The Trump administration stopped federal funds from being distributed to Maine because of the governor’s refusal to prohibit boys from competing in girls sports.
The move came on Wednesday after multiple requests were sent to Gov. Janet Mills (D-ME) urging her to comply with federal law “against discrimination in education.” After Mills’s continued refusal, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins notified Mills that she was halting federal funds the U.S. Department of Agriculture sent to the state “for certain administrative and technological functions in schools.” Rollins communicated her decision in a letter to Mills.
“You cannot openly violate federal law against discrimination in education and expect federal funding to continue unabated,” Rollins said in the letter. “Your defiance of federal law has cost your state, which is bound by Title IX in educational programming. Today, I am freezing Maine’s federal funds for certain administrative and technological functions in schools.”
Rollins did not specify an amount or for which program funds were being frozen. However, she reiterated that the restriction on this distribution of funds could end immediately if Mills began complying with the law.
“This is only the beginning, though you are free to end it at any time by protecting women and girls in compliance with federal law,” Rollins emphasized.
President Donald Trump issued the “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” executive order on Feb. 5, which made it the nation’s policy to “protect opportunities for women and girls to compete in safe and fair sports.”
“In recent years, many educational institutions and athletic associations have allowed men to compete in women’s sports,” Trump’s order reads. “This is demeaning, unfair, and dangerous to women and girls, and denies women and girls the equal opportunity to participate and excel in competitive sports.”
Trump stressed the importance of Title IX in his directive, explicitly noting that those receiving federal funds couldn’t “deny women an equal opportunity to participate in sports” and that to do so, as some courts recognized, would be “ignoring fundamental biological truths between the two sexes.”
“Therefore, it is the policy of the United States to rescind all funds from educational programs that deprive women and girls of fair athletic opportunities, which results in the endangerment, humiliation, and silencing of women and girls and deprives them of privacy,” the executive order notes.
Rollins emphasized this in her letter to Mills.
“In order to continue to receive taxpayer dollars from USDA, the state of Maine must demonstrate compliance with Title IX’s protection of female student athletes from having to compete with or against or having to appear unclothed before males,” the USDA secretary wrote.
Rollins also said her department is reviewing the state’s “research and education-related funding” to evaluate compliance with federal law.
“Under President Trump’s leadership, USDA is ensuring state educational, research, and other entities receiving federal taxpayer funds comply with federal laws or correct and remediate any violations,” Rollins said.
Rollins also noted that this funding freeze would not include any “federal feeding programs or direct assistance to people” in Maine, emphasizing that “if a child was fed today, they will be fed tomorrow.”
TRUMP MUST LISTEN TO VOTERS ON THE ECONOMY
Rollins concluded by letting Mills know that the USDA would also be reviewing previous grants to the state awarded by the Biden administration.
“Many of these grants appear to be wasteful, redundant, or otherwise against the priorities of the Trump Administration,” Rollins said. “USDA will not extend the Biden Administration’s bloated bureaucracy and will instead focus on a Department that is farmer-first and without a leftist social agenda.”
