Participants gather at Monument Square for the Jan. 18, 2025 the People’s March in Portland, Maine. (Photo by Jim Neuger/ Maine Morning Star)
It is very clear that the Trump administration is using what federal levers are available to punish the state of Maine for boldly pushing back on his efforts to dismantle rights for transgender people.
Since Gov. Janet Mills now famously told President Donald Trump “see you in court,” it seems he is trying to make good on his threats to withhold federal funding, in some cases without any due process.
Here is a running list of the retaliatory federal actions that have happened since that exchange.
Beyond soothing his seething id for being challenged by a woman (to his face, on his home turf), Trump’s vengeance may also make some political sense.
Unlike other Democratic-led states that would be easy to write off, or hard to challenge, Trump clearly has a strong base in Maine, one that granted him a key Electoral College vote each time he ran.
Many are likely to interpret the withdrawal of federal funding and other inconveniences as being Mills’ fault, rather than an effort by the president to supersede state law.
Legislative Republicans are already framing the dynamic in this way, as prioritizing “radical ideology” over “the future of our kids,” as Assistant House Republican Leader Katrina Smith put it in a recent press statement. My sense is that they are hoping it translates into electoral wins because, while transgender rights affect very, very few cisgender people, the general public seems open to these arguments.
But human rights should not be impacted by polling numbers.
As others have pointed out, the debate bears some similarity to other fights for justice. For example, despite becoming legal in 1967, general approval of interracial marriage didn’t cross the 50% threshold until the mid 1990s.
Further, as Eesha Pendharkar reported earlier this week, trans students have been participating in Maine sports for years without incident but the recent politicization of the issue is threatening the privacy and well-being of an already marginalized group of young people.
As I have written before, Mills is not just standing up for the rights of trans people, she is standing up for the rule of law and the protections that it provides for Mainers across race, religion, background, ability, sex, sexual orientation and age. And those rights should not be so easily stripped away.
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