Last month, I launched my monthly Grocery Price Index to track grocery prices in the Trump era.
I am tracking 30 regular household items at my local Kroger.
In the first month, prices of the 30 items largely stayed the same.
With one major exception.
Eggs.
The cost of 12 extra large, Grade A eggs jumped 24%, from $4.19 in mid-January, to…
$5.19 last week:
The overall index rose from 120.59 to 120.85. (Soda was up, avocados and cheese slices were down). More to come in the months ahead.
Day 83 — February 22, 2025
Elon Musk, a billionaire whose role remains unclear atop the federal government (except that he spent $200M-plus to secure that role) sent an email to millions of federal workers telling them to reply by 11:59 p.m. Monday on the five things they accomplished the previous week. Here’s a screenshot of what folks received:
In a tweet hours before that email went out, Musk previewed it was coming, then said “[F]ailure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”
Overall, the email is causing chaos across the federal workforce.
One common theme was that, before Musk’s tweet, none of these departments or agencies was given any advance notice that their own workforces would be sent this request from an outside agency—and a private sector billionaire at that.
“The American Federation of Government Employees said in a notice to members that the union "strongly believes this email was sent illegitimately and that OPM lacks the authority to direct the assignment of work to agency employees in this manner.””
Supervisors at numerous agencies (including the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Internal Revenue Service, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Department of Energy, and the Pentagon (civilian employees)) told employees not to respond to the email, and to wait for guidance.
Other agencies, such as the FBI and State Department, were more firm, suggesting to employees that the request came from outside the chain of command. One ambassador wrote: “no employee is obligated to report their activities outside of their Department chain of command.”
Think about it: if Musk can command that all federal employees take this step—answering to him and his team of undefined DOGE hacks—and that precedent is created, what comes next?
Share this post