Gov. Janet Mills’s office referred critical social media posts to the police. The FPC pushed back.
Talk about your thin-skinned politicians! Apparently, it doesn’t take much more than an insult from critics these days to get the governor of Maine to scream for the police.
Since When Is Criticism a Crime?
Back in December, during an interview with a local NBC affiliate about blunders by official in the lead-up to the Lewiston mass shooting, Maine Gov. Janet Mills left the door open to tighter gun restrictions, including a ban on so-called “assault weapons.”
That segment was picked up and publicized by The Maine Wire, a conservative-leaning news site. That outlet’s post, in turn, drew a pungent comment from the Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC), a pugnacious self-defense rights group that pulls no punches when it comes to defending individual liberty. So, of course the governor’s office went crying to the cops.
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“Documents obtained by the Maine Wire via a Freedom of Access Act show that Gov. Janet Mills’ personnel referred social media posts from the Firearms Policy Coalition and the Maine Wire to the State Police, flagging them for the governor’s Executive Protection Unit,” The Maine Wire‘s Steve Robinson reported last week.
The posts in question were entirely unthreatening, except perhaps to sensitive feelings. The Maine Wire added nothing to the video clip except for a short summary of the content: “Governor Mills is leaving the door open for a possible assault weapons ban following the Lewiston shooting.”
The FPC was, characteristically, a little sharper: “Hey @GovJanetMills, Three words: Fuck you. No.”
That’s short, to the point, and perhaps a bit sharp, but it implies no threats whatsoever.
Nevertheless, The Maine Wire found emails showing that Mills’ press secretary passed a link to the post around the office, and that “another staffer immediately forwarded the post to the Maine State Police employee responsible for protecting the governor.”
According to Robinson, this isn’t the first time officials in the Democrat-led state government have tried to get the outlet in legal hot water. Emails revealed the office of Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows questioning if an article illustration depicting a stylized presidential ballot featuring only the Joe Biden–Kamala Harris ticket qualified as a “fake ballot” since it showed the state seal. This happened after Bellows tried to boot Republican Donald Trump from the state’s primary ballot.
Part of a Pattern of Weaponized Law
The Maine spat is part of a flurry of cases across the country involving government officials attempting to misuse the legal system and regulatory power to punish political opponents. While not as high-profile or as high-stakes, it’s reminiscent of NRA v. Vullo, a case recently given new life by the U.S. Supreme Court, in which Maria Vullo, the former head of New York’s Department of Financial Services, very clearly used the power of her office over banks and insurance companies to twist their arms until they denied services to the National Rifle Association.
“Six decades ago, this Court held that a government entity’s ‘threat of invoking legal sanctions and other means of coercion’ against a third party ‘to achieve the suppression’ of disfavored speech violates the First Amendment,” Justice Sonya Sotomayor wrote for the court in the unanimous opinion. “Today, the Court reaffirms what it said then: Government officials cannot attempt to coerce private parties in order to punish or suppress views that the government disfavors.”
Such coercion came in the form of the abuse of regulatory power over financial institutions in the Vullo case. But it can come as old-school referrals to the police of anybody who criticizes government officials and their policies. Anything like that violates free speech rights.
The Firearms Policy Coalition Fights Back
“The disdain for natural rights by government officials like Maine Governor Mills and Secretary of State Bellows bolsters our commitment to our mission to render them irrelevant,” the FPC responded to the dust-up over the X post referral.
In a July 18 letter to Mills and Bellows, FPC President Brandon Combs vowed, “we take First Amendment-protected rights just as seriously as we do others.”
“You must surely be aware that our X post responding to Governor Mills’s discussion of an immoral ban on protected arms is clearly protected speech as there is absolutely no uncertainty about the law regarding this form of speech. If not, some education is in order,” the letter continued. “Naked authoritarianism, such as efforts to chill free speech, is not acceptable to FPC and our members. We strongly encourage you to learn more about protected speech and arms.”
For what it’s worth, the first letter of each line of the letter, read vertically, spells: “Fuck You No.”
The governor’s office did not respond to requests for comment by press time.
The state police commissioner was copied on the letter. That seems a handy shortcut given the propensity of the governor’s office to share mean messages with the cops. It cuts out the middleman and ensures police get a timely heads-up about sharply worded criticism of government officials.
A Practice That Needs To Stop
The weaponization of law, the courts, regulatory agencies, and tax collectors is despicable, but nothing new. The IRS has been used by presidents at least as far back as Franklin Delano Roosevelt to torment political enemies. Operation Chokepoint put federal regulatory pressure on banks to cut off access to financial services for legal but politically disfavored industries. The practice is extralegal and destructive of whatever remains of respect for government. It’s also becoming increasingly common.
When abusing the power of the state to punish critics becomes the norm, it erases the line between people who have committed actual criminal acts, and those who have just pissed off the powerful. That’s what lands us at the point when the office of a state governor refers insulting social media posts for the state police to do something about.
We’ll discover the hard way what that something is, unless those on the receiving end push back the way the FPC did. That means mocking thin-skinned government officials, calling them out publicly, and taking them to court. Intolerant officials want to hurt their critics with powers that were never meant to be used that way. That can only be discouraged if such abuses come with high costs of their own.