Hey listeners, it's Allison. Can you do that is taking a holiday break? But while we're gone,

we're bringing you some episodes from earlier in the year. Just before the presidential election,

we brought you a special three-part series about the legacy of the past four years of the Trump

administration. The series dove into our country's hyper polarization and how some pieces of the

Trump agenda have exacerbated our divides. And that was all before the election. If you listen to

these episodes now with the election behind us, the series reveals what drove some loader decisions

at the polls, and it forecasts some of the debates happening within our political parties today.

Here more of what this series reveals in hindsight with a fresh listen. Here's the second

episode of that series on Trump and science. President Trump has disrupted so much in Washington.

He's bucked against the norms of the White House and the way Americans perceive how Washington

works. Much of this transformation has unfolded in dramatic headline grabbing moments. But some of

this change has been gradual. It's happened over time in small moments that together end up carrying

large consequence. The Trump administration has slowly unraveled parts of our government that

rely on expertise and data, on empirical findings and research. And Trump's rhetoric often

disparages public institutions, everything from the media to the US intelligence community

to science-based government institutions. The breaking news, President Trump taking on his CDC

director, calling him confused and mistaken on two issues central to stopping the spread of

the virus, masks and vaccines. I think he made a mistake when he said that. It's just incorrect

information. And I called him and he didn't tell me that and I think you got the message, maybe

confused. And while this gradual erosion of trust has garnered some attention, the weakening

of US-based science agencies could have gone largely unnoticed by much of the country

until a global pandemic made it impossible to ignore. This is the second episode in a three-part

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