A president for some of the people

Trump won’t use federal government resources to help states that didn’t vote for him

Firefighters battle the Lee and Elk fires in Colorado, August 2025

The presidential oath prescribed by the U.S. Constitution doesn’t explicitly say that the president must serve all Americans, and not just those who back his campaign, but it’s certainly how it’s been interpreted over the centuries. The Constitution’s mandate that the president “shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed” definitely makes it sound like the president has obligation to the nation as a whole, rather that to a subgroup of Americans he likes.

This has not been a particularly controversial thing in the past. Most presidents-elect, when winning office, talk about their interest in being everyone’s president. To be sure, presidents have obligations and policy goals that will affect people differently. The Affordable Care Act likely benefitted supporters of Barack Obama more than it did supporters of John McCain, even though partisanship was hardly a requirement for benefitting from it. Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts likely benefitted his supporters more than Jimmy Carter’s, although Democrats making large incomes were certainly eligible for the cuts.

As we’ve seen with several things recently (and indeed since 2017), Donald Trump views the presidency differently. I want to specifically talk about Trump’s disbursement of emergency disaster funds. Politico recently ran a well-researched story on this, examining the rate of presidential approval of requests for federal emergency declarations going back to Ronald Reagan. (Such presidential declarations allow for the disbursement of federal funds and actions, including the deployment of FEMA response teams.) They divide the states by the partisan affiliation of the governor and senators making the request. This analysis produced what I see as one of the most shocking images to come out of this administration (and that’s saying something):

The chart very starkly shows that approval of emergency declaration requests has been a) quite high, and b) basically equal across party lines — until Trump’s second term. Since January 2025, Trump has approved 89 percent of the emergency requests from Republican states but only 23 percent of the requests from Democratic states.

What’s more, Trump takes far longer to consider the emergency requests from Democratic states than those from Republican states. Andrew Rumbach’s Disaster Lab, which collected much of the data used in the Politico piece, finds that it takes an average of 55 days for Trump to render a decision about disaster aid for a state he won in 2024, but it takes 105 days for a decision for a state that Kamala Harris won.

Trump isn’t exactly shy about tying the political support he receives from a state to the disaster aid he approves:

Disaster aid is not just a symbolic aspect of the federal government — it’s something that affects people’s lives, health, and financial solvency. Last year, the state of Colorado requested federal disaster aid for a series of fires and floods. Trump rejected this aid request, citing, in part, the state’s imprisonment of Tina Peters, the former county clerk and election denier. Governor Jared Polis filed an appeal — with the endorsement of all the state’s members of Congress, both Republican and Democratic — and was again turned down. His commutation of Peters’ sentence did not persuade Trump to release the federal aid.

Needless to say, Trump’s refusal to approve aid doesn’t just hurt Democrats. 1.4 million Coloradans voted for Donald Trump in 2024, and they’re less concentrated in the cities like Democrats are, and more in the kinds of rural areas that tend to get hit so hard by fires and floods. Trump’s hurting them, as well.

I’ve had conversations with some folks online about this over the past few days, and I’ve seen some people respond with demands for a law that would prevent the President from doing what Trump is doing. But this guidance is already implicit in the Presidential oath, in the norms that have guided the office, and in the political incentives that drive nearly all public officials. We haven’t needed a law for this sort of thing because no prior president wanted to be known as a leader who would literally let people die for not voting for him.

This is not limited to disaster aid. Recently, the state of Minnesota suffered a cyber attack on its water supply systems. Investigators have preliminarily determined that Iranian cyber hackers were responsible for this, suggesting that it may be part of Iran’s military response to the United States’ bombing campaigns. If true, this is a stunning development and a literal attack on the U.S. homeland by a foreign power. That would be an area where the President has pretty clear obligations to defend the nation.

Instead, he blamed Minnesota:

“I blame it on Minnesota because they are grossly incompetent,” Trump said at a cabinet meeting at Camp David on Friday, adding that [Governor Tim] Walz is “corrupt” and “Iran has bigger problems than worrying about Minnesota.” Asked later if he could rule out Iranian responsibility, Trump said, “I don’t think there was an Iranian cyberattack. I think Minnesota ought to get its act together.”

This is again an area where Trump is violating the requirements of the office he holds. The federal government receives revenue from all 50 states. Yet it is now spending that money just to help states that voted for the President, while he blames the other states for their misfortunes. Is it a crime? No. Is it impeachable? Absolutely.

As Jonathan Bernstein wrote earlier this year, “Trump believes that by winning the presidential election… he won some sort of prize, when in fact he was hired to do a job that has some 330 million bosses.” I think this holds up. As far as Trump is concerned, the office of the presidency does not come with responsibilities, only perks and powers.