Sprawling.
In a word, that’s the Trump administration’s six-week-old campaign against Maine.
There’s been an escalating war of words and mounting investigations centered on Maine’s policies toward transgender students.
It’s been a firehose of news, and with so many agencies and actors playing parts, it can be hard to keep track of it all, even if you’re tuned in every day. Did you look away for just a minute? Good luck getting caught up. In this spat, there’s time in a minute for decisions, investigations and letters that a minute will rescind, to paraphrase T.S. Eliot.
We’ve put together a guide that breaks down the key players and actions of the past six weeks. It’s not exhaustive, but if you’ve been unable to keep up, here are the broad strokes.
This overview doesn’t include the Trump administration’s nationwide actions, including heating assistance program layoffs, changes to how research is funded, the rescinding of COVID-19-era grants, new tariffs, imminent showdowns with states over diversity policies and voting restrictions and more.
How did this all start?
In February, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that seeks to keep transgender athletes out of girls’ and women’s sports. That had an immediate impact nationally, with the NCAA changing its policy in response.
Maine was thrust into the center of the debate after state Rep. Laurel Libby, R-Auburn, made a now-infamous social media post targeting a transgender Greely High School athlete who won a girls’ track-and-field title.
Not long after that Trump singled out Maine during a Republican governors meeting in Washington. The next day Trump and Gov. Janet Mills crossed paths at an event at the White House. In a heated exchange, Trump pressed Mills on the state’s policy toward transgender athletes and the governor told the president that she would “see you in court.”
Why is this an issue in Maine?
State law, specifically the Maine Human Rights Act, prohibits discrimination in education, employment, housing and more on the basis of race, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, disability, ancestry or national origin. The act was amended in 2019 to provide a more clear definition of gender identity and again in 2021 to prohibit discrimination based on gender identity in education.
Compliance with Trump’s order would mean violating the state’s own laws. However, his executive order doesn’t have the force of law, legal experts say.
What is Trump threatening?
During that Republican governors event, Trump floated withholding federal funding to get Maine to comply with his executive order.
But it wasn’t until last month when the Trump administration made explicitly clear what would happen if the state doesn’t bend to his will. Tucked into a March 19 press release announcing the University of Maine System’s compliance with Title IX, the U.S. Department of Agriculture delivered an ultimatum to the rest of the state: Keep transgender athletes out of girls’ and women’s sports or lose federal funding.
How much federal funding does Maine receive?
A lot.
In the last fiscal year, Maine received nearly $21 billion in federal funds (minus some Medicare support and what comes through the U.S. Postal Service), according to the liberal Maine Center for Economic Policy.
Maine is a “net receiver” of federal funds, meaning the state gets more back than what it loses in taxation. In 2022, Mainers paid an average of $11,158 in federal taxes, while the U.S. government returned $18,714 per capita to Maine, an analyst for the Maine Center for Economic Policy wrote in March.
What agencies are involved?
There is a sprawling alphabet soup of agencies taking part in the pressure campaign against Maine:
— U.S. Department of Agriculture
— U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
— U.S. Department of Education
— U.S. Department of Commerce
— U.S. Department of Justice
— Social Security Administration
What are their targets?
The federal government has been investigating:
— State of Maine
— Maine Department of Education
— University of Maine System
— Greely High School in Cumberland
— Maine Principals’ Association
How is Trump pressuring Maine?
The heart of this pressure campaign has been a series of investigations into alleged Title IX violations. Title IX is a federal law, passed in 1972, that guarantees equal opportunities to girls and women to compete in sports in any educational institution that receives federal funding.
The Trump administration has argued that allowing transgender athletes to play alongside girls and women violates their civil and equal opportunity rights.
Presently, there are more federal agencies investigating Maine than transgender athletes in girls’ sports. There are no transgender athletes competing on any UMaine System sports team. At the high school level, only two transgender athletes are competing during the current school year.
For the 2023-24 school year, about 45,000 students participated in high school sports in Maine, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations. (That does count students who participated in two or more sports multiple times.)
Between 2013 and 2021, the Maine Principals’ Association, which oversees scholastic sports for 151 public and private schools, heard from 56 trans students wishing to participate on a high school sports team consistent with their gender identity, only four of whom were trans girls.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Education launched a separate probe into its state counterpart over allegations that dozens of school districts are hiding students’ “gender plans” from parents in violation of the Family Educational Privacy Rights Act.
Last month, the Social Security Administration ended two programs that allowed Maine providers to electronically transmit birth and death information. That meant new parents would have to drive to one of the eight Social Security offices in the state to register their newborns for a Social Security number rather than at the hospital.
That decision was reversed within 48 hours.
Over the past two weeks, we’ve learned that acting Administrator Leland Dudek did that as payback against Mills for not being “cordial” to Trump. He canceled those programs despite warnings from senior Social Security officials that the decision would likely increase fraud. In an email exchange, Dudek acknowledged “improper payments” would increase, but saw that as tolerable in order to punish a “petulant child,” as he called Mills.
Has Maine lost any funding?
So far, the impact of these investigations on federal funding for Maine have been limited.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture on Wednesday announced it would freeze its funding for educational programs in Maine. That affects the salaries for workers who administer school food programs.
The Trump administration also pulled funding for Maine Sea Grant, but since then, the Commerce Department has said it will renegotiate that grant. More than 30 states, Puerto Rico and Guam participate in the national Sea Grant program. No other Sea Grant program has seen its funding cut.
So what happens next?
Last month, Maine missed a deadline from the Trump administration to comply with its interpretation of Title IX. This week, the U.S. Department of Education issued a final warning, giving the state until April 11 to comply.
If Maine misses that deadline, it faces possible sanction or legal action.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi has threatened to sue Maine over any alleged Title IX violations.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has already referred its Title IX case to the Justice Department.
Both Greely High School and the Maine Principals’ Association — which argues the Trump administration has no authority to investigate it because the organization receives no federal funding — have said they won’t sign agreements that they violated Title IX.
It’s uncertain how this fight would play out in court. The Trump administration’s interpretation of Title IX is untested (courts have ruled it extends to gender identity), and legal experts have said that the rushed investigations — which concluded after four days without interviewing state officials — could undermine the federal government’s case when it goes before a judge.
But if Trump prevails, Maine stands to lose large sums of federal funds and the case could set the stage for the president’s showdowns with other states.
