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Trump and Musk’s Cuts are Already Affecting Rural Wisconsin

A letter from farm country

Andrew Gaertner
13 min readMar 15, 2025
Trump and Musk are having a chilling effect on rural Wisconsin. Author’s photo

I live in a Trump township, in a Trump county, in a Trump state. I can’t say that I voted for him, but I understand why many did.

One of my neighbors explained his Trump/Musk vote to me. He essentially said that, to him, the Democrats are out of touch with people like him. When I suggested that Trump is signalling authoritarianism, my friend pointed to Trump’s first term, when Trump was a lot of bluster and show but didn’t change that much. My friend was more concerned about trans women competing in women’s sports and going into women’s locker rooms than Trump’s signalling of fascism.

Well.

We have already seen that Trump 2.0 is not at all like Trump 1.0. This feels like a Blitzkrieg against the very idea of a federal government. Welcome to the world where an unelected rich bro co-president has decided to destroy the federal government and tank the American economy.

As a rural white dude in Trump country, I might expect to have few negative outcomes from the first two months of the Trump/Musk presidency. I might think that the federal government is in Washington DC and their programs are mostly helping (so-called) minorities in big cities. I might think that I would be better off without such a big…

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Andrew Gaertner
Andrew Gaertner

Written by Andrew Gaertner

To live in a world of peace and justice we must imagine it first. For this, we need artists and writers. I write to reach for the edges of what is possible.

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