The Great American Stalemate

Housing locked, jobs frozen, justice bent, Gaza displaced, COVID ignored, and in Alaska, Trump got played by Putin’s ankles.

Good morning! Remember when Americans chased opportunity with a U-Haul, a handshake, and an unreasonable security deposit? That dynamism is jammed in park. Mobility, both geographic and economic, has fallen to record lows, and the “go where the jobs are” story now comes with a footnote: only if you can forfeit your 3% mortgage, eat the moving bill, and pray your new city isn’t even pricier. The WSJ clocks the 2023 mover share at a post-war low and says it held roughly steady last year; job-switching is also at its weakest since the Great Recession, as firms cut back on relocation and entry-level ladders get yanked up.

The big culprit is housing’s rate-lock “golden handcuffs.” Decades of zoning choke points collided with a spike in mortgage rates, and anyone lucky enough to hold a sub-4% loan isn’t budging. Economists say every percentage point below market makes it that much less likely you’ll sell. It becomes a measurable drag on the economy.

Affordability is the anvil. A decade ago, a typical family spent about 30% of income on housing; now it’s pushing 40%. Upsizers can’t upsize, downsizers can’t downsize, and first-timers can’t even get in the door. Nobody wants to trade a small, cheap payment for a bigger, expensive one, so inventory stays frozen.

The labor market is just as stiff. Job-hopping, the classic way to get a raise, is stuck around 2% a month, far below the churn of the late ’90s. Relocations have sunk to historic lows as companies quietly scrap moving packages. Productivity stalls when workers can’t move where they’re most needed, and wages follow.

For new graduates, the trap is worse. Start underemployed and odds are you’ll stay underemployed years later, scarred into the low-wage tier. Pair that with fewer entry roles and you’ve baked in inequality.

And yes, policy matters. Economists have long shown that keeping workers out of high-productivity metros drags down national GDP. Add today’s rate-lock, Trump’s tariff-inflated costs, and an immigration crackdown that starves local labor pools, and you get a country that feels…stalled.

Bottom line: America didn’t lose its hustle; we handcuffed it—through housing scarcity, frozen mortgages, thin ladders into good jobs, and employers obsessed with “senior-only” hires. Until we unjam housing and mobility, the “land of opportunity” will keep telling people to stay exactly where they are.

The party line from Washington is that the economy is “resilient.” Resilient like a patient in traction.

If Americans can’t move, at least the FBI is being “reorganized.” Which in Trumpian terms means the walls are quieter because the career professionals have been shoved out the door. Longtime DOJ and FBI lawyers who worked January 6th cases are being fired, pushed, or “reassigned” with a wink. The regime calls it reform; everyone else calls it retribution.

The purge isn’t just about removing people, it’s about redefining the job. The Bureau’s new assignments look less like law enforcement and more like political policing. Instead of chasing terrorists, agents are told to track “antifa networks.” Instead of pursuing financial crimes, they’re rerouted into immigration raids. Domestic intelligence, once focused on counterterrorism, is now redirected toward “election integrity,” which in practice means surveilling local officials who resist Trump’s redistricting schemes. When you gut career expertise and refill the ranks with loyalists, you don’t end up with a neutral FBI, you get a Praetorian Guard in blue windbreakers.

This is the classic authoritarian pivot: dismantle institutional independence, replace it with personal loyalty, and then dress it up as efficiency. The people who once built cases against organized crime and foreign espionage are out the door; the people left behind are handed political enemies lists. The FBI motto used to be “Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity.” Under Trump, it’s fast becoming “Find Biden’s Emails.”

And if you thought the DC police takeover was just cosplay authoritarianism, think again. Trump literally tried to seize the Metropolitan Police Department under the flimsiest “crime emergency” pretext, only to be swatted back by Judge Ana Reyes with a reminder that the Home Rule Act is not a blank check for cosplay autocrats. Taken together, it’s the same playbook: hollow out law enforcement until only loyalty remains, then slap a “law and order” label on the hollow shell.

While Trump runs roughshod over domestic institutions, Israel is preparing another round of “population management.” Translation: expanded military operations in Gaza, paired with quiet talks about resettling Palestinians abroad. Libya, South Sudan, even the Sinai Peninsula have been floated as destinations, as if countries already burning need a few hundred thousand more refugees to sweeten the deal.

And then there’s Trump’s own brainstorm: empty Gaza and rebuild it as a “Riviera of the Middle East.” A beachfront development scheme with a side of ethnic cleansing. International law calls it forcible transfer. Trump calls it real estate. Either way, under bombardment, blockade, and famine warnings, the word “voluntary” is doing Olympic-level gymnastics.

As if schools weren’t fraught enough, students are heading back just as the new “Stratus” variant sends COVID rates surging. The Southwest leads the nation at 12.5% positivity; L.A. County wastewater is peaking like it’s February again. And right on cue, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. stripped away the CDC’s recommendation that children and pregnant people get boosters.

Not just reckless; this is ideological. Medical groups are suing, pointing out that the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, the actual scientists, still recommends boosters because they cut hospitalizations by almost half and deaths by nearly a quarter. Uptake was already anemic, with fewer than one in four adults bothering to get the last shot. Now, thanks to Kennedy, the message is: let the virus rip, and may the odds be ever in your favor.

So while parents price out N95s and kids share air with a highly transmissible variant, the administration’s response is to shrug. Public health has been privatized: if you get sick, that’s your personal responsibility. Or as the virus itself might say, “thanks for the open house.”

Finally, the week’s pièce de résistance: Trump’s Alaskan lovefest with Vladimir Putin. Marketed as a peace summit, it delivered neither peace nor dignity. Russia analyst Mark Galiotti calls it what it was: a stage-managed dominance game in which Putin got everything he wanted, framing the debate, dangling a grotesque “deal” that demands Ukraine surrender swaths of blood-soaked territory, and even inviting Trump to Moscow in English for the dominance optics.

Trump, visibly tired and rambling, declared the summit a “10.” Putin likely scored it the same, though for different reasons. One outlet went so far as to compare Trump’s swollen cankles to Putin’s lean ankles. That’s how deep the optics cut: the strongman posing as sharp and confident while his American counterpart looked like he’d lost a round of golf to his own caddy. America didn’t just get played in Anchorage; it got humiliated, ankles, cankles, and all.

That’s your Sunday sweep: a country stuck in place at home, gutting its institutions, exporting displacement abroad, shrugging at preventable illness, and embarrassing itself on the world stage. America is moving less, and so is the moral compass.

For everyone following along with my four-legged co-editor’s recovery: the latest word from the vet is cautiously optimistic. What we’ve been seeing may not be another prolapse after all, but his third eyelid. The swelling looks a little less inflamed today, and there’s ever so slight improvement. Fingers firmly crossed.