Trump Says He’ll Fight for Working-Class Americans. His First Presidency Suggests He Won’t.

Story by Eli Hager. November 2, 2024.

  • Trump’s Policies on Poverty: During his presidency, Trump proposed significant cuts to programs aiding low-income families, including health care, food assistance, and housing programs.
  • Project 2025: Critics cite this as a blueprint for a potential second Trump term, proposing deep cuts to the social safety net and tax breaks for the wealthy.
  • First-Term Challenges: Trump faced difficulties implementing his agenda due to inefficiencies and a lack of preparation in his early presidency.
  • Future Plans: If re-elected, Trump and his allies plan to combine tax cuts with aggressive cuts to social spending, and to introduce new regulations earlier in the term.
  1. Raise rent of 4 million poorest people.
  2. Cut the federal disability benefits of a quarter-million low-income children, on the grounds that someone else in their family was already receiving benefits
  3. Tried to enact a rule allowing employers to pocket workers’ tips
  4. Enacted a rule denying overtime pay if they made more than $35,568 a year.
  5. Proposes deep cuts to the social safety net for lower-income families
  6. Proposes more large tax breaks for the wealthy
  7. Advanced an agenda across his administration that was designed to cut health care, food and housing programs and labor protections for poor and working-class Americans
  8. Proposed significantly deeper cuts to programs for low- and modest-income people than any other president ever has, including Reagan, by far.
  9. Cutting the Children’s Health Insurance Program, known as CHIP, by billions of dollars.
  10. Rescinding nearly a million kids’ eligibility for free school lunches.
  11. Freezing Pell grants for lower-income college students so that they’re not adjusted for inflation.
  12. Overhauling and substantially cutting the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, colloquially known as food stamps, in part by defining people with assets exceeding $2,250 as not being poor enough to receive aid and reducing the minimum monthly food stamp amount from $23 to zero.
  13. Eliminating multiple programs designed to increase the supply of and investment in affordable housing in lower-income communities.
  14. Eliminating a program that helps poor families heat their homes and be prepared for power outages and other energy crises.
  15. Shrinking Job Corps and cutting funding for work-training programs — which help people get off of government assistance — nearly in half.
  16. Restricting the collective bargaining rights of unions, through which workers fight for better wages and working conditions.
  17. Trump also never gave up on his goal of dismantling the Affordable Care Act.
  18. Continue to reduce the civil service, meaning the nonpolitical federal employees whom he collectively calls “the Deep State”.