Inflation Tracker for June 2025:
Checking How The Cost Of Living Really Is
Feel free to check the past Biden Era archives and follow the editions to come in the Trump Era on Substack, Medium, and LinkedIn, including those on the 2024 Autopsy, Bench-Building, DOGE News, Project 2025 Authoritarianism, Progressive Populism, and more (First Come, First Serve!).
Happy Father’s Day everyone!
In other news:
First, for Democrats, listen to Chuck Rocha’s message and subscribe to his new Substack blog and Latino Vote Podcast—which he does with GOP strategist Mike Madrid. Keep up the audio voiceovers too. #ListentoChuck
The heinous and deadly shootings of two Minnesota state lawmakers cannot be viewed in a vacuum. Although Donald Trump condemned (albeit in 1-2 words) these violent political assassinations, Trump’s history of stoking the January 6 insurrection, pardoning convicted felons and the leaders of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, and suggesting pardons for the people who planned to kidnap and kill Gretchen Whitmer all constitute adding fuel to the fire. Without question, the tone, messaging, and actions of Trump and his MAGA following have made him the Inflamer-in-Chief. Simply a 1-2 word condemnation will not change that.
Donald Trump was so concerned about loyalty appearances at Fort Bragg that soldiers who weren’t supportive of his remarks were to be removed by military higher-ups. Screenings also took place to ensure no fat soldiers were behind Trump as he made his partisan remarks.
National Guard troops deployed to Los Angeles were left temporarily unpaid and forced to sleep on the floor.
Congressman Mark Green of Tennessee enters a potential conflict of interest by voting for the Big Ugly Bill while already announcing his intentions to resign from Congress to join the private sector.
The Big, Fat, Ugly Bill would, by the way, cement the largest upward transfer of wealth ever in American history from the bottom third of Americans to the top 1%.
The World Bank slashes the global economic growth forecast citing Trump’s tariff and economic policies. The US growth forecast for 2025 has been sharply slashed by 1.4%, and for 2026, it was lowered by 0.4 percentage points to 1.6%.
Another Project 2025 author addition to the Trump White House; this time in the Education Department.
The Big Crypto Mafia adds another lobbyist in its lobbyist army from both parties in the form of 2024 Harris campaign advisor David Plouffe and former DINO Senator Kyrsten Sinema. Coinbase, the company Plouffe is now employed with, donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund. I second Jeff Hauser’s, Matt Duss’s, and Jonathan Cohn’s assessments of how cynical and poor this looks for the Democratic Party.
“Trump proposes cutting $33B in HUD funding, including Section 8”, via Multi Family Dive. Homelessness sheltering programs suffer the most as a disclaimer.
Here’s quite an image: an 87-year old veteran arrested for protesting the military parade, while Putin gives the Don a nice birthday call, including advice on how he can mediate the Iran hostilities. Russia’s greatest assets? Oil, gas, nukes (not). Nope, it’s Donald Trump. How pathetic that we are having Russia become the world peacemaker.
Concerns about gerontocracy arise again as reports from the New York Times circulate on the decline of DC Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, and as Axios reported on generally.
Here’s an unappreciated headline: Nearly $2 billion in dark money spending, a record high ever for federal elections in 2024.
With that covered:
As we begin this new phase of the inflation tracker (pending it goes well with being able to find and retrieve information for you the reader), I want you to remember the big picture as we get consumed by endless streams of news.
First and foremost, we must track the authoritarian breakthrough of Donald Trump and his allies. Remember, if we have no democracy in the US, all other issues don’t matter. Dictatorships don’t hold fair elections after all on whatever issues matter to you—as a general rule of thumb.
We certainly cannot normalize the use of the military and calling out of the Marines for crowd control over peaceful protests in Los Angeles, This action caused the crowds to become inflamed, pitting American soldiers against Americans protesters exercising their First Amendment rights. This is why we had a Boston Massacre, a Tea Party, and an American Revolution against King George III.
Secondly, though just as important, our need to keep up on all the campaign promises from 2024 that Trump made to the American people, especially since party-run propaganda runs rampant while mainstream channels become overwhelmed and flooded with distractions and shiny objects. The message has to be heard loud and clear, which means it is up to Democrats and all of us in the pro-democracy movement to get the word out on “Promises Made, Promises Broken”:
Trump promised peace in Ukraine on Day One, & peace and stability in the Middle East. Clearly, he has failed to achieve either. Ukraine fights Russia on its own without us, while the people of Gaza continue to starve to death and hostages remain in the captivity of Hamas. Iran’s going well too (not!).
Trump promised to Make America Healthy Again. That turned out to be another farce, with access to COVID vaccines derailed and a reemergence of global diseases like measles, bird flu, and drug-resistant tuberculosis.
Trump promised not to cut Social Security and Medicare. Oopsie-daisy. Wrong on that too.
Trump promised to drain the swamp of DC lobbyists. The lobbyists instead run the government (quite literally), and Trump himself is grotesquely enriching his own family in public office from real estate deals to crypto memecoins.
Remember reigning in “waste, fraud, and abuse,” the red-herring to privatize and cut government services through DOGE? Turns out we spent more money on DOGE cost-cutting than we did on saving money.
Trump pledged to expand IVF coverage and leave abortion access to the states. His administration is openly defying those campaign remarks.
Trump had wanted to tackle crime, according to Republicans. Instead, he pardoned the January 6 insurrectionists—some of whom landed back in prison or were killed by law enforcement in subsequent events—while also lifting gun restrictions in the process.
Trump said he had no connection with the Project 2025 agenda. We now know the 900-page manifesto was followed step-by-step, at an alarmingly accelerated pace (40% complete or in progression).
Trump is keeping his promise on one thing I suppose: passing tax cuts for the ultra wealthy off the backs of the working and middle class.
Trump promised to go after criminals who snuck into the “Biden Border.” ICE is instead going after high school students, fast food workers, restaurant workers, small businessmen, farm laborers, and labor organizers.
And as we will cover here in depth, Trump promised to lower costs. He is doing anything but that.
Costs of living do vary from locality to locality. However, the trendlines are pretty consistent nationally wherever you are.
Take this: according to a recent report, the bottom 60% of American households now say that the cost of living is “out of reach” for them. At the same time, the top tenth of 1% have more wealth than the bottom half of Americans combined.
Life is becoming more and more unaffordable for many. Yet, it seems our President, if we even want to call him that, is more focused on personal retribution against his political opponents and enriching himself than he is on actually doing the job.
Issues like tackling corporate price-gouging, breaking up price-fixing monopolies, building more affordable housing, and reshoring our supply chains, all of which Democrats had and would have done more of, have either gone by the wayside or been reversed by the Trump White House. Add in the highest new tariff taxes in nearly a century, and you have higher costs even from the beginning of 2025.
AAA regularly chronicles gas prices, and finds that the median national price is $3.12 all across the country. Furthermore, not one state is below $2.60, not even in the poorest states in the country.
The home market is clearly stalling, as major forecasters warned us for months, with homebuilders pulling back on housing construction and declines in housing permits because of a surge in home material costs from Trump tariff whiplash. Means home mortgages and rent costs will only go up more as interest rates remain high.
Electricity prices already set records as we speak today. Repealing the clean energy provisions that fuel the future economy as job creators and keys to future energy independence and dominance would raise prices by hundreds of more dollars per household.
And, to top it all off, BuzzFeed found that these high costs on essentials have real impacts on people. Some people are switching their dietary and shopping habits when buying groceries. Some people are moving back to live with their parents or with fellow roommates. Others are looking for jobs with higher pay, landing second jobs, or checking out the gig economy just to make ends meet. Those who own a small business have had to raise prices on customers because of the tariffs and still witness a decline in sales. That is the Trump Golden Age economy.
With that, I will now offer an overview of how high prices are locally in my hometown of Providence, Rhode Island to showcase the folly of the so-called Golden Age (or rather, the Trump Gilded Age):
First observation: prices have gone up 10-20% in the grocery stores on almost everything since January.
Fruits have gone up dramatically.
Vegetable prices went up.
Beef prices are up locally.
The orange juice we buy costs more than it did earlier this year.
The only thing not up (as much as before) are eggs—which we don’t eat as much of because of food allergies.
Rhode Island gas prices on average sit at around $2.97, and are sometimes more expensive (no surprise) in lower-income neighborhoods.
In short: the basics are costing just too damn much. Thank you Donald for another promise made, promise broken: lowering grocery costs on Day One.
A good lay of the land, Mike!