'My jaw dropped': Maine governor 'appalled' by Trump threats to her state

Maine's governor Janet Mills discussed her reaction to president Donald Trump's threats to her state during an appearance on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Monday.

A federal judge recently ordered the Trump administration to unfreeze federal funding allocated to Maine by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which Trump ordered to be withheld because state law allows transgender student athletes to participate in girls sports, and the governor told "Morning Joe" that she was surprised when the president called her out at a February event at the White House.

"Very unexpectedly the president called on me to answer a question that was unrelated to the topic at hand," Mills said. "I've been to the White House and talked to President Trump before, President Biden, President Obama... several presidents, always been a good conversation, exchange of ideas. This was different, very different, and when he said, 'I am the law,' basically, 'we are the law,' my jaw dropped, and I thought, you know, I've been a district attorney, attorney general, defense attorney, and now governor, and I always have respect for the, I've always had respect for the rule of law, and that just boggled my mind to say that 'I am the law.' Every every fifth-grade civics student knows that there are three branches of government and that the chief executive is required by the constitution to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, not to make the laws, not to invent the laws or reinterpret the laws by tweet or Instagram post or press release or executive order. He's not allowed to do that, so when he reinterpreted Title IX."

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"I support Title IX," Mills added. "I have spent my career the better part of my career, defending and protecting the rights of women and girls in health care, in employment, housing, credit and the like, and I'm appalled. I was appalled at his interpretation that he can just reinvent the law, so when we started getting letters from the Department of Agriculture, Department of Education, Department of Health and Human Services saying, you better, better behave or else and then we got this letter on April 2 from Brooke Rollins, the secretary of agriculture, and which some have called, some have referred to as a ransom note. The tone of it and the substance were rather appalling, and the very next day she threatened to cut off funding for all education. The very next day, because there are maybe two at most two transgender athletes competing in Maine schools right now, they decided to shut off funding for our school nutrition program the school lunch program entirely on which 172,000 Maine schoolchildren rely for their school meals."

U.S. District Court judge John Woodcock granted Maine's request for a temporary restraining order last week and ordered the USDA and other agencies to end their funding freeze.

"The other thing he said was, look, the statute, the law says if you don't like what a state or entity is doing over here, you can't take their funds away over here," Mills said. "It's like they also sent us a letter about the Department of Corrections, because they found out there's a transgender individual in our prisons, and on account of that, they're stopping funding for the program that allows women inmates to bond with their children. So why would you punish women inmates over here because of something happening over there? It's not rational, and the judge said the law, the federal statute doesn't allow you to do that."

Watch the video below or at this link.

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