Secretary of State Shenna Bellows (D) revealed Thursday — unintentionally — why President Donald Trump is almost certain to prevail in his bid to compel Maine Gov. Janet Mills (D) to protect female sports in Maine by threatening to withhold federal funding until Maine complies with federal civil rights laws.

If you’ve been camping in Allagash wilderness and missed the last four weeks of Maine politics, here’s some background: Top Democrats have been advocating feverishly for a policy the forces Maine’s female high school athletes to compete against males who say they are girls. In contrast, Maine’s Republicans have argued that forcing high school girls to run track and field against physically advantaged males is unfair. Plus, President Trump has issued an executive order — Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports — clarifying that Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972 does not allow Maine to force girls to compete against male athletes. In other words, Title IX requires institutions that receive federal funds, like every state agency and public school in Maine, to provide females with equal opportunity to participate in sports.

The Mills v. Trump disagreement has sparked a prolonged conflict between Maine and the federal government. Because Mills has been unwilling to comply with federal civil rights law, the federal government has been left with no alternative but to use its primary enforcement mechanism: money. So thanks to Mills, Maine’s schools and other federally funded institutions will now begin losing federal dollars unless and until the state’s leaders decide to comply with civil rights protections for women.

Which brings us to Sec. Bellows, who on Thursday declared that’s she’s going to run for governor while continuing to collect her $140k per year taxpayer-funded salary — running in an election she’ll also be administering a la Katie Hobbs of Arizona. In an interview with some obscure podcast, Bellows regaled the audience with a tale from her time as a Maine lawmaker and then as Secretary of State about the federal push to adopt the controversial Real ID. In telling the story, however, Bellows incidentally revealed that the Biden Administration did with the Real ID precisely what the Trump Administration is now doing with Title IX compliance—that is, tying compliance with a federal policy to funding.

Here’s Bellows:

“Maine for the longest time, refused to accept the REAL ID law. And then we got a nasty letter from the feds saying A.) Mainers aren’t going to be able to get on planes, and B.) we’re going to suspend your highway funding, which pays for a lot of our roads and bridges,” Bellows said.

“We did, in fact, create an option. We wanted Mainers to have choices… So Maine has two options. You can get a standard driver license. It’s your typical main driver license, or you can get the Real ID driver license, and the big difference is that the Real ID meets those federal requirements. Now, the federal government has been threatening to keep Mainers off planes now for virtually 20 years. Keep in mind the law is 20 years old, but I think this time they might mean business. This time they seem serious,” said Bellows.

“When [the Biden Administration] sent the threatening letters about not being able to fly or not getting your highway funding other states fell in line,” she said.

As you can hear from the clip (or read from the transcript), Bellows, and by extension the Mills Administration, had no problem with the Biden Administration binding federal funding to a national policy supported by the occupant of the White House. When it was Biden threatening to withhold federal funding, Maine Democrats simply accepted the well-established authority of the federal government to withholding funding in order to incentivize voluntary compliance with federal policies.

However, now that the Commander-in-Chief is President Trump, Maine’s elected and appointed officials, including Mills and Bellows, are furiously trying to explain why this time it’s different.

Next week, the deadline will hit for Maine to have complied voluntarily with Title IX after investigations into the departments of Education and Health and Human Services found that it was, indeed, in violation of the federal civil rights laws. The findings letters the federal government sent to the state agency gave a deadline for voluntary compliance of ten days. Absent compliance, the letters said the matter would be referred to the Justice Department for enforcement. So, in addition to the loss of funding for institutions that continue to violate federal civil rights law, Maine could also see federal charges filed against the officials in charge.

For more on this topic, watch my video here or read our coverage below:

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