A month into Donald Trump’s second term, the president hosted a White House event for the National Governors Association, which didn’t quite go as planned. The Republican picked a fight with Maine’s Democratic governor, Janet Mills, over transgender student athletes, apparently hoping to bully her into submission.
It didn’t work. “See you in court,” the governor told him.
The prediction is now coming to fruition. The Associated Press reported:
The Trump administration on Wednesday sued Maine for not complying with the government’s push to ban transgender athletes in girls and women’s sports, escalating a dispute over whether the state is abiding by a federal law that bars discrimination in education based on sex. … The political overtones of the moment were clear, with Attorney General Pam Bondi — and several athletes who joined her on stage at the Justice Department — citing the matter as a priority for Trump.
At a press conference, Bondi said, in reference to the president, “This has been a huge issue for him.” That’s not generally the kind of argument Americans hear from an attorney general justifying a Justice Department case against a state, but here we are.
This is not, however, the only case of interest: Bondi’s Title IX case dovetails with a separate case, brought by Maine, which recently sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture over funds it froze as a result of the underlying dispute. Late last week, U.S. District Court Judge John Woodcock Jr., a George W. Bush appointee, granted the state’s request for a temporary restraining order and ordered the Cabinet agency to release the funding.
The same day, Trump’s Department of Education, which still exists in a lesser form, said that it was moving forward with plans to cut off all federal funding for Maine’s public schools because of the state’s policy on trans student athletes.
Alas, for the Republican president and his team, this is not the only evidence of the apparent feud. Earlier this month, for example, the public learned that Leland Dudek, the Trump-appointed acting head of the Social Security Administration, ordered the termination of some federal contracts with Maine because the governor bothered the president. (The move was later reversed.) In case that weren’t quite enough, after Trump clashed with Mills, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration also sent a letter to Maine cancelling funding for Maine Sea Grant. Time will tell whether the courts put a stop to all of this, or whether the governor is forced to back down. Watch this space. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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