Americans weigh in on Trump's first year | The Excerpt

On the Tuesday, January 20, 2026, episode of The Excerpt podcast: It has now been 365 days since President Donald Trump was sworn into office and outlined his vision for the country. As he enters the second year of his second term, USA TODAY spoke with Americans nationwide to learn how the president’s policies have affected their lives. USA TODAY National Correspondent Trevor Hughes joins The Excerpt to share their perspectives.

Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

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Dana Taylor:

It's been exactly one year since President Donald Trump took the oath of office and laid out his vision for America.

Donald Trump:

During every single day of the Trump administration, I will very simply put America first.

Dana Taylor:

Hello and welcome to USA TODAY's The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Tuesday, January 20th, 2026. As he begins the second year of his second term, USA TODAY spoke to dozens of Americans across the country to hear their take on how the president's policies have impacted their lives. Joining me now to share just a few of those stories is USA TODAY National Correspondent Trevor Hughes. Good to have you back, Trevor.

Trevor Hughes:

Yeah, good to be here.

Dana Taylor:

I'd like to start with some broad strokes here. Trump's presidency so far has been an eventful one, to say the least. We've seen new trade wars, a huge ramping up of immigration enforcement, an assault on Venezuela that led to the capturing arrest of their president and a surge of executive orders covering everything from what genders the federal government will recognize to declaring birthright citizenship no longer legal. The country feels like it's reached a political divide of new heights. What did you find here?

Trevor Hughes:

What was fascinating in my conversations and our conversations were supposed to be focused on the economy, but what we really found was that how you see the country and how you see the economy is very much based on whether or not you support President Trump. I didn't find a lot of folks who supported the president who criticized him. They tended to say that what he's doing is what he was elected to do, and they're very pleased to see it. And then of course, you have many, many liberals who are incredibly upset and say, "This is exactly what we warned was going to happen, and they're horrified."

Dana Taylor:

I want to turn to housing because when it comes to the issue of affordability, mortgage rates remain a sticking point. USA TODAY spoke with Christina O'Donnell, it's a longtime suburban Philadelphia realtor about the issue of affordable housing. What's her take on the current housing market?

Trevor Hughes:

What she said, and what we heard over and over from a lot of people is that those people who have homes who refinance during the pandemic, they're sitting at 3% in their mortgage, which is a great rate, right? But it means you can't afford to upgrade. And that's what she saw. There's a lot of folks who are sort of stuck in their houses. And so there's this strange pent-up demand for people who would love to move, but just feel like they have these golden handcuffs in their existing houses. And of course, those people who don't own homes yet, for them, the barrier to entry is still significantly high when you're looking at a mortgage rate of 6%, especially in an economy where it's hard to get together a bunch of money for a down payment.

This realtor we talked to, she was telling us that things are sort of slow and she's hoping that they get better, but she's had to cut back on her marketing materials because she's a realtor who's been impacted by tariffs. She's reduced the frequency of the newsletter she sends out because the price of stamps has gone. So the economy really runs her center through so many Americans' concerns right now and in the housing market is cheap among them.

Dana Taylor:

Let's turn now to energy beginning with coal. In Colorado's coal town, how do people like 61-year-old lifelong resident Trula Simmons feel about Trump's first year back in office?

Trevor Hughes:

I've been covering this part of Colorado for many, many years and Trula, like a lot of other folks out there are very happy with the president. They wish he had done more to protect coal mining because under the Biden administration, a lot of coal mines are shutting down or sort of moving in that direction because a lot of coal-fired power plants are being pushed to shut down because of environmental consideration. Now, the president has promised for years to protect coal miners, and frankly, he's pushed to keep coal mines open.

And so people like Trula are looking out at her neighborhood at her area and she says, "My husband lost his job as a coal miner. My son lost his job as a coal miner, but my husband got a job at the reclamation and her son is getting a different job at a different coal mine because that one is going to remain open because coal still is producing a lot of electricity in this country." But for her, they drive, they live in a very rural area, so they drive a hundred miles round trip for groceries. When you're driving a hundred miles round trip to Sam's Club, that price of gas makes a huge difference. I paid, I think, $35 to fill up my 25 gallon tank the other day. During the height of the gas crisis, it was closer to 80.

Dana Taylor:

In response to threats posed by climate change, former President Barack Obama and Joe Biden championed green energy, how did that affect people like Trula?

Trevor Hughes:

For many of these rural areas where there are coal mines and giant coal generating power plants, it's been the backbone of the air economy. These are jobs where you can earn 75, $100 an hour depending on overtime, really good, solid, reliable jobs day in and day out. And so when a president like Obama or Biden or even Hillary Clinton said, "We're going to put a lot of coal miners out of business," they understood what was going to happen. And the issue has been in those rural remote areas, there's not a lot of other job opportunities. And so if you take away that single largest employer, those huge jobs, those huge reliable paychecks, you can devastate a community. And the folks out there are very cognizant of that. And that really did drive their decision making when it comes to presidential elections.

Dana Taylor:

I want to stick with green energy. USA TODAY also profiled an American industrial painter, his name is Nick Reynolds. He's a wind farm worker who feels like he got the rug pulled out from under him, along with about 12,000 other workers by a decision by the Trump administration. Tell me about the project he was working on and where things stand now.

Trevor Hughes:

He was working on a project called, Revolution Wind. It's off the coast of Rhode Island, and it would provide clean energy for hundreds of thousands of households in the Northeast and hopefully stabilize their power rates because once the wind farm is up, it doesn't really require a lot of inputs. It's not like coal mining where you have to mine coal every day. It's not like burning natural gas where you have to get more natural gas. The wind blows for free. And so Nick really saw this as a fantastic job. It pays well, it's reliable, it's in his hometown. And he felt, looking at the way America was going, especially under President Biden, that green energy was an important field. It was important for the country. It was important for his environment and for his neighbors. And so he was really frustrated when the president tried to kill this project. And a judge just overturned that decision. And so his buddies went out and celebrated the other night, but they still don't know when they're getting back to work.

Dana Taylor:

Trevor, in reading your piece, Reynolds sounds like a guy who tried to make smart choices by adapting to a changing employment landscape. He told USA TODAY, "I did all this training in this promising field that the president encouraged and for what?" How does he feel about Republicans?

Trevor Hughes:

Not good. I mean, Nick went through a whole bunch of very specialized training so that he could actually go out and paint in the wind turbines as they're being installed off the coast, which requires familiarity and expertise with boats, with first aid, with high angle rope rescues. This is not sitting in a factory painting something with a can. This is incredibly technical work. And so he spent all this money of his own money and his own time to get this training because he looked at this and said, "Boy, the US is really going all in on green energy. I would really like to be a part of that." And so he's been very frustrated to feel like the rug got pulled out from under him and he lost his job. He has been laid off. And even though the project has officially going to be restarted, he hasn't started work again and he hasn't gotten paid.

Dana Taylor:

In your piece, you shared an interesting story about a couple in Oklahoma City who faced uncertainty last year due to the price of gold. What have the last 365 days been like for jewelry store owners, George and Valerie Naifeh?

Trevor Hughes:

We heard it from them and we've heard it from other people, which is if you have gold right now, people have been selling it because it's worth so many thousands of dollars. I mean, the price of gold under the president I think has doubled. And so what that means is people who have gold have been turning it in, selling it to keep their bills paid. But what it means for the jewelry store owners is that people are less likely to buy gold because they sell gold based on the ounce. And so they can't sell as many items if the price of gold is just super high. And so they've been working on their design, sort of trying to figure out how to pivot, but they're actually really optimistic that ultimately the economy will get better, that people will be able to afford more things and that they'll be able to bring on some trainees with help from some tax incentives.

Dana Taylor:

Is that something that's included in Trump's so called big beautiful bill?

Trevor Hughes:

Yes. I mean, the president proposed in Congress passed the one big, beautiful bill, and it has all kinds of voter friendly things in it. I mean, no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on the interest paid on American-made cars if he bought the car I think this year. So there's quite a lot of things in there that were really meant to help working people. And I have seen folks, I've talked to folks who have said the tax on overtime, maybe it'll help, maybe it won't help. It really depends on whether you work in an industry where you're declaring that overtime and declaring those tips.

Dana Taylor:

For some of Trump's biggest attractors are incensed with the way he's tackling immigration. The killing of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis has become a national rallying cry for many Americans to force ICE out of American cities. 48-year-old Jamila Wilson, a licensed childcare provider in Chicago, spoke with our colleagues. What did she share with USA TODAY?

Trevor Hughes:

Jamila is one of those people who's lived in Chicago all her life, and she's really concerned about what she's seeing. Chicago is not a fan of Trump, and Trump is not a fan of Chicago. And it is creating this very challenging situation where childcare providers like her feel like they're really being targeted. And she specifically said that she feels like the president is very specifically targeting black and brown Americans and not targeting fraud or waste or abuse that's committed by white Americans. Jamila feels like the president's budget really prioritizes tax breaks for billionaires, really prioritizes creating fearful environments for immigrants in this country. And it's something that she says she sees on the faces of the parents she talks to every day.

Dana Taylor:

Our colleagues spoke to dozens of Americans, but let's end with 73-year-old Kansas Cattle Rancher, Hal Luthi. He had a banner year thanks to the high price of beef. How much of that is tied to policies implemented by President Trump?

Trevor Hughes:

It's unclear how much of it is tied specifically to the president's policies. The price of beef has been high for quite a long time, but what's interesting is that Americans continue to pay it. They haven't really cut back on their beef consumption in the way that you might expect. But Hal, he had a banner year. When I talked to him, he was sitting in his brand new pickup. He paid cash for his pickup. Now, to be fair, he had his old one for 17 years, but this last year was the best year he's had in a real long time. And he felt like President Trump has really laid the groundwork for that success. He said inputs for things like prices for fertilizer and diesel. Those are higher than they had been in years past, but overall, he felt like the president was really creating an environment in which businesses like his could succeed.

Dana Taylor:

Despite his feeling that the country's heading in the right direction, he does recognize that other Americans are struggling. What changes would he like to see in 2026?

Trevor Hughes:

Yeah, Hal was talking a lot about the president's desire to bring back manufacturing to this country. We refer to the Rust Belt because the industrial base of America, which really has been hollowed out. You go to cities like Omaha, you go to cities like Kansas City, and sometimes they feel very empty compared to their heyday when there were millions and millions of people working in factories, working in manufacturing. And so Hal expressed something that I've heard over and over from a lot of Americans, which is if we built more things in America, if we built and bought more things from America, we would be better off as a country. And they are really pleased to see President Trump making that a priority.

Dana Taylor:

It was a fascinating piece to read. Trevor Hughes is a National Correspondent for USA TODAY. Thank you so much for coming back on The Excerpt.

Trevor Hughes:

Of course.

Dana Taylor:

Thanks to our senior producer, Kaely Monahan for her production assistance. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to [email protected]. Thanks for listening. I'm Dana Taylor. I'll be back tomorrow morning with another episode of USA TODAY's The Excerpt.