Following a series of local school board elections around the state earlier this month, the largest teacher union in the state praised voters for substantially rejecting candidates who engaged in “culture war” issues and instead mostly backing those focused on supporting teachers and students. School board races have become hotly-contested in recent years in part…
Ryan McQueen, a school board member for RSU 21 — a district that consists of Arundel, Kennebunk and Kennebunkport — submitted his resignation on Wednesday after community members initiated a recall effort over social media posts containing racist and transphobic rhetoric. A series of offensive posts on Twitter and Gab — a social media site…
School librarians in Maine are fighting a bill that would ban schools from providing students with books considered “obscene,” saying it could potentially criminalize educators. Proponents of the legislation say they are merely protecting children from inappropriate material but educators say the definition of the word obscene remains unclear. Heather Perkinson, Maine Association of School…
Around 50 people rallied Wednesday night outside a campaign event in Lewiston held by former Gov. Paul LePage and Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, protesting both Republican politicians’ opposition to abortion rights. The event with Youngkin, which was closed to the press, comes as LePage is trying to reclaim his old job in a race against…
It’s no secret that Paul LePage is no fan of public education. As governor he called Maine teachers “a dime a dozen” and told an audience of business people that “if you want a good education, go to private schools. If you can’t afford it, tough luck — you can go to the public school.” …
QAnon influencer and best selling author Christiane Northrup of Yarmouth has turned her sights to the federal and local primary and general elections this year in effort to unleash an “army of angels” to vote for political candidates who sign on to an agenda rooted in apocalyptic conspiracy theories. In 2021, Northrup co-founded the group…
Last week, a white supremacist carried out another mass shooting, leaving ten dead at a Buffalo grocery store and a paranoid, racist manifesto. In his unhinged diatribe, the shooter espoused the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory that white Americans are being deliberately “replaced” with non-white people with high fertility rates. Like other far-right terrorists before him,…
More than one in five Republican state lawmakers across the country have joined at least one far-right Facebook group, according to a new report. Together the lawmakers sponsored 963 bills during the most recent legislative sessions, said the group that wrote the report, which describes the far-right efforts as anti-human rights. The Institute for Research…
The inclusion of policies targeting LGBTQ people and “critical race theory” within the Maine GOP’s platform demonstrates local Republicans’ continued shift toward right-wing extremism as Maine barrels toward a high-stakes election in November, progressives who have tracked the state’s conservative movement say. Republicans gathered late last week and over the weekend for a convention that…
Over the last several months, conservatives across the country have been pushing to ban books that they consider inappropriate for youth to access. One school district in Texas has banned 130 books, ranging from LGBTQ+ coming of age stories and sex education to the history of the KKK and desegregation. And while Maine has not…