Today’s Big Story

So Much for a Soft Landing

Stocks suffer worst day of 2025 as recession fears rise

The stock market cratered on Monday, with investors fearful that the economy could be headed into a recession. Why? Well, because President Donald Trump said the economy would see “a period of transition” and refused to rule out a recession. Which basically was what no one wanted to hear and will no doubt put new pressures on consumer confidence and the White House—all just days ahead of a possible government shutdown.

It’s not great news. For over a year, economists and policymakers have been singularly focused on achieving a so-called “soft landing” that brings inflation down without a recession. But now, as the Wall Street Journal points out, “a new team of pilots are considering a course correction that, by their own acknowledgment, might tip the economy toward a hard landing.” Trump and his senior advisers in recent days have signaled indifference to rising risks, which is putting a chill on private-sector investments. They have argued a “detox” might be needed in spending and hiring, that falling stock values aren’t a big worry, and that inflation could rise in the short run.

The high cost of living was one of the primary reasons that Donald Trump was elected to the presidency. Trump himself said in a December interview with NBC News, “I won on groceries,” explaining, “When you buy apples, when you buy bacon, when you buy eggs, they would double and triple the price over a short period of time, and I won an election based on that. We’re going to bring those prices way down.”

Trump didn’t just promise to implement policies that would gradually ease economic concerns; throughout 2024, he said that if America voted for him, prices would fall rapidly—on day one, actually. Seven weeks into the second Trump administration, grocery prices haven’t gone down. Intelligencer says Trump is now trying a new strategy: urging Americans to quit complaining and trust that he’ll eventually make them “so rich.” Over the weekend, Trump shared a Daily Caller article on Truth Social titled “Shut Up About Egg Prices—Trump Is Saving Consumers Millions.”

It’s a striking change in tone and message for a man who rode widespread economic dissatisfaction to the White House by promising to “make America affordable again.” Though all three major U.S. stock indexes slumped—and even crypto is falling—Trump’s team projected confidence that the volatility would prove temporary and that an economic boom set off by tax cuts would follow later this year.

X Experiences ‘Major Outages’

Musk claims “massive cyberattack” hit platform

Hours after a series of outages Monday that left X unavailable to thousands of users, Elon Musk claimed that the platform was being targeted in a massive cyberattack. “We get attacked every day, but this was done with a lot of resources,” Musk claimed in a post. “Either a large, coordinated group and/or a country is involved. Tracing …”

Musk later claimed that the attack originated from IP addresses "in the Ukraine area," (without going into detail on what this might mean) during an interview with Fox Business' Larry Kudlow. According to the Associated Press, cybersecurity experts quickly pointed out, however, that this doesn’t necessarily mean that an attack originated in Ukraine. Security researcher Kevin Beaumont said on Bluesky that Musk’s claim is “missing a key fact—it was actually IPs from worldwide, not just Ukraine.” Specifically, he said it was a Mirai variant botnet, which is made of compromised cameras. He said while he is not sure who is behind the attack, it “Smells of APTs—advanced persistent teenagers.”

Outage reports started at about 6 am Eastern and spiked around 10 am with 41,000 reports, per Downdetector, which tracks website and app outages. The app formerly known as Twitter has experienced several widespread outages since Musk took over in 2022. When he acquired the platform for $44 billion, the Tesla CEO slashed the company’s headcount by about 80% from 7,500 employees to 1,300 workers, and just 550 full-time engineers, by January 2023.

Let’s Talk About Avocados

How the Mexican import conquered the U.S. market

Avocados are true superfoods: dense, buttery scoops of vitamins, fat and fiber—all in a hand-sized package. But my fellow millennial’s favorite toast topping didn’t just happen. Humankind worked for a long time to make them this perfectly delicious. According to a just-released paper, people in what’s now modern-day Honduras made avocados a part of their diets at least 10,000 years ago and purposefully improved them starting more than 7,500 years ago—first by managing wild trees, and then by selectively planting new ones, to encourage thicker rinds and larger fruit.

Now, we’re practically addicted. The average American devours over nine pounds of avocados a year. If that sounds like a lot of avocados, that’s because it is. In the 1970s, it was less than a single pound. In the 1990s, it was still less than two pounds. Even since 2000, America’s national avocado consumption has quadrupled. In fact, we’ve developed such a voracious appetite for this versatile fruit that the U.S. now annually brings in nearly 3 billion pounds of avocados. And nearly all of the avocados that Americans eat are imported—and close to 90% of those imports come from Mexico.

Of course, with the recent tariffs slapped on Mexican imports by the Trump administration, businesses are scrambling to decide whether to eat the costs—or feed them to consumers. Before they could make their decisions, the White House swerved and suddenly delayed the tariffs for a month. But no matter what happens next, there are two things that probably won’t change about the avocado economy: The first is that U.S. companies will keep importing from Mexico because that’s the only way they can meet the year-round demand. The second is that Americans will keep buying them. After all, isn’t that why we can’t afford to buy houses? 

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