House Speaker Ryan Fecteau (D-Biddeford) probably thought the Tuesday night censure vote against Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn) would become a cause célèbre among Maine Democrats.

After Maine Gov. Janet Mills embarrassed herself—and the state—by pitching an unwise fit at the White House, Democratic leaders and strategists have desperately searched for a way to save face.

Instead, Speaker Fecteau created a new viral moment ripped from the pages of The Handmaid’s Tale as he and his fellow Democratic men stripped away a Republican woman’s right to vote.

On Tuesday night, Fecteau loomed menacingly over a poised Rep. Libby like Commander Waterford, prepared to dispense discipline to an uppity Offred. All that was missing was the white bonnet.

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For the crime of exposing Maine’s state-sanctioned violation of girls’ civil rights — i.e. forcing them to compete against and share locker rooms with male athletes — Fecteau and his Eyes of God lieutenant, Rep. Matt Moonen (D-Gilead), have now deprived Libby of her right to vote and speak on the floor of the House of Representatives.

Libby, the duly elected representative of House District 64, has now been muzzled and disenfranchised by a pair of men for daring to stand up on behalf of female athletes in Maine. This is from the same party that once tried to convince voters that Republicans were waging a “war on women.”

The absurd and dystopian nature of political events in Maine has been entirely lost on Maine’s legacy newspapers and remaining left-wing writers. Sadly, the newspapers have lost pretty much all of their columnists, but especially the columnists who might write something interesting or contrary to the Democrat Party line. But the dark irony of Commanders Fecteau and Moonen putting a woman in her place wasn’t lost on Boston Globe columnist Carine Hajjar.

Hajjar’s Friday column excoriates Fecteau and Mills for their heavy-handed imposition of 18th century patriarchal attitudes on an outspoken female elected official.

From the Boston Globe:

Democrats fancy themselves the party that fights for women.

But on Tuesday, Maine House Speaker Ryan Fecteau, a Democrat, led the charge to take the vote away from one.

House Democrats voted, 75-70, to censure state Representative Laurel Libby, a Republican, and strip her of her vote and, by extension, her constituents of their representation in the Legislature until she apologizes for a Facebook post she made about a transgender student winning a girls high school track meet.

…

[I]n a scene that almost felt like satire, Fecteau gazed down from his lectern at Libby, mother of five, after she gave a speech about the importance of protecting girls’ sports ahead of the vote to censure her. Or tried to give a speech. Over the course of about 10 minutes, Libby tried to explain herself, only to be interrupted mostly by Democratic men. “The member is beginning to skate on thin ice, as it relates to the course of debate in this chamber,” Fecteau told her from on high — after yet another interruption. Libby managed to get through less than one page of her seven-page floor speech.

The men alleged over and over that her comments were outside the scope of debate. Comments about the high school girls in her state who had to compete against — and lose to — a transgender athlete in the state championship for indoor track.

“Can you imagine trying to put your best foot forward, but knowing that the outcome was already predetermined by natural biological advantages?” she asked the chamber — before being interrupted. So she spit out her final words: “When the woke left can’t silence women, they cancel them.”

In Hajjar’s view, Libby’s decision to post an image of a male minor winning first place in a girls’ track and field event was bound to draw criticism. However, Democrats have dished out a punishment that vastly exceeds the supposed offense. And, in focusing on the distress that a Facebook post might have caused one young man, they’ve ignored an important debate over a statewide policy that is causing distress for hundreds of female athletes in Maine.

That debate will come soon enough.

On Thursday, surrounded by Maine women and girls, including many high school athletes, Rep. Liz Caruso touted a bill that aims to protect girls’ sports and girls’ spaces by ensuring Maine’s policies do not force females to compete against males.

While that vote was, until the events of this week, almost certainly headed for an “Ought Not to Pass” report from the Committee and a lopsided, party-line roll call vote of death, the national attention focused on Maine’s State House this week suggests that the stakes have been raised. Perhaps at least a few Democrats will see clearly the fundamental unfairness of the policy that Fecteau, Moonen, and Mills appear rabidly committed to maintaining — even if it costs Maine $280M+ per year in education funding.

Maine has now become Ground Zero for a fight over transgenderism writ large, with boys playing girls’ sports serving merely as a proxy for the larger fight. While the Maine Democrats have attempted to fundraise off Gov. Mills’ slap fight with President Trump, no amount of astroturfed protests and fundraising text messages will alter the fundamental reality that 80 percent of American voters agree with Libby, not the Gilead men who stripped away her vote this week.

If you need any further indication of who emerged more powerful after the events of this week, consider how Libby and her Democratic critics have conducted themselves.

Libby has been a ubiquitous presence in traditional media and social media. Her following has exploded on X and massively grown on Facebook, expanding and enlarging her reach and influence for every future policy fight she wants to enter.

At the same time, Speaker Fecteau has deleted his X account, and he ran away from the Maine Wire’s cameras when we tried to ask him some questions. The same goes for Janet Mills. One side is running and hiding, while the other is embracing the fight and defending her position and values. You don’t have to be a political genius to understand who is winning the debate over Maine’s decision to continue violating federal civil rights laws.

The only remaining question is when—not if—Mills will bend the knee to President Trump and end the wrongheaded and regressive policies that force young girls to compete against males.