Blackstone's Stephen Schwarzman gave $3 million to the super PAC boosting Susan Collins' reelection. He appears in the Epstein files. She voted to defeat the amendment that would have forced the Justice Department to release them.
The AP and the Guardian obtained a January 2019 letter in which Robert F. Kennedy Jr. asked Samoa's prime minister to let his team study the country's MMR vaccines. He told senators the trip had nothing to do with vaccines. Fourteen Republicans we track voted to confirm him.
Collins' campaign email says a statewide tour takes 'quite literally fuel.' She blocked every attempt to end the Iran war for 60 days — and her husband holds up to $150,000 in ConocoPhillips and Phillips 66.
Food, rent, electricity, healthcare - in America we should be able to afford these basic necessities of life without going bankrupt.
Susan Collins has supported the current administration's tariffs and other policies which have led to:
Half of all Americans struggling to afford groceries
47% struggling to afford their utility bills
47% struggling to afford healthcare
48% struggling to afford housing
1 in 4 Americans saying they have skipped a medical checkup due to affordability
23% skipping a prescription dose
Gas prices skyrocketing
Maine's iconic lobster industry is caught in the trade war. Much of the catch is processed in Canada and shipped back, and Maine exported $250 million in seafood to Canada in 2024. Industry leaders warn that tariff-driven uncertainty is driving down demand for Maine lobster and raising the cost of steel traps.
Collins broke with Trump on the Canada tariffs, and her own Senate floor speech is the best available catalogue of the damage: 95% of the heating oil Mainers burn comes from Canadian refineries, 90% of the potash Maine potato growers use is imported from Canada, Maine ships $200–400 million of lobster north for processing every year, and the Twin Rivers mill in Madawaska — 500 jobs, the only big employer in that part of the state — gets its pulp through a pipeline from New Brunswick. "Our consumers, our manufacturers, our lobstermen, our blueberry growers, our potato farmers will pay the price," she said.
Her objection stopped at the border, though. In the same speech she said "there is a strong case to be made for tariffs on Mexico, on our adversary, China, but I don’t see the case for Canada" — and Maine families pay the tariffs on Mexican and Chinese goods just the same.
The vote was already dead when she cast it, and everyone knew it. Three weeks earlier, House Republicans had slipped a provision into the rule for the government funding bill declaring that for the rest of the session there would be no more "calendar days" — as far as the three tariff emergencies Trump declared on February 1 were concerned — which switched off the fast-track process that lets members force a House floor vote on ending an emergency. The Senate passed the Canada resolution anyway, and it sat. Kaine, Schumer and Wyden wrote to Speaker Johnson asking him to schedule a vote, noting that the House had "already sidestepped this responsibility once in March." He never scheduled one, and the tariffs stayed on until the Supreme Court struck them down on February 20, 2026 — ten months later.
We are feeling this directly in our wallets. What is Susan Collins doing about that? Making things worse. We deserve better.
We all deserve access to quality healthcare so we can live healthy and productive lives.
Susan Collins disagrees:
She voted to let ACA tax credits expire, increasing health costs for millions of Americans, driving many of them to switch to cheaper plans or abandon health insurance coverage altogether. And the less people there are with coverage, the higher the rest of our premiums will be.
She supported Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s nomination for Health and Human Services Secretary, which has proven to be disastrous for American health.
An estimated 40-60,000 Maine residents could lose health care coverage under Trump's budget bill. Maine already has one of the highest uninsured rates in New England.
Collins postures as a moderate, but her opposition tends to arrive only once it can no longer change the result. On the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" — which cut roughly $1 trillion from Medicaid and health care — she cast the vote that put it on the Senate floor while she unsuccessfully negotiated for rural-hospital carve-outs, then voted no on final passage. It passed anyway, 50–50, on Vice President Vance's tiebreaker — a tie he could only be there to break because she had already let the bill reach the floor. As TIME noted, her protest votes are "as strategic as they are symbolic."
We need healthcare to live. Literally. What is Susan Collins doing to help us? Making things worse. We deserve better.
Wants to Gut Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security
Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security aren't handouts. They're earned benefits that we pay into out of every single paycheck, our entire working lives, so that we can see a doctor, take care of our parents, and retire with dignity instead of going bankrupt when we get old or sick.
For years, Susan Collins and her party have been quietly laying the groundwork to gut these programs. Now they've said the quiet part out loud.
They admitted the plan. Speaker Mike Johnson told the "Moon Griffon Show" that "entitlement programs like Medicare, Medicaid and things like Social Security ... have to be adjusted and fixed," and that "We have a plan to do that next year ... desperate times call for desperate measures."
We know what the plan looks like. The Republican Study Committee — a caucus of more than 170 House Republicans that includes Speaker Johnson and his top three deputies in leadership — released a budget calling for raising the Social Security retirement age for future retirees and converting Medicare into a privatized "premium support" model that would hand seniors over to for-profit insurance companies.
Even Republicans admit what "reform" means. Sen. Josh Hawley, on the push to "address" and "reform" these programs: "That's usually code for 'cut.' I'm not in favor of that."
It's a broken promise. Donald Trump pledged in 2024, "I will never do anything that will jeopardize or hurt Social Security or Medicare." Susan Collins and her party are now preparing to do exactly that.
Susan Collins's record. When the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" cut roughly $1 trillion from Medicaid, Collins supplied the vote that let it onto the Senate floor, then voted "no" on final passage — where 50 nays could not stop it, because the Vice President breaks ties. Her independence consistently arrives at the stage where it cannot affect the result.
These programs are a promise: work hard, pay in your whole life, and your country will be there for you when you need it. Susan Collins wants to break that promise so she can keep cutting taxes for billionaires. We deserve better.
Cut Taxes for the Rich, While the Rest of Us Pay For It
We all need to pay our fair share to the government so it can provide the services that benefit all of us.
But billionaires in the U.S. pay a smaller tax rate than most teachers and nurses. That's not fair.
The wealthiest 400 billionaire families in the U.S. paid an average federal individual tax rate of just 8.2 percent. For comparison, the average American taxpayer in the same year paid 13 percent.
23 of the largest and most profitable companies in the US paid no federal corporate income taxes from 2018-2022. And 109 corporations paid zero federal tax in at least one of those years.
On June 27, 2025, private equity billionaire Steve Schwarzman gave $2 million to a super PAC backing Collins's reelection. The next day she voted to let Trump's budget bill onto the Senate floor, 51–49 — a bill that cuts Medicaid, SNAP, and programs for low-income Mainers. Vice President Vance was standing by to break a tie and was not needed, because Collins voted yes. She then voted against the final bill. But the damage was done.
Susan Collins is on the side of the billionaires and big business. We deserve better.
We all deserve clean air, clean water, and a healthy planet to live on.
Susan Collins has supported the repealing and rolling back of environmental protections and climate change regulations, all so that billionaires and big business can plunder natural resources and destroy our environment in the name of profit.
Is Intentionally Wrecking Our Public Schools and Our Kids' Futures
Nine out of ten American children — 49.6 million of them — go to a public school. It's where they learn to read, where they eat breakfast and lunch, where kids with disabilities are guaranteed an education by law, and where a kid from any family, rich or poor, religious or not, gets a fair shot.
Susan Collins and her party are taking that apart on purpose: draining public school money into private and religious schools, pushing one religion into everybody else's classrooms, and shutting down the federal department that is supposed to look out for our kids.
She voted to create the first national private school voucher in American history. It is hidden inside the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act." You give up to $1,700 a year to a charity that hands out private school scholarships, and the government gives you back every penny you gave on your taxes. It costs you nothing — no other tax break in the country works that way. Each person is capped at $1,700, but any number of people can do it, so there is no limit on what it drains from the Treasury. It starts January 1, 2027. Congress's own scorekeepers say $26 billion over ten years; one tax research group says as much as $51 billion every year — more than the government spends on Title I ($18.4 billion) for poor schools and IDEA ($14.6 billion) for kids with disabilities combined. And "low-income" means a family earning three times what a normal family in their area earns still qualifies — in some places, $500,000 a year.
They are giving away our tax dollars to families who are already wealthy and were never in public school to begin with. Every state that has tried it gets the same result — the money goes to people already paying private tuition: 95% of Arkansas voucher users never attended a public school. In Florida's first year of universal vouchers, 69% of new recipients were already in private school and only 13% had ever set foot in a public one. In Iowa, two-thirds were already in private school. We aren't rescuing kids from bad schools — we're cutting checks to families who never needed them, with the money coming out of the schools 90% of our kids actually attend.
And the kids who do switch end up doing worse. Four careful studies found the same thing. In Washington, DC, voucher kids fell behind in math. In Louisiana, a student who started in the middle of the class dropped to the bottom third in math after three years. Indiana and Ohio found the same. Kids with disabilities lost the most.
The money goes to religious schools that can turn our kids away. Ohio now spends nearly $1 billion a year on vouchers, the vast majority going to Catholic and evangelical schools — schools that, unlike public schools, can reject your child over their religion, their disability, or who their parents are, or for ANY REASON AT ALL with almost no accountability for the public money they take. Many have simply raised tuition to capture the vouchers instead of enrolling more students.
Maine's schools count on about $218 million a year in federal money — $66 million for special education, $61 million in Title I, and $65 million for school lunches — roughly 8% of every K-12 budget in the state.
Maine has quietly run a voucher for over a century, and the Supreme Court just opened it up. Under "town tuitioning," towns without their own school pay private school tuition out of public education money — 1,827 Maine students at an average of $14,801 each in 2024-25. For forty years that money couldn't go to religious schools. In 2022 the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that Maine must fund religious schools too — schools that, unlike the public schools next door, get to decide which children they'll take.
Our public schools took generations to build, and they are the one institution that has to take every single child who walks in the door. Susan Collins is helping tear them down and hand the pieces to private interests. Our kids will pay for it for the rest of their lives. We deserve better.
A good job where we can make a living to support our families, own a home, and have a good life. That's the American Dream.
Susan Collins supports policies and an administration that are turning the American Dream into a nightmare.
There were 20.8 million layoffs in the U.S. in 2025
55% of employed Americans say they're concerned about losing their jobs
The unemployment rate is 4.2%
In 2025 the U.S. economy averaged just 15,000 jobs added per month, a dramatic decrease from the monthly average of 125,000 the year before Trump took office.
Overall employment for workers without college degrees fell by 361,000 jobs from January to September 2025.
58,000 net manufacturing jobs have been lost from April, when the administration announced "Liberation Day" tariffs, to September 2025.
Works for Billionaires, Big Business & Special Interests and Not for Us
Our elected officials should work for us, the people.
Susan Collins chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee — the most powerful spending committee in the entire U.S. government. She controls every dollar of federal spending. Her top campaign donors are the Wall Street private equity firms that profit from the tax breaks she helps protect. Look at who some of her top funders are:
Pro-Israel PACs, led by AIPAC — $2,032,354 given to her campaign over her career, plus $565,000 in outside spending to elect her
KKR & Co. — $161,341
Blackstone Group — Steve Schwarzman's private equity firm, whose CEO donated $2 million to her PAC the day before she helped advance Trump's budget bill — $111,704
Apollo Global Management ($58,037) and KPS Capital Partners ($40,400) — more private equity
General Dynamics — $39,287, a weapons maker funded by the committee she chairs
Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, the corporate law firm — $39,600
Affiliated Managers Group — $35,000
Super PACs have spent $10.9 million on her behalf — 21% of the $52 million raised across her career
Susan Collins is funded by billionaires, big business and special interests. No wonder she's not doing anything to improve OUR lives. We deserve better.
Let Elon Musk and DOGE Cut More Than $153 MILLION from Maine
We all want a government that works for us as efficiently and effectively as possible. Unfortunately our government doesn't always work that way, so reform is badly needed. Given how big and complicated the government is, it's a tough problem that needs well-thought out solutions, so that we don't make things worse.
That's not what we got.
Susan Collins stood idly by while billionaire and ketamine-addled chaos monkey Elon Musk and his DOGE goons chainsawed their way through the U.S. government, promising to save the government at least $2 trillion annually in waste, fraud and abuse. Because they had no idea what they were doing and no one to stop them, in the end our government suffered, people suffered, Maine suffered, government spending actually went UP and Elon Musk became even richer.
Elon Musk and DOGE:
Had access to and exfiltrated (stole) all our sensitive personal information.
Kneecapped the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which had returned over $26 billion to the American people since 2011.
Attempted to cut $4 billion in funding for medical research.
Will cost the federal government an estimated $500 billion in lost tax revenue (that could pay for programs for us), due to cuts at the IRS.
Laid waste to the employees at several government departments, removing their top experts and most skilled practitioners, and making their services less effective for all of us. This badly affected veterans, who make up 30% of the federal workforce.
DOGE targeted cuts at the Togus VA Medical Center — one of the largest employers in central Maine and the primary healthcare provider for the state's 100,000+ veterans.
We'd like to thank you, Susan Collins, for doing absolutely nothing while an unelected South African big tech billionaire took a chainsaw to vital U.S. government functions and completely failed to make the government more efficient. We deserve better.
As a member of Congress, part of Susan Collins's job is to act as a check and balance to the executive branch. She and her fellow members of Congress from Maine have completely abdicated their responsibility. These spineless cowards are rubber stamping everything Donald Trump wants to do, no matter how crazy, dangerous or harmful. And we've seen the results. We deserve better.
Susan Collins has called herself a moderate during her 29 year tenure. But she votes with Donald Trump 95% of the time.
#BREAKING: Very interesting take by Chris Hayes on how Senator Susan Collins PRETENDS to be an independent/middle of the road Senator when she's really and truly, a hardcore party line Republican. A MUST WATCH for every Maine voter. Really good stuff👍 pic.twitter.com/eqe6ymhmlJ
We deserve to feel safe in our neighborhoods, schools, and places of worship.
In order to do that, we need to take real steps to prevent gun violence. And despite what we've been told, it is possible to support the 2nd Amendment and support common-sense gun safety laws at the same time. But Susan Collins has opposed bipartisan gun safety laws, while offering meaningless thoughts and prayers every time there's a new mass shooting.
A child or adolescent is killed with a gun every 2 hours and 48 minutes in the U.S.
Age-adjusted firearm homicide rates in the U.S. are 33 times greater than in Australia and 77 times greater than in Germany
Every day, 125 Americans are killed with guns, and more than 200 are shot and wounded
Women in the U.S. are 28 times more likely to be killed with a gun than women in other high-income countries.
In America our vote represents our will. It gives us the power to make the change that we want to see in the world.
Unfortunately that's not a sentiment that Susan Collins's billionaire and big business donors can stomach. Because when we have voting power, we use it to make our lives better, and they lose power. Read about all the ways they're trying to take away our voting power on our about page, then come back here.
Susan Collins has opposed legislation to make voting easier while supporting the SAVE Act, which would force every single American citizen to prove their citizenship status in person when registering to vote or updating their voter registration information. For the vast majority of Americans, this would mean presenting a passport or birth certificate at their local election office. This would disenfranchise millions of U.S. citizens: 146 million Americans do not have a passport, and 69 million women who have married do not have a birth certificate that matches their new legal name. Working-class and low-income Americans would also be disproportionately disenfranchised if the bill became law, as the vast majority of these groups do not possess a passport.
Whether white, black, or brown, we should all be able to live in America and exercise our constitutional rights without fear that law enforcement will turn on us.
But the current administration has created a secret police force that is abusing their power against anyone who stands in their way, U.S. citizen or not. They claim to be going after "the worst of the worst", but are taking daycare workers, day laborers, grandmas and kids who are valued members of our communities. And Susan Collins, staunch defender of the Second Amendment to fight back against government tyranny, is doing nothing while the government tyrannizes us.
ProPublica:They describe the legions of masked immigration officers operating in near-total anonymity on the orders of the president as the crossing of a line that had long set the United States apart from the world's most repressive regimes. ICE, in their view, has become an unfettered and unaccountable national police force.
ProPublica:Accosting people outside of their immigration court hearings where they're showing up and trying to do the right thing and then hauling them off to an immigration jail in the middle of the country where they can't access loved ones or speak to counsel. Bands of masked men apprehending people in broad daylight in the streets and hauling them off. Disappearing people to a third country, to a prison where there's a documented record of serious torture and human rights abuse.
New York Times:Masked and heavily armed, ICE agents are sent to cities such as Chicago, Los Angeles and Minneapolis to terrorize immigrant communities and brutalize people who challenge their efforts to stop and detain anyone deemed suspicious. To expand its reach, ICE greatly lowered its recruitment standards, effectively enlisting anyone who cares to sign up. To attract new officers, ICE advertises the chance to do violence to people deemed "enemies" of the United States, likening civil immigration enforcement to a war on a dangerous, alien force. The result is an agency whose agents' first recourse appears to be violence or the threat of violence.
They are executing American citizens. On January 7, 2026 an ICE agent in Minneapolis murdered an American citizen, a mother of 3, by shooting her in the face as she tried to drive away. Then the killer walked away, and our government lied and tried to gaslight us about what happened. Decent politicians condemned the murder. What did Susan Collins have to say? Nothing.
They are executing American citizens: Part 2. On January 24, 2026 ICE agents in Minneapolis murdered an American citizen, a 37 year old ICU nurse, who was filming their activity and trying to help others. Then our government lied and tried to gaslight us about what happened.
And the list of the dead keeps growing. ICE agents — on duty and off — keep killing members of our communities, while Susan Collins says nothing:
On December 31, 2025, an off-duty ICE officer in Northridge, Los Angeles shot and killed Keith Porter Jr., a 43-year-old U.S. citizen and father of two who was born and raised in Compton. Federal officials called it self-defense against an "active shooter," but Porter's family says he was peacefully returning home and never posed a threat — and witnesses reported only three shots, matching his autopsy and contradicting claims of an exchange of gunfire.
On July 7, 2026, an ICE officer in Houston shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old father of three and small-business owner who had lived in the U.S. for 35 years. Agents had been hunting a different white van. Harris County's medical examiner ruled his death a homicide, and his co-workers disputed ICE's claim that he used his vehicle as a weapon.
On July 13, 2026, an ICE agent in Biddeford, Maine shot and killed Joan Sebastian Guerrero, a 26-year-old Colombian father who was legally authorized to work in the U.S. and supported his wife and 3-year-old daughter by delivering food and cleaning a veterinary clinic. He was not the target of ICE's warrant — agents were looking for someone else — and were not wearing body cameras. Even Maine's Republican Senator Susan Collins urged DHS to halt non-urgent vehicle stops in the state.
It's happening here in Maine. In January 2026, ICE's "Operation Catch of the Day" arrested more than 200 people across Maine — cooks, health care workers, construction workers, and asylum seekers in the middle of legal immigration processes, including a mother followed home from school drop-off and a father running errands after his wife gave birth.
If ICE can murder innocent U.S. citizens without repercussions, what could they do to you? ICE is out of control and a danger to us all - no one is safe. What's Susan Collins going to do about it? Absolutely nothing. We deserve better.
Avoids Her Constituents and Refuses to Hold In-Person Town Halls
Good leaders meet with their constituents and have town halls where citizens can voice concerns, ask questions, and provide input on policies. Susan Collins doesn't want to hear what we have to say. She only wants to talk to her rich donors or people who agree with her.
Susan Collins chairs the committee that writes the federal budget, and her household's biggest asset is a stock portfolio now worth $9.8 million. Her opponent's campaign puts her passive investment income last year at more than most Maine households earn from a full year of work.
And she has been breaking the rules on disclosing it. Collins failed to report up to $395,000 in stock trades — 24 transactions more than 100 days late, from 2013 to 2018 — in direct violation of the STOCK Act, which requires disclosure within 45 days. That is the same law she helped pass in 2012, as the first Republican to back it. The late-reported holdings include Microsoft, JPMorgan Chase and CVS, and in 2026 she also failed to disclose a Pfizer stock purchase.
She is now finishing her fifth term — nearly 30 years in Washington — and in February 2026 she announced she is running for a sixth. If she wins, she will have served three times longer than she promised Mainers she ever would.
And when the old pledge resurfaced, she didn't keep her word — she moved the goalposts again. In April 2026 she suggested she might serve only one more term, then quickly walked even that back.
She told us twelve years was long enough. Twelve years ago was 2014. Susan Collins is the swamp. We deserve better.
Voted for Kavanaugh — Who Then Overturned Roe v. Wade
We should hold our leaders to high standards. Susan Collins calls herself pro-choice. But she voted to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, saying he had told her Roe v. Wade was "settled law." Kavanaugh then voted with the majority to overturn Roe, calling it "wrongly decided" — directly contradicting what he told Collins in private.
Collins said afterward that what Kavanaugh and Gorsuch had done was "completely inconsistent" with what she had heard from them. But the damage was done. She helped put him on the court.
And that's not all. On September 8, 2025 the Supreme Court, over three dissents, put on hold a federal judge's order that had barred immigration agents in Southern California from stopping people based solely on their race or ethnicity, the fact that they were speaking Spanish or accented English, where they were standing, or the work they did. Kavanaugh wrote separately to defend those stops — a concurrence so sweeping that lawyers now call the practice a "Kavanaugh stop".
Then the clock ran down, and she changed her mind. The War Powers Act gives Congress 60 days to authorize or end a war the President started without its approval. In mid-April, with the 60-day mark approaching, Collins signalled her position would "very likely" change if the fighting continued — and on April 30, 2026 she voted to end the hostilities, calling the deadline "not a suggestion" but "a requirement." She was one of only two Republicans to do so.
By then it made no difference. The resolution failed 47-50. The war continued.
For two months, Collins helped block every attempt to restore Congress's role in deciding whether we go to war. She only moved once the law was about to force the question — and by then it wasn't enough.
This is a pattern. She voted against Trump's budget bill too — but only after her procedural vote had already sent it to the Senate floor. She votes no when the outcome is already decided. When her vote won't stop anything. It lets her look moderate while changing nothing.
And by the way, just look at how much money Susan Collins has taken from AIPAC. Does Susan Collins work for Israel or the people of Maine?
We deserve better.
We're all going to pay the price for this with increased rates of asthma, cancer, and premature deaths. We deserve better.
