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Renee Mann lives and works in Maine.
One can only assume that Sen. Susan Collins is thinking about her legacy. Elected first in 1996, her accolades include actively serving as the senior most Republican woman in the Senate — in 2020, she became the first Republican woman elected to a fifth term in the Senate — a perfect voting record, and rising to chair the Appropriations Committee. There are few who can deny her acumen on the technical side of governing. The Payroll Protection Program, if anyone can remember all the way back to 2020, showcased her proficiency at problem-solving logistical issues that leverage her decades of experience in Congress.
Where I believe the senator shows her largest vulnerabilities, and in turn activates the fury and bewilderment of people who think she is, or should be, on their side, is when we demand something that perhaps she is just unable to give — when there is more emotional, visceral, dare I say, moral issue at stake. Where there isn’t a puzzle to be solved, but rather a call for leadership through bravery.
Seared into my memory are the events leading up to the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court, as women in Maine and across the country pleaded with the senator who they believed, incorrectly it seems, could listen to their stories and perhaps empathize with the fear and terror of what the overturning of Roe v. Wade might mean for them, or their daughters, or the county at large with the court poised to strip autonomy and medical discretion away for them and their healthcare providers.
As I recall, she met us with derision and dismissal. And when her instincts and research proved incorrect, offered only an “oopsy-daisy” amounting to the explanation that Kavanaugh misled her.
The parallels between this moment and the confirmation vote of Kavanaugh that would eventually lead to the overturning of Roe v. Wade are hard, in my mind, to overlook. Again, it is an attempt to rationalize, research and justify one’s way to a logistical response for a deeply moral issue.
As we all watch what has unfolded and continues to unfold with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Minnesota, and have scrambled and held our breath for what an ICE offensively named “Operation Catch of the Day” looks like in Maine, Congress is considering more funding for the Department of Homeland Security to fund ICE’s continued operations.
This request for more taxpayer money — the money that comes out of your paycheck — comes at a moment when we can count at least six people killed by ICE in the streets of our communities and countless — literarily there is no reliable accounting of the number of people being jailed, interned in detention centers or deported. And to our collective horror, as the best and worst of our country is on display in the past few weeks, Collins not only reinforces the narrative that immigrants are to be feared, and that if only ICE was better trained, law and order would prevail suggesting she will vote to extend funding for ICE.
We cannot afford another one of Sen. Collins’ moral “oopsy-daisies.” To quote Nina Turner, “SpongeBob SquarePants is older than ICE.” We do not and have not ever needed ICE to keep our country safe.