Maine has become ground zero for a fight between the Trump Administration and the American left over “gender identity”— the nebulous concept that descended from the halls of academia to state houses, city councils, and school boards across the country to serve as a club that Democratic officials and progressive activists would use to batter voters and taxpayers into submission to far-left ideology. Marching under the banner of “gender identity,” leftists adorned American classrooms and city streets with Pride Progress flags, filled public school curricula with queer theory and pornographic children’s books, and labeled anyone who would not submit to the unreality that boys can become girls merely by wishing as a bigot.
The Lexington and Concord opening volley in the revolt against gender ideology, at least here in Maine, began with the pole vault seen around the world, the now-infamous picture of a male track-and-field athlete accepting his first-place trophy in the women’s division. That moment was juxtaposed side-by-side with an image from the previous year, where the same young man tied for fifth place in the men’s division. The image, posted to Facebook by Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn), spread like wildfire across the Internet. Despite a demanding letter from House Speaker Ryan Fecteau (D-Biddeford) asking that she delete the post, Libby stood firm. The image became a viral sensation not, as many on the left have asserted, because of “transphobia,” but because it depicted the kind of lunacy Mainers had been forced to accept as the new norm, lest they be harangued out of polite society.
Thanks to President Donald Trump’s national policy requiring the protection of female-only spaces and female sports, the image also served as ironclad evidence that Maine Gov. Janet Mills (D), Attorney General Aaron Frey, and the Maine Principals’ Association were facilitating and endorsing the brazen violation of federal civil rights law. Simply put, Libby’s post showed a state-sanctioned violation of the civil rights of Maine’s female athletes. As a result of the viral social media post, the spectacle spilled over into national politics and culminated in a high-profile clash between President Trump and Gov. Mills at the White House.
President Trump had previously issued an Executive Order — “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” — that articulated a national policy to defund any institutions that undermine women’s equal opportunity to participate in sports by forcing them to compete against male athletes: “In recent years, many educational institutions and athletic associations have allowed men to compete in women’s sports,” Trump wrote. “This is demeaning, unfair, and dangerous to women and girls, and denies women and girls the equal opportunity to participate and excel in competitive sports. Moreover, under Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972 (Title IX), educational institutions receiving Federal funds cannot deny women an equal opportunity to participate in sports.”
Gov. Mills, confronted in-person at a White House meeting between Trump and American governors, opted to pick a fight with the Commander-in-Chief over the Executive Order and the executive branch’s well-established right to withhold federal grants and funding from states. “We’ll see you in court,” Mills sneered at Trump. While Libby’s post served as proof that Maine was violating federal law, Mills obstinacy at the White House — and a later outburst by her Chief of Staff Jeremy Kennedy — confirmed that the Mills Administration’s official policy was to continue violating federal civil rights law by forcing young women to compete against male athletes.
Immediately after the exchange buzzed through multiple news cycles, Maine Democrats attempted to circle the wagons around a governor in need of reinforcements. The party sent out fundraising texts and emails, and Maine’s pro-Democrat Party newspapers all issued re-writes of the same basic storyline about Mills becoming the anti-Trump hero for which “The Resistance” had been longing. Perhaps in furtherance of this communications objective, Speaker Fecteau and House Majority Leader Matt Moonen (D-Portland) — in a spectacle that could have been ripped from Handmaid’s Tale fan fiction — stripped Libby of her right to vote and speak on the floor of the House of Representatives until and unless she apologized for sharing the image that allowed the world to see Maine was flagrantly defying federal civil rights law by forcing female athletes to compete against male athletes.
Exactly what Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey will argue against the federal government remains unclear, but the Mills Administration already appears to be losing the argument in the court of public opinion. In Jan., a New York Times / Ipsos poll found that 79 percent of American adults agree with Trump that female athletes should not be forced to compete against male athletes. In the days prior to the spat, Mills charted her lowest ever approval rating in a Pine Tree State poll. That 80-20 divide was evidenced in dueling rallies Saturday and Sunday, when nearly 500 Mainers turned up at the State House for a peaceful “Rally Against Mills” after an online petition effort gathered more than 25,000 signatures in support of anti-Mills sentiments.
The following day, roughly 10 people demonstrated in front of Rep. Libby’s home in Auburn, leaving behind a smattering of dead fish in her driveway, an ominous homage to the Godfather’s famous line about sleeping with the fishes.
The State Legislature will soon hold public hearings for a bill that would prevent male athletes from competing in girls’ athletics, but the real fight will be had in the 2026 legislative and gubernatorial elections, and the focus of that fight will be whether the mutable concept of “gender identity” should be excised from the Maine Human Rights Act. Expanding the definition of this ideological buzzword in 2019 turned Maine’s civil rights protections into a weapon for far left activists, including Mills, Frey, and state bureaucrats writ large, to use against normal Americans, and especially Maine’s Christians.
Imbued with a new understanding of “gender identity,” the Maine Human Rights Act became the basis for the Mills Administration’s assault on traditional American values, including women’s rights as they were understood until the world went mad in 2020. Using the post-2019 Maine Human Rights Act, Mills, Frey, and Department of Education Commissioner Pender Makin have attempted to defund Christian schools. At the same time, school boards across the state have imposed policies that require young women to share bathrooms and locker rooms with males. In the same vein, Mills authorized taxpayer-funded sex-change procedures under MaineCare, including for minors. Last year, she signed legislation allowing 16- and 17-year-olds to seek sex-change procedures without their parents’ knowledge or consent. Similarly, Maine has the unique distinction of being a legal sanctuary for any adult who might transport a minor over state lines for the purposes of seeking so-called “gender-affirming” medical procedures.
The current political fight may be crystallizing around whether Maine’s female athletes should be forced to compete against male athletes. However, the broader political battle will be about restoring sanity to the Maine Human Rights Act and returning the law to a true guarantor of civil rights, as opposed to a weapon leftist agitators can use to impose hard-left quasi-religious doctrines on the rest of the state through public institutions, particularly the schools. Given the stridency of the left-wing zealots who currently control Maine’s House, Senate, and Governorship, such a change is unlikely to happen in the current legislative session. That means change will only come at the ballot box in 2026—either with the ascendance of legislative leaders who have the courage to stare down the shrill voices of a fringe minority or through a ballot referendum aimed at restoring the state’s protections for the civil rights of women and girls.
READ MORE:
- Maine Education Department Tells Public Schools to Ignore Trump’s Order on Transgender Ideology
- Mills Signs Extremely Controversial Transgender Trafficking Bill Into Law
- Study Finds Transgender Surgeries Dramatically Increase the Risk of Suicide
- Maine AG Aaron Frey Defends Revamped “Transgender Trafficking” Bill Condemned by Red State AGs
- Maine Lawmakers Reject Coverage for “Detransitions” in Bill to Fund Transgender Hormone Treatments, Surgeries Via MaineCare
- Maine House Democrats Block Bill to Fund “Detransition” Healthcare for Transgender People
- Democrat House Speaker Ryan Fecteau Deletes X Account After Backlash for Censuring Rep. Laurel Libby
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