The U.S. House passed a bill on Tuesday aimed at ending burdensome efficiency standards that restrict the home appliances Americans can buy.

[RELATED: From Paper Straws to Appliance Regs, Trump Rolls Back Nanny State and Irks Enviros…]

The “Home Appliance Protection and Affordability Act” from Rep. Rick Allen (R-Ga.) would require the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to significantly alter its criteria when considering potential energy conservation requirements.

This is the most gangsta moment of the night asking if Pelosi stood up when he called out stopping Congressional insider trading😂🫡 pic.twitter.com/JXsa9V31Fm

— 👮‍♂️The Badged Patriot👮‍♂️ (@BadgedPatriot) February 25, 2026

The alleged “white supremacy” Zohran Mamdani was railing against while attending Bowdoin College was nothing compared to the whiteout he’s now up against in New York City.

In his first political firestorm as the first Muslim mayor of the nation’s largest city, Mamdani is being criticized for failing to support cops injured this week in a snowball attack.

NYPD had responded to a snowball fight in a city park that had allegedly gotten out of hand.

But when the snowballers saw the word POLICE on officers’ uniforms, they began pelting them with chunks of ice, injuring two cops.

In fact, some of the snowballing hoodlums claimed they thought the cops were ICE.

The city’s police commissioner – who Mamdani hired – is calling on her boss to investigate what she calls assaults on police officers.

But Mamdani, who made it well-known during his mayoral campaign he hates cops, is refusing to take the bait.

He’s minimizing the melee in the park that left two police officers injured as nothing more than a good old-fashioned snowball fight.

“I’ve said that what I saw was a snowball fight,” the mayor said Wednesday. “It should be treated accordingly. It was one that got out of hand. But that’s what it was.”

Former NYPD Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce said the mayor is jeopardizing his relationship with the department.

“Not to back up the men and women is really, really bad. It’s as bad as you can get,” Boyce said. “So, this is a seminal moment, right here and we’ll see how it goes from here. Because I think it’s important to understand just how important this is to the police department.”

“This was not just a ‘snowball fight.’ This was an assault,” the Police Benevolent Association said in a statement.

Besides being anti-cop – except when they’re protecting him – Mamdani’s four years at Bowdoin included many student-newspaper columns he wrote accusing the elite liberal arts college of white supremacy – and where he founded Students for Justice in Palestine.

In one Bowdoin student-newspaper column he headlined “White Privilege,” in 2013, Mamdani called for a wider “diversity” of opinion writers.

During his campaign for mayor, Mamdani, a socialist Democrat, apologized for language he’d previously used to describe the police department, once referring to it in a social media post as “racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety.”

AUBURN, Maine – A gubernatorial debate that opened with promises of structure and civility quickly slid into sharp personal attacks, with Democratic candidate Troy Jackson repeatedly invoking former state Rep. Deqa Dhalac as he accused Republican Bobby Charles of “race baiting,” and later branding The Maine Wire “the main liar” during a blowup over fraud and corruption allegations.

A deadly shooting during a youth hockey game in Rhode Island last week has claimed a third victim, a grandfather whose daughter and grandson were also killed in the attack, authorities said.

Gerald Dorgan, who had been in critical condition, has died from his injuries, according to the Associated Press.

Dorgan’s daughter, Rhonda Dorgan, and grandson, Aidan Dorgan, were also killed in the shooting.

Police identified the shooter as Robert Dorgan, 56, who died from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Dorgan, who had had a sex-change operation, also went by the names Roberta Esposito and Roberta Dorgano.

Robert Dorgan’s ex-wife was Rhonda Dorgan and adult son was Aidan Dorgan.

Maine State Police searched the killer’s storage unit in Brunswick earlier this month and found firearms, ammunition and firearm accessories.

At the time of the shooting, Dorgan was working on BIW’s cable crew.

Sen. Angus King has cosponsored a bill alongside several Democratic lawmakers requiring the federal government to return the revenue generated from President Donald Trump’s (R) tariffs, which were recently struck down by the United States Supreme Court.

Let’s hear it for Maine blueberries – you know, the ones that don’t get “recalled.”

Four states are facing a serious recall of blueberries produced not in the wild barrens of the Pine Tree State but in Oregon.

Maybe next time they’ll get Wyman’s on the phone and order from Maine’s finest.

Just a suggestion…

The Oregon-produced berries were recalled in Michigan, Oregon, Washington and Wisconsin, as well as in Canada.

Nearly 60,000 pounds were recalled due to potential contamination with Listeria monocytogenes, a potentially life-threatening food-borne disease that can cause serious adverse health effects.

The FDA characterized the recall as a Class 1, its highest, most severe safety warning, meaning there is a reasonable probability that use of the product could cause serious adverse health consequences or death.

Maybe one way to avoid this problem is to order from Maine, which produces most of the wild (lowbush) blueberries in the world.

The majority of production occurs in Washington County, known for its blueberry “barrens.”

The best known supplier is Wyman’s Blueberries of Milbridge, which has been in business since 1874.

Wyman’s is the largest producer of wild blueberries in Maine and the U.S., managing over 17,000 acres of barrens and processing up to 2.3 million pounds of fruit daily during peak harvest.

The company got its start as a seafood-canning company, but switched to harvesting blueberries a few years later.

“We employ over 300 people year-round across our facilities in Maine and the Canadian Maritimes, and our aim is to be one of the world’s greatest companies to work for,” Wyman’s says on its website. “Above all, our goal as an employer is to enhance the lives of all who work here. We’re dedicated to enriching our employees’ lives while supporting communities we all want to live and work in.”

Though it’s known for its blueberries, Wyman’s harvests and sells several other fruits as well.

“We started out in 1874 canning sardines,” Wyman’s says. “But to our founder, Jasper Wyman, there was just something about the wild blueberry barrens surrounding his Maine cannery that compelled him.

“Eventually he realized you can package a sardine just about anywhere, but wild blueberries were unique to his little corner of the world.”

Take that, Oregon.

The Maine State Police arrested an Alabama woman on Tuesday after an I-95 pursuit through Androscoggin County.

[RELATED: Maine State Police arrest suspect in Skowhegan homicide after pursuit across three states…]

The Augusta Regional Communications Center received numerous calls at around 5:38 p.m. reporting an erratic driver.

Maine’s teacher hiring standards could become much stricter if a bipartisan bill aimed at protecting children, currently under consideration in the Committee on Education and Cultural Affairs, passes into law.

[RELATED: Kennebunk Teacher Who Hoped Charlie Kirk Would “Rest in Hell” Resigns…]

SCARBOROUGH, Maine – Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) is drawing fresh scrutiny after promoting the claim that legal residents in Maine were “picked up based solely on the color of their skin” during recent immigration enforcement activity.

Former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell has gone from being a metaphorical international peace-making God to his word having no credibility.

The Democrat from Maine allegedly having had sex with a 17-year-old girl at pedo Jeffrey Epstein‘s request was enough to erase Mitchell from his historic reputation helping bring peace to Northern Ireland.

But as bad if not worse, people don’t believe him when he says he didn’t.

For George Mitchell, that’s really the tragedy – that his word is no longer reliable.

Even his own Maine institute doesn’t believe him.

Not even necessarily because he allegedly had sex with a child – but because the leaders of his own institute believe he’s lying.

The guy who brought what people thought could never happen – peace in Northern Ireland – is now considered a fraud.

If Mitchell’s memory is faulty then one would expect either him or, if it’s due to dementia, someone on his behalf to say that he doesn’t remember having sex with a child.

But then the implication is, well, he may have. But can’t remember.

“I didn’t know her. I didn’t have contact with her. I didn’t meet her. I didn’t talk to her.” Mitchell the seasoned lawyer has a way of parsing his denials.

So even if Mitchell’s denials are true, the problem is the people who matter aren’t buying any of it.

That is the true tragedy of what has happened to George Mitchell – that his very word, once something as solid as granite, is now nothing more than trash.

“How should we react when we discover that someone, once accorded almost god-like status, turns out to have feet of clay?” the commentator Alex Kane asked in the Irish News, a Belfast daily. For the institutions and public figures that once feted President Bill Clinton and his envoy Mitchell, it is an agonizing question.

“Mitchell, a Senate majority leader until 1995, was an inspired choice to chair multiparty talks. Indefatigable, affable and astute, he steered negotiations to an agreement in 1998 that drew a line under a brutal conflict and saved countless lives,” reports TheGuardian.com.

Mitchell returned last June for the premiere of a film about his negotiating triumph. “It was like the return of the hero,” said Noel Doran, a former editor of the Irish News who attended the screening. “It almost felt like a privilege to be in the same room as him.”

The reverence had persisted despite an allegation by Virginia Giuffre in 2019 that she had been forced to have sex with Mitchell in the 1990s, and despite his name appearing multiple times in the “Epstein files.”

Mitchell denies any wrongdoing or ever meeting Giuffre but this month, after another release of Epstein material, former supporters wrenched off the halo.

The US-Ireland Alliance announced earlier this month that its George J Mitchell scholarship program would no longer bear his name.

“We are not a court of law. We are an organization which must make decisions that reflect what we stand for,” the alliance’s founder and president, Trina Vargo, said this week. “Given all the new information that has come to light, we felt we could no longer ask our alums and future applicants to wear the name Mitchell.”

Queen’s University Belfast, which forged a close partnership with Mitchell during and after his term as the university’s chancellor from 1999 to 2009, followed suit. It erased his name from its Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice, scrubbed laudatory articles from its website and removed his bust – estimated to have cost $47,000 – from the campus.

The moves followed information from the latest Epstein files, Queen’s said in a statement. “Senator Mitchell previously provided public reassurances regarding his contact with Epstein. The recent files have shown this to be incorrect and in light of this information, the university acted accordingly.”

To add insult to injury, and perhaps the worst blow to George Mitchell, the George Mitchell Institute in Maine dropped his name from its banner.

His own institute has banished George Mitchell.

The Belfast city council now is considering rescinding Mitchell’s key to the city, a proposal backed by nationalist and unionist parties.

“It is a poignant irony – even in disgrace, the former envoy from Maine has brought both sides together,” TheGuardian.com said.

Mitchell has claimed Giuffre’s identification of him was a case of mistaken identity.

“In 2021, Ms Giuffre supplied a photograph to OK! Magazine, which incorrectly captioned it as depicting Senator Mitchell standing behind Jeffrey Epstein,” the ex-senator’s spokesman said. “The individual in the photograph was not Senator Mitchell. The publisher acknowledged the incorrect caption and removed it.”

From there, Mitchell’s mouthpiece went on to the rehearsed boilerplate denial – that the senator had never met or had any contact with Giuffre or any underage women, and had learned of Epstein’s criminal activity through media reports about his 2008 prosecution and conviction, after which Mitchell “declined or deflected” invitations from Epstein’s office.

“Senator Mitchell profoundly regrets ever having known Jeffrey Epstein and condemns, without reservation, the horrific harm Epstein inflicted on so many women,” his spokesperson said.

No one believes George Mitchell anymore.

That’s the sad legacy of the Waterville native who, after breaking through the chains of an impoverished blue-collar upbringing, reaching the highest pinnacles of public life, became known at age 92 for lying about sexually trafficking a teenage girl.