Under former President Joe Biden, Appalachia had been earmarked for nearly $900 million in federal investment to help transition the region from dying coal industries into an industrial hub for renewable energy, including solar manufacturing.
“We knew we were living in a historic moment, not just because of the amount of funding, but because the whole region mobilized to meet the moment,” Jacob Hannah, CEO of Coalfield Development, told The Guardian. “It was a once-in-a-generation cash injection designed to prioritize extraction-based communities as part of the energy transition, which for the first time in almost a century made Appalachia very competitive.”
The region responded to Biden’s aid by handing Trump some of his biggest margins anywhere—83% of the vote in some counties. Trump rewarded those areas by canceling those investments so he and his friends could secure even bigger tax cuts.
It’s “demoralizing,” Hannah said.
But don’t expect Trump or the GOP to get the blame.
“Regardless of who’s in power, there’s a lot of finger-pointing, while life gets worse for the common people and the oligarch class keep winning,” Orville Overton, a local business owner and member of the residents’ council, told The Guardian. “I don’t think people know who or what to trust, because both [political] parties have failed us in big ways.”
One party earmarked nearly a billion dollars for the region. The other party took it away. Clearly, both sides failed them equally.
President Donald Trump is giddy about his tacky “gold card” visa program, his face plastered on the card like it's some third-world strongman souvenir. As Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick ...
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This is why Democrats should make sure all of the financial help goes only to blue states, and districts that voted for the Democrats that gave them the help. All of these Trump voting districts need to suffer the consequences for their votes for a long time to come. There is no helping these people, so they have to be ignored in favor of those who do vote for the help, and know who it is that's giving it to them.
Even if you give these morons the money, they would only buy Trump sneakers with it anyway. Stop throwing away good money after bad Democrats.