Sunday, June 14, 2026
Trump at 80: A President ‘Really Uncomfortable’ With Aging
Trump at 80: A President ‘Really Uncomfortable’ With Aging
“As President Trump turns 80, he faces scrutiny over his age and stamina, with some questioning his ability to handle the demands of the presidency. Despite his age, Trump maintains a demanding schedule, often working late into the night and engaging in numerous phone calls and meetings. While his aides insist he is in excellent health, Trump’s public appearances and speech patterns have led to speculation about his well-being.
Even for a president known for imposing his own reality on every situation, Mr. Trump has not outrun scrutiny over his age.
By Katie Rogers
Katie Rogers is a White House reporter. She reported from Washington.
He stays up late, phoning lawyers and lawmakers, while posting up to 150 times a night on Truth Social. His mornings involve calls with world leaders about the war in the Middle East, or talks with landscapers about replanting a bothersome tree. When he arrives in the Oval Office, his unstructured days unfold like a time-lapse video, with people zipping around him as he stays seated at the center of the frame.
As President Trump turns 80 on Sunday, he is so intent on projecting an image of relentless energy that he has installed a massive, mixed martial arts octagon on the South Lawn to mark the occasion. After watching the fight, Mr. Trump will depart Washington in the middle of the night and cross an ocean for a diplomatic summit in France. It is a schedule that seems devised to ward off questions about age and stamina as he begins his ninth decade.
But even for a president known for imposing his own reality on every situation, Mr. Trump is facing scrutiny over his age that has grown more intense with each passing year. A Reuters/Ipsos poll taken in February showed that nearly six in 10 Americans think Mr. Trump is growing more erratic.
On Monday, Mr. Trump appeared to doze off during a New York Knicks game at Madison Square Garden. That episode prompted such intense speculation that James Dolan, a prominent ally and the team’s owner, felt compelled to weigh in publicly, saying the president “was very much awake.”
On June 4, during an hourlong appearance in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump leaned to the side in his chair, closing his eyes for a few seconds as Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, spoke about the importance of coal.
Earlier this month, legions of online observers speculated, as they had before, that Mr. Trump was ailing when his public schedule contained no public events for nearly a week, a streak that began just after a physical exam at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. Three days after that evaluation was completed, the president’s physician, Dr. Sean P. Barbabella, declared in a summary that the 79-year-old Mr. Trump “remains in excellent health, demonstrating strong cardiac, pulmonary, neurological and overall physical function.”
So the oldest president ever to be inaugurated and his advisers spend a lot of time hitting back at people who have drawn a different set of conclusions about his health based on what they believe they can plainly see.
This week, senior White House officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to talk about Mr. Trump’s health, said that when the president appears to slump or lean over at his desk in the Oval Office, as he did during an event earlier this month, he is doing it to lean closer to better hear someone speaking. (He leaned away from Mr. Zeldin and closed his eyes during the event on June 4th.)
Mr. Trump’s hand is frequently bruised and bandaged, but the White House officials said that was from all of the handshaking he likes to do. And he is not sleeping during public events, like the game at Madison Square Garden. He is just looking down, they said, or actively listening with his eyes closed. Other times, they believe he is the victim of selective editing or unflattering camera angles.
“The White House doctors are among the most elite physicians in the world, and they have released multiple comprehensive reports confirming President Trump is in excellent health and fully fit to carry out all duties of commander in chief,” Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said in a statement. “The president proves this himself every single day, taking nonstop questions from a hostile press corps and maintaining a relentless schedule.”
Still, Mr. Trump, like any president or medical patient, only discloses what he wants the public to know. His physicians have evaded questions about his health for years, including after a gunman’s bullet grazed his ear in Butler, Pa., and when he was sick with Covid in 2020. Presidents are not legally required to share their most sensitive health information with the public, and the summaries they do share are in keeping with modern tradition rather than obligation.
Mr. Trump is part of a class of Washington politicians who have remained in power even as Americans have signaled concerns about aging leaders. Washington is a part-time home to the third-oldest Congress in history, and if Mr. Trump completes his term at age 82, he will be the oldest president to have held office.
“Somebody at 80 years old just doesn’t have the physical stamina, the mental stamina for that office,” said Rahm Emanuel, a prominent Democrat who is interested in running for president in 2028, and who has called for a mandatory retirement age of 75 for many top federal positions. Mr. Emanuel, who served as a chief of staff to President Barack Obama and a top aide to President Bill Clinton, said that the presidency is especially taxing.
“It ages you in a way that no other stress in your life does,” he said.
Some White Houses have been more aggressive than others at obscuring the truth of an aging president’s condition. As President Joseph R. Biden Jr. physically declined, his aides went to great lengths to obscure the signs of his aging. No one in Mr. Biden’s inner circle discouraged him from trying to run for the presidency again, despite indications that he was growing more frail.
As he ages, Mr. Trump has taken a different approach. He lets the cameras pick up his slumps, swollen ankles and bandaged hand. He continues to take a tall stairway wheeled up to Air Force One, often navigating the stairs carefully. He continues to appear before the news media, fielding questions from friendlier faces and lashing out at journalists who ask him questions he perceives as unflattering.
More often than not, he meanders far beyond the topic he has appeared before reporters to discuss.
“These are the strongest job numbers of the entire administration so far, and that’s during this conflict, on top of it. So it’s great. And, you know, we have a thing. We have a problem in this country, because it used to be, if you’re — I’m a little older than a couple of you, but I don’t feel old. I feel the same as I did 50 years ago. It’s crazy. Mr. Senator. We got a great Senator right here, Ron, but I do feel the same. But — but in the old days, you know, if you had good job numbers, like great job numbers like they announced today, the stock market goes up. Today, everything is crazy,” Mr. Trump said to a group of supporters in Wisconsin earlier this month, slipping an aside about his age into a monologue on other topics, including the U.S. war in Iran, his thoughts about the stock market, and a greeting for Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin.
The presidential historian Julian E. Zelizer, who has edited a book about the Trump presidency, said that it is hard to know what elements of Mr. Trump’s erratic behavior and meandering speech patterns can be attributed to age-related decline.
“He’s so unconventional, so to speak, and so different in how he acts as a president, including the way he speaks, that it’s harder for people to discern what is not normal for him as opposed to exactly how he’s been speaking since ‘The Apprentice,’” Mr. Zelizer said. “All of this makes it a lot foggier when these instances emerge.”
A call-heavy schedule
Mr. Trump’s public appearances are still limited compared with his first term, with most events falling between noon and 4 p.m., according to a recent analysis of his public schedule.
According to several people with knowledge of his schedule and habits, Mr. Trump gets somewhere between four and five hours of sleep a night. His late-night Truth Social sprees are conducted either by the president or by an aide, Natalie Harp, who has access to his account and shares flurries of posts with his approval.
The president heads to the Oval Office between 9 a.m. and 10 a.m., but sometimes arrives as late as 11 a.m. He often starts his workdays on the phone in the White House residence before heading downstairs. Once he is in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump’s appointments often run long or bleed into each other, with aides and visitors staying for unrelated meetings.
In response to follow-up questions about the president’s most recent health exam and about Mr. Trump’s whereabouts during the weeklong period when he was out of public view, the White House provided The Times with a 15-page schedule of the president’s activities, many of which did not appear on his official schedule, from May 27 through June 10.
The document reveals a White House where Mr. Trump’s days often unfold in an unstructured cascade of phone calls during and between scheduled meetings and unscheduled ones. On the morning of May 27, the day after his physical, the president participated in eight phone calls, with the earliest at 7:15 a.m., before participating in a briefing to prepare for a cabinet meeting.
His afternoon included seven more meetings, including one about his White House ballroom project that ran for nearly two hours. He participated in three more calls, two of which were about Iran negotiations.
The next day, May 28, Mr. Trump held 11 calls and 8 meetings, and left the Oval Office at 11:35 p.m., according to the document. On several other workdays when he did not have public events, including May 29, June 1 and June 2, Mr. Trump left the Oval Office after 7 p.m. Lately, aides who sit outside of the office have started trading off evening shifts to make sure they are there when Mr. Trump decides to head to the residence, one senior official said.
All the while, Mr. Trump’s Truth Social account churned out posts throughout the day and often late into the evening. Between May 27 and June 10, Mr. Trump’s account posted 387 times — an average of 27 posts per day. Among the complaints about media coverage and endorsements of Republican politicians, dozens of those posts were about various White House and Washington construction projects, including his planned ballroom and the rehabbing of the Reflecting Pool on the National Mall.
Mr. Trump recently invited construction workers who had worked on the Reflecting Pool into the Oval Office for a photo, an appointment that was hastily added to his schedule when he decided he wanted to meet with them.
Several of Mr. Trump’s allies who have spent time with him lately at the White House, who were granted anonymity to describe their interactions with the president, said that he is more or less the same person he used to be, without any signs of diminished faculties. In one meeting, Mr. Trump forgot someone’s name. One recent Oval Office guest noted that in another meeting, Mr. Trump seemed more tired than usual, which that person attributed to his night-owl tendencies and late-night posting sessions catching up with him as he ages.
Defenders say that Mr. Trump has not lost a step, largely because he still takes questions from reporters.
“He’s not shying away from somebody throwing a fastball at him,” said Stephen K. Bannon, the pro-Trump podcaster and former White House aide. Mr. Bannon said that the president has grown more energetic as the pressure around him has grown, particularly as he seeks to end the war in Iran.
“History seems to have sped up, and he seems to be speeding up with it,” he said.
Tucker Carlson, an ally of Mr. Trump’s who has fallen out with him over the war, said in an interview that he did not think Mr. Trump has missed a step. But he said the president does not enjoy discussing the topic of his age and mortality: “He’s really uncomfortable with it,” Mr. Carlson said, adding that Mr. Trump often brings up elderly people he knows who he feels are in great shape for their age. Mr. Trump frequently references Gary Player, the 90-year-old retired golfer, as one example.
Mr. Carlson said that Mr. Trump’s intense focus on his ballroom project was about “an older man building a monument to himself.”
Medical questions
Late on a Friday evening two weeks ago, Mr. Trump’s physician released a summary of the president’s latest Walter Reed exam. The president had last visited the medical center in October for what his aides said was a semiannual checkup after a visit in April 2025.
In his latest report, Dr. Barbabella wrote that the president had been evaluated by a team of 22 medical professionals, without noting their specialties. The president had an echocardiogram and an ultrasound of the heart, after increased testing of his cardiovascular system last year and a diagnosis of chronic venous insufficiency, a condition that occurs when veins have trouble moving blood back to the heart. Mr. Trump has taken two medications to lower his LDL cholesterol levels.
Several cardiologists interviewed for this article said that it was encouraging to see that the president had managed his cholesterol levels and had reported a blood pressure within healthy range. But they questioned the use of artificial intelligence to provide an evaluation of Mr. Trump’s cardiac age, which Dr. Barbabella assessed as 14 years younger than the president’s actual age.
“There is no tool for using A.I. to make that kind of a statement that is accepted in the cardiology community,” said Dr. Eric Topol, a cardiologist who studies the science of aging. “It hasn’t been validated to a point where it could be used for biological age versus chronological age.”
Dr. Topol also said that a CT angiogram, which checks for blocked arteries in the heart, turning back a clear reading was “very unusual” for a 79-year-old. In 2018, the White House physician at the time, Dr. Ronny Jackson, said that Mr. Trump had a calcium score of 133, indicating plaque in his arteries but at a level fairly common for a man of his age.
“The doctors deserve praise and he deserves praise because of managing his cholesterol,” Dr. Topol said. But he added that there were several areas of the report that lacked detail about the condition of Mr. Trump’s arteries. “It’s possible he has no buildup, but that should be specifically presented,” Dr. Topol said.
In a lengthy interview with The Times in January in which he fielded questions for hours on topics ranging from foreign policy to his health, Mr. Trump saidthat he had never been diagnosed with heart disease. He said that he had never had a heart attack.
And Mr. Trump, who has gained 14 pounds since his last physical, according to Dr. Barbabella’s summary, said at the time that he had never used a GLP-1 drug for weight loss.
Mr. Trump, who has called journalists seditious and treasonous for asking questions about his health, said that he attacked them because he had “gone out of my way to take physical exams more than anybody.
“I just feel it’s important, because I think that people that are president ideally should be in good health, and they should be good cognitively,” he added.
For this article, White House officials were given a detailed list of questions asking for more information about Mr. Trump’s latest exam, including an updated calcium score, which commonly accompanies angiogram results, and whether or not Mr. Trump has ever had a sleep study or been screened for sleep apnea, given his apparent drowsiness during the day.
The White House did not say whether Mr. Trump would take his doctor’s advice to lower his aspirin dosage, as listed in Dr. Barbabella’s health summary, or develop an exercise and healthy eating plan to manage his weight.
“Every one of the tests in question were completed, and they have all checked out perfectly,” Ms. Leavitt said in response to those questions. “President Trump has revealed more personal medical information than any president in history because he wants to be maximally transparent with the American public, and there is literally nothing to hide.”
Dylan Freedman and Chris Cameron contributed reporting from Washington.
Katie Rogers is a White House correspondent for The Times, reporting on President Trump.“
Saturday, June 13, 2026
At the Kennedy Center, a Name Change Shrouded in Uncertainty - The New York Times
At the Kennedy Center, a Name Change Shrouded in Uncertainty
"President Trump’s name was removed from the arts institution’s facade overnight on Saturday. Many questions remain, including whether or not it stays off.
At high noon on Saturday at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, one vigil gave way to another, as patrons and visitors pivoted from concerns over the center’s name to the fate of an institution mired in legal uncertainty.
About 150 people had gathered in front of the building under a blazing sun, having heard that the center had until noon to certify that President Trump’s name had indeed been removed from the facade, as a federal court had ordered.
The center filed the certification with the court before the deadline, but visitors looking to confirm the results with their own eyes were out of luck: The marble front remained shrouded in white- and blue-striped tarps, with no clear answer on when they would be removed.
“I was hoping for a reveal, honestly,” said Katy Bigge, a student at Rutgers University who was visiting Washington with her parents. Her father, Philip Bigge, was squatting on the ground, peering through a crack between the tarp and the building’s front to try to make certain that Mr. Trump’s name was gone. He could not be sure, but he thought he had detected that the letters were missing.
“I think overall the message is that the process works,” he said.
Ms. Bigge, 21, was less sure about the removal’s larger civic meaning, but she was pleased to witness its aftermath. “Something like this is a little satisfying,” she said.
It was far from clear how long the satisfaction of Mr. Trump’s critics, some of whom had also gathered at the Kennedy Center on Friday night, would last. Representatives for the Kennedy Center did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday afternoon about plans for the facade.
The president’s allies on the center’s board, who voted in December to add Mr. Trump’s name to the building and who consider him key to the institution’s revitalization, are continuing to fight the judge’s order in an appeals court.
In the ruling late last month, Judge Christopher R. Cooper of Federal District Court in Washington found that only Congress, which dedicated the building as a living memorial to John F. Kennedy in 1964, could alter its name. But if a higher court disagrees, it is possible that the letters will go right back up.
Hanging in the balance of the appeal is also Mr. Trump’s plan for a two-year closure for renovations, after the judge ruled that the board had not properly scrutinized the plan.
Even if the institution stays open, it will do so with a staff depleted by firings, layoffs and departures; with a calendar largely empty of programming; and with the financial headwinds brought about by boycotts from artists and audiences.
“The name change was the most legible imprint of the White House on the center, but so much damage had already been done at that point,” said Cathleen O’Malley, a former manager in the center’s artistic programming department, who left her job in February.
Ms. O’Malley was among the crowd at the Kennedy Center on Friday, spending 14 hours waiting for Mr. Trump’s name to come down. She said one of the biggest challenges going forward would be the loss of experienced employees who had spent years building relationships with artists and donors.
Those “nursing a fantasy that the Kennedy Center will spring back to life when these letters come down,” she said, “are missing the breadth and depth of damage that has been done over the last 16 months.”
Mr. Trump and his allies have argued that the rebranding has benefited the institution. In a briefing filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the Justice Department argued that millions of dollars in donations had been contingent on having Mr. Trump’s name on the building.
“Removal of President Trump’s name threatens to impede the center’s fund-raising efforts and contribute to the financial decline of the center,” the filing read.
No public financial documents have taken stock of the economic impact of Mr. Trump’s takeover, but tax filings that cover part of his first year as chairman of the center are expected to be released in the coming months.
Amid the uncertainty of the legal battle, the National Symphony Orchestra, which performs at the center, has been left in limbo, without an approved budget to fund its coming season. On Saturday, the orchestra will play what could be its last concert there before the closure. Mr. Trump’s takeover has divided some Kennedy Center supporters, with some favoring boycotts of the symphony and other programming, and others insisting that boycotts only harm the musicians.
“I have so many amazing memories here,” Paige Carter, a recent graduate of American University’s law school who let her Kennedy Center membership lapse after the president took over, said on Saturday. “I desperately miss it.”
Mr. Trump has argued that a two-year renovation of the Kennedy Center is exactly what the institution, which opened in 1971, needs to thrive. Last year, he helped secure $257 million from Congress for the work.
Matt Floca, the center’s executive director and the president’s point person for the renovation plans, has said the building is in desperate need of maintenance, pointing to serious water leaks, outdated equipment and discolored exterior marble.
Judge Cooper, who temporarily blocked the closure, agreed that maintenance was “sorely needed.” But he said that in quickly approving the president’s plan, the board had been “ill-informed” and needed to properly assess the potential consequences of shuttering Washington’s pre-eminent arts institution.
The judge gave the board the option to scrutinize the consequences of a two-year closure more seriously before it could proceed with such a decision. It is not clear whether the board will do that or focus on getting approval for the plan through the appellate courts.
The tarp-covered matrix of scaffolding at the front of the building had already made the arts center seem like an active work zone.
The work on Friday night pushed past the initial midnight deadline set by Judge Cooper. He approved a 12-hour extension after Mr. Floca submitted a filing saying that thunderstorms had delayed the letters’ removal.
But the work also appeared to be contingent on the outcome of the down-to-the-wire appeal by the Kennedy Center. It was only after the district court and an appeals court rejected the center’s requests for a stay on the order that a work crew finished constructing the scaffolding.
Lawyers for Representative Joyce Beatty, a Democrat of Ohio and an ex officio member of the board whose lawsuit resulted in the court ruling, did not oppose the request for the extension but shared a note of skepticism.
“Defendants had two weeks to comply with the order,” the lawyers wrote in a court filing, “and only need an extension because of their inexcusable delay.”
It was not clear when Mr. Floca, who is in regular communication with Mr. Trump, planned to give the signal to take down the tarps and reveal the facade.
Elizabeth Williamson is a feature writer for The Times, based in Washington. She has been a journalist for three decades, on three continents.
Julia Jacobs is an arts and culture reporter who often covers legal issues for The Times."
Opinion | Only One President Could Come Up With This Spectacle - The New York Times
Jamelle Bouie
Only One President Could Come Up With This Spectacle
"You’re reading the Jamelle Bouie newsletter. Historical context for present-day events.
Tomorrow, on Flag Day, President Trump and the White House will host U.F.C. — the Ultimate Fighting Championship — for a set of fights in honor of the nation’s 250th anniversary, as well as to mark the president’s 80th birthday. To hold this event, the president has transformed the White House grounds into a pay-per-view spectacle — a carnival designed and built for the biggest display you can imagine.
It suffices to say that this is out of the ordinary for a celebration of the nation’s founding and independence.
At the Jubilee in 1826, for example, President John Quincy Adams watched a parade from the steps of the White House and later listened to a reading of the Declaration of Independence.
The Centennial was a more extravagant affair — centered on a monthslong exhibition in Philadelphia. President Ulysses S. Grant opened that exhibition on May 10, 1876 in a joint appearance with Emperor Dom Pedro II of Brazil. In his official proclamation, Grant called on Americans to mark the centennial with “some public religious and devout thanksgiving to Almighty God for the blessings which have been bestowed upon us as a nation during the century of our existence, and humbly to invoke a continuance of His favor and of His protection.”
At the Sesquicentennial in 1926, President Calvin Coolidge delivered a speech in Philadelphia on the meaning of the Declaration of Independence. “At the end of 150 years,” said Coolidge, “the four corners of the earth unite in coming to Philadelphia as to a holy shrine in grateful acknowledgment of a service so great, which a few inspired men here rendered to humanity, that it is still the pre-eminent support of free government throughout the world.”
And on July 4, 1976, for the Bicentennial, President Gerald Ford traveled to key sites of the American Revolution — Valley Forge, Philadelphia and New York City — before returning to the White House for a final public celebration. While at Independence Hall, he also delivered a nationally televised address in which he called on the country to continue the work of the founders: “Liberty is for all men and women as a matter of equal and unalienable right. The establishment of justice and peace abroad will in large measure depend upon the peace and justice we create here in our own country, where we still show the way.”
In each celebration, we see how presidents treat the moment as a chance to exercise national leadership — to lead the American people in a collective appreciation of the nation’s highest values. None of them — not Adams, not Grant, not Coolidge, not Ford — turned the spotlight on themselves.
This is obviously a sharp contrast with the aesthetics of the current celebration, which are first and foremost about the president’s ego and vanity. But there’s something else as well.
To put the country and its people at the forefront of the occasion is to honor the democratic spirit of the founding of the United States. To put oneself at the forefront, as Trump has, is to discount and strip away that democratic content.
Sunday’s U.F.C. fight is not just a garish spectacle; it is an expression of the president’s contempt for the ritual and symbolism of American democracy — which is just another way to say, his contempt for democracy itself.
What I Wrote
I wrote about the ways Americans have shaped constitutional meaning and, in particular, the work of Black Americans through the 19th century to make the Constitution work for them.
But some of the most influential conventions in American history are well off the public radar. These are the Colored Conventions — gatherings of Black Americans held throughout the 19th century, beginning in the 1830s and ending in the 1890s. It was in these conventions that Black Americans, either born free or formerly enslaved, articulated a constitutional vision of their own. That vision would go on to play a critical role in the constitution-making of the Civil War and Reconstruction.
I also joined the Slate Culture Gabfest to talk about the new “Masters of the Universe” film. And on the most recent episode of my podcast with John Ganz, we talked about the 1998 dark comedy “Bulworth,” written, directed by and starring Warren Beatty.
Now Reading
Eric Segall on the “originalism” of the Roberts court for the blog “Dorf on Law.”
Moira Donegan on Nancy Mace for The New Yorker.
David Waldstreicher on Gordon Wood for The New Republic.
Charlotte Rosen on the Bernie Goetz shooting for The Baffler.
Lovia Gyarkye on the Haitian filmmaker Raoul Peck for Hammer & Hope.
Photo of the Week
I took this picture at the peak of Mount Rubidoux in Riverside, Calif.
Now Eating: Pasta Salad
This recipe from Melissa Clark is easy and delicious and perfect for a summer cookout or a potluck. It’s also easy to make it vegetarian by omitting the cured meats.
Ingredients
3 tablespoons red wine vinegar, plus more to taste
1 garlic clove, finely grated or minced
1 teaspoon dried oregano
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
⅓ cup extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for drizzling
1 pound short-cut pasta, such as farfalle
1 pint cherry or grape tomatoes, halved
8 ounces mozzarella, cubed (or use small mozzarella balls)
4 ounces sliced salami, cut into ¼-inch ribbons
¾ cup sliced Kalamata olives
½ cup thinly sliced cucumber
3 tablespoons diced red onion
1 cup coarsely chopped fresh parsley and basil leaves
Directions
Make the dressing: Combine vinegar, garlic, oregano and a big pinch each salt and pepper in a large bowl. Whisk in oil; taste and add more salt, pepper or vinegar as needed. Set aside.
Prepare the pasta: Bring a large pot of heavily salted water to a boil. Cook the pasta according to the package directions until the pasta is al dente. Drain well, transfer to the large bowl, and toss with the dressing while still warm.
Add tomatoes, mozzarella, salami, olives, cucumber and onion to the bowl and toss well; fold in herbs. Taste and season with more salt, pepper and vinegar, if you like.
Drizzle with olive oil and top with cracked black pepper just before serving.
Jamelle Bouie became a New York Times Opinion columnist in 2019. Before that he was the chief political correspondent for Slate magazine. He is based in Charlottesville, Va."
Wages Are Falling. Wealth Is Surging. No Wonder Americans Are Unhappy. - The New York Times
Wages Are Falling. Wealth Is Surging. No Wonder Americans Are Unhappy.
"As Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire, workers are facing higher prices and fears of A.I.-driven job losses.
Ben Casselman is The Times’s chief economics correspondent.
Two events from the past week help crystallize this strange, contradictory moment for the U.S. economy.
On Wednesday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the surge in energy prices had wiped out a year and a half of wage gains for the average American worker. On Friday, the public-markets debut of SpaceX made Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire.
That stark juxtaposition helps explain why many Americans, in survey after survey, say they no longer believe the U.S. economy is working for them. A few people are getting fabulously, unimaginably wealthy at the same time that entire generations of families worry they will never be able to afford to buy a house, raise children or enjoy a comfortable retirement.
“I don’t think the stock market is necessarily causing” Americans’ pessimism about the economy, said Stefanie Stantcheva, a Harvard professor who studies public sentiment. “But I don’t think people are looking at it and are thinking, ‘Great, this means I’m going to do very well, too.’ It’s potentially reinforcing this feeling of ‘I’m falling behind.’”
Inequality is hardly a new feature in America. But the explosion of wealth at the very top is without precedent in U.S. history. At the height of the Gilded Age at the end of the 19th century, the richest handful of Americans had a net worth equivalent to about 3 percent of the country’s annual economic output, according to data compiled by the French economists Gabriel Zucman and Emmanuel Saez. Today, the fortunes of the same 0.00001 percent — about 20 individuals — make up roughly four times as large a share, equivalent to 12 percent of annual output.
Other economists, using different methodologies, come up with somewhat different numbers. But hardly anyone disputes the basic fact that the wealthiest few have made extraordinary gains in recent years.
The picture for the other 99 percent of Americans is more nuanced. More than half of U.S. households own stocks, either directly or through retirement accounts, meaning they have benefited at least somewhat from the record-setting run-up in share prices. Wealth has risen more slowly for middle-class families than for the rich over the past decade, Federal Reserve data shows, but it has still risen.
For most Americans, however, “wealth” is a somewhat abstract concept, tied up in the house where they live and the retirement accounts they hope to leave untouched for as long as possible. What matters more, day to day, is their income. And the share of national income going to workers has been trending down for decades. It hit a record low in the first quarter of the year, according to data from the Commerce Department.
Now, rising costs are again taking a bite out of workers’ paychecks. The recent jump in energy prices — a result of the war with Iran — pushed the annual inflation rate to a three-year high in May. Hourly wages, adjusted for inflation, have fallen for three months in a row, erasing all the gains made during President Trump’s first year in office. Measures of consumer sentiment have plummeted as gas prices have risen.
Oil prices have eased somewhat in recent weeks on hopes of a lasting cease-fire, and are likely to fall further if the United States and Iran reach a deal and tankers begin to move out of the Persian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz in greater numbers.
But relief at the pump is not likely to end Americans’ anxiety after years of one economic shock after another. First, the Covid-19 pandemic shut down large parts of the economy and put tens of millions of people out of work, at least temporarily. Then inflation soared to the highest level in four decades. Since then, Americans have endured high interest rates, tariffs and repeated recession scares.
“If you think about what it felt like to go through Covid, and then inflation, and also political unrest and instability, you come out of those things thinking, ‘How am I supposed to plan for the future?’” said Elizabeth Wilkins, president of the Roosevelt Institute, a left-leaning think tank.
Ms. Stantcheva, the Harvard economist, has found that bouts of high inflation take a long-term toll on consumers’ economic attitudes. That is not only because of the strain on their budgets but also because it seems unfair — the wealthy are able to absorb higher prices relatively easily, while lower-income households struggle.
“It goes hand in hand with a big sense of inequity and injustice,” she said.
Now Americans face a new threat in the form of artificial intelligence, which tech industry leaders warn could eliminate whole categories of white-collar work. Many economists are skeptical of those predictions, but polls show that many workers are worried about what the technology will mean for their careers. Voters across the country have also rebelled against plans to build A.I. data centers in their communities, citing their impact on electricity bills, water supplies and air quality.
Given those concerns, it is hardly surprising that the public is uncomfortable with the surge in wealth that has accompanied the A.I. boom. Companies connected to the technology have driven the recent gains in the stock market. SpaceX’s debut on Friday was the first in what is expected to be a series of giant initial public offerings for A.I. companies. (SpaceX, though best known for its rockets and satellites, also owns an A.I. lab and has made huge investments in A.I. infrastructure.)
In addition to making Mr. Musk a trillionaire, the SpaceX I.P.O. alone was expected to mint thousands of new millionaires and several billionaires.
“Many of the tech moguls who are the current superrich have not helped themselves in the conversation by saying, ‘My innovation is going to obliterate your life,’” said Glenn Hubbard, an economist at Columbia Business School who served as a top adviser to President George W. Bush. “It’s not too crazy to imagine a backlash.”
Mr. Hubbard said he did not necessarily see a problem with the existence of billionaires or even trillionaires, as long as people were getting rich through entrepreneurship and innovation rather than through corruption or cronyism. But he said policymakers should take the public attitudes seriously. Congress should consider ways to tax billionaires more effectively, he said, and to ensure that the wealthy don’t exert undue influence on the political system.
Many progressive economists, however, argue that enormous fortunes like Mr. Musk’s inherently distort both the economic and the political systems, giving the superrich too many ways to avoid regulation, taxation and oversight.
“It’s the power to influence markets, it’s the power to buy competitors, it’s the power to influence policymaking,” said Mr. Zucman, one of the French scholars of wealth inequality. “If you want a well-functioning market economy, it’s not good to have too much concentrated power with extreme wealth at the very top. It distorts markets. It distorts democracy.”
The A.I. boom is still in its nascent stages, and some analysts are skeptical that SpaceX and other companies will earn profits to justify their sky-high valuations. If the doubters are right, share prices could fall and Mr. Musk’s trillionaire status could prove short-lived.
But such a decline could have consequences for ordinary Americans as well. A.I.-related investments have helped carry the economy through a tumultuous period; the stock market boom has helped prop up consumer spending as wage growth has cooled. A bursting of the A.I. bubble would put millions of jobs in jeopardy, from the electricians wiring data centers to the waiters serving wealthy investors in high-end restaurants. And it would vaporize trillions of dollars in paper wealth held in 401(k) accounts and college saving plans.
That can make A.I. feel like something of a Catch-22 for workers: If the technology succeeds in reshaping the economy, they could lose their jobs. If it fails to live up to the hype, their retirement savings could evaporate. No wonder so many Americans feel that the economy is rigged against them, said Heather Boushey, who served as an adviser in the Biden administration and has written a book about the economic impact of inequality.
“Clearly our economy is designed to create a handful of billionaires and a trillionaire,” Ms Boushey said. “It is no longer about creating opportunity and stability for the majority.”
Ben Casselman is the chief economics correspondent for The Times. He has reported on the economy for nearly 20 years."
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