Steve Mistler
Chief Political Correspondent and State House Bureau ChiefJournalist Steve Mistler is Maine Public’s chief politics and government correspondent. He is based at the State House.
Steve has been a journalist for nearly two decades, specializing in the coverage of politics and state government. His work has been recognized by the Maine Press Association, Gerald Loeb and regional Murrow awards for investigative projects and accountability journalism. He was named the MPA’s Journalist of the Year in 2011 for his coverage of municipal and state government. He later received a Public Service in Radio from the Society of Professional Journalists and a writing award from the Public Radio News Directors for his retrospective of former Gov. Paul LePage.
He joined Maine Public in 2016 after a career in newspaper reporting. He and his family live in Maine.
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Eleven of the 15 have already been convicted while the rest await trial. The president's clemency includes 1,500 alleged or convicted rioters, drawing a mixed reaction from Maine's congressional delegation. -
The tax and fee changes that Gov. Janet Mills put forward last week in her budget only add up to about $150 million in a two-year state spending plan that tops $11.6 billion. But new taxes and fees are always controversial, even when they are narrowly “targeted,” as Mills argues in this case. -
Former Republican congressman John Ratcliffe was a controversial choice for Director of National Intelligence during Trump's first term, but his conformation hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee was uncontentious. -
The lawsuit doesn't challenge the law or seek to block it, but objects to a implementation rule it says forces employers to pay into the program for the first quarter of this year even if they plan to offer a private benefit. -
Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump's pick to lead the Department of Defense, has lamented that international laws governing war and torture have hamstrung and endangered American military operations. -
The bill is sponsored by six members of the Government Oversight Committee, which oversees investigations by the legislature's watchdog agency. While the agency used confidential records in its investigations of four child deaths that occurred in 2021, court rulings have found that members of the oversight committee don't have access to the same documents. -
A campaign pushing to require a photo ID for voting says it's collected more than 170,000 signatures to get the issue on the November ballot. Opponents warn it's one of the most restrictive in the U.S. -
The records were provided to the Office of Program Evaluation and Government Accountability to probe the deaths of four children in state care in 2021, but not legislative panel that oversees the agency. The court says that was by design.
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The brain injury provisions were partially inspired by the Lewiston mass shooting in 2023. -
The Giffords Law Center had assigned Maine a letter grade of F as recently as 2022, but gave it a C-plus for laws passed in 2024.
