Walmart Holiday Meal Basket Is Sadder Than Ever as Trump Tanks Economy

A year ago, President Donald Trump lied to Americans about how much Thanksgiving dinner would cost them—now the prices have only gotten worse. Last holiday season, Trump plugged Walmart’s yearly Holiday Meal promotion as proof he’d beaten the Democrats on low prices. Spoiler alert: That wasn’t true at all. Fast-forward a year, and Walmart has unveiled its newest holiday promotion, which offers a snapshot of Trump’s crumbling economy. Walmart’s newly unveiled 2026 Holiday Meal contains 17 products and can feed a crowd of 10 for a record-low price of $3.50 per person. Walmart claims that this year, shoppers will receive 18 percent more items than last year, and a 12 percent lower price for the same items compared with last year. A quick trip to Walmart’s website, however, reveals that the price of the company’s Holiday Meal has decreased by swapping the items for cheaper options, and forgoing cooking and holiday staples.While this year’s basket has more products than the 2025 Holiday Meal, which contained only 15 products and boasted feeding 10 people for less than $4 per person, the newer iteration scraps carrots and macaroni and cheese, adding corn muffin mix, sweet potatoes, mini marshmallows, and whipped topping instead.These changes can’t hide the fact that the items from last year’s basket have only gotten more expensive. A year ago, the items included in Walmart’s 2025 Holiday Meal Basket cost a total of $35.51. Now they cost a total of roughly $39.72. By comparison, the company’s original Holiday Meal, launched in 2024, included 29 items and served eight people for less than $7 per person. The items in that holiday basket now cost roughly $63.45, increasing drastically from the $55 price tag at its debut. The 2026 basket does not include certain items from the original, including onions, carrots, celery, seasoning, pecan pie, or cranberry sauce. Increasing prices are a direct result of spiking energy costs from Trump’s war against Iran, as well as his disastrous tariff policies. As of October 2026, the estimated year-over-year headline inflation rate has risen to 4 percent. The producer price index rose 0.3 percent in October, putting the annual rate at 6.5 percent, the highest rate in four years. Policymakers are beginning to worry that inflation is so widespread that it’s even starting to affect categories that are not driven by oil prices or tariffs, CNBC reported Thursday. Clearly, Americans have no illusions about how Trump’s policies have affected prices. Last week, voters issued a stunning rebuke of Republican leadership by flipping both the House and Senate blue in the midterm elections. American voters continue to be interested in affordability. At Walmart, they might get it, but with Trump, they certainly won’t. Read about the 2025 basket:Donald Trump tried to keep Jensen Huang atop Nvidia. It didn’t work.The president called Huang earlier this week, encouraging the ex–artificial intelligence chief to resist internal pressure to remove him, The New York Times reported Thursday.Huang resigned as Nvidia’s CEO, president, and board member Thursday morning, after he was caught in two scandalous affairs with direct reports, and another with a Chinese businesswoman that U.S. intelligence agencies had identified as a Chinese spy.Trump reportedly knew about Huang’s affair—and his spying partner—for months. State Secretary Marco Rubio informed Trump about the alarming relationship moments before Huang joined the presidential trip to Beijing at the president’s request. It was at least the second time that Trump had been informed of Huang’s ties to the Chinese government, inside sources told the Times.But Trump did not act on the information.Instead, the president has repeatedly denied that he had any knowledge of the illicit affair before it was unearthed by U.S. news organizations. On Tuesday, Trump refuted the Times’ report, telling a reporter in the White House press room that he “didn’t hear about” the scandal in May. Trump added that he spoke with the Nvidia leader earlier that day, sharing that Huang insisted he had “absolutely no idea that the person in question was a spy.”The president did not mention that he had also attempted to influence Nvidia’s leadership during that phone call.Nvidia emerged in recent years as the largest semiconductor company in the world, and a precious American asset in the burgeoning AI tech wave. In January 2025, Nvidia was announced as one of the “key” technology partners in the Trump administration’s $500 billion public-private initiative to jump-start AI-focused data center development, dubbed the Stargate Project. Months later, Trump allowed the company to export previously banned chips to China, loosening trade restrictions on tech that Washington feared could be used against U.S. national security interests. Yet Huang’s intimate relationship with an alleged foreign asset didn’t seem to bother the president. Instead, Trump was more focused on dollar signs, concerned about the potential financial consequences if Huang was forced out of the company he co-founded in 1993. (Trump’s interest stems beyond the broad scope of the economy, however: The president’s 2026 financial disclosures revealed that he purchased between $1 million and $5 million of Nvidia stock earlier this year.)Trump isn’t done meddling in Nvidia’s corporate decisions now that Huang is gone, either. On Thursday, the president blasted his opinion about the company’s potential succession plan on Truth Social, writing that “there is only one man to take” Huang’s place: “TIM COOK of Apple. A Legend replaces a Legend!”Two unions with a collective 700,000 members have endorsed Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen for Senate majority leader. Both also explicitly called for Senator Chuck Schumer not to run.On Friday the more than 90,000-member Office and Professional Employees International Union, or OPEIU, and the 600,000-member International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers Union, or IAM, both made their support for Van Hollen known in separate press statements.“The overwhelming support for congressional Democrats at this time in history cannot be squandered. After careful deliberation in consultation with the OPIEU Executive Board, consisting of union leaders from coast to coast, we are respectfully asking you to decline to seek to become the next Senate Majority Leader,” the OPEIU wrote in its letter addressed directly to Schumer. “The American people are desperate for change, and for a new generation of political leaders to deliver that change. We are grateful for the decades of support you’ve shown for organized labor throughout your career, but we must empower the next generation of political leaders at this pivotal time in our nation’s history.”“The IAM Union proudly supports Senator Chris Van Hollen for Senate Majority Leader. He’s a proven champion of working people who will fight to unrig an economy stacked against working families,” the union wrote in a press release.“Senator Van Hollen understands this is a fight of Workers vs. Billionaires and has the courage to deliver the change voters demanded. Workers did their part on election night. Now it’s Senate Democrats’ turn. Senator Van Hollen is the right choice.”Protest against Schumer’s leadership, which was once considered an inevitability, has grown substantially. The longtime New York senator has been criticized by the left wing of the Democratic Party for his beholdenness to Israel, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, crypto, artificial intelligence, and corporations in general, as well as a lack of progressive vision on issues of affordability and health care. He has also been criticized for failing to adequately support the campaign of Florida Senate candidate Angie Nixon and backing moderates who failed to win Democratic primaries in Michigan and Maine. On Friday, Mississippi Senator-elect Scott Colom pushed back on Schumer’s claim that he “recruited” him.At least 10 senators or senators-elect—from Bernie Sanders to Elissa Slotkin—have refused to endorse Schumer’s leadership. That animus has also trickled down to Representative Hakeem Jeffries’s candidacy for speaker of the House, and for nearly identical reasons.Schumer still thinks he has an excellent chance at winning the leadership position.“I welcome any discussion about the future of our caucus and the important work ahead,” Schumer wrote Thursday night. “I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished together—55 seats and counting is an amazing result—and I have the votes to continue serving as Democratic Leader.”That statement was not well received, getting ratioed badly on X. Most of the comments called for him to step down.This story has been updated.Former Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem’s relationship with senior adviser and rumored boyfriend Corey Lewandowski crossed both professional and personal lines.Leaked emails and Signal messages reveal that Lewandowski was directly involved in responsibilities beyond that of an unpaid “special government employee,” as the Trump administration classified him, directly planning third-country deportations and weighing in on the high-profile deportation of Kilmar Ábrego García to El Salvador.The messages were obtained from the Department of Homeland Security by the nonprofit American Oversight through a Freedom of Information Act request, before they were shared with Politico. Many of them were redacted, but from what was visible, it was clear that Noem’s DHS treated Lewandowski as a high-ranking official, equal to Noem herself, rather than as a special adviser.Deputy Homeland Security Secretary Troy Edgar once sent an email to his top aide with a list of items to report to “S1 and Corey,” where “S1” referred to Noem. Lewandowski also received many of the same briefings as Noem and Edgar, including ones about deportation cases and operations in Djibouti.In some high-level email and Signal chat exchanges, Lewandowski was taking full charge with Noem absent. He wrote to other high-ranking officials such as DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin, Immigration and Customs Enforcement deputy director Madison Sheahan, and DHS senior official Joseph Mazzara, who gave him updates on department projects.Lewandowski took particular delight in news of deportations. “Praise Jesus,” he wrote in one message after an immigrant was deported to South Sudan, despite having no ties to the country. “I love deportations,” he wrote in another message a week later.Lewandowski’s tenure in DHS was marked with rampant corruption, and now there is further proof he was practically running the department along with Noem, whom he was more than likely in a relationship with despite both of them being married. Months ago, Democrats sought to preserve all of the department records related to Lewandowski. Now that they have recaptured Congress, Lewandowski, and Noem will have a lot more to worry about thanks to these new revelations. Billionaire Senator Jim Justice broke the law by failing to file his annual financial disclosure report on time. Now he’s facing a reckoning on Capitol Hill.The Senate Select Committee on Ethics issued a letter of admonition to the West Virginia Republican this week, slamming him for effectively hiding his finances from the public.“The public must feel confident that Members never place personal financial interests ahead of the best interests of the United States,” committee Chair James Lankford and Vice Chair Chris Coons wrote in the letter. “Your actions failed to uphold that standard, resulting in harm to the public trust and confidence in the United States Senate and a violation of federal law.”The Ethics in Government Act of 1978 stipulates that all federal officials—including lawmakers, senior executive branch officials, and candidates for national office—disclose their annual finances. The law was drafted after Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal, and was intended to combat corruption and restore faith in Washington.By law, officials must submit their financial reports by May 15. Justice asked for and received two extensions, pushing the deadline to August 13, but he didn’t heed that deadline either. His filing assistant acknowledged the deadline in six separate communications, according to the letter. A week and a half after the latest deadline passed, the committee ordered Justice to submit his report by August 28, a date he also ignored before ultimately filing on September 8.Justice is unique in his noncompliance. The letter noted that “in the 47 years since the governing statute was enacted, the Committee has no record of any other Member failing to file a timely annual financial disclosure report.”The committee acknowledged Justice’s rationale for the delay—which was apparently affected by his filing assistant’s “significant family hardship”—but nonetheless argued that “this does not abrogate your personal responsibility as a U.S. Senator to comply with governing federal law.”The letter is an unprecedented wrist slap for a misbehaving lawmaker, but it is not actually tantamount to a formal punishment. Whether or not the Senate takes the issue a step further remains to be seen.