US Politics Mega-thread - Page 5452

President Trump predicted Thursday that the U.S. is likely headed toward another shutdown before the funding deadline at the end of January.

“I think we have a problem, because I think we’re going to probably end up in another Democrat shutdown,” Trump told host Maria Bartiromo on Fox Business’s “Mornings with Maria.”

“The [prior] shutdown cost us a lot, and I think they’ll probably do it again. That’s my feeling. We’ll see what happens,” he continued.

So far, there appears to be little appetite among Democrats for another shutdown.

Democrats in the House and the Senate have called for an overhaul of Immigration and Customs Enforcement after an officer fatally shot an unarmed woman in Minneapolis. Democrats say they will oppose the DHS bill unless it includes tougher oversight and conduct guidelines for ICE officers.

It feels like we’re all doing the math on our current velocity toward the cliff and distance from it and maximum braking force, but the math isn’t actually very hard. We just keep recalculating because the result we keep getting is unfathomable

On January 22 2026 17:02 decafchicken wrote:


Median Salaries are up ~1.68% (and actually strongest at the middle class while the lowest gained little), but inflation is up 2.9% meaning they are effectively down ~1.2%. And while the middle class wages might have slightly outpaced upper class, the wealth levels tell a WILDLY different picture, with over 40% of the 12T in wealth going to the top 1%

Net worth levels (Q4 2024 → Q3 2025)
Top 0.1%: 22.48T → 24.89T (+2.40T, +10.7%)
Top 1%: 49.84T → 54.83T (+4.99T, +10.0%)]
90th–99th: 58.59T → 63.00T (+4.40T, +7.5%)
50th–90th: 48.43T → 50.84T (+2.41T, +5.0%)
Bottom 50%: 3.99T → 4.25T (+0.26T, +6.5%)

Economic expansion...GDP is up 4.3%, driven largely by tariffs (increases consumer spending + drives down imports), decreased investment, and increased government spending, none of which signal a healthy economy.

All numbers from BLS & FRED

On January 23 2026 05:34 Hat Trick of Today wrote:


You also have to look at specific inflation as well. Rent growth in a lot of east/west coast + midwest urban hubs from Kansas City to Newark are still like 3% per most real estate investor advice. Property and casualty insurance premiums rose by around 5% too, let’s not even talk about health insurance here.

Then you also have inflation of beef where auction prices in Oklahoma have increased by the high 30% from the start of 2025 to end of 2025. Which is obviously being felt by the consumer who can see obscenely priced steaks and ground meat at Publix.

And let’s not even start with consecutive price hikes in the consumer sphere ranging from every streaming service to Warhammer where Games Workshop has directly pointed out their rapid and consecutive price hikes in 2025 have mitigated the 6 billion GBP US tariffs hit had on their bottom line. Or WOTC doing shrinkflation and price adjustments with their sealed Magic the Gathering products.

All of this hits consumers with less disposable income way harder than those with a lot of disposable income who are increasingly becoming the only people fueling consumer spending. Everyone else is feeling poor as shit.

On January 22 2026 12:14 JimmyJRaynor wrote:

relax man. try not to take a maudlin old man's theatrics too seriously. i'm not a 1 issue voter. i'm moderately pleased with the work the team around Trump has done over the past year. The federal government gets a 6.75/10 from me in year 1. Median salaries are up... blue collar worker pay is rising faster than white collar pay. The average working man is benefiting from the moderate economic expansion in 2025.

Now, in some fancy diagram i saw on Fox News they showed the path of a mythical "intercontinental ballistic missile" leaving the Soviet Union and going over the arctic circle, over Nuuk Greenland, across Quebec, over Montreal and then hitting Washington DC. This is the reason the USA must have ownership of Greenland. Ok, great.

By this same logic shouldn't Trump demand US ownership of Montreal?

On January 23 2026 05:34 Hat Trick of Today wrote:


You also have to look at specific inflation as well. Rent growth in a lot of east/west coast + midwest urban hubs from Kansas City to Newark are still like 3% per most real estate investor advice. Property and casualty insurance premiums rose by around 5% too, let’s not even talk about health insurance here.

Then you also have inflation of beef where auction prices in Oklahoma have increased by the high 30% from the start of 2025 to end of 2025. Which is obviously being felt by the consumer who can see obscenely priced steaks and ground meat at Publix.

And let’s not even start with consecutive price hikes in the consumer sphere ranging from every streaming service to Warhammer where Games Workshop has directly pointed out their rapid and consecutive price hikes in 2025 have mitigated the 6 billion GBP US tariffs hit had on their bottom line. Or WOTC doing shrinkflation and price adjustments with their sealed Magic the Gathering products.

Then we can talk about consumer electronics, there is no way the RAM and storage shortages fuelled by AI isn’t going to completely cook the price of everything in the year of our lord 2026. It already has cooked the PC industry in 2025, there’s a reason why Corsair has consistently screwed around with their customers buying anything involving RAM from individual RAM sticks to prebuilt desktops.

All of this hits consumers with less disposable income way harder than those with a lot of disposable income who are increasingly becoming the only people fuelling consumer spending. Everyone else is feeling poor as shit.

On January 23 2026 05:42 decafchicken wrote:


Yeah it seemed like a waste of nuance to go into considering the only thing he took away from my post is he doesn't think government spending increased despite it hitting a record $7T last year