Trump's Rural Chainsawing Project:
Donald Trump's White House Chainsaw Continues to Hurt Rural America
Feel free to check the past Biden Era archives and follow the editions to come in the Trump Era on Substack, Medium, and LinkedIn, including those on the 2024 Autopsy, Bench-Building, DOGE News, Project 2025 Authoritarianism, Progressive Populism, and more (First Come, First Serve!).
To the headlines of the weekend:
Elon Musk may be gone, but DOGE is here to stay. The Resistance must not accept DOGE’s coup as the new norm in Washington DC.
Senator Joni Ernst justifies Medicaid cuts on the basis that “we’re all going to die” someday to a chorus of loud boos and condemnation. If that was not enough, she doubled down on her Trump-like arrogance and disregard in her sarcastic “apology” video.
As Ali Velshi reported on, mass deportations are set to make record profits for the private prison industry, but they also threaten sectors that rely on immigrant workers like dairy farms, construction, and restaurants.
Trump lies (again) to his own voters on the Nippon-US Steel deal.
As Trump seeks to remove Cuban and Venezuelan refugees, his State Department is scrapping an office entirely dedicated to relocating Afghan allies, endangering Afghan Christians in the process.
Trump’s DOL solicitor pick, an author of Project 2025, fights to block overtime pay for domestic workers.
US students and international visa recipients are leaving the country for other universities globally who are actively courting them. Make America Great Again? Don’t think so with the American Brain Drain.
Meanwhile, RFK Jr. is making America healthy again with measles cases nearing 1,100 cases, a family farm losing 95% of its Arizona chickens to bird flu, and COVID vaccine recommendation chaos.
Jake Tapper bleeds more viewers after spending months hawking his book on air simply for a buck, reaching ratings levels not seen since a decade ago. One thing to look for the truth as Carl Bernstein and David Gergen sought to do. Another to make money off of a story that is ultimately stale bread at the end of the day.
Things are going swimmingly well in Trump’s America.
Now that we got that summary over with…
Earlier this year, I wrote about how Trump was hurting Rural America.
Of course, there are many components to Donald Trump’s presidential election victories in 2016 and 2024. But if there is one component that comes to mind for many, it is the rural electorate.
As you have probably heard, almost two-thirds of rural voters supported Trump in his three presidential bids. Compare that to around 55% of the rural vote that went to John McCain in 2008, and slightly more than that to Mitt Romney in 2012. He is the only Republican in recent memory to win the working class vote over a Democrat (including Scranton Joe Biden). Trump’s 2016 presidential primary voter base was rural as well.
I mention this because Democrats often fail to be rural-literate, or even try to focus on rural issues. The problem is partly representational. Many Democratic officials, strategists, and party insiders do not come from rural areas. That was true for a while, but it is especially more acute in the Trump era.
Even more important, the truth is while rural voters have a greater cultural affinity to the Republican Party (“pro-life, “pro-gun,” traditional marriage, more religious, etc.), its opinion of the GOP as a whole, especially its economic policies, are not that great. Their approval ratings are not that impressive in Rural America. The issue? The numbers of Democratic officials are even worse than those of the Republicans.
Sure, this manual is not a perfect playbook for appealing to rural voters. I am a Providence, RI resident who knows the big city life. Yet I have tried to learn from the experts in this line of work (people like Matt Barron, Celinda Lake, Dr. Robin Johnson, Dr. Nicholas Jacobs, Lynlee Thorne, Chuck Rocha, Atima Omara, Mudcat Saunders, Tom Zoellner, and other well-known names from the Obama-Biden 2008 rural advisory team and similar projects like it).
Like the last post, this edition seeks to highlight the kitchen table issues of how Donald Trump is hurting rural voters in their wallets, in their budgets, and in the dignity of their livelihoods which they have worked so hard for years and decades.
Here’s how Rural America is being impacted further by Trump 2.0 (credit mostly to The Daily Yonder again):
Medicaid cuts will unquestionably result in even more rural hospital closures, impacting half of all rural Americans on Medicaid.
SNAP benefits are inevitably at risk from the GOP budget resolution.
School vouchers would effectively defund rural public school districts.
Social Security office closures are hitting rural Americans the hardest.
Researchers say the mass layoffs at the National Park Service and US Forest Service could set the stage for the privatization of some federal public lands.
The US Department of Agriculture “yanked funding” that allowed schools and food banks to buy from small farmers, while farm subsidies increased for Big Agriculture.
The DOGE-cutting of the USDA’s Rural Development agency holds massive consequences for all rural Americans.
Food bank grant cuts forcing some (like in Nevada’s and Idaho’s Duck Valley) to grow their own food.
The Trump budget slashes funding for rural housing, housing loans, and self-help programs.
The decimation of AmeriCorps will be a death sentence for rural nonprofits.
Rural America too suffers from the threats to dismantle Head Start.
Trump just eliminated all support left to close the digital divide in rural areas.
Rural news access jeopardized by efforts to defund PBS and NPR.
Don’t be mistaken. Rural areas also need support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, as Montana learned the hard way. These endowments fund community libraries and other essential community infrastructure.
Same thing can be said for rural libraries and small museums that rely on the Institute for Museum & Library Services.
Rural energy programs stand to lose from new executive rules and legislation coming through Congress, leaving many to resubmit new energy and infrastructure project proposals.
Rural schools hurt the most from losing mental health grants the Biden Administration gave them.
FEMA’s Resilient Infrastructure program faces imminent risk of elimination.
Rural youth face a higher risk of hunger with the Local Food for Schools Program coming to an end.
Telehealth access at risk in some very vulnerable communities, while others still struggle to gain access to it because of GOP opposition.
The rural transportation funding formula hurts rural communities by penalizing them based on marriage and birth rates…hint, hint.
Federal layoffs of the civil service too will impact rural residents. Not every federal government worker hails from the big city.
Multiple EPA Environmental Justice Regional Offices are set to shut down.
EPA civil rights work stalled for communities seeking legal remedies from poultry farm pollution.
Victims of farm-lending discrimination face uncertainty (and funding freezes).
Food sovereignty grants frozen (possibly in violation of indigenous treaties).
Family farms fail to receive subsidies to plant spring crops, while Big Farms get a $50 billion windfall in handouts.
The USDA dismantled its farm animal welfare research lab.
Trump Tariffs prove problematic for, though not limited to, soybean farmers.
Intimidation tactics back in the Trump Administration’s efforts to crack down on farm labor organizing, especially activism done by immigrants via ICE.
And that’s just what Trump is doing. How about the things he’s not doing?:
He’s not addressing the issue of farmland being bought up by foreign interests.
He’s not working to pass the Railway Safety Act in the aftermath of East Palestine, Ohio.
He’s not supporting the miners with black lung disease by gutting OSHA and MSHA offices (the latter of which Trump backtracked on after backlash in WV and KY over mine safety concerns).
He’s not cracking down on pharmacy-benefit manager middle men.
He’s not looking into the bird flu epidemic that threatens egg prices.
He’s not focused on the screwworm threat that imperils beef prices and cattle supply.
He’s not working to address grain explosions despite warnings from federal regulators about such accidents in facilities in the Midwest.
He’s not reigning in child labor violations in corn crop production either.
But is this really much of a surprise? Not at all. Republicans have a long history of voting against rural interests from the days of the first Trump, Obama, Bush, and even Clinton and Reagan administrations. This includes a wide range of issues from eliminating programs such as the Conservation Stewardship Program, the Forest Legacy Program, the Organic Certification Cost Share Assistance Program, the Essential Air Service Program, and Biorefinery, Renewable Chemical, and Bio-Based Manufacturing Assistance, to trimming down Trade Adjustment Assistance, failing to crack down on currency manipulators, opposing broadband expansion legislation, voting against opioid prevention measures, cutting back mail delivery by the US Postal Service, filibustering railway safety bills, repealing net neutrality, and denying funding to rural veterans and the VA.
Republicans aren’t helping rural folks. So why are Democrats not even trying to compete for their support…up to now at least?
The Democratic Party has an opening to win some more rural voters back. They should take advantage of the moment while they can.
Hope the Democrats are listening to this one, Mike.