At a White Home occasion with a bipartisan group of governors Friday, President Donald Trump briefly sparred with Democratic Maine Gov. Janet Mills after threatening to withhold federal funds from her state over the problem of transgender athletes.
The back-and-forth got here as Trump mentioned his govt order banning transgender athletes from girls’s sports activities.
“Are you not going to adjust to that?” Trump requested Mills immediately.
Gov. Janet Mills reacts after difficult U.S. President Donald Trump over federal regulation on the problem of trans girls in sports activities as Trump addressed a gathering of governors on the White Home, Feb. 21, 2025 in Washington.
Win McNamee/Getty Photographs
She responded that she would adjust to state and federal legal guidelines.
“Nicely, I am — we’re the federal regulation,” Trump stated, including, “Nicely, you higher do it. You higher do it since you’re not going to get any federal funding in any respect in the event you do not.”
Mills responded: “See you in courtroom.”
“Good,” Trump replied. “I am going to see you in courtroom. I look ahead to that. That ought to be a straightforward one. And luxuriate in your life after governor, as a result of I do not suppose you will be in elected politics,” Trump stated.
After Friday’s White Home gathering, Mills launched a press release about Trump’s menace to withhold federal funding.
President Donald Trump speaks on the Governors Working Session on the White Home in Washington, Feb. 21, 2025.
Jim Watson/AFP by way of Getty Photographs
“If the President makes an attempt to unilaterally deprive Maine college kids of the advantage of Federal funding, my Administration and the Lawyer Normal will take all acceptable and vital authorized motion to revive that funding and the educational alternative it supplies. The State of Maine won’t be intimidated by the President’s threats.”
Additionally on Friday, the Division of Training despatched a letter to a Maine schooling official asserting a “directed investigation” of the Maine Division of Training “amid allegations that it continues to permit male athletes to compete in women’ interscholastic athletics,” the division stated in a information launch.
The division cited a Maine highschool which it stated is “persevering with to permit at the least one male pupil to compete in women’ classes.”
Trump signed the “Preserving Males Out of Ladies’s Sports activities” order earlier this month, which directs federal businesses to interpret federal Title IX guidelines as prohibiting the participation of transgender women and girls in feminine sports activities classes.