Trump Clashes with Maine Gov

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Maine Democratic Gov. Janet Mills’ public dust-up with President Donald Trump during a White House meeting with most of America's state leaders didn’t live up to governors’ collective goal of "disagree[ing] better," the National Governors Association chairman said Saturday. Colorado Democratic Gov. Jared Polis was asked about the exchange – in which Trump challenged Maine to comply with his executive order on transgender athletes in school sports, and Mills told Trump "see you in court." The president remarked that any state that does not align its scholastic athletics with biological sexes will not receive federal funding.

As governors, they have their prior initiative that they continue to work on is to disagree better, Chairman Polis said. We always hope that people can disagree in a way that elevates the discourse and tries to come to a common solution around . . . what the issue is. I don't think that that disagreement is necessarily a model of that, he continued, adding that some governors may not have known the origins of the fiery exchange at the time. Polis said governors do have the right to sue the federal government but that there are also other ways to understand where respective parties are coming from. It was a little uncomfortable in the room, added NGA Vice Chairman Kevin Stitt, Oklahoma’s GOP governor.

The exchange may have been "good politics" for both Mills and Trump with their respective bases. He added that he personally agrees with Trump’s stance and noted that he led a push in 2022 to ensure that scholastic athletes are competing against people of their own biological sex in Oklahoma. The NCAA has followed that, I think the Olympics have. And then you have a governor saying that they're not going to follow that. So, I don't know what legal background she has, but they talked about seeing each other in court. And we'll we'll see what happens on it. Polis added that Mills maintained that she is following current federal law under her current stance, which involves transgender athletes and federal funding.

Later, Stitt said that Trump had invited all governors to give him a call, and had quipped that if a Democrat and a Republican call at the same time, he will take the Democrat’s call first. He is a businessman. He is not ideological. He wants to get things done, Stitt said. At the White House meeting, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey successfully asked cabinet officials to share their direct lines, to better facilitate cooperation between states and the Trump administration. That nugget was revealed by South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, who quipped that the president had also offered governors an open line – but did not explicitly publicize his number. The situation involves a legal battle between the state of Maine and the federal government.

The U.S. Department of Education launched a federal investigation into the state’s compliance with Title IX, focusing on the state’s policies allowing transgender students to compete in school sports. The probe claims that these policies may violate Title IX protections for women’s sports. Maine Gov. Janet Mills denounced the probe as political retaliation, warning that Trump is using federal power to punish states that refuse to comply with his agenda. No President—Republican or Democrat—can withhold federal funding authorized and appropriated by Congress and paid for by Maine taxpayers in an attempt to coerce someone into compliance with his will, Mills said. It is a violation of our Constitution and of our laws, which I took an oath to uphold.