Jon Fetherston, a reporter with the right-wing nonprofit news outlet The Main Wire, has put forward baseless claims of Somali-Americans in Maine steering votes by bringing English-language interpreter to the polls.
The Maine Wire is a news publication run by the Maine Policy Institute, a right-wing think tank funded by donations from judicial activist Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society.
The Maine Wire has played an active role, through its articles and through the actions of Jon Fetherston, in targeting the Somali-American community.
The Maine Wire, a right-wing news outlet founded by a nonprofit that received $760,000 from the 85 Fund, a dark money fund established by conservative judicial activist Leonard Leo, is accusing members of the Somali-American community in Lewiston, Maine of “electioneering” and alleging that interpreters are steering Somali-Americans’ votes to Democratic candidates.
But it is entirely legal for Maine’s voters to rely on interpreters at polling places. Maine Wire hasn’t produced any evidence that the interpreters directed Somali-Americans to vote for specific candidates. And in response to Maine Wire’s reporting at Lewiston City Hall, Lewiston Mayor Carl Sheline issued a statement reminding residents that statutory law places limits on photography and video recording at voting places.
“Your voting rights are protected,” Sheline wrote on Facebook. “Report all voter harassment to the city clerk!”
On Oct. 20, Maine Wire reporter Jon Fetherston posted a video from Lewiston City Hall. The translators were “talking to people and pointing at the ballots,” Fetherston claimed, “and actually we’ve noticed a couple of people actually touching the ballots.” He continued: “We noticed the person yesterday actually handling a ballot and actually putting a ballot in an envelope. And I did bring it to the city clerk’s attention, because that is a flagrant misuse of the ballot.”
Fetherston went on to say he’d been “told by other sources that maybe the Maine People’s Alliance,” a progressive community activist organization, was “paying these people.” Fetherston said he asked the interpreters whether the words “Republican” and or “Democrat” “translate into Somali,” but they did not respond.
Several days earlier, on Oct. 14, Rev. Dr. Jodi Cohen Hayashida of the Maine People’s Alliance accused Maine Wire of “intimidating immigrant voters” at the Lewiston City Hall.
“This home-grown harassment reflects a larger national effort to intimidate vulnerable voters in our communities—our neighbors, our loved ones—to intimidate them and keep them from using their voices and the power of their own vote,” Hayashida said.
During the Oct. 20 episode of Maine Wire TV, editor-in-chief Steven Robinson accused Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, of working with NGOs such as the Community Organizing Alliance, run by Somali-American Safiya Khalid, of a “concerted effort from friends of the Secretary of State to bring migrants into the voting booth, regardless of their citizenship status or their eligibility to vote.” He had written a post on X earlier that day implying that NGOs with Somali-American funding had a quid pro quo with Maine’s Somali population to provide services such as Medicaid and “other taxpayer funded scams” in exchange for voting for Democrats: “We give you the votes, you protect the money.”
According to the 2020 Census, Maine had the third-highest Somali population in the United States. Several Somali-Americans have been elected to state and local offices from Lewiston, including Khalid, who in 2019 became the youngest person ever elected to the city council at the age of 23. After serving one term, she co-founded Community Organizing Alliance, a nonprofit that engages in civic outreach, including voter registration with the city’s Black and immigrant communities.
Fetherston returned to City Hall on Oct. 21, where he filmed himself badgering Somali voters with questions, including Khalid. He asked her to address “the violence that’s being created by all this,” (while not specifying what “this” meant) to which she replied, “Jon, leave me alone.”
Attacks on the Somali community in Maine relate to the ongoing attacks in Minnesota, which had the highest Somali population in the United States in 2020. On Oct. 9, President Trump posted on Truth Social that Minnesotans must “fight back” against the Somalis who have “taken over” the state. This month, the FBI raided the Washington, D.C. home of Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, the first Somali-American elected to Congress.
On Oct. 23, according to Maine’s Secretary of State office, the Department of Justice said it would send election observers to watch polls in Lewiston and Portland, Maine.
The Maine Policy Institute
The Maine Wire was established by the Maine Policy Institute, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded in 2002 as the Maine Heritage Policy Center. Its most recent 990 lists 13 employees, including CEO Matt Gagnon, treasurer William Boeschenstein and Chairman and President Scott Wellman. Gagnon’s salary for 2024 was listed at $275,339. The organization’s revenue for 2024 was nearly $2 million.
One of the organization’s biggest donors is The 85 Fund, a 501(c)(3) tied to judicial activist and former Federalist Society Vice President Leonard Leo, which donated $760,000 to the institute in 2024. Another right-wing donor, Claremont Institute Chairman Thomas Klingenstein, gave nearly $700,000 to the organization between 2021, 2022 and 2023.
On its website, the Maine Policy Institute describes itself as a “nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that works to expand individual liberty and economic freedom in Maine.” The group’s 990 states its mission is “to formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise; limited, constitutional government; individual freedom; and traditional American values.” The Institute publishes reports on policy issues such as school boards and education, green energy technology and Maine’s housing crisis. It maintains comprehensive databases of Maine demographics, party registration and campaign finance on its website.
The Maine Wire
The Maine Wire was founded in 2011 by Lance Dutson, then-CEO of the institute and a veteran GOP political operative. In 2018, he told the Maine Monitor that he started the site to “provide pressure on the press” to report on the institute’s findings on issues like healthcare, which he felt the mainstream media had ignored. Currently, the site has more than 245,000 followers on Facebook, more than 100,000 followers on Instagram, nearly 74,000 followers on X and more than 26,000 subscribers on Substack.
The Maine Wire has faced criticism for its partisan coverage and attacks on Maine’s Somali-American community. In a January 2026 column, Portland Press Herald columnist Steve Collins critiqued the outlet for using sensationalist headlines and inflammatory coverage to target Somali-Americans.
Fetherston has used a sword as a trademark prop. Last March, he wielded it while standing outside a Lewiston mosque where Muslims were attending an Eid al-Fitr ceremony. A reel posted to Facebook shows him unsheathing it for the first time. “I feel more powerful holding this,” he says.
Founded in 2026, the Civil Defense Institute is a nonpartisan investigative research organization. We research people, organizations and networks whose conduct undermines civil society and Americans’ freedom to participate in public life. Our work examines extremist and conspiracy-driven campaigns, foreign influence, organized harassment and the institutions that enable them.