Republican voters are beginning to feel the sting of betrayal that always accompanies supporting Donald Trump.
“If I had known that this was going to happen,” former U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service employee Graham Peters told Great Lakes Now, “I wouldn’t have voted for him.” Peters is just one of millions of federal workers affected by the probably illegal, and definitely destructive cuts being imposed by Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency.
While many conservative-voting Americans are now wondering what is going to happen to the federal money they were enjoying, many are still under the delusion that diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and initiatives only affect people who aren’t white.
The harsh reality is that many Trump voters are unaware that the receipt-free spectacle of Musk and Trump’s dismantling of the government, and the focus on bigoted anti-DEI propaganda, hurt them directly.
In Clarksburg, West Virginia, where Trump received 70% of the votes, a lead-testing program started under the Biden administration by the environmental justice division of the Environmental Protection Agency is already on Musk and Trump’s chopping block. The program helped raise lead testing rates of local families from 8% to 41%. Elevated levels of lead in children can lead to long-term health problems and developmental delays. Clarksburg is 90% white, with a poverty rate of 23%.
According to Time magazine, a proposed expansion of the successful lead testing program into Ohio, another Trump-won state, is also up in the air.
These are not the only programs under the Biden administration being swept under the DEI blanket of DOGE’s destructive austerity attack. Environmental justice programs that use federal funds to assist many of those rural voters whose support Trump has enjoyed find themselves scrambling to figure out what the future holds.
For instance, there’s a series of initiatives that are not “race” focused, under a Biden program called Justice40. These initiatives advocated for a better redistribution of federal funds to communities with larger economic challenges. Grants awarded through Justice40 included helping to fix essential infrastructure in underserved areas—many of which voted for Trump. It’s also a casualty of Trump’s executive order pen.
“The idea was always that the money should go where it’s needed the most, and a lot of communities that will be hurt are rural, white communities that had also qualified for funding under the Justice40 parameters,” Holly Burke, communications director with Evergreen Action, told The American Prospect. “It’s clear to me that Trump doesn’t understand that these programs also benefit a lot of people he considers his base.”
When asked by Time Magazine about the numerous Trump-voting communities negatively affected by Trump and Musk’s new policies, simply because their grant has the words “environmental” and “justice,” in it, White House spokesperson Harrison Fields stuck to well-worn talking points. He explained that “protecting the civil rights and expanding opportunities for all Americans is a key priority of the Trump Administration, which is why he took decisive actions to terminate unlawful DEI preferences.”
One of the fundamental disconnects between Trump’s voters and the actions of Musk’s DOGE lies in a deeply misinformed understanding of what the government can and should do for its citizens.
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