It’s an old joke.

The next school year is approaching the Maine Department of Education and Maine school districts like a stalking predator.

With COVID-19 resurgent in the South and West and the president trying to provoke a race war, ho-hum problems like the existential threat posed by the climate crisis are taking a back seat.

The Region 5 Chiefs of Police is an organization that represents all law enforcement agencies in Penobscot and Piscataquis counties.

Without question, the COVID-19 pandemic has put additional strain on American families, the American economy and American public institutions with no clear end in sight.

It has been a good few weeks to be Susan Collins.

President Donald Trump has been accused of ignoring the COVID-19 pandemic.

On Monday, Gov.

The risk posed to political campaigns and elections by misinformation, disinformation, security breaches and digital manipulation have never been greater.

On March 17 the Maine Legislature met to take up legislation crafted to prepare the state for combatting the COVID-19 pandemic.

My two children attend elementary school in East Millinocket, and when we received word that we would be remote learning for the remainder of the school year because of COVID-19, I was worried. I was not thinking about my kids, who have devices and good internet access. I was thinking about the 40 to 50 percent of students in our local high school and elementary school that did not have dependable access to online learning materials. For some of those students who could “access” the internet, they did so on a parent’s cellphone.

Tuesday afternoon I learned the unfortunate news that former Speaker of the Maine House of Representatives and former commissioner of the Department of Economic and Community Development John Richardson had passed away as the result of a heart attack. I had the great fortune to know John, though interestingly enough we first encountered one another well before we met in person.

The U.S. Supreme Court this week caught up with public opinion and common sense when it ruled that it is illegal to fire a person for being gay or transgender. The ruling was ground shaking and a major expansion of civil rights protections for LGBTQ people living in states without non-discrimination protections in state law.

It is only natural for people in the midst of a deeply emotional event to lash out at what they see as the cause of their grief and anger. Understandably, this reaction often overreaches and leads to calls for drastic measures that will not solve the problem in the long term.

We cannot allow science and public health to become just another part of the culture wars. Wearing a mask in public as COVID-19 continues to kill thousands of Americans is about helping to protect our friends, family and neighbors. It’s not virtue signally, and it’s not the same as wearing a Planned Parenthood t-shirt or a MAGA red hat.

More jobs in the factories of Maine. More opportunities for Maine’s commercial fishermen. That’s the good news President Donald Trump brought to Bangor on Friday as he celebrated a dramatic expansion of swab production for COVID-19 testing in Guilford and signed a proclamation reopening the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts area to commercial fishing.

As anti-racism protests grow across the country and coronavirus continues to spread, a presidential visit to Maine on Friday feels misplaced. Worse, it has the potential to spread dangerous violence -- and the deadly virus -- to rural Maine while taking precious financial resources away from local and state agencies that need them to serve their citizens. President Donald Trump is headed to Guilford anyway. Here is our message to our president. You should not be coming here. Not now. 

It can be quite hard to talk about the issues circulating around the death of George Floyd, as well as the protests that death sparked, without everyone tuning you out. Depending on not only what you are saying, but who you are, people can discount what you say before you utter a single word.