U.S. President Donald Trump took to his social media platform Truth Social on Saturday to demand an apology from Maine Gov. Janet Mills, a Democratic, after the two had a heated exchange at the White House in February over an executive order banning transgender women and girls from playing in women’s sports.
This new scrutiny on Maine comes as the state has been subject to numerous probes and funding cuts following that exchange that “have been widely interpreted as retaliatory,” according to the local outlet the Maine Morning Star.
“While the state of Maine has apologized for their governor’s strong, but totally incorrect, statement about men playing in women’s sports while at the White House House Governor’s Conference, we have not heard from the governor herself, and she is the one that matters in such cases,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
“Therefore, we need a full throated apology from the governor herself, and a statement that she will never make such an unlawful challenge to the federal government again, before this case can be settled,” he added.
The statement, according to Politico, implied that the Trump administration would continue to target Maine unless Trump receives the apology he wants.
“King Trump demands an apology from the Governor of Maine because she embarrassed him” wrote former NBCUniversal studio executive Mike Sington. “Pathetic.”
Multiple outlets reporting on the remarks from Trump noted it was not immediately clear what Trump meant when he said that the “state of Maine” had apologized.
On Saturday, Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows wrote on Bluesky: “Can confirm ‘state of Maine’ hasn’t apologized. (As the official keeper of all state records and guardian of the seal ;)).”
Jonathan Ladd, an associate professor Georgetown University’s public policy school, wrote that “Trump is constitutionally required to take care that U.S. laws be faithfully executed. On what legal basis can he treat the people of Maine differently depending on if their governor apologizes to him? None.”
The dispute between Trump and Mills stems from an interaction at a White House event as part of the National Governors Association on February 21.
“We’re going to follow the law sir. We’ll see you in court,” Mills told the president in a heated exchange, referring to the Maine Human Rights Act, which was amended four yeas ago to include gender identity as a protected class. Mills and Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey have argued that the law supersedes the president’s edict barring transgender girls from participating in sports that match their gender identity.
Since that episode, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services investigated and found Maine to be in violation of Title IX for allowing transgender girls to compete in women’s sports, the U.S. Department of Agriculture launched and resolved a probe into the University of Maine System’s Title IX compliance, and the Trump administration briefly imposed an end to the practice of allowing parents to register their newborns for a social security card at the hospital, among other measures.
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