Donald Trump will return to the White House next month, capping one of the most improbable political comebacks in American history. He reclaims power alongside a Republican-controlled Congress that could give him broad authority to push his “Make America Great Again” agenda.
So what does MAGA 2.0 portend for Vermont? A look back at Trump’s first term offers some clues.
His “Muslim travel ban” turned a library that straddles the Vermont-Canada border into a de facto visitation center for people who were suddenly unable to enter the U.S. His attacks on Planned Parenthood sent Vermont scrambling to backfill the reproductive-health care provider’s lost federal funding. His tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico sent prices of some items soaring for local businesses. His Justice Department threatened Burlington over its sanctuary-city status and sued the University of Vermont Medical Center over allegations — denied by the hospital — that a nurse was forced to carry out an abortion against her will.
Meanwhile, the Vermont Attorney General’s Office joined a four-year, sprawling legal effort to stymie some aspects of Trump’s agenda, participating in more than 60 multistate lawsuits.
While his trademark unpredictability makes it hard to pin down how exactly he might govern a second time around, Trump’s campaign pledges and early postelection moves suggest that his presidency will likely shake up life in the Green Mountain State.
A crackdown on undocumented immigrants, for example, could have a noticeable impact in a rural and aging state where imported labor fills key jobs in the agricultural sector and at nursing homes, hospitals and other worksites.
His promise to roll back climate regulations and “kill” the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency could undermine Vermont’s ability to clean up polluted waterways and monitor PFAS chemicals.
Vermont schools will face new scrutiny. Trump has blasted policies put into effect by President Joe Biden that are meant to protect transgender students, and he has threatened to curb federal funding to districts that would defy his administration’s efforts to roll back diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
College and university employees worry about academic freedom. Trump could come after federal grants and student loans, and he has made clear his disapproval of pro-Palestinian protests on campuses. Students and faculty are already planning to fight to defend their right to free speech.
Trump may seek to further restrict access to reproductive services, even in Vermont, where the right to an abortion is enshrined in the state constitution. Although the president-elect has said he’s not in favor of a national ban, he could cut access in other ways, starting with another push to defund Planned Parenthood.
Vermont’s elected officials have vowed to contest Trump’s agenda, but a growing number of their constituents supported him this election cycle. He earned 120,000 votes here, his best showing in three elections. The improvement may reflect growing concerns over Vermont’s economy — the same concerns that helped the state GOP make historic gains in Montpelier.
Attorney General Charity Clark, a Democrat reelected last month to her second term, has been gearing up for a fight. She’s well primed after serving as chief of staff to former attorney general T.J. Donovan, who battled Trump during his first term.
“I hope that I’m wrong, but I expect I’m going to have to do a lot of work to uphold the rule of law,” Clark said.
Gov. Phil Scott, Vermont’s top Republican and one of the country’s most popular governors, will have his own role to play. Some of Trump’s promised initiatives, such as his pledge to carry out mass deportations, will require the help of local authorities. Scott could be forced to choose between the desires of his constituents in a liberal state and the demands of his party’s proudly vengeful standard-bearer.
Scott has shown he’s not afraid to spar with Trump. He has criticized the incoming president repeatedly and said he voted for the Democratic presidential candidate in 2020 and this year.
But Scott will have far less political cover than he did during Trump’s first term. Gone are fellow anti-Trump GOP governors — such as Charlie Baker of Massachusetts and Larry Hogan of Maryland — who echoed Scott’s criticisms. Besides Kelly Ayotte, the incoming governor of New Hampshire, Scott is the only Republican governor of a blue state.
In his first public remarks after the election, Scott struck a conciliatory tone.
“For the sake of our country, we need to tamp down the division and fear, and we need to at least give him the opportunity to do better and do the right thing,” the governor said during a press conference last month. That doesn’t mean he won’t criticize Trump, Scott added: “I call them like I see them.”
Asked if Trump could focus his ire on little old Vermont, the governor shrugged. “I think there’s bigger fish to fry in his world, I would imagine, but we’ll see.”
In anticipation of a second Trump presidency, Seven Days reporters dove into the issues that could shape life in Vermont during the next four years. Here’s what they learned.
On Pins — and Needles
By summer, Burlington wants to open an overdose-prevention center, where people could take drugs under supervision. Could Trump interfere with those plans?
Most certainly. In 2019, a Trump-appointed U.S. attorney in Pennsylvania filed suit against Safehouse, a nonprofit seeking to open an overdose-prevention center in Philadelphia. The Justice Department argued that the center would violate federal law, known as the “Crack House Statute,” that prohibits “maintaining drug-involved premises.”
The case has been tied up in courts for years, meaning there’s no legal precedent on operating the centers, which are also known as safe-injection sites. Safehouse hasn’t opened one, but in 2021, two launched in New York City. More than a dozen other states have passed laws allowing them.
Trump’s pick for attorney general — former Florida attorney general Pam Bondi — is no fan of the centers. In a Fox News appearance in 2021, Bondi said they sanction the illegal drug trade.
“It’s a crime in our country to take heroin, to shoot heroin, to do drugs, and we’ve got to set that example,” Bondi said. “We’ve got to help addicts, not promote what they’re doing.”
What she didn’t say is whether the feds should try and shut them down.
The state law authorizing Burlington’s overdose-prevention center says operators would be shielded from prosecution. Would those protections hold up?
Vermont lawmakers may have endorsed Burlington’s plans, but the feds can overrule them. The current U.S. attorney for Vermont, Nikolas Kerest, hasn’t directly weighed in on the matter. But during his first term, Trump’s U.S. attorney for Vermont, Christina Nolan, said operators of safe-injection sites would be subject to prosecution. Kerest is likely to resign in the coming months, and Trump’s next nominee may take a more hard-line stance against the centers.
That said, the office isn’t directly controlled by Justice Department officials in Washington, D.C.
“While Main Justice certainly sets priorities and guidelines for U.S. Attorneys’ Offices to follow, it does not usually tell them which cases to prosecute or not,” said Eric Miller, who served as Vermont’s U.S. attorney for nearly two years under president Barack Obama.
Does this mean Burlington’s plans are doomed?
Not necessarily. With overdose rates at an all-time high, Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak says she is still committed to opening a center by next summer.
Soon after the election, the mayor convened city staff, attorneys and community partners to prepare for Trump 2.0, including possible roadblocks to opening a center. She plans to reach out to the Vermont Attorney General’s Office about the matter.
Of course, the city itself may not end up in the DOJ’s crosshairs. The feds could instead target the nonprofit that’s chosen to run Burlington’s center — which is what happened in Philadelphia.
Burlington activist Ed Baker says the antidote to Trump intervention is to organize against it. Along with the grassroots Vermont Interfaith Action, Baker is planning a campaign to drum up support for the centers.
“There’s this incredible potential and power in a group of people who are organized,” Baker said. He added: “We’re a city. We need to be reckoned with. We’re not some weak voice.”
What progress has the city made to open an overdose-prevention center?
Just this week, the city announced a key hire to get the center up and running. Theresa Vezina, the city’s “special assistant on overdose prevention center implementation,” is in charge of finding the center operator and will issue a request for proposals in the coming weeks.
Then there’s the matter of location. A very preliminary zoning amendment would allow a center to open nearly anywhere downtown and in “Neighborhood Mixed Use” districts, which includes stretches of North Street and North Winooski Avenue in the Old North End. A “heat map” of overdoses, showing where people already use, will also guide officials’ decisions.
Officials hope such a site will reduce the amount of public drug use happening on city streets and properties.
“You have to place this somewhere where it will actually be utilized,” Mulvaney-Stanak said. “It cannot be on the outskirts of town, because that’s a setup for failure.”
The question is sure to provoke public debate. Trump or not, Burlington’s path to opening an overdose-prevention center won’t be easy.
— Courtney Lamdin
Cash Rules Everything
Last month, Trump threatened to hike tariffs by 25 percent on all goods entering the U.S. from Mexico and Canada and 10 percent on those from China. How would this affect Vermonters?
Sorry, maple syrup lovers – the sweet stuff is probably going to cost more. Even if the sap is flowing from local Vermont trees, some of the equipment used to extract and boil it, plus the packaging, is imported from Canada. And, believe it or not, much of our syrup is, too. Producers will probably pass on those higher costs to the consumer.
Our famous warm winter clothes wouldn’t be immune, either. Darn Tough, Vermont Flannel and Burton bring in raw goods such as cotton and wool from overseas. And much of the lumber used in Vermont home building was milled north of the border, meaning housing costs could also rise.
OK, so those are a few items people can be more selective about. Aside from those things, we’re good?
Not really. Sweeping changes in tariffs would raise prices, period, according to Michele Asch, chief people officer at Twincraft, a contract skin care product company that has two factories in Essex and one in Winooski. Twincraft buys ingredients from more than 50 countries, including shea butter from Africa and coconut oil from Asia. Even if the new administration doesn’t target the small equatorial nations that Twincraft relies on, new tariffs would affect almost every business by sowing chaos and inefficiency, Asch said.
“Our costs will go up, our brands’ costs will go up, and ultimately, the retail consumer is going to pay more,” Asch said. “And that’s just for the skin care industry. I don’t see any way this doesn’t cause much higher inflation.”
How are local manufacturers preparing?
Vermont Flannel makes its shirts at New England facilities, including shops in Johnson and Barre. But owner Joe Van Deman is considering buying bulk supplies of the European flannel his company uses ahead of any potential Trump tariffs. He’s also investigating whether he can source the supplies from mills in North Carolina instead of importing from overseas — which is what the Trump tariffs are intended to encourage.
At computer hardware company OnLogic, customers who have heard about impending tariffs have been calling to try and get their orders in early, according to Lisa Groeneveld, the South Burlington company’s vice chair. Many computer components are made in Asia.
“We’ll get it here to Vermont and hold it for them until they need it,” Groeneveld said.
Vermont’s already in a housing crisis. Will the tariffs make things worse?
Anything that drives up construction costs — such as tariffs on imported lumber and building supplies — will slow the already sluggish pace of construction in Vermont.
In 2023, Vermont imported $100 million worth of construction material from Canada, about half of which was lumber, according to Tim Tierney, who is in charge of recruitment and international trade for the state. Burlington affordable housing developer Champlain Housing Trust, and other builders that get federal money, have to buy materials from U.S. suppliers under a Biden-era law called Build America Buy America.
But there are variables. For example, the cold-climate heat pumps that CHT uses aren’t made in the U.S., noted Amy Demetrowitz, CHT’s chief operating officer. If it’s too expensive to import those, she said, builders will likely choose a different technology.
— Anne Wallace Allen
Immigrants’ Anxiety
How are immigrants in Vermont — many of whom work in the state’s dairy industry — feeling about the potential for widespread deportations nationwide?
Many of Vermont’s 1,000 or so migrant farmworkers have been in the state for years. Though most reside in the country unlawfully, they are far from transient. They’ve set down roots, started families and formed communities. Many were here during Trump’s first term, so any fear about an immigration crackdown is familiar. Leaders in the migrant farmworker community say they are more prepared this time around, Rossy Alfaro, an organizer with Migrant Justice, told Seven Days through an interpreter.
“There’s a lot of concern,” said Alfaro, a former farmworker and mother of three who lives in Milton. “But what we do know is that we’re going to be fighting to defend the protections that we’ve created over the years.”
What happened last time?
Trump’s vow of mass deportations during his first term didn’t happen, at least at the scale he promised. Practically speaking, federal immigration officials need local and state law enforcement to help them track down undocumented residents. Vermont leaders, pressured by activists, took steps to limit such cooperation. Following Trump’s issuance of what he dubbed a “Muslim ban” in 2017, Gov. Scott signed a bill that required the governor to approve any formal agreements with federal immigration officials.
Activists also pushed for policies that barred police officers in Vermont from sharing some information with immigration authorities. The U.S. Justice Department, in turn, briefly threatened to withhold federal grant dollars from Vermont police.
At the same time, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials arrested a number of farmworker activists associated with Burlington-based Migrant Justice. The group sued, alleging the feds were targeting farmworker activists for deportation in violation of their First Amendment rights. The feds later settled with the farmworkers and agreed not to deport several of the activists — a major win for Migrant Justice.
With so much emphasis on the southern border, does Trump intend to target undocumented immigrants living in Vermont?
Trump’s newly appointed “border czar,” Thomas Homan, has said the administration will specifically target “criminals” and “national security threats” for removal. But Homan also has his eye on the northern border, where federal data show a recent spike in illegal crossings. Homan, originally from upstate New York, recently told a television station that “we absolutely need to have more agents up there,” citing “an extreme national security vulnerability.”
The border in the North Country is part of the Swanton Sector, which includes Vermont. The feds recently erected three surveillance towers along the border, VTDigger.org reported. And border patrol agents’ arresting authority extends 100 miles inland, so more personnel could translate into tougher enforcement deep into Vermont. That would heighten the risk of detention for undocumented immigrants, some of whom already rarely leave the farm out of fear of apprehension.
Resisting the president’s deportation agenda could put Vermont in the crosshairs. The state’s criminal justice council, a law enforcement oversight body, recently adopted a policy that restricts information sharing between local cops and immigration authorities. Officers who violate the policy face discipline and decertification.
Kike Balcazar, a Migrant Justice activist who was arrested by ICE during the first Trump presidency, said the new model policy is strong but hardly ironclad.
“The state needs to make a strong stand in ensuring our state law enforcement agencies won’t be a party to Trump’s policy of mass deportation,” Balcazar said through an interpreter.
Would mass deportations here harm the dairy industry?
Yes. Vermont dairy farms have been reliant upon migrant laborers for many years, and the industry would collapse without them.
Homan, Trump’s border czar, appears to know this. He said last month that Trump would seek to carry out workplace raids around the country — with one big exception.
“I’m not looking to attack dairy farms. I’m looking to help them,” Homan said.
Even if Trump does not round up and deport Vermont farmworkers, his policies will marginalize them in other ways, said Jill Martin Diaz, executive director of the Vermont Asylum Assistance Project.
“When we foreclose safe ways of moving through the world, all we do is force people into less safe, more erratic, irregular, dangerous, predatory ways,” Diaz said.
Migrant Justice activists say they won’t be deterred.
“We’ve fought hard to come out of the shadows,” Balcazar said, “and it’s not an option to go backward.”
What about legal immigration, especially refugee resettlement, which has helped grow Vermont’s workforce and increase diversity?
Trump is expected to shut down refugee admissions into the U.S. within days of taking office, at least temporarily, according to Tracy Dolan, the executive director of Vermont’s State Refugee Office. Trump has also said he plans to reinstate a version of the travel ban that targeted people from seven Muslim-majority countries.
Vermont’s three refugee resettlement agencies hope to resettle as many people as they can before Trump takes office. But they’re expecting to fall well short of their goal to resettle 650 people in the current fiscal year, which ends on September 30.
The stakes are especially high for the 600 or so Afghans who resettled in Vermont following the withdrawal of U.S. armed forces from their home country in August 2021.
Many are single men who worked on behalf of the U.S. government and left their families behind during the chaotic evacuation from Kabul. They have been waiting for three years for the American government to fulfill its promise to reunite them with their loved ones. The delays have already led some to consider going back to Afghanistan, where they could face persecution from the ruling Taliban.
Molly Gray, executive director of the Vermont Afghan Alliance, worries that an indefinite pause on all arrivals from the country will devastate many of her clients. She is planning to host a town hall-style forum so that Afghans can ask questions in a safe environment.
In a frantic push before Inauguration Day, she and her staff are also trying to find aid teams in the Middle East that can evacuate family members of stateside Afghans whose reunification cases have already been approved. Those waiting include a relative of one of her employees.
“It feels like August 2021 all over again,” Gray said.
— Derek Brouwer & Colin Flanders
Murky Waters
Many fear Trump’s administration could gut the Environmental Protection Agency, which enforces pollution standards. What could that mean for efforts to improve Vermont’s water quality?
Vermont depends heavily on federal funding for projects such as wastewater plant upgrades and the yearslong effort to clean up Lake Champlain.
It also looks to the EPA to enforce existing laws meant to address long-standing problems, such as pollution from dairy farms, and to craft new regulations to protect against emerging threats, such as PFAS chemicals that are leaching into surface and drinking water.
If federal funding dries up and the EPA is hollowed out, the state’s water quality initiatives could suffer. A less robust EPA, for instance, might not come after Vermont for failing to abide by the Clean Water Act, as it did under Biden.
“We are all on the edge of our seats,” said Jon Groveman, the policy and water program director for the Vermont Natural Resources Council. “We are concerned, we are watching, and we will react.”
How much federal money is at stake?
Vermont is slated to receive a total of $225 million from the 2021 infrastructure bill. That money is crucial to repair or upgrade wastewater treatment systems and replace aging lead drinking water pipes, noted Julie Moore, Vermont’s natural resources secretary.
About $150 million more has yet to be allocated for specific projects. While Moore is hopeful Trump won’t target those infrastructure funds, his pledges to slash federal spending are worrisome.
“It’s all in jeopardy,” Moore said.
Earlier this year, the feds released rules regulating PFAS in drinking water. Are those standards now at risk?
PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, from industry have contaminated drinking water wells in Bennington. They have polluted groundwater around the Vermont Air National Guard base in South Burlington and are discharged regularly into the Winooski River from chipmaker GlobalFoundries and by treatment plants that accept landfill leachate, such as Montpelier’s.
Vermont has been a leader in regulating PFAS chemicals in drinking water and in banning the sale of some consumer products that contain them, Moore said.
The federal drinking water rules released in April are, for some PFAS chemicals, more restrictive than Vermont’s standard, which limits five PFAS compounds to 20 parts per trillion.
If the recent federal standards for drinking water are rolled back, Vermont’s existing rules would remain in place. But federal efforts to establish other standards, such as PFAS levels in rivers and lakes, would likely stall out, leaving Vermont on its own to figure those out.
In the absence of federal leadership, the burden would fall on states to fight any court challenges to the rules from the chemical industry.
“The level and quantity of work necessary to withstand legal scrutiny, should any standard we establish be challenged, is high,” Moore said.
Vermont has been trying for years to clean up pollution from dairy farms. Are those efforts in danger?
Earlier this year, the EPA informed the state that its efforts to reduce agricultural pollution were falling short and violating the federal Clean Water Act.
The EPA ordered the state to consolidate its two pollution enforcement programs into one under the Agency of Natural Resources. But that federal oversight could be curtailed under Trump and shift the enforcement burden onto organizations such as Conservation Law Foundation Vermont, which demanded federal regulators step in in the first place.
“It would be difficult for EPA to reverse course on its own findings,” said Elena Mihaly, the group’s vice president for Vermont. “If they do, CLF is well prepared to challenge such a blatantly arbitrary about-face in federal court.”
— Kevin McCallum
Schoolhouse Rocked
Trump spoke about dismantling the U.S. Department of Education during his campaign. That seems unlikely, but could his administration cut federal funding for public schools in Vermont?
It’s very possible. During his first term, Trump championed diverting public dollars to charter and private schools and attempted to slash K-12 funding. His pick for education secretary, former World Wrestling Entertainment executive Linda McMahon, served as board chair of the America First Policy Institute, a think tank that has championed school choice and proposed cuts to federal education funding.
In Vermont, public schools receive approximately $116 million in federal funds each year. About $43 million comes from the Title I program, which provides financial assistance to around 230 Vermont schools that have a high percentage of low-income students. Another $38 million comes from the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, which funds a portion of special education costs, and about $11 million goes to teacher training.
Districts are already under immense pressure to reduce spending next school year due to rising property taxes, so the loss of any federal cash would hurt.
Franklin Northeast Supervisory Union, based in Enosburg Falls, received $4.5 million in federal dollars last year, about 10 percent of its overall budget. Federal Title I and special ed dollars are primarily spent on specialized staff who support students in need of extra help, according to superintendent Lynn Cota. Cuts to those grants, Cota said, would require local districts to pick up the slack, cut services or, most likely, a combination of both.
Could the Trump education department investigate or punish Vermont schools for being too “woke”?
The federal education department investigates complaints of discrimination on the basis of race, gender and disability through its Office for Civil Rights. There are around a dozen open cases related to issues that include racial and disability harassment in Vermont K-12 schools, stemming back to 2022. Trump could direct his education secretary to change the way the Department of Education investigates civil rights violations — arguing that diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives discriminate against white students, for example.
But he would have a hard time mandating a change in curriculum for Vermont schools. The federal Every Student Succeeds Act prevents the U.S. education secretary from dictating states’ curriculum decisions or making the adoption of a specific curriculum a condition for receiving a federal grant.
Trump wants to roll back Title IX protections for transgender students that President Biden put in place. How would this affect Vermont, a state with strong protections for trans students?
Under Title IX, Biden broadened the definition of sex-based discrimination to include sexual orientation and gender identity. But Trump seems inclined to eliminate those protections and could impose new rules that explicitly exclude transgender and nonbinary students from sex-based protections.
That could set the stage for a federal law banning transgender students from playing on a sports team or using a locker room that aligns with their gender identity — even though state-level guidance in Vermont allows both of those things.
Trump couldn’t make such changes unilaterally, according to Jared Carter, a professor at Vermont Law & Graduate School. There is a rulemaking process his administration must follow, so it would take time.
If the law were changed, Vermont couldn’t just ignore it, Carter said, but Vermont’s attorney general could challenge any changes through a lawsuit — just as dozens of Republican AGs sued the Biden administration when it changed the Title IX rules this year.
How else is Trump affecting schools?
Education leaders worry that his harsh rhetoric about transgender students and immigrants could have a trickle-down effect, resulting in more bullying and harassment. It will be up to individual school districts to set their own parameters for what will and won’t be tolerated.
In the days after the election, Essex Westford superintendent Beth Cobb emailed community members, saying there had been “a steep increase in harassment reports connected to race, gender identity and country of origin.” She urged families to “talk with your students about the importance of kindness and nondiscriminatory behavior.”
— Alison Novak
Insuring the Future
Trump has said he will not try to repeal the Affordable Care Act again. But enhanced subsidies that reduce the cost of insurance expire at the end of 2025. If they lapse, what would that mean for Vermont’s health care system?
Big trouble.
A typical health insurance plan in Vermont is among the costliest in the country. But about 90 percent of the 30,000 or so people who purchase plans through Vermont’s individual marketplace receive some relief.
If those subsidies expire, monthly costs would skyrocket. State officials estimate the average person would see a 65 percent increase in their current payment.
The impact would be even more dramatic for those who make more than 400 percent of the federal poverty line — about $100,000 for a family of three. These people do not traditionally qualify for any relief and some could see their monthly payments double or even triple.
The ensuing spiral would jeopardize the health of the entire system. More people, particularly healthy ones, would think twice about paying huge monthly costs for insurance plans that they would expect to use rarely. Some would ditch insurance entirely.
That would cause problems for insurance companies and hurt the bottom lines of the state’s 14 hospitals, as larger uninsured numbers often translate to more unpaid debts.
That’s … pretty bleak. So what are state officials doing to prepare?
Crossing their fingers, mostly.
That’s because the subsidies save Vermonters somewhere between $50 to $60 million, far too much for the state to backfill on its own, said Addie Strumolo, deputy commissioner of the Department of Vermont Health Access.
Strumolo’s department is working on a legislative report that will outline some options, “with the hope that those are contingency plans.”
“Our first and strongest preference — and the best outcome for our state — would be the continuation of those critical federal funds,” she said.
There’s some reason to be hopeful. The subsidies are popular, and taking them away could create a political backlash.
Even as the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, Vermont made abortion a constitutional right. Is that under threat now?
National experts don’t believe Trump has the appetite for a federal abortion ban, which would supersede Vermont’s law. Still, anti-abortion groups will pressure him to further roll back protections, and there are ways he can do so without Congress.
Trump could, for instance, restrict access to abortion pills by enforcing a long-dormant federal law known as the Comstock Act that makes it a federal crime to send or receive materials meant for “obscene” or “abortion-causing” purposes. He could also revoke the U.S. Food & Drug Administration’s approval of one of the pills, mifepristone, and remove it from the market.
Are Vermonters doing anything about their reproductive health before Trump takes office?
Planned Parenthood of Northern New England, which serves Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, says it has recorded a sharp increase in visits for long-lasting birth control measures.
Appointments for birth control implants at its seven Vermont clinics have doubled from a weekly average of 50 before the election to an average of 100 since. More people are also inquiring about vasectomies.
The increased traffic comes as the regional nonprofit health care provider confronts a substantial budget gap that could grow if Trump again cuts federal funding to abortion providers.
Vermont’s seven Planned Parenthood locations serve about 13,300 patients annually, more than half of whom are low-income. Vermont is the only state to subsidize the regional affiliate and stepped in during the earlier Trump years to provide about $800,000 in funding to cover the lost Title X funds.
Jessica Barquist, vice president of public affairs for Planned Parenthood of Northern New England, said the org is in talks with Vermont officials in hopes of securing more state funding.
“If we can at least get ourselves on some solid financial footing, we’ll be in a better place to weather the storm,” Barquist said.
— C.F.
Defending LGBTQ Rights
Trump has said he wants to restrict access to gender-affirming care for transgender people, particularly minors. Could he?
Maybe. Most troubling to advocates in Vermont would be if Trump carries out his vow to remove gender-affirming care from coverage under Medicaid. To do this, Republicans could take a page from the anti-abortion rights playbook and use federal law and funding to target health care providers and insurers.
Gender-affirming care includes a spectrum of social, psychological and medical interventions — including hormone therapy or surgery — related to a person’s gender identity.
Dr. Erica Gibson, division chief of adolescent medicine at the UVM Medical Center — which has the only multidisciplinary youth gender clinic in the state — is concerned that Trump may try to restrict Medicaid and Medicare funding to teaching hospitals such as hers. In the worst-case scenario, the medical center may have to choose between offering gender-affirming care or continuing to receive the Medicaid funding it depends on.
“Families are really worried,” said Gibson, who noted that a few are even thinking of moving out of the country to ensure continuity of service for their children.
One bright spot is that Vermont has some of the strongest laws protecting gender-affirming care in the country. In 2019, Vermont’s Department of Financial Regulation issued a bulletin requiring health plans operating in the state to cover medically necessary treatment for gender dysphoria and related conditions.
And in 2023, legislators passed a series of shield laws to protect people seeking reproductive or gender-affirming care from out-of-state prosecution, as well as health care workers providing those services.
What are advocates doing now to protect LGBTQ people?
In the days after the election, groups such as Outright Vermont, a Burlington-based nonprofit supporting LGBTQ youths, and the American Civil Liberties Union of Vermont met with Attorney General Clark to discuss potential strategies.
There is some concern that the Trump administration would strip federal civil rights protections from trans people and other members of the LGBTQ community. The president-elect has already said he plans to resurrect a ban on transgender people serving in the military.
Local advocates are getting organized and preparing to fight back in court if necessary, said Dana Kaplan, Outright’s executive director. Their defense will rest on “Vermont’s laws and regulations” and litigation to ensure that any of Trump’s executive orders or administrative actions comply with the law and the Constitution.
The work began even ahead of the election, according to Kaplan. Outright and more than a dozen organizations dedicated to supporting marginalized youths formed the Rise Up for Youth Coalition, a network “united to support and protect young people from the impacts of today’s challenging political and social climate,” the group says on its website.
There are steps people can take to protect themselves. Outright, Vermont Legal Aid and the ACLU are also hosting a “Know Your Rights” virtual information session on Thursday, December 12, for parents and caregivers of trans and nonbinary youths.
Given the state’s well-known protections and reputation as a haven for LGBTQ people, should we expect more to move here?
Kaplan and Gibson, the physician, expect the trend to continue or grow under Trump as Republican-led states become more emboldened in how they strip protections for certain classes of people.
But Vermont’s queer-friendly laws, they noted, don’t protect residents from the harm of Trump’s verbal threats, or discrimination within state lines. Outright says it saw a huge spike in calls for support in the days after Trump’s election.
“We can have the best policies and laws possible, but still young people are experiencing difficulties on a daily basis navigating harmful rhetoric,” Kaplan said.
— Rachel Hellman
Tips for Getting Ahead
During the campaign, Trump sought to woo service workers by proposing to eliminate income taxes on tipped wages. How big a deal would that be?
Currently, all tips greater than $20 per month are subject to income and payroll taxes. Trump’s “no tax on tips” policy could exempt those wages from one or both of those federal taxes, though the details remain scarce.
“For employees who are already receiving tips, obviously it’s a positive thing,” said Leo O’Reilly, a South Burlington-based accountant who specializes in independent restaurants. “You’re just going to pay less in taxes.”
But it might not have all that huge an impact. Yale University’s Budget Lab estimates that tipped workers only make up 2.5 percent of all employees nationwide. And while servers are typically the highest-paid employees in the restaurant biz, O’Reilly pointed out, many don’t earn enough to pay federal income tax. A single parent with two children, for instance, would need to make almost $60,000 before owing any, he said.
What do tipped workers think?
Izzy Stearns, a bartender at Burlington’s Vermont Pub & Brewery, would welcome the extra take-home pay — and it would mean not having to wait until April to see that chunk of cash coming back from the IRS. Still, she worries that the untaxed tip income, if unreported, could make servers appear poorer to potential lenders.
“I think of how our credit score system works and how it might be harder to get a car loan or a mortgage because that income is taken into account,” she said.
But the untaxed income would likely still be reported and tracked on W-2s, O’Reilly said. We’re not returning to the days of under-the-table cash tips.
Stearns started working at the pub in 2022, and tips have been consistently around 20 percent since then, she said. She doesn’t think the change would lower that figure. But she won’t be around to find out: She’s moving to New Zealand to finish her college degree. It’s cheaper, and, Stearns said, “the political unrest in this country is a lot.”
Could tax-free tipping boost Vermont’s restaurant industry?
It’s no secret that restaurants are struggling. Long-running spots continue to close, and the ones that remain open are largely operating with reduced hours. One of the biggest issues — even before the pandemic — is staffing. Making the job more lucrative might attract more workers.
Historically, servers and bartenders have been the ones to earn tips. But are changes afoot in the restaurant world?
Whole-house tip pooling — which balances a restaurant’s wage structure between front-of-house workers, such as servers, bartenders and hosts, with back-of-house cooks and dishwashers — has become extremely popular. Vermont Pub & Brewery, where Stearns works, operates a tiered tip-pool system for all front-of-house employees.
Among O’Reilly’s restaurant clients, who collectively employ close to 2,000 workers in Vermont, back-of-house wages have gone up an average of 40 percent since 2019. Sixty percent of the restaurants he works with now operate whole-house tip pools, up from zero pre-pandemic. O’Reilly anticipates that tax-free tipping could pressure others to make the change.
So why tip at all?
The tipping system as a whole is in an increasingly precarious state for workers, said Kayla Silver, who owns two food businesses in Essex. The unspoken bare-minimum tip has crept from 15 to 20 percent, and the practice has spread from sit-down restaurants to cafés and takeout counters. The constant iPad swivel can be exhausting.
Diners tend to view tipping either as “a wonderful expression of gratitude or a way to add an angry exclamation point to an experience,” Silver said. She’s seen an array of reactions at her full-service Salt & Bubbles Wine Bar and Market and her new counter-service café, Leo & Co.
But if diners know workers aren’t being taxed, tips could shrink, Silver said. In other words, workers could actually end up making less.
— Jordan Barry
The original print version of this article was headlined “Hanging in the Balance | Donald Trump’s return to the presidency could disrupt the way many Vermonters live”
Related Stories
‘Safe Haven’: Vermont Is Considering Controversial Overdose-Prevention Sites. ‘Seven Days’ Went to New York City to See One.
UVM Health Network Announces Layoffs as Part of Effort to Save $185 Million
This article appears in Dec 11-17, 2024.
Got something to say?
Send a letter to the editor and we'll publish your feedback in print!