On Wednesday, President Trump shouted on Truth Social, “EFFECTIVE FEBRUARY FIRST, NO MORE PAYMENTS WILL BE MADE BY THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT TO STATES FOR THEIR CORRUPT CRIMINAL PROTECTION CENTERS KNOWN AS SANCTUARY CITIES.” What did he mean by “payments”? Highway funds, Medicare reimbursements to hospitals, education programs? No one seems to know, least of all Trump himself.
There is no precedent in modern times for this.
Trump can’t just shut off all federal funding to states he doesn’t like. But no one doubts he would if he could — or doubts he’s trying to. This is more than bloviation. Something important and dangerous is happening. The Trump administration is engaged in a comprehensive war, and its enemy is half of America. This war is being waged in rhetoric and regulation, budget cuts and violence. Its aim is to tear the country in two.
There is no precedent in modern times for this; one might make an analogy to Reconstruction in the wake of the Civil War, in which the federal government forced the South to accept democracy. But that was for the best of reasons, and Trump’s attempt to bend blue states to his will is for the worst.
We’re seeing the ugliest face of Trump’s plan in Minnesota. Minneapolis is under siege from roving gangs of masked federal thugs. Trump promised a “DAY OF RECKONING & RETRIBUTION” against the city and the state of Minnesota, and he is already delivering. Even before an ICE officer shot dead Renee Good, ill-trained and overly aggressive agents rampaged through the community, brutalizing people, lobbing tear gas into crowds and spreading an atmosphere of fear that has everyone in the city on edge. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz wrote on social media this week, “Minnesota voted against him three times and now he’s punishing us,” and it’s hard to argue, especially since Trump is openly talking about “retribution.”
Minneapolis is only one of the places Trump has sent National Guard troops and/or large numbers of ICE and Border Patrol agents. All of thoe places have been where most of the population votes for Democrats: Los Angeles, Washington, Memphis, New Orleans. And there will be more places.
Far less attention has been given to the administration’s efforts to create two separate systems of federal funding, one for red states and one for blue ones. Fortunately, at least for now, some of those efforts are being blocked by the courts. Last week, a federal judge ruled that the administration had acted illegally when it cancelled billions of dollars in environmental grants to 16 states led by Demcorats. “Defendants freely admit,” the judge noted, “that they made grant-termination decisions primarily — if not exclusively — based on whether the awardee resided in a state whose citizens voted for President Trump in 2024.”
Last week was not the first time a judge made a similar ruling. In April, another district court ruled against an executive order Trump signed instructing Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem to ensure that sanctuary jurisdictions “do not receive access to federal funds.”
This is a pattern that is being repeated again and again: Trump and his aides look to remove states run by Democrats from national programs or widely distributed funding, as though the only places that deserve the support of the federal government are those that voted for him. The administration just announced, for example, that it is cutting off $10 billion in child care funding to California, Illinois, New York, Minnesota and Colorado — all blue states. The Department of Health and Human Services is closing six of its 10 field offices — all in blue cities in blue states. Trump has withheld disaster aid from blue states, a repeat of actions from his first term (in 2018, an aide convinced him to release recovery funds to California by showing him how many votes he got in Orange County). Trump is also moving the Space Command from Colorado to Alabama. Most remarkably — as in the administration’s filings in the case on environmental grants — officials in Trump’s administration don’t even pretend they should serve all Americans equally. Trump himself certainly doesn’t. Every day he makes clear that if you support him he likes you, and if you don’t, you’re his enemy. This is something new in both policy and politics. Sure, federal largesse has often been handed out to those with connections, and members of Congress try to steer money to their own districts and states. But we expect every occupant of the Oval Office to say that they’re the president of all Americans and reinforce the idea that we are one nation with one fate. Democrats have worked hard to make sure their policies benefit red states, both for political reasons and because they clearly believe it’s the right thing to do, especially since the needs in areas like education, health care, and economic development are often greater where many Republicans live. The Biden administration, for instance, made extensive efforts to improve life in rural America, where Democrats get precious few votes. And when Democrats wrote the Inflation Reduction Act, they took pains to direct the vast majority of its climate funds to red states, in the hope that doing so would help protect the programs from future Republican sabotage. (That turned out to be a miscalculation). Like almost all presidents, Republican and Democratic, Biden often deployed the lofty rhetoric of unity and common destiny. Trump never bothers. He has a long list of those who are not quite American in his eyes: immigrants from the wrong places, journalists, trans people or even just Democrats. “They hate our country” is one of his most oft-used descriptions of Americans who dare to criticize him. He thinks he gets to define who is part of our country, and if you didn’t vote for him, you don’t qualify.
Paul Waldman is a journalist and author focused on politics and culture. 
