AG Frey and U.S. Rep. Pingree highlight importance of state-level legal challenges to counter Trump

U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree and Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey said it’s crucial for states to challenge President Donald Trump’s executive orders and “sham investigations,” emphasizing the legal avenues already used to counter several of the administration’s actions.

Frey, who was speaking alongside the 1st District representative during a tele-town hall Tuesday evening, highlighted cases Maine has joined challenging Trump’s executive order about birthright citizenship and attempts to freeze federal funding, and U.S. Department of Education layoffs.

Speaking to the roughly 13,000 people who joined, according to Pingree’s office, Frey also addressed the federal investigations by the U.S. DOE and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that found Maine to be in violation of Title IX within a few days of being initiated — and did so without following any steps of a typical investigation, including interviews.

Maine now faces several pending deadlines set by the various federal agencies to comply with the Trump administration’s interpretation of Title IX, which views allowing transgender girls’ access to sports, locker rooms and bathrooms as violating the federal law that bans sex-based discrimination. If the state does not challenge the findings in federal court, it will have to comply or risk losing millions in federal funding. 

Pingree and Frey discussed the tense exchange between Trump and Gov. Janet Mills, which prompted the directed investigations. 

“We do have a situation where we have a federal administration that appears to be trying to please the president by targeting Maine and programs in Maine,” Frey said. “It’s hard not to see it as something that’s been motivated by this desire to effectuate revenge, or effectuate some sort of animus that the President has for the state of Maine.”

The remark came the same day that the acting head of the Social Security Administration Leland Dudek admitted to the New York Times that he temporarily halted several agency processes in the state that would have significantly inconvenienced Maine people because he was “ticked at the governor of Maine for not being real cordial to the president.”

Frey did not say Tuesday whether Maine would be filing a lawsuit challenging the Title IX investigations, but said, “obviously, we’re engaged. We are the state’s attorney. We are working with the affected agencies.”

Pingree also emphasized that the president does not have the power to unilaterally cut off funding to Maine, from Social Security to the temporary funding freeze ordered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to research and grants to the University of Maine System.

“However you feel about a policy, the president does not have the power, just because of his executive order, to block funding to the states,” said Pingree.

“Congress can block funding to the states … but it can’t be an edict of a president because he feels a certain way. He can’t do it because of policy, he can’t do it because he feels he was insulted,” added the congresswoman, who said in an email following the event that she’ll be announcing in-person town-hall events “very soon.”