First, the good news: There's no solid evidence right now that the economy is in recession, or even particularly close to it.

• The bad news: Red flags are popping up every which way, Axios chief economic correspondent Neil Irwin writes.

🖼️ The big picture: Warnings are piling up, including from surveys of consumers and businesses, corporate earnings and financial markets.

• It all suggests the economic ground may — emphasis may — be shifting beneath our feet.
• The evidence so far is all in the realm of anecdotes, or "soft data," not the kind of definitive, "hard data" evidence of a downturn that would make economists believe a recession is beginning.

🔭 Zoom out: A confluence of forces emanating from Washington is driving the vibe shift.

• The threat of new tariffs far larger than those enacted in the previous Trump term is part of it, as is the erratic implementation.
• Cuts to the federal workforce and government contracting may be leading some wary consumers to slow spending (as is already evident in credit card data for the D.C. area).
• It all adds a layer of uncertainty for companies trying to decide whether to engage in new capital spending or hiring.

🔎 Zoom in: Yesterday, the University of Michigan's preliminary survey of consumer sentiment for March plunged for the third straight month, showing sharply lower expectations for the future among Democrats and Republicans alike.

• Thursday, the S&P 500 fell into official correction territory — a 10% drop from its peak. (It rebounded sharply yesterday.)
• Leaders of businesses large and small are showing less confidence in the outlook.

👀 Warnings have percolated from airlines and retailers, including Dollar General and Walmart, about underwhelming consumer demand.

• Announced layoffs reached their highest levels since the summer of 2020, when the pandemic was in full force — and highest for the month of February since 2009, per outplacement firm Challenger Gray & Christmas.

The bottom line: None of this means that a recession is underway, or inevitable. The U.S. economy is like a tanker ship that normally moves forward, and it takes a lot to stop that progress.

• But what's striking is how pervasive these warning signs have been lately.

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The most urgent divide in the Democratic Party is less ideological than tactical: whether Dems should stand and fight on every front — or pick their battles.

Why it matters: The split is epitomized by the feud over whether Democrats should have let the government shut down yesterday. (A six-month spending bill passed 54-46.) But it's bigger than that, Axios' Dave Lawler writes.

• The base is bracing for a four-year political war against a power-hungry president — without Dem lawmakers in battle formation,

🥊 As Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker's chief of staff Anne Caprara wrote on Bluesky that it's "Team Fight" vs. "cave."

🗽 The most glaring example of that split is between two prominent New York Democrats.

• Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and nine members of his caucus voted to advance the GOP-led funding bill on Friday despite intense pressure to oppose it.
• Schumer torched both Trump and the continuing resolution (CR) in a New York Times op-ed explaining his decision but argued that Trump would only seize more power in a shutdown.

💥 Friction point: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) told CNN's Jake Tapper that Senate Democrats' move was "almost unthinkable."

• "The strength that we have is in this moment," Ocasio-Cortez argued, saying this was a rare case where Republicans needed Democratic votes.

At House Dems' policy retreat in Leesburg, Va., she told reporters there's a "deep sense of outrage and betrayal."

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Gen Z represented 13% of U.S. home mortgage applications in 2024, up from 10% in 2023, Axios' Sami Sparber writes from an analysis by CoreLogic, an industry data provider.

• Relatively affordable parts of the Midwest and South saw the highest Gen Z shares. Pricey coastal metros lagged behind.

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Speaking in the Great Hall of the Justice Department, President Trump denounced prosecutors who once worked in the building, and the media:

• "I believe that CNN and MSDNC, who literally write 97.6% bad about me, are political arms of the Democrat Party. And in my opinion, they are really corrupt and they are illegal. What they do is illegal."
• "The New York Times," he said at another point, "will write whatever these people [opponents] say — and The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal, and MSDNC, and the fake news CNN, and ABC, CBS and NBC."

Why it matters: Despite Trump's decisive victory, he hasn't let go of his grievances over his federal criminal cases, which have been dismissed, Axios' Marc Caputo and Erin Doherty write.

• "The case against me was bullshit!" Trump said, referring to the indictment over mishandling classified documents, said to laughter.

🖼️ The big picture: Trump's off-the-cuff campaign-style speech was unlike any other ever given by an occupant of the White House at the department.

• It's highly unusual for a sitting president to speak at DOJ. But Trump's visit marks the latest victory stop on his revenge tour.

His 70-minute remarks ended with the Village People's "YMCA" — the signature finale of his campaign rallies.

• In his words: What Trump said.

Americans reported losing over $12.5 billion to various forms of fraud last year, per new FTC data — up a staggering 25% from 2023.

• Why it matters: The spike suggests fraudsters are outpacing both law enforcement and efforts to educate consumers on how to protect themselves, Axios' Alex Fitzpatrick writes.

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About 1 in 15, or 7%, of U.S. adults have been on the scene of a mass shooting (defined as 4 or more people shot), Axios' Alayna Alvarez writes from a new University of Colorado Boulder study.

• 2% reported being injured, whether by gunfire, by shrapnel or in the chaos of people fleeing. Among those uninjured, 75% said they suffered psychological distress.

For most survivors, the violence hit close to home. More than three-fourths of mass shootings took place in their own communities.

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Former Sen. Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.) — an old-school moderate Republican senator who helped craft major U.S. immigration reform in 1986 and made friends across the aisle — died in Cody, Wyo., at 93 after struggling to recover from a broken hip in December.

• The No. 2 Republican in the Senate for a decade, the lanky Simpson was a blunt talker who wasn't afraid to promote unpopular causes in his party, including abortion rights and gay equality. Yet he remained part of the GOP establishment, Reuters reports.

A 6'7" balding giant, the affable Simpson told TIME in 2011, shortly after he retired from the Senate: "Now it's just sharp elbows. And instead of having a caucus where you sit down and say, 'What are you going to do for your country?' you sit figuring out how to screw the other side."

• Under President Obama, the then-retired Simpson led, along with Erskine Bowles, the Simpson-Bowles presidential commission on deficit reduction.

Eulogizing former President George H.W. Bush at the Washington National Cathedral in 2018, Simpson took a dig at partisan warfare:

• "Hatred corrodes the container it's carried in."

Obituary.

A blood moon — a type of total lunar eclipse — appears between skyscrapers in downtown Chicago early yesterday.

• Why a blood moon looks red: "During a total lunar eclipse, Earth lines up between the Moon and the Sun, hiding the Moon from sunlight. When this happens, the only light that reaches the Moon's surface is from the edges of the Earth's atmosphere. The air molecules from Earth's atmosphere scatter out most of the blue light. The remaining light reflects onto the Moon's surface with a red glow, making the Moon appear red." (NASA)