A Crisis of Confidence

What a time in American life. Our President initiates a trade war, the markets tremble, and then he pulls back on most of it. But the damage is done.

Consumer confidence is plummeting. Tourism is down. The appetite for dollars and American debt is shaky. Companies are scaling back. Credit card delinquencies are rising. The probability of a recession has spiked.

I met with a couple of CEOs this week who said, “The 10% blanket tariffs and the China tariffs will stifle billions of dollars in economic activity each month. People are acting relieved because of the 90-day stay but even what’s left behind is very significant. Plus, it’s not realistic to hammer out trade deals with other countries in 90 days, so there’s a lot of uncertainty.”

In my own circle, a friend lost his job and a company had investors pull out.

Sometimes, uncertainty feeds on itself. Are you going to hire that person or take that trip or make that purchase? Or maybe you should hunker down? Major companies and individuals alike are reining in spending. If enough people choose the latter, it kicks off a cycle.

This is one thing Trump either didn’t realize or didn’t care about; confidence is a delicate thing. If you shake it too much, it can waver and fail. People cue off of each other, and if enough people start heading in a direction others follow. You don’t want to be on the wrong side of that.

It’s impossible to witness the leadership of the last couple of weeks and have confidence in those who are making decisions on behalf of all of us. The tortuous justifications and rationales were painful. Leadership matters, for better or worse. We deserve better than this.

I know a lot of people who were anxious about their retirement account diminishing last week. My advice – use this time to recalibrate. If you are going to need something in the next few years and have some savings, set it aside. Peace of mind will help you sleep at night. There are times to be aggressive and times to be cautious. I get different data points than most and the data I’m seeing are not promising. I expect continuing rough water. We have never had a recession in the age of AI before. Employers are going to see what the technology can do.

Here is a passage from The War on Normal People that seems very relevant today:

“If you look at the histories of layoffs, they maintain a fairly normal pace until a recession hits. Then employers go wild looking for efficiencies and throwing people overboard.

The real test of the impact of automation will come in the next downturn. Companies will look to replace their call centers and customer service departments with artificial intelligence and hybrid bot-worker arrangements . . . Large companies will question why their accounting and legal bills are so high. And on and on. Cost-cutting knives will come out, turbocharged by new automated tools. Productivity will then shoot up in the worst way possible as companies accomplish the same tasks with many fewer workers. Our public sector will also be faced with dramatic new needs even as tax revenues decrease.”

There are going to be opportunities in the times ahead. The key is to make it there.

Forward is growing as people look for different leadership – see what we are doing in your state. Also this week, I talk about AI and the economy with Nihal Mehta, an experienced AI investor.

One Key Way Democrats Can Start to Get Their Act Together

The Democrats are suffering from a leadership void. I wrote an op-ed for Newsweek that the Democrats should accelerate their nomination process. It follows below.

One Key Way Democrats Can Start to Get Their Act Together

Who leads the Democratic Party? No one knows, and that void is forestalling any attempt to have a meaningful conversation about the future of the party.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) are drawing huge crowds, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) and Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) are staking out a moderate message, Gov. Gavin Newsom, Democrat of California is podcasting, and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is staving off a mutiny. Former Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg is doing press. The chorus of voices is making the party seem more like a chicken strolling around a barnyard pecking at random than a party striving to take back power.

To be clear, I'm not a Democrat—I'm an Independent who co-founded a new party. I happen to think that the Democrats with their 29 percent approval rating and inability to win the Senate are a structural minority party for the foreseeable future. Do you see them winning Senate races in Texas or Florida anytime soon? Me neither. Folks like The New York Times' Ezra Klein and podcast host Lee Drutman agree that a new political force is necessary to create meaningful competition in places like Kansas or Nebraska, and I'd add California and Massachusetts to that list. That's what I'm working on.

That said, watching the Democrats flail around gives me no pleasure. A dysfunctional party is bad for the country. And one could argue, with the Republicans' blind obeisance to Trump, we are down to zero functional major parties.

So, let's say I want to help the Democrats out. How to fix it?

The problem is this—the first votes for the Democratic presidential primary aren't cast until the beginning of 2028 and most candidates won't declare until after the midterms in 2026. That leaves about 20 months of rudderlessness and lack of definition before a real race begins and a conversation can be had.

Quick refresher—the Dem primary debates are likely to begin in summer of 2027 with candidates declaring a few months prior. Who is going to run?

Everyone.

Among the most likely are: Newsom; Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker; Maryland's Gov. Wes Moore; Michigan's Gov. Gretchen Whitmer; Buttigieg; Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro; Colorado Gov. Jared Polis; Rep. Ro Khanna of California; Minnesota's Sen. Amy Klobuchar; Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz; Former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel; Murphy; Arizona Sen. Ruben Gallego; AOC; and probably a dozen more we haven't heard of. The field was about 23 the last time there was an open nomination process in 2020, which I was a part of, and this one will be at least as big.

So, how do you make this mess any better?

Start now. In 2025. Pull the whole process forward.

There are two main ways to do this. The first is easy. The second is tougher but manageable.

First, the DNC announces presidential forums on the future of the party to take place in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Georgia this Summer. Only people who are seriously preparing presidential bids may participate. This will start to suss out some of the early contenders. The forums are obvious media events; CNN or MSNBC would televise them. Candidates would campaign and meet with folks around the state. And then you would hold a non-binding vote in each of these states on who they would like to see as the nominee.

If you are lazy, you could limit this to party activists at a state convention. It would be more compelling to have the public involved in the vote; you could even have people in that state vote on their smartphones using mobilevoting.org. You could build out a calendar giving candidates valuable exposure to important states and constituencies as well as shift the media narrative.

Second, you could pull up the primary process a year earlier. For places like New Hampshire, they just want to go first; does it matter if it's in '27 or '28? You could hold your primaries in '27 and then still have the national convention in Summer '28. That way, the big primary debates would be in '26. You get the country's attention a full year earlier.

What are the problems with these suggestions?

First, they extend the presidential campaign. You'd be making the campaign 12 to 18 months longer for some candidates. As someone who ran myself for years, that's a long time. Some of these folks are current officeholders with lots of obligations. The time to pick apart candidates is longer.

On the other hand, many campaigns might end a little bit earlier too. Some of these folks don't currently have jobs. A lot of the people who are planning to run are stealth campaigning right now anyway. And you have time for a more thorough vetting and getting people in front of the public.

Second, there are costs and practicalities. Running events and forums in various states would require resources and planning. And any adjustment to the primary calendar would require buy-in from multiple stakeholders.

The costs aren't a real issue though—if anything, you would energize donors and the grassroots and this would be generative. You think people in New Hampshire wouldn't be pumped to get an early look at the field?

The real impediment to these suggestions is that they would require the Democratic Party to be nimble. Agile. Adaptive. Do things a little bit differently and more aggressively rather than wait for '28.

You guys are underwater with your own voters. I'd suggest that if there was a time to do something different, it would be now.

To the Dems, feel free to ignore this. Who am I after all? I'm just a concerned citizen who stood up and said you should hold a competitive primary in '24 for Joe Biden . . . oh wait, that aged rather well.

Try to do better this time. An early start could help.

A $10 Trillion Disaster

What a disaster. I’ve never seen so much value destroyed deliberately. Global markets have lost $10 trillion in the past days because of Trump’s trade war.

These tariffs are a catastrophe. Prices will go up. Domestic manufacturers who export will have less business. Employers will shed jobs. The stock market is in retreat and I believe the economy will soon follow. It’s a recession of our own making.

You could argue, “pain is necessary to get someplace good.” But if your goal were to drive employment in certain sectors you would telegraph the tariffs well in advance, target specific industries, and give companies assurance that the new tariffs were here to stay so they could make long-term decisions.

None of that is happening. This is destruction without the value on the other side.

Some people think there’s some master plan at work. There isn’t. It’s just idiocy. And people will suffer. We will be made poorer through this and less safe as hostilities will increase between societies.

I have been angry about this all week. We deserve better leadership.

On the other side, Cory Booker gave a speech for 25 straight hours on the Senate floor about the victims of the administration’s actions. I discussed this with journalist Tara Palmeri on the podcast this week as well as the ’28 field among the Democrats. I like Cory, but where was this when Joe Biden was holding the party hostage 15 months ago?

The Democrats are suffering from a leadership void. I wrote an op-ed for Newsweek that the Democrats should accelerate their nomination process. You can read it here.

Meanwhile, Democrats overperformed in Wisconsin and Florida special elections this week because of the unpopularity of the current administration. The pain will soon be impossible to ignore. These are dark times. Hopefully we can rebuild in a way that provides people a real path forward.

Confidence Men

Who among us hasn’t mistakenly texted someone? Of course, we’re not the National Security Advisor adding a national journalist to a military thread.

What’s weird is I’ve met or know some of the people at the center of this story. A group of principals want to communicate with each other in a direct, personal and convenient way and the government doesn’t maintain a texting service that is certified for classified information. So they use Signal, a commercial app that is typically used for communications one wants to keep confidential; the messages will disappear in a set period of time, a little bit like Mission: Impossible.

The most likely explanation is that Mike Waltz wanted to add Jamieson Greer, the U.S. Trade Rep who would be naturally included in planning a military action meant to clear trade routes in the Middle East. The “JG” who got added instead was Jeffrey Goldberg, the Editor-in-Chief of the Atlantic.

On one level, I sympathize. When you are one of these people, you want to do what you do in your ordinary course of everyday life, which is text. Who would want to wait to get together in-person? And a disappearing text would be more immediate and leave a much lighter paper trail than an email, which lives forever and requires far more time to turn around with a group.

On the other hand, the lack of acceptance and accountability for a mistake like this is understandably frustrating. And if a Democratic high official had made this kind of mistake, it’s clear that Republicans would be calling that person unfit or a criminal; they might say the same thing about everyone on the thread for discussing classified matters over a commercial texting service.

The person most in danger of losing his job is Mike Waltz. He screwed up by mistakenly adding Goldberg and embarrassed the whole administration.

However, in this political environment, anytime you give in to your opposition you fuel it and give them strength. If Trump fires Waltz now, the critics will start to circle Pete Hegseth who included classified war plans in the chat and others. It’s only Month 3.

I think Waltz survives, but it’s possible he becomes the fall guy for this fiasco. One thing is clear is that this has undermined confidence in the administration’s higher-ups; they come across as sloppy and hypocritical.

The other major political story has been Bernie and AOC drawing enormous crowds on a national Fighting Oligarchy Tour. Tens of thousands of people have shown up in Wisconsin, Iowa, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado and other environments to figure out what to do in the face of Trump and Musk.

There are a few good things about this. First, it’s an expression of voter sentiment and resentment toward the current state of affairs. Second, at least someone’s doing something. Third, it could put pressure on some vulnerable Republican members of Congress to not vote for Medicaid cuts and other unpopular measures; the locations have been chosen with this in mind.

The main result though is going to be a revolt within the Democratic Party against both moderates viewed as too conciliatory to the administration – most notably Chuck Schumer who approved the continuing resolution to keep the government open – and incumbent members. You’re going to see a ton of challenges to incumbent Democratic members in primaries next year, generally from the left.

By the way, Chuck Schumer is taking a ton of heat for going along with the continuing resolution, but in my opinion he had little choice. The Trump administration would be unusually willing to go along with a closing of the government because it fits their philosophy; they would have used the shutdown to close a lot of agencies, and over a million federal employees would have been sent home and furloughed without pay. Consumer confidence and the market would have crashed, and a recession would have commenced. I commented that if you’re going to shut down the government, you also need a $10 billion GoFundMe to keep federal employees from going home empty-handed.

The above is ignored by the Democrats who now claim that they should be fighting the administration at every turn. It’s easy to say that with the lights on.

Moving the party to the left – or trying - is going to feel good for many. But it won’t be easy given that the moderate wing has its own champions; AOC is already feuding online with John Fetterman, for example. And it won’t make Democratic candidates any more competitive in places like Ohio, Florida, Texas, or Nebraska where they would have to win Senate races in order to actually have a chance to pass laws.

Indeed, 3 Democratic Senators have already said they’re not running next year. The chances of Dems winning back the Senate given the map and these retirements are essentially zero. The Senate is currently 53-47 for Republicans and that number may go up, not down. That has led observant Dems like Ezra Klein to comment that there needs to be an Independent effort to back popular candidates in parts of the country where Democrats aren’t competitive, which happens to be the majority of the nation.

I hope that sounds familiar – that is the mission Forward has undertaken. Of course, we also think creating competition for Democrats in places like California or Massachusetts would be positive. People are catching on.

The status quo is worsening. There’s an opportunity to advance our politics. Let’s do our best to move people forward.

To see what Forward is doing in your state click here. For my interview of serial entrepreneur and co-owner of the Minnesota Timberwolves Marc Lore about his new food delivery startup Wonder and his journey as an entrepreneur, click here.

Abundance

Why can’t we have nice things? Why are we heading more toward Mad Max than, say, Star Trek or the Jetsons? This might be the most important question of our time.

There have been a number of books asking versions of this question recently. From Jen Pahlka to Yoni Appelbaum and Marc Dunkelman, a number of people are tackling why we haven’t been making big strides in areas like housing or climate change or delivery of government services. I might add, why is poverty seemingly intractable despite our GDP setting record highs and AI arriving in order to do more and more work on our behalf?

Now, the biggest effort yet to explain our halting progress has arrived in the form of “Abundance” by Ezra Klein of the New York Times and Derek Thompson of the Atlantic. Derek joins me on the podcast this week to discuss.

“Abundance” opens with a vision of the future. ‘The world has changed. Not just the virtual world, that dance of pixels on our screen. The physical world too: its houses, its infrastructure, its medicines, its hard tech.’ Ezra and Derek imagine a world where people work perhaps 3 days a week because AI is doing a lot of the busywork. Energy is clean and food is plentiful because of advances in agriculture and technology.

“We could be making many more scientific advances than we are at present,” Derek observes. “But our researchers are spending up to 40% of their time filling out grant applications rather than actually doing research.” Derek and Ezra have painstakingly gone through the red tape and bureaucracy attendant with scientific research, housing, infrastructure and other areas of opportunity. Their mission is to have liberals focus on results more than rules and innovation more than inaction; indeed, clearing out some of the constraints will be necessary on many fronts.

I love that Derek and Ezra, two of the most prominent thinkers of our time, are setting themselves to a big-picture growth and problem-solving agenda. They are actively trying to transform our politics. “Trump is embodying the politics of scarcity,” Derek says. “The abundance agenda can be the antidote and define the next era of American liberalism, a liberalism that builds.”

We have definitely been constrained for too long by this tit-for-tat red vs. blue dynamic that is not addressing the true challenges of our time. ‘We are attached to a story of American decline that is centered around ideological disagreement,” is how they put it. Perhaps a vision of abundance can set us free.

A lot of people 5 years ago asked me, “Could we really give people universal basic income? Do we have those kinds of resources?” I would respond, “Do you remember anyone asking whether we could afford it when we bailed out Wall Street for $2 trillion? We are the richest, most advanced society in the history of the world; we can afford to address gross poverty, especially because we would get back the investment in people many times over.” In many ways, that was an argument of abundance vs. scarcity.

I started Forward largely to free us from this dysfunctional ideological clash and path to nowhere. As Derek and Ezra write, “Whether government is bigger or smaller is the wrong question. What it needs to be is better. It needs to justify itself not through the rules it follows but through the outcomes it delivers.” If we can make outcomes the measuring stick, big things will be possible. There is now a different political conversation getting started, and I’m eager to help it gain power and energy. Let’s do what we can to share it.

For the Abundance book, click here. For my interview of Derek Thompson of the Atlantic, click here. To join Forward to actually fuel the politics of possibility, click here. The future won’t build itself.

Why Nothing Works

When I was running for President, many were dubious about government’s ability to solve big problems.

Why can’t we get big things done anymore? There have been a number of thinkers who have tackled this question, including Jen Pahlka (bureaucratic rules), Yoni Appelbaum (zoning laws), and now Marc Dunkelman, whom I interview on the podcast this week.

Marc is a fellow at Brown University and the author of “Why Nothing Works: Who Killed Progress – and How to Bring it Back.” He spent years on Capitol Hill as a Democratic staffer and then as a researcher at a thinktank.

“We used to be able to do big things, from the power grid to the highways to Social Security to the Tennessee Valley Authority. But over the past several decades, things have changed, as many self-described progressives have become concerned about government overreach in various realms. Today, we have a vetocracy where there are a lot of ways to stop things from happening. We seldom do big things successfully anymore, and voters have noticed.”

Marc makes a series of arguments. First, he defines “Progressivism” as a popular movement that wants government to solve problems.

Progressivism, according to Marc, is defined not by one but by two impulses that are in tension with each other. On one hand, the government needs to become more powerful to solve problems, as embodied by Alexander Hamilton. On the other hand, the government must be kept in check because it does bad things and ignores the people, as argued by Thomas Jefferson. These two impulses have waxed and waned in relation to each other over the last 100 years. The version that has emerged since the 1960s – with the Jeffersonian impulse to keep the state from too much power – has become a fundamental political liability for progressives.

“The average liberal voter might have two top priorities if you asked them: climate change and women’s reproductive rights. The first asks government to do big things. The second asks government to be small and stay out of it. We don’t think anything of these preferences but we should realize that they are very different in their vision of the role of government.”

According to Marc, the failures of government over the years have fueled the rise of Trump, because if the institutions aren’t working the way they’re supposed to, you become responsive to a very different type of leadership.

So what can be done now? “This is in some ways good news, because we can focus on things ourselves. We should give communities a voice but not a veto when we want things to get done. Rendering government incompetent is a lousy way to draw voters into a movement to employ government to solve big problems.” Ain’t that the truth.

For my interview of Marc, click here. For his book, click here. To see what Forward is doing for politics, click here. Maybe we can get things working again.

A War of Our Own

“I didn’t think Trump would actually implement tariffs; I thought it was a negotiating tactic.”

I’ve seen this sentiment aired a hundred times both publicly and privately. It has been incredibly frustrating watching Trump launch a trade war. His tariffs are going to be vastly destructive and will raise prices for consumers and manufacturers alike. Agricultural states and the Midwest are going to be hit particularly hard, but every American will feel the pinch when they head to the store. The result has already started to weigh on global stock markets as less trade and more uncertainty make it harder to invest in growth. Trump’s vacillating on what the tariffs cover doesn’t help; who could plan investments not knowing if it’s going to change week to week?

Also, Wednesday was the announcement that US employers announced plans to cut 172,000 jobs in February, the highest number since July 2020 and the 12th highest in 32 years. This included 62,000 federal employees, a number which will obviously increase. Trump’s plans to cut 80,000 workers from the VA alone recently leaked.

One thing that has been supporting the stock market for months is “the AI trade.” Of course, AI itself is a job suppressor; I know a dozen executives who have either cut jobs or didn’t hire workers directly because of AI.

One pattern that recurs is that employers tend not to be in the practice of shedding workers until a recession hits. Then, they look around and become ruthless on headcount, in part because the economic environment gives them cover to do so. Imagine companies in job-cutting mode fueled by AI? That’s fast approaching.

Indeed, February’s layoff numbers as well as a very weak Fed survey indicate that we may be teetering on the edge of a recession right now. The twin spectre of a trade war and widespread federal layoffs that will leave tens of thousands of households in professional and financial limbo are weakening confidence. The NIH and USAID cuts have already had that kind of impact on thousands of researchers and non-profit workers.

Trump seems more than ready to inflict economic pain on the country he leads. It’s bizarre.

This self-inflicted trade war is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen. Do I think Trump is leading us into a recession through his tariffs, posturing and erratic leadership? Yes. Yes I do. And I think this one will feel different compared to any of the recent ones we have experienced.

This week on the podcast I sit down with our friend John Avlon to talk policy. Also, a state senator in Utah joined Forward this week, our 47th elected official to affiliate! An article in the Bulwark this week pointed out that a new party could compete in areas that are currently uncompetitive; it’s exactly what the country needs. New people are joining Forward all the time – check out what we are doing in your state.

Are Americans Stuck?

The answer is almost certainly ‘Yes,’ if not in the way that you think.

Back in 2020 I had a policy called ‘Get Americans Moving Again.’ It was meant to address the fact that Americans were relocating for new opportunities less frequently than in times past.

Yoni Appelbaum, the author of ‘Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity,’ believes this is one of the biggest things holding back American prosperity. “For 200 years, Americans moved to the places with faster growing economies, and they weren’t always the same places. Moving to Flint, Michigan in the 1920s was a terrific bet. In the 2020s it is not a terrific bet . . . for 200 years, the gap between the richest places and the poorest places was narrowing because people would move from poor places to rich places.” I interview Yoni about his book on the podcast this week.

The statistics are startling: In the 1800s, Americans were so mobile that one out of 3 moved every year. In the 1960s, about one out of every five Americans moved in any given year, a rate of 20%. In 2023, that was down to one in 13, or about 7.7%.

Why do we move less? Yoni pegs the culprit as zoning laws. Housing became much more expensive in high-growth markets like New York or Boston or San Francisco because of restrictions on building in various areas. “America is often described as suffering from a housing crisis, but that’s not quite right. In many parts of the country, housing is cheap and abundant, but good jobs and good schools are scarce. Other areas are rich in opportunities but short on affordable homes.” He’s right; I spent months traveling to the Midwest and there are very reasonably priced homes anywhere you look. The jobs and growth opportunities might be hundreds of miles away. In high-growth cities and affluent suburbs, however, it’s extraordinarily difficult to build housing for the average family. In Manhattan, 27 percent of all lots are now in historic districts or are otherwise landmarked.

By one estimate, the decline in mobility is costing America $2 trillion each year in lost productivity. The toll is more personal too. “People who have recently changed residences report experiencing more supportive relationships and feeling more optimism, greater sense of purpose, and increased self-respect. Those who want to move and cannot, by contrast, become more cynical and less satisfied with their lives.” More and more, people want to move but never actually do.

So what can be done? I’m an advisor to PadSplit, a company that makes it easier for people to rent a spare bedroom. Yoni makes a couple of recommendations. First, let people build near you and join your neighborhood. Stop stopping new developments. Let people build. Rules should apply uniformly across different neighborhoods and communities. Second, be more tolerant of what growth and change could look like, even if the new buildings don’t look good to you. Third, have an approach of abundance. We need a lot of new supply in attractive regions. Many of these changes will be engendered locally.

Yoni has taken a fascinating lens to an underrated problem in American life – we don’t move enough. If we change that, it would improve our culture and economy immeasurably. Call it Doing the Unstuck.

For my interview of Yoni, click here. For his book, click here. To see what Forward is doing in your community to help improve local policy, click here.

The Upside Down

“So . . . I kind of thought that Russia invaded Ukraine.”

I posted this on X, and it got over 2 million views and 55,000 likes. When the obvious needs defending or restating, we’re in trouble.

A friend of mine from Brown told me, “An engineer in the Coast Guard I know who was there for 20 years was fired this week because he was in a new position for less than 2 years, and was thus considered technically probationary.”

I talked to an academic physician in the Midwest. “All of the researchers at my hospital are freaking out. Most all of them are NIH-funded, studies that have been years in the making could be shut down and the people left high and dry.”

A friend who works in government developing infrastructure in New England said to me, “Everything is being called into question right now, we’re not sure what’s going to be real. It’s an awful environment.”

These are strange times in the U.S. when you can’t take much for granted. The President is upending longstanding alliances and seems to gravitate to strongmen – perhaps because that’s what he aspires to be. Career professionals are cast aside arbitrarily. Health researchers are on the run. Projects that have been on the books for years might get thrown out the window.

I have felt for a long time that our two-party system has devolved into the Democrats as defenders of faltering institutions vs. the ‘burn it down’ crew that has come to define today’s Republican Party. Institutional mistrust and polarization, and Joe Biden overstaying his welcome, led to this past November’s outcome. Meanwhile, most of us are somewhere in the middle, thinking that the institutions do indeed need revamping and modernization but that a chainsaw isn’t the tool of choice.

One thing that I am hearing is that several prominent candidates are running in ’26 as Independents because they think the future lies outside of the two-party system. This choice will become more commonplace as both parties become increasingly unpopular.

Meanwhile, buried under the political news was the fact that inflation in January was stubbornly high and consumer spending is weakening. People are waking up to the fact that Trump doesn’t have some secret plan to lower costs, and if anything his activities – threatening tariffs and mass deportations – tend to be inflationary.

The headwinds are picking up. Uncertainty isn’t a great environment for most people – or markets. And uncertainty may be the most predictable thing for our immediate future. Plan accordingly.

For my convo with Zach over the current Administration’s actions on the podcast this week, click here. To see what Forward is doing click here – I’m in DC this week for a meeting with a Senator who would like to see our politics improve.

Back to School

Hello, I hope that your weekend is going well this Presidents Day. I celebrate this holiday every year by putting on a colonial-era George Washington wig.

I was invited to speak at my alma mater, Brown University, last week. It was my first time on campus since I ran for President.

It was a lot of fun. I’ve spoken at over a dozen universities these past several years, but at Brown there was a sense of camaraderie and pride. The students filled the auditorium and dozens were turned away. The energy was tremendous and heartwarming.

I spoke about my college years, when I was a fairly unremarkable undergraduate. I had very little figured out, though I did mention a couple of courses that impacted my thinking like Labor Economics and Ethics and Public Policy. I traced my steps from Providence all the way to the presidential campaign and making the case for democracy reform today. I tried to make my journey relatable and achievable.

I also talked about my friend Dean Phillips – another Brown alum – and his primary campaign in 2024, which I was proud to support. History has proven Dean to be correct. I tried to end on an invigorating note about how the future will be theirs to shape.

Afterwards, I met and took pictures with dozens of students. One young woman asked me, “Was it all worth it?”

I answered without hesitation, “Of course! I’d do it all over again.”

Another student said to me, “Thank you for being here. My friends and I followed your campaign every day when I was in 8th grade.” It has been 5 years since 2020, and that 8th grader is now a college freshman. Several other students told me that they volunteered for my presidential campaign and showed me pictures to prove it. There were a lot of students who wanted me to run again. Several thanked me for helping them feel better about the current moment.

Meeting with the students was uplifting. They were positive and idealistic and looking for a way to make a difference. I have no doubt that they will. They also reminded me of how much I have to be grateful for. Many of them understood the vision I was campaigning on.

We may not get there as quickly as I hoped five years ago, but there are a lot of dedicated and passionate people who want to see that vision come to pass. The college freshmen of today will be out in the world working before we know it. We have a lot of work to do, but the next generation is on its way.

To see what we are doing with Forward in your area, click here. For my interview of Jo Ling Kent of CBS News about DeepSeek and AI on the podcast this week, click here. Have a great long weekend.