Gov. Phil Scott visited the Cabot Hosiery sock mill in Waterbury earlier this month to call attention to the challenges facing Vermont manufacturers. Reporters, however, took the opportunity to broach more politically charged subjects, including the federal government shutdown that was then entering its second week.
Scott had sent a letter to U.S. Senate leaders in late September urging lawmakers to work together to prevent a shutdown. The letter was not well received by Vermont’s Congressional delegation, who viewed Scott as urging them to capitulate to Republican demands that would make it harder for Vermonters to afford health insurance.
U.S. Rep. Becca Balint (D-Vt.), for one, described her reaction to the missive as “fury.”
May Hanlon, executive director of the Vermont Democratic Party, piled on: “Performative neutrality in the face of clear harm is not leadership,” she wrote in a scathing statement.
At the sock mill, reporters wanted to know what Scott had to say about this Democratic criticism. Anticipating the question, the governor pulled the two-page letter from his suit pocket, slid on his reading glasses and read it aloud. He explained that he was merely urging lawmakers to reach a spending deal — even just a short-term one, if necessary — to keep the government open while budget negotiations continued.
“I’m not blaming Democrats. I’m not blaming Republicans. I’m blaming both of them,” Scott said. “And they need to come together, just like we do in the states.”
That even an apparently benign call for bipartisanship could trigger such controversy was an illustration of the challenges Scott — no supporter of the president — faces in navigating the turmoil generated by Donald Trump 2.0.
“Performative neutrality in the face of clear harm is not leadership.”
May Hanlon
As governor, Scott has been wary of taking actions or calling out Trump and his policies in ways that could trigger retaliation against the state by a president known to punish those who displease him. As a moderate Republican dependent on Democratic voters in one of the country’s bluest states, this caution has made him vulnerable to charges that he does too little to stand up to the White House.
Scott remains the most popular governor in the nation, with an approval rating of 75 percent, according to market research firm Morning Consult. Those numbers have slipped a bit, however, from 81 percent last year. Scott, 67, is up for reelection next year. While he has yet to say whether he’ll seek a sixth two-year term, his cautious strategy for dealing with Trump raises the question: Will he pay a political price?
He has faced a drumbeat of criticism from Democrats and Progressives who say he is not doing enough to oppose policies they see as damaging, including cuts to Medicaid and food benefits, mass deportation of undocumented immigrants, and antagonism of Canada. And many rank-and-file voters are livid about President Trump. Vermonters gained worldwide attention when they protested the administration during Vice President JD Vance’s family ski trip in March. They have turned out by the thousands at protests such as the mid-October No Kings rallies in 50 or so communities.
After two election cycles in which his Democratic opponents posed no serious threat, Scott now faces the possibility of a credible challenge. State Treasurer Mike Pieciak and Attorney General Charity Clark, both Democrats, are mentioned as potential candidates. Both have seized on Scott’s sometimes muted response to President Trump.
“It’s just become clear to me that the approach of being proactive, of fighting tooth and nail on all these things in the Trump agenda that are antithetical to Vermont values, is what this moment demands of us,” said Pieciak, who has declined to openly declare his candidacy, though he recently hired two experienced political operatives to work for him.
Trump’s policies, he said, sometimes “are not being met with very forceful pushback from the governor.”
Vermont Republicans aren’t all pleased, either. Some say Scott hasn’t given Trump the credit he richly deserves.
“I think that most Republicans would like to see the governor be a little more positive toward Trump than he has been,” said Paul Dame, chair of the Vermont GOP, citing Trump’s stronger border policies and his success at negotiating lower drug prices for Medicaid as worthy of praise.
Scott dismisses these criticisms as nothing new and little more than signs that there’s an election year ahead. If anything, he said, angering people on the right and the left assures him that he’s on the right track.
“As long as I am criticized by both of them equally,” Scott said, “I know I’m exactly where I should be.”
Keeping His Head Down
Scott sharply criticized Trump during his first term. But this time around, the governor appears to have calculated that it is better not to pick fights with the mercurial president whose second administration is far more forceful and organized. In January, the governor urged Vermonters to give the president the “opportunity to do better” and has largely refrained from criticizing him.
That restrained approach contrasts starkly with the fiery opposition to Trump from Vermont’s Congressional delegation. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) “Fight Oligarchy” tour, for instance, helped galvanize the resistance soon after Trump’s inauguration. Even Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.), who is known for reaching across the aisle, has been a fierce critic of the administration, accusing Trump of being “lawless” as well as “trampling the constitutional rights” of Americans.”
Pieciak, for one, said that while he didn’t always agree with Scott’s strategy in the first few months of Trump’s second term, he understood the governor’s goal of trying to separate the rhetoric from the reality in the barrage of presidential directives and policy reversals.
But as the first year has unfurled, Pieciak said, it’s becoming clearer that Trump’s tactics are often illegal, his threats of reprisals hollow and his leanings authoritarian. He noted that law firms and universities threatened by Trump have shown they can push back and prevail. States such as Minnesota, where Democratic Gov. Tim Walz blasted Trump’s “ridiculous trade war,” haven’t faced retaliation so far, he said.
Others point to Janet Mills, the Democratic governor of Maine, as a model of how governors can stand up to Trump. During a February White House meeting with governors, Trump warned Mills that her state had “better comply” with his executive order barring trans athletes from school athletics.
She did not flinch. “See you in court,” she replied.
Widely circulated clips of the confrontation made Mills a star of the left. Maine has prevailed in court so far, and now she’s running for the seat held by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine).
National political cartoonist Jeff Danziger, who lives in Dummerston, reflected the views of Vermonters hoping for a more Mills-like response from Scott in an April cartoon. It depicts Mills retorting to the president while Scott cowers under a chair labeled “Vermont.”
Danziger acknowledged that some Vermonters seem to appreciate that Scott is “not yelling and screaming” endlessly about Trump but said he finds the governor’s cautious approach odd for a guy who takes risks on the track as a race car driver.
“Some see the governor they want,” he said, “and some of us who want to see action are disappointed.”
Clark, the state attorney general, has also pushed back against the president’s policies, making her points in court. She has so far filed or joined 32 lawsuits against Trump administration actions.
Scott has at times supported Clark’s efforts, including her recent lawsuit to restore the $57 million Vermont was promised in the Solar for All program. In other cases, he has held back. When federal highway officials froze $16 million in electric vehicle infrastructure funds Vermont was expecting, the Scott administration did not support her legal challenge. It declined to provide her with evidence that withholding the money harmed the state, arguing that the feds hadn’t made a final decision and it wasn’t worth going to war over a relatively small amount of money. The Trump administration ultimately released the funds.
Concern about retaliation is part of the calculus. It was a factor when Vermont chose not to join a multistate suit over fees that states collect for managing federal energy projects, according to Kerrick Johnson, commissioner of the Department of Public Service. Vermont was out only about $146,000.
There is growing evidence that Scott is right to worry that the Trump administration might withhold federal funds to punish states that didn’t support him. Last week Trump denied Vermont’s request for disaster assistance for July 10 flooding during which torrential rains washed out roads and caused other damage in communities including Lyndon, East Haven and West Burke. Trump also denied requests from Democratically controlled Maryland and Illinois, while approving requests from red states Alaska, Nebraska and North Dakota.
Figuring out how Vermont will be affected by an avalanche of federal policy changes has challenged state officials. Scott’s measured approach at times shows that he’s waiting for the impacts to become clearer.
For example, state officials have struggled to keep up with threats to SNAP, the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program once known as food stamps. First, Washington tightened the eligibility rules on the program. Now the government shutdown threatens to suspend those federal benefits altogether on November 1, which would affect 65,000 low-income Vermonters. And the state’s interest in providing some relief using its own funds has been complicated, and may be prevented, by technical barriers created by the shutdown. Scott said on Monday that he would support Vermont’s inclusion in a multistate lawsuit to protest the cuts; which Clark announced the following day.
State Rep. Charlie Kimbell (D-Woodstock) serves on the Statehouse committee grappling with SNAP. He said Scott could push back harder on Trump at times but thinks the governor, on balance, is doing as well as can be expected under trying circumstances.
“You could be the most talented manager, but when the goalposts keep moving it’s really hard to know what play to call,” Kimbell said.
SNAP Judgment
Scott’s willingness to sue over SNAP differs from his approach this summer, when he yielded to a Trump administration demand and opened himself to another round of criticism at home. The feds, saying they wanted to root out fraud and abuse, called for states to turn over information about those who receive payments from SNAP. Most Democratic-led states refused to comply, but Vermont turned over recipients’ names, addresses and Social Security numbers in July.
Twenty-one other states took the administration to federal court, arguing that the data was protected by privacy laws. Earlier this month, a federal judge in California granted a temporary injunction, finding that the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s demand for data was likely unlawful.
That means sharing the personal data of Vermonters with the federal government was unnecessary and likely illegal, said Anore Horton, executive director of Hunger Free Vermont, a nonprofit that advocates for the needy.
“They are choosing what feels like the safest path, but it’s imposing the greatest burden of harm on the absolutely most vulnerable people,” Horton said. “I don’t think that’s consistent with Vermont values.”
Pieciak, the state treasurer and potential gubernatorial candidate, described sharing the personal information of an estimated 140,000 people as “one of the largest data breaches in Vermont history.”
“This is the clearest example of how when the governor chooses not to fight, Vermonters lose,” Pieciak said.
Scott defended his decision, saying the federal government has a right to basic data about those receiving federally funded benefits — and already knows who those people are.
“It just seemed like we’re fighting over nothing, because they already have the information,” Scott told Seven Days in a wide-ranging interview last week.
Scott also noted a preliminary injunction by a lower court is far from a legal victory and said he expects the Trump administration will ultimately prevail.
“This isn’t over,” he said.
Scott’s compliance in surrendering the SNAP specifics contrasts with the way in which Secretary of State Sarah Copeland Hanzas, a Democrat, handled the Trump administration’s demand for the state’s voter data, including every registrant’s name, date of birth, address, driver’s license number and Social Security number.
She refused to obey. “This … is highly sensitive data that I have an independent obligation to protect under state and federal law,” she told the U.S. Department of Justice.
Scott counters that the situations were different because food assistance is a federal program but the state runs elections.
Duck and Cover
Scott’s desire to avoid unnecessarily provoking Trump is clear to some of the people who work for him.
One non-cabinet level Scott appointee, who asked for anonymity out of fear of retaliation, said senior administration officials have taken an unusually close interest in public communications about policies or programs that might draw unwanted federal scrutiny.
“The Scott administration has made it clear we are to keep our heads down,” the appointee told Seven Days. “This is not a time to resist. This is the politics of appeasement.”
Jill Martin Diaz, executive director with the Vermont Asylum Assistance Project, said Scott administration officials are seeking to avoid Trump’s ire and have become hypervigilant about terminology, particularly when it comes to people detained by ICE and held in Vermont prisons. Scott administration officials discussed at length how to refer to prison visits by the group’s lawyers, Martin Diaz said, declining to use the term “clinic” to avoid the impression Vermont was doing anything “extra” for immigrants.
“They seem very preoccupied with word choice as part of their strategy to stay below the radar in Bernie Sanders’ Vermont,” Martin Diaz said.
This semantic sensitivity was apparent on Monday when Jon Murad, the interim commissioner of the Department of Corrections, explained in testimony to lawmakers that people brought in by ICE aren’t tracked separately or even referred to as “ICE detainees.” Rather, he said, they are called “immigration detainees.”
Language aside, Democratic lawmakers have taken Scott to task for renewing Vermont’s contract to hold federal immigration detainees in state prisons.
In March, ICE agents plucked Tufts University grad student Rumeysa Ozturk off a street outside Boston, stuffed her into an unmarked car and held her in Vermont overnight before shipping her to an ICE detention center in Louisiana. That case and others prompted some Vermont lawmakers to demand that the state simply stop making its prison space available to ICE.
“I think we need to be a leader on this and just say no,” Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (P/D-Chittenden-Central) said. “People are being disappeared and moved out of their home communities and moved quickly so that lawyers don’t know where they are and [they] can’t get access to legal help, and we are complicit in that.”
Scott had a different take. If Vermont refused to house the detainees, they’d simply be whisked away to more-distant states, farther from families and legal assistance, he asserted. Scott ultimately signed a renewed agreement nearly identical to the old one — but with slightly higher payments to the state.
The Scott administration also declined an opportunity to defy the Trump administration in solidarity with other Northeast states that banded together to issue joint COVID-19 vaccine guidelines. The initiative was intended to counter restrictions on eligibility for COVID-19 vaccines announced by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
In mid-September, seven states and New York City jointly encouraged more widespread use of vaccines. Vermont did not sign on to the recommendations but issued its own, similar guidelines.
Anne Sosin, a public health researcher at Dartmouth College, said regional initiatives such as this one by the Northeast Public Health Collaborative are vital as public guidance from the federal government loses credibility.
“I worry that Gov. Scott is letting politics drive the decision-making of the process around public health,” Sosin said.
To learn more about what and who drove the decision not to join the announcement, Seven Days requested emails between senior Scott administration officials and the Vermont Department of Health. Officials declined to release them, on grounds that the state’s public records law provides an executive privilege exemption to protect internal administration discussions on policy development.
Human Services Secretary Jenney Samuelson said Vermont collaborates with other health departments in New England on many issues but didn’t sign the vaccine memo for timing reasons, not political ones.
“There wasn’t a directive not to participate,” Samuelson said. “There wasn’t enough time for the governor’s office and the governor’s office staff to evaluate what they were being asked to sign on to.”
Trump’s ‘Trap’
Scott said he understands that some would like him to be more vocal and more critical of everything Trump says or does. However, that would play right into Trump’s hands, he contended.
“His trap is to cause turmoil,” Scott said. “He’s like a typhoon, and everyone is chasing their tail on a daily basis about something he says or does that is petty and unpresidential.”
It’s smarter, Scott said, to separate fact from fiction and focus on the policy changes that have actual impacts on the state. When it’s clear that an initiative is illegal or contrary to Vermont values, Scott said, he’s shown he’s willing to push back.
As an example, he cited his handling of Trump’s two requests for the governor to deploy the Vermont National Guard — first to ICE detention facilities and then to patrol the streets of Washington, D.C. In both instances, Scott said the work involved did not suit the Guard’s role.
“To say I would rather have someone else in the White House would be an understatement.”
Gov. Phil Scott
When the state can work with lower-level federal officials to find a path forward without lawsuits, state officials will do so, he said. Maintaining relationships with federal agencies is crucial and may have helped the state secure an unexpected $27 million in federal funds to rebuild the aging bridge between Burlington and Winooski, he said.
Mike Smith headed state agencies under Scott and former governor Jim Douglas and has become known as a fix-it man for Vermont organizations in trouble. Scott’s deliberative approach, he said, strikes him as exactly how someone with a state to run should respond.
“I think he’s playing it real smart,” Smith said. Efforts by political opponents to tie Scott to Trump won’t work because voters know him too well, Smith said.
Scott agreed. He said he respects the office of the president and the will of the voters who elected Trump. But anyone who suggests he has an affinity for the president or his policies, he said, is mistaken.
“To say I would rather have someone else in the White House would be an understatement,” Scott said.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Balancing Act | The political agility of the nation’s most popular governor is being tested by the second Trump administration”
This article appears in Oct 29 – Nov 4 2025.
