Good morning. Donald Trump returns to the White House on Monday, and we’re unpacking the forces that brought him there – more on that below, along with neighbours who grew closer over the pandemic and the late David Lynch’s unforgettable work. But first:

• Ottawa will unveil its initial retaliation plan Monday if Trump uses Inauguration Day to proceed with tariff threats
• Former central banker Mark Carney launches his Liberal leadership bid in Edmonton
• Israel’s security cabinet convenes to approve a deal to release hostages and pause the war with Hamas

Again, good morning. I’m Steve Kupferman. For the past eight months, I’ve been The Globe and Mail’s U.S. politics editor. Those eight months have been ... I think the strongest word The Globe will allow me to use is “eventful.” When I started this job, Donald Trump’s hush-money trial was happening in Manhattan. That was a comparatively low-key time, before assassination attempts one and two, Joe Biden’s departure from the presidential race and, you know, all the rest.

On Monday, Trump will be inaugurated for the second time, cementing his status as the angry red parenthesis around four years of Democratic rule.

The election result can seem baffling. Until relatively recently, lots of people thought of Trump’s 2016 victory as an aberration. Which invites a question:

How did a country that elected Joe Biden four years ago become Trump’s America once again?

Trump’s resurgence becomes less baffling when you cast your mind beyond the 2024 election cycle and think about his wins as being part of a tectonic shift in American and global politics that began before him and will likely outlast him.

What does that shift consist of? What are the forces driving it, and who are the people swept up in it? These are big, era-defining questions, and as inauguration day approaches, we still don’t have definitive answers to them.

But we think we know where to begin looking for those answers. And so that’s where we sent international correspondent Nathan VanderKlippe.

Welcome to pivot country

Nathan spent weeks travelling to “pivot counties”− parts of the U.S. that voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 and then switched allegiances to Trump. These counties are where Trump’s message resonated deeply enough to tip the political balance across entire communities.

Obama-to-Trump pivot counties are otherwise a disparate group. There are about 180 of them, spread across the U.S. in states red and blue. They are demographically diverse − some majority white, some majority Black and Latino, some majority Indigenous. And they all have their own histories and their own local concerns.

But Nathan discovered that there are at least some things that seem to unite these places. And those things may point to the long-term changes that have enabled Trump’s rise to power.

Industry, income and the erosion of the middle class: After the election, many pundits and reporters pointed to inflation as a contributing factor to Biden’s defeat. But in some parts of the U.S., economic malaise has been a fact of life for generations, in part because of a federal governing philosophy that prioritized big-picture goals at their expense.

The Globe found that pivot counties have, on average, lower median incomes than the states they are located in. In one pivot county, Grays Harbor, located on the Washington coast, Nathan encountered simmering rage over federal protections for the spotted owl. Locals blamed those regulations for destroying the area’s logging industry nearly 40 years ago. In Trump, some voters finally found a conduit for their outrage.

Frustration with elites: In all the pivot counties Nathan visited, he encountered anger at a set of values that residents associated with the country’s cultural elites − and with the Democratic Party. “I don’t think that an individual can say they’re another sex any more than I can say that I’m a tractor,” Jeff Branick told Nathan in Jefferson County, Tex., where in 2018 Branick was elected county judge as a Republican. He had previously held that office as a Democrat.

Social decay and drugs: America’s addiction to potent synthetic drugs was one of the centrepieces of Trump’s campaign. He laid the blame for the problem with porous borders, which he said had allowed drugs such as fentanyl to enter the country. Nathan met many people in pivot counties who had seen the effects of the drug epidemic, and were grateful to Trump for appearing to prioritize the issue when other politicians had not. One of those places was Roosevelt County, Mont., where local leaders told Nathan fentanyl had been a community-wide source of suffering.

What’s next for the U.S.?

Here are a few questions on our minds as we anticipate the arrival of the second Trump administration.

Will Trump be able to hold his coalition together?

Trump’s support in 2024 was broader than it had been in previous elections, which is both good and bad for him. It won him the presidency, but has also given him many competing interests to please. His Silicon Valley backers, for instance, have different priorities than his nativist, anti-immigration supporters.

Will he have to walk back his promises?

Many of Trump’s most significant campaign pledges could, if actually implemented, have unpopular knock-on effects. His tariffs, for instance, could cause prices to rise. How he weathers this potential double-bind will be something to watch. He and his allies have already backpedaled on some campaign promises, such as his claim that he would end the war in Ukraine in a day.

What, if any, checks will there be on his power?