“See you in court.”
Those were the words that Maine Gov. Janet Mills had for President Donald Trump and his administration at a recent summit, when he threatened to rescind federal funding to her state should she refuse to comply with his executive order prohibiting transgender women from participating in competitive women’s sports.
Needless to say, she refused. Right to his face.
Mills is one of a solid-and-growing number of women in politics who have been using their power and platforms to mitigate the prospective harm of the sweeping policy changes Trump has attempted to enact since taking office last month. (Yes, it’s only been a little over a month.)
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul similarly – and publicly – declined to comply with presidential orders recently. Trump asserted that he would rescind approval for congestion pricing in New York City, a program that charges a $9 toll for drivers entering heavily trafficked parts of Manhattan during peak hours to generate additional funding for the city’s mass transit system. “CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD,” Trump posted on Truth Social of his decision. “LONG LIVE THE KING!”
In response, Hochul hosted a press conference – and took aim at both his attempt to mandate compliance, and his self-proclaimed monarch status. “I’m here to say: New York hasn’t labored under a king in over 250 years, and … we sure as hell are not going to start now,” she said. “The streets of this city, where battles were fought, we stood up to a king – and we won then.”
Action is happening at other levels of governance, too. Numerous attorneys general – many of them women – have been filing complaints and lawsuits to block the deluge of executive orders handed down by Trump’s office, as well as efforts on the part of White House senior advisor and unelected billionaire Elon Musk to cut both programs and personnel. The AGs’ efforts have challenged everything from their attempts to eradicate birthright citizenship, to Musk’s attempt to access data held by the Treasury Department.
The cohort of attorneys general has been meeting frequently via Zoom calls to coordinate their efforts, several of them told the Washington Post, using the policy proposals laid out in Project 2025 as a blueprint for strategizing a legal resistance.
And for some women in power, the best way to push back against Trump’s lawless power grabs has been to step away from their posts altogether, rather than take what they know are wrong actions. For example, there’s Danielle Sassoon, the conservative former interim head of the Southern District of New York who resigned from her post rather than drop the corruption case against Trump’s newest supplicant, New York City Mayor Eric Adams. Several other staffers followed her lead.
“Because the law does not support a dismissal, and because I am confident that Adams has committed the crimes with which he is charged, I cannot agree to seek a dismissal driven by improper considerations,” Sassoon wrote in a letter to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, adding that compliance would set a “breathtaking and dangerous precedent.”
The message is clear – these women are not backing down. In an official statement, Mills of Maine said that the conflict between Trump and those who will not give in, like her, “is about whether a President can force compliance with his will, without regard for the rule of law that governs our nation.”
She concluded: “I believe he cannot.”
