The nation is splitting into three distinct economic realities: the Have-Nots (stalling) ... the Haves (coasting) ... and the Have-Lots (rocketing to greater wealth), Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen write in a "Behind the Curtain" column.

• Why it matters: This isn't just about "inequality." It's about a structural shift where the growing number of hyperwealthy are profiting wildly off the AI revolution — through exclusive access to private deals, massive investment power, governmental connections, and equity stakes "normal" investors can't touch.

🖼️ The big picture: This shift, if it holds, will rattle economics, politics and AI throughout 2026 and beyond. We're already seeing it in rising inequality, pessimism about the future and AI opposition.

• It's human nature to judge your personal economics and mood on how you feel, influenced heavily by conscious and subconscious comparisons to others. So it's possible President Trump is right: U.S. growth and stocks soar in 2026. But even then, because the AI-connected hyperwealthy do so much better than everyone else, fear and resentment still grow.
• It's also possible the AI bubble pops, and everyone suffers. But the Have-Lots will (mostly) still have lots.

🫠 The Have-Nots: Stuck

For the bottom 50%+, the economy, by historical standards, is fine. Wages are growing, unemployment is low, and inflation is moderate. But the mood is sour, reflected in sky-high pessimism about their personal future and AI.

• This group leans Trump — not massively, but clearly, and enough to matter to MAGA's plans.
• Their income is up about 4% year-over-year before inflation, lower than the growth for their richer friends. But they're often burning through any increase to keep pace with inflation for food and energy.
• If they don't own a house, rents are high. And mortgage rates are around 6%, nearly twice what friends and neighbors got five years ago.
• The surging stock market does little for them. The bottom 50% of Americans own a measly 1% of all U.S. stocks. When Nvidia or Microsoft adds $1 trillion in market cap, it does nothing for the bank accounts of half the country.
• Roughly 40% of Americans couldn't cover a $400 emergency expense without debt.

So it's no wonder working-class or lower-income Americans are downbeat, and fear AI wiping away their jobs or making matters worse.

• The gap: During the AI bounce of the past two years, the top 10% of households saw their wealth increase by $5 trillion in a single quarter (Q2 2025), while the bottom 50% saw a gain of just $150 billion.

🫣 The Haves: Coasting (nervously)

We're talking about roughly a third of U.S. households with $100,000+ in investable assets. They're disproportionately likely to own stocks and retirement accounts. If they're homeowners, many still enjoy low mortgage rates from 2020–21. By most historical measures, they're doing pretty well.

• Their wages rose 4.4%, and they enjoyed strong market returns in 2025.
• About 54% of homeowners are sitting on mortgage rates at or below 4%. Those amount to golden handcuffs, keeping housing costs down for those who bought their home before 2022, even as today's 6%+ mortgage rates keep current renters out of the market.
• Bank of America data shows holiday spending grew much more strongly among higher-income households than lower-income ones.

But many are AI-nervous. They tend to hold white-collar jobs threatened by high-performing AI and read daily about the tough job market for their college-age or soon-to-be college-age kids.

• The lower end of the affluent benefits from broad-based market gains, thanks to AI or AI-adjacent companies. But most aren't putting money directly into the AI startups fueling the hyper wealth growth of the Have-Lots.
• The University of Michigan's consumer sentiment survey, released Friday, actually found improvement this month "among lower-income consumers, while sentiment fell for those with higher incomes."

⬇️ Column continues below.

Jim and Mike continue:

🤑 The Have-Lots: Rocketing

A new AI aristocracy is upon us. The tech moguls, mega-investors and others benefiting from AI are now in a category of their own that vastly overshadows the mere haves, Jim and Mike continue.

• This group is quickly accumulating vast wealth and power, in part by growing ever closer to the federal government in what we've called the Silicon Swamp.
• So the Have-Lots are becoming ever more invested in preserving Washington's status quo, and fending off new federal and state laws and regulations.

💡 Axios chief economic correspondent Neil Irwin, co-author of our Axios Macro economics newsletter, helped us crunch the numbers, and we found that the Have-Lots are an even more stunning story than we realized. It's hard to overstate what an amazing year 2025 was for the very richest Americans, particularly those with an inside track on AI, Trump or both:

• Among the 50 richest Americans, the median 2025 increase in net worth was nearly $10 billion, based on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. That represents a 22% median gain in a year when the S&P 500 rose 16%, and Treasury bills returned less than 4%.
• Elon Musk's rise in wealth last year, $187 billion (to $600+ billion), is roughly the same as the entire net worths of Bill Gates and Charles Koch combined (about $117 billion for Gates and $69 billion for Koch).
• It was also a great year for the Google guys. Co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin saw their net worth rise by $101 billion and $92 billion, respectively (to $269 billion and $250 billion), while former CEO Eric Schmidt ended the year $17 billion richer (at $53 billion).

The bottom line: The haves increasingly fear becoming Have-Nots, while the Have-Lots sock away even more.

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Federal prosecutors are investigating Fed Chair Jay Powell over the central bank's multibillion-dollar headquarters renovation, Axios' Neil Irwin and Courtenay Brown write.

• Why it matters: It's an extraordinary escalation of President Trump's campaign against Powell, whom he has attacked over interest rate policy. Powell's term as Fed chair ends in about four months.

Powell, in a rare and unusually blunt public statement late last night, said the investigation — which includes grand jury subpoenas — is a pretext to pressure the Fed over interest rate policy:

• "The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the President."

What to watch: The investigation threatens to derail the confirmation process for Trump's next Fed chair pick and other central bank nominees. News of Powell's replacement might come as soon as this month.

• Senator Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who's on the influential banking committee, said he'll "oppose the confirmation of any nominee for the Fed — including the upcoming Fed Chair vacancy — until this legal matter is fully resolved."

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Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem vowed to send in "hundreds" more agents to Minneapolis days after an ICE officer fatally shot a woman in the city, Axios' Avery Lotz writes.

• Noem said on Fox News' "Sunday Morning Futures" that more officers will arrive by today so ICE and Border Patrol agents can work in Minneapolis "safely."

🏛️ Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and two other Minnesota House members were blocked from accessing an ICE detention facility outside Minneapolis yesterday.

• Homeland Security assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin wrote they "were notified that their visit was improper and out of compliance with existing court orders and policies, which mandate that members of Congress must notify ICE at least seven days in advance of Congressional visits."

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A crackdown on nationwide protests in Iran has killed at least 538 people and even more are feared dead. Tehran warned that the U.S. military and Israel would be "legitimate targets" if America uses force to protect demonstrators. (AP)

• Why it matters: Trump and his national security team are weighing potential responses, including cyberattacks and direct strikes by U.S. or Israel.

Another 10,600+ people have been detained over the two weeks of protests, said the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, which has been accurate in previous rounds of unrest in Iran.

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61% of registered voters in a survey last month said Big Tech has too much D.C. policy influence, according to a poll from Morning Consult and nonprofit advocacy group Tech Oversight Project.

• Just 13% of the 1,800 voters polled (margin of error: ±2 percentage points) said families or workers benefit most from President Trump's AI policies.

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The famed Dexter Filkins profiles Secretary of State (and national security adviser) Marco Rubio in the new issue of The New Yorker, writing that for Rubio, "who grew up among Cuban immigrants in Florida, hostility toward leftist governments in Latin America was a kind of birthright."

• A former U.S. official tells Filkins that Rubio "really believed that Venezuela and Argentina and Brazil and Colombia should be great countries, and that they should be staunchly anti-Communist ... engines of a reinvigorated South America."

"Rubio has a special loathing for Nicolás Maduro, whose regime devastated Venezuela's economy and sent millions of citizens streaming out of the country," Filkins writes in the 15-pager.

• A former Florida politician who knows Rubio said: "If Rubio took down Maduro and the regime in Cuba, he'd be a hero in Miami forever."

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Miami Beach's Fisher Island (33109) was the priciest U.S. ZIP code in 2025, with a median sale price of $9.5 million, Axios' Sami Sparber writes from a PropertyShark analysis.

• Atherton, Calif. (94027, near San Francisco), where the typical home sold for $8.3 million, came in second after eight straight years at the top.
• Sagaponack, N.Y. (11962, in the Hamptons) followed at $5.9 million.

📍 Stunning stat: California ZIPs made up 61% of the top 120 ZIP codes.

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