Something remarkable just happened in American politics. Despite intense polarisation, a burst of bipartisanship has enabled Congress to pass vital legislation, over the objections of hard-core obstructionists in the House of Representatives. How was this possible?
The Republican Party began the 118th Congress holding the fifth-narrowest House majority in American history—and its most extreme members appeared firmly in control. Kevin McCarthy became speaker after a humiliating 15 rounds of voting. As a way to win the job, Mr McCarthy agreed to place hard-right members on the powerful Rules Committee, where they could routinely undermine the party’s leaders. He also accepted a change that allowed a single member of Congress to call a vote on his ouster. The influence of the berserker caucus peaked when eight Republicans voted with the Democratic Party to remove Mr McCarthy from the speakership in October 2023.
However, the extremists have had stunningly little influence on policy, despite their formidable procedural power. The passage of legislation to aid Ukraine and other allies is only the latest example. President Joe Biden signed it into law on April 24th (along with a bipartisan move to ban TikTok unless it is sold by its Chinese owner).
In the spring of 2023 Mr McCarthy negotiated a deal to modestly cut discretionary spending in exchange for an increase to America’s borrowing limit. The House Freedom Caucus howled that the reductions were insufficient. Although 71 Republicans voted against the Fiscal Responsibility Act, the legislation still passed with help from Democrats. The insurgent wing of the Republican Party could only grumble as Mr McCarthy held on to his job.
But averting a government shutdown in September 2023 was a step too far. Mike Johnson, a Louisiana congressman, replaced Mr McCarthy after several weeks of chaos in the lower chamber. He kept the government funded with short-term spending bills, the sin for which Mr McCarthy was excommunicated, but Republicans were not eager to go through the ordeal of finding yet another speaker. Republican divisions undermined the party’s bargaining power with the White House and the Democrat-controlled Senate, and Mr Johnson eventually passed a solution for the remainder of the fiscal year that bore a striking resemblance to what Mr McCarthy had negotiated a year before.
The hard right betrayed even greater legislative ineptitude in its fight against funding for Ukraine. Many conservatives demanded drastic changes to America’s immigration system, and a group of senators negotiated what would have been the most restrictive immigration law in decades in exchange for nearly $100bn in funding for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. Republicans rejected the proposal because of pressure from Donald Trump, who sees the crisis on America’s southern border as a political winner as he campaigns for a new stint in the White House.
Mr Johnson, who had voted against Ukraine aid several times before taking the speaker’s gavel, had a change of heart, swayed in part by intelligence briefings. The legislation he put to the House was remarkably similar to the Senate bill, though he broke it into several pieces. Whereas a majority of Republicans supported the debt-ceiling increase and the government-funding bills, most rejected the new aid for Ukraine. Ironically, many complained that nothing had been done to tackle America’s porous border. Republican hardliners won virtually nothing they had sought in earlier negotiations, yet Congress still provided $61bn for Ukraine. Though shamefully late, it will make a big difference to Ukraine’s war effort.
While the hard right was up in arms, Mr Trump stood by the speaker. “We have a majority of one, OK?” Mr Trump said in a radio interview on April 22nd. “It’s not like he can go and do whatever he wants to do. I think he’s a very good person.”
For now Mr Johnson appears secure in his position. Marjorie Taylor Greene, an excitable congresswoman from Georgia, has threatened to oust him, but has yet to force the question. “The old maxim on Capitol Hill is that you vote when you have the votes,” says Doug Heye, a former Republican leadership aide. “Clearly Marjorie Taylor Greene didn’t have the votes.”
A strong majority of House Republicans would back Mr Johnson, as they did Mr McCarthy, but the new speaker has also built goodwill with some Democrats. “For all its rank partisanship, the House right now is functionally and uneasily governed by a group of Republicans and Democrats,” wrote Brendan Buck, a former aide to two Republican speakers.
Mr Johnson’s shift on Ukraine does not mean Congress will take up much serious legislation for the remainder of this term, especially as the campaign season shrinks the legislative calendar. Expect some tweaks—Mr Johnson is considering changes to how “earmarks”, which designate a specific recipient for certain spending, are made in funding bills, probably an attempt to shore up support with conservatives—but nothing as salient as the foreign-aid package. A serious effort to impeach Mr Biden is unlikely: even trying would alienate many of the Democrats implicitly helping Mr Johnson remain in power.
Will America’s accidental speaker be leading House Republicans next year? Retaining the House won’t be easy, and parties that lose their majorities tend to fire their leaders. The Republican Party will have to increase its majority to give Mr Johnson a chance, and the power of a Trump endorsement would depend largely on whether he wins the presidency. It doesn’t help that House Republicans have a history of punishing their leaders for doing the right thing. ■
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SIX ESTEEMED sommeliers sit silently behind a judging table. A waiter tops up their glasses one by one and they appraise the stuff: sniff, hold it to the light, sometimes swirl, sip, swish between cheeks, dump the extras and give it a score. But the liquid is no Zinfandel or Syrah. Instead the bon viveurs are tasting high-end waters.
Homemade barbecue pork chops. Katy Perry performs onstage during the Katy Perry The Lifetimes Tour 2025. A woman checks her receipt while exiting a store.
iStock| Theo Wargo | Hispanolistic | Getty Images
A few weeks ago, as Kiki Rough felt increasingly concerned about the state of the economy, she began thinking about previous periods of financial hardship.
Rough thought about the skills she learned about making groceries stretch during the tough times that accompanied past economic downturns. Facing similar feelings of uncertainty about the country’s financial future, she began making video guides to recipes from cookbooks published during previous recessions, depressions and wartimes.
The 28-year-old told followers that she is not a professional chef, but instead earned her stripes by learning to cook while on food stamps. From Rough’s yellow-and-black kitchen in the Chicago suburbs, she teaches viewers how to make cheap meals and at-home replacements for items like breakfast strudel or donuts. She often reminds people to replace ingredients with alternatives they already have in the pantry.
“I keep seeing this joke over and over in the comments: The old poors teaching the new poors,” Rough told CNBC. “We just need to share knowledge right now because everyone is scared, and learning is going to give people the security to navigate these situations.”
The self-employed consultant’s videos quickly found an audience on TikTok and Instagram. Between both platforms, she’s gained 350,000 followers and garnered about 21 million views on videos over the last month, by her count.
President Donald Trump’s announcement of broad and steep tariffs earlier in April has ratcheted up fears of the U.S. economy tipping into a recession in recent weeks. As Americans like Rough grow increasingly worried about the road ahead, they are harking back to the tips and tricks they employed to scrape by during dark financial chapters like the global financial crisis that exploded in 2008.
Google is predicting a spike in search volumes this month for terms related to the recession that came to define the late 2000s. Searches for the “Global Financial Crisis” are expected to hit levels not seen since 2010, while inquiries for the “Great Recession” are slated to be at their highest rate since the onset of the Covid pandemic.
Porkchops, house parties and jungle juice
On TikTok, a gaggle of Millennials and Gen Xers has stepped into the roles of older siblings, offeringflashbacks and advice to younger people on how to pinch pennies. Some Gen Zers have put out calls to elders for insights on what a recession may feel like at this stage of life, having been too young to feel the full effects of the financial crisis.
“This is, potentially, at least on a large scale, the first time that millennials have been able to be the ‘experts’ on something,” said Scott Sills, a 33-year-old marketer in Louisiana. “We’re the experts on getting the rug pulled out from under us.”
Those doling out the advice are taking a trip down memory lane the to tail-end of the aughts. Cheap getaways to Florida were the norm instead of lush trips abroad. They had folders for receipts in case big-ticket purchases went on sale later. Business casual outfits were commonplace at social events because they couldn’t afford multiple styles of clothing.
Porkchops were a staple dinner given their relative affordability, leading one creator to declare that they “taste like” the Great Recession. They drank “jungle juice” at house parties, a concoction of various cheap liquors and mixers, instead of cocktails at bars.
“There’s things that I didn’t realize were ‘recession indicators’ the first time around that I thought were just the trends,” said M.A. Lakewood, a writer and professional fundraiser in upstate New York. “Now, you can see it coming from 10 miles away.”
Customers shop for produce at an H-E-B grocery store on Feb. 12, 2025 in Austin, Texas.
Brandon Bell | Getty Images
To be sure, some of the discourse has centered around how inflationary pressures have made a handful of these hacks defunct. Some content creators pointed out that the federal minimum wage has sat at $7.25 per hour since 2009 despite the cost of living skyrocketing.
Kimberly Casamento recently began a TikTok series walking viewers through recipes from a cookbook that was focused on affordable meals published in 2009. The New Jersey-based digital media manager said she’s found costs for what were then considered low-budget meals ballooning between about 100% and 150%. In addition to sharing the price changes, the 33-year-old gives viewers some tips on how to keep costs down.
“Every aspect of life is so expensive that it’s hard for anybody to survive,” Casamento said. “If you can cut the cost of your meal by $5, then that’s a win.”
‘A very human thing’
This type of communal knowledge-sharing is common during times of economic belt tightening, according to Megan Way, an associate professor at Babson College who studies family and intergenerational economics. While conversations about how to slash costs or to make meals stretch typically took place among neighbors in the late 2000s, Way said it makes sense that they would now play out in the digital square with the rise of social media.
“It’s a very human thing to reach out to others when things are feeling uncertain and try to gain on their experience,” Way said. “It can really make a difference for feeling like you’re moving forward a little prepared. One of the worst things for an economy is absolute fear.”
Read more CNBC analysis on culture and the economy
Way said that Americans are quick to look back to the Great Recession for a guide because that downturn was so shocking and widely felt. However, she said there’s key differences between that economic situation and what the U.S. is facing today, such as the absence of bad debt that sparked the housing market’s crash.
Still, she said there’s broad uncertainty felt today on several fronts — be it tied to the economy, geopolitics or domestic policy priorities like slashing the federal workforce or limiting immigration. That can reignite the feeling of unpredictability about what the future will bring that was paramount during the Great Recession, Way said.
In 2025, it’s clear that economic confidence among the average American is rapidly souring. The University of Michigan’s index of consumer sentiment recorded one of its worst readings in more than seven decades this month.
With that negative economic outlook comes rising stress. When Lukas Battle made a satirical TikTok about feeling like divorces were increasingly common around the time of the Great Recession, the 27-year-old’s comments were abuzz with people talking about their parents splitting recently. (Though divorce has been seen as a cultural hallmark of the financial crisis, data shows the rate actually declined during this period.)
“There’s a second round of divorces happening as we speak,” Battle said.
Cultural parallels
That’s one of several parallels social media users have drawn between the late aughts and today. When videos surfaced of a group dancing to Doechii’s hit song “Anxiety,” several commenters on X reported feeling déjà vu to when flashmob performances were common.
Disney‘s reboot of the animated show “Phineas and Ferb,” which originally premiered in the late 2000s, similarly put the era top of mind.
Lady Gaga performing at Coachella 2017
Getty Images | Christopher Polk
“Recession pop,” a phrase mainly referring to the subgenre of trendy music that dropped during the Global Financial Crisis, has caught a second wave over the past year as Americans contended with inflation and high interest rates.
In 2008, artists such as Miley Cyrus, Lady Gaga and Katy Perry regularly appeared on the music charts. Both Cyrus and Gaga have released new songs this year. Perry kicked off a world tour this week.
“It’s almost a permission to feel good, whether that’s through song or something,” said Sills, the marketer in Louisiana. “It’s not necessarily ignoring the problems that are here, but just maybe finding some sort of joy or fun in the midst of all of it.”