Troy Jackson emerges as potential frontrunner to replace Graham Platner in Maine’s Senate race
Troy Jackson, Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, speaks during a demonstration outside of a federal immigration office after a man was fatally shot by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, on July 14, 2026 in Scarborough, Maine. (Ryan Murphy/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Former Maine Senate President Troy Jackson appears all but certain to replace Graham Platner as the Democratic nominee for Senate in the party’s bid to unseat Republican incumbent Susan Collins this November.
Jackson’s campaign said Monday that “it is turning its full focus toward defeating Senator Susan Collins,” citing a “decisive advantage” during recent county-level caucuses.
Jackson, who comes from a logging family not far from the Quebec border, is a familiar face to Maine voters due to his history of activism and his lengthy background as a state lawmaker in Augusta.
His campaign’s statement also came after an eventful Sunday for Maine politics as four other Democrats dropped out of the running: Dan Kleban, Shenna Bellows and Nirav Shah and Jordan Wood.
“We are suspending our campaign tonight. This is the conclusion of the caucuses and letting this process play out,” Wood, the former chief of staff to Katie Porter when she served as a congresswoman representing California, said in a selfie-style video posted to social media on Sunday evening.
“I’m so proud to endorse my friend Troy Jackson. I didn’t know Troy until over a year ago when I decided to run for office for the first time, but he has become a friend, someone I trust, someone that I know represents and will serve all people in Maine,” Wood added.
Shah and Kleban, like Wood, also endorsed Jackson. Bellows did not mention Jackson when suspending her Senate campaign.
Maine Democrats held county-level nomination meetings over the weekend in order to select delegates ahead of their party’s Senate nominating convention set for this coming Saturday, July 25.
While the Maine Democratic Party’s website lists that eight candidates remain in the race to replace Platner, including former primary candidate David Costello and activist Ashley Webb, delegates who expressed support for Jackson received overwhelming support at the nomination meetings and the candidates who withdrew Sunday were previously viewed as Jackson’s main rivals.
Jackson’s campaign said that 481 of 500 county delegates support his candidacy. A total of 601 delegates will participate in the July 25 convention, with the additional 101 delegates being members of the Maine Democratic State Committee.
Just over six weeks ago, Jackson stood in front of a crowd in a Bar Harbor theater to ask Mainers to support his own bid for governor (a race he lost) and to vote for Platner in the Democratic Senate primary.
But after Platner was accused earlier this month of sexual assault by a former girlfriend, an allegation he’s denied, Jackson joined calls for him to exit the race. Platner formally withdrew his candidacy on July 10.
Now, in nearly a week, Maine voters should know for certain whether Jackson will officially be the Democrats’ pick to try to flip the high-profile Senate seat.
The U.S Supreme Court is seen on June 25, 2026 in Washington, DC. . (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — The Supreme Court on Tuesday rolled back longstanding limits on the amount of money political parties can spend in coordination with individual candidates for federal office — a ruling that could unleash a wave of new spending before the midterms. The Supreme Court said the spending limits violate the First Amendment.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Students walk through the halls between classes at Rippowam Middle School on September 14, 2020 in Stamford, Connecticut. (John Moore/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Nayleen Escalante-Villatoro, a sixth grader at Brookland Middle School in Washington, D.C., has struggled significantly with attending school.
She said whenever there are family problems that force her mother to take off work, she has to step in.
“Me and my older sibling stay home to watch the little ones,” Nayleen told ABC News, adding, “It makes me feel stressed because I’m missing school and I’m not learning.”
This not only frustrates Nayleen, but it also impacts her studies: “I have to do a lot of makeup work after all the missing assignments that I haven’t done,” she added.
Kids like Nayleen face a multitude of challenges at school — when they’re there.
From the rigors of learning how to read and write to addressing mental health concerns and outside distractions, students juggle more than just their classroom workloads. A combination of these issues and other societal factors has fueled an attendance crisis that’s led to a spike in student chronic absenteeism — defined as missing at least 10% of the school year — in recent years, according to experts who spoke to ABC News.
While one in three students nationwide experienced chronic absenteeism during the 2021-2022 academic year, the rate is declining, from up to 30% to roughly 24% by the start of the past school year, according to estimates from the Return 2 Learn tracker reviewed by ABC News.
Government officials are also collecting data on K-12 chronic absenteeism but the Department of Education recently told ABC News it couldn’t yet provide it. Its National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) told ABC News in 2023 that chronic absenteeism increased from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, there’s been no silver bullet to the problem. Different states have taken their own approach, from going door-to-door to check on students to providing high-impact tutoring at school. Education and health experts also emphasize family engagement, community relationships, extracurricular activities and outdoor recreation are potential solutions for chronically absent students.
Hedy Chang, CEO of Attendance Works, a nonprofit focused on addressing absenteeism, said that when kids aren’t showing up to school, it’s an indication that engagement isn’t happening.
“When you treat it as a matter of engagement, that’s when we build the relationships with families, which make them trust schools and it builds a relationship so that we can actually find out what are the underlying causes of why kids aren’t showing up,” Chang told ABC News.
United Family Advocates Executive Director Joanna Lack is calling for more attention to those underlying causes. Lack worked on the issue for many years as the chief performance officer in Camden, New Jersey, and has since transitioned to the non-profit organization dedicated to keeping families safe and together.
“We’ve been looking at the wrong problem instead of opening up the hood and saying ‘What’s actually going on here?'” she said.
Home life among ‘constellation’ of issues
Student absenteeism is often correlated with household or child welfare problems that impact the student’s school life, according to UFA’s Lack.
“Chronic absenteeism is like the symptom that you experience, but it’s not the disease, and we’ve been treating it like it’s the disease,” Lack said.
The Department of Health and Human Services does not have a specific initiative targeting chronic absenteeism. However, Head Start and the Family Opportunity, Resilience, Grit, Engagement-Fatherhood (FORGE) program under the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) both aim to improve outcomes in child welfare and enhance early childhood education, according to HHS officials.
Chang said there isn’t an urgent need for new federally funded programs or aid, just better use of ones that are available.
“I need existing programs to think about how they use chronic absence data to collaborate and work together to support kids and families and make sure the kids who need their resources, or the schools that need their resources, are getting it,” she said.
There’s a “constellation” of issues that contribute to increased absences, from child welfare involvement to unstable housing, but Lack noted that families are complex and kids don’t come in silos.
Activity makes a ‘huge difference’
Nayleen is one of the thousands of students across the country who participate in extracurricular activities through the SCORES program, which creates safe environments where young people can build connections with their communities, according to its website. She said DC SCORES — which provides soccer, poetry, and service-learning programs — has helped her return to class more regularly.
She explained that playing soccer with DC SCORES has empowered her and she looks forward to talking to her coach after attending school.
“It helps me because whenever I’m going through stuff he will understand me,” she said. “Sometimes he will help me. He will sit down and have a talk with me,” she said, adding, “Whenever I’m down, he will ask me if I’m OK.”
At the last month’s inaugural National Executive Forum on Health and Outdoor Recreation, which combined outdoor recreation industry and health leaders to promote using recreation as a pillar of public health, experts told ABC News that recess makes a “huge difference” for holistic growth in adolescents.
Outdoor Recreation Roundtable President Jessica Turner emphasized that being outside is fundamental to student health.
“We’ve stepped back so far from incorporating the outdoors into our lives and to step back into it doesn’t take very much,” Turner told ABC News. “It’s not a heavy lift.”
Schools supporting parents and kids
Chang, of Attendance Works, said chronic absenteeism isn’t inevitable.
She stressed that schools are starting to adopt more effective family engagement strategies for those dealing with attendance issues.
Shavar Jeffries, CEO of the KIPP Foundation, which operates the largest public charter school network in the nation, has utilized some simple yet effective solutions to correct absenteeism.
Jeffries told ABC News that when a student doesn’t show up, they call the family “immediately.”
“‘Johnny, Mary, didn’t come to school today. We really need them because they are going to miss an opportunity to learn,'” he said, adding “Then, frankly, sometimes we also say: You got to figure it out.”
“Get your baby to school because they can’t learn to fulfill that potential if you’re not able to do that,” Jeffries added.
A tarp remains in place on the facade of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on Aug. 25, 2026, in Washington, D.C. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — The Justice Department notified a federal judge Thursday night the Kennedy Center will delay implementation of its board’s resolution honoring President Donald Trump for more than a month.
In a filing late Thursday, the DOJ said the effort to add Trump’s name to the facade and plaza will “not be effectuated before October 8, 2026.”
The Trump administration’s filing came following a two-hour hearing Thursday during which U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper urged the center to delay its plans to give him more time to consider his decision.
The hearing Thursday featured the lead attorney for Ohio Democratic Rep. Joyce Beatty, who sits on the Kennedy Center’s Board of Trustees as an ex-officio member, repeatedly accusing the Kennedy Center board of thumbing its nose at the court by voting to honor Trump after Cooper ordered his name off the building in a decision earlier this year.
“I don’t say this lightly,” said attorney Nathaniel Zelinsky. “We view this as outright defiance.”
“Are they attempting a renaming?” Zelinsky asked. “Absolutely, yes. They are doing the same thing they were told they couldn’t do before.”
Cooper did not signal at the hearing that he necessarily agreed. Nor did he leap at the chance to issue an order stopping the board from immediately moving forward with its plans to honor Trump as the man who “renovated and restored” the center.
Instead, he used the hearing to probe both sides on the legality of the board’s move earlier this month to again add Trump’s name to the famed cultural institution.
Cooper seemed to grapple with whether the renaming of the plaza after Trump violates a 1983 law blocking “additional memorials” in the center’s “public areas.”
“Could a plaza just outside the building be considered the ‘public area’ of the building?” Cooper asked Zelinsky.
Zelinsky pointed to the Justice Department’s most recent filing in the case, in which administration lawyers said the board’s intent was to rename “the complex” after Trump.
But the administration’s lawyer insisted the Kennedy Center would continue to exist as a memorial to John F. Kennedy.
“There is no renaming here,” said Justice Department attorney Brantley Mayers. “The board has not taken any action to rename.”
Mayers also said there was “no evidence” that the move to add Trump’s name back onto the building is imminent, even as he said it was “clear that recognizing the president will help address both the financial and structural issues” he said the center faces.
Cooper shrugged off the bluster of the Trump administration’s most recent filing, which suggested the performing arts center could face demolition in the event he issued an order permanently blocking President Donald Trump’s push to renovate the facility with additions intended to recognize Trump personally.
“That may be great atmospherics,” Cooper told Mayers. “But I gotta say, the first four of five pages of your brief seem to be a non-sequitur. We’re here to discuss whether the board’s resolution was consistent with my order and consistent with the statutes.”
Cooper said he’ll need to take some time to “give the issues the attention they deserve” and asked the DOJ to delay any plans to give him time to rule.
Cooper suggested he might impose an order keeping the status quo if center management didn’t go along.
Zelinsky had asked the judge to act more urgently, pointing to the “overnight” move to add Trump’s name to the center following a similar vote by the board earlier this year.
“They don’t contest that the last time they did this, they ruined the marble,” Zelinsky said. “Talk about an irreparable injury! They’ve drilled into it and they’re going to be poised to do that again.”
