Maine faith leaders urge Susan Collins to fund health care for Mainers and stop funding ICE

September 25, 2025

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With a federal shutdown looming, Collins must act now to protect Mainers and vote to fund services they rely on, rather than tax breaks for billionaires.

Photos: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1M3ExIBvqaDoweWHoEgupgHk-n3hF604p?usp=sharing 

Faith leaders from several local churches and organizations, as well as people of faith from the Greater Portland area, called on Sen. Susan Collins today to extend premium tax credits for people with marketplace health coverage and to stop funding ICE.

Gathering outside Collins’ Portland office, the group held a faith vigil in which they urged her to do the moral thing and protect Maine’s most vulnerable residents ahead of Congress’ Sept. 30 deadline to pass a bill to keep federal agencies funded.

Rev. Tara Humphries (they/them), of Allen Avenue UU Church, said, “Accountability is a core part of my Unitarian Universalist faith. We are individuals part of something much larger and more deeply connected than our own selves, and justice calls us to consider that when making decisions that impact the whole. So, I hold my elected officials accountable when they fail to act in the best interest of their most vulnerable constituents, despite having been elected to do precisely that.”

Collins voted on Sept. 19 in support of a funding bill that ignores impending health care price hikes and fails to revise the law the Senate passed in July that will cut Medicaid and Medicare. About 71,000 Mainers are enrolled on the Affordable Care Act individual marketplace, where premiums are expected to rise by nearly 24% if Congress doesn’t extend the tax credits. And 400,000 Maine residents (about one-third of the population) rely on Medicaid.

Health care providers and advocates in Maine warn that 61,000 Mainers will lose coverage, thousands of fishermen could be cut off from MaineCare, and rural hospitals in Presque Isle and Ellsworth face an “imminent risk of closure.”

Rev. Dr. Jodi Cohen Hayashida (she/her), an organizer with Multifaith Justice Maine, said, “Susan Collins has to decide how she is going to use her considerable power—to support a continuing resolution that steals healthcare from Mainers and funds the abduction of our neighbors or to demand changes that will protect the people she has been elected to serve. I pray Sen. Collins’ heeds the admonition of her Catholic faith:  ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me.’”

Through their singing and prayers, faith leaders also called on Collins to stop funding ICE and to instead protect Maine immigrants from the organization’s cruel and inhumane practices of removing people from their communities and separating families.

Rev. Humphries said, “Stripping access to healthcare and funding the forced removal of our neighbors without their constitutional right to due process is immoral. I don’t care what ‘side’ you’re on… Mainers take care of one another. It’s who we are. I hope Senator Collins will remember the communities to whom she is accountable, and that it’s never too late to side with love and justice.”

Rev. Alison Patton (she/her), of First Congregational Church of South Portland, said, “As people of faith, we believe the health and well-being of all our neighbors matter. So we are calling on Senator Collins to step up and demand the budget changes we need, to ensure legal protections for immigrant Mainers, resist illegal ICE activity and preserve access to healthcare for all Mainers.”

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With more than 32,000 members, MPA is the largest community organization in Maine, and one of the largest in the country. We work together on issues that include but are not limited to housing, care, climate change and environmental justice, health care access, racial justice, and immigrant rights.

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Contact: Kate Gardner, [email protected]