Democracy is the illusion that everyone can live at the expense of everyone else

The alliance that brought Trump to power for a second time is far more heterogeneous than it was in his first term. As much as Republicans like to rail against big government, [their voters are] often its biggest beneficiaries,” says John Mark Hansen, professor of political science at the University of Chicago.

The fear in Bogalusa is that Congress will slash Medicaid, the government health insurance programme for people on low incomes that serves one in five Americans. It is a scheme that many Republican lawmakers have long wanted to curtail.

“Musk enjoys brandishing his chainsaw but it’s not funny when you take a person’s job, it’s not funny when you take their healthcare,” says Cleo Fields, a Democratic lawmaker from Louisiana. All the talk of cuts to anti-poverty programmes is one of the reasons why voters have been haranguing Republican members of Congress at town hall meetings up and down the country in recent weeks, in angry scenes that have been shared thousands of times on social media.

Aside from the Maga populists there are now the “broligarchs”, ultra-wealthy tech executives like Elon Musk who have become some of the president’s most ardent supporters. There are also working-class Black and Hispanic voters who backed Trump for the first time last November, attracted by his promise to bring down prices on day one.