USDA freezes funding for Maine schools over transgender athletes
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) said Wednesday it had frozen federal funds for some Maine education programs over the state’s refusal to ban transgender students from girls’ and women’s sports as ordered by President Trump and his administration.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announced the freeze following a letter sent to Maine Gov. Janet Mills (D) explaining funding would be paused “for certain administrative and technological functions in schools.”
A spokesperson for the department did not answer emailed questions asking which specific programs the agency had paused funding for. The pause does not affect federal feeding programs or direct assistance, according to a news release.
The USDA is also reviewing the state’s research and education-related funding “for compliance with the Constitution,” federal law and “the priorities of the Trump administration,” Rollins wrote. She pointed specifically to Title IX, the federal law against sex discrimination, and Title VI, which bars discrimination based on race and ethnicity.
The Trump administration has invoked either statute in its crackdown on transgender rights and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in schools. Executive orders signed by the president aim to ban trans athletes from girls’ and women’s school sports and curb DEI efforts among federal agencies and grant recipients. Another order demands schools stop teaching what the Trump administration views as critical race theory — an academic framework evaluating U.S. history through the lens of racism that has become a political catch-all buzzword for any race-related teaching — and other lessons related to race, gender and sexuality.
Maine officials, including Mills and state Attorney General Aaron Frey (D), have said Trump’s order on transgender athletes conflicts with the Maine Human Rights Act, which explicitly protects the right of trans students to participate in athletic programs that match their gender identity. But the Trump administration has argued the state is still required to follow federal law — Title IX, in this case — and permitting trans girls to compete against and alongside non-transgender girls violates it.
“Where federal and state law conflict, states and state entities are required to follow federal law,” Attorney General Pam Bondi (R) wrote to Mills and officials in California and Minnesota in February.
“You cannot openly violate federal law against discrimination in education and expect federal funding to continue unabated,” Rollins wrote in Wednesday’s letter to Mills. “Your defiance of federal law has cost your state, which is bound by Title IX in educational programming.”
She added, “This is only the beginning, though you are free to end it at any time by protecting women and girls in compliance with federal law.”
A spokesperson for Mills did not immediately return a request for comment.
Rollins said the USDA had also launched “a full review” of grants awarded to Maine’s education department by the Biden administration, claiming several “appear to be wasteful, redundant, or otherwise against the priorities of the Trump Administration.”
“USDA will not extend the Biden Administration’s bloated bureaucracy and will instead focus on a Department that is farmer-first and without a leftist social agenda,” she wrote.
It is unclear which grants Rollins’s letter refers to. A department spokesperson did not return a request for clarification.
The USDA’s funding freeze is the latest development in a monthlong battle between Mills and Trump over the state’s noncompliance with Trump’s executive order on transgender athletes.
Last month, the departments of Education and Health and Human Services found Maine to have violated Title IX following investigations the governor previously called “politically directed.” The Education Department on Monday issued what it called a “final warning” to Maine’s state department of education before it turns the investigation over to the Justice Department.