Attorney General Pam Bondi said Tuesday that her Department of Justice (DOJ) cut federal funding for Maine for putting a male convict with a violent record into a women’s prison.
Speaking on “Fox and Friends,” Bondi said the state was in violation of President Donald Trump’s policies. The DOJ told the Daily Caller News Foundation in a statement that it slashed more than $1 million for Maine’s Department of Corrections.
The attorney general said the prison agency lost the funding as of Monday night for housing “a giant, six-foot-one, 245-pound guy who committed double murder with a knife” in a women’s facility because “he identified as a woman.” The DOJ confirmed his identity as convicted murderer Andrew Balcer.
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Balcer was convicted in 2018 of fatally stabbing his mother nine times in the back before killing his father and their pet chihuahua. He called 911 after the murders, saying, “My father came up because he heard her [his mother’s] screams and I stabbed the fuck out of him. Oh, I killed the dog, too. It was barking.”
Balcer had his prison records changed to identify as female as of 2022 while serving his 40-year sentence.
Trump signed an executive order on his first day in office requiring states to keep male inmates in men’s prisons even if they identify as women or lose funding. The policy currently faces a lawsuit in Washington, D.C. from two male inmates who seek to remain in their preferred facilities to serve their sentences.
Trump also halted other funding for Maine’s universities after Democrat Gov. Janet Mills refused to comply with Trump’s order requiring states to separate sports in school based on sex instead of subjective gender identification.
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“They’re not abiding by what President Trump said” on sports and prisons, Bondi declared.
“No longer,” Bondi said about forcing women to live with the male inmate. “We will pull your funding and protect women in prison and women in sports and we will protect women throughout this country.”
Maine’s Department of Corrections did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Data from the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) showed that 1,538 out of the 10,047 inmates in women’s federal prisons — or 15% — were trans-identifying men by the time Trump returned to office in January.
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“The Department of Justice will continue pulling discretionary funds from institutions that promote these invasions of women’s spaces and will use legal leverage to compel Maine leadership to remedy this dangerous issue,” the DOJ told the DCNF.
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First published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
