Judge says Trump has to release Maine funds

Donald Trump and Governor Janet Mills of Maine have been in a street brawl for months.

Mills has refused to buckle on the transgender issue, which led to Trump trying to lock the state out of federal funding, which Trump just got some very bad news about.

See You in Court

While the feud between Democrat governors and the Trump administration over the transgenders in sports issue was not a secret, it really made it to the national stage when Trump hosted governors at the White House.

Trump sought out Mills, and when he asked her if she was going to comply with his order, she responded, “I’m complying with state and federal laws,” and Trump shot right back, “We are the federal law.”

When the governor told Trump that she would see him in court, Trump responded, “Good, I’ll see you in court. I look forward to that. That should be a really easy one.

“And enjoy your life after governor because I don’t think you’ll be in elected politics.”

Blocking Funding

Not long after that exchange, the Trump administration moved to withhold funding from Maine over the policy.

Maine Assistant Attorney General Sarah Forster responded to the threat, "Nothing in Title IX or its implementing regulations prohibits schools from allowing transgender girls and women to participate on girls’ and women’s sports teams.

"Your letters to date do not cite a single case that so holds. To the contrary, various federal courts have held that Title IX and/or the Equal Protection Clause require schools to allow such participation."

Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor then announced, “The Maine Department of Education will now have to defend its discriminatory practices before a Department administrative law judge and in a federal court against the Justice Department."

Overruled

One of the reasons Trump keeps losing these cases is that federal spending like this is protected, and a partisan policy cannot stand in the way of the funding, even with an executive order.

To that point, Trump found out this week that the government must unfreeze all the funds that were slated to go to Maine.

The ruling stated that the USDA "must immediately unfreeze and release to the state of Maine any federal funding that they have frozen or failed or refused to pay because of the state of Maine's alleged failure to comply with the requirements of Title IX."

Trump has skipped a lot of regulations, laws, and rules with his orders, and I believe most of them will be defeated in the courts. And it is not necessarily that Trump cannot do what he is trying do, but he is just going about it the wrong way. Trump has to stop firing from the hip with these orders and the White House counsel should be stepping in to slow him down before these orders are presented.