The Democratic primary to take on Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine looks different due to the decision of one candidate to drop out and join a different race with high stakes.

Nearly 20 years ago, Graham Platner drunkenly got a tattoo while on leave with fellow Marines in Croatia.

Graham Platner's campaign for U.S. Senate took some early hits because of his online history and a tattoo he now regrets, but he's staying in the race for the long haul.

Voters in Maine and Texas have considered Republican-backed proposals that proponents say would safeguard elections, but opponents believe are intended to make voting more difficult.

Two years after the deadliest mass shooting in state history, Maine voters decided to make it easier for family members to petition a court to restrict a potentially dangerous person’s access to guns.

Maine and Texas are the latest states where Republicans are pushing ballot initiatives targeting noncitizen voting, which is rare.

Maine voters will decide a pair of high-profile ballot measures addressing elections and gun violence in a statewide referendum election next week.

Graham Platner, a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Maine, tells The Associated Press that he's covered a tattoo on his chest to no longer reflect an image widely recognized as a Nazi symbol that he got nearly 20 years ago.

Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner has revealed in a podcast that he was tattooed years ago with an image widely recognized as Nazi symbol.

The national chair of the Democratic Party says online comments made by a Senate candidate in Maine in which the candidate appeared to endorse political violence, criticize police officers, and express other controversial views were wrong, but not disqualifying from office.

The New England governor who told President Donald Trump to his face she'd see him in court now plans to challenge Maine’s Republican Sen. Susan Collins at the ballot box.

Maine’s two-term Democratic Gov. Janet Mills will run for the U.S. Senate seat held by veteran Republican Sen. Susan Collins next year.

Republican congressman Wesley Hunt is running for the U.S. Senate in Texas, defying Senate GOP leadership and adding a new element to an already contentious primary campaign.

The governors of Arizona, Illinois, Maine and North Carolina have signed orders intended to make COVID-19 vaccines available in pharmacies for people without individual prescriptions.

A Maine principals' group is resisting a U.S. Department of Justice subpoena seeking the names of all students playing interscholastic sports.

President Donald Trump's administration has sued the California Department of Education for allowing transgender girls to compete on girls sports teams.

Attorneys for the state of Maine and a conservative lawmaker who identified a transgender student athlete online are in agreement that the lawmaker’s lawsuit over her loss of voting rights is now moot.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has called President Donald Trump's military intervention in Los Angeles an assault on democracy.

The Supreme Court is siding with a GOP state lawmaker in Maine who was blocked from voting after she identified a transgender student athlete in a critical social-media post.

A Republican state lawmaker from Maine appealed to the Supreme Court after she was censured by the state House for a social media post about a transgender athlete, a move that comes amid sparring over the issue between the Democratically controlled state and the Trump administration.

A ruling from the top court in the United Kingdom that says the legal definition of a woman is someone born biologically female is the latest high-profile action globally involving the issue of what legal recognitions transgender people are allowed.

The Trump administration is suing Maine’s education department for not complying with its push to ban transgender athletes in girls and women's sports.

A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to unfreeze funds intended for a Maine child nutrition program that were suspended amid a disagreement between the state and the president over transgender athletes.

Maine officials say the state will not comply with a ban on transgender athletes in high school sports in the wake of a Trump administration finding that the state violated antidiscrimination laws by allowing the students to participate.

Maine officials are suing the administration of President Donald Trump to try to stop the government from freezing federal money in the wake of a dispute over transgender athletes in sports.

The Social Security Administration’s acting commissioner is facing calls to resign after he issued an order that would have required Maine parents to register their newborns for Social Security numbers at a federal office rather than the hospital.

The Trump administration is investigating Maine with a claim that dozens of school districts in the state violate federal law by withholding information about students’ gender transitioning from parents.

A federal judge says Friday he will “get to the bottom” of whether President Donald Trump’s administration defied his order blocking deportation flights.

President Donald Trump and Elon Musk's campaign of disruption is engulfing the federal government.

The U.S. lobster industry continued a multiyear slide in catch last year.

Elon Musk is vowing yet again to fire any federal workers who don’t respond to an email asking them to list five things they accomplished last week.

President Donald Trump’s real-time confrontation with Maine’s governor over transgender athletes captured the conundrum many Democratic governors are facing in the Republican’s second term.

President Donald Trump has sparred with Maine’s governor during a meeting of governors at the White House.

Maine residents whose sense of safety was shattered last year by a mass shooting have marked the anniversary Friday with a memorial service that drew hundreds of people to the city’s hockey arena.

Republican Donald Trump mixed up Democratic Gov. Janet Mills’ gender on a phone call with supporters in Maine.

Maine's governor says there has been a huge jump in law enforcement requests for Maine courts to allow guns to be seized from people deemed a danger to themselves or others since the deadliest mass shooting in state history.

A special commission says the Army Reserve and local police missed opportunities to intervene and seize weapons from a spiraling reservist responsible for the deadliest shootings in Maine history.

An Army report says three reserve officers have been disciplined for dereliction of duty in the aftermath of a reservist’s rampage in which 18 people were killed in Maine.

U.S. Army reservists who witnessed the mental and physical decline of a colleague who would commit Maine’s deadliest mass shooting told a commission that they tried to intervene before the tragedy.

State lawmakers are taking very different approaches to public safety following high-profile shootings.

The Maine Legislature has approved sweeping gun safety legislation nearly six months after the deadliest shooting in state history.

Maine is joining a multistate effort to elect the president by popular vote with the governor’s announcement that she’ll let the proposal become law without her signature.

Nebraska’s Republican governor is calling on state lawmakers to move forward with a “winner-take-all” system of awarding Electoral College votes.

The interim report from the commission investigating Maine's deadliest mass shooting focused mostly on whether authorities should have taken shooter Robert Card into custody and seized his guns under the state's so-called yellow flag law.

An independent commission investigating a mass shooting that left 18 dead in Maine issued an interim report that has found that a sheriff’s office had cause to take the killer into protective custody and take his guns from him beforehand.

An Army reservist who shot and killed 18 people in Maine last year had evidence of traumatic brain injuries, according to a brain tissue analysis by researchers from Boston University.

Emotional survivors of a mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine, called on politicians to protect the community from future tragedies.

Maine’s governor has rolled out legislation she says will prevent dangerous people from possessing weapons and strengthen mental health services to help prevent future tragedies like the Lewiston mass shooting that shook the state.

Maine's governor says a state-owned site on the coast of Maine will serve as the location of an offshore wind port critical to developing the nation’s first floating offshore wind power research array.

Maine state police are defending their search last fall for a gunman who had just killed 18 people, saying they didn’t rush to search woods surrounding his abandoned car because they feared an ambush.

Scientists say the back-to-back storms that lashed the Northeast in January were more of a sign of things to come than an anomaly.

Relatives of the victims of the deadliest shooting in Maine history are imploring an independent commission to prevent such a thing from ever happening again.

Law enforcement officers say Maine's yellow flag law that allows guns to be confiscated from someone in a mental health crisis is cumbersome and time consuming.

Forecasters say more bad weather is in store after storms that battered nearly every corner of the United States.

A fake swatting call was made to the home of Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows.

The arrival of a heavy storm, flooding and power outages just before Christmas is complicating, and in some cases threatening to cancel, holiday plans for many New Englanders.

Utility crews are working to restore power to hundreds of thousands of customers in Maine and some rivers continued to rise following a powerful storm that hit the northeastern U.S. At least five people were killed.

An independent report conducted for a police agency clears the agency’s response to growing concerns about the mental health of a man who later went on to commit the deadliest mass shooting in Maine history.

Two senators from Maine are asking the U.S. Army inspector general to provide a full accounting of interactions with a reservist before he killed 18 people at a bowling alley and bar.

The White House says President Joe Biden will visit Maine later this week to mourn with the community of Lewiston.

Communities that were sheltering in place in the aftermath of Maine's shootings are beginning to move forward, with kids returning to school and residents celebrating Halloween.

Maine’s authorities are trying to piece together the events that led to the worst mass shooting in the state’s history.

The residents of Lewiston, Maine, are embarking on a path to healing after a man suspected of killing 18 people earlier this week was found dead.

Robert Card, the suspect in the Lewiston, Maine, mass shooting is dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, multiple sources tell CNN.

Authorities say the man wanted in the mass shooting at a bowling alley and bar that killed 18 people and wounded 13 has been found dead.

The man wanted in the mass shooting at a bowling alley and bar that killed 18 people and wounded 13 has been found dead, bringing an end to a search that put the entire state of Maine on edge for the last two days.

As police keep looking for the man accused of killing at least 18 people and injuring more than a dozen others in Maine Wednesday night, a retired Jacksonville SWAT officer gave more insight into how a manhunt like this typically works.

State election officials and privacy advocates are raising alarms about a push by several conservative groups to gain access to state voter rolls.

A coalition of 25 governors and the Biden administration are set to announce a pledge Thursday morning to quadruple the number of heat pumps in U.S. homes by 2030.

New England harbors and fishing villages are being emptied of boats as the region prepares for Hurricane Lee.

Groups opposed to Maine's new law expanding access to abortions won’t attempt to nullify the new statute through a so-called People’s Veto referendum.

Maine is poised to launch an offshore wind program that would meet clean energy goals and produce enough power for about 900,000 homes from floating wind turbines in the Gulf of Maine.

Maine will soon expand abortion access, joining a half dozen states that leave it to doctors and patients to make the decision without restrictions on timing.

The Maine House has voted again to allow later abortions in some circumstances, putting the proposal one final vote away from going to the governor for her signature.

A proposal to expand access to abortions narrowly passed in the Maine House, clearing the first legislative hurdle after an emotional floor debate.

State police in Maine say four people were fatally shot in a home shortly before gunfire broke out on a busy highway about 25 miles away, wounding three.

Maine's governor is a politician — and a poet.

When then-Gov. Paul LePage endorsed Donald Trump for president in 2016, LePage credited himself as a prototype for the insurgent candidate.

Threats against election officials in the U.S. have risen to such a level that those attending a conference this week in Wisconsin were not given the agenda until after they arrived, were warned not to wear their name tags in public and were shuttled to an undisclosed location for trivia night.

Stark political divides are threatening to overshadow a meeting this week of the nation's governors.

Former Maine Gov. Paul LePage is seeking a political comeback.

Native American tribes in Maine gave up some of their rights to the state when they settled their land claims more than 40 years ago.

The Supreme Court has rejected an emergency appeal from health care workers in Maine to block a vaccine mandate that went into effect Friday.

Opponents of a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for health care workers in Maine have filed an emergency appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court after being dealt another legal defeat.

After a year of struggling to boost testing, communities across the country are seeing plummeting demand, shuttering testing sites or even trying to return supplies. “We just don’t have enough people who are immune to rule out another surge.”U.S. testing hit a peak on Jan. 15, when the country was averaging more than 2 million tests per day. “People just aren’t going to go out to testing sites.”AdBut testing remains important for tracking and containing the outbreak. That’s more than 25 times the country’s current rate of about 40 million tests reported per month. From a public health viewpoint, testing is effective if it helps to quickly find the infected, trace their contacts and isolate them to stop the spread.

The state reported 103 infections that day, the largest single day increase in cases. France’s government has shut down all nonessential businesses and ordered people to stay indoors for the next month to slow accelerating virus infections, hospitalizations and deaths. The Geneva canton, or region, said the University Hospitals of Geneva on Sunday counted 474 people hospitalized with coronavirus infections, including 56 in intensive care. Iran has reported more than 620,000 confirmed virus cases in all. Montenegro recently has seen a surge in virus cases.

All remain in quarantine at a Christchurch hotel, and health officials say they expect more to test positive. — British PM Johnson imposing strict coronavirus restrictions on Greater Manchester, England’s second-largest urban area, after talks fail on financial support. Local health officials said Tuesday that the surge is overwhelming their ability to confront the pandemic. Officials say coronavirus cases related to the university represent 61% of the total in Washtenaw County, compared to just 2% in August. ___PHOENIX — Arizona reported more than 1,000 daily coronavirus cases for the second time in a week.

Janet Mills thought she was doing the tourism industry a favor by providing an alternative to the 14-day quarantine. Visitors can skip the quarantine altogether if they can show theyve tested negative for the virus within 72 hours before arrival. Travelers to Alaska who are tested upon arrival are allowed to avoid further quarantine if they test negative. In Vermont, visitors can cut short the two-week quarantine if they get a test after a week that comes back negative. Visitors can avoid a quarantine by being tested before they arrive, or they can reduce the quarantines duration by being tested after arrival.

During a call earlier this week with governors, Mills told the president she was concerned about security problems for our state if Trump visited because of his harsh remarks about handling demonstrators. Trump is also scheduled to meet with members of the commercial fishing industry in Maine earlier in the day. He's set to fly into Bangor, where a group of demonstrators has pledged to have a presence, in the afternoon. Normally, Friday's events would make for a friendly visit for Trump in a congressional district that awarded him an electoral vote in the 2016 election. Piscataquis County Sheriff Robert Young said he's spoken to organizers of a planned demonstration during Trump's visit and said their "motives and intent are good."