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‘Even the Rich Are Worried’: Experts Warn of ‘Scariest’ Signs Amid ‘Stagflation’ Fears
Warning signs are flashing red in a week where troubling economic news has turned unmistakably grim. Consumers should brace for a surge in terms like “inflation,” “stagflation,” “Trumpflation,” and “recession” dominating the headlines.
Reports are now showing consumer confidence has plummeted to its lowest level in 12 years, the markets are currently tanking, analysts have downgraded predictions for stocks, core inflation is rising, GDP projections have been sliced in half or are now negative, unemployment is expected to increase, and some major corporations are projecting sales decreases.
All this comes just days before what President Donald Trump has repeatedly declared will be “Liberation Day,” April 2, when he says he will announce major increases to his existing tariffs campaign.
The Washington Post’s chief economics reporter, Jeff Stein:
Look I’m just a reporter, and not some fancy Wall Street financial analyst, but when the president does all caps tweets at 139am about LIBERATION DAY I am inclined to believe he’s serious about the massive new tariffs pic.twitter.com/Mj61RtUjfC
— Jeff Stein (@JStein_WaPo) March 27, 2025
Barely more than two months into Trump’s second term, economic experts are issuing warnings.
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“This is one of the scariest charts I’ve seen in awhile,” declared The Washington Post’s economic columnist Heather Long, pointing to a chart showing the “Expected Change in Financial Situation in a Year.”
“When Americans are asked — Do you think your financial situation will be better off in a year? They increasingly say ‘no,'” Long explained.
“In the ‘vibe-cession’ under Biden, people gave the economy poor grades. But they were generally optimistic about their personal finances (esp the rich),” Long noted. “Under Trump 2025, people at all income levels are worried they will be worse off in a year. This is the type of situation that causes people to really pull back on spending. This is what is different than 2023 or 2024.”
Pointing to another chart, Long writes, “Wow. Huge drop in consumer sentiment among all income groups.”
“Even the rich are worried now.”
Consumer sentiment “is down more than 30% since November,” she says.
“People are worried they will lose their jobs. Two-thirds of consumers expect unemployment to rise in year ahead–> highest concern since 2009,” she noted, adding, “People are fearful tariffs will drive up prices.”
“Even high-income consumers are concerned about their personal finances; only 26% of higher-income consumers expect to be better off financially in a year, down from 42% in August 2024.”
It gets worse.
“Inflation expectations are surging due to Trump’s tariffs,” she writes. “I continue to think the Trump team is really misreading how different 2025 is compared to 2017/2018. People are watching prices closely now.”
Princeton University economics professor Alan Blinder, considered to be among the most influential economists in the world, blasted the President this week in a Wall Street Journal op-ed: “Trump Plays Recession Roulette With the American Economy.”
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“I thought the probability of a downturn was nearly zero. Now one is likely, and we may see stagflation,” he wrote. “Trump’s actions seem designed to drive the U.S. economy into the ground. This would truly be a Trumpcession.”
For those unfamiliar with those terms, keep reading.
“Start with high tariffs. The president’s press secretary may think tariffs are tax cuts. In fact they are tax increases—probably big ones. And any tax increase saps the purchasing power of consumers. Take away enough and you’re flirting with a consumer-driven recession—or stagflation, since tariffs also drive up prices. The stock market understands the peril and is dancing to tariff news.”
Blinder warns that measures of uncertainty “have all leapt skyward recently.”
“What about immigration, both legal and illegal, and its effects on the availability of labor? What about the impending battle over extending—or even expanding—the 2017 tax cuts? What will be left of health and safety regulation when Elon’s musketeers are finished with it? How many Americans feel comfortable about their tax and Social Security records sitting in Mr. Musk’s computers?”
Long also points to stagflation.
“Bank of America economists now believe that ‘modest stagflation’ is the most likely outcome for the US this year, and that the combination of low growth and elevated prices will likely keep future Fed rate cuts on hold,” she writes.
For those who want to dive into some numbers, this one isn’t too hard to understand. The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, known as the Atlanta Fed, now shows that U.S. gross domestic product, or GDP —the value of all goods and services produced in the country—is now expected to drop by nearly three percent.
On March 28, the #GDPNow model nowcast of real GDP growth in Q1 2025 is -2.8%. The alternative model forecast, which adjusts for imports and exports of gold, is -0.5%: https://t.co/T7FoDdgYos. #ATLFedResearch
Download our EconomyNow app or go to our website for the latest… pic.twitter.com/5euVtnsnI6
— Atlanta Fed (@AtlantaFed) March 28, 2025
Even Fox News is warning on inflation, saying, “too many goods are rising at too fast of a price.”
Watch the video below or at this link.
Fox: 35% of all the components of core inflation are now growing at 5% or faster per year. Peak COVID was at 40%. You are in that range where too many goods are rising at too fast of a price pic.twitter.com/6DKyaA1I7h
— FactPost (@factpostnews) March 28, 2025
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Image via Reuters
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Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner is under fire after releasing a video declaring that new allegations against him are false, yet he is “taking time to reflect” on a path forward.
Politico on Monday afternoon reported that a woman who dated Platner, Jenny Racicot, “says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.”
“Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner,” Politico reported, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”
In a video posted to social media eleven minutes after the Politico story dropped, Platner says, “I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.”
He said he and his supporters “were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, in a focus on defeating Susan Collins.”
“So, regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”
“Those were the goals when we launched this campaign. And they remain my goals today.”
“Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me. And I will not turn my back on you now. Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated. And we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a political commentator who served as the communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, blasted Platner.
“I’m sorry but ‘we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward’ is not an option on the table,” Miller wrote. “Either it’s false and you campaign with vigor or it’s true and you get out / apologize to everyone you let down.”
Journalist Ryan Grim, commenting on Platner’s video, noted that Platner “strongly suggests he is considering dropping out. Already Troy Jackson and Chellie Pingree, both gubernatorial candidates, are being kicked around in Maine circles as potential replacements.”
Several others, including Puck News’ Peter Hamby, predicted Platner will be dropping out.
Platner had postponed several campaign events before the Politico story was published.
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 6, 2026
President Donald Trump is facing backlash after posting a video of children — including showing their unblurred faces — graduating from kindergarten, with some of the girls purportedly wearing hijabs.
“President Trump posted a captionless video of graduating kindergarteners on Truth Social on Monday, goading his supporters into verbally attacking little children simply for being Muslim,” The New Republic reported. “The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.”
The original post of the video which Trump reposted reads: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”
Trump did not add any comments. TNR called the post “Islamophobic, weird, and creepy,” while noting that the comments section of Trump’s post was filled with calls “by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters” to “deport the children and ban hijabs.”
TNR also noted that it “should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.”
Critics blasted Trump.
“There is something deeply unsettling about the president of the United States—the most powerful person in the world—going after kindergarten schoolchildren in Minnesota because they wore hijabs, as Trump has done this morning on his website,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.
One social media commentator wrote, “Trump posted an unblurred video of more than a dozen Muslim kindergartners to Truth Social, exposing the children’s faces while targeting them for their religion.”
Another added, “Trump is a bigot. The president took to Truth Social to attack kindergarteners in hijabs. These are little kids. The president isn’t just a bigot, he’s also a coward.”
The original video was posted to the X social media platform in June.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at the time commented, “If you are in a public school in America, you should be speaking english.”
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to delay releasing the $5.8 million civil judgment to E. Jean Carroll are being met with a warning by the journalist’s legal team, who suggest there could be a legal maneuver for Trump to employ to forgo paying the judgment in either of the two cases he lost.
According to The Guardian, on July 4, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Trump to release the $5.8 million judgment, which is in escrow, to Carroll by this coming Tuesday — or explain why he would not do so.
Carroll’s attorneys think Trump may be trying to buy time to mount another legal strategy, telling the judge that Trump’s request for an extension “appears to be little more than yet another play for time.”
“The case is separate from Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan civil jury’s 2024 award of $83.3m to Carroll for defamation,” The Guardian explains. “But her lawyers have suggested a legal scenario in which the president might seek to conjoin the cases and further delay payment of both.”
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) wrote, “We can only assume that defendant is seeking … to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying plaintiff presumably in connection with his forthcoming petition and motion for a rehearing.”
Trump’s former attorney, Justin Smith, in one of his final acts, wrote to the Supreme Court suggesting that his client would be appealing the $83.3 million civil judgment.
Smith argued that the Supreme Court “may wish to consider the petitions together,” given they involve the same parties.
The larger judgment case involves possible questions of presidential immunity, and that has Carroll’s attorneys concerned.
“A conjoined case, Carroll’s lawyers fear, could result in both judgments being wiped out,” The Guardian reports.
The president has also made clear he is no fan of Judge Kaplan, after the jurist made several rulings that “angered” Trump.
“What else can you expect from a Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge, who went out of his way to make sure that the result was as negative as it could possible be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2023, “speaking to, and in control of, a jury from an anti-Trump area which is probably the worst place in the US for me to get a fair ‘trial’.”
Image via Reuters
Platner Scorched Over ‘Taking Time’ Video After New Accusation
Trump Sparks Fury Online After Posting Unblurred Video of Muslim Kindergartners in Hijabs
One Legal Maneuver Threatens to Undo Everything E. Jean Carroll Won
Inside the Group Helping MAGA Voters Walk Away — And What Finally Pushed Them
