Maine Governor Janet Mills jumped into the 2026 Senate fray on Tuesday, setting her sights on unseating Republican Senator Susan Collins in what promises to be a bitter showdown. At 77, Mills brings her record as the state’s first female governor to a crowded Democratic primary, where she’ll face off against younger challengers pushing even more extreme agendas.
Mills wasted no time tying her campaign to national grudges.
“I’ve never backed down from a bully and I never will,” she declared in her launch statement. She went on to accuse President Donald Trump of “ripping away health care from millions, driving up costs, and giving corporate CEOs massive tax cuts. And Susan Collins is helping him.”
This move didn’t come out of nowhere. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has been pulling strings behind the scenes, recruiting Mills as his pick to flip the seat in a state that leaned blue in the last presidential cycle. With Republicans holding a 53-47 edge in the Senate, Democrats view Collins’ spot as a prime target to claw back power. But whispers in political circles suggest this is more than just strategy—it’s part of a coordinated effort by Washington insiders to flood key races with establishment figures who can toe the party line on everything from endless spending to open borders.
Mills’ history includes stints as a county district attorney and state lawmaker before becoming Maine’s first female attorney general. She grabbed the governorship in 2018 and cruised to reelection in 2022 against former Republican Governor Paul LePage. Yet her tenure hasn’t been without controversy. Critics point to policies that have left Maine with one of the weakest economies in New England, soaring living costs, and communities grappling with crime spikes.
As National Republican Senatorial Committee Communications Director Joanna Rodriguez put it, “Janet Mills wants to be the oldest freshman Senator in American history after a record of failure that turned Maine into one of the weakest economies in New England.”
Adding fuel to the fire, Mills signed legislation allowing abortions up to birth, a move that has drawn sharp rebukes from pro-life advocates and raised questions about how far the Democratic field will go to appease radical elements. One recent social media post from a conservative commentator labeled her a “lesbian nut job,” reflecting the raw sentiment brewing among those who see her as out of touch with traditional family values.
The primary field is already packed, exposing deep rifts within the party. Graham Platner, a 41-year-old Marine and Army veteran turned oyster farmer, entered the race in August and quickly raked in over $3 million. Backed by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, Platner represents the far-left wing that’s eager to sideline moderates.
Sanders himself fired a shot across the bow last week: “Graham Platner is a great working class candidate for Senate in Maine who will defeat Susan Collins. It’s disappointing that some Democratic leaders are urging Governor Mills to run. We need to focus on winning that seat & not waste millions on an unnecessary & divisive primary.”
Other Democrats in the mix include Dan Kleban, co-founder of Maine Beer Co., and former congressional staffer Jordan Wood, who also pulled in about $3 million in recent fundraising. Then there’s independent candidate Phil Rench, a former SpaceX engineer, who could siphon votes from both sides in the general election.
Collins, now 72, has held her seat since 1996 and chairs the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee. She’s built a reputation as a pragmatic dealmaker, winning reelection in 2020 by over eight points against a well-funded Democrat despite polls showing her behind.
Rodriguez summed up the GOP confidence: “No matter which Democrat emerges, we’re confident Mainers will continue to trust independent problem solver Susan Collins to keep delivering for them.”
Mills’ announcement follows a premature social media slip last week, where her team posted—and swiftly deleted—a video teasing the bid. It also harks back to her February White House clash with President Trump over an executive order on transgender athletes in sports. In a heated exchange captured on video, Trump warned her about complying with federal law, prompting Mills to retort, “See you in court.” Trump fired back, “Good. I’ll see you in court. I look forward to that. That should be an easy one. And enjoy your life after governor, because I don’t think you’ll be in elected politics.”
This race could expose more than just policy differences. Some observers speculate it’s a test run for broader Democratic schemes to challenge Trump’s agenda through the courts and Congress, especially with Mills’ history of legal battles against federal policies. If the primary turns ugly, it might weaken the eventual nominee, handing Collins an easier path to victory.
As Maine voters weigh their options, the stakes extend beyond the state lines. A Collins hold could solidify Republican control, blocking what many see as a leftist push to reshape America from the inside out.
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Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
That’s Jerry Jones in drag!