From Keystone XL to USAID: Partisan Reactions to Job Loss

Protestors of the Keystone Pipeline, Photo via Getty Images/BBC

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On his first day in office in 2021, President Joe Biden signed an executive order canceling the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, a project intended to transport oil from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, which had been approved for construction by the first Trump administration. The project had always faced controversy for its proposed ecological destruction and contribution to climate change, but Republican advocates often argued that it would create jobs in struggling rural communities. 

And indeed, after the project’s cancellation, lawyers for TC Energy focused on job loss in their Supreme Court appeal. They argued it would cause deep economic uncertainty for people employed by the project, and especially for the blue-collar workers who lived in economically disadvantaged and rural areas anyway. Conservative news outlets, and particularly the national cable news network Fox News, vilified Biden for his choice to cancel the project. In years since, they have also interviewed workers like Lynn Allen, who still hope to see a revival of the project under Donald Trump for the sake of their own economic stability and that of their communities. 

In contrast, liberal news outlets, including CNN, tended to focus coverage of the cancellation and its ensuing legal battle around the climate change impact. Instead of writing as extensively about the individuals losing jobs, they saw Biden’s executive order as a necessary step in reversing harmful climate policies under Donald Trump. And while liberal assertions of the project’s cancellation as a positive for climate policy are likely true, it displayed the glaring difference in how job losses among pipeline employees were covered by media outlets depending on their partisan alignment. 

In recent months, as Trump and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have slashed federal jobs and indirectly cost jobs for thousands of others working in research and for NGOs or government contractors, empathy for laid-off or furloughed workers has noticeably been absent from conservative spheres. When the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) was dismantled earlier this year, leading to some 10,000 job cuts, conservative outlets focused their coverage extensively on what they viewed as the organization’s excessively liberal policy objectives. Individual job losses by former USAID employees were largely ignored. And of course, the human losses caused by the cuts to USAID food security and health programs were glossed over in the name of reducing supposed government bloat. 

Reactions to the job losses faced by employees of the Keystone XL pipeline in 2021 and  those of severed federal agencies in 2025 are demonstrative of a greater trend toward American partisanship. It is evident that a worker’s association with the policies and ideologies of a particular party or presidential administration is crucial to how media outlets and the general public empathize with their personal economic hardship. More broadly, this represents only a small part of a much bigger culture war, one in which traditional values, blue-collar work, and conservative politics are pitted against education, shifting familial structures, and other liberal ideologies. 

Among those who work in energy, only 25% are female, and 75% are white. In construction, over 90% of employees are male, and, despite some conservative rhetoric on the roles of immigrants in the labor market, over 50% are non-Hispanic and white. This means that the construction and energy workers employed by the Keystone Pipeline, and those who were most likely to face job losses after its cancellation, were white men. This, of course, is the same demographic group that is, in the United States, the most likely to vote conservatively. 

Perhaps this then explains why the rhetoric from conservative politicians and news outlets surrounding the pipeline’s closures is so intently focused on the job losses expected by people working on the project. In a world where politics are so deeply tied to identity, it is much easier for people to advocate for those whose identities align with their own, and who are perceived as occupying the same sector of the political spectrum as ourselves. Thus, when white, conservative men were struggling due to job loss, it was easy for conservative outlets to latch on to their struggle and to frame it as a liberal attack on the conservative class, rather than focusing on the climate benefits that liberals did. And perhaps, it was also easy for liberals to gloss over the individual economic struggles of laid-off workers when those who had lost jobs fell outside of the typical liberal voting base. 

Additionally, political ideology can get tied up in moral frameworks, which can make it particularly easy to other those who fall outside of our identity-based and ideological demographics. A search for “Blue Collar Man” on TikTok yields over 219 million posts, and as culture wars have amped up in recent months, emphasis on the white, hardworking, traditionally masculine blue collar man has increased in conservative spheres. He represents the pinnacle of what a conservative, and more broadly, an American, is supposed to be, and he is placed on a moral pedestal by conservatives who feel that liberalism is toxic to American values. Thus, for a conservative, the job loss of a blue-collar worker may also feel like an attack on traditional family values, masculinity, and hard work—an attack which can lead to further polarization, as well as to a cycle of resentment towards other workforces perceived as more liberal or as more valued by liberals.  

This would also explain the obvious polarity in reactions to recent job cuts made by DOGE. A USAID employee, unlike the blue-collar energy worker, was more highly educated (had a master’s degree or above), lived in an urban environment like the District of Columbia, and was more financially well-off in general. They also represented an affront to many mainstays in the modern conservative political agenda by committing to funneling resources (i.e., food and medical supplies) from the United States, to nations outside of the political west. This goes against the belief held by many modern republicans that resources should be internally directed to create economic growth for the hardworking American. So, when USAID was cut, the job losses experienced by educated, largely liberal employees may have seemed inconsequential to conservatives, who felt their own economic stability had been threatened by liberal policies that focused on climate justice and foreign cooperation. 

Furthermore, attacks on seemingly liberal jobs have extended far beyond the overtly humanitarian USAID. Trump also targeted jobs and research funding that reflected any sort of ideal for promoting diversity, even when that diversity was regional and economic, and beneficial to people who had grown up in conservative spheres. Opportunities were stripped away from many white, rural, often conservative Americans for the sake of protecting the hardworking man, an objective that acts as a response to traditionally liberal Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and affirmative action programs. White conservatives rushed to end these programs on the basis of supposed unfairness, without even realizing that undermining opportunities created by DEI would have consequences for their own base—and even for their own children. 

It is clear that Trump’s attacks on the “liberal worker” are not ending anytime soon, and also that indirect effects on conservatives will continue to happen. The recent federal shutdown has already come with the stripping away of $8 billion in infrastructure funding for liberal districts, much of which was slated for energy sector development. Those who were set to be employed in energy projects  are now without work, much like the Keystone workers of 2021. However, rhetoric from conservative politicians and news outlets is now far more focused on the benefits of Trump’s cuts, rather than on the blue-collar workers who are hurt by them. In hoping to hurt democrats through targeted unemployment campaigns and project cancellations, conservatives are harming their own constituents. 

So when considering the polarization of modern America, it is evident that American workers must remain at the forefront of any analysis. The fight between who does and who does not deserve a job will continue to inform policy and political rhetoric, and it is best to keep this fight in mind in order to best begin dismantling the current polarized political system. 

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This article was edited by Naba Syed and Sarah Davey.