Trump Cuts Funding To Maine’s Universities After Governor Defies Executive Order
Published 11 hours ago
on March 11, 2025
By Cullen McCue
The U.S. Department of Agriculture is pausing funding to the University of Maine System (UMS), a network of eight public colleges in the state, UMS officials confirmed Tuesday. The pause comes just a few weeks after Maine Governor Janet Mills, a Democrat, refused to comply with a recent executive order that bars transgender-identifying men from competing in women’s sports at any school or institution that receives federal funding.
Less than two weeks after being sworn in on January 20, President Trump signed an executive order that barred biological males from competing in women’s and girls’ sports. The order reinforced the president’s broader policy stance that gender is based on biological sex at birth, not identity. This follows another sweeping executive order signed back in January, which mandated federal agencies to define sex strictly as male or female across government documentation, including passports and federal prison assignments.
Funding will paused while the USDA reviews potential Title IX and Title VI violations by the universities in question and comes just days after Trump vowed to take action against states that defy the order during his Congressional address on March 4.
On Tuesday, UMS confirmed that funding to eight Maine universities would be paused as a result of the state’s decision to defy the order. “An email forwarded to the University of Maine that appears to have originated from the USDA’s Office of the Chief Financial Officer directs the department’s ‘awarding agencies and staff offices to temporarily no longer issue any payments or authorize any other releases of funding to Columbia University or the University of Maine System,'” a spokesperson for UMS told Fox News.
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