Trump demands Maine governor apologize — or the state will face consequences

President Donald Trump is demanding a “full throated apology” from Maine Gov. Janet Mills in his spat with the state over transgender athletes, implying his administration will continue to target the state unless he gets one.

The Democratic governor got into an argument with the president during a governors’ meeting at the White House in February, telling the president “we’ll see you in court” when he threatened to pull federal funding from the state if it failed to comply with his order to ban trans athletes from playing in women’s and girls sports.

His administration subsequently opened overlapping investigations into Maine, including probes launched by the Departments of Education, Health and Human Services and Agriculture.

The president in a Saturday morning Truth Social post demanded Mills deliver a “full throated apology” for her earlier comments and promise to never pose a “challenge” to the federal government again.

“While the State of Maine has apologized for their Governor’s strong, but totally incorrect, statement about men playing in women’s sports while at the White House House Governor’s Conference, we have not heard from the Governor herself, and she is the one that matters in such cases,” Trump wrote. “Therefore, we need a full throated apology from the Governor herself, and a statement that she will never make such an unlawful challenge to the Federal Government again, before this case can be settled.”

It was not clear what apology from the state of Maine he was referencing, or what apparent case was being settled. The White House declined to comment on the president’s post or clarify what consequences the governor and her state could face for not apologizing.

Mills’ office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Trump administration has increasingly sought to pressure schools into compliance with the president’s Feb. 5 executive order banning trans women and girls from competing in women’s sports. The order relies on Title IX, which prohibits sex-based discrimination in educational programs that receive federal funding, as its foundation.

The Biden administration had previously said that barring trans athletes from participating in sports was a Title IX violation.

The White House has threatened to halt federal funding for schools as a leverage point to force compliance with its Title IX interpretation and the president’s executive order. On Wednesday, the White House announced that it had “paused $175 million in federal funding from the University of Pennsylvania” over the school’s policies allowing trans athletes to compete.

One of the Trump administration’s investigations into Maine, led by the Department of Agriculture into the state’s university system, resulted in a temporary pause in USDA funding for Maine’s school system. The pause, announced March 10, would have affected programs directly benefiting Maine’s farmers and foresters funded by the millions of dollars provided through the USDA to the state’s land grant university.

Two days after USDA announced its funding pause, it backpedaled, saying it would restore funding to the university system. Earlier this week, the department cleared the University of Maine of Title IX violations, saying it had “clearly communicated its compliance” with Title IX guidance under the Trump administration.

In response, UMaine Chancellor Dannel Malloy said the school system was “relieved to put the Department’s Title IX compliance review behind us so the land-grant University of Maine and our statewide partners can continue to leverage USDA and other essential federal funds to strengthen and grow our natural resource economy and dependent rural communities through world-class education, research and extension.”

But UMaine also said it had never strayed from Title IX compliance.

“The University of Maine System has always maintained its compliance with State and Federal laws and with NCAA rules,” Malloy’s statement read.

A spokesperson for the university system also told POLITICO that “when the NCAA updated its rules in February, it required no changes in our universities’ policies or which of our student-athletes could participate.”

The USDA’s proclamation that the state’s universities were found to be Title IX compliant didn’t mark the end of the state’s battle with the administration.

On Wednesday, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights told Maine’s state education department that it had concluded its investigation. The federal agency determined the state was violating Title IX, offering the state Department of Education “an opportunity to voluntarily agree within 10 days or risk imminent enforcement action including referral to the U.S. Department of Justice.”

And in addition to Trump’s Saturday morning apology demand, USDA’s March 19 announcement clearing the school system also included a not-so-veiled message for the rest of the state, writing in bolded letters: “The choice for the rest of Maine is simple: protect equal opportunities for women, as required by law, or lose funding.”