Trump's week in review: Tariffs impact stocks; USDA freezes Maine funding; military fitness questioned
3. USDA freezes federal funding to Maine schools
In a letter published Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins informed Maine’s Democratic Gov. Janet Mills that her state would face a funding freeze “for certain administrative and technological functions in schools” over what Rollins described as Mills’ “defiance of federal law.”
Rollins told Mills that she “cannot openly violate federal law against discrimination in education and expect federal funding to continue unabated.”
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Mills has been sparring with the Trump administration over an executive order issued by Trump on Feb. 5 establishing it as U.S. policy to “rescind all funds from educational programs that deprive women and girls of fair athletic opportunities, which results in the endangerment, humiliation, and silencing of women and girls and deprives them of privacy.” The policies targeted by the executive order allow trans-identified males to compete in women’s sports.
Trump confronted Mills over her state’s lack of compliance with the executive order at a meeting with governors in February, assuring her, “You better do it because you’re not going to get any federal funding at all if you don’t.” Mills released a statement shortly after the exchange, vowing Maine “will not be intimidated by the President’s threats” to pull federal funding.
Rollins assured Mills that her state could get the federal funding back if it demonstrated “compliance with Title IX which protects female student athletes from having to compete with or against or having to appear unclothed before males.”
She said the USDA “has launched a full review of grants awarded by the Biden Administration to the Maine Department of Education,” determining that many of them “appear to be wasteful, redundant, or otherwise against the priorities of the Trump Administration.”
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: ryan.foley@christianpost.com
