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Janet Mills launches Senate campaign by celebrating her wins for trans rights
Photo #7408 October 23 2025, 08:15

Maine Gov. Janet Mills (D) launched her campaign for U.S. Senate last week, and one of the first arguments she made was to tout her record on trans rights.

In a message posted across social media platforms, Mills discussed how she stood up to the president earlier this year as he tried to force the state to ban trans girls from participating in school sports.

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“See you in court,” she said after he threatened to end Maine’s federal education funding to punish the state for not following his orders in February. By May, Maine had settled its lawsuit with the administration over its attempt to freeze $3 million in federal funds allocated by Congress.

“There was no investigation, there was no notice, and there was no lawful process that was followed,” the state’s attorney general said at the time. “Maine had no choice but to bring suit to confront this unlawful action by the USDA.”

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“I told him I’d see him in court,” Mills said at the time. “Well, we did see him in court, and we won.”

“It’s the Congress that makes the law, not the president… These bullying tactics, we will not tolerate them… I am confident when we see him in court, we will win time and time again.”

Mills used those lines in her post this past weekend, adding that she won’t “tolerate bullies.”

“This is proof that when we fight, we win,” she wrote.

I don’t tolerate bullies. When Donald Trump threatened to withhold federal funding from Maine unless we folded to his demands, I told him I’d see him in court.So we did. And we were able to restore millions in funds for Maine students. This is proof that when we fight, we win.

Janet Mills (@janetmillsforme.bsky.social) 2025-10-18T16:04:06.995Z

Mills has also highlighted her support for expanded healthcare access, citing her administration’s expansion of Medicaid when she first took office in 2018. She claims that the Medicaid expansion has enabled 100,000 state residents to gain access to healthcare coverage.

Mills, who is 77, said she will serve only one six-year term in the Senate. If she wins the primary, she will face centrist Republican Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) in the general election next year.

“I think the moment demands a lot more than we’re seeing from Susan Collins,” Mills told the AP last week. “It demands a fighter and someone who will stand up and fight for the future of democracy and fight for the interests of Maine people, just as I have done for my entire career.”

Several Democrats have announced primary runs, like former Blackwater security contractor and oyster farmer Graham Platner. Platner announced his campaign in August and caught people’s attention with his populist rhetoric and working-class credentials, earning the endorsement of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT).

In October, he got embroiled in scandals around his use of social media. He complained in one Reddit thread from 2013 that rape victims should “take some responsibility for themselves and not get so f**ked up they wind up having sex with someone they don’t mean to.”

“You make a choice to consume enough of a substance to lose your self control. So if you don’t want to be in a comprising situation, act like an adult for f**k’s sake,” Platner wrote. “Rape is a real thing, if you’re so worried about it to buy Kevlar underwear you’d think you might not get blacked out f**ked up around people you aren’t comfortable with.”

Then, a video of him lip-syncing in his underwear at his brother’s wedding revealed that he had a Nazi tattoo on his chest. He apologized, claimed that he was drunk when he got that tattoo, said that he was not aware that the “Totenkopf” symbol was associated with the Third Reich, and had the tattoo almost immediately covered up with a new tattoo.

“I’m not a secret Nazi,” he said in an interview with Pod Save America this week. “The fact that I’ve managed to go from communist to Nazi in the span of four days according to people who are trying to do this to me I find to be quite a spectacular turn of events.”

In an August Reddit “Ask Me Anything” event, he said he stood up for LGBTQ+ rights.

“I stand right in the f**king way of anyone who’s going to try to come after the freedoms of the LGBTQIA+ community,” he said.

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