Dem
47
GOP
53
Presidents before Donald Trump generally acted like they were president of the entire country, even if their policies worked out better for certain communities and states than for others. Trump has pretty much dropped all pretense of that. He is interested only in being president of the Red States of America. Many of his actions make this clear that he cares not a whit about blue states. In fact, he actively hates them.
His most recent action on this front is a directive last Thursday from OMB that orders the CDC to claw back $600 million from blue states. Trump also wants to claw back $940 million in contracts and grants from the Department of Transportation. All of these funds were awarded to the states based on various laws. Trump has said they don't deserve the funds because they are too woke.
Among the funds to be clawed back after having been sent to the states are monies sent to Colorado to address COVID-19 disparities among racial groups, monies sent to Illinois to pay for increasing HIV PrEP use among straight Black women, and monies sent to California to evaluate state laws about sexual violence among sexual minorities, among many other projects.
The states being targeted on the transportation funds are California, Colorado, Illinois, and Minnesota. They involve things like electric vehicle chargers, green buses, and other climate-related items funded by the Inflation Reduction Act. As far as Trump is concerned, any laws signed by Joe Biden are prima facie invalid, so he can cancel any portion of them he wishes just on his say-so. There were no attempts to claw back any funds from red states.
On a different front in the same war against blue states, Trump has snubbed two of the Democratic governors. Traditionally, every winter, the president meets with all 50 governors, regardless of party, to discuss policy, followed by a black-tie dinner in the evening. This year, only Republicans are invited to the policy discussion, and two Democratic governors, Govs. Wes Moore (D-MD) and Jared Polis (D-CO), were not invited to the dinner. Moore is Black and Polis is gay. Just mentioning it. The former point did not escape Moore, who mentioned it on CNN yesterday. Some other Democratic governors are now rethinking their plans for attendance. Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D-IL) is not going. Other governors haven't stated their plans yet.
In January, Trump attempted to illegally freeze billions of dollars in funds Congress had appropriated for child care programs. He did this only in blue states. A district court quickly ruled he couldn't do that. He also illegally canceled more than $7 billion in clean energy projects. Trump basically admitted that the decisions were made based on whether a state had voted for him or not. The laws that appropriated the funds used formulas that did not take partisanship into account, but those formulas are of no interest to Trump. What is of interest to him is rewarding states that voted for him and punishing those that did not, the law be damned.
In addition, OMB has issued a memorandum demanding that 14 blue states provide a detailed list of all federal funds that go to state and local governments, universities and nonprofits in the state. Presumably this is to use these congressionally mandated appropriations to blackmail the states into obeying Trump. The memorandum did not list any red states that need to supply the information.
It all fits into Trump's model of "If you aren't my friend, you are my enemy and I will punish you any way I can." For the next 3 years, the rule of law is a dead letter. (V)