Former Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Michael Steele often warns, during his appearances on MSNBC, that the Trump Administration’s dramatic cuts to the United States’ federal workforce will have a major impact on the conservative red states that voted heavily for Donald Trump in 2024 — and not in a good way. Programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, Steele emphasizes, are not used exclusively in Democratic blue states.
One red state that is likely to feel the impact of the Trump/DOGE job cuts, according to New York Times reporters Eduardo Medina and Emily Cochrane, is Alabama — especially the city of Huntsville.
Although the national popular vote was close in the 2024 presidential election — Trump defeated Democratic nominee Kamala Harris by roughly 1.5 percent nationally — Alabama wasn’t close at all: Trump carried Alabama by about 30.5 percent.
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But Medina and Cochrane, in an article published on February 15, stress that Huntsville (which they describe as an “aerospace behemoth”) is likely to be hit hard by Trump Administration cuts.
“More than half of the roughly 40,000 federal civilian employees in Alabama live in the congressional district that includes Huntsville, according to the Congressional Research Service as of March 2024,” the Times reporters explain. “There are also thousands of workers there whose jobs are tied to government contracts and could be affected…. More than 6200 people work at the flight center alone, with about 2300 of them classified as federal civil employees of NASA.”
Medina and Cochrane add, “There are lingering memories of past layoffs: more than 1000 jobs in Huntsville were lost when Constellation, a program to return astronauts to the moon, was shut down in 2010.”
The journalists note that conservative Sen. Katie Britt (R-Alabama) “is among a number of Republicans who have raised concerns about the effect of a plan that would cut $4 billion in federal funding for research at the nation’s universities, cancer centers and hospitals.”
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“Those cuts, which a federal judge put on hold this week, could affect research programs at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and elsewhere in the state,” Medina and Cochrane report. “Such cuts could trickle to other facets of the Huntsville economy. Terrence Harris, a real estate agent in Huntsville, said that in the last couple of weeks, several of his clients who work for the government have backtracked from plans to purchase a home because they feel concerned about their job security.”
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Read the full New York Times article at this link (subscription required).
