During the government shutdown a few months ago, the Trump administration started cutting energy grants to states, but the only states that were seriously affected were ones that Donald Trump lost in last year’s elections. Last month, federal lawyers conceded in a court filing that this was not a coincidence.
On the contrary, two months after officials in blue states accused the White House of “mafioso tactics,” administration officials were unexpectedly candid in acknowledging that they did precisely what they were accused of doing. “[C]onsideration of partisan politics is constitutionally permissible,” they argued.
Perhaps, though, it’s worth considering just how often the Republican White House “considers” partisan politics when cutting off public resources. My MS NOW colleague Julianne McShane reported:
The Trump administration froze $10 billion in funding for social services programs in five Democratic-led states on Tuesday, citing concerns about fraud that have not been substantiated with evidence, a Health and Human Services official confirmed to MS NOW on Tuesday.
The freeze affects programs that provide support to low-income families, including Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, which provides cash assistance for living expenses; the Child Care Development Fund, which helps low-income families access child care; and social services grants that primarily support at-risk children.
The states affected are Minnesota (which Trump lost by 4 points), New York (which Trump lost by 12 points), California (which Trump lost by 20 points), Illinois (which Trump lost by 11 points) and Colorado (which Trump lost by 11 points).
No red states were included in the funding freeze, which will inevitably cause real hardships on countless struggling families.
The developments come against a backdrop in which Trump and his team also have allegedly politicized federal disaster aid, swiftly approving requests from officials in red states, while repeatedly denying appeals from officials in blue states.
What’s more, in October, Politico reported: “The Trump administration on Friday paused $11 billion in ‘lower-priority’ Army Corps of Engineers projects in a dozen states, most of which are led by Democratic governors.”
Months earlier, CNN reported: “The Trump administration significantly cut funding for flood prevention projects in blue states across the country while creating new water construction opportunities in red states, undoing a Biden-era budget proposal that would have allocated money more evenly, according to a data analysis prepared by Democratic staffers.”
Taking stock of the broader dynamic, The New York Times’ Jamelle Bouie recently argued, “Trump seems to see Democratic-led states — and the people in them — less as constituents to which he has a set of larger obligations and more as enemies to be pacified and defeated. For Trump, there is no whole people of the United States. There are only his people and his states.”
The Republican White House seems unnervingly eager to prove the observation true.
For now, the pushback has been limited to the courts, but several months ago, NBC News reported that Democratic legislators in a variety of blue states have explored measures that would “essentially allow states to withhold federal payments if lawmakers determine the federal government is delinquent in funding owed to them.”
The report added, “These bills still have a long way to go before becoming law, and legal experts said they would face obstacles. But they mark the latest efforts by Democrats at the state level to counter what they say is a massive overreach by the Trump administration to cease providing federal funding for an array of programs that have helped states pay for health care, food assistance and environmental protections.”
In 2025, nothing came of these proposals. In 2026, don’t be surprised if the policy discussions surrounding these measures grow louder.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
