Pine and Roses’s Todd Chretien sat down with Rose D. and Marianne M-W. to talk about Trump’s attacks on trans athletes in Maine.
TC: We’re here at Otto’s pizza in Portland with Rose and Marianne and we’re gonna talk about trans liberation and Trump. To begin with, Donald Trump has gone on the attack against Maine, threatening to withhold $260 million in education and state funding all over the question of trans athletes participating in sports in Maine. So, first question, do you think Trump is serious and how should we respond?
M M-W: I think that sometimes Trump is just vibing on the mic, but now that the Justice Department has threatened a lawsuit against the state, I think the threat is transitioning from free association into something real that we need to be prepared to respond to. What actually comes of this is a different question. Is the state violating Title IX? No. Can the federal government withhold federal funding without the consent of Congress? No. But will the courts stop him? It’s unclear.
TC: I’m glad you mentioned the courts. Gov. Janet Mills was completely right to stand up to Trump and say, “I’ll see you in court.” She’s gained a lot of credibility for that and rightly so. But the Supreme Court is run by a supermajority of ultra conservatives. So when Mills said, “I’ll see you in court,” it became a rallying cry, but also pointed to a weakness.
M M-W: I think there is a pretty significant chance that this goes all the way to the top and the Supreme Court rules in Trump’s favor. Then what happens? Will the state just immediately fold or does that create a further crisis? I think that’s more of an open question and might be something we need to consider strategy wise. I think the liberal reflex to take things to the court has been a relic of the postwar liberal Warren court years. With a couple of notable exceptions, the court has not been a friend to progressives and socially liberal causes in a long time. We need to move away from relying on the courts to enforce or establish progressive social liberties. For the moment, however, there’s not a lever that a moderate Democrat governor like Mills has to pull other than the courts. We will probably need popular resistance. I hesitate to suggest that anyone should make a high school basketball game a site of protest, but we will need popular resistance to demand that trans kids be allowed to play. We will need regular members of our communities—parents of the cisgender kids on the teams—to say, “this kid is just one of the kids on this team and they deserve to play.” We need to ensure that whatever the Trump administration throws at us meets popular resistance in Maine as well as legal and legislative pushback. We shouldn’t look to Governor Mills to lead that.
TC: Rose, you’ve been doing a lot of organizing work in the more rural District 2. There’s a stereotype that the state is split into a blue part and a red part around Portland. Based on your experience, do you see the potential for solidarity with trans athletes and trans people in general that Marianne is referring to, not only in and around Portland, but also in District 2?
RD: Absolutely. Right now I’m helping some students who live in northern and central Maine get ready to testify on a bill that would codify trans rights into the state Constitution, and queer people live in all parts of our state. There are definitely people outside of greater Portland who really care about these issues. Whether that’s because it affects them personally or they know people or it is something that they are really passionate about. There are people who are willing to speak out and stand up.
TC: That’s a very important point to stress. But we do have a political problem in the state. State Rep. Laura Libby from Auburn has made a name for herself by outing a trans athlete minor. She has been censured by the state legislature for doing so, but is also raising millions of dollars for her gubernatorial campaign and has been championed endorsed by Trump. They are not just relying on the courts to push this through. They want to take the state back for MAGA. Do you see somebody like Laura Libby as purely opportunist? Or is there support for what she’s putting forward? Do we have a majority on our side in defense of trans rights in Maine?
RD: I think it might be both. There is definitely a way in which a lot of this has been manufactured from nothing. Yet it has become a flashpoint issue for the Republicans. And I think you’re starting to see that in opinion polls. Unfortunately, Trump’s attacks on LGTBQ+ rights is one of the only things that Trump’s not losing support around. He’s really dropping off on the economy. But he’s maintaining support for attacking immigrants and trans people. So I think both. The trans attack was manufactured, but I also think now that it has been manufactured, it does present a more serious risk. We need to figure out a way to confront it. It pains me to say we’re very lucky to have Janet Mills because she’s been such a frustrating governor for progressives and socialists in so many ways. But LGBTQ+ rights in general and abortion rights in particular are the two things where she has been consistently really good. However, specifically trans rights seem to be the one area where some elected Democrats seem more willing to throw us under the bus. So I think there will be a danger. If Libby runs for governor, it will be important to watch what Democrats do. Will they take on trans rights as an issue to be fought for or an issue to avoid and concede, like Kamala Harris did on so many issues during her presidential run.
TC: I think it’s a really good point. Some of the Democrats who voted in favor of censuring Libby say things like, I don’t agree with the state policy supporting trans athletes, but I’m against outing minors on social media. District 2 Congressman Jared Golden is the prime example. How can the left construct a coalition of people who are strong enough to stand up for trans rights without cutting deals with those Democrats who are willing to throw people under the bus?
M M-W I think one thing we have going for us is that Democratic primary voters are more supportive of trans rights than Democratic elected officials. I think we need to do everything we can to make sure that Jared Golden is not the Democratic nominee for governor. I think we also need to reaffirm social liberalism as a left wing value. As a trans woman, I don’t need the general public to really know a lot about what it means to be trans, but I need people to respect my right and the rights of all other trans people to live the lives that we want to live. And we need to affirm that letting people live the lives that they want to live as a core value for socialists and progressives more broadly.
I’m from away—as we say in Maine—so I’m a bit hesitant to speak about Maine values. But I’ve lived here for six years and it seems to me that letting people live their lives without interference as much as possible is the way people like it in Maine, whatever their political backgrounds. And so I think that if we frame this as a fight to allow people to be who they are and live the lives that they want to live, we can rally a lot of people. We’re not gonna convince Libby or any of her hardcore supporters. We’re not gonna convince MAGA people who claim to support freedom or whatever. But I think we can win over a coalition from mainstream liberals to Berniecrats to socialists.
TC: A silver lining to Trump carrying up this attack and Libby carrying his torch is that he’s in danger of overreaching, for instance, now he’s threatening all Title IX support for sports. He’s really threatening all sports, threatening all schools, threatening the entire system of government. He’s already laid off VA workers in Maine. He’s already laid off park rangers. He’s already laid off USDA workers and Farm Service Agency workers. How do we talk to people about the real danger he poses to trans people and expose how he’s trying to divide and conquer.
M M-W: What we need is to act with the understanding that trans rights are a working-class issue, not an abstract concept. Trans rights are made up of the same things that all working class people need, healthcare, education, housing, secure employment with a living wage, etc. How do we convince people that eroding trans people’s rights will set the stage for eroding every working class person’s rights. And fighting for trans liberation means fighting for universal healthcare and housing. It means fighting for workplace protections and unions. If you sacrifice trans people, you’re only opening the door for Trump to attack you.
And look at who is attacking all the groups you mentioned. It’s the same guy who can’t shut up about trans women on Twitter. The billionaires removing transphobia from the hate speech policies on their platforms are the same ones backing Trump’s evisceration of the federal government and his plans to privatize everything. I don’t necessarily expect everyone to make trans rights their own personal cause, or really even understand anything about trans life, but we do need to understand that giving the billionaires an inch on anything emboldens them and furthers their agenda.
RD: I feel like part of it, at least, is that they don’t like trans people, they hate trans people because of how we represent a kind of broader shift in culture. What it’s ultimately about is gender politics. Thinking back to during the election—JD Vance and the childless cat ladies and all that—the thing that threatens them is women in general having any rights. They want to end abortion rights! They’re coming for us because we’re an easy target right now, but it’s part of a broader push. And it’s not just trans women who are affected by these kinds of policies. Think back to the Olympics when conservatives generated controversy over an Algerian boxer, a cis woman, basically just because of how she looks. It’s about policing everyone. I think we need to train people to know who the real enemy is, because it’s the same no matter who you are if you are a working person in this country.
