Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins is threatening to withhold agricultural research funding from institutions that do not comply with an executive order aiming to ban transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports. She has so far initiated a review into the University of Maine’s policies.
The threat comes amid a dispute between the White House and the state of Maine over transgender athletes, with President Trump on Friday threatening Maine Governor Janet Mills that unless the state complies with his executive order, "you’re not going to get any federal funding.”
Mills said in a statement Friday that the state of Maine “will not be intimidated by the President’s threats and if Trump withholds federal funding to Maine schools her administration will take “appropriate and necessary legal action to restore that funding.”
In a letter to University of Maine System Chancellor Dannel Malloy, USDA Acting General Counsel Ralph Linden said the agency is opening an investigation “based upon indications that the State of Maine is openly disregarding President Trump’s Executive Order." He added that Title IX is “broader than just athletics and bars discrimination on the basis of sex in any federally funded education programs or activities.”
“USDA is committed to upholding the president’s executive order, meaning any institution that chooses to disregard it can count on losing future funding,” Rollins said in a statement.
According to a USDA press release, the University of Maine has received over $100 million in National Institute of Food and Agriculture and Agricultural Research Service funding in recent years. In FY24, the agency awarded $29.78 million to the university, according to Samantha Warren, a spokesperson for the University of Maine System.
Warren stressed in a statement to Agri-Pulse that USDA’s letter “makes no allegations of any wrongdoing.”
"Maine’s public universities will continue to comply with all relevant State and Federal laws and cooperate with any compliance reviews to ensure postsecondary educational opportunities and high-impact research continue to benefit our students, the state and this nation,” Warren said.
This is not the first time an agriculture secretary has used agency funding to pressure schools to take certain actions when it comes to policies on gender identity. In 2022, under then-Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack, state and local agencies and schools seeking school lunch funding from the Food and Nutrition Service were required to adopt prohibitions against discrimination due to gender identity and sexual orientation.
