2025 Achievements
At Maine People’s Alliance, we believe in a world where everyone has what they need and contributes what they can, and no one is left behind.
In 2025, we made some exciting leaps toward this vision. This year, MPA members worked to win so many things: progressive tax fairness bills, making sure that the state budget protected funding for childcare, statewide protections for residents of mobile home communities, defeating a voter suppression ballot initiative, protecting our paid family and medical leave program from legislative attacks, and more! We also fought against Trump’s federal budget cuts, the Republican-led federal shutdown, and attacks on affordable healthcare. We continued to hold Sen. Susan Collins accountable while also protecting the rights of people who’ve moved to Maine from other countries.
Federal Pushback
Throughout the spring and summer, MPA put sustained pressure on Sen. Susan Collins to oppose Trump’s federal budget reconciliation bill. Once the bill passed, we worked to elevate its devastating impacts on Maine and make sure voters knew that, despite voting “no,” Collins was in a powerful position to organize her colleagues against the bill, and did not. Throughout the year, we held press conferences outside her offices, organized petition delivery events to all six of her Maine offices, met with her staff to share stories, knocked on over 37,000 doors to talk to Mainers about the impact of the bill, and more.
Our member-led federal issues team has been organizing almost weekly in 2025 around pressuring Maine’s congressional delegation to do the right thing. This has included petition delivery events, email, letter, and phone call campaigns, and visits to Washington, D.C. to meet with Maine’s members of Congress.
Healthcare
MPA worked hard all summer and fall organizing Mainers around the federal government shutdown. We visited hospitals statewide, a number of which are facing possible closure due to Republican cuts to Medicaid, and spoke with patients and health care providers about their concerns. We also organized events outside of Sen. Collins’ six Maine offices and delivered a bill for $100 million—the low estimate of the amount Mainers’ health care costs will likely increase because Republicans in Congress failed to extend the enhanced premium tax credits.
Throughout the year, MPA also delivered the stories of Mainers on Medicaid and Medicare to the offices of members of our congressional delegation and worked to identify and elevate the stories of Mainers impacted by the health insurance hikes and by the Medicaid cuts looming from the federal budget bill.
In the Maine legislature, MPA members supported bills to regulate medical debt reporting, expand Maine’s hospital “free care” program in the state budget, regulate the use of AI in insurance claim denials, and limit how often insurance providers can request prior authorizations for treatments for chronic health conditions. Some of these bills were held over, but we had several big wins!
Tax Fairness
At the state level, we made more progress on tax fairness than at any time in recent history! With Mainers for Tax Fairness, we supported the successful passage of LD 1082, a real estate transfer tax for houses worth more than $1 million, and LD 1294, an expansion of Maine’s version of the child tax credit that will target the credit more toward the families that most need it.
Three other bills have been held back to be considered in the next legislative session, and all have real paths to passage as the state grapples with the shortfalls caused by the federal reconciliation bill. One bill adds a 2% surtax to incomes of more than $1 million per year; another updates Maine’s tax brackets so people with middle incomes no longer pay as much as the wealthiest Mainers; and a third increases taxes on very wealthy corporations with over $3.5 million in annual profits. As part of our work with Mainers for Tax Fairness, we opposed harmful cuts (especially to childcare) in the governor’s budget and made the case for generating more revenue from the wealthy.
Childcare
In March, we turned out dozens of childcare providers, parents, and kids to a rally at the State House organized by the Maine Association of Young Children to oppose Gov. Mills' proposed budget cuts. After generating hundreds of constituent contacts to legislators, the Health and Human Services Committee voted to remove the harmful cuts from the budget. We also organized childcare providers (and others) to successfully convince the Appropriations Committee to reject major cuts to childcare funding.
In July, MPA childcare leaders went to DC for a Capitol Hill lobby day sponsored by the Child Care for Every Family Network, where they had meetings with staff for Sens. Angus King and Susan Collins and Rep. Chellie Pingree. In the fall, we focused on organizing parents and providers who want to make childcare a central issue in the 2026 elections, and launched a house party program as the first step in building a large base of volunteers to lead this work.
Immigration and ICE Accountability
MPA organizers have been increasingly active in local organizing around ICE accountability. In Bangor, we joined a local rapid response team with allies and have trained MPA members as ICE watch verifiers. In September, we organized faith leaders to urge Sen. Susan Collins to fund health care for Mainers and stop funding ICE.
Our Multifaith Justice Maine coalition also helped turn out 28 people to offer testimony to the Judiciary Committee in support of limiting municipal law enforcement from collaborating with ICE. MPA collected petition signatures and lobbied for the passage of this bill (LD 1971), which successfully passed in both chambers and which Gov. Mills said she will allow to become law.
MPA Organizer Mohamed Ibrahim has been organizing volunteers in Maine's immigrant community interested in being part of our immigrant rights advocacy. He’s organized phonebanks to our Congressional delegation, and supported state and several local efforts to curb law enforcement and municipal government coordination with ICE.
Climate Action and Polluter Accountability
While our work to develop offshore wind in Maine has been slowed by opposition from the Trump administration, we have been working with the Frontline Climate Formation (pictured here) and other allies to build a broad and diverse base of Mainers in support of addressing climate change. This legislative session we won a campaign for increased public financing of renewable energy, which was an important incremental step in our long-term work to maximize public ownership and investment in Maine’s growing green energy infrastructure and distribution. We also supported successful legislation to increase financing and investment services for renewable energy generation and grid technology as well as a bill to address high energy cost, fossil fuel emission, and utility company malpractices that was held over to the next session.
Our decades-long lawsuit against Mallinckrodt Inc. for mercury pollution in the Penobscot River continues. In October, the Maine Department of Environmental Protection filed another notice of violation against Mallinckrodt for failing to complete environmental cleanup at the site. MPA has been pushing for a full cleanup of the site and the impacted portions of the river since the plant shut down in 2000.
Affordable Housing and Tenant Rights
As part of Housing Justice Maine, we organized dozens of mobile home owners (who have faced drastic lot rent increases in recent years) around a bill to fight for statewide protections against corporate rent gouging. A compromise bill passed to give residents the right to mediation if rents are increased by more than inflation plus 1% in any given year and residents won the right of first refusal to collectively buy their parks when they are put up for sale. MPA Organizer Nyawal Lia has also been supporting mobile home park leaders in providing input on the Governor's Office's work to reform the management of mobile home parks and create a model local rent stabilization ordinance.
MPA members also organized around a bill to establish a statewide rental registry, which was held over until next session. And in March, members of the Lewiston MPA chapter launched an effort to build support for limiting rent increases in the city.
Electoral Power Building and Fighting Voter Suppression
We began our engagement in the 2026 Democratic primary race for governor with an early “champion” endorsement for Secretary of State Shenna Bellows. MPA also spent the year recruiting progressive candidates for municipal offices around the state, which included running candidate trainings and planning candidate endorsement strategies for 2026. As part of this strategy, our legislative scorecard hit 40,000 mailboxes in September. And in Bangor, MPA members played a key role in electing three progressives to the city council and two progressives to the school committee!
On Election Day, MPA staff and members tabled at over 70 polling locations, collecting voter surveys from Mainers about candidate preferences for the governor’s and U.S. Senate races next year, in addition to issue priorities—collecting over 6,000 surveys! This outreach provided us with a long list of Mainers to involve in our 2026 electoral campaigns to elect bold progressive leaders.
After activists on the far right qualified a voter suppression initiative for the November ballot, MPA joined the steering committee of the effort to defeat it. With a strong coalition campaign, the initiative was defeated by a historic 2:1 margin! Grassroots organizing and outreach was a key strategy behind the win: in addition to dropping tens of thousands of flyers about the ballot initiative on doorsteps over the summer, our canvass teams knocked over 24,000 doors in the final seven weeks of the campaign, talking to 11,000 targeted voters about the importance of voting “no” to defend voting rights.
Harm Reduction and Drug Policy Reform
MPA has been working with allies to defeat bills in the legislature that would continue the failed war on drugs and build support for bills that prioritize treatment and recovery over incarceration. On Valentine’s Day, we worked with allies to organize a “Lead With Love” event at the State House to make the case for investing in care over criminalization in the state budget.
We’ve also partnered with our friends at Maine Recovery Action Project (ME-RAP) and Popular Democracy on a new campaign to ensure opioid settlement funds in Maine are spent transparently and directed toward lifesaving, community-centered solutions, with the leadership of Mainers impacted by drug use and addiction. We have been working to educate our base and expand the number of people with the knowledge and support they need to push for accountability in their localities.
Workers’ Rights, Consumer Rights, and Protecting Paid Family and Medical Leave
This legislative session, the paid family and medical leave program we passed in 2023 was under attack by Republicans, with 12 bills designed to weaken the program. Additionally, the Maine State Chamber of Commerce and Bath Iron Works filed a lawsuit against the Mills administration challenging how the state is implementing the program. MPA’s Policy Director Cate Blackford defended the extensive vetting process that was part of the law’s passage and MPA members spoke at a press conference denouncing the attacks. We worked with allies to mobilize Mainers and successfully defend the program and now we prepare for benefits to start in 2026!
We also worked to organize Mainers around the attacks on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Community Organizing, Training, and Leadership Development
With the addition of four new organizing fellows this spring, we are now organizing in all of Maine’s 16 counties! Our community meetings in rural communities continue to bring new people into MPA—our first meeting in Norway was attended by 75 people—and our monthly virtual member meetings are attended by dozens of people. MPA’s door-to-door canvassers are signing up new members and raising a record number of small contributions on doorsteps, and we are recruiting hundreds of new monthly sustainers to join our Seed Fund!
MPA has also continued organizing on college campuses, with many of our interns leading chapters at their schools. And Multifaith Justice Maine leader Rev. Dr. Jodi Hayashida has been working to organize Maine faith leaders around strategies for elevating voices of faith in protecting trans Mainers from political attacks, such as the recent anti-trans ballot initiative being advanced by conservatives.
In 2025, we launched a new training program for our staff, members, and allies to better equip ourselves with the skills needed to drive social change.
MaineBeacon.com – Progressive News, Framing the Issues
MPA and MPRC’s news website, MaineBeacon.com, continued to reach tens of thousands of engaged readers with online news and opinion pieces. Through its reporting, Beacon seeks to advance a progressive worldview, amplify work of allies and elevate diverse voices, inform policy and educate Mainers, hold government and corporations accountable, and model news coverage that focuses on centering the voices of those most impacted by systemic societal issues and proposed solutions.
Beacon content generated over 273,000 visits to the Beacon website in 2025, and stories posted on social media reached over 400,000 engaged readers. In addition to daily reporting, the Beacon produces a podcast that is rebroadcasted on five local radio stations.
Can you help us keep winning in 2026 by making a contribution today?
We count on grassroots donations to power our work each year. In addition to paying our staff and resourcing our campaigns, we are counting on members like you to help us raise the money for important things, like:
- Knocking doors in over 100 Maine towns to educate people about important issues, like the urgency of taking climate action;
- Advocating for bills in the Maine legislature;
- Hiring more organizers across Maine so we can continue reaching people in rural areas of the state;
- Fighting the worst of Trump's agenda;
- Educating the public though regular reporting on our MaineBeacon.com news website; and
- Running a training program for members of MPA and allied organizations (in Maine and nationally) to learn the skills necessary to keep building a strong movement for change.
Want to join the MPA Seed Fund?
Our monthly giving program is all about planting hope, growing power, and harvesting change by supporting MPA's community organizing and training programs. You should join because...
- We are an organization of thousands of everyday people fighting for justice. We don’t want to be funded by a handful of wealthy donors—we want to be funded by members like you;
- Monthly donations by thousands of members add up fast (100 more people giving just $10/month means $12,000 for MPA’s work next year); and
- Giving monthly using your bank account (instead of a credit card) means NO money going into the pockets of greedy credit card companies and more money going straight to work for progressive social change.