Gov. Janet Mills spoke of a “brand new day” when she was inaugurated in 2019 as Maine’s first female governor. She did not mention first-term President Donald Trump, nor could she have known how he would overlap again with her in office and make Maine an object of his ire.
Yet as the governor nears her final year in office, one of her key roles is pushing back against the president and his efforts to yank the state’s federal funding since Trump first singled out Mills at a White House event over Maine’s transgender athlete policies in February. Many of his moves were reversed, but a Justice Department lawsuit may last until Mills’ final months.
Mills, who has not ruled out a 2026 bid against U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, has capitalized on the attention from her “see you in court” remark to the Republican president. She has been featured in national Democratic fundraising messages and traveled this summer to the Maritimes to encourage Canadians to keep visiting Maine despite Trump’s tariffs and rhetoric that the country’s officials were blunt about criticizing during the goodwill trip.
This anti-Trump ambassador role shows a different side of Mills, a Farmington native who has controlled business in Augusta with solid Democratic control of the Legislature. She has generally won out over more progressive members of her party in budget disputes and in the policy areas of gun rights and tribal sovereignty. Still, Republicans give her little credit.
Mills’ office declined to grant interview requests for this story, but former colleagues and family of the 77-year-old governor used similar words to describe her, saying she did not instigate the fight with Trump but took it on aggressively when it came to her.
She “didn’t have any choice” once Trump asked if the Maine governor was in the room at the White House event, said James Tierney, who served as Maine’s attorney general from 1980 to 1990 while Mills was a district attorney. Tierney said he spoke with Mills about the encounter. Nodding to Trump’s repeated use of “he” to describe Mills on a campaign call last year, Tierney said the president did not know who she was until she spoke up.
“She just said what she believes [to Trump],” Tierney said. “It made her a hero to some and a villain to others, but it was pure Janet.”
Dr. Dora Mills, the governor’s sister, recalled how Mills came to her house after flying back from Washington the day after the Feb. 21 clash with Trump. The governor joined her sister, her sister’s college-age kids and the kids’ friends at the dinner table. Mills asked the kids how they were doing and about school “as if nothing had happened.”
“I finally stopped her and said, ‘You’re making a lot of news.’ She wasn’t as aware as one might be,” the governor’s sister said.
In Democratic Governors Association digital ads that aim to build the group’s email list and donor base, Mills has derided Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” of tax breaks and spending cuts that the Republican-controlled Congress approved for his signature in early July.
“There’s nothing pretty about cutting food to hungry children,” Mills says in one message. “Nothing pretty about preventing people from getting to their doctor when they have a healthcare problem.”
Republican critics have argued she should focus more on her state’s fiscal health, pointing to higher property taxes, energy prices, housing costs and a MaineCare deficit that earlier this year caused protracted arguments in the Legislature that Democrats have controlled while using their majorities to pass numerous budgets without GOP votes.
They point to polling showing a majority of Mainers and Americans want transgender female athletes banned from female sports to argue Mills is on the wrong side of the issue. She faced hecklers at the June moose permit lottery drawing in Farmington.
Maine Republican Party Chair Jim Deyermond said Mills does occasionally “reach across the aisle” but dismissed that as “not for anything of consequence.”
“I don’t think she’s going to be seen in the light she thought she was going to be seen in,” Deyermond said.
At the state level, Mills may also pressure on her left from the Wabanaki Nations over her refusal to back more sweeping tribal sovereignty legislation that would grant tribes additional federal benefits that others across the country have. Mills has preferred piecemeal changes to the landmark 1980 settlement regulating the tribes like Maine towns and cities.
The next governor could go in a different direction on that issue and others, particularly if they are in Mills’ party. The governor has not endorsed anyone in the primary, but she marched in a July parade in Aroostook County with former top adviser Hannah Pingree, who is seen as her preferred heir apparent.
U.S. Sen. Angus King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats and who served as Maine’s governor from 1995 to 2003, said Mills will have to deal with the prospect of Medicaid and Affordable Care Act cuts under Trump’s megabill that are expected to affect about 60,000 Mainers. King said he has spoken with Mills about how rural hospitals may close as a result.
Time will tell how much Mills seeks to accomplish legislatively next year and if new federal issues will arise. As for the transgender athlete dispute that thrust Mills into the national spotlight, King said Trump started it.
“She wasn’t looking for that fight,” he said. “It came to her.”