A white supremacist has taken out an advertisement in a small northern Maine newspaper promoting a book-burning event later this year — a public display that reflected a growing comfort that hate groups have felt in promoting their messages in Maine and elsewhere in recent years.
While racist groups have long used keyboard activism to spread their messages online, where it’s easy to remain anonymous, they’re now using various tactics to spend more time in the public eye.
That has included harassing local officials, testifying on state and local policy changes, disrupting public meetings and distributing signs and other promotional materials. Those activities have coincided with a nationwide jump in reports of anti-semitic and anti-immigrant behavior in recent years, according to experts who track those incidents.
The New England White Network, led by New Hampshire activist Ryan Murdough, was behind the recent advertisement in the Aroostook County newspaper, along with some other recent public demonstrations across Maine.
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“June Book Burning,” said the ad, which ran in a March issue of the Fort Fairfield Journal. “During pride month, New England White Network is going to party like it’s 1933.”
It included multiple allusions to Nazi history. Although the month was off, it referenced an episode from May 1933 in which the National Socialist German Students’ Association burned more than 25,000 volumes of what it deemed anti-Nazi books. The ad also featured a logo for the New England White Network that resembled the Iron Cross, a famous German military medal.
Self-proclaimed National Socialist Ryan Murdough, founder of the New England White Network, took out an ad for a June Book Burning in an Aroostook County newspaper. Credit: Fort Fairfield Journal ad
“The ad was an opportunity to post something pretty extreme and draw attention,” said Christopher Magyarics, a senior investigative researcher for the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism who has tracked Murdough’s activities.
Magyarics pointed to other recent cases in which Murdough’s group has tried to put its views into wider circulation. Last year, his group began posting messages on community bulletin boards, along hiking trails and on magazine racks around Maine, Magyarics said. Its materials have generally taken aim at Jewish-owned businesses and public officials it views as anti-white, including Maine Gov. Janet Mills.
In one case from January 2024, Murdough sent a letter to Mohammed Albehadli, who was then the coordinator for diversity, equity and inclusion in the South Portland schools. The letter pushed Albehadli to quit his job and move his family out of the state, according to the Press Herald.
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The district’s superintendent called the email “the most vile” message he had seen during 35 years in education, and Albehadli told the newspaper that the “message raised safety concerns for my family and I … We could not feel safe again after receiving it.”
In March, the New England White Network provided testimony against Maine legislation that would recognize certain Muslim celebrations as state holidays.
“As White Nationalists, it’s our job to stand up for White people and hold elected leaders’ feet to the fire when they implicitly express solutions for our people,” said Jay Gonzalez, director of the group’s Maine chapter, in written testimony. “It’s also our duty to publicize our grievances and force them into the mainstream.”
The Anti-Defamation League reports a significant increase in the distribution of antisemitic literature and this hate map indicates antisemitic incidents around the nation, including Maine. Credit: Courtesy Anti-Defamation League.
In recent years, there has been a broader increase in reports of hateful acts across the nation.
The Anti-Defamation League found there was a 200 percent increase in reports of anti-semitic incidents from October 2023 to September 2024 — in the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack in Israel — compared with a year earlier. The number of incidents topped 10,000.
Immigrants and refugees also faced more harassment during that time, especially after a viral disinformation campaign last fall about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, which was embraced by President Donald Trump, according to ADL.
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Jeff Tischauser, a senior researcher at the Southern Poverty Law Center, attributed some of the uptick to Trump, who in his new administration has attacked diversity initiatives and pardoned Jan. 6 insurrectionists, including those linked to racist groups such the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers.
“There is a sense that the Trump administration and the FBI under Kash Patel is not going to take violence against the left as seriously as previous administrations,” Tischauser said.
While hate groups have long shared their views online, they have also been happy to trumpet examples of their message getting a wider audience.
Last fall, Christopher Pohlhaus, a former Maine resident who founded the notorious Blood Tribe neo-Nazi group, claimed credit for stoking the online rumors about Springfield, Ohio.
Magyarics noted that Murdough ran as a white supremacist in 2010 for the New Hampshire State House.
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In response to questions from the Bangor Daily News, Murdough said that the New England White Network has multiple chapters that are promoting their causes in venues such as town council and school board meetings.
He noted that the only people allowed to attend the upcoming book burning in Maine will be vetted members of the network.
But that isn’t stopping Murdough from using the event to promote his group. After the ad recently ran in the Fort Fairfield Journal, he shared photos of it online and declared the Aroostook County publication “the most pro-White newspaper” in the nation.
The paper’s editor and publisher, David Deschesne, said in an email response to the BDN that his newspaper is not pro-white, but rather that he accepted the ad from Murdough in the interest of allowing free speech.
“I am just the middleman providing information — albeit information about an ideology I do not agree with — which is a position all newspapers/news organizations should be doing,” he said. “One cannot provide that service by arbitrarily gatekeeping and deciding whose speech should be protected and whose speech shouldn’t be.”
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The letter’s publication caused an outcry among some local readers. Deschesne pointed to a letter he received from a Mapleton woman that was published in the April 2 issue.
In the letter, Nicole Gamblin questioned why the paper accepted an ad for such “a heinous and horrific event.”
“By choosing to take a buck and post this, you are promoting hate and violence,” Gamblin wrote. “We have too much of this in our world right now. We must do better.”
Steve Heinz of Cumberland is a member of the Maine Council of Trout Unlimited (Merrymeeting Bay chapter).
Man’s got to eat.
It’s a simple truth, and in Maine it carries a lot of weight. For generations, people here have hunted, fished and gathered food not just as a pastime, but as a practical part of life. That reality helps explain why Maine voters embraced a constitutional right to food — and why emotions run high when fishing regulations are challenged in court.
A recent lawsuit targeting Maine’s fly-fishing-only regulations has sparked exactly that reaction. The Maine Council of Trout Unlimited believes this moment calls for clarity and restraint. The management of Maine’s fisheries belongs with professional biologists and the public process they oversee, not in the courtroom.
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Trout Unlimited is not an anti-harvest organization, nor a club devoted to elevating one style of angling over another. We are a coldwater conservation organization focused on sustaining healthy, resilient fisheries.
Maine’s reputation as the last great stronghold of wild brook trout did not happen by accident; it is the product of decades of careful management by the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife (MDIFW), guided by science, field experience and public participation.
Fly-fishing-only waters are one of the tools MDIFW uses to protect vulnerable fisheries. They are not about exclusivity. In most cases, fly fishing involves a single hook, results in lower hooking mortality and lends itself to catch-and-release practices. The practical effect is straightforward: more fish survive and more people get a chance to fish.
Maine’s trout waters are fundamentally different from the fertile rivers of the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic states. Our freestone streams are cold, fast and naturally nutrient-poor. Thin soils, granite bedrock and dense forests limit aquatic productivity, meaning brook trout grow more slowly and reproduce in smaller numbers.
A single season of low flows, high water temperatures or habitat disturbance can set a population back for years. In Maine, conservation is not a luxury; it is a biological necessity.
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In more fertile southern waters, abundant insects and richer soils allow trout populations to rebound quickly from heavy harvest and environmental stress. Maine’s waters simply do not have that buffer.
Every wild brook trout here is the product of limited resources and fragile conditions. When fish are removed faster than they can be replaced, recovery is slow and uncertain. That reality is why management tools such as fly-fishing-only waters, reduced bag limits and seasonal protections matter so much.
These rules are not about denying access; they are about matching human use to ecological capacity so fisheries remain viable over time. Climate change only raises the stakes, as warmer summers and lower late-season flows increasingly push cold-water fisheries to their limits.
Healthy trout streams also safeguard drinking water, support wildlife and sustain rural economies through guiding and outdoor tourism. Conservation investments ripple far beyond the streambank.
Lawsuits short-circuit the management system that has served Maine well for decades. Courts are not designed to weigh fisheries science or balance competing uses of a complex public resource. That work is best done through open meetings, public input and adaptive management informed by professionals who spend their careers studying Maine’s waters.
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Man’s got to eat. But if we want Maine’s trout fisheries to endure, we also have to manage them wisely. That means trusting science, respecting process and recognizing that conservation — not confrontation — is what keeps food on the table and fish in the water.
TJ Biel scored 21 points and Newport native Ace Flagg added 10 points and seven rebounds as the University of Maine men’s basketball team held on for a 74-70 win over the New Jersey Institute of Technology on Saturday in Newark, New Jersey.
Logan Carey added 11 points and five assists for the Black Bears, who improve to 3-15 overall and 1-2 in the conference. Yanis Bamba chipped in 14 points.
Maine led by seven at the half, but NJIT went on a 13-0 run in the first four minutes to take a 43-37 lead. The Black Bears recovered and took the lead on a dunk by Keelan Steele with 7:53 left and held on for the win.
Sebastian Robinson scored 24 points and Ari Fulton grabbed 11 rebounds for NJIT (7-11, 2-1).
Clarissa Sabattis, Chief of the Houlton Band of Maliseets, foreground, and other leaders of Maine’s tribes are welcomed by lawmakers into the House Chamber in March, 2023 in Augusta. (Robert F. Bukaty, /Associated Press)
Maine’s gambling landscape is set to expand after Gov. Janet Mills decided Thursday to let tribes offer online casino games, but numerous questions remain over the launch of the new market and how much it will benefit the Wabanaki Nations.
Namely, there is no concrete timeline for when the new gambling options that make Maine the eighth “iGaming” state will become available. Maine’s current sports betting market that has been dominated by the Passamaquoddy Tribe through its partnership with DraftKings is evidence that not all tribes may reap equal rewards.
A national anti-online gaming group also vowed to ask Maine voters to overturn the law via a people’s veto effort and cited its own poll finding a majority of Mainers oppose online casino gaming.
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Here are the big remaining questions around iGaming.
1. When will iGaming go into effect?
The law takes effect 90 days after the Legislature adjourns this year. Adjournment is slated for mid-April, but Mills spokesperson Ben Goodman noted it is not yet known when lawmakers will actually finish their work.
2. Where will the iGaming revenue go?
The iGaming law gives the state 18% of the gross receipts, which will translate into millions of dollars annually for gambling addiction and opioid use treatment funds, Maine veterans, school renovation loans and emergency housing relief.
Leaders of the four federally recognized tribes in Maine highlighted the “life-changing revenue” that will come thanks to the decision from Mills, a Democrat who has clashed with the Wabanaki Nations over the years over more sweeping tribal sovereignty measures.
But one chief went so far Thursday as to call her the “greatest ever” governor for “Wabanaki economic progress.”
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3. What gaming companies will the tribes work with?
DraftKings has partnered with the Passamaquoddy to dominate Maine’s sports betting market, while the Penobscot Nation, the Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians and the Mi’kmaq Nation have partnered with Caesars Entertainment to garner a smaller share of the revenue.
Wall Street analysts predicted the two companies will likely remain the major players in Maine’s iGaming market.
The partnership between the Passamaquoddy and DraftKings has brought in more than $100 million in gross revenue since 2024, but the Press Herald reported last month that some members of the tribe’s Sipayik reservation have criticized Chief Amkuwiposohehs “Pos” Bassett, saying they haven’t reaped enough benefits from the gambling money.
4. Has Mills always supported gambling measures?
The iGaming measure from Rep. Ambureen Rana, D-Bangor, factored into a long-running debate in Maine over gambling. In 2022, lawmakers and Mills legalized online sports betting and gave tribes the exclusive rights to offer it beginning in 2023.
But allowing online casino games such as poker and roulette in Maine looked less likely to become reality under Mills. Her administration had previously testified against the bill by arguing the games are addictive.
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But Mills, who is in the final year of her tenure and is running in the high-profile U.S. Senate primary for the chance to unseat U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said Thursday she would let the iGaming bill become law without her signature. She said she viewed iGaming as a way to “improve the lives and livelihoods of the Wabanaki Nations.”
5. Who is against iGaming?
Maine’s two casinos in Bangor and Oxford opposed the iGaming bill, as did Gambling Control Board Chair Steve Silver and the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, among other opponents.
Silver noted Hollywood Casino Bangor and Oxford Casino employ nearly 1,000 Mainers, and he argued that giving tribes exclusive rights to iGaming will lead to job losses.
He also said in a Friday interview the new law will violate existing statutes by cutting out his board from iGaming oversight.
“I don’t think there’s anything the board can do at this point,” Silver said.
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The National Association Against iGaming has pledged to mount an effort to overturn the law via a popular referendum process known as the “people’s veto.” But such attempts have a mixed record of success.
