Maine Gov. Janet Mills suspends her U.S. Senate campaign
Janet Mills, governor of Maine and Democratic US Senate candidate, during a roundtable discussion with community leaders in Westbrook, Maine, US, on Tuesday, March 10, 2026. (Photographer: Sofia Aldinio/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Maine Gov. Janet Mills announced Thursday morning that she is suspending her U.S. Senate campaign, leaving Graham Platner as the likely Democratic nominee to face off against incumbent Republican Sen. Susan Collins.
Mills cited financial resources as a reason for suspending her campaign.
“While I have the drive and passion, commitment and experience, and above all else — the fight — to continue on, I very simply do not have the one thing that political campaigns unfortunately require today: the financial resources,” Mills said in a prepared statement. “That is why today I have made the incredibly difficult decision to suspend my campaign for the United States Senate.”
The latest Federal Election Commission filings from Q1 show Planter raised roughly $1.4 million more than Mills and has roughly $1.7 million more cash on hand.
Platner, an oyster farmer and military veteran, also regularly polled significantly higher than Mills.
Mills’ announcement came just one day before the Maine Democratic Convention was scheduled to begin — and more than five weeks before the state’s June 9 primary.
Mills and Platner were scheduled to participate in their first televised debates of the campaign in May alongside David Costello.
Sen. Bernie Sanders supported Platner, while Sen. Chuck Schumer had previously announced his endorsement of Mills.
In a statement issued Thursday morning by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Schumer and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand said in part, “After years of allowing Trump’s abuses of power, Senator Collins has never been more vulnerable and we will work with the presumptive Democratic nominee Graham Platner to defeat her.”
ABC News’ Hannah Demissie contributed to this report.
President Donald Trump, joined by first lady Melania Trump, signs the Fostering the Future executive order in the East Room of the White House, Nov. 13, 2025. (Heather Diehl/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — The Trump administration is urging states to stop removing children from their homes over gender-identity disputes at the behest of child welfare agencies without their parents’ approval.
In a letter first obtained by ABC News, the Health and Human Services Department’s Administration for Children and Families (ACF) reminds state child welfare agencies that under the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA), they are barred from removing children from their home because a parent doesn’t agree with the child’s gender identity.
“When states overstep their bounds, ACF will take action to deter inappropriate policies that drive unnecessary interactions with child welfare systems. This is one such example,” ACF Assistant Secretary Alex Adams wrote in a statement Tuesday.
The Trump administration cited multiple examples — from Illinois to California — where children who may reject the sex they were assigned at birth and perceive themselves as a different gender were removed from their homes without parental consent and placed in the child welfare system.
However, Shannon Minter, vice president of legal at the National Center for LGBTQ Rights (NCLR), told ABC News that he is not aware of any state removing children from parents based on their response to a transgender child.
Transgender is an umbrella term for people whose gender identity and/or expression is different from cultural expectations based on the sex they were assigned at birth, according to the Human Rights Campaign.
Minter called the effort a broader push by the Trump administration to “eliminate” all protections for transgender young people.
“No one is advocating for removing children because a parent is struggling to understand,” he said, adding, “But child welfare professionals need the discretion to assess when rejection crosses the line into real harm — the same way they would for any other child.”
Morissa Ladinsky, a clinical professor in pediatrics at Stanford University in California, argued that children aren’t typically removed from their home without parental consent in this fashion.
“My experience tells me that there is likely more to the story,” Ladinsky told ABC News, adding that she has not seen removal over gender disputes fall under the domain of Child Protective Services.
As the division of HHS that promotes welfare assistance and supports the economic and social well-being of children and families, the agency has said ACF’s duty is to protect families and keep them together. ACF’s letter also stressed that parents hold the right to refuse removal according to their religious beliefs and moral convictions around gender identity.
The letter said breaking the law could violate the First Amendment and states could risk losing federal grant funding under CAPTA.
“What we’re doing with this letter is we’re putting states on notice,” Adams told ABC News.
“When policies are either increasing the number of kids committed to the system inappropriately or they’re deterring foster families from stepping up, I do think there was a role for ACF to weigh in,” he said, adding, “It does merit federal action.”
The letter to states bolsters an initiative to protect children from the foster-care system amid a shortage of facilities nationwide with only 57 foster homes for every 100 vulnerable kids coming into the system, according to Adams.
The letter comes at the directive of President Donald Trump’s Fostering the Future for American Children and Families executive order and follows the president’s call during his State of the Union address last week for a federal ban on gender transitions for minors.
“Surely, we can all agree no state can be allowed to rip children from their parents’ arms and transition them to a new gender against the parents’ will,” Trump said during his address. “We must ban it and we must ban it immediately.”
Gender identity is described as how a child perceives and calls themself, which can be the same or different from the sex that was assigned to them at birth, according to the Human Rights Campaign.
However, if a child sees themself as different than the sex assigned at birth, parents have the right to reject this self-identification, the ACF letter says. Under federal law, CAPTA states that a child may not be removed from the home without proof of “abuse” or “imminent risk of harm.”
The Trump administration has stated that restoring power to parents is one of its top health, education and humanities priorities. But the letter warns that states are usurping parental rights and potentially misinterpreting the CAPTA law if they remove children from their homes without evidence of “abuse or neglect.”
Under ACF, the health department’s human services division administers the largest federal child care program and other federal services that helps millions of households nationwide.
Prior to ACF’s letter to states, lawmakers have taken several child care-related actions against the nation’s health agency under Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. In a previous letter to Kennedy first reported by ABC News, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and other congressional Democrats said the agency’s alleged “disregard” for child welfare undermines the government’s core child-protection obligations amid federal immigration crackdowns.
Adams stressed Tuesday’s letter is supported by the whole organization, including Kennedy, and the secretary has demonstrated his commitment to improving child welfare outcomes across several different domains.
Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) speaks to a crowd during a fundraising event with the South Carolina Democratic Party at the Columbia Museum of Art on February 27, 2026 in Columbia, South Carolina. T (Photo by Sean Rayford/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Rep. Jim Clyburn, a South Carolina Democrat, told ABC News on Thursday that he is running for reelection, not announcing his retirement.
Clyburn, who took office in the House in 1993, is set to appear at South Carolina Democratic Party HQ in Columbia at 10:30 a.m. to make his campaign announcement.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
On Thursday, Jan. 29, 2026, in front of the Orange County Courthouse, advocates and former elected officials asked President Trump to create a pathway to permanent residency for Haitians who face deportations as their temporary protected status expires on Feb. 3. (Natalia Jaramillo/Orlando Sentinel/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — A federal judge on Monday blocked the Trump administration from ending Temporary Protected Status for more than 350,000 Haitian immigrants.
In an 83-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes granted a stay maintaining the legal status of Haitian nationals “pending judicial review.” In her ruling, she accused Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem of “preordaining” her termination decision, saying she “did so because of hostility to nonwhite immigrants.”
“There is an old adage among lawyers,” Judge Reyes wrote. “If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts. If you have the law on your side, pound the law. If you have neither, pound the table.”
“Secretary Noem, the record to-date shows, does not have the facts on her side — or at least has ignored them,” Reyes continued. “Does not have the law on her side — or at least has ignored it. Having neither and bringing the adage into the 21st century, she pounds X (f/k/a Twitter).”
Judge Reyes wrote that while Noem has a First Amendment right “to call immigrants killers, leeches, [and] entitlement junkies,” she is constrained by the Constitution and federal law to “apply faithfully the facts to the law in implementing the TPS program.”
“The Government does not cite any reason termination must occur post haste,” Reyes wrote. “Secretary Noem complains of strains unlawful immigrants place on our immigration-enforcement system. Her answer? Turn 352,959 lawful immigrants into unlawful immigrants overnight.”
The federal judge noted that Noem “has terminated every TPS country designation to have reached her desk — twelve countries up, twelve countries down.”
“The statutory design is straightforward: TPS exists because threats to life exist; when the threat persists, so should TPS protection, unless the Secretary articulates a well-reasoned and well-supported national interest to the contrary,” she wrote.
The D.C. federal judge listed the five plaintiffs by name, saying, “They are not, it emerges, ‘killers, leeches, or entitlement junkies.'”
“They are instead: Fritz Emmanuel Lesly Miot, a neuroscientist researching Alzheimer’s disease; Rudolph Civil, a software engineer at a national bank; Marlene Gail Noble, a laboratory assistant in a toxicology department; Marica Merline Laguerre, a college economics major; and Vilbrun Dorsainvil, a full-time registered nurse,” Judge Reyes wrote.
DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin released a statement to ABC News on Monday night, saying, “Supreme Court, here we come.”
“This is lawless activism that we will be vindicated on. Haiti’s TPS was granted following an earthquake that took place over 15 years ago, it was never intended to be a de facto amnesty program, yet that’s how previous administrations have used it for decades. Temporary means temporary and the final word will not be from an activist judge legislating from the bench,” McLaughlin said.
