The US Division of Agriculture is pausing funding to the College of Maine System (UMS), a community of eight public faculties within the state, in response to UMS officers.
The pause is in response to the state’s current refusal to adjust to President Donald Trump’s govt order to maintain transgender athletes out of girls’s sports activities.
The pause in funding comes because the USDA critiques potential Title IX and Title VI violations by the colleges, amid the state’s current refusal to adjust to Trump’s govt order to maintain transgender athletes out of girls’s sports activities.
Trump reaffirmed his intent to punish states that proceed to permit trans athletes to compete with ladies throughout his March 4 deal with to a joint session of Congress.
Trump’s administration has now acted on that promise.
A UMS spokesperson confirmed to Fox Information Digital on Tuesday it has been notified its funding shall be paused.
“An e-mail forwarded to the College of Maine that seems to have originated from the USDA’s Workplace of the Chief Monetary Officer directs the division’s ‘awarding companies and employees workplaces to briefly not situation any funds or authorize another releases of funding to Columbia College or the College of Maine System,’” the spokesperson stated.
“The message goes on to state, ‘This pause is short-term in nature whereas USDA evaluates if it ought to take any follow-on actions associated to potential Title VI or Title IX violations. Please take any essential actions to effectuate this route from management. This pause will stay in impact till additional discover.’”
The UMS spokesperson says the system instructed the USDA the colleges “have been in compliance with related state and federal legal guidelines and that UMS universities are members of the NCAA,” including the system is “unaware” of any Title VI violations.
Nonetheless, UMS says it’s going to present additional readability on the scenario after “additional evaluation is accomplished.”
In fiscal 12 months 2024 alone, the USDA awarded $29.78 million in funding to UMS for analysis, the system stated.
The USDA claims it has supplied over $100 million to the UMS lately in a letter addressed to the system.
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The NCAA additionally amended its gender eligibility coverage to ban any athlete born biologically male from competing in girls’s sports activities.
Trump initially vowed to chop funding to Maine particularly if it continued to permit trans athletes to compete in ladies sports activities throughout a gathering of GOP governors on the White Home on Feb. 20.
The subsequent day, Gov. Janet Mills’ workplace responded with an announcement threatening authorized motion in opposition to the Trump administration if it withheld federal funding from the state.
Then Trump and Mills verbally sparred in a extensively publicized argument on the White Home throughout a bipartisan assembly of governors.
Simply hours after that interplay, the US Division of Schooling introduced it will examine the state for permitting transgender athletes to compete in ladies sports activities and for potential Title IX violations.
The US Division of Well being and Human Providers has already decided that the state and its division of training have violated Title IX by permitting transgender athletes to compete and has made a referral to the US Division of Justice.
Republican Maine state Rep. Laurel Libby helped ignite the contentious scenario when, in early February, she recognized a organic male who competed in and received a ladies state pole vault competitors for Greely Excessive College on social media.
Police safety was assigned to Greely Excessive College in the course of the controversy.
Libby was then censured by the state’s Home of Representatives and Speaker Ryan Fecteau for the put up.
Libby filed a lawsuit Tuesday in opposition to Fecteau in response to the censure, searching for to have her voting and talking rights restored.
The controversy has even incited a protest in opposition to Mills known as the “March Towards Mills” outdoors the Maine’s State Home Saturday morning.
A number of feminine athletes took the microphone on the march to talk out in opposition to the Democratic governor.
A day later, eight pro-trans activists protested outdoors Libby’s house in opposition to her views.
They held indicators that stated “Disgrace on you Laurel 4 exploiting a baby 4 your political achieve” and “Defend trans youth,” in response to the Maine Wire.
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