Maine governor tells Trump ‘see you in court’ amid faceoff over trans athletes
Maine Gov. Janet Mills (D) told President Donald Trump “we’ll see you in court” during a tense exchange in the White House and said her state won’t be intimidated by his threat to withhold federal funds if it doesn’t comply with a recent executive order barring transgender athletes from competing on women’s sports teams.
On Friday, the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights said it was opening a Title IX investigation into the Maine Department of Education over the inclusion of transgender athletes.
It came after Trump had told a group of Republican governors about his plans to withhold federal funds from Maine unless the state complies with his executive order. At a meeting of governors at the White House earlier on Friday, he called out Mills specifically, asking: “Is Maine here, the governor of Maine?”
“Are you not going to comply with it?” Trump asked her.
“I’m going to comply with state and federal laws,” she said.
“Well, we are the federal law,” Trump replied. “You better do it because you’re not going to get any federal funding at all if you don’t.”
After some back-and-forth, Trump repeated himself, telling Mills: “You better do it because you’re not going to get federal funding.”
“We’re going to follow the law, sir. We’ll see you in court,” she said.
“Good, I’ll see you in court. I look forward to that. That should be a real easy one,” Trump said. “And enjoy your life after governor because I don’t think you’ll be in elected politics.”
Mills later released a statement saying Maine “will not be intimidated by the president’s threats.”
If Trump “attempts to unilaterally deprive Maine schoolchildren of the benefit of federal funding,” her administration and the attorney general “will take all appropriate and necessary legal action to restore that funding and the academic opportunity it provides,” she said.
The Maine Principals’ Association said earlier this month that it will not enforce Trump’s Feb. 5 executive order and would follow the Maine Human Rights Act, which bars discrimination based on gender identity. Trump’s executive order directs the Education Department to inform schools that allowing transgender athletes to compete on girls’ and women’s sports teams will put them in violation of Title IX, the federal law banning sex discrimination in schools.
Under the law, schools that discriminate based on sex are not eligible for federal funding.
Announcing its investigation on Friday evening, the Education Department asserted that state laws “do not override federal antidiscrimination laws.”
“Maine would have you believe that it has no choice in how it treats women and girls in athletics – that is, that it must follow its state laws and allow male athletes to compete against women and girls,” Craig Trainor, the Education Department’s acting assistant secretary for civil rights, said in the statement. “Let me be clear: If Maine wants to continue to receive federal funds from the Education Department, it has to follow Title IX.”
The majority of funding for education comes from state and local sources such as property taxes. According to the Education Department, federal contributions to elementary and secondary education make up about 8% of all funding, and this includes contributions from other departments such as the Department of Health and Human Services’ Head Start program and the Agriculture Department’s school lunch program, as well as the Education Department.
In the 2021-2022 fiscal year, the most recent year available, Maine received more than $360 million from the federal government for elementary and secondary education – about 10% of the state’s funding, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
—-
Video Embed Code
Video: At a meeting of governors at the White House on Feb. 21, Maine Gov. Janet Mills defied President Donald Trump’s threat to withhold federal funding.© 2025 , The Washington Post
Embed code: {iframe src=”https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/c/embed/0639d7e1-5186-455d-9af8-a32965c9b110?ptvads=block&playthrough=false” frameborder=”0” width=”480” height=”290” data-category-id=”vertical” data-aspect-ratio=”1.7778”}{/iframe}