Veterans are getting laid off from federal jobs. Midwest Farmers can't tap promised government funding. Medicaid enrollees in red states are worrying about losing health coverage. The looming threat of tariffs would also hit GOP-voting districts hard if President Donald Trump follows through on those.
That’s the thing about big, across-the-board policy swipes: They spare no one.
To be sure, what the GOP and Trump are doing is no secret, and many of these efforts have hurt Democratic voters too. But you have to wonder if Trump supporters are surprised to find themselves in the president’s crosshairs.
Trump campaigned on the tariffs now threatening the country's economy. He also wanted to gut the federal workforce, often referring to it as the "deep state." And the GOP has longed to cut down the size of the US government. Now it's joined by billionaire Elon Musk, who before the election vowed to slash $2 trillion from the federal budget and admitted those efforts would cause "temporary hardship."
“The president’s policies are incredibly popular, and the American people applaud his success in cutting the waste, fraud, and abuse of their hard-earned taxpayer dollars,” Danielle Alvarez, a senior adviser at the Republican National Committee, told NBC this week.
Maybe not for long. Consumer sentiment has dropped since Trump's inauguration, with a key confidence index plunging in February by the largest amount in almost four years.
Farmers
From Alabama and Iowa to Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, farmers are scrambling after the Trump administration's abrupt federal funding freeze worth billions of dollars left them on the hook for labor, materials, and improvement costs.
Executive directives signed by Trump have halted 23 US Department of Agriculture programs that provide funding to American farmers, according to a fact sheet distributed by two Democratic lawmakers.
On top of that, farmers will suffer from the termination of USAID at the hands of Musk's Department of Government Efficiency initiative, according to a recent note from Bank of America.
Last year, USAID bought $2 billion in US-grown corn, soybeans, wheat, vegetable oil, and peas from farmers, about 1%-2% of annual exports. Additionally, USAID helped to fund a program "that helps US farmers with improved production practices and to provide advanced warning of pests," according to the BofA note.
That's quite a snub from the Trump administration for a voting bloc that overwhelmingly backed the president.
According to nonprofit news outlet Investigate Midwest, the most farming-dependent counties in the US supported Trump by an average of 77.7%, larger shares than the president received in both the 2016 and 2020 elections.
A "vote Trump"-decorated cargo shipping container is displayed during the World Ag Expo at the International Agri-Center in Tulare, Calif., on Feb. 11. (Photo by PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images) ·PATRICK T. FALLON via Getty Images
Medicaid recipients
On Tuesday, the House GOP advanced its budget resolution to the Senate after narrowly passing it 217-215. The resolution requires $880 billion in spending cuts over the next decade.
While the budget itself doesn't state those cuts must come from Medicaid, the reductions must be made by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which oversees Medicaid, Medicare, and Children’s Health Insurance Program.
Fifteen of the 28 states where Medicaid enrollment makes up at least 20% of the population's healthcare coverage voted for Trump in 2024, according to an analysis of data from KFF. That includes Louisiana (32.2%), Kentucky (27.9%), West Virginia (26.2%), and Arkansas (25.3%).
In fact, most voters regardless of presidential preference are worried that Medicaid spending cuts could hurt the program, reduce access to health care, and increase out-of-pocket costs, according to focus groups of Medicaid enrollees conducted by KFF in January. A survey out Monday found 71% of voters who supported Trump said trimming Medicaid would be unacceptable.
"I would oppose [cutting Medicaid] just because there’s a lot of people who need it, who would be affected by it negatively," a 29-year-old White male Trump voter from Pennsylvania told the KFF focus group.
And none of those Trump voters in the KFF focus groups had any idea that the GOP-led Congress wanted to reduce federal spending on Medicaid.
"I think Trump knows that people are struggling right now, and I don’t think he’s gonna do, at least not right now, cut anything Medicaid because he just knows people’s financial problems right now," a 45-year-old Hispanic male Trump voter from Arizona told the focus group.
U.S. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) leaves after the House passed the Republican's budget resolution on the spending bill on Feb. 25 at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images) ·Kayla Bartkowski via Getty Images
Veterans
As DOGE looks to shrink the federal workforce by up to 10%, veterans could find themselves getting pink slips.
In 2021, the latest data available, the federal workforce employed 636,937 veterans, comprising about 30% of the government's civilian workforce. Over half of those veterans — 53% — were also disabled, the highest representation of disabled veterans since 2009.
Veterans make up the largest employment blocs in the Department of Defense, representing almost 46% of all employees, and the Transportation Department, comprising 36.3% of all workers there.
But they also account for at least a fifth to a quarter of employees at the Energy Department (26.5%), Department of Homeland Security (25.8%), Justice Department (22.8%), Labor Department (23.1%), State Department (20.3%), Veterans Affairs (28.7%), General Services Administration (24.9%), and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (20.2%).
Firing them could also hurt areas whose local economies are buoyed by military installations, such as Colorado Springs, historically one of the reddest districts in Colorado.
"Another important aspect of this locally is that this area has a very high share of veterans in our population, and a disproportionate share of veterans work for the federal government," Bill Craighead, program director at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs Economic Forum, wrote previously to Yahoo Finance. "So anything that is affecting federal employment will have a particularly large impact on veterans."
Veterans are also largely Trump supporters. A survey before the election from Pew Research Center found that 61% of veterans backed Trump versus 37% who supported former Vice President Kamala Harris.
Tariffs and red states
Tariffs pose another economic headwind to red states.
An earlier analysis before the election found that Trump's proposed tariffs of 60% on Chinese imports and 10% on imports from the rest of the world would hit the economies of Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan the most. Five of those states voted for Trump.
While the White House has held back on the 60% tariff on China so far, it's upped the rate for import duties on Mexican and Canadian goods — including aluminum imports — to 25%.
This week, aluminum producer Alcoa Inc. said those levies could cost the US 100,000 jobs, with 20,000 losses coming from the US aluminum industry, or about 35% of workers employed in the industry. Downstream production makes up the bulk of the US aluminum industry, and those facilities "are largely concentrated in the Midwest and Southeast," according to a 2022 Congressional Research Service report.
"This is bad for the aluminum industry in the US," Alcoa CEO Bill Oplinger said on Tuesday about the tariffs. "It's bad for American workers."
Especially those in red states.
Janna Herron is a Senior Columnist at Yahoo Finance. Follow her on X @JannaHerron.
