It’s On: Trump, Maine Gov Play Chicken Over Males in Girls’ Sports

Who will blink first? And more to the point, who will voters back — even in Maine?

Donald Trump kicked off this sparring by noting today that the state of Maine still allowed makes to compete in school programs for girls’ sports. Trump had issued an EO directing the Department of Education to force states receiving federal support for their schools to comply with biology-based restrictions on access, and most states have at least offered some compliance. If Maine didn’t comply, Trump warned, he would order their federal funding suspended, as well as the potential political consequences of defiance.

All of this happened with Trump and Maine governor Janet Mills in the same room:

OWNED! pic.twitter.com/BXt32185Ac

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) February 21, 2025

At the gathering in Washington Thursday, Trump said he “heard men are still playing in Maine” and asked if anyone in the crowd was from the state.

“I hate to tell you this, but we’re not going to give them any federal money. They’re still saying they want men to play in women’s sports, and I cannot believe they’re doing that,” he said. “So we’re not going to give them any money, none whatsoever, until they clean that up.”

Mills and state AG Aaron Frey didn’t take too kindly to that ‘advice.’ They issued a statement vowing to take Trump to federal court to get their federal dollars, on which Maine relies more than most states for education:

“If the President attempts to unilaterally deprive Maine school children of the benefit of federal funding, my Administration and the Attorney General will take all appropriate and necessary legal action to restore that funding and the academic opportunity it provides,” Mills said. “The State of Maine will not be intimidated by the President’s threats.”

The president’s comments at a gathering for Republican governors in Washington D.C. came days after a Maine lawmaker made a widely circulated social media post that included photos of a high school athlete and criticized the state’s policy allowing transgender athletes to compete in school sports.

Pardon me for a moment while I digest the argument that federal subsidies to states should come with no strings attached. That’s not how I recall the Joe Biden administration’s Department of Education operating, especially when it came to issues like transgender policy, pronouns, and the like. The same administration tried to force states to use a new definition of “sex” in Title IX to include “gender identities,” and threatened to put funding at risk and used the potential for enforcement for compliance.

Of course, they also lost that battle in court, although not over the use of funding as a potential stick. The federal courts decided that Congress had meant “sex” as biological sex, and Congress would have to act to expand Title IX to cover “gender identity.” Those cases are now moot with the new administration’s policies. Mills and Frey could take Trump to court to force the Department of Education to produce the subsidies regardless of whether they comply with those new policies, and perhaps a court would temporarily restore funding while awaiting a full hearing. However, it seems like a stretch to claim that states can spend federal dollars even while defying federal policies, as it would essentially remove any enforcement of such policies anywhere and everywhere. Besides, Title IX expressly protects women on the basis of biological sex (as the courts recognized in this go-around), which means that males encroaching in such spaces removes the balance required to qualify for federal spending.

The real question, though, is why Mills and Frey want to have this fight at all. The reason other states are backing down from allowing males to compete and occupy spaces for girls and women is that the public overwhelmingly opposes that policy. The Biden administration tried to pretend that radical transgender activism was the mainstream and that biology didn’t matter, but it didn’t work. In fact, those policies got less popular as they were put into practice, and polling this year shows that this is actually one of Trump’s strongest issues.

Trump may not be terribly popular in Maine, but I’d bet his policy restoring biological norms will be. A poll from Marquette Law School last week showed just how popular the biological approach is:

The federal government’s recognizing only two sexes, male and female, is supported by 63% and opposed by 37%. … More than 90% of Republicans favor Trump’s most popular actions: those on recognizing two sexes, deporting immigrants in the United States illegally, expanding oil and gas production, and declaring an emergency on the border. A substantial majority of independents, 66%, favor recognizing two sexes[.]

Trump lost Maine by seven points in November, but that doesn’t mean Mills and Frey are going to get a lot of support for letting males into female spaces. This is cutting back towards the push by Democrats to make themselves the Weirdo Party rather than a party interested in the concerns of the vast majority of voters. This issue isn’t quite 80/20, but Mills and Frey are staking out the distinctly unpopular side of this game of chicken. 

Hence, even disregarding Trump’s general refusal to blink in these circumstances, bet on Mills and Frey to throw in the towel eventually. But if not, it will make for a fun popcorn-passing show, as Maine Democrats self-immolate.