EDITORIAL: 'Whiplash and worry' continues to plague Maine

Yahoo

16-03-2025

Mar. 16—When University of Maine Chancellor Dannel Malloy and President Joan Ferrini-Mundy greeted the news last week that $56 million in previously suspended federal funding had been restored to their organization, they said in a statement that they were "eager to put the whiplash and worry of recent weeks behind us."
The statement referred to the United States Department of Agriculture's plan to halt funds — and its subsequent U-turn, however welcome — as "an unnecessary distraction from our essential activities that benefit Maine and well beyond."
Amen. This is just the latest worrying, distracting and discombobulating move by a federal government whose babyish motives are not — as we noted in last week's editorial about the same style of about-face recently suffered by the Maine Sea Grant and its many and varied beneficiaries — sufficiently explained to the public.
Rather, we're all left to connect these scattershot dots ourselves.
Rep. Chellie Pingree did this (again) last week, concluding that the USDA's plan to conduct a "compliance review" into the University of Maine System was "vindictive" and "a total sham in the first place."
The interest that the new Trump administration has taken in telling Maine and the nation who's boss, in gratuitous scaremongering and time-wasting, is causing pain and hardship to the people and entities that work to sustain our communities.
That this is an exceptionally shoddy way to govern should be undeniable, whatever your politics. On top of that, it's hypocritical for such a meddling approach to be taken by a team of people who profess themselves to be devoted to the elimination of "waste."
A knee-jerk reversal of a knee-jerk decision offers no comfort at all. Would that we could feel secure in some knowledge that the federal government won't, in the end, keep its word. We can't. And so the cycle of panic and the anxious calculator work seems doomed to continue.
We can't, under these conditions, stop bracing for exactly what we're told is going to happen. The response we might prefer to take, to ignore the announcements and persevere as if they won't be pursued, isn't available to us. It's oppressive to be messed around in this way.
Which is why it's very important that Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey joined with the attorneys general of more than 20 other states last week in a lawsuit against the administration (President Donald Trump, the U.S. Department of Education and U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon), seeking an injunction against the alarming decision to strip the DOE of about half its workforce, and an order that would bar future orders made with the aim of dismantling the department.
It's why we can't afford to take the news that broke Thursday, regarding sweeping, damaging cuts to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Local Foods for Schools and Local Food Purchase Assistance programs, lying down. "Sunsetting" was one of the jargon terms selected for use in official communication last week. With Maine farmers, veterans, food banks and school-going children in the line of fire? Indeed. It's dark out there.
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