To the editor: What I discover fascinating about Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins’ assertion that migrant laborers can merely get replaced by automation and Medicaid recipients is not only the underlying cruelty expressed towards each hardworking immigrant laborers and Medicaid recipients, neither is it the surprising ignorance (“Trump official suggests Medicaid recipients, automation can substitute immigrant staff. California farmers disagree,” July 9).
What I discover fascinating is the obvious assumption by President Trump and his “mind belief” that “able-bodied adults on Medicaid” are all individuals outdoors of his very base. From a purely political perspective, it’s the one means I could make sense of Rollins’ proposal. I hate to be the bearer of unhealthy information to Trump’s workforce, however in line with present statistics, the most important group of Medicaid recipients within the U.S. are white non-Hispanics (estimated to be 39.6% of all recipients). A majority 55% of white voters forged ballots for Trump within the 2024 election. Which means that of Medicaid recipients who’re registered voters, it’s not unreasonable to imagine that a big portion are Trump voters.
Trump and his administration’s seeming indifference to subjecting Medicaid recipients who might occur to be GOP voters to the kind of contempt and cruelty they usually reserve for immigrants and other people of coloration tells me that they (as is usually the case) may not have thought of the implications of their proposals on their very own voters. And on this case, it appears to me that this specific lack of judgment is sort of a rogue torpedo fired by the Trump administration that’s headed proper again on the GOP. Will probably be attention-grabbing to see how this impacts the midterm elections.
Matthew Singerman, Newbury Park
