Trump's mad at the governor of Maine, so he takes it out on its children

He is furious that Gov. Janet Mills treats him like the pompous fool he is

By Mike Sorrell

“I have spent the better part of my career listening to loud men talk tough to disguise their weakness. That’s what I heard today.”

Gov. Janet T. Mills made that comment in a long statement she issued on June 5, 2020, after first-term president Donald Trump visited Maine.

After that visit by Trump during the COVID-19 pandemic, Gov. Mills criticized Trump for not doing enough to protect people’s health or to help Maine’s economy during a difficult time. She mentioned commercial fishermen: “What Maine fishermen need from this President is a better trade policy from his Administration, not misguided plans for retaliatory tariffs which have been shown to do more harm than good.”

Of course, Trump does not take advice from Democrats, or from anyone else for that matter, so he did not retain what she said about retaliatory tariffs. Now the national and world economies gasp for oxygen like fish flopping on the deck of a boat.

Trump does have a huge memory bank, however, in which he deposits anything critical, derogatory or “mean” that anyone says about him. He then does a slow boil until he finds a way to get revenge.

Especially when a woman belittles him.

The 77-year-old Gov. Mills is a political moderate who has a reputation for speaking her mind and not backing down, according to New York Times reporter Jenna Russell. In his usual insulting way, Trump said during the 2020 trip to Maine that Mills operated as a “dictator” when taking steps to protect people’s health and that she “doesn’t know what she’s talking about.” That sparked the statement from the governor mentioned above.

In February, Trump stood in front of an assemblage of governors at a White House luncheon.

“Is Maine here?” Trump asked.

Mills stood up.

He told her that he was going to cut off federal funding for Maine if she did not comply with his executive order titled “Keep Men Out of Women’s Sports.”

“See you in court,” Mills said.

A brief video of that exchange is here.

Mills has not said what she personally thinks about transgender men playing on girls’ and women’s sports teams except to say the issue is “worthy of discussion.” She says her resistance to Trump’s executive order comes because Maine has a human rights law that says gender discrimination in sports is illegal. Trump has no business doing away with a state law, she has said. That is up to the Maine legislature, which might at some point change the law because a University of New Hampshire poll indicated that 64 percent of Maine voters favor not allowing transgender men to play on sports teams with girls or women.

Meanwhile, Gov. Mills digs in the heels of her L.L. Bean boots.

The Maine Principals Association says there are 151 public and private high schools in the state. A total of two transgender males play on girls sports teams.

Trump seeks to cut that number to zero by stopping the allocation of federal funds to the state.

Every child in Maine could be harmed.

What’s left of Trump’s downsized Department of Education announced Friday that all funding for Maine’s public schools will be stopped, reported Jenna Russell and Dana Goldstein of The New York Times. That is $249 million that won’t go to children in kindergarten through 12^th grade unless the Trump administration’s plan does not pass muster in court.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture on April 2 froze funds for a child nutrition program. District Court Judge John Woodcock of Maine on Friday ordered the Trump administration to release that money. State Attorney General Aaron Frey filed suit, telling the court that the federal money is needed “to feed children in schools, childcare centers, and after-school programming as well as disabled adults in congregate settings.” Several million dollars is involved.

Last Tuesday, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced on Fox News that the Trump administration will withhold money from Maine prisons because the state was “allowing a man in a woman’s prison.” She did not say how money would be held back.

Fox News said one of the programs involved incarcerated parents with children under 18. The program is designed to help the children reduce their likelihood of “future involvement in the juvenile-justice system.”

In March, Leland Dudek, the acting administrator of the Social Security Administration changed a policy that allowed parents of newborn babies in Maine to obtain a Social Security number for the child while still on hospital maternity wards. Children would now have to go along with their parents to Social Security Administrative offices. Furor ensued across the state, so Dudek reversed his decision.

It is sad and disturbing that the full force of the federal government is lining up against Maine’s children because the governor talked back Trump.