A version of this story first appeared in the Morning Update newsletter. Sign up here to receive the Morning Update and other BDN newsletters directly in your inbox.
Good morning.
We’ve got another hot and dry day ahead of us. By Friday, however, rain and thunderstorms cover much of the state.
Penobscot Community Health Care needs $3 million in the next 30 to 60 days to avert a financial crisis or bankruptcy, according to its president and CEO, Lori Dwyer.
While Dwyer said that the provider won’t close its doors, the crisis could force it to curtail services and cut staff. She warned the effects could ripple throughout the state’s healthcare system, with more low-income Mainers seeking care in emergency rooms.
A federally qualified health center, it provides healthcare to underserved populations, regardless of health insurance or the ability to pay.
Tuesday’s news prompted nine state lawmakers to ask the Maine attorney general’s office to allocate $1 million in opioid settlement funds to help stabilize Penobscot Community Health Care’s housing services, which includes the Hope House Health and Living Center, Bangor’s only low-barrier homeless shelter.
Bobby Charles tells Republicans he’ll ask for ICE agents at Maine polls
Republican gubernatorial nominee Bobby Charles said last week he plans to ask border czar Tom Homan — whom he called a longtime friend — to send U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and federal marshals to Maine polling places this fall, according to audio exclusively obtained by the Bangor Daily News.
“I’m going to make an appeal for ICE and marshals to be at our voting booths,” Charles said in the recording, from an Aug. 20 meeting of the Maine Young Republicans in Arundel, adding, “Do you think the illegals who are being paid money are going to like that?”
BDN Politics Editor Michael Shepherd reports that there is no evidence of people being paid, and what Charles said he’d ask for is likely illegal. The comments came as Charles looks to distance himself somewhat from Trump during an underdog campaign in a Democratic-leaning state.
Meanwhile, Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows told Shepherd that ICE and federal law enforcement are prohibited from being at polling places on Election Day.
“Bobby Charles can call whoever he wants, but he can’t change the Constitution or the law,” she said.
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From the Opinion Page
“The vice president’s suggestion that this killing was somehow an acceptable cost of fighting the fentanyl trade is not just callous. It is false.”
Opinion: A little bit of ‘perspective’ on the ICE killing of Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero