Democratic Assemblymember Erica Roth urges Nevada state Republicans to speak out against Trump’s budget cuts.

Though House Republicans voted just last week on a budget proposal that shrinks safety-net programs, rural towns like Pahrump, Nevada, have already experienced federal services disappear. 

According to Nye County spokesperson Arnold Knightly, since May 2020, the Social Security Administration had stopped visiting the city, forcing elderly residents to travel an hour to Las Vegas for in-person assistance—a heavy burden in a county with a rapidly-growing senior population, comprising more than 30% of its residents.

Despite scarce resources, in 2024, more than 70% of Pahrump voters backed Donald Trump for president, who promised to slash government programs. Now, those same communities could face some of the harshest fallout from the very policies they helped usher in—further straining regions already struggling with limited health care, aging populations, and poor infrastructure.

Rural Nevada backed Trump in the last three presidential elections, prompting Assemblymember Erica Roth (D-Washoe) to criticize Trump in an interview with The Nevada-El Nevadense for withdrawing resources from his most loyal supporters.

“I think there’s no other way to put it, but Trump is decimating his base,” she said. “He’s betrayed them.”

Despite its large land mass, Nevada is one of the nation’s least populated states, which, according to the Nevada Aging and Disability Services Division, creates challenges to delivering services to remote areas. Roth said that after several years as a legal aid attorney in Nevada, many of her rural clients were seniors on fixed incomes who she says will face grave risks if federal cuts are implemented.

This contradiction highlights a deep political and economic dilemma facing rural America. As Republicans in Washington push for sweeping budget cuts, these policies disproportionately affect the very communities that have consistently supported them at the ballot box.

Trump’s rollbacks on safety net programs come as Nevadans, especially seniors and rural residents, grapple with an affordability crisis on top of large price swings for groceries, economic chaos from an unpredictable tariff plan, cuts to food assistance and other key federal programs and staff. In rural Nevada counties, these pressures take place against the backdrop of a failed economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the conservative lobby group Nevada Policy.

“That’s only going to compound and get worse as [Trump] continues to wreak havoc on the economy and take money directly out of these folks’ pockets,” Roth said about budget cuts.

These concerns haven’t stopped Republicans, who took cuts further during budget negotiations. These included gutting Medicaid coverage, which removed 8.7 million recipients from the program nationwide over the next decade, resulting in 7.6 million more Americans being uninsured. 

Roth criticized Trump for prioritizing the wealthy over seniors who live on fixed incomes in rural counties. She also urged Nevada state Republicans to speak out against Trump’s economic policies after receiving calls from voters who feel uncertain about the future. 

“Trump has sown absolute chaos, we don’t know what’s going to happen next,” she said. “That is absolutely not a way to govern.”