despite considerable advances in biomedical science, many diseases and conditions that disproportionately or uniquely affect women have not received the level of research, clinical attention, and treatment that other diseases and conditions have received.” 

That is fundamentally true. Medical conditions that solely or disproportionately affect women, such as endometriosis and autoimmune diseases, have for decades been denied funding or excluded from clinical trials. Even conditions that affect men and women have routinely left girls and women out of clinical trials, failing to collect vital information about the different ways that diseases present and progress.This includes cardiovascular disease, in which women may experience different heart attack signs and symptoms compared to men and, consequently, often misattribute heart attack symptoms. The result is significant, often deadly, delays in seeking treatment. 

The same disparity exists in medication research, with women experiencing adverse reactions to medications about twice as often as men because girls and women are not included in clinical studies where medication effectiveness and dosage is studied. This all trickles down into mainstream medicine, where women have for decades been denied care, diagnoses and medication. But the solution that Donald Trump is offering is not going to fix it. 

While the goals of this task force are legitimate, namely to advance and coordinate research on women’s health through all phases of life, to increase inclusion of women and girls in clinical trials, and develop accountability for grant recipients, the president has routinely cut and downscaled women’s healthcare funding and initiatives as Melania Trump has stood idly by. 

During his second administration, the president has cut Medicare, which provided vital healthcare for women, and shut down data-collection contracts for the Women’s Health Initiative study. (He reversed this decision days later.) As part of his efforts at targeting scientific grants connected to diversity, equity and inclusion, the president has further defunded women’s healthcare. 

But perhaps the most glaring example of the administration’s neglect came in June when Trump cancelled millions of dollars in grants under the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program. This change affected thousands of universities, community organizations, public health departments and Planned Parenthood clinics that provide vital gynecological care to women in states where abortion is currently illegal — and where Trump and the GOP’s continued fight against abortion access is costing women their lives. 

The Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the grants, issued new funding criteria mandating abstinence-only sex education with an increased emphasis on marriage and fertility tracking, which advocates warn will increase the rate of teen pregnancy. But that may be the point.

Since his return to office in January 2025, Trump has worked to reverse the decline in U.S. birth rates, even calling himself the “fertilization president” at a Women’s History Month celebration in March 2025. Many of his allies have claimed that the decline in teen pregnancy rates is a “crisis” rather than a societal success. With this context, women’s healthcare advocates argue that Trump is trying to raise the birthrate by increasing the number of teen pregnancies. 

The president’s latest executive order advances this pronatalist agenda. The White House touts TrumpRx.gov as “delivering massive savings on some of the most commonly used fertility medications in the country to help families grow,” and hails the work of Moms.gov “to support new and expecting mothers, bringing together information intended to help families navigate pregnancy and early parenthood.” 

Although Melania Trump has not spoken publicly about the Moms.gov portal, she did publish an op-ed in the Washington Post around the same time Trump launched the platform earlier this year on Mother’s Day, writing that America’s strength is tied to how mothers mold their children’s and family’s moral character. “America can restore the honor of motherhood after years in which feminism often placed career above family, with consequences to our nation,” she wrote. 

With these words in mind, it comes as no shock that the order makes no mention of protecting access to abortion or contraception. As scholars and advocates like Dr. Karen Leader responded online to an X post from the official HHS account, writing, “‘Reproductive health’ without access to legal abortion is a death sentence for women.” Another person replied, “You might ask @FLOTUS to address the many preventable deaths of women who are bleeding out in parking lots or have sepsis or ectopic pregnancies due to republican draconian abortion laws.” 

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Even the people Trump has assigned to the new task force have a proven track record of supporting cuts to women’s healthcare and using medicine as tools to police and restrict women’s bodies. Led by White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, it will include HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has in the past supported cuts to Medicaid coverage and maternal health initiatives and medical abortion restrictions, as well as championing vaccine skepticism.

In a move that is especially galling, Pete Hegseth, who was accused of sexual assault and reached a financial settlement with the accuser, will also serve on the task force. During his time in office, the defense secretary has led a sustained attack on women’s healthcare and diversity in the military. In September 2026, the Pentagon released (and then temporarily rescinded) guidance as part of Hegseth’s “Health and Human Performance Optimization” initiative, which includes regularly screening female service members for fatigue and irregular menstrual cycles. 

Women service members 35 and older who report significant symptoms of perimenopause or menopause are required to undergo testing to determine if these symptoms impact their station or quality of life. In response, advocates and medical professionals voiced concern that this policy could lead to unwanted and unwarranted tracking of women’s menstrual cycles, compromising medical privacy and potentially opening the door to use period tracking as a way to police miscarriages and abortions.

Instead of advancing women’s healthcare, the president’s executive order and task force should be seen for what it is: a cynical ploy for votes ahead of the November midterms. Taken together, the actions represent a last ditch attempt to save the support of women — and especially white women — for Trump’s allies amid growing criticism of the president. 

It makes sense that the first lady, who herself defended abortion rights in her 2024 memoir “Melania” and urged Congress to hold public hearings for Epstein survivors, would be Trump’s choice to share the news. Once again, Melania Trump is willingly being used as a political prop to show that Trump values and respects women, despite the fact that he routinely fires the women in his Cabinet and press office, continues making sexist and predatory remarks to reporters, and most importantly, has named hostile men as many members of a task force dedicated to women’s health. 

Women have long been medically disenfranchised, and Trump is trying to argue that he and the first lady care about women’s health. But for a president that has fought against abortion rights, opposed the release of the Epstein files and even defended the “Cornell 7,” many American women will remain unconvinced of his motives. Rather than reassured, they will also be rightly skeptical of the first lady who continues to stand by his side.

The post Melania Trump turns her back on women with an executive order appeared first on Salon.com.

WARSAW — Poland’s lower chamber of parliament approved two bills that would loosen the country’s strict abortion restrictions Tuesday evening, marking a breakthrough for Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s coalition nearly three years after it took power, promising to restore reproductive rights.

The measures, which are likely to be vetoed by opposition-aligned President Karol Nawrocki, would end criminal penalties for helping a woman obtain an abortion and re-legalize terminations involving severe fetal abnormalities, undoing one of the crucial elements of Poland’s near-total abortion ban.

“The state trusts women. A woman who terminates her own pregnancy is already exempt from criminal punishment. It’s time to stop punishing everyone who loves us, worries about us and respects our choices,” Katarzyna Kotula, Poland’s government equality commissioner and a lawmaker from the Left, said on X.

Still, neither bill would allow abortion on request up to 12 weeks of pregnancy, as Tusk’s Civic Coalition promised during the 2023 election campaign. The multi-party coalition includes many conservatives and lacks agreement on the liberalization going this far.

Both bills now move from the lower chamber, or the Sejm, to the Senate, where they seem poised to pass, but their eventual fate remains uncertain. President Karol Nawrocki, an ally of the nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party, said before his election in 2025 that he would not sign legislation easing abortion rules.

“By refusing to sign [the abortion] legislation, the president is hurting people,” Włodzimierz Czarzasty, speaker of the Sejm, said Tuesday before the votes. “If he wants to hurt women, he will hurt them. I think women will see that and hear that.”

Tusk’s coalition government will likely keep turning up the heat on the president and PiS if Nawrocki blocks the liberalization, as he has said he would.

Overriding a presidential veto requires a three-fifths majority in the Sejm that the Tusk-led coalition doesn’t have. The proposals that passed Tuesday lingered in a parliamentary committee for two years before surfacing, spurred by the campaign heating up 12 months before the next general election, slated for late 2027.

Overturning restrictions

At the parliamentary level, ending criminal penalties for helping women with abortion passed with 217 votes in favor, 213 against and three abstentions. The other bill won a slightly clearer majority of 233 for, 203 against and a single abstention.

The first bill would decriminalize assisting or encouraging an abortion performed outside legally permitted grounds, an offense which currently carries sentences of up to three years in prison. It would also protect doctors, nurses and midwives from prosecution when they terminate a pregnancy because of a threat to the woman’s life or health or strong indications of a serious, irreversible fetal condition.

The second bill would restore the right to terminate a pregnancy when doctors identify a severe and irreversible fetal abnormality or an incurable illness threatening the fetus’s viability. It would also set deadlines for hospitals to provide lawful abortions and require written explanations for refusals.

Women’s rights organizations were skeptical about the bills being a breakthrough, saying the reforms fall far short of granting Polish women the access to abortion available in most of the EU, where pregnancies can generally be terminated on request during the first trimester. 

“What does this mean for women who need abortions now? Nothing, because none of these projects would help them,” Legalna Aborcja (Legal Abortion) NGO said on X.

Education Minister Barbara Nowacka, acknowledging the incremental nature of the change, said she believed women should be able to decide, unconditionally, whether and how many children they have.

“But I voted for it and will always vote for every change, even the smallest one, that brings Polish women closer to full rights over their own lives.”

Poland does permit abortion where pregnancy threatens a woman’s health or life or results from a criminal act, including rape or incest. In October 2020, the Constitutional Tribunal, dominated by judges appointed under the PiS government, struck down the additional ground for serious fetal abnormalities, which one of the bills passed tonight restores.

The ruling, effective from January 2021, prompted huge street protests and dealt a lasting blow to PiS’ standing in the polls, contributing to the party’s eventual loss of power in the 2023 election.

Reversing the restrictions became a defining issue for Tusk’s pro-European camp ahead of the October 2023 election. But the governing agreement with the more conservative Polish People’s Party (PSL) and Poland 2050 prevented that. Some PSL and Poland 2050 lawmakers voted against the two bills tonight.

In July 2024, the Sejm rejected an attempt to decriminalize assistance with abortion by 218 votes to 215, after most PSL lawmakers joined the right-wing opposition in voting against it.

This story was originally reported by Shefali Luthra of The 19th. Meet Shefali and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy.

Republicans running for governor across the country are backing away from abortion bans they once endorsed.

U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, the Republican candidate for governor in Wisconsin, calls his state’s 20-week abortion limit “settled law.” Just three years ago, he co-sponsored a bill that would have banned abortion six weeks into pregnancy.

Stacy Garrity, the GOP’s candidate in Pennsylvania, has said during her campaign that she would “respect” the state’s current law, which allows abortion until 24 weeks of pregnancy. Four years ago, she called on abortion opponents “to engage and make a difference” in state laws after the fall of Roe v. Wade. 

In Kansas, where abortion is legal until 22 weeks, Republican Ty Masterson has demurred when asked if, as governor, he would support a statewide referendum to eliminate the Kansas constitution’s abortion protections. Masterson had previously spoken at protests in opposition to reproductive rights and won the backing of state and national anti-abortion groups.

The candidates’ retreat suggests that, even as reproductive rights fade from the national spotlight and polls show voters are far more likely to prioritize cost-of-living concerns, the political ramifications of pushing for new abortion restrictions remain substantial. The rhetorical distancing also moves political conversations away from an issue that overwhelmingly energizes Democrats. 

“That might be their strategy there, to try to demotivate Democratic turnout in the state to take abortion off the table as a voting issue,” said Ashley Kirzinger, a pollster at KFF, a nonpartisan health policy research, polling and journalism organization. That’s especially true in tighter races such as those in Wisconsin and Kansas, she said.

Tiffany’s, Garrity’s and Masterson’s campaigns did not reply to requests for comment. The 19th contacted multiple Republican-aligned pollsters who also did not immediately respond.

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About 60 percent of Americans believe that abortion should be legal in most or all cases, including about two-thirds of independents, according to a poll from The 19th and YouGov. 

That said, pushing for abortion restrictions has never been broadly popular. Even before Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, Republicans seeking general election typically would not campaign overtly on abortion bans, said Molly Murphy, a pollster and president of Impact Research, a Democratically-aligned polling firm. 

“It would get discussed in donor meeting hot mics, endorsement questionnaires, etc, but candidates wouldn’t run on the fact that they’d ban abortion,” she wrote in an email.

    

Voters largely don’t consider abortion to be “settled law,” said Celinda Lake, a longtime Democratic pollster, noting that the share of voters opposing abortion bans has increased since the fall of Roe. “They feel like, ‘Wait a minute, it can be taken away again.’” 

In some races, Democrats and their allies are trying to push abortion rights back under the microscope — a strategy geared toward energizing liberal voters, Kirzinger said. 

Wisconsin’s Democratic nominee for governor, David Crowley, has said that, if elected, he would work with the state legislature to enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution — though it’s not clear how expansive that protection would be or whether it might supplant the state’s 20-week cutoff.

Pine Tree State Prosperity, a political action committee associated with the national Democratic Governors Association, is running advertising in Maine that highlights anti-abortion remarks made by Bobby Charles, the state’s Republican pick for governor. The Democratic nominee, Hannah Pingree, has led by double digits in recent polls. Charles’ campaign did not reply to a request for comment. 

Planned Parenthood’s super PAC, called Planned Parenthood Votes, has focused its resources in states such as Michigan, where the Republican candidate, U.S. Rep. John James, has said that abortion is “decided.” Four years ago, James said he opposed abortion in all cases, and he has compared the practice to genocide. His campaign did not reply to a request for comment.

James’ running mate, Jay DeBoyer, recently suggested leveraging a state constitutional convention to enact a 12-week abortion ban in Michigan, according to recordings of the remarks reported by The Detroit News and Michigan Advance. DeBoyer has since said publicly that abortion is a “settled” issue in Michigan, where voters in 2022 amended the state constitution to protect abortion before fetal viability.

Some gubernatorial candidates are still pushing for abortion restrictions, albeit far less ambitious ones. 

In New Mexico, where Democrats are expected to keep control of the governor’s mansion and already control both legislative chambers, Republican candidate Gregg Hull said he was “fully committed” to working with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to reduce the number of Texans coming to the neighboring state for abortions. 

Hull has repeatedly called himself “pro-life” but also said that he would not change the state’s abortion law, which imposes no time limits on the procedure, without legislative support. His campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Abortion opponents are trying to revive the issue in a handful of states. SBA Pro-Life America, one of the nation’s leading anti-abortion groups, is pushing ads that characterize Democratic candidates for governor as well as the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives as extreme on the issue, including in Ohio, Wisconsin and Michigan.

But generally, voters are less likely to trust conservatives on abortion, Lake said. And talking about abortion, she added, is more likely to generate enthusiasm among key Democratic voting blocs, particularly young women and college-educated women, who typically support reproductive rights.

“We have in our research people who say, ‘I used to be pro-life, I didn’t support abortion, I would never get one, but I think this is a decision that needs to be made by a woman and her doctor,’” Lake said. “People now feel this is just way too dangerous. This has gone way too far.”

The post The GOP candidates walking back some of their abortion stances appeared first on Salon.com.

This story was originally reported by Shefali Luthra of The 19th. Meet Shefali and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy.

Republicans running for governor across the country are backing away from abortion bans they once endorsed.

A Calculated Delay

The Trump Justice Department has mapped out its coming attack on mifepristone — much thirsted for by anti-abortion advocates, but deliberately delayed to avoid midterm backlash — in a new court filing. 

The first step to imposing new restrictions (or reimposing ones previously lifted) is to conduct a “safety review.” Experts often point out that there are few drugs that have been studied and scrutinized as much as mifepristone, making the pretense of discovering some heretofore unknown risk factor fairly absurd.  

“FDA is on track to obtain study results by mid-December 2026,” DOJ wrote of its review. “FDA will then need to review and evaluate/interpret the results and draft a report. FDA expects to complete that process not later than March 2027.” 

The agency will then use those “findings” to justify a change to mifepristone’s REMS — Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy — or restrictions meant to police the use of highly dangerous drugs. Mifepristone’s safety profile has never justified these restrictions, but the anti-abortion movement’s decades of smearing the drug as unsafe has successfully made it harder to get under Republican and Democratic FDAs alike. 

The Biden administration took the largest strides yet in removing some of these barriers. Most importantly, it lifted the in-person dispensing requirement, which has allowed patients even in red states to be prescribed the medicine over telehealth by doctors in blue ones, and receive it in the mail. So far, blue state shield laws have protected those providers from prosecution by red states, though a massive legal reckoning on these state jurisdictional issues is certainly coming. 

That Biden-era REMS change is the crux of a Louisiana lawsuit against the FDA seeking to restrict mifepristone, with the state arguing that allowing the drug to be remotely prescribed and mailed undermines its abortion ban and forces it to expend money on Medicaid patients that have mifepristone-related complications. This week’s filing is part of that lawsuit. Historically, these lawsuits have struggled to amass legitimate examples of such mifepristone-related injuries, and Louisiana’s complaint leans heavily on state sovereignty. 

The DOJ filing stated that the FDA is looking at the in-person dispensing requirement in particular. 

“Following completion of its study and review, FDA will decide whether changes to the Mifepristone REMS Program are necessary and, if applicable, initiate any such changes in accordance with established processes,” it said. “FDA anticipates that it will be able to provide an update to its estimated date of completion as more information becomes known, particularly in March 2027 when it expects to complete its report on the final study results.” 

This filing is as much a signal to the anti-abortion movement as it is an attempt to get Louisiana to cool it until the midterms are safely finished and the FDA can do the dirty work itself. Activists have been outraged at the lack of movement in President Donald Trump’s second term, though they were somewhat assuaged when he nominated Heidi Overton — who has called mifepristone “dangerous to women” and celebrated Dobbs — as the new FDA commissioner. She has not yet received a confirmation vote. 

Susan Collins is very concerned — and she should be. As a politician who has only run for one office in her life and held the same seat for nearly 30 years, the Maine senator is facing a possible loss in what looks more and more like a big blue wave coming in November’s midterm elections. As the rare GOP senator representing a blue state, she should be the first one caught in that undertow. But Collins is a rare creature: a virtual Houdini who has always managed to fend off defeat during tough elections. Whether she will somehow work her magic again is one of the biggest questions of 2026.

At the start of this election cycle, Democrats had two competing strategies about how to beat her. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer was convinced that because more women than men vote in the state and Collins wins most of them, the answer was to find a Democratic woman that closely matched Collins’ profile. So he persuaded the popular Democratic Gov. Janet Mills, 79, to run for the seat. A progressive faction took the opposite approach, believing that a younger, male populist outsider would provide the contrast Mainers were looking for. So they recruited a oyster farmer, Graham Platner. It soon became clear that Schumer’s bet was the wrong one, and that Platner’s persona and message were more appealing. Mills’ heart wasn’t really in the race, and she dropped out fairly quickly. But then, after Platner was forced to withdraw from the race due to credible allegations of sexual assault, he was replaced with another salt-of-the-earth working man type. Troy Jackson, a fifth-generation logger who once served as president of the Main Senate, was well-known in the state and became something of a compromise candidate. Collins is currently trailing Jackson in most polls, although the revered New York Times/Portland Press/Siena poll, released Thursday, showed her with a small lead. 

While no one is counting their chickens, the environment appears to favor Democrats. This is the first election for Collins since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling, which overturned Roe v. Wade and decades of access to abortion. Since the senator had effectively cast the deciding vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court in 2018, vouching for his mainstream credentials and assuring Americans he considered Roe “settled law,” the case also severely damaged her reputation as a moderate among many Maine voters, most of whom — remember — are women. Collins has since claimed she was “misled” by Kavanaugh, but she has refused to repudiate her vote. 

What had once been one of the senator’s selling points — her position on choice — is now a liability. But it doesn’t stop there. According to analysis by Planned Parenthood, Collins has subsequently supported 95% of Trump’s judicial nominees — to be fair, that percentage is roughly on par with her votes in previous administrations — including for anti-choice judges. She has also voted against the Equality Act, which would add sexual orientation and gender identity to civil rights laws, legislation she had previously co-sponsored. For some voters who backed her before, this is a deal breaker. 

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Collins’ other selling point to Mainers of all political stripes has been her dedication to bringing home pork for the state as the chair of the powerful Appropriations Committee. While that power has been somewhat curtailed by both parties in recent years after revelations of such schemes as former GOP Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens’ infamous “bridge to nowhere,” Collins has managed to keep the tradition going, albeit with a more subtle application.

Throughout the campaign, Jackson has portrayed Collins as a tool of the corrupt GOP swamp, tying her to Trump and the party’s overwhelming corruption. While it’s hard to know how much traction Jackson has been getting on that issue, last week he was handed a gift in the form of a Pro Publica story alleging that Collins engaged in suspicious pay-to-play arrangements via a high-powered Washington lobbyist who is close to her and her husband. (Reporting by the New York Times supported the claim.)

In a nutshell, the former CEO of a defense contractor told the FBI that he created a shell company to hide a $150,000 donation to a super PAC supporting Collins in exchange for her help in obtaining millions in contracts, which he received. There is evidence that she not only knew about it, but worked with others to make it happen. After a preliminary FBI investigation in 2023 didn’t lead to any charges, new evidence was apparently leading the bureau to a larger investigation when the Trump Justice Department quashed it as part of their purge of the agents and lawyers who were working political corruption cases.

Collins maintains she was cleared of any wrongdoing, but there is a big cloud over her head at the exact moment voters are increasingly concerned about government corruption writ large. It doesn’t help that she has enabled Trump and his administration all along the way. She might vote with him less than other Republican senators, but that’s not saying much, since many of them are barely sentient rubber stamps. And Collins certainly hasn’t been a crusader against his unconstitutional usurpation of Congress’ power of the purse, which is only going to get worse now that the president is entering his lame duck period. Among her confirmation votes was one in favor of budget director Russell Vought, the main author of Project 2025, who continues to make the case that Trump has the power and right to cancel congressional appropriations he doesn’t like. 

Collins’ big pitch to the people of Maine is her perennial favorite — that she has seniority and power, and that she will use it for their benefit. But she has shown little appetite for using any of it to stop the worst consequences for Maine and the country-at-large. In the end, it may come down to whether Mainers care more about Collins’ record of bringing home the bacon or about saving the country from a malignant administration.

UPDATE: This column has been updated to reflect Graham Platner’s job as an oyster farmer.

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