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janet mills
Emails Show Trump Official Targeted Maine Social Security Services as Political Revenge
"Trump is clearly comfortable weaponizing Social Security for political purposes, and we fear that this is only the beginning," said one critic.
Apr 02, 2025
The top Democrat on the U.S. House Oversight Committee on Wednesday led calls for the resignation of acting Social Security Administration Commissioner Leland Dudek following the revelation of internal emails confirming that the SSA canceled contracts with the state of Maine as political payback after Democratic Gov. Janet Mills publicly defied President Donald Trump in support of transgender student athletes.
The emails—which were obtained by House Oversight Committee Ranking Member Gerry Connolly (D-Va.)—show that Dudek ordered the cancellation of enumeration at birth and electronic death registration contracts with Maine, even though SSAd subordinates warned that such action "would result in improper payments and potential for identity theft."
"These emails confirm that the Trump administration is intentionally creating waste and the opportunity for fraud."
Dudek—who is leading the SSA while the Senate considers Trump's nomination of financial services executive Frank Bisignano—replied to the staffer: "Please cancel the contracts. While our improper payments will go up, and fraudsters may compromise identities, no money will go from the public trust to a petulant child."
He was referring to Mills, who stood up to Trump in February after the president threatened to suspend federal funding for Maine unless the state banned transgender girls and women from participating on female scholastic sports teams.
The termination of the enumeration at birth contract briefly forced Maine parents to register their newborns for a Social Security number at a Social Security office, rather than checking a box on a form at the hospital as is customary, before the SSA reversed its decision.
Connolly sent Dudek a letter demanding that he "resign immediately" and submit to a transcribed interview with House Oversight Committee Democrats. Connolly wrote that Dudek "ordered these contracts terminated" as "direct retaliation" for Mills' defiance, "even though you knew that doing so would increase improper payments and create opportunities for fraudsters."
Government accountability advocates also condemned Dudek's actions.
"These emails confirm that the Trump administration is intentionally creating waste and the opportunity for fraud—in this case, to punish Maine Gov. Janet Mills for not bowing down to Donald Trump," Social Security Works president Nancy Altman told Common Dreams.
"The people actually punished by these actions were exhausted new parents in Maine, forced to drag their newborns to overcrowded Social Security offices in the middle of a measles outbreak," she continued. "Thankfully, the Trump administration had to quickly reverse course after massive public outrage. But Trump is clearly comfortable weaponizing Social Security for political purposes, and we fear that this is only the beginning."
"Once again, we see Team Trump resorting to revenge to set domestic policy."
Max Richtman, president and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, told Common Dreams that "it does not surprise us at all that this administration would weaponize Social Security against anyone who disagrees with or challenges President Trump."
"It's one of the concerns that we have with Elon Musk and [the Department of Government Efficiency] having access to everyone's personal data without any defensible explanation for why they need it," he continued. "We and the American people have legitimate worries, not only that this information will be vulnerable to hackers, but also that it could intentionally be misused as a weapon against anyone who publicly disagrees with Trump."
"The fact that the acting commissioner himself publicly admitted that he didn't really understand the Maine contract, but canceled it anyway, proves that this administration is making reckless changes that affect real people for no legitimate reason," Richtman added. "Once again, we see Team Trump resorting to revenge to set domestic policy."
The revelation of Dudek's emails comes amid SSA turmoil caused by the termination of thousands of agency personnel in what Trump, Musk, and other Republicans claim is an effort to reduce waste and fraud. Musk—who recently referred to Social Security as the the "biggest Ponzi scheme of all time"—has proposed the elimination of up to 50% of SSA's workforce and has said that up to $700 billion could be cut from programs including Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
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Governor Mills Stood up for Students and Survivors—Who Will Join Her?
Rather than descend into reactionary advocacy that centers an untrustworthy, increasingly fascist government, we must go above and beyond Title IX, standing up for actionable, lasting solutions to sex-based discrimination in schools.
Mar 27, 2025
“Are you going to comply with that?”
The question came at a bipartisan governors’ meeting, lobbed unceremoniously by U.S. President Donald Trump toward Gov. Janet Mills of Maine. Gov. Mills is one of the few representatives of any political party or institution to defy a recent executive order barring transgender students from women’s sports—and to stand firmly and vocally against the weaponization of Title IX to advance a bigoted, anti-trans agenda.
“I’m complying with the state and federal laws,” she replied. And then—“See you in court.”
Even as we identify and invest in alternate approaches to protecting students from gender-based discrimination, we cannot grant right-wing politicians leeway to weaponize Title IX for their own political gain.
The exchange, though brief, and the rushed and retaliatory federal investigation that followed, echoed far beyond the White House as a rare but critical example of how state, local, and school officials must stand up for students in the absence of adequate federal protections against sex discrimination. And those federal protections have never been adequate.
It is high time to recognize that in practice—and without states and schools moving beyond compliance to true advocacy for their students—Title IX has never offered comprehensive, accessible solutions to gender-based violence. I should know: I’ve experienced Title IX’s failings as a student, an organizer, and a policy advocate working to change how schools treat—and advocate for—survivors.
I was a college student in the Obama years, during what should have been a progressive “golden age” for Title IX, the federal civil rights law prohibiting gender-based discrimination in publicly funded schools. The reality on the ground was marked less by progress than by confusion and chaos. When my peers sought support from our Title IX office, administrators called their reasonable requests for support “too difficult” to address. Without on-campus advocates, nearly 40% of survivors who reported abuse during this period experienced a substantial disruption in their education due to retaliation, institutional betrayal, and being pushed out of schools. Many survivors stayed silent.
When Betsy DeVos gutted Title IX protections during the first Trump administration, I joined the survivor- and youth-led project Know Your IX, where I worked with student activists whose horror stories under the Trump administration’s Title IX rule sounded eerily familiar. Survivors experiencing traumatic investigations dropped out of school—paying off student loans for a degree they would never get. Medical school students chose not to report abuse for fear of losing professional opportunities. Young people who had experienced dating abuse developed new mental health challenges, and their schools refused to grant accommodations. And though Joe Biden won the presidency in 2020, Trump-era guidance on how schools should enforce Title IX persisted throughout nearly the entirety of his presidency. President Trump moved to officially reinstate DeVos-era guidance, after appointing people who have caused sexual harm or been complicit in it (including Secretary of Education Linda McMahon) to the highest positions of power in our country. If it wasn’t already clear, it should be staggeringly so now: We cannot rely on the federal government to save us.
Rather than descend into reactionary advocacy that centers an untrustworthy, increasingly fascist government, we must go above and beyond Title IX, standing up for actionable, lasting solutions to sex-based discrimination in schools. Local organizing at K-12 schools and college campuses led by students and survivors offers one path forward. We can also fight for stronger state anti-discrimination policies that reflect the needs of marginalized students. And we can empower student groups with resources and training to support their peers in the absence of federal or administrative protections.
Most importantly, it is time for schools to take responsibility for protecting their students and act accordingly—regardless of state and federal policy, or how the president decides to interpret the 37 words that make up the statute of Title IX. While federally funded schools are required to comply with Trump’s Title IX rule, they can and should create separate anti-discrimination policies that fill in the gaps of the current Title IX rule. We should encourage schools to go above and beyond what federal law requires to protect students from sexual violence, and respond with care when it occurs.
Of course, in the absence of strong, federal legislation codifying students’ protections and schools’ responsibility to address gender-based discrimination, “sending education back to the states” creates an inequitable patchwork of civil rights protections, resulting in even more students experiencing traumatic disruptions to their education. While investing in school- and state-level organizing, we must build wide networks of support and mutual aid that persist no matter how hostile the environment. Groups like Know Your IX, now a project of the national youth activism organization Advocates for Youth, will continue to organize alongside brilliant and dedicated survivors and student activists holding their schools accountable and fighting for survivor-centered solutions.
Even as we identify and invest in alternate approaches to protecting students from gender-based discrimination, we cannot grant right-wing politicians leeway to weaponize Title IX for their own political gain. We must join Gov. Mills and shout from the rooftops that bigoted, transphobic attempts to attack marginalized young people through education policy will never be a solution to this country’s epidemic of sexual harassment and assault. We must hold strong in the face of increasingly brazen attempts from federal officials to curb students’ rights and retaliate against dissidence. If lawmakers actually cared about women and girls, they would bolster Title IX protections—not attempt to dismantle them.
Title IX was always the floor, not the ceiling. Now, it’s time to aim for the stars. Student survivors, LGBTQI+ youth, and pregnant and parenting people deserve nothing less.
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Trump Called 'Pathetic' for Demanding Apology From Maine Gov. Janet Mills
"On what legal basis can he treat the people of Maine differently depending on if their governor apologizes to him? None," wrote one Georgetown University professor.
Mar 23, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump took to his social media platform Truth Social on Saturday to demand an apology from Maine Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat, after the two had a heated exchange at the White House in February over an executive order banning transgender women and girls from playing in women's sports.
This new scrutiny on Maine comes as the state has been subject to numerous probes and funding cuts following that exchange that "have been widely interpreted as retaliatory," according to the local outlet the Maine Morning Star.
"While the state of Maine has apologized for their governor's strong, but totally incorrect, statement about men playing in women's sports while at the White House House Governor's Conference, we have not heard from the governor herself, and she is the one that matters in such cases," Trump wrote on Truth Social.
"Therefore, we need a full-throated apology from the governor herself and a statement that she will never make such an unlawful challenge to the federal government again before this case can be settled," he added.
The statement, according to Politico, implied that the Trump administration would continue to target Maine unless Trump receives the apology he wants.
"King Trump demands an apology from the Governor of Maine because she embarrassed him" wrote former NBCUniversal studio executive Mike Sington. "Pathetic."
Multiple outlets reporting on the remarks from Trump noted it was not immediately clear what Trump meant when he said that the "state of Maine" had apologized.
On Saturday, Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows wrote on Bluesky: "Can confirm 'state of Maine' hasn't apologized. (As the official keeper of all state records and guardian of the seal ;))."
Jonathan Ladd, an associate professor at Georgetown University's public policy school, wrote that "Trump is constitutionally required to take care that U.S. laws be faithfully executed. On what legal basis can he treat the people of Maine differently depending on if their governor apologizes to him? None."
The dispute between Trump and Mills stems from an interaction at a White House event as part of the National Governors Association on February 21.
"We're going to follow the law sir. We'll see you in court," Mills told the president in a heated exchange, referring to the Maine Human Rights Act, which was amended four years ago to include gender identity as a protected class. Mills and Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey have argued that the law supersedes the president's edict barring transgender girls from participating in sports that match their gender identity.
Since that episode, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services investigated and found Maine to be in violation of Title IX for allowing transgender girls to compete in women's sports, the U.S. Department of Agriculture launched and resolved a probe into the University of Maine System's Title IX compliance, and the Trump administration briefly imposed an end to the practice of allowing parents to register their newborns for a social security card at the hospital, among other measures.
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