Bulwark Takes - Trump PUNISHES Blue States With Shutdown Agenda

Episode Date: October 2, 2025

On day two of Donald Trump’s shutdown, Jonathan V. Last and Andrew Egger dig into the White House’s real strategy: using the crisis to punish blue states and Democratic constituencies. From freezing $18 billion in New York infrastructure projects to halting green energy construction in Democratic states, Russ Vought and Trump are openly weaponizing federal power for political retaliation. They discuss the legality of these moves, the impact on workers (many of them Trump voters), and the deeper truth that Trump doesn’t care about his base so long as Fox News viewers see him “owning the libs.”

Hello, everyone. This is JVL here with my bulwark colleague and author of the Morning Shots Newsletter, Andrew Eger. Andrew, say hello to the people. How's it going, people? We are in day two of Donald Trump's shutdown, and it's glorious. It's everything we hoped it could be. And we've got the Republican Party operating in total good faith and really just trying to make a deal happen for the good of the American people. And none of those things are true. I mean, I guess it's true that we're in day two of a shutdown. So, Andrew, you wrote today about Russ Vote's plan, which seems to be we're going to use the shutdown to hurt blue states. Explain that for me.

How are they going to do that? Yeah, so some of this was expected, right? I mean, it had been telegraphed for a number of days that OMB and Russ Vote, who runs OMB, were going to use the shutdown as a pretext to try to fire a bunch more government workers. they have already done. Obviously, that was a big part of Doge. But RestVote always saw that as a nice first step, and there was always going to be more. Obviously, that was going to skew to hurt sort of, you know, Democratic-leaning constituencies. Federal workers vote maybe 60 percent, you know, Democrat, and obviously in the D.C. area, that's higher. So that was kind of expected going in. There have also been some surprises we found out yesterday. One of the biggest was something that Russ Vote unveiled

yesterday morning, which was that the White House was going to very immediately and unexpectedly pull the plug on a couple of very large infrastructure projects in New York City in my hometown to the tune of about $18 billion, I believe, for those two. So a specific subway expansion, Hudson River Tunnel. I don't understand these things. I don't live in New York. I don't know what they do up there. But, you know, two major public works projects, you know, for the city of New York. And obviously, the nexus there is that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is a senator from New York. So this was very much like an FU to Chuck Schumer, a way to kind of like twist his arm,

get him back to, I say get him back to the negotiating table, but that is in it. Nobody's negotiating to just get him to drop his opposition to the continuing resolution that Republicans want to pass. That was one thing. And then a few hours later, vote hopped on the old Twitter account again and announced that there were going to be many more billions of dollars in immediate freezes to what he called green new scam expenditures, which is, you know, green energy products that were funded, green energy projects that were funded by the infrastructure bill that was passed under Biden a couple of years

ago, which, as you will recall, from the coverage of that bill, spread the money around pretty evenly. There was there was a lot of money from from the the Biden infrastructure bill going into red states. It's like he was the president for all of America, even the people who didn't vote for him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it was interesting yesterday. Russ Voters really appreciated that, right? Right, right. It worked out really well. It worked. It was a great plan. Thanks, President Biden. Well, new sheriff in town, new set of rules, because what's happening now is they're freezing a lot of these expenditures, but they are very explicitly only freezing them in blue sea. states. Russ vote was very open about this. He said, green new scam spending. We're cutting a bunch of

more money from it. We're stopping these projects. And here is 16 states that we're doing it in. And it's 16 states that all voted for Kamala Harris and have Democratic senators. So again, just naked, open, obvious. The plan is to put pressure on these, these blue state senators who have, who have, you know, so far refused to fund the government with this bill that Republicans want and just say we are going to, you know, basically hit you as hard as we can economically until you agree to just sign on the dotted line for what we would like to spend here. Okay, first question, is this legal? That's a great question.

Which part? I think it's a little different. It varies. I mean, like, if you talk about the New York stuff, right? If you're talking about like those, you know, those New York projects that he froze, I would expect that ultimately, you know, this probably gets. shot down in court. But for the meantime, he is at least like talking about it in legal terms, right? He said, you know, we need to make sure these contracts are in keeping with our new

sort of anti-D-EI policies. And we're afraid that they were awarded, you know, under the auspices of DEI in a way that we don't approve of. But unfortunately, you know, we can't, the Department of Transportation is not able to review these, these contracts because they're all on furlough because of the shutdown. So what are you going to do? We got to, we got to just put the whole project on ice until the shutdown is over. intervene and review these things in the last 10 months. We just realized right now, what are the odds? Yeah.

I mean, it's obviously a fig leaf, right? I mean, everyone knows that. J.D. Vance said as much yesterday at the White House press briefing. He was asked, is this just a way to, you know, twist Chuck Schumer's arm? And he was kind of like, I'm sure Russ isn't, you know, losing sleep over the fact that he's going after these, these constituencies. But, you know, sometimes all you need is that kind of like legal fig leaf. If the question is, is it legal, right?

I mean, like, sort of similar to Trump's national security tariffs that, like, it's, it's in our national security interest that we put a tariff on bathroom vanities or something like that, right? As long as you say the magic phrase, you give yourself some iron plating as far as lawsuits are concerned. But it is obviously political retaliation. And on the broader question of, is it legal to freeze this spending, like, just in general, no.

I mean, the answer is, no, it's not. This is a spending that's been allocated by Congress. appropriated by Congress, and the Trump White House has asserted more and more control over this second term in a bunch of different policy ways over that spending and saying, actually, we are not going to spend this money, even though it's the law that it must be spent. And this is just the latest example of that. So one of the questions you raised was that in your, again, excellent Morning Shots newsletter to which everybody should subscribe, you asked, you know, do these people understand?

that like the blue states aren't a monolith and not every single person in the blue states voted for the Democrats. And a lot of these, I don't know, the guy, big burly guys from Staten Island who do construction around New York City public transit projects might be Trump voters. Yeah, that's what's so weird about this. Because on the one hand, like, I guess they think they're being kind of clever by only cutting these programs in blue states. Obviously, that's going to have major economic ramifications because a lot of these blue state hubs are like big hubs of economic activity like New York City, right? I mean, obviously that's its own thing. But even setting that aside, I mean, if you are talking specifically, even about green new scam, even about renewable energy

construction projects, you are still talking about, you know, blue collar manual labor type work. You're talking about construction workers. You're talking about hard hat guys, right? You're talking about, you know, union, union people. Jonathan Cohn, our health policy, or not just our health policy reporter, our policy reporter who does a lot of health policy, had a great piece just a couple of weeks ago that was profiling this guy who's the head of a local ironworkers union in Rhode Island, who he and his guys had been, you know, busily constructing an offshore wind farm off the coast of Rhode Island. And the Trump administration pulled the plug on that a few weeks ago or, you know, kind of put it on ice, uh, indefinitely. And it's like, huh, I guess in theory

that, like, on paper that codes left wing, right? On paper, it's like Rhode Island, Blue State, Renewable Energy Project, you know, progressive priority. Let's just yank that and, and hurt their guys. But like the people who are putting that together are disproportionately Trump voters. And that's true in New York City. And that's true sort of across the, I mean, talk about New York. Just one other thing about New York. Like the outer boroughs, of New York and like the bedroom communities all around New York have been enormous Republican, like a Republican gold mine for the past few years. The Republicans have the majority in the House of Representatives because a lot of these communities have broken red just in the last couple cycles

and sent a cup sent a bunch of, again, kind of like, you know, ex-urban New York City congressional districts sent Republicans to the house, which is why, you know, things like the salt deduction. gets raised and like these these people wield disproportionate power in the house because Republicans know like we wouldn't have the gavel we wouldn't have the speaker's gavel without these guys and they're those guys are like they are like the voters who this is shafting and it's very strange to see like that that I guess they're not I don't know I I can't put my brain because like in theory like Russ Russ Vote is like one of these like Machiavellian prince of darkness diabolical geniuses but this seems so dumb on on its own terms in that way I'm

I'm sorry I'm just getting this in now So I have to, we have breaking news. Donald Trump doesn't actually care about his voters, Andrew. And he doesn't care about the House either. He doesn't care about House Republicans. He has discovered that he can govern just fine by issuing executive orders as an autocrat. So he has no need to control the House. He doesn't need those marginal districts in the New York City suburbs.

And to the extent that a couple hundred union guys in Rhode Island get pissed off at him. Who cares? He's never going to carry Rhode Island anyway. And he gets to make two and a half million people watching Fox every night happy because he's owning the libs. That's all that matters, right? And the corollary is his voters are dumb enough.

They won't blame him for it anyway. I would bet a box of donuts that if we were able to. poll, all of the, these types of construction workers who are getting their lives upended, who are Trump voters for this, a month from now, none of them will blame Trump for it. Donald Trump has taken the measure of his supporters. He understands them in ways that people like you and I have, like, for 10 years now, just been dead wrong. We keep saying, well, oh, no, it's the economy.

It's kitchen table issues. It's not this. It's not that. they'll see and no no he understood we didn't well some of it depends on the trump voter i mean like if you're if you're talking about like the the most maga of the most maga guy who whose entire identity is wrapped up in this stuff in in the same way that people get their identities wrapped up in like being a flat earther and like any any kind of like contradicting data point just bounces off of them without you know changing their trajectory at all i totally agree with you with that group

but that group is what 25 30 percent of the country that's kind of a daggering number of people. I think it's more than that. There was a piece in, I forget where it was. I think it was Washington Post a week or two ago about a guy in southern Nevada who was, like, you know, a very thoughtful guy who was not a super ultra-maga guy, but was a Trump supporter. And his life was, like, he was a national, I guess, National Park Service guy who lost his job with Doge.

His wife died and the government screwed him on death benefits. I mean, one of the saddest stories you've ever heard. And, like, his youngest kid, who is, like, a bulwark type, kept me like, Dad, don't you see what this man is doing to us? And this guy, who, again, he is not going to boat parades with MAGA flags or anything like that. And he seems like a genuinely good guy trying to struggle with the world he sees around him. And he's just like, I just got to believe he's getting bad advice.

You know, I can't believe that he's. he knew, if only he knew, if only the furor knew what was happening. He would never allow such things. Yeah, I mean, we're, we're sort of jumping from like, does any of this matter all the way to, like, will any of this cause these people to sort of like burn their, their Trump membership cards, right? Which is two different questions, right? And I do think it, it does matter that, like, this stuff does cut against, I mean, in some weird ways, it cuts against the normal progression of like the shutdown logic, right? I mean, just to game this out a little bit,

like, what Republicans want to be saying right now is the government is shutting down and everything is bad because Democrats are making the government shut down. They wouldn't give us this votes to keep funding where it was before. What was so wrong with funding where it was before? You'd like to find the last time. And they're, you know, they're getting in the way and they're making all these problems

and all these things are bad are going to happen because of the Democrats. And like, they're taking pains to make this message, right? Carolyn Levitt is getting up on TV and saying all this stuff and JD Vance. all these guys are like, they're working hard to do this. But at the same time, this stuff, the stuff we're talking about now, this stuff isn't happening because the government shut down. This is specific retaliatory stuff, right?

And I just think, like, what's the point of, like, prejudging the, like, the fact that people are going to be hurt by this and saying, yeah, but they're, but they won't care, you know, like, it's pearls before swine to even, like, present them with this information, you know what I mean? Like, like, maybe they won't care. Maybe they, you would be playing the percentages to our, argue that this is unlikely to shake them loose, like, like so many other things. But like some people are changing their minds, right?

I mean, Donald Trump's approval rating was up here and now it's down here. And we would like it to be, you know, two floors down in my house. But like, there's a difference between here and here. And that's, that is a reaction to, to lived events, right? And the lived events are only getting worse and worse and worse. Andrew, uh, some days I wake up and I ask, what does any of this matter? honestly and you know this is Trump is his approval is higher than it was at this point in his first term as as terrible as things are we've got we've got job numbers moving backward we have

inflation going upwards we have a trade war we have we have the United States getting involved in in wars in Iran which we had promised we would like a bunch of bad shit is happening and people we have massed agents on the street just grabbing people off we have trump in open fights and defiance with the supreme court and he's more popular now than he was in september of 2017 it's nuts i like i just don't know what to say about any of us honestly it's dark out there except that the people some a significant enough percentage of the people want this that we're going to keep getting it Every day is another day to try to change their minds.

You know what I mean? What are we doing? What are we doing? That's the whole point. What are we even doing here? All right. Andrew, buddy, thanks for being with me. Everybody, hit like, hit subscribe.

Follow the channel. We'll be back with more sunshine and puppy dogs next time. Good luck, America. Thank you. Thank you.