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In a sudden and dramatic turn that has upended one of the nation’s most competitive congressional contests, Graham Platner, the Democratic nominee for Maine’s high-stakes U.S. Senate race, announced Wednesday night he was suspending his campaign. The exit comes just 48 hours after a bombshell report from Politico detailed a sexual assault allegation from Platner’s ex-girlfriend, who accuses him of entering her home uninvited while intoxicated in 2021 and assaulting her — claims Platner has forcefully denied.

Platner, an oysterman and former U.S. Marine who pulled off one of the most shocking primary upsets in recent Democratic politics, saw his rapid ascent from political obscurity collapse into chaos this week. After defeating popular sitting Maine Governor Janet Mills, a candidate hand-picked by party establishment leaders, Platner built a grassroots movement of more than 15,000 supporters across the state and earned endorsements from progressive icons Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. He was tapped as the party’s official challenger to five-term Republican incumbent Susan Collins, a race widely viewed as make-or-break for Democrats hoping to flip control of the U.S. Senate in November’s midterm elections.

This latest allegation is not the first controversy to trail the first-time candidate. Since he launched his campaign last August, reports have emerged of offensive past social media posts, a chest tattoo with documented Nazi ideological ties, sexually explicit text messages sent to women after his 2023 marriage, and multiple accusations from former partners of threatening, toxic behavior. Despite these repeated red flags, 72% of Maine Democratic primary voters backed Platner in June’s nominating contest, a testament to the appetite among the party’s base for anti-establishment, working-class progressive candidates.

But in the wake of the new sexual assault allegations, political support evaporated within hours. Every major institutional backer, including Sanders and Warren, withdrew their endorsements, and the national Democratic Party cut off all campaign funding. By midweek, it was clear Platner’s campaign could not survive. In his 11-minute pre-recorded announcement video posted to social media, however, Platner pushed back against the narrative that he was stepping down over the allegation. “We went toe to toe with one of the most entrenched political systems in the history of the world, and we won,” he said. “And now they are not going to let us have it, not if it’s me.” He added he would not formally file withdrawal paperwork until he secures guarantees that his replacement will be chosen through an open, democratic process, rather than picked behind closed doors by party leaders.

The sudden exit has thrown Maine Democrats and national party strategists into panic mode. To win a Senate majority this November, Democrats must flip four Republican-held seats while defending all of their own incumbents, making the Maine seat a critical must-win target. Platner’s departure has not only derailed months of campaign planning but also re-opened deep, long-simmering rifts between the party’s progressive grassroots wing and moderate establishment that could have ripple effects all the way to the 2028 presidential election.

State party leaders are now rushing to select a new nominee before a mandatory July 27 deadline, announcing this week that a convention of hundreds of delegates will pick a replacement within the next two weeks, with a promise of public input to avoid accusations of a closed-door power grab. The process has already sparked open friction: state party chair Devon Murphy-Anderson accused Platner’s campaign of attempting to manipulate the selection process, a claim Platner’s allies rejected, countering that they only want an open process that blocks an establishment-backed candidate from being anointed without input.

Political observers warn that mismanaging the nominee selection could alienate Platner’s passionate base, a group Democrats desperately need to turn out in November. “So much of Platner’s base, whose passion Democrats are going to want to have, will sit on their hands and be very angry if it looks like this is another case of the establishment triumphing over what the people want,” said James Melcher, a politics professor at the University of Maine at Farmington.

Multiple established Maine political figures have already signaled interest in stepping into the race, including former Maine Senate leader Troy Jackson, former gubernatorial candidate and state epidemiologist Nirav Shah, and current Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, who was the Democratic nominee against Collins in 2014. Still, former state Senator Lynn Bromley, who backed Mills in the primary, warned that uniting voters around a new candidate in just three months will be an uphill battle. “The thing I’m the most worried about is we run somebody and he or she loses, and then we spend the next four years pointing fingers at whose fault that was,” she said.

Platner’s campaign represented a key test of a growing national trend among Democratic voters: the embrace of outsider candidates who promise uncompromising progressive policy, including universal healthcare, a wealth tax, and expanded affordable housing, and appeal to working-class rural voters that have increasingly abandoned the party in recent cycles. A Platner win in November would have cemented the case that left-wing, working-class candidates can win competitive battleground seats, a precedent that would have boosted prospects for a progressive presidential nominee in 2028. That opportunity is now all but gone.

Analysts note that Platner’s survival through multiple earlier scandals underscores how hungry Democratic voters are for a new kind of political representation, but it also highlights the major risks of nominating charismatic political newcomers who have not undergone rigorous vetting before running for high office. While some Maine Democrats argue the upheaval could be a blessing in disguise, allowing the party to put forward a more vetted, traditional candidate, the clock is ticking, and five-term incumbent Collins — a proven tough competitor who has defeated Democratic challengers for 30 years, including overcoming poll deficits to win in 2020 — waits for whoever emerges. “It’s not as though it was going to be easy before, and now it’s hard,” Melcher noted. “Beating Collins was always going to be hard.”

A sudden political upheaval has shaken the critical race for a U.S. Senate seat in Maine, as Democratic hopeful Graham Platner announced the suspension of his campaign amid cascading scandals topped by a sexual assault allegation that collapsed his support within party ranks.

Platner, an oyster farmer and military veteran whose anti-establishment populist campaign had quickly turned him into the Democratic Party’s front-runner, shared his decision in an 11-minute video posted to the social platform X. He pushed back hard against the assault claim, calling it entirely fabricated, and emphasized that his choice to step aside was not an admission of any wrongdoing. Instead, he blamed unified pressure from national and state Democratic leaders, who had threatened to cut off all financial and organizational campaign support if he remained in the race against incumbent Republican Susan Collins.

“This has been an incredibly difficult decision, one that my wife and I have wrestled with over the course of several days,” Platner said in the address. “Over the past couple days I have faced some very serious allegations, and I just want to make it clear, this is all false. The things that have been claimed did not happen. It’s not real.”

Per Maine state election law, Platner needed to formally withdraw by July 13 to allow state Democrats to place a replacement candidate’s name on the general election ballot this November. He confirmed he will file official withdrawal paperwork only after confirming the process to select his successor will follow “transparent and democratic” protocols.

Platner’s rapid rise in Maine Democratic politics was unprecedented just months ago. Running on a progressive platform that included pushing for universal healthcare and expanded affordable housing, he tapped into widespread voter frustration with the party’s established leadership, propelling him past initial rivals including Maine Governor Janet Mills, who ultimately suspended her own nomination bid. His campaign received high-profile endorsements from leading progressive voices Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, building momentum that appeared to put the competitive seat within Democratic reach.

That momentum unraveled rapidly over the past week, however, after a new sexual assault allegation became public. By Monday, Warren had joined a growing chorus of top Democrats calling for Platner to exit the race, and three of his most prominent congressional backers — Representatives Ro Khanna and Senators Ruben Gallego and Martin Heinrich — pulled their endorsements entirely. Both the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which invests millions of dollars in party nominees across the country, and the Maine Democratic Party cut all ties and ended their support.

The Maine race is widely viewed as one of the most critical pickup opportunities for Democrats as they pursue an uphill bid to flip majority control of the U.S. Senate in this year’s midterm congressional elections. No Republican presidential candidate has carried Maine since 1988, leading Democratic strategists to conclude a well-supported Democratic nominee could defeat Collins, a longtime moderate Republican incumbent.

This isn’t the first string of scandals to hit Platner’s campaign. Prior controversies began emerging last October, when U.S. media reported he had a tattoo bearing a resemblance to a Nazi-era symbol, which he said he obtained during a drinking trip with fellow Marines in Croatia in 2007 and had since covered up. Later, old posts from the social platform Reddit were unearthed showing Platner arguing that sexual assault victims should “take some responsibility for themselves” by avoiding extreme intoxication, a comment for which he later apologized and asked voters for forgiveness.

In June, The New York Times reported that Platner had exchanged sexually explicit messages with multiple women outside his marriage, a report he acknowledged was accurate, noting his wife had previously warned his campaign team about the risk of the story becoming public. The Times followed that report with additional accounts from three former girlfriends, who accused Platner of patterns of erratic, angry behavior.

Jenny Racicot, the 41-year-old woman who made the latest sexual assault allegation, spoke first to Politico and later CNN, confirming she was one of the former girlfriends quoted in the Times report but chose to go public with the assault claim after previously declining to be named for the story to avoid being publicly labeled as a rape victim.

Platner is the second high-profile Democratic candidate to suspend a campaign this year following sexual misconduct allegations. In April, Congressman Eric Swalwell dropped out of the race for California governor and resigned his seat in the U.S. House after multiple women brought forward claims of inappropriate behavior, which Swalwell has repeatedly denied.

A week after the U.S. Supreme Court delivered a major rebuke of his restrictive immigration policy by upholding the longstanding principle of birthright citizenship, former President Donald Trump has announced he will move forward immediately with a formal request for the high court to rehear the contentious case. The Supreme Court’s recent ruling rejected Trump’s executive order that aimed to roll back the 150-year-old citizenship guarantee established by the 14th Amendment.

Under Supreme Court procedural rules, a party that loses a decision is permitted to submit a request for rehearing within 25 days of the ruling being issued. For such a request to be approved, a majority of the court’s nine sitting justices must vote in favor of granting a second hearing. While this procedural avenue is technically available, legal experts note that rehearings of already decided cases are extraordinarily rare in the court’s modern practice: the last time the high court agreed to revisit a concluded ruling was roughly six decades ago.

Taking to social media on Wednesday to lay out his next move, Trump issued a stark and uncompromising criticism of the court’s decision. “This miscarriage of justice will destroy America if they don’t change their absolutely insane decision,” he wrote in his post.

The 30 June ruling, which upheld birthright citizenship by a 6-3 vote, represented a significant setback to Trump’s longstanding immigration agenda, but it was widely celebrated by civil rights and immigrant advocacy organizations across the country. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts clarified that the 14th Amendment’s text guarantees citizenship at birth to all children born on U.S. soil, even those born to parents who are in the country unlawfully or only on a temporary, non-immigrant basis.

Trump had argued in his executive order that the children of undocumented immigrants and temporary visa holders did not meet the 14th Amendment’s requirement of being “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” of the United States, and were therefore not eligible for birthright citizenship. Five justices, including Chief Justice Roberts, concluded that Trump’s executive order directly violated the 14th Amendment’s protections. Justice Brett Kavanaugh issued a separate concurring opinion, stating that he also found the order unlawful, but grounded his conclusion in violations of federal statute rather than the Constitution.

In the immediate aftermath of the ruling, Trump already pledged to continue his campaign to end birthright citizenship through an alternative legislative route, which would require approval by both chambers of the U.S. Congress to move forward. Birthright citizenship has been a cornerstone of U.S. nationality law since 1868, when the 14th Amendment was ratified following the Civil War, and its legality has been repeatedly affirmed by Supreme Court rulings in the decades since.

At NATO’s 2026 summit held in Ankara, alliance Secretary General Mark Rutte pushed back against growing public skepticism over the bloc’s unity, insisting in an exclusive interview with the BBC that the decades-old cornerstone of Western defense remains more robust and cohesive than ever.

Rutte’s upbeat assessment comes on the heels of a series of inflammatory and divisive comments from former U.S. President and current officeholder Donald Trump, who stirred controversy ahead of and during the summit. Most notably, Trump publicly expressed disappointment that NATO did not formally join his recent military campaign against Iran, despite the fact that the alliance was never consulted on the operation. Even so, multiple NATO member states including the United Kingdom granted U.S. forces access to their domestic military bases to launch strikes against Iranian missile infrastructure, enabling the large-scale operation to move forward.

Trump also reignited longstanding friction by repeating his unorthodox claim that the U.S. should take control of Greenland, and he publicly labeled Spain a “terrible partner” for the alliance. Still, the U.S. leader sought to soften tensions in his public remarks, noting that the Ankara summit had produced overall “unification” among leaders and claiming there was “tremendous love in that room.”

When asked to address the obvious disconnect between NATO leadership’s optimistic messaging and Trump’s polarizing public comments, Rutte — a seasoned former Dutch prime minister known for his diplomatic style — framed internal disagreements as a normal part of the alliance’s dynamic. “It’s a bit like in a family: you have families where you never quarrel, and then it bursts out completely,” he explained.

Despite past comments from Trump suggesting he would not rule out a full U.S. withdrawal from NATO, and his repeated claims that Washington has received poor returns on the trillions of dollars it has invested in the alliance, Rutte said he is 100% convinced of Trump’s commitment to NATO’s mission. He pointed directly to Trump’s recent Iran operation, codenamed Operation Epic Fury, as clear proof of the mutual benefits the U.S. gains from the alliance.

“[The operation] could not have taken place at this extent without using Europe as a power projection platform,” Rutte noted. He added that over 5,000 U.S. and coalition aircraft launched sorties from European bases over the six-week period between late February and mid-April, before a ceasefire with Iran took effect.

Beyond Middle East operations, Rutte highlighted NATO’s critical value for U.S. national security in the Arctic region. NATO’s Nordic members sit directly across from Russia’s large nuclear-armed submarine fleet based on the Arctic Kola Peninsula, giving the alliance an unrivaled early warning capability to protect the U.S. homeland. “You don’t want the Russian nuclear submarines to end up at the shores of the United States,” he said. “We prevent that as NATO collectively. So, for all these reasons, we are in this together, 32 countries and nations, because we need each other.”

Beyond addressing questions of unity and U.S. commitment, the core agenda of the 2026 Ankara summit focused on turning past pledges of increased defense spending into tangible action. The alliance’s top priority is scaling up European defense industrial capacity to counter the massive arsenal of drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles fielded by Russia.

While some member states, including the United Kingdom, have not yet outlined a clear roadmap to reach the target of spending 3% of national GDP on defense by 2030, Rutte struck an optimistic note on progress made since NATO’s last summit, held in his home city of The Hague in 2025. He reported that European and Canadian members have already added a quarter of a trillion dollars in cumulative defense spending over the past two years, a figure he called “staggering.”

“Today we took stock… So we are delivering, and now we have to ramp up the defence industrial production even further, making progress and maintaining support for Ukraine,” he said.

When asked whether NATO would be prepared to fend off a potential Russian territorial incursion into a Baltic ally like Estonia by 2030, a scenario some analysts have warned about, Rutte expressed unshakable confidence. “Absolutely we’ll be ready. Now we’re ready, in 2030 we are ready, at any moment,” he said. “We are defensive. We will never attack another country, but every adversary knows that if they will try to attack us, we are ready. We will defend ourselves.”

A federal judge has cleared the way for veteran writer E. Jean Carroll to receive more than $5 million in damages, plus accrued interest, that sitting U.S. President Donald Trump was ordered to pay over a civil ruling finding him liable for sexual abuse and defamation. The ruling brings an end to Trump’s latest bid to delay payment while he pursued a last-ditch appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In a Wednesday order, Judge Lewis Kaplan — who oversaw the original 2023 civil trial — directed a court clerk to disburse the frozen funds, which Trump had deposited into a court-controlled account shortly after the initial jury verdict to satisfy the judgment during the appeals process. Trump had requested a hold on the $5.8 million total payment (which includes interest and additional costs) while he asked the Supreme Court to revisit its earlier decision to decline hearing his appeal of the case.

The origins of the case stretch back to the mid-1990s, when Carroll, now an 82-year-old former magazine columnist, alleged that Trump sexually assaulted her in a fitting room at the Bergdorf Goodman luxury department store in Manhattan. Decades later, after Carroll went public with the accusation, Trump repeatedly denied the claim, and in a 2022 post on his Truth Social platform, he labeled the incident a complete hoax — a statement that formed the basis of Carroll’s defamation claim alongside her allegation of sexual assault.

In May 2023, a jury seated in a New York federal court unanimously found Trump liable on both counts, and awarded Carroll $5 million in compensatory and punitive damages. Since the verdict, Trump has mounted a multi-stage appeals challenge, arguing that Kaplan improperly permitted the admission of prejudicial evidence that skewed the jury’s view of his case. Last year, a federal appeals court upheld the original jury verdict, ruling that Kaplan had not made any legal errors that would justify throwing out the ruling or ordering a new trial.

This is not the only defamation ruling Carroll has secured against the president. In a separate 2024 civil trial, a second jury found Trump liable for additional defamatory statements he made about Carroll, and awarded her nearly $84 million in additional damages. Trump also appealed that ruling, but a panel of federal judges rejected his challenge last year. The BBC has reached out to Trump’s legal team for a response to Wednesday’s order, and has not yet received comment. Kaplan has not specified a timeline for when the funds will formally be transferred to Carroll.

A federal court has handed down a sentence that spares former Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan from any prison time, one year after she was convicted of obstructing a federal proceeding related to her actions helping an undocumented immigrant evade U.S. immigration agents at her Wisconsin courthouse.

The 2025 incident sparked intense partisan friction across the state, becoming a rallying point for conservative critics of loose immigration enforcement who framed Dugan’s actions as proof of a deeply politicized liberal judiciary. On Wednesday, District Judge Lynn Adelman ruled that a $5,000 fine was sufficient punishment for the 65-year-old former jurist, concluding that custodial sentence was unnecessary to meet the legal goals of sentencing. Adelman noted that Dugan, who built a nine-year career on the bench and resigned amid impeachment pressure from Wisconsin’s Republican leadership, had compiled a long record of positive service to the Milwaukee community.

Dugan’s legal troubles date back to April 18, 2025, when Mexican national Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, who faced misdemeanor battery charges, appeared for a scheduled hearing at her courtroom. Six law enforcement officers from the FBI, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and the Drug Enforcement Agency were present at the courthouse to take Flores-Ruiz into federal custody. Per an FBI affidavit, Dugan reacted with open anger to the terms of the arrest warrant and ordered the federal agents to report to the office of the court’s chief judge. While the officers waited, Dugan directed Flores-Ruiz and his defense attorney to a private side exit typically reserved for jury members, in an attempt to help him avoid detention. The attempt was ultimately unsuccessful: immigration agents intercepted the pair shortly after they left the courtroom, and Flores-Ruiz was later deported from the U.S.

Dugan was taken into custody two weeks after the incident, a development that was celebrated by allies of the Trump administration, who had cited her actions as evidence of Democratic-aligned judges undermining federal immigration policy. In December 2025, a jury found her guilty of obstructing a criminal proceeding, but acquitted her on a second charge of concealing a person from arrest. She had already resigned from her judicial post earlier that year, as Wisconsin Republicans moved forward with impeachment proceedings against her.

Ahead of Wednesday’s sentencing, Dugan addressed the court for the first time after choosing not to testify during her trial. She pushed back against the polarized framing of her actions that has dominated public discussion of the case, noting she has been labeled both a lawless rogue and a hero to immigration advocates. “I am neither. I am a public servant who was just trying to do my job,” she told the court. Dugan added that her actions on the day of the incident aligned with longstanding court administrative policies and community priorities for the Milwaukee courthouse, and that she had never acted with malicious intent.

Dugan faced a maximum possible sentence of five years in federal prison for the obstruction conviction. Her legal team had already announced plans to appeal the conviction ahead of the sentencing hearing, and had urged the court to impose a lenient sentence, pointing to her decades of public service that ended abruptly with her arrest in 2025.