People are Paying Attention
6/5/202613 min
June 4, 2026
The Trump administration’s promise to dismantle the liberal consensus got him elected, but the effects of his plans are starting to be widely felt, Tariffs are destroying foreign markets for US agricultural products, The war on Iran is sending the price of fuel and fertilizer soaring, Secretary of Agriculture Brook Rollins was grilled by the House Agriculture Committee, New World screwworm, a parasite that had been eradicated is back after the Trump administration cut funding for control and prevention, Oil reserves are at their lowest level in 22 years, Many of the known funders for Trump’s ballroom have received lucrative contracts from the federal government, Democrats are calling out the corruption in the administration which siphons taxpayer money into the pockets of the wealthy, At a Texas rally for James Talarico the democratic candidate for governor, the crowd shouted “lock him up!"
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Transcript preview
First 90 secondsHeather Cox Richardson· Host0:00
[outro music] June 4th, 2026. The wheels are wobbling on the Trump administration bus. The administration has always been an alliance of groups and people that oppose the so-called liberal consensus, the idea that the US government should regulate business, provide social welfare programs, promote infrastructure projects, protect civil rights, and support a rules-based international order. Republicans had embraced that ideology since the 1980s, but for all their celebration of tax cuts and deregulation, leaders recognized that the modern American state depended on the free trade and defensive security systems of the international order, and that the American people liked infrastructure and social welfare programs. Trump upended that system, promising to get rid of the federal government built around the liberal consensus, the government his voters thought they hated because they thought its protection of equality before the law gave Black Americans, brown Americans, women, and gender or religious minorities a leg up on white Christian men. Or they thought funding for science wasted their money on the research that right-wing influencers mocked for wasting their money and intruding on their freedom. Or they thought the US contribution to the North Atlantic