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President Donald Trump has promised not only that America will be “great again” but also that it will be “healthy again,” “wealthy again,” “beautiful again,” and—crucially—“affordable again.” Now, as the country faces persistent inflation, a housing crisis, and rising prices on consumer goods, he claims that affordability is nothing more than a “con job,” an opportunistic buzzword leveraged by a rival party. “The word affordability is a Democrat scam,” he said during a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday.
Incoming presidents don’t get to pick the economy they inherit, but they can only credibly blame their predecessors for so long. In a Fox News poll last month, almost twice as many respondents said that Trump, not Joe Biden, is responsible for current economic conditions. Per new polling from Politico, 46 percent of Americans say the cost of living in the United States is the worst they can remember it being, and 46 percent think Trump is to blame for those high costs. The trend isn’t entirely new; voters have blamed Trump for the economy throughout the year. As frustration persists, the president is pointing fingers at the Democrats, but he can’t dispute the data.
Americans now face both a weakening dollar and stagnant income levels. Trump’s surprise implementation of punitive tariffs this summer ended up making all sorts of goods, including clothing and beef, more expensive. Meanwhile, millions have left the country (voluntarily or not) amid the administration’s crackdown on immigration, according to the Department of Homeland Security’s estimates. This exodus, combined with a reduction in newcomers, has the potential to harm local economies.
Trump has tried conflicting strategies to deal with voter frustration. He has a tendency to invoke the previous administration when things go wrong—at the start of his term, he said Biden’s name an average of six times a day, often to fault him for the economy or immigration issues. But during a recent meeting with New York City Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani, the president appeared to check his impulse to vilify Dems, beaming over Mamdani’s proposals to fix the cost-of-living crisis. “Some of his ideas really are the same ideas I have,” Trump said: “The new word is affordability.”
About a week later, he dubbed himself the “AFFORDABILITY PRESIDENT” on Truth Social. But again, that only lasted so long: Affordability actually “doesn’t mean anything to anybody,” he said on Tuesday. Next week, he’ll pivot once more as he sets off on a national tour to assuage voters’ concerns about the economy and inflation.
Sentiments about a president’s approach to the economy usually carry over to the incumbent party—and at the moment, Trump’s relative unpopularity is Democrats’ gain. The party has jumped at the chance to pummel Trump on affordability, which proved to be a winning issue in recent elections: The cost-of-living rhetoric that catapulted Mamdani to victory in New York City also helped two other Democrats win important races last month. The political scientist Lynn Vavreck told me yesterday that when Trump downplays the issue, he risks repeating some of what led to George H. W. Bush’s downfall in 1992: Bush lost that election to Bill Clinton in large part because his optimism about the economy failed to connect with voters’ reality. Biden suffered from a similar disconnect—and the same problem is creeping up on Trump ahead of the midterms.
Approval ratings for a president’s first year in a new term often benefit from what the economic historian Robert J. Gordon calls the “honeymoon effect”—a bump that isn’t neatly explained by anything other than voters’ inclination to give leaders time to warm up. But by the time midterm season rolls around, voters tend to be less forgiving. Ten months into Trump’s presidency, the polling is starting to track a similar pattern: His approval ratings started at 47 percent and have since slipped to 36 percent (thanks to more than just affordability). Trump has been known to bounce back. But if the honeymoon is ending, that’s one thing he can’t blame Biden for.
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Today’s News
- The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices voted 8–3 to end the long-standing recommendation that all newborns receive a hepatitis-B shot at birth. For babies born to a virus-negative mother, parents can decide “when or if” to vaccinate; the panel recommends that the first dose be given two months after birth if parents choose to vaccinate.
- The 2026 World Cup draw took place at the Kennedy Center, where President Donald Trump was awarded the first-ever FIFA Peace Prize.
- The Supreme Court agreed to decide whether Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship is constitutional; arguments are expected to begin in April, and a decision is expected by late June.
Dispatches
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Evening Read
Illustration by Ben Kothe / The Atlantic
No NFL Game Has Ever Ended in a Score of 36–23
By Josh Levin
There was no good reason to be thinking about NFL history when the Dallas Cowboys took on the Las Vegas Raiders a couple of weeks ago. Neither team had a winning record at the time, and the score was never close after halftime. But as the game stretched on that Monday night, the sportswriter and video maker Jon Bois sensed that something unprecedented could be afoot. “I glanced up and realized 36–23 was very much in play,” he told me.
Bois is the mind behind “Scorigami,” a term he defines as “the act, and art, of producing a final score in a football game that has never happened before.”
Read the full article.
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Rafaela Jinich contributed to this newsletter.
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