On May 10, the Republican governor of North Dakota, Doug Burgum, announced his state would stop paying out federal COVID-19 unemployment insurance (UI) benefits effective June 19.

“These programs have accomplished their goals but are now counterproductive,” Burgum said of his decision, which made North Dakota one of the first of twenty-six states — twenty-five of which are led by Republican governors — that cut off pandemic-related jobless aid over the past two months, slashing benefits for more than four million people nationwide several months before the programs were set to expire in September.

But Burgum, a former Microsoft executive who sold his software business to the company for $1.1 billion in 2002, had already been told cutting the UI programs would mean tearing apart the safety net and cutting off aid to people harmed by the pandemic — in materials prepared by his administration.