Welcome to Midterms Meltdown, a special pop-up newsletter from The Swamp—bringing you up to the minute with the secrets the politicians don’t want you to know about the race to November 3.
It is the most consequential election campaign since 2024, and the nooze will be oozing around the nation to shape D.C. for the next two years and beyond. Our David Gardner, Farrah Tomazin, Sarah Ewall-Wice, and Laura Esposito are getting down and dirty with the inside stories from the battlefields every Monday and Friday.
Melting down in The Swamp today are: Barack Obama, Machine Gun Kelly, George W. Bush, Bernie Sanders, Susan Collins, Carlos Santana, Adam Hamilton, Anna Kelly, James Talarico, Graham Platner, Scott Jennings, Sherrod Brown, Ted Cruz, Tin Man, Troy Jackson, Scarecrow, and the Cowardly Lion.
Republican Senator’s Shock Celebrity Jet Perk Revealed
Susan Collins’ re-election campaign spent more than $163,000 on private jets over the past year—even as the vulnerable GOP Senator begged supporters for gas money to fuel a statewide tour, The Swamp’s Farrah Tomazin can exclusively reveal.
As the 73-year-old Republican fights to hold onto one of the most closely watched seats at November’s midterms, federal finance records reveal three of her political committees spent $163,563 between 2025 and 2026 to buy the kind of luxury air travel more often associated with celebrities and CEOs than a Senate race in Maine.
The figures come two months after the Daily Beast revealed Collins begged supporters for as little as $5 to fuel her re-election campaign—despite voting several times to uphold the Iran war, and her husband Thomas Daffron, 83, holding thousands of dollars’ worth of oil and gas stocks.
“Organizing a tour of this scale takes a lot of coordination, enthusiasm, and quite literally fuel,” an email from Team Collins read at the time. “Will you chip in just $5 today to help us put gas in the tank and keep our team moving forward?”
The biggest private jet bills went to Florida-based Exclusive Charter Service, which counts Coldplay, Machine Gun Kelly and Carlos Santana among its clients.
The service urges customers to “get accustomed to the luxe private jet life,” with perks such as 24/7 jet charter, VIP catering, and global ground transportation.
The other major vendor was Advanced Aviation Team, which advertises “presidential-level service” and was founded by former White House Travel Office directors who worked for George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
Both parties have used it, including during Kamala Harris’ 2024 presidential race and Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential primary campaign.
The optics of lavish expenses could be awkward for a politician in an increasingly working-class, anti-elite political environment such as Maine.
Collins’ opponent, Troy Jackson, 58, is a former logger and state senate official who was elevated after progressive firebrand Graham Platner withdrew from the race amid a series of abuse scandals.
Jackson has already said the GOP Senator will massively outspend him in the race, while Democrats have seized on the fact Collins’ campaign has been boosted by donations from billionaires. As the Daily Beast revealed last month, some include former associates of sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
The three PACs that used the private jet services between 2025 and 2026 were Susan Collins for Maine, the Dirigo leadership PAC, and Collins for Senator. According to the FEC filings, Dirigo, for example, paid $58,392.67 to Advanced Aviation Team in April for “PAC air charter.”
At its advertised rates, Advanced’s super-light jets start at $8,890 an hour, while super-midsize jets run as high as $12,610 an hour before discounts. That means Collins’ $58,393 payment alone represents roughly five to seven hours of charter time at those rates.
A spokesperson for Collins said, “Most of the flights that Senator Collins takes are commercial but, depending on the circumstances, it is common for us to use charter air service for the campaign. So when necessary for the Senate schedule, or when commercial service is not feasible, the campaign will use private travel.”
Collins, who is looking for a sixth term, occasionally breaks ranks with Trump. Last month, for instance, she spoke out against the president’s decision to ramp up another trade war with Canada, which borders Maine. She was also one of several senators who did not show up at the GOP midterm convention last week, opting to spend her time in Maine.
“She’s not my best friend at all,” Trump said of Collins earlier this year. “But she’s a sane person, and she’s a person that never missed a vote in many years.”
News of her campaign’s private jet use comes after the Houston Chronicle reported last week that Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz’s leadership PAC spent nearly $200,000 on private flights in the first half of 2026 alone.
The FEC permits senators and their political committees to use commercial charter services as long as they pay the usual fair market charge.
With 50 days until the midterms, Collins is facing one of the toughest reelection fights of her career, with recent polls showing her neck-and-neck with Jackson. The Democrat holds a narrow 48-44 lead in the latest YouGov poll, while other recent surveys have found the race effectively tied.
Collins made headlines recently after addressing reports that Jackson fathered two children with his second cousin, who is his long-term partner. “Well, I’m not going to bring up the fact that the mother of his two children is his second cousin,” Collins told Politico reporter Jonathan Martin when asked if Jackson’s personal life would be fair game on the campaign trail. “I don’t know whether people know that or not.”
“But you just mentioned it,” Martin pointed out.
The Big Poll Loser: DONALD TRUMP
The president spent the entire Republican midterm convention begging supporters to vote as if he were on the ballot, and in some ways he is. A CBS News poll found the Trump factor is front and center among likely voters, but not in a good way. 45 percent of likely voters said they would vote against Trump in 2026. Just 28 percent said they would support Trump. Another 27 percent said it was not about Trump. A whopping 54 percent said they would vote for a Democratic candidate in the House if the election were today, while 46 percent said they’d vote for a Republican.
Hey big spender…
A variety of different groups are dropping tens of millions of dollars into the most competitive Senate races with the final sprint to November 3. Be prepared for television to blast attack ads nonstop in battleground states. According to Ad Impact tracking, candidates and outside groups dropped $70 million in reservations last week alone. Republican spending to help Sen. Jon Husted in Ohio is wild for a state the president won by more than 11 points. GOP groups have already spent more than $80 million and have another $83 million in reserve. Democrats have another $65 million reserved for ads there after spending $69 million as they look to flip the seat back to blue with former Sen. Sherrod Brown.
Meanwhile, Republicans are rushing to save Ken Paxton in Texas with tens of millions in ads. The GOP group Texas PAC placed $51 million in ad reservations. The group’s first anti-James Talarico ad aired over the weekend with a clip of him defending trans Texans. It comes after Republicans made a big fundraising push for Paxton around the convention last week in Dallas, as the latest polling shows Talarico with a very slight edge.
(Another) Kamala Cash Grab
Meanwhile, Kamala Harris is back, asking supporters for more cash, saying she is going all out to help the Dems in November. “So as I prepare to get back on the campaign trail to help elect Democrats in the midterms with numbers too big to rig, I am asking one more time,” she wrote in a fundraising email asking for $5 donations. Considering she burned through $1.5 billion in 15 weeks in 2024, you might understand why donors would be a little reticent.
Whistleblower Woes
Surprise, surprise: The Trump administration is finding innovative—and allegedly illegal—ways to crack down on voting ahead of the midterms. This afternoon, a bombshell whistleblower disclosure alleges that top officials at the Department of Homeland Security have pulled federal agents from their national security duties so they can participate in a sting known as the “Unlawful Voter Initiative.” The initiative has agents posing as voters in a move the whistleblower alleges violates state laws, all in an effort to fuel Trump’s favorite, baseless obsession: finding unlawful voters. The disclosure, leaked to Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla this afternoon, is just the latest in the president’s efforts to cast doubt on election results before the midterms.
What Donald Trump is saying…
“I don’t know what she’s talking about,” Trump said when asked about a video he posted about January 6th on Truth Social.
What the Democrats are saying…
Kansas Senate candidate Adam Hamilton is on his way down the Yellow Brick Road. It’s really not Kansas anymore…
“I went to the Wizard of Oz museum, and while I was there,” Hamilton told an energetic crowd at the Kansas State Fair. “I got to watch a certain clip from The Wizard of Oz. You’ve got Dorothy with Toto; she’s on the Yellow Brick Road. They’re going to see the wizard and her three trusty sidekicks; you remember them: the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and who? The Cowardly Lion. And I’m standing there. It’s been 20 years since I watched it. I said, ‘Ok, what did the Scarecrow need? Do you remember? (crowd shouts back) He needed a brain. What did the Tin Man need? He needed a heart? What did the Cowardly Lion need? He needed courage. And I had to laugh, and I thought, this is what’s wrong in Washington, D.C. right now,” he continued. “We’ve got a lot of people up there who’ve lost their minds. They’re no longer using critical thinking skills to solve problems. They’re not thinking for themselves. They’re doing whatever their president or their party tells them to do. That’s not good for Kansas.”
And finally… place your bets
WHO WILL WIN THE MAINE SENATE SEAT?
What they’re saying on Kalshi:
Troy Jackson—67 percent
Susan Collins—33 percent
What they’re saying on Polymarket:
Troy Jackson—71 percent
Susan Collins—30 percent
