{"id":2110,"date":"2025-10-24T11:27:18","date_gmt":"2025-10-24T11:27:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/?p=2110"},"modified":"2025-10-24T11:27:18","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T11:27:18","slug":"trump-is-trying-and-failing-to-shield-maga-from-the-shutdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/?p=2110","title":{"rendered":"Trump Is Trying\u2014And Failing\u2014To Shield MAGA From the Shutdown"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture.\u00a0<\/em>Sign up for it here.<\/em><\/p>\n

Each time President Donald Trump\u2014nominally the leader for the entire country\u2014has been asked about the government shutdown, he has replied with the rhetorical equivalent of a shrug, claiming that the situation is hurting \u201cDemocrat things\u201d and that he is protecting the paychecks and priorities of his supporters. \u201cThe Democrats are getting killed on the shutdown because we\u2019re closing up programs that are Democrat programs that we were opposed to,\u201d he told reporters last Tuesday. \u201cWe\u2019re not closing up Republican programs, because we think they work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those words are backed by actions. The president has taken extraordinary steps over the past three weeks to weaponize the closure of the government, steering federal funds to shield his chosen beneficiaries from the shutdown\u2019s harms even as he opportunistically damages the interests of his opponents. But despite Trump\u2019s efforts, he has failed to split the shutdown into a red-blue binary of winners and losers. His MAGA base has already been affected by the shutdown, his denials notwithstanding\u2014and the pain for the president\u2019s supporters will increase significantly if the lapse in government funding continues into November.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Farmers, a key constituency for Trump, are among those getting hurt. The Department of Agriculture halted crucial farm aid just as planning for the 2026 planting season was getting under way. Furloughs and mass layoffs, meanwhile, have decimated a small-business-lending program popular in rural communities. Federal subsidies keeping small-town airports afloat are scheduled to run out within days. And despite what Trump might suggest, the majority of the federal employees who are currently going without a paycheck live outside of the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area. Trump-friendly West Virginia, for instance, has among the highest number of government workers per capita in the country. \u201cNo matter how these programs are labeled by the administration, the cuts that are happening hurt everyone,\u201d Abigail Andr\u00e9, the executive director of the Impact Project, which has been\u00a0tracking federal workers\u2019 fates\u00a0during Trump\u2019s second term, told me. \u201cIt\u2019s difficult to argue that you can cabin off certain parts of the country from impact effectively for very long.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s true that Trump\u00a0has<\/em>\u00a0been able to blunt some of the real-world ramifications of the shutdown for wide swaths of the public. Troops\u2014whom the president sees as a key part of his political base\u2014were supposed to miss their paychecks for the first time last week, but Trump ordered funds to be repurposed to cover the cost of their salaries. He did the same for members of the FBI, immigration agents, and other federal law-enforcement officers. He has steered money from tariff revenue to continue funding for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children\u2014commonly known as WIC\u2014and ordered certain military celebrations to continue as planned. The administration is also looking for ways to pay air-traffic controllers,\u00a0Politico<\/em>\u00a0reported. The moves, perhaps ironically, may be helping lengthen the shutdown by taking some of the pressure off of lawmakers to end the impasse.<\/p>\n

But the longer the shutdown drags on, the more certain groups are going to require special treatment\u2014and the more Trump\u2019s supporters will get hit as collateral damage. The administration has said it plans to \u201cbatten down the hatches and ride out the Democrats\u2019 intransigence.\u201d That strategy is making some of the president\u2019s allies nervous. Republicans are privately clamoring for additional carve-outs or bailouts to shield their constituents from the growing impact of a closed government\u2014and are more publicly acknowledging that the expiring health-care subsidies at the core of the shutdown fight will also hurt their voters. All of this could force Trump, who has so far been something of a bit player in the shutdown drama, to take on a more central role in the inevitable dealmaking necessary to reopen the government.<\/p>\n

On October 17, Arkansas lawmakers\u00a0passed a resolution\u00a0saying farmers were \u201cin need of strong leadership from President Donald J. Trump\u201d and Congress to prevent the imminent closures of thousands of local farms. \u201cThis is going to affect the state of Arkansas in a very mighty way,\u201d State Representative DeAnn Vaught, a Republican and farmer who introduced the resolution, told her fellow legislators before the vote. She likened the situation to \u201ca tsunami coming.\u201d The government shutdown arrived as farmers were already suffering from low commodity prices,\u00a0Trump\u2019s trade war, increased tariffs, and the expiration of the Farm Bill, several industry experts told me. Nearly half of the U.S. Department of Agriculture\u2019s staff has been furloughed, and local offices that help farmers access capital and other assistance have been closed since early October. Trump has promised to provide a bailout for farmers using billions of dollars collected from tariffs, but USDA officials have said plans for aid\u00a0are on hold\u00a0while the government is closed. Yesterday, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said her agency would be reversing course and restarting several aid programs beginning Thursday. But industry leaders have predicted that up to a third of farms in Arkansas could be forced out of business before next year\u2019s harvest without more federal intervention in the form of a multibillion-dollar bailout. Farmers in other states are facing similar pressures.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe biggest worry of farms that see themselves as eligible for a trade-related bailout is that the delay may make it difficult to get the money,\u201d Vincent Smith, a professor in agricultural economics at Montana State University, told me.<\/p>\n

Chris Gibbs, who grows corn, soybeans, and other crops in Shelby County, Ohio, told me he was waiting for the government to reopen so that he could apply for a commodity loan at his local Farm Service Agency. The office has been closed since October 1. The program\u2019s\u00a0website says\u00a0this is because of the \u201cRadical Left Democrat Shutdown\u201d and that Trump \u201cwants to keep the government open and support those who feed, fuel, and clothe the American people.\u201d Rollins\u00a0wrote on X yesterday that those offices would reopen\u00a0on Thursday at Trump\u2019s direction, providing more than $3 billion in assistance. The people who will be staffing the offices, many rural voters themselves, will continue to miss paychecks as they return to work.<\/p>\n

\u201cSpecial thanks to our great USDA employees who continue to work without pay to serve our farmers and ranchers,\u201d Rollins wrote.<\/p>\n

Gibbs, a former Republican and longtime USDA official who now chairs his local Democratic Party, said he opposes Trump\u2019s tariff-and-bailout policies but acknowledged that many farms \u201care under extreme pressure\u201d and need help as they approach another planting season with tumbling prices for soybeans, corn, and wheat. China, a crucial market for American crops, has reduced its purchases in response to Trump\u2019s trade war.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to lose some farmers,\u201d Gibbs told me.<\/p>\n

Even as his voters face hardship, Trump has made light of the shutdown,\u00a0posting memes of Democrats\u00a0in sombreros and depicting his director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, as the grim reaper. Throughout the shutdown, Vought has been cast by the administration in the role of a shadowy and brutally effective operator empowered to direct the trauma of a government closure exclusively toward Democratic priorities.<\/p>\n

Vought has sought to live up to Trump\u2019s hype,\u00a0taking to X\u00a0to announce freezes and cancellations of more than $35 billion for projects in Democrat-led states and pledging to enact upwards of 10,000 permanent layoffs during the shutdown. But his push to target blue states\u2014including by halting $18 billion worth of infrastructure upgrades for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer\u2019s hometown of New York\u2014has not been as seamless as Trump may have envisioned.<\/p>\n

When Vought announced that \u201cnearly $8 billion in Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left’s climate agenda is being cancelled,\u201d he listed 16 states\u2014all of which voted against Trump in 2024. The post did not mention Montana, which was set to receive part of a $1 billion grant to help produce hydrogen fuel\u2014a grant that was canceled by Vought\u2019s announcement. Republican Governor Greg Gianforte had been among the backers of the project,\u00a0saying in 2023\u00a0that it \u201cwould create good-paying Montana jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just last month, local leaders in Mineral County, Montana\u2014where Trump\u00a0won more than 70 percent of the vote\u00a0last year\u2014had\u00a0celebrated the proposed project\u00a0as a potential boon to the community. The town of St. Regis had lost one of its largest employers, a sawmill, in 2021, and the hydrogen project was set to replace some of those jobs, State Senator Denley Loge, a Republican who represents the area, told me. Vought\u2019s cancellation announcement was devastating for a rural community already struggling from the shutdown, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWestern Montana\u2014especially the county we\u2019re in\u2014is pretty economically depressed, and this might have been just a little bit of a boost,\u201d Loge said of the hydrogen project. \u201cIt\u2019s disappointing, because we were finally thinking we were making some momentum.\u201d<\/p>\n

Several of the other 321 energy projects that were canceled are located in congressional districts represented by Republicans. White House officials have maintained that Democrats are to blame for any collateral damage from the shutdown. They have repeatedly pushed Schumer and other Democratic senators to vote to reopen the government before any negotiations over health care can begin. \u201cThe Trump Administration is working day and night to mitigate the pain Democrats are causing, and even that is upsetting the left\u2014with many Democrats criticizing the President\u2019s effort to pay the troops and fund food assistance for women and children,\u201d White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson told me in a statement.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not clear whether that sentiment will be sufficient for Republican lawmakers who are hearing from a growing number of their impacted constituents as the shutdown stretches into its fourth week. \u201cGovernment shutdowns have tangible, painful consequences for real people,\u201d Senator Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican from West Virginia, wrote on October 7 in\u00a0a local op-ed, highlighting the state\u2019s large concentration of federal employees. High-poverty states such as West Virginia rely disproportionately on government aid, including food stamps and other programs that are set to run out of money as soon as next month.<\/p>\n

Some Americans might find buying a house or accessing scarce forms of transportation more difficult because of the shutdown. The National Flood Insurance Program is currently dormant, disrupting potential home sales along the Gulf Coast. Republican lawmakers have clashed over a stand-alone bill to reauthorize the program amid the shutdown,\u00a0Politico<\/em>\u00a0reported.\u00a0The Essential Air Service, a subsidy program that supports airlines operating out of small-town airports, is set to\u00a0run out of emergency funds\u00a0by November 2. Senator Lisa Murkowski, a Republican from Alaska, where the service helps connect remote communities that are inaccessible by road, said she has been reaching out to the Trump administration to relay how detrimental any disruption would be for her constituents. Even Congress\u2014which is uniquely positioned to end the shutdown\u2014is feeling it. Members are still getting paid (the House hasn\u2019t taken a vote since September 19), but many of their staffers missed a paycheck for the first time on Monday.<\/p>\n

The administration\u2019s moves to lay off thousands have not fallen neatly along partisan lines. On October 10, the entire staff of the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund, a small-business lending program\u00a0popular in underserved areas, received layoff notices. The CDFI Fund typically would be disbursing grants to small nonprofits and banks around this time of year, providing capital that would disproportionately flow to borrowers in rural America, industry leaders told me. Eight of the 10 congressional districts that received the most CDFI-supported funds are represented by Republicans, according to\u00a0a recent analysis\u00a0by the Urban Institute. (CDFI Fund staff also help support key pillars of Trump\u2019s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, including a revamped version of Opportunity Zones designed to boost rural communities.)<\/p>\n

One CEO of a local lender, speaking on condition of anonymity due to fear of retribution by the White House, told me that community banks \u201cserving small towns in rural America\u201d will ultimately be forced to close because of the Trump administration\u2019s layoffs.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s going to be brutal,\u201d he told me.<\/p>\n

For his part, Trump has said little about the impact of the shutdown on his supporters, instead\u00a0telling Fox Business\u00a0recently that the lapse in funding had given him \u201cthe right to cut programs that Republicans never wanted,\u201d including \u201cgiveaways\u201d and \u201cwelfare programs.\u201d But those programs are a lifeline to the very people who helped Trump get into office\u2014which makes his minimization of the shutdown an unsustainable position, Andr\u00e9, of the Impact Project, told me.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople across the country may not all notice right away, but the most vulnerable among us probably feel that pinch already,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd the longer it goes on, the more of us will be impacted.\u201d<\/p>\n

Article originally published at\u00a0The Atlantic<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2111,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-us"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2110"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2110\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2113,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2110\/revisions\/2113"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}