2025 is likely to be an extremely difficult year for people serving in state governments. Aside from the regular perils of trying to govern when so many critical influences — notably the national economic environment, but also the immense ripple effect of national party politics — are beyond their control, governors and legislators will have to deal with the fallout of big fiscal decisions underway in Washington, D.C., that directly control state budgets. According to a recent analysis from Pew, federal funds represent over a third of state-government revenues. And as any governor from either party will tell you, federal dollars typically come with “strings” (i.e., mandates) that aren’t necessarily relaxed when funding is decreased. So when great ideological pressure is exerted to cut federal spending, state lawmakers face the prospect of doing more with a lot less, particularly since (now as ever) federal officials don’t tend to look that closely at programs they run themselves (e.g., defense, Social Security, and Medicare).

The fiscal math of the second Trump administration and its subservient congressional wing, focused on tax cuts and major new border-security spending amid promises of deficit reduction, will require massive cuts in federal-state programs from Medicaid to education to emergency management to housing to nutrition. States are by and large responsible for social safety-net benefits and services focused on low-income folks. These are not high priorities for any Republican administration, and certainly weren’t for Trump 1.0, which nearly decimated state budgets with a cap on federal Medicaid costs as part of its failed........

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