Politics
The 6 most urgent policy questions we have for America’s governors
Governors are scrambling to figure out the most effective way to respond to the seismic changes unleashed in the opening weeks of the Trump administration.
The basic calculus is clear: Democrats are searching for ways to thwart the White House’s most sweeping actions, while Republicans are desperate to show they’re fully on board with the MAGA agenda.
But beneath that crude dynamic, the deliberations happening in state capitals are far more nuanced and politically fraught.
Democrats are wary of simply mounting a scorched-earth resistance to President Donald Trump’s policies given the GOP’s sweeping victories on Election Day. That’s especially true on immigration, where the president’s hard-line tactics have resonated even with voters in deep blue swaths of the country.
Republicans, meanwhile, must navigate their own political tightrope in responding to the administration’s efforts to slash federal spending. That’s particularly tricky with regards to the massive packages enacted during the Biden administration that Trump has vowed to unwind — but that have disproportionately benefited red states.
These calculations are shifting on a daily basis — with legal fights creating even more uncertainty — as state executives face the toughest budget conditions since before the pandemic led to huge pots of federal cash swelling state coffers. Governors’ ability to traverse this choppy terrain will play a big role in determining which of them emerge as national political figures heading into 2028.
As the relationship between the federal government and state capitals gets upended, Blue Light News on Thursday is convening six state leaders for its 2025 Governors Summit, a series of one-on-one interviews on the sidelines of the National Governors Association meeting in Washington.
The gathering will feature some of the country’s most influential state executives answering questions from some of Blue Light News’s top reporters and editors. The lineup includes Democrats Jared Polis of Colorado and Andy Beshear of Kentucky, and Republican Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma. The program starts at 8 a.m. EST.
To frame those conversations, we’ve assembled a list of the most urgent political and policy questions governors — and, by extension, the country — face in 2025.
1. How should Democratic governors, with an eye on 2028, work with Trump — or not?
It’s a raging debate among Democrats in Washington and across the country: how much to cooperate with Trump — and how much to resist?
For a party still sorting through the wreckage of its 2024 losses, it’s still an open question. But for Democratic governors, many of whom have an eye on 2028, it’s an even more urgent political balancing act. They’re under pressure from the party’s progressive base to resist Trump at every turn, while also offering a positive vision for the future that’s not centered exclusively on attacking the president.
At the same time, these Democratic governors must find ways to work with Trump when it comes to federal spending, especially after natural disasters. Look no further than California Gov. Gavin Newsom greeting Trump on the tarmac after the devastating Los Angeles wildfires last month.
So, how do they walk that political tightrope?
This isn’t limited to the Democratic governors. Both parties are facing open presidential primaries in 2028, so GOP governors may be looking for their own ways of standing out. Right now, however, there’s little evidence that Republicans want to put distance between themselves and Trump. For example, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp recently told Blue Light News that the government “can stand a little right-sizing,” when asked about 1,300 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention employees, based in Atlanta, who were fired.
But how long does that line hold? (Elena Schneider)
2. What role, if any, do governors have to play in navigating a new era of trade war?
Trump’s tariff threats and protectionist ideology have pushed some of America’s closest trading relationships to the brink — and disrupted state economies in the process. Trump’s crackdown on trade with Canada, alone, has cast a shadow over the states: Michigan leaders fear layoffs in the auto sector, New York’s power supply could be imperiled, and Beshear of Kentucky has warned that Canadian retaliation could damage the liquor industry.
So, what is the responsibility of a governor in this moment? How much can a state leader work around Trump’s trade policies — or brace their state’s economy for impact? Should governors be building bridges to foreign countries, even at the cost of undermining federal policy? Or appealing directly to the White House for help, even at the risk of angering Trump or crossing their own party?
During the first Trump administration, governors in both parties stepped up their international travel and economic development efforts, effectively launching a new, sub-federal form of diplomacy aimed at offsetting protectionism in the White House. But Trump is moving faster and more aggressively with his policies this time, with the confidence of a more emphatic electoral mandate. Can governors keep up? (Alex Burns)
3. How should governors navigate abortion issues that stretch across state lines?
The fall of Roe v. Wade was supposed to send abortion back to the states. But more than two years later, so many cross-border conflicts are flaring up that assertions from the Supreme Court’s conservative majority and Trump that each state should be allowed to decide its own policies are being strained to the breaking point.
Louisiana and Texas are attempting to prosecute a New York doctor for prescribing abortion pills via telemedicine to patients in those states. Idaho and Tennessee have vowed to go after anyone who assists a minor in obtaining an abortion out-of-state. Idaho, Kansas and Missouri are also arguing in a Texas court that federal rules allowing abortion pills to be prescribed online and shipped by mail violate their sovereignty. And Alabama medical groups and activists are locked in a legal battle with their attorney general over what information, if any, they can provide to patients about terminating a pregnancy outside the state.
The nation has been a patchwork for abortion access for decades, but those divisions are only getting deeper, and neither side in the abortion war is satisfied with the current situation.
How much federalism and state-level experimentation should be allowed in the abortion space, and what baseline protections should be guaranteed nationwide by Washington? How concerned are governors that policies restricting the movement of people or medications across state lines could have repercussions beyond abortion? With the Trump administration rolling back its enforcement of the FACE Act, the 1994 federal law criminalizing the obstruction of abortion clinics, will governors push for state-level protections? (Alice Miranda Ollstein)
4. How will states cooperate with — or attempt to thwart — Trump’s immigration policies?
Failure to pass sweeping immigration changes in polarized Washington has led to state governments taking up their own policies. Blue state governors, including New York’s Kathy Hochul, face federal lawsuits over allowing undocumented immigrants to receive driver’s licenses, while red state governors dispatched National Guard troops to the southern border during the Biden administration.
But Trump’s November victory and subsequent push to carry out an aggressive deportation policy has scrambled traditional alliances.
Stitt, the Oklahoma Republican, blocked his state’s top education official from collecting the immigration status of public school children. Democrats, including Hochul and Polis of Colorado, are supportive of deporting undocumented immigrants who commit violent crimes.
And the Trump Justice Department’s decision to drop New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ corruption case, as he aligns himself with the administration’s immigration czar, has intensified calls from fellow Democrats for him to step down. The Adams saga highlights the extraordinary steps Trump is willing to take to push local and state governments to enact his immigration plans.
What resources are governors willing to provide Trump to potentially deport millions of people? What will be the impact on state economies and employment? How will crucial, Republican-leaning sectors like agriculture absorb the loss of workers? (Nick Reisman)
5. As Trump downsizes Washington, do Republican governors have a line he can’t cross?
Trump’s slashing of the federal government at the hand of Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency is bound to have immediate trickle-down effects on the states, which heavily rely on federal funding to keep the lights on and federal employees to provide critical services and expertise.
State and federal government functions are so closely entwined that a shuttering of federal agencies stands to transform the daily lives of Americans, from where they go to school to what food gets put on the table.
The Trump administration has already laid off thousands of federal workers across agencies, from the Education Department to the Forest Service to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The cuts are expected to escalate in coming weeks and months as Musk and his allies work with surgical precision to downsize government.
Therefore, the question for GOP governors, whose enthusiasm for DOGE’s mission has prompted some to create their own copycats, is: Can DOGE go too far? What would it take for them to stand up for their state’s economic interests and demand that DOGE back off? For Democratic governors, in the absence of congressional pushback to Musk, how do they intend to fight a dramatic reshaping of Washington?
6. What role should governors play at the dawn of artificial intelligence in state government?
Lawmakers have spent the last few years trying to understand the revolutionary implications of artificial intelligence systems while developing guidance on state government use. They still have a long way to go.
What they’ve discovered so far is that there is great promise, many risks and no easy answers. While AI has the potential to transform government operations across the state agency spectrum, the perils are equally eye-opening. For all the efficiencies to be gained in the delivery of services — in critical areas such as education, health care, law enforcement and transportation — there is also the prospect of privacy violations and the inadvertent incorporation of bias or discrimination into algorithms. Recent elections, which have been buffeted by deceptive, AI-generated content, are already offering many officeholders an all-too-personal glimpse into some of the darker applications of artificial intelligence.
What role should governors play in this pivotal moment — the dawn of artificial intelligence in state government? What responsibility do they have to ensure ethical principles are being developed and ethical practices are being followed? How can governors ensure that the government datasets powering this revolution are reliable and unbiased? What steps are being taken to guard against unforeseen consequences?
All of these considerations must be balanced against current fiscal and budgetary constraints, especially the Trump administration’s efforts to slash federal spending. But what price do you put on the potential leap forward in government efficiency, or on the vast opportunities for economic development that will flow from the adoption of AI technologies?
Decisions made today will echo for decades to come. (Charlie Mahtesian)
Under the political radar, the country’s food stamps program is undergoing a slow-motion transformation. The ramifications could bubble up into the midterms.
Changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program from Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act are rolling out in phases, from tougher work requirements to restrictions on non-citizens. Food stamp rolls already shrank by more than 5 million people nationwide as of this summer, as the hardest-hit state, Arizona, saw an outright majority of its food stamp recipients lose benefits.
The latest alteration clicked into place Oct. 1, when the share of administrative costs states and counties have to pay rose to 75% from 50%. An even bigger financial shift looms in a year, when states with high payment error rates will have to assume some benefit costs for the first time, a scenario that’s already rippling through state and local budget planning.
It all adds up to a new era in federal-state relations — and in the size and nature of the welfare state.
In a year when affordability worries top voters’ priority lists and grocery prices strain their wallets, Democrats think the SNAP shift gives them an opening to make Republicans pay politically after the GOP used social safety net cuts to food aid and Medicaid to help pay for last year’s tax cuts.
“People are getting kicked off these programs at the very moment they’re going to the polls to vote,” House Agriculture ranking member Angie Craig (D-Minn.) said. “I sure wouldn’t want to be a Republican headed into the November ballot.”
But Republicans think they have a compelling story to tell voters, trying to right-size a program that spends millions of dollars on erroneous payments. The SNAP changes align with the Trump administration’s broader push to crack down on fraud and make the government smaller or more efficient. Implementing stricter work requirements for welfare often polls well, and trying to move people toward work gets at the root causes of poverty, they argue.
“The premise is simple: Let’s make sure that this program is preserved for those truly in need, and that we aren’t squandering taxpayer dollars,” a senior USDA official told Playbook in an interview. “And let’s make sure that if folks are able-bodied, they are work training or volunteering for 20 hours per week.”
That doesn’t mean Republicans in competitive races are putting SNAP and Medicaid cuts front and center on the campaign trail. When they tout last year’s megalaw, new tax breaks typically lead the messaging. And 10 frontline GOP House campaigns didn’t respond to requests for interviews about how they can win on SNAP.
At the state and county level, some governments are scrambling to prepare for a massive cost shift, hitting at the same time as significant Medicaid changes. The resulting bureaucratic jumble has contributed to some of the SNAP losses this year, as recipients struggled to get through overtaxed call centers, some states cut staff, and others tightened their processes.
“It really sets up a change in the federal responsibility, and I view it as a slippery slope,” warned Barbara Guinn, New York’s commissioner of the Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance. Her state is staring down a possible $1 billion added burden next year, though they’re advocating for a repeal of the benefits change. “Once they implement any kind of cost shift, I think it will be easier for them to take similar actions in the future.”
Whether to delay next year’s cost shift has already generated tensions over the farm bill in the Senate, where Democrats are demanding a longer postponement than Republicans’ offer of one year. Some Minnesota counties are considering significant property tax increases to pay for the extra costs, Craig said: “We’re going to be pushing hard for a two-year delay — at the request of, frankly, many of my Republican county commissioners, not just Democrats.”
Conservatives see the new calculus as a long overdue change to improve efficiency and incentivize program integrity. Improper payment rates are high in many states (though they comprise both over-payments and under-payments, and error rates are different from fraud). Those that reduce errors enough won’t have to take on paying the benefits. And even opponents of the changes think lower error rates are a worthy goal. SNAP rolls often ebb and flow with the economy, and the recent drop could reflect the job market pulling people out of need — or the removal of people who shouldn’t have been getting food stamps in the first place.
“There needs to be some level of accountability,” the USDA official said. States with high error rates “need to start to have skin in the game.”
But at a time when many households are already squeezed by inflation, the SNAP changes have correlated with higher numbers of Americans turning to charities to ward off hunger. The surge in people losing food aid came more quickly than expected. The unemployment rate hasn’t meaningfully changed. And the vast majority of large food banks in a recent NBC survey said they were grappling with higher demand, in part due to food stamp changes. Another rule kicking in the day after the midterms could lead to many retailers being bumped out of SNAP as places where low-income people can use their benefits.
For state governments, a set of sweeping operational changes are now underway to conform to new policy demands, often requiring more money or staffing at already under-resourced offices. And the budgetary stakes to get error rates lower are sky-high.
“It’s a really complicated, nuanced and confusing time for states who are trying to administer SNAP,” said Lauren Kallins, a senior legislative director at the nonpartisan National Conference of State Legislatures, which has advocated for a delay in the benefits costs shift.
National Democrats are increasingly shifting their attention away from North Carolina’s Senate race as polls show former Gov. Roy Cooper ahead, eyeing once long-shot races as possible pickups. But a veteran Democratic strategist who helped deliver the party’s last presidential victory in the state is urging donors not to take a win for granted.
David Plouffe, who managed behind Barack Obama’s narrow 2008 victory in North Carolina, urged Democratic donors and supporters not to grow complacent in the final weeks of Roy Cooper’s Senate campaign, according to audio obtained by Blue Light News.
“I think that this race … has I think been the best run race in the country,” Plouffe said on the call. “But that doesn’t mean that we can rest easy.”
He warned about North Carolina’s relatively fixed partisan makeup as a purple state, making it difficult for a candidate to dramatically expand their base of support.
“There’s certain states that elections happen within a bound, and this one will be that way as well,” he said.
In public polling, Cooper leads Republican Michael Whatley, who has struggled to boost his name recognition against the much better-known former governor. And as Democrats grow increasingly bullish on their candidate’s chances of flipping the seat — one of four pickups they need to take control of the Senate — national groups have begun shifting their money and attention to other contests, including most recently to Kansas.
But Plouffe said North Carolina needs to remain a priority.
“We have to win the ones we have to win,” he said on the call to Cooper’s finance committee.
Just days before Plouffe’s remarks, Senate Democrats’ top super PAC pulled back some of its spending in North Carolina, following a much bigger retreat by Republicans’ top super PAC in the state.
Plouffe cautioned that North Carolina has historically been a tough state for Democrats at the federal level, especially in recent years. The party hasn’t won a Senate race there since 2008, when Obama became the last Democratic presidential candidate to carry the state, winning by fewer than 15,000 votes. He lost the state in 2012.
“Even though we carried the electoral votes back then, we only did so by I think 14,000 votes. So it was our narrowest victory,” Plouffe said. “And in 2012, we tried to win North Carolina again with the help of so many people on this phone, and we just couldn’t get it done. And that tells you how difficult the state is.”
Plouffe also cast the stakes of Cooper’s race as extending beyond November, arguing that a Cooper victory could provide a blueprint for the party’s eventual 2028 presidential nominee.
“Democrats need to compete and win in North Carolina in 28,” he said. “And it’s one thing to look how a governor can win a state. The best route, the best scout that you receive, is how someone in a federal race won in a tough state, and that can show you the way.”
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