Title IX, tariffs and the other stories driving Maine's political frenzy

One of President Donald Trump’s cabinet secretaries sends Gov. Janet Mills a comply-or-else letter.

The president’s acting Social Security Administration director faces calls to resign after emails show he targeted Maine for retribution.

Trump’s tariff gambit against Maine’s leading trading partner, Canada, is less severe than anticipated, at least for now.

Welcome to April and a political news cycle that never stops. This week we’re going to focus on a few developments with the goal of providing a little clarity and context that isn’t always achievable when news breaks and deadlines loom.

We’ve extensively documented the Trump administration’s retaliation against Maine after Mills told the president in February that she would continue to follow state law allowing two transgender athletes to compete on girls’ sports teams. But this week, U.S. Dept. of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins escalated the conflict with a letter to Mills so extraordinary that it needs to be read to be believed.

“Today, I am freezing Maine's federal funds for certain administrative and technological functions in schools,” Rollins wrote. “This is only the beginning, though you are free to end it at any time by protecting women and girls in compliance with federal law.”

It is highly unusual for cabinet secretaries to write, much less publicize, a letter to a state governor that explicitly tells them to do what the president says or risk the loss of state funding or additional investigations.

It’s also important to remember that the Trump administration is justifying these threats by asserting that Maine is violating Title IX, a 1972 law that expanded educational and athletic opportunities for women and girls.

But the Trump administration’s position on Title IX and how it affects transgender athletes is not settled. That’s why the U.S. Senate tried earlier this year to clarify the law so that the president’s interpretation is correct. That bill stalled.

That means that the conflict in Maine is likely to be settled in court, which seems agreeable to the Mills administration and Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey based on their nonresponse to deadlines to comply with Trump’s executive order last week. The Trump administration’s decision to ramp up the pressure via more funding freezes, investigations and threatening letters might be an indication that it’s less comfortable with litigation than it appears.

Also, it shouldn’t be a surprise that Rollins would personally insert herself into the conflict. She has been loyal to the president for years, serving in his first administration and then leading the group that helped plan for his return to office, the America First Policy Institute, or AFPI. AFPI rivaled the Heritage Foundation in mapping out a plan for Trump’s second term. Heritage’s plan was Project 2025 – maybe you’ve heard of it.

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, who has already threatened Maine with litigation, was AFPI’s legal director.

U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree called on acting Social Security Administration director Will Dudek to resign “immediately and disgracefully” after more details emerged about his decision to yank a contract that allows Maine parents to register their newborns for Social Security cards at the hospital, as well as another that allows families to report the death of loved ones to funeral homes.

Pingree had previously called on Dudek to step down when he admitted to a Huffington Post reporter that he yanked the contracts because he was mad that Mills told Trump “see you in court” on Feb. 21.

Emails obtained by Democrats on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform add further detail about Dudek’s motivation, and also that he was warned by staff that canceling the contracts would risk improper payments and potentially identity theft.

Despite that warning, Dudek ordered staff to cancel the contracts, telling them in an email, “While our improper payments will go up, and fraudsters may compromise identities, no money will go from the public trust to a petulant child.”

In a letter to Dudek, U.S. Rep. Gerald Connolly, the lead Democrat on the oversight committee, said the acting director wasn’t truthful when he abruptly reinstated the contracts and said he didn’t realize that canceling them would do harm.

Connolly also requested an array of documents from Dudek and to sit for an interview with oversight committee staff “even after you resign.”

It’s unclear if any of that will happen, but the pressure on Dudek to resign is the latest chapter in his strange, and potentially brief, stint as SSA’s leader.

Multiple news reports have documented how Dudek has tried to demonstrate his loyalty to the Trump administration after rising from the agency fraud unit to acting director. Last month he was reprimanded by a federal judge for asserting in news interviews that he would have to shut down the entire agency if he complied with a court order that blocked billionaire Elon Musk’s team access to personal data. Dudek argued that denying access to Musk’s team would also mean denying access to all SSA staff, thereby paralyzing the agency.

Judge Ellen Lipton Hollander told Dudek that his claims were “patently incorrect.”

While the president's announcement on Wednesday of new tariffs sent economic shockwaves around the globe, the effects on Canada — Maine's largest trading partner — were arguably more muted. That's because Trump essentially kept the status quo, with the significant exception of adding 25% tariffs on imported cars, trucks and auto parts.

Maine residents will feel the effects of any tariffs because those costs are typically paid by the end consumer. But fears of new tariffs on Canadian electricity, oil, lobster, lumber and other products have been allayed, at least temporarily. And many state leaders say that's good news given how intertwined Maine's economy is with its provincial neighbors.

For instance, 90% of the heating oil, gasoline and other petroleum products consumed in Maine come from Canada. Likewise, raw lumber, lobsters, potatoes, blueberries and other products are shipped from Maine to facilities in Canada only to come back as finished (but imported) products. Maine exported $1.3 billion to Canada in 2024, which was more than the next nine export markets combined. But Maine imported $4.7 billion in Canadian goods.

Of course, the current situation could change in a heartbeat depending on whether U.S.-Canada relations warm or get even frostier.

Gov. Mills and most of Maine's congressional delegation have been outspoken critics of Trump's tariffs on Canada. Trump even went after Collins this week, accusing her of being "disloyal" to the Republican Party. The lone exception is Democratic Rep. Jared Golden, who calls tariffs a "first step in rewriting a rigged trade system."

Representing Maine's more conservative and blue-collar 2nd District, Golden had proposed 10% universal tariffs on all imports. So he was pleased to see that's where Trump also landed for his baseline tariff.

"I’m eager to work with the president to fix the broken ‘free trade’ system that made multinational corporations rich but ruined manufacturing communities across the country," Golden said in a statement after Trump's announcement. "But tariffs must be paired with policies that prioritize American families’ prosperity. We need to make sure that the new approach benefits working people — that means supporting unions, the trades and apprenticeship programs, cutting regulations that hold back production, unleashing American energy and using tariff revenue to support domestic manufacturers that create good-paying jobs for Americans."

Golden's comments even caught the attention of the White House. In fact, Golden received the top mention in an email and posting highlighting positive reaction to the reciprocal tariffs.

"The support is bipartisan, with Democrat Rep. Jared Golden lauding President Trump's plan," reads the post on WhiteHouse.gov.

That’s our message to the Harpswell Anchor, a local paper that covers everything — seriously everything — about the small coastal community of about 5,000 residents.

The Anchor has been around in some form since 1998, but right now the newspaper is a reminder of what residents in news deserts have lost as the economics of newsgathering continue to pose challenges to local journalism.

Sometimes that means features about local high school kids dealing with cellphone bans, or how town officials are dealing with PFAS contamination. And recently it meant covering Harpswell’s annual town meeting.

If not for the Anchor’s coverage of the latter, Maine Public might not have known that a relatively new fishermen’s organization funded by a right-wing group is asking coastal communities for cash. You can read and listen to our story here, but we thought it was important to recognize how it even got on our radar: local reporters covering their community so that residents have a better understanding of their neighbors and government.

Maine's Political Pulse was written this week by State House bureau chief Steve Mistler and State House correspondent Kevin Miller, and produced by news editor Andrew Catalina. Read past editions or listen to the Political Pulse podcast at mainepublic.org/pulse.