After Janet Mills, the Democratic governor of Maine, challenged President Trump during a White House meeting, she became both a folk hero to her party and a political target whose state now faces a federal investigation by the Department of Education.
Ms. Mills, 77, told Mr. Trump on Friday that she would not accede to his executive order banning transgender athletes in women’s sports. “See you in court,” she said, while seated with a group of bipartisan governors in the White House State Dining Room. The U.S. Department of Education promptly informed Maine officials that the state’s education department was under a “directed investigation.”
The Trump administration “will do everything in its power to ensure taxpayers are not funding blatant civil rights violators,” said Craig Trainor, the acting head of the U.S. Department of Education’s civil rights division. He said that Maine would lose federal funds if it did not comply.
Ms. Mills did not stand down.
“Do not be misled: This is not just about who can compete on the athletic field, this is about whether a president can force compliance with his will, without regard for the rule of law,” the governor said in a statement on the escalating conflict. “I believe he cannot.”
The fight has thrust Ms. Mills, a fixture in Maine politics, onto the national stage. And it was her opposition to the first Trump administration’s hard-line immigration and anti-abortion policies that helped her become the state’s first female governor.
But her nearly five decades in state politics has been propelled by her support for law enforcement and her record as a criminal prosecutor.