Red state parents lash out at Trump: 'Never had this problem before'

When President Donald Trump sought a second term in the 2024 election, nearly three out of five Nebraskans voted to put him back in office. Now many of those same Nebraskans are struggling to make ends meet because of one of Trump's signature programs — and they are talking about it.

"The DHHS website states that approval of a subsidy for eligible families 'may take up to six weeks to complete,'" reported the Nebraska Examiner's Cindy Gonzalez on Sunday. "The full cost may be covered. Depending on income, some may owe a monthly fee paid directly to a qualified provider. The provider bills DHHS for the remainder."

Gonzalez continued, "A DHHS spokesman acknowledged a 'temporary' increase in processing times for programs including childcare subsidy approvals — and said it stems partly from stepped up eligibility restrictions called for in President Donald Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill,” which Congress approved in July 2025."

Gonzalez also quoted spokesman Jeff Powell, who explained that the delays have occurred because "the move away from the honor system to verification for certain eligibility criteria is requiring more staff time to process."

As one example of a suffering Nebraskan, Gonzalez told the story of Josh Wiggington.

"Josh Wigginton and his wife each went to work Friday," Gonzalez wrote. "One dropped off daughter Nayeli at their childcare center, which transports the 7-year-old to school and back. The other parent picked her up after the work day."

She added, "It’s a longtime routine that nearly collapsed earlier in the week due to what Wigginton said was an unusually long delay by the state to reauthorize the family’s annual childcare subsidy."

Wiggington told Gonzalez, "We’ve never had this problem before. An email to our caseworker came back undeliverable. I’ve been calling. I get hung up on. … I’m nervous.”

Speaking to AlterNet in August, University of Bristol cognitive scientist Stephan Lewandowky explained why so many rural voters support Trump even though his economic policies ultimately wind up hurting them.

"Being hypocritical — feeling pain for yourself but not making the connection that maybe this other person is also in pain, and maybe we should support each other rather than throwing welfare recipients under the bus so I can have my subsidy — different people come to different conclusions about that," Lewandowsky explained. "There's so much tied up in this. There's latent racism. There's religion. There's the general conservative idea that poor people are — it's their fault, they're just lazy, everybody is responsible for what happens to them… except me, because I'm a farmer, and therefore I'm not lazy, and I've tried everything, and I deserve a subsidy."

He continued, "There's a lot of attitudes and underlying currents tied up in this that are difficult to disentangle. But, as you said before, there is an angle of racism that I think is underlying pretty much all of this misogyny. If you sort of give an instrument to people that measures their racism and misogyny, well, it tells you about who they're gonna vote for and all that kind of stuff pretty well."

Writing for The Bulwark in June, conservative commentator Jonathan V. Last broke down an ethnographic study of Trump voters which ascertained that many of them are willing to economically suffer as long as they perceive other groups they dislike as hurting more.

“As a wise man once said: They are who we thought they were,” Jonathan V. Last wrote regarding a May study sponsored by the Johns Hopkins Agora Institute. “I want to go deep on this question because the people in the study describe a remarkable consistency about why they dislike democracy. It’s not that they’re misled, or mistaken. They have a coherent worldview. It’s just not very nice.”

Describing the average group of Trump voters as “a minority under threat from a tyrannical majority” who “believe that there is a cultural schism in America, with good, God-fearing people like themselves on one side and the wicked majority on the other. They detest this imaginary majority and fear that ‘democracy’ would allow that majority to gain political power," he continued, “We are firmly out of the realm of policy here. Or reality, even."

He concluded, "So long as there is a trans activist in San Francisco posting on BlueSky, these people will be aggrieved. Even if their preferred political party holds the presidency, controls Congress, and has an openly corrupt majority in the Supreme Court. Domination of the political system is not enough; they want the people who disgust them to disappear.”