Blue Press Journal

Tag: US Senate

  • The Art of Safe Dissent: How Susan Collins Mastered the Illusion of Rebellion

    by Winston Wendell

    I have always been interested in theater, but there are not many people who could describe Senator Susan Collins’s art as political theater so convincingly. Her most recent performance regarding the confirmation hearings of Todd Blanche, Trump’s former attorney, perfectly illustrates the art of rebellion.

    When Senator Lisa Murkowski announced her opposition to the confirmation in the Senate, I felt delighted, believing that a real GOP rebellion had occurred. Soon after her announcement, Senator Collins followed suit, adding fuel to the idea that GOP senators had staged a magnificent show of disapproval against Trump’s choice for the position. However, my political nose began to itch as the next statements began pouring in. After all, it was none other than Senator Bill Cassidy who revealed his support for Blanche’s confirmation. The curtain quickly dropped, exposing the lack of real GOP opposition to Trump’s nomination.

    To my surprise, Cassidy defended Blanche’s confirmation with nothing more than a good enough excuse for his “no” vote. After all, who has not criticized Blanche’s record before? At a time when the majority of Senate Republicans have voiced concerns about Todd Blanche’s confirmation, his “not perfect,” yet ultimately tolerable voting record, is a good enough excuse for a limited “rebellion” against Trump’s nominee.

    I believe that the most crucial detail regarding Collins’s performance involves the “rebellion.” In this respect, I can understand Chris Hayes’s unease when Collins announced her “no” vote on Blanche’s confirmation because, shortly thereafter, he realized that the required votes for passage had already been secured. In fact, according to Susan Collins Watch, a website monitoring Collins’s voting record, her “no” vote has failed to stop a single nominee in her 29-year Senate career. To me, it seemed that Collins’s “rebellion” against Trump’s choice was yet another well-orchestrated play designed to mislead Collins’s constituents.

    Moreover, I was quick to recall the events of 2018 involving Collins’s confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh. She was confident in stating that her vote for Kavanaugh’s confirmation did not undermine abortion rights or Roe v. Wade, yet her promise rang hollow four years later when her “yes” vote secured Kavanaugh’s confirmation. As such, I do believe that Collins has demonstrated a pattern of behavior suggesting that she rarely votes “no” when her “no” vote cannot change anything.

    Collins’s “carefully crafted image as a bipartisan gatekeeper” begins to fade, her constituents must ask themselves what really matters when casting a “no” vote against a presidential nominee for the Supreme Court. Collins’s performance in voting for Kavanaugh’s nomination and subsequently defending her decision as one of “reasoned pragmatism” appears to suggest that “no” votes do not come easy for Collins. In fact, for Collins, it seems that they only occur when they fail to accomplish anything.

    Fediverse Reactions

  •  Senator Susan Collins’ ICE Vote and the Fatal Shooting of Johan Sebastián Guerrero

    Biddeford, Maine is usually a quiet place. National tragedies—they don’t happen here. But then you see the headlines: 26-year-old Johan Sebastián Guerrero, shot and killed. This wasn’t random; no, it fits a larger, ugly pattern. He was a young father, a legal resident, a husband. Gone in a flash because of an operation that completely missed the mark.

    I read that ICE agents shot him while looking for someone else entirely. That shakes me. It exposes something broken far beyond a single mistake. How does a mission meant to catch one person end with the death of an uninvolved man just sitting in his car? People should answer for this, but watching the political response, it’s clear many would rather look away.

    I can’t help thinking about Senator Susan Collins. She keeps voting to pour more money into ICE, never pairing that support with real reform. That’s not just an abstract policy corner—it’s now the reality lived by a widow and a child suddenly without a father. Funding an agency without demanding accountability means backing its methods, whether you intend to or not. When Senator Collins doesn’t push for transparency or structural change, to me, she’s decided the way things are is good enough.

    But what really gets me is her silence afterward. No regret, no acknowledgment. That says a lot: she’ll defend the system as it stands, even if it costs innocent lives in her own state. A Senate candidate called her approach “signing the checks and hoping for the best.” That stings because it’s painfully true. Hope isn’t policy—it’s shirking responsibility.

    Biddeford’s tragedy shows you can’t separate immigration enforcement from real lives. This stuff unfolds where we live—our driveways, our neighborhoods, right in front of us. When we give agencies huge power and little oversight, we have to own what happens next.

    Watching all this, I think we’ve hit a turning point. This isn’t just about borders anymore—it’s public safety and the worth we assign to each person’s life. With elections heating up and talk of immigration on the rise, I’ll be paying close attention. Will Senator Collins stick to her choices? Because for the Guerrero family, her vote wasn’t about politics. It was a failure that left a wound no speech or policy spin can ever heal.