<\/p>\n
As the deadly<\/span> federal immigration crackdown fueled by a racist obsession with Somali people kicked into high gear in Minnesota, a right-wing local news site in Maine had a clear message: Bring the chaos here.<\/p>\n The Maine Wire launched in 2011, and for the next decade most of its output was standard libertarian fare. But as the U.S. right took a hard nativist turn \u2014 and amid an infusion of cash from some of the most powerful right-wing money men in the country \u2014 the site developed a fixation on Maine\u2019s Somali community, a highly visible immigrant population in a state that\u2019s over 90 percent<\/a> white.<\/p>\n Amid the runaway success of a right-wing YouTuber\u2019s viral video about \u201cSomali fraud\u201d<\/a> in Minnesota, the site played an enthusiastic role in selling a similar narrative in Maine, spinning nuggets of truth into overstated claims of massive graft. And they got results.<\/p>\n In January, the Department of Homeland Security launched a surge of federal agents into the state, sweeping up hundreds of migrants while also performing showy raids on Somali-owned businesses linked to people who had been mentioned in the Maine Wire. In February, top federal officials, including Donald Trump himself<\/a>, called for greater scrutiny of the state\u2019s Medicaid system in language that directly targeted Somalis \u2014 a tack that closely followed The Maine Wire\u2019s lead.<\/p>\n Editor-in-chief Steve Robinson, a Maine native who spent years producing shock-jock radio in Boston, came to the publication in 2023. The shift in tone was evident almost immediately. \u201cMaine Governor Wants to Resettle 75,000 Foreign-Born Migrants in Maine by 2029,\u201d Robinson warned in a headline<\/a> that year. Critics blamed the piece for sparking an anti-immigrant rally by neo-Nazis<\/a> at the state Capitol a few weeks later.<\/p>\n Robinson and his staffers present the website as a plucky upstart fighting for the common Mainer, but their work is not all driven by lobstermen and loggers. In recent years, The Maine Wire and its parent organization, the libertarian-leaning Maine Policy Institute, benefited from millions of dollars in donations from entities associated with Leonard Leo<\/a>, the judicial activist<\/a> widely credited with the conservative takeover of the Supreme Court<\/a>, and Thomas D. Klingenstein, a MAGA megadonor and chair of the ultra-conservative Claremont Institute.<\/p>\n Between 2020 and 2024, the most recent year for which records are available, the Maine Policy Institute saw its annual revenue nearly triple \u2014 with a surge in funding from entities linked to Leo and Klingenstein, according to an analysis of tax documents by The Intercept. In 2024, at least $1.2 million of the institute\u2019s $1.9 million budget came from organizations connected to Leo\u2019s dark-money network.<\/p>\n The budget boost came amid a broader push by Leo, Klingenstein, and other conservative bankrollers to inject cash into state-level projects<\/a>, ensuring their authoritarian, anti-immigrant, and climate-denial<\/a> efforts have local staying power. (Representatives for Leo and Klingenstein did not respond to The Intercept\u2019s requests for comment.)<\/p>\n Matt Gagnon, the Maine Policy Institute\u2019s CEO, declined to comment on how much of that cash goes into the operations of The Maine Wire. But over the course of those years of plenty, its staff has more than doubled to include three reporters, one \u201cdigital media correspondent,\u201d\u00a0and three editors.<\/p>\n In the process, The Maine Wire has carved out a belligerent presence in the state. Its reach is felt especially on social media, where it boasts some 200,000 followers across Facebook and X, as well as 26,000 subscribers to a spinoff on Substack. (Maine\u2019s population hovers at around 1.4 million.) Gagnon credited Robinson for this growth, praising him for pursuing a web-savvy strategy and a voicey style.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we\u2019re trying to do with The Maine Wire is not like a Wall Street Journal,\u201d Gagnon told The Intercept. \u201cIt\u2019s not \u2018Just the facts, ma\u2019am,\u2019 or completely free of bias or opinion. We try to shake through our bias to make sure we\u2019re reporting accurately, obviously, and to make sure that we\u2019re not engaging in tabloid garbage news, but we\u2019re very open about our perspective.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou get one Somali on a jury in Minnesota, you think they\u2019re going to convict anybody?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n That perspective is openly hostile to Maine\u2019s Somali community. While discussing the Minnesota fraud scandal on a podcast, for example, Robinson posed<\/a>, \u201cYou get one Somali on a jury in Minnesota, you think they\u2019re going to convict anybody?\u201d \u2014 ignoring the dozens of people<\/a> indicted and convicted<\/a> by federal prosecutors under President Joe Biden.<\/p>\n This apparent bias leads to similar distortions at home in Maine. Many of The Maine Wire\u2019s claims of fraud rest on existing state audits from years past in which investigators \u2014 employed by the state of Maine \u2014 found evidence of improper payments. Without producing hard evidence of equivalent examples that have gone unaddressed, <\/strong>the site presents these as the tip of the iceberg, rather than instances of the state actually doing its job to combat fraud.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Maine Wire has a way of telling half-truths and then getting Mainers riled up about it,\u201d said Paige Loud, a social worker running for Congress in the state\u2019s 2nd Congressional District.<\/p>\n After an initial interview fell through, Robinson stopped responding to The Intercept\u2019s attempts to reschedule. When contacted with a detailed list of questions prior to publication, he declined to comment.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n On the homepage<\/span> of The Maine Wire, the reader finds a grim portrait of the state. In between stories hinting at \u2014 but hardly proving \u2014 extensive fraud in Maine or scaremongering about the security of mail-in ballots, the site\u2019s coverage is a miasma of stock tabloid fare: Tales of small-time drug busts and mugshots of vacant-eyed defendants abound. To take the site at face value, it would seem that Maine is awash in fraud, upcoming elections are in danger, and violence lurks around every corner \u2014 often at the hands of immigrants, and specifically members of Maine\u2019s Somali diaspora.<\/p>\n Whenever possible, links to Somali people and institutions are presented as red flags. The term \u201cSomali-linked\u201d appears frequently, suggesting a stain of corruption inherent to anyone of Somali descent; one recent article managed to squeeze the word \u201cSomali\u201d twice into a single headline<\/a>. In another story<\/a>, a reporter flagged a business as suspicious in part because it shared an address with a hawala, a type of money-transfer business found in Muslim communities worldwide, which The Maine Wire described as \u201cequipped to funnel taxpayer money back to Africa.\u201d<\/p>\n The fixation on Somalis only recently became the site\u2019s bread and butter. In the first 11 months of 2025, The Maine Wire published approximately 23 articles that included the word \u201cSomali,\u201d averaging about two per month.\u00a0<\/p>\n Beginning in December, as right-wing audiences frothed over the viral Nick Shirley video in Minnesota<\/a>, The Maine Wire leapt into action. Its journalists dusted off earlier reporting to suggest the existence of a sprawling conspiracy of Medicaid fraud, protected by a sordid alliance between Democratic political elites and allegedly corrupt Somali-run nonprofits and health care providers. That month, the Maine Wire published at least 31 articles that included the word \u201cSomali\u201d and kept it up with at least 26 in January, at least 14 in February, and at least nine in March. Robinson published still more stories about the issue on his Substack, dubbed The Robinson Report.<\/p>\n Somali Americans in the state are no strangers to nativism<\/a>, but people who spoke with The Intercept said the past few months have been unusually tense, thanks in large part to The Maine Wire\u2019s obsession with their community, which numbers less than 3,000 people, according to the most recent U.S. Census Bureau data.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s created a lot of stress for me,\u201d said a Somali American resident of Lewiston who has been the subject of reporting by The Maine Wire and harassed by its readers. \u201cThe Maine Wire started this rhetoric against Somalis last year, and a lot of people really are saying horrible things on social media that are very, very racist. And that\u2019s just kind of normalized now.\u201d<\/p>\n Still, the site wins praise from readers for reporting on issues they feel are ignored by more mainstream publications. Maine journalists who spoke with The Intercept for this story admitted a grudging respect for some of the work that The Maine Wire has done, including a series on illicit marijuana grow houses owned and operated by Chinese nationals. But they criticized the site for overhyping the idea of widespread fraud.<\/p>\n \u201cSome of the people who work there seem like they actually have the smarts and the talent to be good journalists. It\u2019s just that the whole damn thing is geared towards electing Republicans,\u201d said Steve Collins, a longtime reporter in the state who writes a column for the Portland Press Herald and has been openly critical<\/a> of the website. \u201cThey take information, and instead of using it to report news in some kind of straight, rational way, it\u2019s just a way to bash people and stir up fear.\u201d<\/p>\n Others were blunter.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Maine Wire is poison,\u201d said independent journalist and former Maine state legislator Andy O\u2019Brien<\/a>, who has written critically<\/a> of Steve Robinson. \u201cWhen you look at the comments, they are so often violent and racist. It gets scary.\u201d<\/p>\n The \u201cthink national, act local\u201d<\/span> strategy has won The Maine Wire an audience of ever more powerful people, a fact that was made clear in February when Mehmet Oz \u2014 the quackery-boosting former television personality who now helms the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services \u2014 took to Instagram to issue an ultimatum to Gov. Janet Mills.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019ve probably heard about Minnesota\u2019s fraud problems. Maine also needs to clean up its act,\u201d Oz wrote. \u201cSomali fraudsters in Minnesota stole millions from a similar program, and we\u2019re seeing all the same red flags in Maine.\u201d<\/p>\n In a February 6 letter, Oz gave Mills 30 days to produce documentation of Maine\u2019s public health funding and the safeguards in place to prevent fraud. The letter included a provision for an extension, but when Mills asked for one, Oz denied it. According to Ben Goodman, a spokesperson for Mills, The Maine Wire knew about the denial<\/a> before it even hit the governor\u2019s desk.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAddressing allegations of fraud is \u2014 and should be \u2014 a collective, professional effort between the State and Federal government, not a political cudgel from a President desperately trying to distract from his failed agenda,\u201d Goodman told The Intercept in a statement. \u201cSo let\u2019s be clear about what this is \u2014 yet another attempt to attack and intimidate those who dare stand up to Trump\u2019s abuses of power.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis is directly connected to the story in Minnesota to demonize Somali communities, which brought about ICE raids there.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n It\u2019s no accident that the events playing out in Maine resemble the playbook used to justify<\/a> the federal crackdown<\/a> in Minnesota<\/a>, according to Graham Platner, a U.S. Senate candidate running against Mills<\/a> for the Democratic nomination.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a nationwide project. This is directly connected to the story in Minnesota to demonize Somali communities, which brought about ICE raids there,\u201d Platner told The Intercept. ,<\/ins>\u201d he said.<\/p>\n For some Mainers who\u2019ve found themselves in the outlet\u2019s crosshairs, its tactics have raised questions about its accuracy.<\/p>\n\n
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