@hcrichardson.bsky.social is required reading these days: heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/february-2...

Sources: www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...
www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...
www.washingtonpost.com/tablet/2025/...

- Sixty-three percent of Americans are worried about Musk’s team getting access to their data.

- 62% of Americans in the CNN poll said that Trump has not done enough to try to reduce prices

- By nearly two to one, Americans see Musk having a prominent role in the administration as a “bad thing.” The ratio was 54 to 28.

- Americans disapprove of Musk “shutting down federal government programs that he decides are unnecessary” by the wide margin of 52 to 26

- 83%(!!!) percent of Americans oppose Trump’s pardon of the violent offenders convicted for their behavior during the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Even those who identify as Republican-leaning oppose those pardons 70 to 27 percent.

- Fifty-seven percent oppose deporting those who are not accused of crimes, 70% oppose deporting those brought to the U.S. as children, and 66% oppose deporting those who have children who are U.S. citizens.

- The number of people who strongly support his actions sits at 27%; the number who strongly oppose Trump's actions is 39%.

- Americans especially dislike his attempts to end USAID, his tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada, and his firing of large numbers of government workers.

- 57% percent of Americans think Trump has gone beyond his authority as president.

- Only 45% approve of the “the way Donald Trump is handling his job as president,” while 53% disapprove.

- 43% percent of Americans say they support what Trump has done since he took office; 48% oppose his actions

and publicizing the Code of Federal Regulations and the Federal Register, the two documents that codify rules and chronicle the daily goings-on, respectively, of the federal government.”

for how the states transmit electors’ votes to Congress; overseeing the process of ratifying new Constitutional amendments; managing the document classification system and, in turn, the delicate balance between public transparency and national security;

What’s going on here is not a working-class revolt against the elites. All I see is one section of the educated elite going after another section of the educated elite. This is like a civil war in a fancy prep school in which the sleazy kids are going after the pretentious kids."

Why is that? The simplest answer is that Trump really seems not to give a crap about the working class. Trump is not a populist. He campaigns as a populist, but once he has power, he is the betrayer of populism.

He seems to have no plans to narrow the education chasms, no plans to narrow the health outcome chasms or the family structure chasms. He has basically no plans to revive the communities that have been decimated by postindustrialization.

www.nbcnews.com/politics/dog...

www.cnn.com/2025/02/17/c...