Maine sues USDA for pausing nonessential funding over transgender athletes

Maine is doubling down on allowing transgender athletes to compete against girls.

Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey filed a complaint in a Bangor federal court on Monday, arguing that the U.S….

Maine is doubling down on allowing transgender athletes to compete against girls.

Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey filed a complaint in a Bangor federal court on Monday, arguing that the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) decision to pause nonessential federal funding to the state is “blatantly unlawful.”

“The president and his cabinet secretaries do not make the law and they are not above the law, and this action is necessary to remind the president that Maine will not be bullied into violating the law,” Frey said in a statement.

The USDA’s action is in response to Maine allowing male transgender athletes to compete in women’s sports. The state saw a male win a pole-vaulting state championship and a team state title in February. It came just weeks after President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to withhold funding from states that violate Title IX by allowing males in girls’ and women’s sports.

Trump then sparred with Gov. Janet Mills about the incident at the White House in late February, and in response to the president’s threats to withhold federal funding, the liberal governor said, “See you in court.”

The Trump administration then conducted a Title IX investigation and found the state was in violation. It then gave Maine 10 days to change its policy, which it refused to do.

The Trump administration says it will restore the funding as soon as Maine prevents males from competing in girls’ sports.

“In order to continue to receive taxpayer dollars from USDA, the state of Maine must demonstrate compliance with Title IX which protects female student athletes from having to compete with or against or having to appear unclothed before males,” U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins wrote in a letter to Mills. “In addition, USDA has launched a full review of grants awarded by the Biden Administration to the Maine Department of Education.

“Many of these grants appear to be wasteful, redundant, or otherwise against the priorities of the Trump Administration. USDA will not stand for the Biden Administration’s bloated bureaucracy and instead will focus on a Department that is farmer-first and without a leftist social agenda.”

Although the USDA has not publicized the specific cuts, it said none will impact federal feeding programs or direct assistance to Americans.

“If a child was fed today, they will be fed tomorrow,” a USDA release explained.

Maine’s Corrections Department is also losing $1 million in “non-essential” federal funding, the Department of Justice announced Tuesday, because it has placed “a male convict with a violent record into a women’s prison,” the Daily Caller News Foundation reported.

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said on Fox News that the state had violated Trump’s day one executive order requiring states to keep men in men’s prisons, even if they identify as women. 

“We will pull your funding. We will protect women in prison. We will protect women in sports. We will protect women throughout this country. No more of that,” the attorney general said.

Andrew “Andrea” Balcer. Image from Reduxx.info

Bondi said it was wrong for Maine to place Andrew “Andrea” Balcer, “a giant, six-foot-one, 245-pound guy who committed double murder with a knife” in a women’s facility.  

The 26-year-old convict is serving a 40-year sentence for stabbing his mother to death in 2018, then killing his father and their dog because “it was barking.” He changed his identity to female in 2022, Daily Caller reported. During his trial he tried to blame the killing on his family’s lack of support for his transgender identity, claims his uncle and older brother vehemently denied

Meanwhile, two male inmates are suing to block Trump’s order that transgender women be transferred back to men’s prisons.