Maine’s Embarrassing Demagogue: Governor Janet Mills

Maine’s Democrat Governor is, it seems, a demagogue. Why? Demagogues make dramatic, untrue statements for personal gain, knowing what they say is untrue. Gov. Mills is that person, raising money for a Senate bid by attacking Trump for defending the law, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, and Maine girls.

Is it not the height of cynicism, hypocrisy, and irony for a female governor, who herself benefited from Title IX protections, to strip Maine girls and women of those same protections?

Mills started law school – with full Title IX protection – in 1973, the year after President Richard Nixon signed this anti-discrimination measure into law. By her own admission in an oral history for Bates, she “worked …for the National Center for Law and Social Policy under Marcia Greenberger in Washington on women’s issues.”

Greenberger, and those who worked for her, defended Title IX protections for biological girls and women. As Mills recalls, she got hired as “the first women in the criminal division of the AG’s office,” a beneficiary of Title IX’s non-discrimination for biological women.

So, as a lawyer, Mills knows Title IX was enacted to protect biological girls and women – their lives, security, opportunities, privacy, and dignity in education and hiring. To claim anything else is utterly dishonest, transparently self-serving, and embarrassing for the State of Maine.

Mills knows federal district, circuit, and Supreme Court cases for 50 years have identified Title IX’s purpose clearly – protect biological girls and women. That was always the law’s intent.

She also knows that, when applying this particular federal statute to states, including Maine, it always supersedes state law, a settled, undebatable result of the Constitution’s “supremacy clause.”

She knows decades of precedent affirm this fact, knows federal courts struck down Biden’s attempts to reinterpret Title IX’s protections of biological girls, even before Trump returned.

Most recently, Tennessee v. Cardona, expressly ended (vacated) Biden’s 2024 rewriting of Title IX, reaffirming protection of biological girls and women, not men who think they are girls.

The judge in that case said Biden’s Department of Education “exceeded its legal authority” when it redefined “sex” under Title IX, ruling “when Title IX is viewed in its entirety, it is abundantly clear that discrimination on the basis of sex means discrimination on the basis of being a male or female.”

End of story. Mills knows that. Still, she pushes her brand of insanity to raise money, as does her disingenuous attorney general, Aaron Frey. The whole legal world is laughing at Maine – again. Meantime, these two know their words are fraudulent because there are just two sexes, male and female.

The Cardona Court held Biden’s 2024 Title IX regulations were what “violated the Constitution,” creating confusion around “gender” and “pronouns,” and chilling free speech. The Court also called Biden’s reinventions of language “arbitrary and capricious.”

Let’s be honest. Students, parents, teachers, coaches, principals (except the Maine’s Principals’ Association), and anyone who ever attended a school, knows Title IX is for protecting girls.

To take any other interpretation of the Constitution, Title IX text, cases, or the primacy of protecting girls and women is absurd. Yet, here comes Janet Mills, determined to raise money with hate for Trump, condemning settled law – since Trump affirmed that law and two sexes.

She asserts a right to ignore federal law, the “supremacy clause” (Article VI, Clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution) and federal courts. If Trump enforces that law by withholding federal money, she vows to “meet him in court.”

Brave and silly words from this female governor who got Title IX’s protections, and now denies them to biological girls because she wants to stock her campaign war chest. That is how “progressives” work — dishonestly.

Rather than honestly explaining the law, Mills has gone low, personal, vitriolic, and ugly. She knows what she is saying is not true, yet pushes the narrative: Trump wants to “coerce” others “into compliance with his will,” and Title IX’s established meaning “is a violation of our Constitution and of our laws, which I took an oath to uphold.” Really?

Sounding like Patrick Henry or Joan of Arc, she says. “Maine may be one of the first states to undergo an investigation by this Administration, but we won’t be the last… You must ask yourself, who and what will he target next, and what will he do? Will it be you?” Rich stuff.

Mills goes lower. “Will it be because of your race or your religion? Will it be because you look different or think differently? Where does it end?” The gall of this demagogue, who did just that, punished speech, religion and those who “think differently” with mandates – is stunning.

Bottom line: Demagogues have no shame, and Democrats are becoming demagogues. They villainize others to advance themselves for themselves. To raise money, they will say anything. Mills makes that case, rather nicely.