WASHINGTON — Tucked into President Donald Trump’s new budget request is a plan that could dramatically change — and, critics say, slash — how much money and help states provide to people needing jobs and training.

Trump’s latest budget proposes a federal “Make America Skilled Again’’ grant that would combine a dozen current programs and provide $3.4 billion in spending for certain employment and training programs, down from $4.65 billion anticipated this fiscal year.

It’s just dirt. 

Not special dirt; there is no spectacular mineral inside it for which the next age of mankind will be built off of, nor are there wells of untapped liquid black magic sauce to fuel economies under it. It, like all dirt, is probably some shade of brown with hints of red or grey depending on the clay or iron content. Yet, the inhuman and depraved obsession that a large cut of humankind has over this particularly thin slice of land over the last six thousand years would probably beg more research be done into what makes its dirt so incredible. 

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.