Don’t worry, everyone, Susan Collins is completely safe! I know it was a close call there and we were all really worried after the Republican Senator had a scary run-in with—checks notes—a sidewalk chalk drawing.
Local police were brought in this weekend to investigate a message written in chalk on a sidewalk near Collins’ home in Bangor, Maine. (It’s unclear whether she was even in Maine this weekend, or if she was in Washington D.C.) (Update 5/12: Numerous outlets have obtained the police report from the incident that states Collins was the person who called 911)
The message read, “Susie, please, Mainers want WHPA —> vote yes, clean up your mess.”
Imagine calling the police to investigate this lmao pic.twitter.com/dSUYXkMC7H
— Alex Peter (@LolOverruled) May 10, 2022
The WHPA is the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would codify abortion rights into law on a federal level. In their endless quest to convince us they support abortion rights while simultaneously doing absolutely nothing to protect said rights, Collins and Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski announced recently that they would not support the WHPA. Instead, they presented their own feckless bill called the Reproductive Choice Act which, despite its name, has nothing to do with offering people the choice to have an abortion. (Rather, it focuses on offering doctors the right to choose not to perform abortions, which is a right they already have so thanks for literally nothing, senators.)
Anyway, the polite request to support the WHPA when it comes up for a (nearly entirely symbolic) vote this week was clearly too much for Collins to handle. Police came out to investigate at 9:20 Saturday night and, as a spokesperson told the Bangor Daily News, found that “The message was not overtly threatening.”
The outlet also notes that the message was no longer visible by Monday afternoon. Presumably because it was, you know, written in chalk.
“We are grateful to the Bangor police officers and the City public works employee who responded to the defacement of public property in front of our home,” Collins said dramatically, also implying that she had someone from the city come out to wash it away, which seems like one of the worst uses of that person’s time and taxpayers’ money imaginable.
Congratulations to Susan Collins for surviving such a traumatic ordeal.
(image: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
