Dem
47
GOP
53
While Trump operates from a general principle of "red states good, blue states bad," he sometimes makes decisions that partially undo this. One recent decision is a deal he made with Argentina to allow $800 million worth of Argentinian beef to be imported and sold in the U.S. He made this deal with Argentina's strongman, Javier Milei, whom he admires.
This deal will help lower food costs in states that don't raise much beef on their own, like the blue states of Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York. But it will hurt ranchers in beef-producing red states like Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas. Either Trump didn't think this through carefully (likely) or his love of foreign strongmen got the best of him.
Other things he has done also negatively impact his voters, even in blue states. He illegally withheld funds for the $16-billion rail tunnel under the Hudson River that will connect New York with New Jersey, the biggest infrastructure project in the country. This punishes two states he hates. Take that, New York and New Jersey. He said he would restore it if they renamed Penn Station and Dulles Airport Trump Station and Trump Airport, respectively. While Penn Station is indeed in New York, Dulles Airport is in neither of those states and neither state has any say in what it is called. It is in Virginia.
One problem here is that the 1,000 people working on the rail project who will lose their jobs if funding is killed are largely working-class men, the core of his base. They are none too happy about this. Fortunately for the workers, on Friday, federal Judge Jeannette Vargas ruled that Trump has no authority to freeze the funding just because he wants two transportation hubs (one not even in the states involved in the project) named after him. (V)