“It is high time that we all stopped being tools and victims of totalitarian techniques – techniques that, if continued here unchecked, will surely end what we have come to cherish as the American way of life.” Margaret Chase Smith (1950)

“But do not be misled: this is not just about who can compete on the athletic field, this is about whether a President can force compliance with his will, without regard for the rule of law that governs our nation. I believe he cannot.” Janet Mills (2025)

On Thursday, June 1, 1950, on her way to the senate chamber, the Republican senator from Maine ran into the Republican senator from Wisconsin.

“Margaret, you look very serious,” said Joe McCarthy. “Are you going to make a speech?”

“Yes,” Margaret Chase Smith replied, “and you will not like it!”

Her short speech has become known as the “Declaration of Conscience.” Announcing that “I speak as a Republican. I speak as a woman. I speak as a United States senator. I speak as an American,” Smith denounced the smear campaigns and character assassinations that had poisoned political discourse. “Freedom of speech is not what it used to be in America. It has been so abused by some that it is not exercised by others.”

After strongly criticizing the Truman administration, she turned to her own side of the aisle. “The nation sorely needs a Republican victory,” she said. “But I do not want to see the Republican party ride to political victory on the Four Horsemen of Calumny: Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry, and Smear.”

She was speaking directly to McCarthy, whose campaign of slander, accusations, and lies about communist infiltration of the government had gained vociferous public support and intimidated both parties into silence. Although the press and public responded positively to Smith’s speech (“This cool breeze of honesty from Maine can blow the whole miasma out of the nation’s soul,” editorialized the Hartford Courant), McCarthy had powerful backers, including the Kennedy family, and Washington remained fearful and silent. Only six senators signed her declaration, a group McCarthy derided as “Snow White and the Six Dwarfs.” But Smith, the first senator to publicly condemn him, had planted a seed.

More than four years later, in the televised Army-McCarthy hearings, her perseverance paid off. When McCarthy attacked his young associate, Joseph Welch, the army’s attorney responded: “Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness. . . .Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?" The bubble had burst. The senate censured McCarthy later that year. His career was effectively over.

Almost 75 years later, the nation’s governors were meeting in the White House dining room, when this exchange occurred between President Trump and Maine Governor Janet Mills over her state’s refusal to ban transgender athletes from women’s sports.*

“Is Maine here, the governor of Maine?”

“I’m here.”

“Are you not going to comply with it?”

“I’m complying with state and federal laws.”

“We are the federal law.”

“We’re going to follow the law.”

“You’d better comply. Otherwise, you’re not getting any federal funding.”

“We’ll see you in court.”

“Good, I’ll see you in court. I look forward to that. That should be a real easy one. And enjoy your life after governor because I don’t think you’ll be in elected politics.”

Within 24 hours, the U.S. departments of Education, of Health and Human Services, and of Agriculture opened investigations into violations of Title IX, the federal law that bars gender-based discrimination, one into the state’s Department of Education and two into the University of Maine. That’s three investigations by three different federal departments in less than one day.

Transgender sports does not poll particularly well in Maine, and few in either party have rushed to Mills’ support. But like Margaret Chase Smith, she stands her ground.

*The impasse: Maine state law bars discrimination based on gender identity. The Trump administration claims the inclusion of transgender athletes violates federal antidiscrimination law.