On Tuesday, the Drudge Report’s front page blared yet another warning sign for Republicans: “EGG RATIONING BEGINS.” In case anyone missed the point, he anchored the story with the startling photo of a rationing notice posted by a local grocery store, limiting customers to just one pack of eggs each.
The news got even worse for Republicans on Wednesday, when the Federal Reserve reported that annual inflation spiked to 3 percent. “GAS PRICES SOAR,” Drudge blasted.
Yikes.
During last year’s presidential campaign, Donald Trump was quick to blame Joe Biden for rising prices. But with last week’s wholesale egg prices shattering records and retail prices up $2 over this time last year, Republicans still lack even the concepts of a plan for tackling inflation. It doesn’t help that their own party leader seems to be working against them: President Trump recently announced even more price-spiking tariffs against America’s largest trading partners.
Trump promised a “golden age” of prosperity. Instead, millions of MAGA voters are feeling even more of a pinch at the cash register and the gas pump than they did during the dreaded Biden years. That may not matter to Trump, but his colleagues on Capitol Hill realize high prices are the one issue that could obliterate their thin legislative majorities.
Welcome to the age of rationing.
If the problem was just about some costly eggs, Republicans could probably blame the current avian flu outbreak ravaging America’s poultry stocks. Of course, those same Republicans also stripped safety regulations and cut inspection funding, ultimately making a nationwide avian flu outbreak unavoidable. If that wasn’t bad enough, the Trump administration has plans to reduce the federal government’s role in avian flu detection even further, effectively placing all inspection and prevention responsibility on cash-strapped states.
But our current round of inflation and corporate price gouging isn’t just a result of Republican unpreparedness on avian flu. Consumer food prices are up across the board, Beef is up more than 50 cents per pound since December 2023, and chicken breast has risen nearly 40 cents.
What should concern Republicans is how food price increases are accelerating even as the broader economy cools down after a five-year post-pandemic expansion.
Last August, furious shoppers sued grocery giant Kroger for alleged price gouging. After a tense interview with the Federal Trade Commission, a Kroger executive admitted to price gouging customers on eggs and milk. There are plenty of other examples of grocers mimicking Kroger’s practicesm but Trump’s FTC is no longer interested in protecting consumers. Instead, Republicans are reworking it to become a more business-friendly enterprise.
Fighting price gouging should be a real layup for a Republican Party that has become fixated on Trump-style economic populism. Instead, they’ve wasted an opportunity to run up the score. Imagine the messaging dilemma Democrats would face if a Trump-majority Consumer Financial Protection Bureau launched a series of high-profile investigations into corporate price gouging, with Trump amplifying that work through his social media megaphones. Even Bernie Sanders would struggle to find the negative! Instead, Trump made the baffling choice to gut the CFPB and allow corporate crooks to keep fleecing his voter base.
Judging by the frustration on display when House Republicans host town halls in their districts, skyrocketing food prices are about to show them the limits of voter loyalty. That’s a crisis of their own creation, worsened by a president who is clearly negotiating only for himself. It’s also a huge opportunity for Democrats to re-engage with the corporate greed messaging that Kamala Harris’s campaign tested but never fully developed.
The 2024 campaign should have taught Democrats that voters will almost always choose the candidate with a clear plan over the candidate with a vague one — even if that clear plan doesn’t seem practical. Republicans have nothing to say about the price gouging hurting American shoppers because they can’t say anything without offending their corporate financiers. Democrats have this conversation all to themselves. It’s time to carpe that diem.
More than any political benefits it might bring, Americans deserve a real plan for combating the rising prices that touch every part of our daily lives. Trump’s plan was, unsurprisingly, smoke and mirrors. Populists in both parties have an opportunity and an obligation to pull America out of Trump’s Age of Rationing. If they don’t take it, voters will know exactly where to point their frustration in 2026.
Max Burns is a veteran Democratic strategist and founder of Third Degree Strategies.
