Political Pulse

Some members of Congress, including most of Maine's delegation, are increasingly uneasy with President Donald Trump's tariffs — but efforts to curtail his power are likely going nowhere.

Welcome to April and a political news cycle that never stops. This week we’re going to focus on a few developments with the goal of providing a little clarity and context that isn’t always achievable when news breaks and deadlines loom.

It’s been a bewildering barrage: hasty investigations, threats to yank federal funds, threats of lawsuits, federal contracts canceled and restored without explanation and unsupported claims by President Donald Trump that Maine has “apologized.”

Trump has said repeatedly he wants Canada to become the 51st state. It's a statement sometimes laughed off in the U.S., but viewed as deadly serious in Canada.

“See you in court.” With those four words, Gov. Janet Mills went from a 77-year-old governor serving the last two years of her final term in a lightly populated state to an unlikely heroine of the Trump resistance.

Maine’s new, three-day waiting period on gun purchases passed the Legislature by the slimmest possible margin last year and narrowly averted a veto from Democratic Gov. Janet Mills. Now, gun rights advocates think the law could become the vehicle to erase waiting period laws in Maine and roughly a dozen other states.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has continued to push the long debunked claim that childhood vaccines cause autism. He has also argued that the COVID-19 vaccine was part of an elite plot to prolong the pandemic and shun other unproven or debunked remedies.

Democrats’ response this week to President Donald Trump’s attempt to freeze all federal grants and loans already approved by Congress was a rare moment of swift, unified and urgent condemnation.

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.

Tuesday is primary election day in Maine (again) as voters head to the polls to select party nominees for Congress, the Legislature and local offices.