What DOGE Looks Like In Rural America
One Republican who seems to understand is
Katie Britt, the senator from Alabama. Last weekend, a reporter from
AL.com asked her to react to news that the National Institutes of Health was sharply reducing its research grants. The University of Alabama-Birmingham is a top recipient of NIH grants, and also Alabama’s largest employer.
Britt said she was all for cutting waste, to make sure taxpayer dollars are “spent efficiently, judiciously and accountably.” But she added that she wanted to work with the administration on “a smart, targeted approach … in order to not hinder lifesaving, groundbreaking research at high-achieving institutions like those in Alabama.”
It sounded a lot like a warning, or at least an objection, especially from a staunch Trump
supporter. And it wasn’t the only one out there. Bill Cassidy, the Republican senator from Louisiana who also happens to be a physician, told
STAT News: “One thing I’ve heard loud and clear from my people in Louisiana is that Louisiana will suffer from these cuts. And research that benefits people in Louisiana may not be done.”
Louisiana, like Alabama, is a strongly pro-Trump state. It also gets about $300 million a year in NIH research funding, according to an analysis of public data by the
Louisiana Illuminator. Other solidly red states with big NIH-backed institutions include
Texas and
Tennessee. The rural sections of these states ― or any state, really ― can be especially dependent on NIH money, because universities, teaching hospitals and affiliated clinics may be the only large employers there, and the sole providers of major medical care, as well.
As of Friday, a judge has temporarily
blocked the NIH funding reduction, citing federal law that would seem to prohibit the Trump administration from making those cuts unilaterally. The same goes for orders that have effectively shutdown most foreign aid through the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Cuts at USAID might seem less likely to have a perceptible effect stateside, because American jobs don’t generally depend on foreign assistance. But in
farm country, they do, because that’s where USAID gets food: Farmers, who
voted overwhelmingly for Trump, could lose as much as $2 billion if food aid goes away.
“You’re talking about a direct impact on American products and American jobs,” George Ingram, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told the
Washington Post.
Republican lawmakers from Kansas, Arkansas and other rural states are rallying behind legislation to save the primary food aid program by moving it out of the State Department and over to the Department of Agriculture.
And they aren’t the only GOP lawmakers making the case to protect programs on the Trump target list. Nearly two dozen House Republicans have been lobbying their leadership to
spare federal subsidies for electric vehicles that Trump has said he is determined to eliminate.
It’s not the potential of backsliding on climate progress that worries these Republicans. It’s the potential of losing jobs in their districts, which are home to new, sprawling EV factories in what’s become known as the “
battery belt” stretching across the
South. And what’s true for EVs is true for the clean energy push more generally: The money that President Joe Biden and the Democrats invested in projects like solar and wind power has gone
disproportionately to Republican districts.
Take the money away, and it’s those districts that could suffer disproportionately.
WELL BITE MY MAGA ASS
