As Troy Jackson becomes frontrunner for Maine Democrats, what happens next?
Troy Jackson has moved into a strong position to become the Democratic nominee in Maine’s crucial Senate race after Graham Platner abruptly ended his campaign following allegations of sexual assault from a former partner. Over the weekend, delegates were chosen across all 16 counties ahead of a special convention in Bangor on Saturday, where Democrats will formally select Platner’s replacement.
Of the 601 delegates who will take part, 500 were elected over the weekend and the remaining 101 will come from the state Democratic Party committee. State Democrats have until 27 July to formally choose Platner’s replacement for the general-election ballot.
Jackson, a former state legislator, once campaigned alongside Platner and received his endorsement during Jackson’s gubernatorial run, where Jackson finished third. That closeness to Platner, whose campaign was mired in controversy, raised concerns that Jackson could be tainted by the rushed replacement process, while questions also persisted about his public speaking style and whether he could match the commanding presence that helped Platner build a statewide populist following.
But Jackson has since consolidated support from major unions, numerous state and national progressive groups, and appears to have secured broad backing from the newly selected delegates. Although their commitments are not legally binding, a large majority of the 601 delegates have now pledged to vote for him.
On Sunday, Jackson told Politico it was
“incredible”to see people
“really concerned about making sure this momentum, this movement continues”as it became clear he would emerge as the presumptive nominee and his rivals dropped out of the competition. His campaign said on Monday that it was turning its
“full focus”to defeating Collins after the weekend’s surge of delegate support.
Nirav Shah, former director of Maine’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, also dropped out and endorsed Jackson, a fifth-generation logger from the northern part of the state. Dan Kleban, the co-founder of Maine Beer Company, and Jordan Wood, a progressive who worked as the chief of staff to former Representative Katie Porter of California, also endorsed Jackson.
Maine’s secretary of state, Shenna Bellows, withdrew on Sunday morning, saying Democrats did not have
“a day to waste in unifying”around the goal of defeating the state’s longtime Republican Senator Susan Collins in the November midterm elections. Democrats are scrambling to regroup after their initial nominee, Graham Platner, ended his campaign earlier this month after a series of scandals that included a woman accusing him of sexual assault, an allegation he denies.
Maine is considered a must-win state in the Democratic Party’s mission of taking control of the Senate. Jackson rallied broad support at county-level meetings this weekend when party committees across the state began choosing delegates for the nominating convention that will meet on 25 July in Bangor to select a new candidate.
Jackson, 58, was elected to the state legislature in 2002 and later became president of the Maine Senate. He left office in 2024 because of term limits. Jackson then unsuccessfully ran for the Democratic nomination for governor earlier this year with Platner’s backing.
Although not legally binding, over two-thirds of the 601 delegates have now committed to voting for Jackson at that statewide convention next weekend.
What happened in the Brooklyn sentencing of Ismael Zambada García?
Ismael Zambada García, the Mexican drug lord known as
“El Mayo”, was sentenced to life in prison by a Brooklyn federal judge on Monday morning and was ordered to forfeit $15bn in drug proceeds. The 76-year-old, who has spent nearly two years inside a Brooklyn federal prison, limped into the courtroom dressed in a beige prison outfit, with white hair and a beard.
Before sentencing, Zambada read a public letter taking responsibility for his crimes and calling for an end to the violence that has plagued Mexico for decades during the drug-fueled conflict.
“I did not go to trial because I did not want to deny the truth,”Zambada read aloud in court, adding that
“violence must end”and urging the next generation of drug traffickers to
“choose a different path”.
Zambada helped lead the Sinaloa cartel, one of Mexico’s biggest organized crime groups, and signed a guilty plea last August admitting to trafficking tons of cocaine, marijuana, heroin and, in recent years, fentanyl. He also admitted to engaging in violence to further the cartel’s business operations and corrupting Mexican public officials.
Federal judge Brian Cogan said the sentencing was
“anticlimactic”because of the plea agreement and the general understanding by all parties involved that Zambada would spend the rest of his life in prison.
“I think he deserves life,”Cogan said, adding that even if anyone disagreed, the US government’s sentencing guidelines would require a life-in-prison sentence because of the severity of Zambada’s crimes.
Zambada’s defense attorneys asked the judge to recommend that the Bureau of Prisons send Zambada to a federal medical facility rather than a traditional prison because of his medical conditions. The conditions are redacted in court records, but during the sentencing hearing the judge said Zambada was
“drifting”toward being
“cognitively impaired”. Mexican outlets have reported that Zambada is dealing with the early stages of dementia. The Bureau of Prisons still has to evaluate where Zambada will be sent to serve the rest of his days.
As one of the co-founders of the Sinaloa cartel, Zambada is one of the biggest drug traffickers in the history of the US-Mexico drug war. The US government has accused him of trafficking tons of cocaine, marijuana, heroin and, in recent years, fentanyl to the US and other parts of the world. Prosecutors also accused him of leading a violent organization that helped corrupt Mexican politicians, military officials and law enforcement agents.
Although Joaquín
“El Chapo”Guzmán is known as the face of the Sinaloa cartel, the elderly Mayo was known as the elusive leader who ran the cartel’s operations from behind the scenes. He was little seen by the public and relatively unknown, in sharp contrast to El Chapo.
Zambada’s arrest in 2024 came as a shock. During a mysterious operation, he was beaten and kidnapped by one of El Chapo’s sons and flown across the border to New Mexico, where he was arrested by US federal agents. It remains unknown whether US agencies helped facilitate the cross-border kidnapping operation that led to his arrest. El Chapo’s son, who orchestrated the kidnapping, pleaded guilty late last year and has become a cooperating witness for the US justice department.
Zambada’s arrest led to a splintering of the Sinaloa cartel, with Zambada’s son and El Chapo’s sons leading different factions in a raging intra-cartel war for territory that has devastated parts of Mexico.
His sentence comes amid a difficult period in US-Mexico relations, as the Trump administration has escalated pressure on the Mexican government to intensify its attacks on criminal groups. Last year, the Trump administration designated the Sinaloa cartel as a terrorist group and has threatened military intervention against the cartel and other drug trafficking organizations.
Reporters were heading up to the courtroom as Brooklyn federal judge Brian Cogan, who also presided over El Chapo’s trial years ago, prepared to dictate Zambada’s sentence.
What is happening in the FBI investigation outside a New York ICE facility?
The FBI is investigating an incident in which an
“incendiary device”was deployed outside 26 Federal Plaza, a notorious Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) holding facility in New York. FBI director Kash Patel said in a statement that
“an individual is in custody and two minor injuries reported thus far”.
The building is also the site of the largest federal immigration courthouse in Manhattan, where there have been several instances of people being apprehended by federal officials waiting just outside courtrooms after immigration hearings. My colleague Julius Constantine-Motal last month reported from the courthouse and captured instances of people being detained after their appearances in court by federal agents who are often masked.
What did Trump say about US military casualties and Iran?
Donald Trump said on Sunday that he felt
“very badly”about three US military casualties as strikes on Iran continued unabated. While speaking to reporters on his return to Washington from the Fifa World Cup final in New Jersey, he acknowledged the three casualties and said those personnel had been fighting to stop Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
“Well, we feel very badly, but you know those great people, those great patriots, were out there fighting that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon,”Trump said.
The president insisted that Iran
“lost everything almost militarily”and said the US controls the strait of Hormuz.
“They don’t control anything. So we’ll see what happens. But we hit them very hard again tonight,”Trump added.
Donald Trump is in Washington today and will spend most of the day in closed-door meetings. At 3.30pm ET he will welcome the 2025 Little League Softball World Series winners to the White House. That event is currently closed to the press, but officials said they would provide updates if anything changes.
The Trump administration’s attacks have continued amid reporting that, in the week before Friday’s Iranian strike that killed two American troops in Jordan, Iran carried out three additional attacks on US forces in the country. According to the New York Times, dozens of service members were injured, but the Pentagon did not disclose either the strikes or the resulting casualties.
The Times, citing several unnamed US officials, also reported that the attacks in Jordan damaged multiple helicopters, another detail the Pentagon reportedly kept secret.
Trump also congratulated his vice-president, JD Vance, and his wife, Usha, on the birth of their fourth child.
“A perfect baby boy for the wonderful Vance family,”Trump wrote on Truth Social.
What did John Fetterman say about Trump’s focus on 2020?
Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman said on Sunday that the president should do something positive rather than continue focusing on the 2020 election defeat that ended his first presidency. Fetterman said this could include resolving the US conflict with Iran.
“I don’t know why the president is dragging up all this stuff,”Fetterman said on CNN’s State of the Union, three days after Trump delivered a televised primetime address about claims of Chinese meddling in the 2020 White House race that he lost to Joe Biden.
“You’re the president. Do something positive – and you are talking about 2020; that’s been settled over six years ago.
“It’s deeply unhelpful and that distracts [from] important things, especially like the Iranian war right now.”
His comments came during a stretch that could prove to be an inflection point in his political career. On Wednesday, he said he would consider leaving the Democratic Party if it ever became
“the anti-Israel party”, a remark he made after more than 100 US House lawmakers voted in favor of halting Israeli military aid over incursions into Gaza and Lebanon.
Fetterman has emerged as a prominent advocate of Israel among Democrats since he joined the Senate in 2023. You can read the full story here:
How is Bulgaria responding to the deployment of US tanker aircraft?
Nato member Bulgaria will seek parliamentary approval later today for up to eight US tanker aircraft to be stationed at a military airport in the country. The government will ask parliament to approve a request by Washington to station tanker planes at the Bezmer military facility, about 260 km (160 miles) southeast of the capital Sofia, to support US military actions in the Middle East, Bulgaria’s prime minister Rumen Radev said.
A move earlier this year to station the aircraft, used mainly for airborne refuelling of other aircraft, at a civilian airport in Sofia without prior parliamentary approval sparked controversy, and the planes left last month.
“The problem was that the military planes were based at a civilian airport in close proximity to Sofia. That is why we proposed to our allies to occupy military airfields,”Radev told an annual conference of Bulgarian Ambassadors in Sofia.
What did Trump say about the Qatari-gifted Air Force One?
The US president said the Qatari-donated jet that serves as Air Force One will soon be sent away for
“maxed out”upgrades, as concerns grow over the plane’s security features.
Trump started flying aboard the Boeing luxury jet on 1 July after accepting the $400m plane as an
“unconditional”gift from the Qatari government last year. Questions about the aircraft intensified earlier this month when the president unexpectedly flew from Turkey to England on the older Air Force One, rather than the new Qatari-gifted aircraft he had used to travel to the Nato summit in Ankara.
Trump was asked whether the Qatari plane lacked missile-defense capabilities as he returned home from the World Cup final in New Jersey on Sunday. He told reporters:
“Well, it has – it has a lot, and you know it has a lot of capability, but as I understand it, in about a month or so, they’re going to send it to have it be maxed out. So they’re going to be sending it, and they’ll have it be maxed out.”
“It’ll take about a month,”Trump added, suggesting the jet could get additional defensive capabilities to enhance its security.
Earlier this month, the New York Times reported that the new jet had the same level of security as the older model, including antimissile capabilities, citing anonymous sources.
The coverage prompted a leak investigation and led the justice department to issue subpoenas to several of the Times’ journalists in what was condemned as an attempt to punish the outlet for its reporting and to intimidate independent media organisations.
The subpoenas, some of which were delivered to reporters at their homes, sought to force them to testify before a federal grand jury in Manhattan. The Times has moved to quash the subpoenas served by the justice department.
How is the Trump administration using the dormant alien terrorist court?
The Trump administration has filed a first-ever petition to a secretive and dormant court created 30 years ago to consider government requests to deport so-called
“alien terrorists”from the US.
The Alien Terrorist Removal Court was established in 1996 but had never received a petition until Wednesday, when the US justice department filed an application seeking the removal of an individual whose name is withheld from the single-page document posted on the court’s website.
Joan Ericksen, the chief judge of the five-member court, said in a written response to the petition that a hearing was held on Thursday during which the court had
“questions about the nexus that the government alleges between the actions of the respondent and the specific sections and subsections it invokes with respect to those actions”.
Ericksen, a federal judge in Minnesota, wrote:
“The answers persuaded the court that the government could benefit from the opportunity for more thoughtful consideration.”She directed the justice department to provide more information by Wednesday. You can here:
What happened in Maine’s Senate race replacement process?
Maine Democrats have rallied around Troy Jackson as they move to replace Graham Platner in the crucial Senate race. Jackson, a former state legislator, moved into a strong position after several of his opponents dropped out over the weekend.
Bellows withdrew on Sunday morning, saying Democrats did not have
“a day to waste in unifying”around the goal of defeating Susan Collins in the November midterm elections. Shah dropped out later and endorsed Jackson, followed by Kleban and Wood, both of whom also endorsed him.
Platner ended his campaign earlier ...
