“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.