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Why Flying Sucks—And What to Do About It Ganesh Sitaraman

Published

1 year ago

December 21, 2023

Air travel’s past is another country. (Photo by Found Image Holdings/Getty Images)

This was a banner year for the bizarre and the profane up in the air: there was the man who cooked shrimp and mashed potatoes in a plane lavatory using a battery (we don’t know why, either), and the Southwest passenger who yelled at a crying baby. There was the Orlando-bound flight where a woman had a meltdown, screaming and claiming “that motherfucker back there is not real!” (without any indication of who or what she was referring to). And then there was the international Delta flight that was diverted after a diarrhea incident midair (honestly, the less said about that, the better).

The Sunday before this past Thanksgiving saw a record number of passengers: 2.9 million flyers in one day, a number not seen since 2019. It was also a record-breaking year for consumer complaints: between January and May 2023, the total number filed over missed connections, flight delays, and cancellations was 38,000—more than double the same period in 2022. Earlier this month, Southwest was fined $140 million for disrupting travel for two million people during the 2022 holiday season.

Nowadays—unless you have enough money to pay for a bit more space, comfort, and distance—flying is generally pretty miserable. And it has become worse in recent years.

It all raises the question: Does it really have to be like this? Absolutely not, says Ganesh Sitaraman, whose new book, Why Flying Is Miserable: And How to Fix It, lays out what went wrong with the American aviation industry. In the excerpt below, he explains how we got ourselves into this current mess and how to dig ourselves out. —Mackenzie Dawson

Flying is a miracle. For most of human history, it seemed like an impossible dream. But today we take for granted that we can have breakfast in Chicago and dinner in Los Angeles or see family across the country during Thanksgiving. We can conduct business anywhere. We can visit all the wonders of the world.

But flying is also miserable. Tens of thousands of flights are delayed and canceled each year. As a result, we’ve missed weddings, had our vacations shortened, lost time with friends, and skipped important meetings. When flights are on time, we pay extra to check our bags and then worry they’ll get lost. The overhead bin space seems to shrink every year—just like the amount of legroom. Delays might mean hours sitting on the tarmac, wishing for a drink of water or a snack or a chance to run to the bathroom. Or they can mean missing a tight connection and being stranded in an unfamiliar city. For those in cities with small airports or airports dominated by one big airline, minimal competition means higher ticket prices. For others, flying is a challenge because the airlines don’t serve their city at all. And all of us struggle to navigate the dizzying array of airline statuses and hierarchies, credit card perks, and point systems.

And that’s just the passenger experience. Zooming out, the airline industry faces a great deal of, well, turbulence. That turbulence has huge impacts on the country, cities, workers, and the economy. Consider these dynamics:

Airlines have gone bankrupt over and over again—and in recent years, merged over and over again. There are now only four big U.S. carriers (Delta, American, United, and Southwest).

In the years before the Covid-19 pandemic, the airlines made record profits. But when the pandemic hit in 2020, they needed huge public support programs—their second in twenty years.

In 2022 alone, more than 180,000 flights were canceled. Some were because of the Southwest Airlines debacle during the December holidays. But many others were a function of staff shortages or extreme weather at major hub airports.

Pilots, flight attendants, and other airline employees are often overworked to the point of exhaustion. Meanwhile, unruly travelers are an increasing problem.

Airlines are now reducing service from midsize cities, like Toledo, Ohio, and Dubuque, Iowa. In some markets like Cheyenne, the state capital of Wyoming, city leaders have even agreed to pay the airlines to offer service because, despite making profits, airlines refuse to fly there without a revenue guarantee.

The miseries of flying and the turbulence in the industry aren’t inevitable—and they aren’t just the result of the pandemic. Nor is this a simple story of corporate mismanagement. As varied as these problems are, they stem from a single source: public policy. We make choices as a country—through our elected representatives—about how best to govern our economy. We choose to have rules to ensure that food doesn’t have bacteria in it, that our rivers and lakes aren’t polluted, that toasters and cars and children’s toys are safe. We choose to have a whole set of laws so banks can get chartered, offer loans, and hold our money safely with a federal insurance system in case the bank goes under. In all these areas and more, we have historically chosen a regime of regulated capitalism that has enabled a thriving economy, but one with guardrails to make sure the dynamics of the market don’t lead to destructive harms. Businesses are supposed to follow the rules we set and be held accountable when they violate the rules.

The key question for air travel—or anything else—is simple: What rules should we choose?

Since the Wright Brothers first took flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in 1903, the United States has tried three different approaches for governing air travel. During the infancy of flight, the federal government promoted the creation and growth of airlines, largely through subsidies. Once airlines were established, fierce competition led to industry chaos. Congress then adopted the second approach. It took a page from the American tradition of regulated capitalism and brought airlines under a system of governance akin to other transportation industries. The American tradition of regulated capitalism was built on the understanding that some sectors of the economy were not like others. Sectors like transportation, communications, energy, and banking were often network-like; they tended to become monopolies or oligopolies; and they could place extraordinary power in the hands of a small number of people and firms. Because of these dynamics, unrestricted competition wouldn’t work in those areas: it would lead to chaos or concentration. One solution is to nationalize businesses in these sectors. Indeed, some countries have had nationalized or publicly run airlines, trains, telephone systems, and electricity utilities.

But the American way was different. Instead of nationalization, these sectors were regulated as public utilities. Public utilities are essential infrastructure—critical for commerce, social life, and national security. Reliability and stability are paramount. From 1938 to 1978, air travel was governed under this regime.

The American tradition offered a system of structural regulations that together achieved a variety of national goals. The system was designed to serve small and midsize communities; to prevent airline bankruptcies and bailouts; to ensure airports wouldn’t be dominated by one airline; to avoid monopolization and predation; and to maintain stable, reliable service at all times. It did this through a set of rules that included the regulation of prices, routes, and entry into the airline business. During this period, a relatively small number of highly regulated big airlines dominated the market. The legal system ensured that the airlines offered high-quality service throughout the country—and prevented the abuses that naturally come with limited competition. It was an age of regulated oligopoly.

The overhead bin space seems to shrink every year—just like the amount of legroom. (Jeffrey Greenberg via Getty Images)

In the 1970s, this system came under pressure from left and right, leading to the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 and a third approach to governance. Advocates for deregulation thought air travel was not a special sector akin to a public utility. They saw airlines as an ordinary market service, like selling sofas or running a convenience store, and they wanted to let the marketplace work. Through the elimination of structural regulation, anyone with resources could start an airline (or so they said), and airlines could pick their routes and set their own prices. Increased competition would lead to cheaper flights. Advocates didn’t think that deregulation would have negative effects on small or midsize communities or that it would lead to concentration into a tiny number of dominant airlines. They even claimed that after deregulation, there could be up to 200 airlines operating efficiently. At first, the deregulators looked as if they had been right. Opening up competition led immediately to a rush of new entrants, lower prices, and fare wars in the early 1980s. But by the end of the decade, the airline industry was in crisis: bankruptcies, low profits, higher prices in some markets, labor-management conflicts, a worsening flight experience, and increased congestion. Leading advocates admitted that they had misunderstood that airline markets are monopolistic or oligopolistic, that they didn’t realize how important scale was to the airline business, and that they didn’t foresee many of these ill effects. Some politicians even apologized for deregulation.

And the four biggest airlines ultimately ended up with an even larger share of the market than before—but now without the duties or restraints of the regulated era. Airlines had become an unregulated oligopoly.

We have now lived under this system for more than forty years. In that time, there have been 189 bankruptcy filings in the industry, major carriers have shifted pension obligations to the government, the number of major airlines has shrunk, and the government has had to bail out the industry. Fees are higher, seats are smaller, and the experience of flying seems to be getting worse.

Then came the pandemic. The Covid-19 pandemic revealed for everyone how problematic our system of unregulated oligopoly is. Before the pandemic, the big airlines were flush with cash, so much so that American Airlines’ CEO Doug Parker predicted it would never lose money ever again. American alone issued stock buybacks amounting to $12.4 billion between 2013 and 2019—more than its annual payroll in a given year. But when the pandemic hit, air travel ground to a halt. By April of 2020, passenger travel was down 96 percent compared with one year earlier. Without much of a rainy day fund, the once flush airlines asked Congress for funding to cover their payroll in the spring of 2020. Some commentators observed that airlines didn’t need this support. They had highly valuable frequent flyer programs they could use as collateral to get private sector loans. If private sector funding was insufficient, they could file for bankruptcy, as they had in the past. Doing so would not liquidate the company or significantly disrupt air travel. Congress rejected these arguments, given the airlines’ status as an essential part of our commercial infrastructure.

The CARES Act of 2020 was a critically important piece of legislation, designed to prevent the catastrophic collapse of the airline industry—and in particular, to save the wages and jobs of workers—by authorizing $50 billion in loans and grants. Under the payroll support program, airlines were offered up to $25 billion to cover their employee salaries and benefits without layoffs. This program was extended twice, with total authorized spending ultimately running to $54 billion. American Airlines took $12.74 billion, Delta $11.88 billion, United $10.89 billion, Southwest $7.1 billion. The program was transparent, protected workers, and prevented the airlines from profiting off taxpayer funds. Airlines couldn’t fire or involuntarily furlough employees until September 30, 2021, couldn’t issue stock buybacks or dividends, and couldn’t increase executive compensation.

But in a quest to cut costs, airlines offered early retirement and voluntary furloughs, leave, and reduced hours to employees. Thousands of employees took up these offers, which included cash severance packages and generous benefits. While technically legal, early retirements certainly violated the spirit of the law. The point of the payroll support program and its no-layoffs condition was to allow the airlines to weather the downturn.

When travel perked back up, they would be ready to fly without delays or disruptions. But when passengers did start traveling again, the airlines had too few staff. They canceled flights by the thousands. There were almost twice as many cancellations in 2022 as compared with the average over the prior decade. Airlines also pushed pilots, flight attendants, and ground crews harder. Pilots for some airlines were flying six days a week, and fatigue rates were 350 percent higher than before the pandemic. Airlines argued that the problem was too few pilots due to minimum flight training requirements. Proposals emerged to lower training standards and increase the retirement age to allow older pilots to keep flying. But these proposals overlooked both the most immediate problem—the early retirement packages—and the deeper ones—pay and training pipelines. As the pilots’ union observed, some airlines had more pilots than before Covid but were flying fewer routes and having a hard time recruiting pilots for low pay. And unlike foreign airlines, the biggest U.S. carriers had only started pilot training programs in the last few years.

With workforce shortages and tens of thousands of flight cancellations, the airlines started cutting back on routes, in some cases ending service to entire cities. In the fall of 2022, American cut 28,000 flights—17 percent of its flights in November. This included hundreds of flights from large cities like Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Smaller cities are seeing airlines depart altogether. Since the pandemic, American, Delta, and United have dropped 59 cities from service. For some cities, the departure of its only airline means no daily flight service whatsoever. In September 2022, Toledo, Ohio, a city of about 270,000 with a metro area of about 600,000 people, lost daily flight service when American ended its last remaining route. In the 1970s, Toledo had service from five carriers, and United alone offered eleven daily flights to seven different cities.

To individual passengers, these post-pandemic challenges are frustrating. But for the country, a broken airline system is a crisis. Air travel is a basic piece of infrastructure for society—like roads, electricity, or the internet. Whether for pleasure, tourism, or commerce, air travel is critical in the modern world.

With the pandemic in the rearview mirror, the verdict is in. American air travel is getting worse. We now have fewer flights to fewer places with less competition and higher prices—and with overworked pilots, flight attendants, and employees. The CARES Act succeeded in preventing the worst-case scenario: bankruptcies, further consolidation, mass layoffs, and the hobbling of the industry. But it was not designed to address the underlying problems with flying—problems that were growing worse well before the pandemic. The time has come to take a fresh look at what’s gone wrong in air travel and how we can make it better. We now have sufficient experience with deregulation—and distance from the turn away from structural regulation—to reflect more carefully on both approaches, assess their benefits and drawbacks, and consider new directions for the governance of air travel. We can choose to fix flying.

This article is an edited excerpt from Ganesh Sitaraman’s new book Why Flying Is Miserable: And How to Fix It, published by Columbia Global Reports.

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The inauguration of a multi-billion dollar grift Judd Legum

Published

4 hours ago

January 21, 2025

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On Monday, Donald Trump took the oath of office — the first person to be sworn in as president while simultaneously hawking an eponymous meme coin.

Trump launched $TRUMP, a crypto token, on Friday night. Meme coins are crypto tokens tied to a celebrity or joke. The first and most famous is DOGE coin, a cryptocurrency centered around a famous image of a Shiba Inu dog. $TRUMP features an image of Trump during the assassination attempt last summer.

While meme coins are nominally tied to digital “artwork,” they function primarily as a speculative asset. Since many meme coins attempt to capitalize on online trends, they are known for extreme volatility. Hailey Welch, an online personality known as the “Hawk Tuah girl,” launched the “Hawk” meme coin in December. The Hawk coin’s value exploded shortly after launch, reaching a market cap of $490 million. But the price quickly collapsed. Today, the total value of all the 999 million Hawk coins is less than $30,000. You can buy 338 Hawk coins for less than one cent.

Trump is leveraging the prestige of the presidency and the global coverage of the inauguration to boost the price of $TRUMP. By Sunday evening, the price of one $TRUMP coin soared to over $75, putting the value of the 200 million $TRUMP coins in circulation at nearly $15 billion. By Monday afternoon, $TRUMP had lost about 40% of its value.

The primary beneficiary of this speculative activity is Trump himself. In a move that raised red flags even among crypto enthusiasts, 80% of all $TRUMP coins are reserved for a company owned by Trump. At its peak, the value of these coins exceeded $50 billion, making $TRUMP, which did not exist a few days ago, the dominant source of Trump’s wealth. The $TRUMP coins owned by Trump are currently locked, meaning they cannot be sold, but will be released in tranches over the next three years.

In 2016, Trump’s net worth was estimated to be about $3 billion. Before the launch of the $TRUMP, that had increased to around $7 billion, largely due to the public listing of Truth Social’s parent company, Trump Media & Technology Group. Truth Social loses millions of dollars every quarter and has few users, but Trump’s fans keep its stock price elevated.

So Trump has a huge financial incentive to keep the price of $TRUMP elevated until he can sell his coins. For Trump, there is nothing but upside. He received the coins for free — whatever he can sell them for will be a windfall. Trump’s supporters, however, could suffer huge financial losses. By Monday afternoon, a single $TRUMP coin cost $40. People who buy these coins looking to turn a big profit could instead find themselves with massive losses.

A vehicle for corrupt foreign influence

$TRUMP does not only create problems for reckless Trump fans. It means that the White House is for sale. Anyone seeking to curry favor with Trump — including foreign governments — now has a vehicle to transfer a virtually unlimited amount of money to Trump by driving up the price of $TRUMP coins.

As with all crypto transactions, anyone can purchase $TRUMP anonymously. The only record involves a digital wallet with no public owner. This means a foreign entity could make a large purchase of $TRUMP coins — perhaps boosting $TRUMP’s value before Trump sold some of his holdings — and no one would know. It creates an unprecedented and completely opaque method to bribe the President of the United States.

“While it’s tempting to dismiss this as just another Trump spectacle, the launch of the official Trump token opens up a Pandora’s box of ethical and regulatory questions,” Justin d’Anethan, an independent crypto analyst, told Reuters.

This week, we started a new publication, Musk Watch. NPR covered our launch HERE. It features accountability journalism focused on one of the most powerful humans in history. It is free to sign up, so I hope you’ll give it a try and let us know what you think.

Subscribe to Musk Watch

Crypto companies under federal investigation boost $TRUMP

Thousands of meme coins are launched every month. The failure rate for meme coins is estimated at over 97%. With so much competition, it is hard to make a significant number of people become aware of a meme coin. Trump, as the President of the United States, solves that problem. But even once people discover a meme coin, it needs to be easy to buy and sell in order to sustain interest.

It is possible to buy and sell crypto assets without an intermediary. But most people buy and sell crypto through a handful of popular exchanges, which make the process easy and allow you to use cash and other assets to fund purchases.

Exchanges like Coinbase, Kraken, and Robinhood can greatly increase awareness and demand for a meme coin. At the same time, they are not going to list every new meme coin that is issued — especially since many of them are scams.

But Coinbase, Kraken, and Robinhood all have made $TRUMP available to their users, dramatically increasing the number of buyers, and sending its price higher. And they aren’t just quietly listing $TRUMP. They are promoting $TRUMP to their user base.

Improving your relationship with the president is a good idea for any business. But these companies have even stronger motivations. Coinbase is currently being prosecuted by the SEC for “operating its crypto asset trading platform as an unregistered national securities exchange, broker, and clearing agency.” The SEC is also prosecuting Kraken for similar alleged activities. Robinhood has not been charged but received a “Wells Notice” from the SEC last May, indicating enforcement action is coming.

The crypto industry is reportedly hoping that, under the Trump administration, the SEC will either end their prosecutions and investigations or offer a favorable settlements.

More broadly, these companies are counting on the Trump administration to allow them to operate legally. The $TRUMP coin allows Trump to make billions from a more permissive regulatory environment. It transforms the presidency from a public trust into a tool for personal enrichment.

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Trump’s Back. What Now? Oliver Wiseman

Published

5 hours ago

January 21, 2025

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Yesterday, we saw the second inauguration of Donald Trump. Unsurprisingly, he did it his way. He danced onstage with the Village People the night before he took the oath of office. He moved the ceremony inside the Capitol because of the cold. He gave tech CEOs choice seating in the rotunda. And he delivered a speech that at times felt less like an inaug…

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Trump’s Back. What Now? Oliver Wiseman

Published

5 hours ago

January 21, 2025

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It’s Tuesday, January 21. I’m Olly Wiseman and this is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. It’s good to be back.

Today we answer the big questions about the transfer of power in Washington. Among them: Will Trump fight lawfare with lawfare? Will TikTok survive? Is neoliberalism dead? Is Trump cool? Does that even matter? Are we at war with Panama now? And: that hat.

But first: the second inauguration of Donald Trump. Unsurprisingly, he did it his way. He danced onstage with the Village People the night before he took the oath of office. He moved the ceremony inside the Capitol because of the cold. He gave tech CEOs choice seating in the rotunda. And he delivered a speech that at times felt less like an inaugural address and more like a State of the Union / campaign speech mashup. Ignoring unifying inaugural speech traditions stretching back to George Washington, he trashed his political opponents and touted new policies that would bring about a “golden age.”

His proposals were a Trumpian mix of serious (action on immigration and inflation) and, well, strange. It’s the Gulf of America now, and we’re “taking back” the Panama Canal, baby!

His promised day-one executive orders included:

Declaring a national emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border, unlocking federal funding for a border wall, reinstating the “remain in Mexico” policy for asylum seekers, and designating drug cartels as “global terrorists.”
Cutting regulations around oil and gas production by declaring another national emergency, this one on energy. (“We will drill, baby, drill.”)
Ending the environmental rules he calls “Biden’s electric vehicle mandate.”
Establishing an “external revenue service” to collect tariffs.
And ending the “government policy of trying to socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private life.” (You read about Trump’s repudiation of gender ideology in the federal government first in The Free Press on Sunday.)

Later in the day, Trump signed these orders. He also pardoned members of the mob who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and withdrew the United States from the World Health Organization. Trump’s January 6 pardons went further than his closest allies appear to have anticipated. Earlier this month, J.D. Vance said that those who committed violence during the riot “obviously” should not be pardoned. But Trump has commuted the sentences of members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers and granted “a full, complete and unconditional pardon to all other individuals convicted of offenses related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.”

Back to Trump’s speech. If there was a theme, it was that his own astonishing political comeback portends a national revival, one that he’ll deliver.

“I stand before you now as proof that you should never believe that something is impossible to do,” he said. “In America, the impossible is what we do best.”

Trump went further. His comeback, and his country’s, he claimed, weren’t just linked but were providential. Recalling the attempt on his life in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July, he said: “I felt then, and believe even more so now, that my life was saved for a reason. I was saved by God to make America great again.”

Gone was the grim “American Carnage” theme of his first inaugural speech. He spoke of the many challenges that “will be annihilated by this great momentum that the world is now witnessing in the United States of America.”

It is a promise both populist and popular, a reminder of why Trump won.

It is also, as my colleague Peter Savodnik argues in his column today, the death knell of neoliberalism and the end of cool.

Here’s Peter: Trump’s critics, “the so-called progressive elites, are howling at the idea that this chump, who is so very unserious, is The One who will restore our seriousness. They miss the point. Only the brawling, bumbling ringleader of the great circus that is today’s Republican Party could break open our sclerotic overclass and lay it bare for the whole republic to see not simply its emptiness but its rot.”

Read Peter’s article, “Trump Is Uncool. And That’s a Good Thing.”

Joe Biden’s Unpardonable Last Act

Another promise Trump made was to “rebalance” the scales of justice. “The vicious, violent, and unfair weaponization of the Justice Department of our government will end,” he said in his inaugural address. This would normally sound like a partisan gripe, if it weren’t for the final presidential acts of his predecessor, writes Eli Lake in The Free Press.

Just moments earlier, Joe Biden had issued sweeping preemptive pardons for his siblings and their spouses. The outgoing president did the same for some of his successor’s high-profile opponents, including Anthony Fauci and Liz Cheney. The level of clemency is without precedent, writes Eli, and inconsistent with Biden’s 2020 promise to uphold the rule of law. Indeed, four years ago Biden expressed his concern that Trump would pardon his own political cronies.

Trump now faces a choice: continue Biden’s erosion of norms, or end the cycle of lawfare. Which will it be?

Read Eli’s full report on Biden’s final act as president—and how Trump might respond.

(Photo by Rebecca Noble via Getty Images; illustration by *The Free Press*)

TikTok on the Clock

The first big internal MAGA dustup of Trump’s second term centers on TikTok, the Chinese-owned social network. Congress passed legislation that forced either the ban or the sale of the app, but on Sunday Trump gave TikTok an eleventh-hour reprieve announcing his intent to keep the app alive for 90 days. Hours after going dark, the short-video platform blinked back on.

This was welcome news to the crowd at a TikTok-sponsored inauguration party Sunday evening. Free Press reporter Olivia Reingold was on the scene and spoke to influencers who say: “We the people are for TikTok.” Read her full dispatch here.

Meanwhile, Joe Lonsdale, a prominent Silicon Valley supporter of Donald Trump, argues that the new president’s TikTok maneuvers undermine the rule of law. Now that Congress and the Supreme Court have weighed in, it doesn’t matter what Trump thinks of the TikTok ban. “The law must take effect,” writes Joe. “Because in our republic, it is the Congress that writes the law. If President Trump disagrees, he can try to change Congress’s mind.”

Read Joe Lonsdale’s op-ed: “Mr. President, Don’t Abandon the Rule of Law to Save TikTok.”

Melania Trump, wearing a hat, looks on during the inaugural parade inside Capital One Arena. (Jim Watson via Getty Images)

Fashion Police: Inauguration Edition

Okay, now the important stuff: the outfits. Suzy Weiss answers some of the really pressing inauguration questions: How did Melania pull off a hat that obscured half her face? Was there a hidden message in Trump’s choice of tie? And Lauren Sanchez’s white lace corset under a blazer: inappropriate or awesome? (Answer: both.) Read Suzy’s full fashion report here.

(Of course, the best-dressed crowd in D.C. this past weekend came to the party we threw. Read about that here.)

More Notes on the Inauguration. . .

Did the inauguration really need to be inside? Freezing temperatures forced proceedings indoors for the first time in forty years. But America’s ruling class wasn’t always so sensitive. As my colleague Chuck Lane points out, yesterday’s weather, frigid as it was, couldn’t hold an icicle to the 30-below wind chill at Ulysses S. Grant’s second inauguration on March 4, 1873. Chuck describes the frosty scene at that evening’s inaugural ball, held in a hangar-like temporary pavilion, in his book The Day Freedom Died: The Colfax Massacre, the Supreme Court, and the Betrayal of Reconstruction: “Dignitaries gamely shuffled across the dance floor in their overcoats, as horn and tuba players squeaked out music through the frozen valves of their instruments. Dozens of birdcages dangled from the ceiling; the canaries inside were supposed to accompany the orchestra. But the cold was so intense that the birds shivered, tucked their beaks under their wings, and then began to drop dead.”
In the beginning—i.e., last Friday—there was the $TRUMP meme coin. It’s kinda sorta like Bitcoin, only Trumpier. On the day it was issued, as traders anticipated the new president’s inauguration, it rose from $10 to $75, giving it a total value of more than $10 billion—billions, we should point out, backed by nothing but Trump’s considerable celebrity. It was yet another signal that his administration would embrace crypto. Then came the $MELANIA meme coin. Weirdly, its arrival caused the $TRUMP coin to drop down to $40. Then $TRUMP rose again in anticipation of the inauguration. Then, both the $TRUMP and $MELANIA coins fell by 30 percent as he gave his inaugural address. Strange. Or maybe not. The volatility of meme coins is a given—that’s kinda the point for traders—and anticipation is always a more powerful driver than the actual event. What does the future hold for $TRUMP and $MELANIA? Probably more extreme volatility. But maybe people will figure out the coins’ value is built on air and they’ll collapse—at which point, maybe the president might decide to regulate crypto after all.

Indicted New York mayor Eric Adams ditched MLK Day celebrations in his city to attend the president’s inauguration. It’s the latest act of Adams’ MAGA charm offensive, which has included a trip to Mar-a-Lago and a shift in his position on immigration, saying he is open to a rollback of sanctuary city policies. Many speculate Adams—who faces federal bribery and fraud charges—is angling for a pardon. Whatever Adams’ next chapter, his eyebrows will still be flawless.
Carrie Underwood improvised an a cappella performance of “America the Beautiful” after technical difficulties nixed her backing track. “You know the words—help me out here,” the country singer said, before launching into the patriotic anthem. . . and nailing it.