With an abbreviated time frame in which to work now that it appears Maine Democrat Graham Platner may step aside after a devastating Politico report on sexual assault rocked his U.S. Senate campaign to its foundations, an unlikely replacement was suggested by the Maine Wire.

Platner is mulling his options after he was accused by a former girlfriend of rape in an explosive Politico report that led to a wide array of Democrats pulling their endorsements and the party cutting off all financial support.

His anticipated withdrawal means Democrats will have to work fast and select a new candidate to take on incumbent Republican Sen. Susan Collins.

According to the Maine Wire, actor Patrick Dempsey, 60, who played Dr. Derek “McDreamy” Shepherd on the popular Grey’s Anatomy show, would be a “wild card” and would inject something not seen before into the midterm campaign.

Maine Wire's Jon Featherston wrote that "outside traditional political circles," Dempsey's name is being taken seriously, with discussions over the possibility the Maine native could become the party's emergency candidate.

"The Lewiston native has long maintained strong ties to Maine through both his acting career and his charitable work with the Dempsey Center. Unlike many of the political figures being discussed, Dempsey enjoys widespread name recognition and a broadly positive public image," Featherston reported before adding, "Political observers note that Dempsey could immediately attract national media attention, energize Democratic donors, and potentially appeal to women voters, independents, and those looking for a political outsider.”

If Platner withdraws by 5 p.m. on July 13, Maine Democrats have until July 27 to select a replacement, giving them roughly two weeks to recruit, vet, and launch a statewide Senate campaign from scratch against an entrenched incumbent.

While President Donald Trump promised Iranian protesters "help is on the way," his administration secretly handed their immigration files to the government they had fled, a new lawsuit charges.

The Iranian American Legal Defense Fund and Public Citizen filed the suit Tuesday in federal court in Washington against Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement director David Venturella, and their agencies.

The lawsuit asks the court to stop the practice and notify every Iranian refugee whose files were shared without consent.

"The law couldn't be more clear that information in asylum applications is protected," said Michael Kirkpatrick, a Public Citizen attorney on the case. He called it "potentially a matter of life and death."

The lawsuit alleges that starting in March 2025, ICE held monthly secret meetings with representatives of the Iranian government — conducted through Pakistan's embassy, since the U.S. has no formal diplomatic relations with Tehran — and handed over immigration files, asylum applications, and personal records of detained Iranians.

According to the lawsuit, ICE officials also brought Iranian government representatives directly into detention facilities to meet with detainees face to face.

The detainees had shared sensitive details — their identities, families, political beliefs, and religious affiliations — in confidence, trusting they would never reach Tehran.

"The Iranian Government engages in unlawful killings, forced disappearances, torture, arbitrary detention, and persecution of political dissidents, religious minorities, and LGBTQ individuals," the State Department found in its own human rights report, the lawsuit notes.

The administration deported more than 100 Iranians on at least three flights, the Washington Post reported, with some called in for interrogation by the intelligence wing of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps upon arrival.

The lawsuit says the U.S. government "materially increased the likelihood that Iranian asylum seekers will be detained, interrogated, tortured, or killed upon return."

"This policy has also exposed the Iranian asylum seekers' family members and acquaintances to retaliation in the form of arrest, interrogation, torture, and death," it adds.

Just two weeks before the last deportation flight, Trump posted on Truth Social urging Iranians to "keep protesting — take over your institutions… They will pay a big price," telling them "help is on its way."

"The new policy has continued notwithstanding the June 2025 military strikes by the United States, the massacre of tens of thousands of Iranian protestors by the Iranian Government in January 2026, and the war launched by the United States on February 28, 2026," the lawsuit states.

Vice President JD Vance’s latest book titled “Communion” received a scathing dissection Tuesday in Rolling Stone, one in which journalist Stephen Rodrick hammered the vice president’s memoir as being about “what happens when religious conviction collides with a cult of personality.”

“Vance wants you to believe that Communion is about one man finding God. It’s not,” Rodrick wrote in his write-up. “It’s about what happens when religious conviction collides with a cult of personality. Vance argues that God must come first. Vance’s political career suggests he doesn’t believe his own faith.”

Vance first rose to national prominence with the release of his 2016 book “Hillbilly Elegy,” a memoir in which Vance recounted his upbringing in a community ravaged by poverty and drug addiction. It would be that same year that Vance would also pen a brutal essay criticizing then-presidential candidate Donald Trump.

It was with great irony, Rodrick argued, that 10 years later Vance would come to embody the very traits he once condemned.

“In a decade, Vance has gone from the kid everyone roots for to a Trump-conjoined demagogue lying about Haitian immigrants, repeatedly stating he does not give a f--- about Ukraine or childless Americans,” Rodrick wrote.

“His story starts as a heartwarming tale of a young man who scrambled to safety via the traditional ladders of American escape. Now Vance is napalming the ladder and telling the poor folks below that it is better to burn.”

The memoir’s core theme is Vance’s conversion to Catholicism in 2019. Regarding Vance’s supposed religious awakening, Rodrick concurred that the vice president had, in fact, completed a "spiritual journey,” but one far different than the one described.

“Vance’s spiritual journey is now complete,” Rodrick wrote. “God may be in his heart, but Donald Trump sits on the throne.”