By Kendall Tietz
Maine was one of the first states to publicly denounce President Trump’s executive actions on gender policy. So it’s no surprise that the Maine Department of Education (MDOE), under Commissioner Pender Makin, chose open defiance over compliance, so long as it advanced their ideological goals.
Documents obtained by Defending Education through public records requests reveal a troubling reality: senior officials at MDOE, led by Commissioner Pender Makin, appear to be actively encouraging school districts to disregard federal directives aimed at protecting fairness in girls’sports, re-establishing single sex spaces and removing gender ideology from classrooms.
Within weeks of beginning his second term, President Trump reaffirmed the original intent of Title IX and banned the incorporation of gender ideology in schools. In contrast, Democrats have doubled down on advancing these policies.
While the Trump administration sought to restore clarity to federal civil rights law, progressive bureaucrats like Makin responded with resistance.
Makin wrote memos and letters actively defying the Trump administration, encouraging her colleagues not to comply with the executive orders. She even floated the idea of producing a video to rally educators in defiance. In one meeting, Makin conferred with the executive director of Equality Maine, a group that targets LGBTQ-identified minors, about how to defend the state’s position against Trump’s reforms.
MDOE officials leaned on the Maine Human Rights Act as justification for noncompliance, but that law makes no reference to biological men competing in women’s sports. In fact, it merely prohibits denying individuals equal opportunity in sports, which Trump’s policy does not violate as biological males are still permitted to compete in the male division, where they belong.
Instead, Makin’s use of the law to justify the refusal to follow the federal Title IX guidance, appears to reflect her interpretation of the statute as the law makes no mention of transgender athletes. If her priority lies with gender activism, perhaps she would be a better fit at a LGBTIA+ advocacy org, rather than heading up education for the state of Maine.
On January 30, 2025, in a memo about Trump’s executive order “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K–12 Schooling,” Makin wrote that the order “does not override locally adopted school board policies” and advised districts to “continue to follow the laws of our state.”
The national spotlight turned to Maine again on February 21, when Trump directly confronted Governor Janet Mills during a White House governors’ event, calling on her to comply with his executive orders: “You better do it, because you’re not going to get federal funding.” Mills replied, “See you in court.”
That same day, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights opened its investigation into MDOE over “allegations that it continues to allow male athletes to compete in girls’ interscholastic athletics” and “has denied female athletes female-only intimate facilities, thereby violating federal antidiscrimination law.”
In response, Makin sent another internal email doubling down, again citing the Maine Human Rights Act as justification for ignoring Trump’s directives. Even amid growing national scrutiny, Makin’s guidance signaled a clear intent to resist federal pressure, doubling down on Maine’s commitment to affirming, inclusive education, no matter the cost to the students in the state.
“There are many congressional barriers and checks and balances of government that should prevent the president from acting on his statement,” she claimed. Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey echoed that sentiment, accusing the Trump administration of “using children as pawns” and vowing “to defend Maine’s laws and block efforts by the President to bully and threaten us.”
At issue is the ongoing back-and-forth in how Title IX is interpreted by different presidential administrations, leading to legal uncertainty and conflict between federal directives and state-level implementation.
During Trump’s first term, the Department of Education interpreted Title IX to exclude transgender females from participating in girls’ athletics. This interpretation was reversed in 2021 by the Biden administration, which expanded Title IX protections to explicitly include gender identity.
States are not technically compelled to follow executive orders, but noncompliance comes at a cost: the potential loss of federal funding, legal challenges and civil rights investigations. These shifting interpretations are likely to persist until the courts, potentially the Supreme Court, resolve them.
Makin’s resistance may be politically satisfying for Maine’s progressive leadership, but it puts school districts, students and millions in federal aid on the line. This was never about principled leadership. It’s been performative defiance from the start, with students and schools left to pay the price.
Kendall Tietz is an investigative reporter @DefendingEd, a former culture writer @FoxNews, a fellow @WSJOpinion and education reporter@DailyCaller. She is open to tips to [email protected]
