Gov. Janet Mills of Maine is attempting to capitalize on her moment in the national spotlight after she got into a public dust-up with President Donald Trump last week over her state’s defiance of his executive order demanding biological males who identify as transgender stay out of women’s sports.
The pair got into a verbal skirmish on Friday at the White House after Trump said the night prior that Maine would not receive any federal funding until it started taking action to prevent transgender women from competing on women’s sports teams.
“We’re going to follow the law, sir. We’ll see you in court,” Mills said after Trump asked if she would comply with his order. “Enjoy your life after governor, because I don’t think you’ll be an elected official afterward,” Trump shot back.
A Maine state representative confirmed to Fox News Digital that following the verbal skirmish on Friday, Mills began sending out mass fundraising texts to Maine residents that cited her altercation with Trump, which played out on national TV.
MAINE STATE REP TALKS ‘EXTREME’ TRANSGENDER ATHLETE POLICY
“On Friday at a bipartisan meeting of governors, Donald Trump threatened to deny Maine school children federal funding unless we fall in line with his personal demands,” Mills’ text campaign said. “He even stated that he was ‘the law,’ never mind Congress or the states. I told him we’d see him in court.”
Mills went on to say that while Trump campaigned on lowering prices for everyday Americans, he is now using his new power to “punish his enemies.”
“I want to make one thing clear: Maine will not be intimidated by the president’s threats,” the campaign said. “The work to push back against Trump and his agenda begins at the state level. Can you donate $10 to the Maine Democratic Party to make sure they have the resources to fight for our state?”
The same week Trump threatened to withhold funding from Maine for not complying with his executive order on women’s sports, a transgender woman who competed as a man until June last year won first place in the women’s pole vault at Maine’s Class B state indoor championship.
Maine’s primary governing body for high school athletics, the Maine Principal’s Association, confirmed that it did not intend to follow Trump’s executive order after it came out. Rather, the association said they would defer to state law that makes it illegal to determine someone’s athletic eligibility on the basis of their gender identity.
Sarah Perry, a civil rights attorney who has extensive experience litigating Title IX issues, said that in addition to Trump’s executive order, Maine is also flouting directives from the Department of Education and previously established precedent from a slew of cases that challenged former President Joe Biden’s Title IX regulations allowing athletic eligibility to be determined by one’s preferred gender identity.
“Within six weeks [after Biden’s Title IX ruling] we had 11 federal lawsuits brought by 26 states, in addition to a handful of others – the Biden administration has lost every time,” Perry pointed out.
Perry added that besides the obvious risk of losing funding, these states also open themselves up to federal Title IX investigations, something she said could potentially force them to comply with Trump’s demands.
Fox News Digital attempted to reach out to the governor’s office for comment but did not hear back.
