Trump tries to force Maine into obedience with the aid of six different federal agencies

On a Monday last month, after a conservative Maine legislator expressed outrage on Facebook about a transgender girl winning a high school pole vaulting event, the hammer of the federal government began to swing.

By Friday of that week, Feb. 21, President Donald Trump singled out Maine’s governor during a White House event and threatened to cut off the state’s federal funding. “See you in court,” Gov. Janet Mills shot back.

Then came a barrage of investigations and threats: The U.S. Department of Education opened inquiries into the Maine Department of Education and the student’s school district, alleging they had violated federal civil rights law. The same day, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services targeted the Maine Education Department, too, as well as the state’s university system.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture then launched an investigation into the university system; and on Tuesday, the university said the USDA had halted funding as the agency investigates “prospective” civil rights violations, records show.

The U.S. Department of Justice sent a letter that “Maine should be on notice” that the agency was poised to sue. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration even pulled $4.5 million for marine research, but it didn’t touch the 33 other grantees who get similar funding.

Then last week, the Social Security Administration briefly became the sixth federal agency to target Maine, canceling contracts that allowed hospitals to automatically report births and funeral homes to report deaths.

Although the Social Security contracts were reinstated, and the state may reapply for the marine research funding, the moves had already wreaked havoc.

Now, more federal agencies are pressing down on Maine than there are transgender girls competing in girls’ sports in the state. Only two transgender girls are competing this school year, according to the Maine Principals’ Association.

“The president is trying to crush the opposition. He’s trying to crush Maine,” said David Webbert, a longtime civil rights attorney in Maine. To Webbert, it’s as if Trump is saying: “‘Maine believes in transgender rights? Well, you’re going to see what happens to you.’”

Some view Maine as a test case for how the Trump administration may try to force its policies on states, regardless of existing state laws. In public comments, residents have invoked the state’s motto to rally Mainers: “Dirigo,” Latin for “I lead.”

“It’s Maine now, but what state is it going to be next? This is not just a Maine issue, but Maine spoke up. So right now, it’s, ‘Let’s make an example out of Maine,’” said Kris Pitts, executive co-director of the nonprofit MaineTransNet.

State officials, thrust into the spotlight, have been trying to avoid becoming more of a target, carefully choosing their words and declining interviews with reporters. And Mills hasn’t challenged Trump again publicly on this issue.

There are signs the administration is preparing to force other states to follow the president’s directives: The DOJ recently sent letters to California and Minnesota threatening to sue those states if they don’t ban transgender girls from athletics.

The Trump administration also is taking a multiagency approach with Columbia University. On Friday, several federal agencies canceled a combined $400 million in grants and contracts because, the administration alleged, the university was not sufficiently combatting antisemitism.

The press release announcing the multimillion-dollar punishment contained a caution for noncompliant institutions: “Doing business with the Federal Government is a privilege.”

Nearly everything about the blitz of investigations in Maine, including how they’re being carried out, is not ordinary.

Federal agencies that don’t usually enforce civil rights laws in schools launched inquiries. HHS, for instance, usually focuses on health care access for people with disabilities or language translation, and there’s no evidence it’s conducted an investigation of Maine in the past 20 years.

Not only did it dive into Maine’s policies on transgender athletes, it reached a conclusion with unprecedented speed.

Investigations like this typically take months, if not years, according to a review of federal investigation data and records by ProPublica and the Bangor Daily News. But just one business day after announcing the investigation, the federal agency decided the Maine Department of Education wasn’t giving girls equal opportunities and had violated Title IX “by allowing male athletes to compete against female athletes,” according to a letter from HHS to the state.

It sent that finding to the general inbox at the Maine attorney general’s office after interviewing no one from that office, the Education Department, governor’s office or officials from two high schools cited in the letter for allowing transgender athletes to compete against girls, according to those agencies and schools.

The Maine attorney general’s office pointed out that the letter cited an incorrect sum of federal funding that flows to the state. Legal experts also viewed its interpretation of Title IX as problematic. Trump’s Feb. 5 “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” executive order asserted that transgender girls can’t play girls’ sports under that federal law. But Title IX has never required schools to exclude them, and Trump’s order can’t rewrite federal law, said Deborah Brake, a professor at University of Pittsburgh School of Law.

“The president can put out an executive order saying anything he wants,” Brake said, but “there has never been a court decision interpreting Title IX to require the exclusion of transgender girls from girls’ sports.”

In a statement, the agency reiterated that Maine could lose federal funding if it didn’t comply with its position. “HHS will investigate and enforce Title IX to the full extent permitted by law to uphold fairness, safety, dignity, and biological truth in women’s and girls’ educational athletic opportunities. Men have no place in women’s sports,” it said.

The USDA investigation of the University of Maine, launched on a Saturday, the day after Mills’ exchange with Trump, also is unusual. In announcing the investigation, the department said $100 million to the university was at risk because of the state’s “blatant disregard” of Trump’s order; a university system spokesperson said that amount reflected multiple years of funding.

Then came a series of questions, according to records obtained by the Bangor Daily News and ProPublica. At 10:50 a.m. the following Tuesday, a USDA official sent a University of Maine official 10 yes-or-no questions about its transgender athlete policies — and gave her 1 hour, 10 minutes to respond. The officials agreed to discuss the questions over a Zoom call, and, about five hours after that call, the USDA sent a list of follow-up questions. The agency wanted those answers by 1 p.m. the following day.

Sherron Jernigan, a USDA civil rights director for the animal and plant inspection service, sent the questions:

“Does the University of Maine System provide sex-separated toilet, locker room, and shower facilities for male student athletes and female student athletes?” The university answered “yes.”

“Does the University of Maine System permit a biological male to participate in individual or team contact sports with biological females?” The university answered “no.”

The university’s Title IX coordinator told the USDA that none of the seven universities within the system has transgender athletes participating in NCAA-sanctioned sports. (Of the more than 500,000 students who compete on NCAA teams across the country, fewer than 10 are transgender, the league’s president recently told a U.S. Senate panel.)

In her response to follow-up questions, Liz Lavoie, the university’s Title IX coordinator, added that the USDA had not given the university “any explanation as to the basis or scope of its inquiry, or the steps in the process.”

“Further, we have been given mere hours to respond to both sets of questions and we are responding in good faith but find the approach concerning given the lack of official service and the informal nature that the questions and interview have been presented,” Lavoie wrote.

The USDA did not issue any findings after the questioning, but the agency already is taking action. On Tuesday, the university said the USDA had frozen funding that could affect research on everything from the contamination of Maine farms by forever chemicals to the sustainability of Maine’s lobster industry. Last fiscal year, the USDA awarded nearly $30 million to the University of Maine.

A USDA spokesperson said the agency would not comment on a pending investigation.

Webbert, the civil rights attorney, called the federal government’s inquiries “a show.”

“It’s a political move dressed up, very barely, with a legal process, but it’s a fake legal process. So it is very concerning because they’re not even trying to make it look like it’s due process,” he said. “It reeks of pure politics.”

The federal government has made no effort to hide the ideological perspective that its various inquiries are seeking to enforce in Maine and the rest of the county, according to documents obtained by ProPublica and the Bangor Daily News. In announcing its action in Maine, HHS said it wanted to “restore biological truth to the federal government” and in its findings cited an article from OutKick, a Fox-owned conservative news site with a mission of “exposing the destructive nature of ‘woke’ activism.”

Meanwhile, the Office for Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Education — which does have a mandate to investigate gender-based discrimination in schools and, with more than 500 people, dwarfs most of the nation’s civil rights enforcement divisions — seemed to conclude that Maine was violating Title IX before it finished investigating.

The press release announcing the launch of the investigation quoted the department’s acting assistant secretary for civil rights, Craig Trainor: “It is shameful that Governor Mills refuses to stand with women and girls. Her rejection of the antidiscrimination obligations that Maine voluntarily accepted when it agreed to receive federal taxpayer dollars is unlawful.”

Trainor linked to “credible local reporting” around the pole vaulter in his letter to Maine officials announcing the civil rights investigation. The report came from the Maine Wire, an online outlet founded by a conservative think tank based in the state. The office hasn’t made contact with Maine since it notified state agencies of its investigation, according to the Maine agencies.

The Education Department did not respond to a request for comment.

Maine’s governor never believed her state would receive an impartial investigation. “I imagine that the outcome of this politically directed investigation is all but predetermined,” Mills said in a statement after the Education Department investigation began. She has since declined to discuss her view of Maine’s transgender athlete policy.

But she has reiterated that Trump legally can’t force the state to violate its own law, the Maine Human Rights Act, which prevents discrimination based on gender identity.

Mainers aren’t sure what this full-court press will mean for their state; keeping up with it is hard enough. State Sen. Joe Rafferty, a Democrat who co-chairs the Legislature’s committee on education and cultural affairs, expressed disbelief when a reporter informed him that HHS’ investigation only lasted four days. He wasn’t aware it had officially started.

“That is why I think part of this is a mirage,” he said of the various investigations. The eventual resolution, he said, is more likely to be settled in a courtroom.

Indeed, HHS referred its finding to the DOJ, which can sue Maine to remove its federal funding. (The health agency also expanded its investigation last week to include the Maine Principals’ Association and the Maine high school where the pole vaulter is a student, according to the agency.) The results of that lawsuit could have significant implications, said Brake, the law professor. Not once since Congress enacted Title IX in 1972 has the DOJ ever cut off funding for a violation.

All the federal attention has been unsettling to some Mainers, welcomed by others who don’t want transgender girls playing girls’ sports and disruptive to the 625-student Greely High School, which the transgender pole vaulter attends.

“It’s just upsetting to everybody at school to be the center of attention and focus. It’s unnerving to go to school and the school is surrounded by police and reporters on every corner,” Gia Drew, who leads a statewide LGBTQ+ advocacy group called EqualityMaine, said of what she’s hearing from the community. “It’s hard to focus on a calculus test when your friends are under attack. It affects not just trans people but everyone who is part of a school system.”

After state Rep. Laurel Libby, a Republican from Auburn, singled out the student on her Facebook page and brought Trump’s attention to Maine, parents in the school district planned to show support by displaying signs and handing out treats before classes began, said state Rep. Christina Mitchell, a Democrat who represents Cumberland, home to Greely High School. She’s also a school board member in the district.

But there were television trucks and a police presence surrounding the school, so parents decided not to add to the commotion.

The Bangor Daily News and ProPublica reached out to the family of the student athlete but received no response. Mitchell said other students, including the transgender student’s teammates and competitors, are supportive of her. “Nobody was making a fuss,” she said.

And many in Maine don’t want a fuss. Even as Mills’ response to Trump made some proud — you can now buy “See you in court” T-shirts — others recognized that it launched Maine into the nation’s consciousness. “You watch it and feel like: ‘Oh, all eyes will be here. This will be something big,’” said Pitts, with MaineTransNet.

Libby and other Republican lawmakers have welcomed the chance to amplify their viewpoint that allowing transgender girls in sports is unsafe and discriminates against girls. Another Republican lawmaker introduced a bill to the Legislature to require transgender athletes to compete on teams matching the gender they were assigned at birth.

“All of the accomplishments of women over the years are being erased by men masquerading as women, erasing us from the history books,” Libby said in a weekly address from Maine House Republicans.

While Libby has been censured by Democrats who control the Maine House for her initial Facebook post about the pole vaulter, she has continued to make appearances on right-wing media to urge the governor to stop supporting the right of transgender girls to compete in girls’ sports. On Tuesday, she filed a lawsuit in Maine District Court against the state’s House speaker over the censure, accusing him of stripping her voting rights “in retaliation for protected speech on a highly important and hotly debated matter of public concern,” according to the complaint. Her party has rallied around her and her cause.

“Allowing biological boys to compete with our girls, is not only unpopular, and unfair, but it is also illegal,” Republican House Minority Leader Billy Bob Faulkingham of Winter Harbor said in a written statement. “Governor Mills should abandon this indefensible position and uphold Title IX protections for our girls.”

Maine institutions being targeted by the federal government have continued to follow state law. And at a regularly scheduled school board meeting at Greely High School on Thursday night, the board president pledged the district’s “unwavering support” of all students.

Mitchell said that Maine may be the federal government’s target now, but other states could be next.

“I think you have to stand up to it. Whatever you think is right, you have to stand up for it, because, if you don’t, it’ll just keep going and spread to other places,” Mitchell said. “We’re a small state, but if you give an inch, you know?”

by Callie Ferguson and Erin Rhoda, Bangor Daily News, and Jennifer Smith Richards and Jodi S. Cohen, ProPublica