2 weeks Ago
The bullying of Maine by the Trump administration in response to a single exchange with Gov. Janet Mills that was all of 40 seconds in duration, we know now, hasn’t been imagined — nor has it been overblown. If anything, the lengths that federal officials have gone to in their various bids to creatively penalize our state in recent weeks are worthy of greater condemnation.
In the face of this wrongheaded and vain targeting, it’s right for state and local representatives to stay the course and we were encouraged, last week, to see them do just that. We cannot let the Maine state position on the matter of transgender athletes competing in girls’ high school sports — which is and has been, like it or not, to follow the letter of the law — be undone by fear or reversed in response to the threat of further victimization , however aggressive or novel. “It was not clear what repercussions the entities could face for not signing,” we reported last week, referring to the refusal by leaders of both the Maine Principals’ Association and Greely High School in Cumberland to sign an agreement to bar transgender athletes proposed by the Trump administration.
In public statements, both organizations noted that they were bound by state law and the terms of the Maine Human Rights Act. Good. At the time of writing (Thursday last), a similar resolution proposed by the U.
S. Department of Education, with the same 10-day deadline to sign, had not been signed by its recipient, the Maine DOE. The alternative, for Maine to go ahead and sign these proposals handed down from on high, is not something this editorial board can countenance.
To give in to even the most relentless application of federal pressure would be to surrender to the executive-order-as-law fantasy that the Trump administration is seeking to make a national reality. Maine and Mills’ opposition to the enforcement of Trump’s order has a firm legal basis. In five weeks, that basis has not weakened or changed.
Nor should Maine’s position. Gov. Mills is following state and federal law, Maine is following state and federal law.
The Trump administration’s cascading fiats, as badly as the president wants them to, do not amount to laws. “You can’t create laws by thinking them, by tweeting them, by issuing press releases, by issuing executive orders,” Mills said last week. Congress makes the laws.
The president — the executive branch — executes the laws faithfully.” That is, when things are working as they’re supposed to. That they aren’t, at the moment, should be plain for all to see.
What’s at hand is still a simple matter of principle. Make this inflated, emotional dispute about any question at all — the answer should still be arrived at via the rule of law and via due process. Any suggestion to the contrary, any support for the idea that we would abase ourselves by giving in to these demands because they’re getting louder, shows no regard for the most basic of American ideals.
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