Local Newsbreak - Gov. Janet Mills spoke of a “brand new day” when she was inaugurated in 2019 as Maine’s first female governor. She did not mention first-term President Donald Trump, nor could she have known how he would overlap again with her in office and make Maine an object of his ire.
Yet as the governor nears her final year in office, one of her key roles is pushing back against the president and his efforts to yank the state’s federal funding since Trump first singled out Mills at a White House event over Maine’s transgender athlete policies in February. Many of his moves were reversed, but a Justice Department lawsuit may last until Mills’ final months.
Mills, who has not ruled out a 2026 bid against U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, has capitalized on the attention from her “see you in court” remark to the Republican president. She has been featured in national Democratic fundraising messages and traveled this summer to the Maritimes to encourage Canadians to keep visiting Maine despite Trump’s tariffs and rhetoric that the country’s officials were blunt about criticizing during the goodwill trip.
This anti-Trump ambassador role shows a different side of Mills, a Farmington native who has controlled business in Augusta with solid Democratic control of the Legislature. She has generally won out over more progressive members of her party in budget disputes and in the policy areas of gun rights and tribal sovereignty. Still, Republicans give her little credit.
Maine Public Radio - Enrollment has declined in more of Maine school districts over the last five years than the national average, according to new research.
Nationwide, 68% of school districts polled by the nonprofit research firm Bellwether experienced enrollment declines between 2019 and 2024.
But in Maine, 73% of districts saw a decline over that time.
According to Bellwether's data, some districts in the state saw double digit declines in enrollment including RSU 49 in Fairfield, RSU 22 in Hampden, and RSU 3 in Unity.
This declining enrollment contributed to school closures, which Maine saw more of in 2025 than 2024.
Newsbreak - The average cost of a single family home in Maine now stands at $425,000, the latest data show. That’s the highest home prices in Maine have been in at least a decade. In 2015, the average home in Maine sold for slightly more than $180,000 according to the Maine Association of Realtors. But what that can get you varies greatly throughout the state.