This is about Sen. Susan Collins’ weekly Tuesday reports to the citizens of Maine, reports that celebrate blueberries, fire station improvements, someone’s retirement from EMMC, a summer interns meeting, her own class reunion, a middle school fishing derby, etc.

During normal times, these events could be considered noteworthy. Not so now, when our country’s democracy is under vicious attack every single day.

Why is Sen. Collins silent on that? On masked agents grabbing people off the streets and sending them to Alligator Alcatraz without due process? On the Epstein investigation? Project 2025 is almost half completed, and on and on.

I’ll be honest, I never fully appreciated the importance of our freedoms of speech, the press, religion, assembly and due process — until now, when each of these are threatened by the orange man, who Collins so naively said years ago that she thought had “learned his lesson.”

Trump is an authoritarian. We need Republicans to resist this administration and fight for our country. Democracy is dying. Unless Collins stands up to this tyrant, her legacy will be just that.

Steven McDowell
Saco