After Maine Gov. Janet Mills advised Pres. Trump “Look you in court,” her speak is facing federal investigations.
AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
Now to Maine and the response to its Democratic governor’s standoff with President Trump. It started appropriate over per week ago with a inequity within the White Dwelling. It has some taking a behold at Governor Janet Mills as a hero. Others dismay she’s place her speak’s budget at menace over the topic of transgender athletes. Maine Public Radio’s Kevin Miller experiences.
KEVIN MILLER, BYLINE: Trump had been speaking to the nation’s governors for nearly an hour when he paused and requested if Maine Governor Janet Mills was within the room. Days earlier, he had signed an teach threatening to decrease funding to states until they banned transgender athletes in females’s sports activities, and a video of a transgender early life a hit a track meet in Maine had long past viral on social media.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Your inhabitants would now not need males playing in females’s sports activities.
JANET MILLS: I breeze to possess a examine the regulation.
TRUMP: So you better comply as a result of in some other case, you usually are now not getting any federal funding.
MILLER: Mills was off-mic, so her curt response – behold you in court – is barely audible. But Trump heard her.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
TRUMP: Loyal. I breeze to behold you in court. I discover ahead to that.
MILLER: And folks four words – behold you in court – in the present day struck a chord nationwide with Democratic activists and influencers. Look you in court T-shirts are in reality for sale in Maine and on-line. And Maine’s governor is being lobbied even more challenging to direct Republican Senator Susan Collins next year.
JIM MELCHER: I admire some Democrats feel indulge in their leaders haven’t proven heaps of braveness, heaps of guts, and they’ve been taking a behold for somebody to be a spokesperson.
MILLER: Jim Melcher teaches political science at the University of Maine in Farmington, a rural college town where Mills has lived for decades. Melcher describes Mills as a scrappy extinct prosecutor who would now not serve down in court or on a political stage.
MELCHER: I admire the visual of her standing as much as Donald Trump, announcing she would now not be intimidated and behold you in court, was a good attain for her to discontinue that. Give these of us a slogan. Show somebody doing this.
MILLER: It’s unclear whether Trump can legally withhold federal funding from states when or now not it’s been passed by Congress. But for the reason that inequity, the Trump administration has launched three investigations into Maine below Title IX, which prohibits discrimination in training in step with sex. And this week, Attorney Traditional Pam Bondi threatened officials in Maine, California and Minnesota with lawsuits, until the states drop in line.
JAMI TAYLOR: I was taken aback to discover the fight initiate off on the sports activities topic, given where the public’s attitudes are.
MILLER: Jami Taylor is a political science professor at the University of Toledo in Ohio and co-creator of the 2018 e book “The Necessary Upward thrust Of Transgender Rights.” Taylor says public notion appears to be extra aligned with Trump than with Maine’s protection, which prohibits discrimination in colleges in step with gender identification.
TAYLOR: I admire the trans rights circulate is going to rob a loss on that topic.
MILLER: Republicans campaigned in opposition to transgender rights all by the election and exclaim the public agrees. Support in Maine, Republicans indulge in Convey Senator Trey Stewart accuse Mills and Democratic lawmakers of risking heaps of of millions of bucks in federal lend a hand over a protection affecting a runt replacement of students.
TREY STEWART: It’s incredibly depressed that Maine, which is already a depressed speak, already closely reliant on federal funding, is now being jeopardized in our federal funding.
MILLER: Some members of Maine’s trans crew are anxious by the protection adjustments by Washington. Bre Danvers-Kidman, the co-govt director of the Maine Transgender Network, says it feels indulge in the hot debate is extra about, quote, “adults bullying children” than transgender athletes. But Danvers-Kidman is heartened to discover the pushback in opposition to Trump from Mills and Maine Attorney Traditional Aaron Frey, who is preparing the speak’s appropriate defense.
BRE DANVERS-KIDMAN: When there is cash involved, I admire there is repeatedly model of a place a query to, indulge in, are of us going to face up for the true thing, or are they going to resolve or now not it’s now not value it as a result of or now not it’s too much cash? Attributable to we’re now not speaking a few diminutive quantity of money right here.
MILLER: Mills has been mostly quiet since her stumble upon with Trump, but in a written commentary, she acknowledged the topic is never in any appreciate times about athletics. It’s about whether a president can sing a speak cash over a political dispute. And with billions of bucks at stake in Maine and various states, governors will be watching when the 2 sides procedure behold every assorted in court.
For NPR News, I’m Kevin Miller in Augusta, Maine.
(SOUNDBITE OF BONOBO’S “CIRRUS”)
Copyright © 2025 NPR. All rights reserved. Talk to our online page phrases of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for additional info.
NPR transcripts are created on a accelerate decrease-off date by an NPR contractor. This newsletter could well moreover simply now not be in its closing assemble and can simply be updated or revised at some point soon. Accuracy and availability could well moreover simply differ. The authoritative document of NPR’s programming is the audio document.