Trump is gutting Medicaid—but rural America still won’t wake up

President Donald Trump’s budget is gutting Medicaid—and rural America is on the front lines of the damage. And big shocker: Most of Trump’s fervent supporters refuse to accept reality.

A health clinic in McCook, Nebraska, which has a population of 7,446, recently made national headlines after announcing that it’s shutting its doors, unable to survive the massive GOP Medicaid cuts.

“Anyone who’s saying that Medicaid cuts is why they’re closing is a liar,” a resident of nearby Curtis, which has a population of 806, told the Washington Post. 

Another resident brushed it off as people just “trying to blame everything on Trump,” calling it “horse feathers.” Must be a Nebraska thing.

And the town’s mayor, who proudly displays an Obama punching bag labeled “Obama stress reliever” on his desk, insisted, “I don’t think the signing of the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ had one thing to do with the closure of this clinic.”

Okay then. 

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For years, Trump and the Republican Party have sold rural white voters a story: that the real problem with government isn’t that it fails people like them—it’s that it helps the wrong people. Benefits aren’t going to “deserving” Americans like them but to immigrants, big cities, Black and brown people, and coastal elites. It’s a lie, but a potent one. And it still works.

Right-wing message boards are full of people claiming that the only health care being cut is for “illegals” or freeloaders. So when the cuts hit them instead—the “hard-working, God-fearing patriots”—they short circuit. The media must be lying. There has to be another explanation. It can’t be Trump.

And, yes, most of those voters are gone. We’re not getting them back. Their political identity is built around the idea that Trump is their champion, even when it’s crystal clear that he’s the one twisting the knife.

But not all of them are unreachable.

Take Brenda Wheeler, a 61-year-old Republican from Curtis. She voted for Trump in 2016 but then soured on him and sat out of the 2024 election. When the clinic closure hit home, she told the Post, “I’m not in agreement with this bill.” 

“When we talked about making America great again, I don’t think this is what we all had in mind,” said Wheeler, who is even considering switching her voter registration to independent. 

People like her are the opening.

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Not all of them will defect. In fact, most won’t. But we don’t need most. If just 5-10% of Republicans peel off—or if a few million nonvoters finally show up—the math shifts toward Democrats. Our fragile 49-48 Democratic national edge becomes a robust 55-45 majority. That’s not just a win; it’s a buffer. It’s how we build a durable progressive coalition that can weather any right-wing wave.

We’re not going to deprogram the cult, but we don’t have to. What we can do is reach the people asking why their mom’s Medicaid got slashed, why their insulin suddenly costs more, or why their town’s only clinic just shuttered.

That’s the silver lining of our current dystopian nightmare: there’s no one else to blame. Republicans control everything. They own it.

The first step is making that reality stick. The second is flipping at least one congressional chamber in 2026 to stop Trump’s agenda and launch real investigations into the corruption unfolding. And the third is offering something better—visible, tangible, immediate help that voters can actually feel. Or, as I’ve been arguing, cut out the buzzwords and promise to directly and immediately make voters’ lives better. 

That’s how we win not just in 2026, but for the long haul.

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