Gov. Janet Mills didn’t hold back Monday during a nationally televised interview about Maine’s ongoing and escalating legal battles with the Trump administration over threats to cut off millions in federal funding to the state for education, corrections and health care.

Appearing on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Mills said “my jaw dropped” when Trump claimed to be the federal law and demanded that Maine comply with his order to bar transgender athletes from high school sports during a confrontation at the White House in February.

“Even a fifth-grade civics student” knows the president can’t create laws through social media posts or executive orders, Mills said Monday. “He’s not allowed to do that.”

Mills also criticized an April 2 letter from the secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture threatening to end food assistance for Maine children if the state doesn’t comply with Trump’s transgender athlete order. Some have called the letter a ransom note, Mills said.

“The tone of it and the substance of it are rather appalling,” she said.

In the letter, USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins made clear the freeze is a direct response to allowing trans athletes to compete in girls sports, which the administration argues violates a federal anti-discrimination law.

“You cannot openly violate federal law against discrimination in education and expect federal funding to continue unabated. Your defiance of federal law has cost your state, which is bound by Title IX in educational programming,” Rollins wrote. “This is only the beginning, though you are free to end it at any time by protecting women and girls in compliance with federal law.”

And Mills mocked the Trump administration’s acting Social Security administrator for briefly cutting services because he was “ticked off” that Mills was “not being cordial” to Trump, after the president called her out before a room full of governors at the White House.

“Like, there’s a cordiality test now?” Mills said. “But regardless, those are arbitrary capricious decisions on their part.”

Mills said the threatened cuts are not rational and are unrelated to the issue of trans athletes.

“If he discovers that there’s somebody on Social Security who happens to be transgender? Does he vacate the whole Social Security program?” she said.

It appears to be the first time Mills has sat down for a media interview since her February altercation with Trump at the White House. Mills has declined multiple interview requests from the Press Herald and has only taken a few questions from reporters at public events.

The interview comes days after the state won an initial court victory in a lawsuit seeking to stop the USDA from withholding food assistance.

Mills did not express an opinion during the interview about whether transgender girls should be allowed to play in girls sports. But she appeared to downplay the notion that it was a significant problem.

“Because there are maybe two — at most two — transgender athletes competing in Maine schools right now, they decided to shut off funding for our school nutrition programs — school lunch program entirely — on which 172,000 Maine school children rely for their school meals?” she said. “That didn’t make any sense.”

The Maine Principals’ Associations, which oversees high school sports and adopted the policy allowing trans students to compete, has said it does not know the precise number of transgender students competing in high school sports because schools do not have to share the information. Two southern Maine students have attracted the attention of conservatives critical of the policy, however, and the MPA has said it is not aware of others.

The MPA policy is based on the Maine Human Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination based on gender identity, sex, race and other things.

Mills’ appearance on MSNBC is likely to only increase tensions with the Trump administration, which last week referred Maine’s alleged noncompliance with federal Title IX rules to the U.S. Department of Justice for enforcement.

The Trump administration is arguing that allowing trans athletes violates Title IX protections against discrimination targeting girls and women, a legal theory that has yet to be tested in court.

While the president has said he is trying to protect women and girls from unfair competition, Mills noted some ways that his other policies are letting women down, alluding to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to strike down abortion protections afforded for 50 years under Roe v. Wade, which has led to restrictions in Republican-held states.

“Protect the lives and welfare of people in those states across the country — the women who are dying because they can’t get health care, sometimes from miscarriage and they can’t get help in an emergency room,” she said. “How about those women and young girls? They need help too. They need our compassion and we’re not providing it. He’s not answering their call.”

Mills, a former prosecutor, defended her record on women’s issues.

“I have spent my career — the better part of my career — defending and protecting the rights of women and girls in health care, in employment, housing, credit and the like, and I’m appalled,” Mills said. “I was appalled at his interpretation that he can just reinvent the law.”