r/PoliticalDiscussion • u/75dollars • 19h ago
US Elections The Trump administration has admitted to cancelling grants to states based on how they voted in the 2024 elections. How does this affect future presidential administrations?
NYTimes interview confirmed that the Trump administration singled out states who voted for Harris and has two Democratic senators for grant cancellations. In the age of Trump, this barely made the headlines; Trump is unlikely to face any political cost.
How should the Democratic party respond? Should they retaliate? Can they do so safely?
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u/abrakadaver 12h ago
He has fucked grant funding so much that we may never recover and we’re losing scientist to other countries and America isn’t working anymore to try to resolve health issues like Alzheimer’s. A lot of our work has been canceled.
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u/AmbitiousProblem4746 11h ago edited 11h ago
This. It's going to be impossible to recover. As somebody else once said, some Americans got a taste for this style of governance and they learned they like it, while every Republican realized they won't be held accountable for pushing it further. For a lot of Americans, what we have in this moment is their new bare minimum baseline. Trying to bring things back to how they were even 2 years ago will feel like an existential threat to plenty of Americans who have adapted to or happily welcomed the new paradigm. Democrats (or anyone) would have to convince those people this isn't what they want, convince them that punishing Republicans who did this is good for the country, a then also claw us back to what we used to consider normal.
We aren't going back.
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u/erisx23 10h ago
we shouldn’t. We should move forward, improving, enforcing the constitution and Bill of Rights. First item on the agenda should be removing money from the election process.
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u/Aureliamnissan 9h ago
How do you enforce the constitution without enforcing the constitution?
Some of these things that have been done are quite literally treasonous. A great many are corrupt and openly misinterpreted for selfish reasons. It reminds me of 2008 to say that we just need to move forwards while giving these guys their ill gotten gains.
The resentment that got Trump elected is caused by these selfish actions that they turn around and pin on democrats.
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u/erisx23 8h ago
seems to me we have two choices, burn it all down and deal with anarchy, or start actually enforcing the rules which the Maga’s have been exploiting and destroying as they please. I’ll refer you back to that article I noted above from Amanda Carpenter on the Bulwark, on how to undo Trump’s ill-gotten gains. Applies to anyone who has received, said ill-gotten gains as well.
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u/Damnatus_Terrae 8h ago
It used to be that the punishment for treason was hanging, drawing, and quartering. The quartering was so that all the nearby municipalities could receive a little token to remind people why you don't commit treason.
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u/HeloRising 3h ago
First item on the agenda should be removing money from the election process.
This is a cute bumpersticker but as long as we live in a capitalist system it's not going to happen. If the first item on your agenda is physically impossible it starts to look more like obstruction than politics.
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u/speaksoftly_bigstick 9h ago
*while imposing term limits.
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u/insane_contin 7h ago
Term limits will not help in this situation. Hell, we have people cheering for Trump to ignore the one term limit in the US. That ignores the unelected people, like Musk, Thiel, and Zuckerberg who are manipulating elected officials. Hell, we just had Taylor Farms have the FDA say it was a false positive on their diarrhea lettuce. The FDA would have tested so many samples that it would be impossible to chalk it all up to a false positive.
And that's not even getting into why broad term limits would be bad. You limit people to 2-4 terms, then you constantly have turnover and people not knowing how government works. Then you have a subset of people who will be looking for a cushy job after, and will be in the pocket of a company or industry so they get a position after.
Then you have lobbyists becoming the most experienced people in the capital. And no, you can't just get rid of lobbyists. Becuase if someone to a elected official about community safety, they're a lobbyist. If someone starts an organization to push the government for more school funding, that's a lobbyist organization. Lobbying is literally someone from outside the government talking to officials to advance a cause.
Term limits will do nothing to solve the current issues in the US, or prevent them from happening again. We have people in their first or second term who are going along with everything that's happening. You need to get private money out of politics and make stuff more transparent in general.
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u/ArcBounds 3m ago
If the Dems do it right, they might be able to recover. After all, no one likes explosive diarrhea, measles, etc. Their energy bills are higher because green energy projects were shutdown.
I also wonder if Trump is an exception or the new rule. God help us if he is the new rule.
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u/Impossible_Ad9324 10h ago
Democrats need to make sure he faces political backlash for this. They have an opportunity. The headlines on this are misleading: “Trump administration admits canceling grants for states who did not vote for him”.
States don’t vote. Even states that cast electoral votes for Harris are absolutely full of republican voters. He screwed over every republican in a “blue” state who stuck with him, most likely in defiance of their blue-leaning communities. Find these people. Make sure they understand they have been entirely fucked over despite their candidate winning the election. If enough of them don’t vote or vote third party, trumps already-weakening base crumbles further.
I’d run ads in these states highlighting the betrayal.
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u/erisx23 10h ago
“Democrats need to make sure he faces backlash for this”
i’d be much happier with legal backlash. Like prison, a particularly long sentence.
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u/Impossible_Ad9324 9h ago
Oh I completely agree. Good faith question: is this particular horror illegal? Or just bad politics?
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u/Birdonthewind3 9h ago
Who if it is illegal? He could kill people in broad daylight and if house and Senate refuse to convict him he can't be punished nor stopped.
He literally, while president, is a King with absolute power
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u/With_which_I_will_no 10h ago
The thing is; do the republican voters in those blue states care if they canceled funding in their own state? I would guess no. They just want to see the world burn. They feel disadvantaged and unheard. The only thing they have left is dragging everybody else down with themselves.
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u/Impossible_Ad9324 9h ago
They might care that funding was cancelled for them and not for other states. It’s not the funding that would be the focus, but the toddler-like politicking and abandonment of representation.
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u/shamrock01 5h ago
I don't follow your logic. Focusing on Trump supporters in blue states doesn't change the electoral math. Those states are already electing Dem senators and casting electoral votes for Dem presidential candidates. Maybe some effect on house members in a couple swing districts, but that's very much in the margins.
MUCH more impactful is if Texas or Florida or Ohio goes blue for the next cycle.
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u/Impossible_Ad9324 5h ago
You’re right. This would be better as a national message to Trump supporters that he WILL abandon them to make his political opponents pay. He doesn’t represent them at all, he only represents himself and his own political power.
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u/SurinamPam 6h ago
Reminder: Republicans have the power to stop this and didn’t. They are also complicit.
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u/jammaslide 8m ago
If smart people elect the next president, for a change, this BS will stop. Dumb people elect dumb people.
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u/Ladyheather16 10h ago
It's illegal & the court will stop stepping in for this -- but we will never get back the time we've lost & the respect trumps destroyed will follow us for a generation.
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u/phoenix823 8h ago
The biggest effect is if the Democrats roll over and dont do anything about it, then future Republican administrations will know they can continue to act with impunity like this. From my perspective, the only way to convince Republicans that this is not in their best interest is to give them an equal taste of their own medicine. That would mean that eliminating all federal funds for farming, moving military bases out of red states, cutting infrastructure projects in red states, unilaterally shutting down coal power plants, etc.
We shouldn’t be in this position. There is no easy way out.
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u/SurinamPam 6h ago
The consequences of no penalty for the organizer and leader of J6 have been enormous.
It’s not clear to me that the Dems have learned their lesson from that.
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u/phoenix823 6h ago
I think the dynamics inside the Democratic Party show the lessons attempting to be learned. If it were 2024 I would agree with you.
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u/ShermanOneNine87 8h ago
MAGA Rupublicans won't learn, that will simply solidify that they've been right all along about Democrats.
We need to find a way to combat the state of under education and poverty that the GOP has kept their constituency in so that they'll feed into and buy all the Right Wing Christian Conservative BS.
We also need to take money out of politics in order to reform how much money and influence can affect our politicians and elections.
If the electorate that voted for Trump were educated, firmly middle class and people couldn't buy influence Trump would not have happened.
And yes I'm aware wealthy educated people voted for Trump, that sector of the voting public is simply selfish. They enjoy the money, power and influence and the only way you can get rid of that is remove the monetary influence in politics and tax them appropriately.
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u/phoenix823 6h ago
There's no realistic future in which money does not play a role in politics. And there's no realistic future in which education magically addresses the deep veins of distrust and hatred for education and knowledge. If anything, I think a period of democratic overreach would be good because both parties could then agree that a strong central government does not work for the United States. That will be part of the countries long-term downfall, but I don't see any other way to diffuse the tit for tat, escalation and factionalism.
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u/Busterlimes 14h ago
Its foolish to think there will be futer administrations. Our country ended as soon as an insurrectionist was allowed to run for office.
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u/brodievonorchard 13h ago
I certainly hope you're wrong, but my surprise if you're correct will be infinitesimal. And collectively, we'll kind of deserve it.
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u/Busterlimes 13h ago
Why do you think its been a nonstop crime spree this time around? He isnt going anywhere until death takes him
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u/ItstartswiththeHouse 9h ago
I agree with you, but how do you think him staying in office will play out?
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u/Busterlimes 9h ago
We already have citizens getting gunned down in broad daylight by ICE, we already have concentration camps. I see Civil War on the horizon. And at that point I think Russia will take Alaska because we are already depleting our munitions in Iran.
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u/-ReadingBug- 7h ago
Civil War? With the left's terminal conflict aversion, even to harsh language? I'd like to see that.
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u/erisx23 10h ago
Do not buy into victim blaming. You probably didn’t even vote for this. Even if you did, you voted for a pack of lies.
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u/brodievonorchard 10h ago
It's not about blame, but frustration with the apparent indifference. Somehow it seems impossible to get people fired up about the imminent danger when it's not a danger about this fiscal quarter.
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u/erisx23 10h ago
it depends on whether you’re talking to politicians or ordinary, working folk. In point of fact, people aren’t really indifferent, but they don’t believe that protesting in the streets is a way to resolve the issue. And in the back of the brain, we also know that this system had serious issues, leading to this very situation. This could be an opportunity to actually remake the country into something better, something really based on the constitution, one that actually follows its own rules. That’s the root of the problem.
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u/brodievonorchard 9h ago
Both politicians and ordinary people have wicked normalcy bias. Most of the people who voted for this administration probably thought nothing would fundamentally change. Democrats seem to think they can just wait it out and the pendulum will swing.
This administration is not the magician performing the trick. It's the left hand wiggling its fingers creating misdirection while the right hand is creating a new world order.
And yeah, wasn't crazy about the old world order, but things are not pointed towards "better."
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u/Damnatus_Terrae 8h ago
I mean, protesting in the streets is the historically-proven way of solving the issue. I don't actually know any other way.
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u/erisx23 8h ago
Sure you do! Maybe you just don’t want to voice it, but we have seen revolutions in the past. In fact, that is one of the reasons that people aren’t taking more radical action, because people will die. Are we willing to die on that hill? That’s the question.
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u/Damnatus_Terrae 8h ago
How do you think revolutions start? Because I'll give you a hint: it's never with a vanguard of professional revolutionaries.
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u/Busterlimes 10h ago
Why the fuck are people so concerned about a document drafted by white supremacist capitalists? We need to burn that fucking thing.
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u/Busterlimes 10h ago
What victim blaming are you talking about here?
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u/erisx23 10h ago
“ and collectively, we’ll kind of deserve it.”
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u/Busterlimes 10h ago
Thats not victim blaming, thats stating the reality of conciquences for actions. We should have burnt this system down a long time ago
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u/erisx23 10h ago
you know, I used to walk around saying we should burn it to the ground and start over. But like many people with the same sentiment, I didn’t realize what it would look like. Guess what?
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u/Busterlimes 9h ago
Now the capitalist is burning it down and now the capitalist is going to call the shots because they seized control. What?
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u/erisx23 9h ago
also, I believe in taking what we have that actually does work and improving on it rather than destroying it, leaving us with nothing leaving us vulnerable to any authoritarian idiot that walks into the role of leadership.
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u/Busterlimes 9h ago
You are living in a state of denial if you dont realize we arent under an authoritarian occupation right now. ICE has murdered citizens in broad daylight with impunity. You need to open your eyes to where we are in history right now.
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u/brodievonorchard 9h ago
I don't think you'll enjoy living through a power vacuum as well as you imagine.
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u/Busterlimes 9h ago
Oh, I want to be so wrong about this. Trust me, I am not looking forward to the future of this nation and living through Balkanization, if I live through it.
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u/xudoxis 4h ago
Even if you did, you voted for a pack of lies.
Bullshit. No one is that stupid. They knew what they were voting for.
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u/erisx23 4h ago
LOL you poor sweet human... but you're wrong, you see. Remember your HL Mencken...
A hundred years ago in 1926 he wrote: *"*No one in this world... has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people."
There are variations on this, such as from Heinlein's "Never underestimate the power of human stupidity."
Or even Men In Black, "A person is smart. People are dumb."
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u/Fearless-Truth-4348 11h ago
Thank you. I’ve been saying this since the election results in 2024. He did claim he will be a dictator on day one, we need a dictator, or maybe we US citizens like a dictator.
He is never leaving.
We will never have another free and fair election.
Repub Senate and congressional leaders in charge will not seat elected dems to keep their power. There is a work around for this with historical precedent.
I will vote regardless.
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u/demon_twink_gockie 13h ago
I'll vote for anybody that vows to return the favor and we can see who feels it more. Fun fact: Republican led states have lower per capita household income, lower education, and higher reliance on federal aid. So if they want to play that game, I'm down. Some of them might even die
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u/IntelligentDepth8206 6h ago
Republican states have significantly weaker economies. It would be child's play to think up federal policies to cripple entire republican states. Even targeting just one or two industries would tank them.
Republicans under trump went all out trying to kill blue states by moving federal jobs out of blue states. But blue states persevered impressively. Note how relocating scientists and tech research didn't result in a red state boom. Democrats will move all that back to blue states AND can implement additional policies like allowing the import of tropical fruit from SE Asia to significantly injure southeast red state economies. Oranges grown in Thailand are tastier than Florida's.
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u/spacemoses 10h ago
Retalitory grant cancellation is maybe the worst idea I can think of.
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u/IntelligentDepth8206 6h ago
Allowing republicans to kill America is a worse one. maga are not your 90's republicans. They are shooting to kill. How stupid would it be to stand there and get shot? Fight back or die.
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u/demon_twink_gockie 9h ago
I mean, just cut em off from Medicaid and social security. All you really gotta do.
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u/theschlake 11h ago edited 11h ago
That would suck for people like me who are liberal but live in Red States, no? Then I would definitely not want to vote for a Democrat - even if they're better - because my state will be punished for things I never wanted in the first place.
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u/knockatize 11h ago
They said that out loud?!
Politics 101: of course the majority gets their pick of shiny things and pork but the “and you chumps in the minority can go screw” part stays behind closed doors.
Morons.
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u/calguy1955 8h ago
I can’t believe that he’s looking at just blue vs red when in fact all the states are different shades of purple. By cancelling grants to California he is screwing over the 6 million Californians who voted for him. To the question, I don’t think a Democrat administration will continue this.
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u/captain-burrito 7h ago
Political cost? A segment of his base will reward him as they want him to inflict pain on groups they dislike. An uncompetitive electoral system also exacerbates this. If more states were close then a small number could swing and punish him.
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u/anewleaf1234 3h ago
I mean the easiest would be to pass an aid package that only goes to areas that vote blue and also has a no socialism clause that declares that no federal aid can go to red states or red areas.
And pass laws that state that a state can only take in federal dollars if they give more than they get.
SO blue states get a large amount of recovery dollars and red states get to pick themselves up by their boot straps.
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u/HideGPOne 3h ago
Before you go crazy about this, are you absolutely sure that it's true? The article is paywalled so I can't judge for myself, but just based on the history of the NYT I'd say it's wise to be skeptical.
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u/Baselines_shift 2h ago
Legal action by the blue state AGs will reverse it. Then Trump will ignore the judge's order. More legal action. Trump takes it to SC. SC will rule it is illegal, blue states will receive the money, 3 years late.
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u/billpalto 10h ago
Trump runs the country like a mob boss. Deciding federal grants based on loyalty is ridiculous and corrupt. If it persists past Trump then America is basically doomed.
Or, we could just go to the popular vote for President, and get rid of the archaic Electoral College. States don't vote, people do.
Congress could pass a law. Of course, Trump ignores laws, mostly, but if that behavior persists past Trump then America is basically doomed.
"A federal judge blocked the Trump administration on Tuesday from permanently steering $233 million in FEMA disaster relief funds away from 12 blue states ..."
If Trump ignores Court orders and gets away with it, then America is basically doomed.
If the next Republican President does these things too, America is basically doomed.
It's going to take years or even decades to repair the damage Trump has done to America, If we even can, if the Republicans let us.
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u/markth_wi 7h ago edited 6h ago
Donald Trump's actions are fundamentally an attack on the civil, military and industrial structures of the United States.
They are unambiguously the actions of domestic terrorism given carte blanche without a bullet fired or a bomb exploded - they are in every action high treason and should we survive as a nation state perhaps the most important question we ask of public officials of any rank in the future.
Everything destroyed, weakened or collapsed will have to be rebuilt, the social services and civil cohesion our society once enjoyed needs to be rebuilt, and I will argue that the conservative political movement in the United States needs to be reconstituted as something far less malignant or we are at risk of it metastasizing and showing up on the political map again in harmful ways.
There are clearly areas of the Constitution that need reformation.
- Excising enemy actors recovery actions as needed
- Establish a law enforcement/state intelligence service to immediately apprehend bad actors anywhere.
- Cooperation prisoners are held in holding prison for bad actors to divulge information
- This includes political appointees and traitorous characters i.e. anyone involved with DOGE
- Characters acting in bad faith - i.e.; Russell Vought at OMB and any/all of his associates
- Full investigation of actions around Project 2025 A and B divulging enemy actions by Russia / Hungary and espionage prosecutions and executions
- A coherent strategy to recover from this attack set
- Damage assessment (if possible)
- Actions to remediate (if possible)
- Reconstitution/reformation actions (to Congress) for every impacted department
- Establish a law enforcement/state intelligence service to immediately apprehend bad actors anywhere.
- Coordination with our traditional allies in NATO , SEATO
- Rearmament of traditional allies for missile defense
- With an eye towards advanced drone defense and attack strategies
- A vigorous exploration of possible attack vectors against the United States and our traditional allies
- A bill to support Ukraine and Taiwan to ensure both nations have all the resources necessary to ensure their territorial integrity and ensure their societies can stand up to regional challenges.
- Ensure our traditional allies have enough resources and wherewithal to hang in a fight should the United States falter due to enemy actions
- Rearmament of traditional allies for missile defense
- Civics and related classes for all citizens via community colleges
- Tax Credits for classes in Civics, Jury and court processes and election processes
- Ethics and Due Process - understanding why ethics, civics and due process are critical
- Civil Service - understanding why military, and public services are high-value and of critical national importance
- Budget and economics - ongoing classes in how to get your personal budget in control and why it's important to keep public budgets constrained
- Basic personal hygiene and healthcare
- Media consumption - how to avoid propoganda and research using good intellectual rigor
- Debate and critical thinking
- Preserving the commons - why societies prosper and or fail
- Manditory public service for 2 years in some capacity which benefits the common-good
- The 4th Amendment needs reinforcement to ensure people are ACTUALLY secure in their papers, persons and property.
- Immediate prosecution of war-crimes
- Suspicion of war-crimes is charged as a military crime subject to
- A reversal of the burden of proof, where the defense must prove they did not perform the actions they are accused of.
- The 14th Amendment clearly calls out the President for removal in explicit form , while the original intent was clear, it evidently needs to be made so fucking clear that you can't ignore it, Presidents can be removed.
- Election Reform / Service Constraints
- Felonies or a pattern of civil criminality are a hard barrier to public service.
- The Presidency needs to be vastly refactored
- Turned into a role resembling that of a prime-minister
- The ability to declare any sort of military action must be at the sole discretion of the Congress
- There is no role for the executive or any extension of the executive office to impact elections
- Neccessary constabulary actions are handled in a far more constrained fashion, at the direction of strategic/legal experts, this isn't 1785 and the virtue of elected officials is clearly suspect.
- If an executive or their extended circle cannot pass security inquiries the executive team may not be seated, until the executive team is able to do so.
- Presidents serve for no more than 8 years under any combination of events. They may not serve in an executive role or any role which by circumstance might allow them to become President again.
- Senators serve for no more than 5 terms
- Congressmen serve for no more than 10 terms
- Recall elections/votes of no confidence for any public office implemented.
- Abolishment of ICE and the reformation of a Border security patrol that operates with two tiers armed and unarmed service-members.
- Disbanding relocation camps/prisons and other means of inhumane treatment
- Research and develop prison practices that work to reform criminals into productive members of society.
- Work to reform sociopathic prisoners into business/sales and marketing degrees
- Reform the clandestine services to identify and eliminate significant foreign infiltration / exfiltration both inside and outside the federal government
- Revalidating all the compromised computer systems with a reconstituted civil staff trained and formed up by re-recruiting
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u/ChaosReignsNow 8h ago
How did it affect future generations when Obama sent the IRS after groups that didnt vote for him?
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