Among the most disorienting things about President Donald Trump’s public language is how easily it can feel numbing and shocking in the same moment. He says something outrageous, the country recoils, and then the recoil itself begins to feel familiar.

As a scholar who studies presidential rhetoric, I know that over time that rhythm does its own kind of damage. It teaches the public to absorb the breach. What once might have sounded like a genuine political emergency or a violation of constitutional decorum begins to register as just another day in American political life.

At least 2.5 million low-income people quickly lost help affording groceries under a Republican-passed law that added new requirements for the nation’s largest nutrition program and shifted hundreds of millions of dollars in costs from the federal government to states, according to a study the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities published Wednesday.