Carrying on in the spirit of encouragement rather than complaint, the editorial board was gently heartened this week by a bit of synchronicity — and nous — on show by both of Maine’s senators in D.C.

Last Wednesday morning, Sen. Susan Collins called a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on what she termed “harmful” cuts to scientific research by the Trump administration. This is a fine example of prompt and effective use of political power.

The day prior, her counterpart Sen. Angus King gave a rousing speech that invoked the legacy of Margaret Chase Smith and, quoting Smith, said it was time that his colleagues “stop thinking politically as Republicans and Democrats about elections and started thinking patriotically as Americans.”

As we reviewed the coverage of these respective and newsworthy interventions, we were struck by how closely each played to the individual senator’s strengths.

In Collins’ case, it was a clean and clear — as is her style — exercise of administrative clout. The senator’s action, sure to provoke the ire of Trump loyalists, came with a named goal. “For the administration to abruptly cancel grants and slash federal funding with little or no justification clearly puts our nation’s leadership in biomedical research in jeopardy,” Collins told reporters. “It must be reversed.”

In King’s, it was a characteristic blend of rhetorical sleight and history that Mainers know and respect. “What is happening day by day before our eyes; to do otherwise, to keep silent, would be to compromise what I have believed about our country since my first civics class in high school and, at about the same time, when I watched my dad risk his career to fight for justice and the rule of law.”

In our lamentable “flood the zone” era of national politics, with flagrant attacks on America’s institutions, bodies, work and norms still not letting up, it’s incredibly important to take actions that make an impression. It becomes all the more effective when those actions come from more than one camp, when the sense of responsibility for defending our values is shared.