The World and Everything in It: February 23, 2026

Editor's note: The following text is a transcript of a podcast story. To listen to the story, click on the arrow beneath the headline above.

JENNY ROUGH, HOST: Good morning!

The Supreme Court draws a line around executive power—in a ruling on President Trump’s sweeping tariffs.

SHAPIRO: The Court is saying, look, if we were to allow this, then there would be no limits on this power. Any president could declare an emergency and levy any tariffs on anything, in any amount. That can’t be the law.

NICK EICHER, HOST: That’s ahead today on Legal Docket.

Also today, the Monday Moneybeat. We’ll talk about the economic effects of the ruling with David Bahnsen.

And, later, the WORLD History Book: Johnny Cash, a musical legend shaped by sin, sorrow, and faith.

TURNER: He looked like a man of experience and he kind of sang like a man of experience.

ROUGH: It’s Monday, February 23rd. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Jenny Rough.

EICHER: And I’m Nick Eicher. Congrats USA Hockey!

ROUGH: Up next, Kent Covington with today’s news.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Mar-A-Lago shooting » U.S. Secret Service shot and killed an armed man … after he drove through a security gate … at President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in South Florida.

Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw said a deputy and two secret service agents responded after the suspect breached the security perimeter.

BRADSHAW:  They confronted a white male that was carried a gas can and a shotgun. He raised the shotgun to a shooting position. At that point in time, the deputy and the two secret service agents fired their weapons …

Bradshaw said the suspect was declared dead at the scene.

According to the Associated Press, investigators identified the man killed as 21-year-old Austin Tucker Martin of North Carolina.

According to multiple media outlets, his family had reported him missing hours before the incident.

The motive is under investigation.

President Trump was not at the resort at the time. Trump has faced threats to his life before, including two assassination attempts during the 2024 campaign.

Olympics » Team USA is celebrating … after closing out the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics with a historic win in Men’s hockey.

OLYMPICS GAME CALL: Jack Hughes wins it! The golden goal for the United States! 

The Americans beat Canada by a score of 2–1 in overtime.

OLYMPICS GAME CALL: For the first time since the 1980 miracle, the United States takes the gold!

The U.S. women also won gold in hockey, also in overtime against Canada.

The United States racked up 33 medals in total, 12 of the gold variety … in one of its best Winter Olympics ever outside North America.

Northeast blizzard warning » Parts of the East Coast are under blizzard warnings or other severe weather alerts.

Cody Snell with the National Weather Service said some areas were bracing for snowfall rates of 1 inch per hour … or more.

SNELL:  That could span all the way back into the Washington D.C. area through the Del Marva Peninsula, New Jersey northeast, including New York City, up through New England, including the Boston area. 

He said within that area, some parts could see 2 to 3 inches per hour.

New York grocery store owner Stew Leonard said Sunday that his stores were packed … with many New Yorkers  “panic buying” with the approach of an intense winter storm that multiplied blizzard alerts around the region.

LEONARD:  Things like shovels, sleds, all those things go up. Like you, you, you can't buy enough of them. You know, they're, they just fly, literally. Every customer, just about, wants one.

Emergency declarations were issued in New York and New Jersey ahead of the storm.

Forecasters said up to two feet of snow was possible in some areas into today … snow up to one or two feet is possible in many areas … with heavy winds and possible flooding in certain spots.

DHS shutdown » Members of Congress are returning to Washington today … as a partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security continues.

Negotiators from both parties have traded proposals but remain far apart on on the issue at the center of the shutdown: proposed changes to immigration enforcement. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has maintained:

JEFFRIES:  ICE needs to be reformed in a dramatic, bold, meaningful, and transformational manner. And if that doesn't happen, the DHS funding bill will not move forward.

But Democratic Sen. John Fetterman, an outspoken critic of the shutdown says … all Democrats want changes to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. But he noted again on Sunday that ICE has already been fully funded … and the shutdown does not affect it.

FETTTERMAN:  This shutdown was nothing more than people that are afraid of the base to just explain to them that shutting down the entire DHS that will have no impact or make those kinds of reforms for ICE.

The shutdown is nine days old today.

Essential DHS staff are being asked to continue working without their full paychecks for now … including at the TSA and the Coast Guard.

Lawmakers are expected to resume negotiations this week, with pressure mounting ahead of the president’s State of the Union address tomorrow.

Gas prices » Gas prices are holding steady after weeks of increases. AAA puts the national average right now at $2.93 per gallon … largely unchanged from a week ago.

But industry analyst Trilby Lundberg says where prices might be in the weeks ahead is less certain.

LUNDBERG:  We have crude oil jumping because of increased tensions between us and Iran. And Iran now planning a stoppage, uh, uh, exercise in the Strait of Hormuz, which moves 20% of the world's oil.

Oklahoma has the cheapest gas in the country right now at $2.34 cents per gallon, on average.

California, on the opposite end, has the priciest fuel … at $4.62.

I'm Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: A closer look at the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on President Trump’s sweeping tariffs. Plus, the Moneybeat with David Bahnsen.

JENNY ROUGH, HOST: It’s the 23rd of February.
Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Jenny Rough.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Time now for Legal Docket.

Last Friday at 10 a.m., the nine Supreme Court justices took the bench. Chief Justice John Roberts announced the judgment of the court in a set of highly anticipated cases.
And within moments, news alerts lit up screens across the country.

MONTAGE: This is one of the most significant cases that the justices have decided in recent years /significant decisions on presidential power in decades. / Breaking news alert for you. It’s finally here. The Supreme Court has made a decision on President Trump’s tariffs. / It appears to me to be a 6 to 3 decision. / Bottom line, it is a 6-3 to invalidate the use of these sweeping tariffs. / The Constitution gives Congress the power to impose taxes / based on two words—“regulate” and “importation”—those words, the Supreme Court says, “cannot bear such weight.”

Those are the words of the Supreme Court ruling that the president’s position on the tariff authority he’s been using “cannot bear such weight.”

ROUGH: Let’s back up and see how we got here.

It’s not often that tariff-related cases come before the Supreme Court. But this past November, the Court heard oral arguments in Learning Resources versus Trump, which was actually dismissed for lack of jurisdiction, and its companion Trump versus V.O.S Selections, which got right to the heart of the matter.

GIL ROTHENBERG: Tariffs are the imposition of a tax on imported goods.

Gil Rothenberg is the former chief of the tax division’s appellate section of the U.S. Department of Justice.

ROTHENBERG: So … they are simply a tax on imports.

That matters. Because if tariffs are taxes, Congress has the power to levy them. So this wasn’t just a fight over trade. It was a fight over who sets the nation’s economic course.
The Constitution separates powers among three branches of government. And Article 1, Section 8 gives Congress the power alone to impose taxes.

ROTHENBERG: Therefore the president cannot impose a tax on his own.

EICHER: Here, the president concedes he has no authority in the Constitution to impose tariffs, but this case centers on a federal statute targeted to emergencies. Trump argued Congress delegated that power in a 1977 law, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. IEEPA, as it’s known by acronym.

ROUGH: Shortly after President Trump took office for the second time, he pointed to two emergencies he deemed foreign threats: the flood of illegal drugs from Canada, Mexico, and China. And the United States’ large trade deficit. So he imposed tariffs on most Canadian, Mexican, and Chinese imported goods, and most imported goods from all trading partners.

EICHER: The tariffs are imposed on the importer.

ROTHENBERG: Now frequently, the importer passes on the tariffs in the form of higher prices to the consumer. … But some of these tariffs were so large that the importer was reluctant to, say, double the price of a product, because the sales would disappear. 

Several small family businesses as well as 12 states filed a lawsuit against the president. They argued IEEPA doesn’t authorize the president’s tariffs.

It does authorize the president to do a long list of other things, though:

ILYA SHAPIRO: Investigate, block, direct, regulate, compel, nullify, void, prevent, and prohibit various economic actions in cases of emergency.

ROUGH: Ilya Shapiro is director of Constitutional Studies at the Manhattan Institute.
Missing from the list, he says:

SHAPIRO: Levy tariffs, or duties, or taxes is not there.

The Trump administration argued that the statute’s language allowing him to regulate imports was enough to authorize tariffs.

SHAPIRO: The government’s backup argument was that “regulate importation” supports tariffs because tariffs are a type of regulation. … But the court held that’s not correct.

The two words “regulate importation,” as the court put it, “cannot bear such weight.”

SHAPIRO: Anytime that Congress authorizes regulations doesn’t mean that it gives authority to the designated agency also to raise taxes.

EICHER: Overall, six justices agreed the statute doesn’t authorize what the president contends. They are: Chief Justice Roberts, joined by conservative Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, and liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

SHAPIRO: The one that got six votes, the text of the statute, IEEPA, does not grant tax levying power. Period.

Three justices dissented. We’ll get to the dissent in a moment, but first let’s return to the six-justice majority.

Three of them said this:

SHAPIRO: Roberts, Gorsuch, and Barrett said that also this was a significant broad authority, a major question in the legal lingo, that if Congress wants to delegate that kind of authority it must be explicit or clear.

ROUGH: In other words, they relied on what’s known in legal lingo as the major-questions doctrine. That says that if the executive branch interprets a statute’s general language to give it the right to do something sweeping … something economically and politically significant, there’s a presumption against it. Congress’ authorization must be very specific. And it wasn’t here.

EICHER: But three other justices declined to go that far. Justice Kagan filed the concurring opinion, joined by Justices Sotomayor and Jackson, to say we don’t need the major questions doctrine. The plain language of the statute is clear enough.

Tax expert Rothenberg explains the split among the six-justice majority this way:

ROTHENBERG: Roberts says we’ve got more than one arrow in our quiver. And the concurring judges would just rather rest on the single arrow of statutory interpretation.

ROUGH: Dissenting was Justice Brett Kavanaugh, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. In what you might call a battle of the textualists, Kavanaugh said the statute’s language that allows the president to “regulate” imports does mean the president can impose tariffs. Tariffs are a means of regulating.

EICHER: Back in November, in the oral argument in the case, Justice Kavanaugh gave a clue as to where he’d land. He pointed out to the plaintiffs’ attorney that to interpret the statute to allow the president to take all sorts of economic actions but not allow the tariffs makes no sense. Here’s a clip from the argument: 

JUSTICE KAVANAUGH: Your interpretation of the statute … would allow the president to shut down all trade with every other country in the world or to impose some significant quota on imports from every other country in the world, but would not allow a 1 percent tariff. And that leaves, in the government's words, in its brief, an odd donut hole in the statute. Why would a rational Congress say, yeah, we’re gonna give the president power to shut down trade. I mean, think about the effects. But you’re admitting that power’s in there. But can’t do a 1% tariff. …That doesn't seem… to have a lot of common sense behind it.

ROUGH: Justice Kavanaugh relied on early U.S. history to point to other instances where a president’s power to impose tariffs has been upheld—

SHAPIRO: And that Congress has historically granted presidents tariff discretion. Which is true, but again with more specificity.

EICHER: Con law expert Shapiro explaining he means by “more specificity,” that Congress historically added limits and constraints.

SHAPIRO: And I think the Court is saying, look, if we were to allow this, there would be no limits on this power. Any president could wake up, declare an emergency, and levy any tariffs on anything in any amount. That can’t be the law. 

But Justice Kavanaugh had a second argument in his dissent. Back now to Rothenberg:

ROTHENBERG: If it’s a matter of foreign policy, the president has so much leeway, the president can do it if it’s a matter of foreign policy.

ROUGH: Justice Kavanaugh also referred to the “mess” of practical consequences. The refund of billions of dollars that the government has collected from importers. An issue the Court did not address.

SHAPIRO: They didn’t say anything about how someone goes for a refund, what the process might be, how much they’re eligible for, whether there’s time limits. That’s because that issue wasn’t presented. It wasn’t briefed. No lower court had ruled on that.

Shapiro says the government was prepared for this ruling and has been looking for alternative options.

SHAPIRO: There are other provisions that allow national security tariffs, or reciprocal tariffs, or strategic temporary tariffs for all sorts of reasons. And I think that’s what the administration is going to go back to. Scott Bessent, the treasury secretary, has now for months been kind of priming the field in anticipation of such a ruling, noting that the government does have alternative methods of levying more targeted, which I think would be a better policy, for tariffs.

EICHER: Which is what happened. More on that when David Bahnsen joins us next.

Overall, Shapiro says a big takeaway is that this ruling is narrow.

SHAPIRO: The court did not rule on whether there really was an emergency, or whether the ostensible reason for the emergency was properly connected to the tariffs. It didn’t get into that. … It merely said IEEPA, this one particular statute, did not allow these kinds of tariffs.

ROUGH: Quickly, I’ll mention that along with Roberts’ principal opinion and Kavanaugh’s principal dissent, every other justice with the exception of Alito and Sotomayor wrote his or her own separate concurrence or dissent.

Thomas’s dissent said Congress cannot delegate so-called “core powers” that touch on life, liberty, or property, but it can delegate non-core powers, like economic ones.
And the last page of Justice Gorsuch’s concurrence contained a mini civics lesson. He addressed it to those who may be disappointed in the ruling. He said the framers of the Constitution made legislation hard and time consuming on purpose. But that deliberate process is aimed at trying to ensure our nation’s laws are well-thought-out.

And that’s this week’s Legal Docket.

JENNY ROUGH, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It:

The Monday Moneybeat.

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s time now to talk business, markets and the economy with financial analyst and advisor David Bahnsen. David heads up the wealth management firm the Bahnsen Group, and he is here now. Good morning to you.

DAVID BAHNSEN: Good morning, Nick, good to be with you.

EICHER: All right, you’ve heard the legal analysis of the Supreme Court’s decision on President Trump’s tariffs. One of the analysts we heard a moment ago made the point that the president does have other options—same thing you’ve said for awhile.

But right on cue … Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was at the Economic Club of Dallas just hours after the ruling and says it changes very little — that the administration can pivot to other statutes and keep tariff revenue virtually “unchanged.” He points to two major sections of law, sections 232 and 301, to keep the tariff pressure on. Let’s listen.

BESSENT: There are 232 and 301 tariffs that have with more than 4,000 lawsuits since the first Trump term. And then a number of 232 and section 301 tariff investigations will be started. Those take a number of weeks and months to implement. So I can tell you that the total amount of revenue that Treasury will collect this year will be little changed, if changed at all.

So if the revenue stays roughly the same, and the tariffs largely stay in place under different legal authority, does this ruling materially change the economics — or not?

BAHNSEN: Well, the very good news is that he is so wrong, it’s almost comical. He’s right. The Supreme Court only ruled on the tariffs that have been rationalized by IEEPA, but that’s over 60% of the tariffs. So I say this is a very good thing for the administration, that the revenue that they are going to generate to the Treasury from tariffs is going to go down, and that’s before we get any clarity from the lower courts that the Supreme Court punted back to on refunds.

My best guess is that there’s a lot of companies that will not know how to fight it and how to go through the process, but that some of the more resourced ones will, and that they will end up prevailing, getting some money back. But it’s true, the Supreme Court didn’t give perfect clarity on refunds. So let’s just go off of what we know, that over 60% of the tariffs now are called into question.

And I’m not convinced that the administration wants to go put all of them back on, because I think that, as you’ve already seen over the last several months, with coffee, with sugar, with bananas, with household products, with kitchen appliances, they saw the affordability impact. They see that goods inflation is back up to 1.7%. It was 0% when Biden left office. So I don’t think that they want to fight a lot of this.

But I definitely understand that the President and the Treasury Secretary need to maintain that public posture, either for politics and optics or for negotiating with some of the other countries that are counterparties. But no, my view is very much that they will attempt to move some of the tariffs to other rationales, but there’s no way they can move all of it. No possible way.

EICHER: You said the Supreme Court may have done the administration a favor. That sounds counterintuitive.

Not that the ruling creates growth—you’re saying removing some of these tariffs may prevent further contraction. Please explain why.

BAHNSEN: It’s not that a Supreme Court ruling can generate economic growth, but getting rid of an executive branch overreach can help stave off what was an economic contraction.

Here’s where it doesn’t help, though, is that there is still, because of the way that the White House has responded, the worst thing we have going right now in the economy is uncertainty, and there’s still now more uncertainty.

But right now, the ability to make commitments for hiring, the ability to make commitments for capital expenditures—my Dividend Cafe on Friday wrote extensively about how we have a capex-less society right now outside of data center—and that is not going to allow for the diversification for a fully robust economy.

And I think a big part of it, not all of it, but a big part of it is related to some of these tariffs and the uncertainty around them. So that’s what I mean by the Supreme Court doing them a favor, is these tariffs in particular are, I think, the worst from a policy standpoint, and to the extent that some of them can now go away or be punted or allowed to kind of fall off, it is going to enhance economic activity.

Any dollar that they don’t collect in tariffs now because of this is $1 circulating in the United States economy, in the private sector, available for capex, for hiring. So it’s one of the dangers, Nick—and I think you and I have talked about this for over a year now, almost on average every other week—we have a real problem talking about tariffs as revenue instead of talking about them as expenses.

EICHER: In this week’s Dividend Café, you made a point that’s easy to miss: that tariffs are sometimes more damaging when they’re disinflationary — meaning when companies can’t or don’t pass costs along and instead absorb those costs. So help the listener here. Why can it be worse when businesses “eat” the tariff instead of passing it on?

BAHNSEN: Well, it’s a disinflationary drag when a company can pass on the impacted tariffs. Who doesn’t think that they would like that? Like there’s some company out there that says, I’m just going to be nice about this, when the customer will pick it up.

Now, likewise, when a customer won’t pick it up, when they don’t have pricing power, when they don’t want to sacrifice market share, it’s what we refer to as price inelasticity when they can’t pass it on. No matter what the company does with the impact of tariff, they’re going to be operating in what they believe is their own self-interest.

So in some cases, the prices go higher, like we saw last year with coffee, with steel, aluminum. In other cases, they don’t, but then profit margins come down.

The disinflationary part is the latter part, that anytime someone says, oh, they didn’t pass that on to the consumer, that’s good, they’re eating it. It’s not good that they’re eating it if it’s going to lead to less capital investment, less orders, less inventory, less confidence for the future, and most importantly, less hiring and less wage growth.

And so this is the study of history here, that tariffs become inflationary and then disinflationary, meaning at first you see some prices go up where they can go up, but then you see it go down if it puts downward pressure on total trade, capital flows, business investment, all of these other things.

The part that mixes this up in a confusing way is that nobody really knows the tariff policy because of this executive discretion and all the waivers and carve-outs. And I can’t tell you when people have said to me over the last six months, well, I really thought it was going to be bad too, but when you look at Nvidia and Apple and the big cap stock market, they’re all doing pretty well. Maybe the tariffs haven’t been that bad.

And I say they’re not paying them. It’s the small businesses that are paying them, and they clearly are not hiring. And yes, correlation is not causation in economics, but you saw a complete death of new hiring, a freeze of new hiring in businesses with less than 250 employees, and especially businesses with less than 50 employees, right around the time

EICHER: Let’s turn to GDP. We got the fourth quarter growth number and it came in at an annualized 1.4 percent. Even adjusting for the government shutdown, that’s softer than many hoped.

You’ve argued that outside of data centers and AI construction, we’re seeing very little broad business investment.

Is this GDP report evidence that growth is becoming too narrow — that we have a real capital expenditures problem?

BAHNSEN: I think the number would have been into the twos annualized—not on the quarter, but an annualized number for the quarter—if it weren’t for government shutdown. But even that would have led to a total GDP number that would have been in the high ones or low twos, far below what many were projecting and hoping, and far below the capacity of this U.S. economy.

And the part that was significantly compressed was capex, business investment. And then the hard part for that is that it’s not only hard in the quarter it’s reported, but it foreshadows what I expect to be difficulty going forward, because business investment is the fertilization of things that are going to lead to more consumption and activity in the future.

And so it is the most important part of economic growth, is the supply side. Tariffs are not the only thing weighing on it, but it is a big factor, and the uncertainty around all of it is a big problem.

EICHER: And before we go … the Fed’s most trusted inflation measure … personal consumption expenditures … has just come in. The headline number looks like persistent inflation, but your argument is that the composition bears a closer look. What did you take away?

BAHNSEN: Yeah, you know, it’s funny. I wrote a Dividend Cafe saying disinflation is coming here this year, and you got a PCE print that ran a little bit hot. And yet my argument is it is a little bit more complicated than the headline suggests. Goods inflation is what’s gone up, and services inflation has actually come lower.

And I believe you’re going to see it continue to go lower as the way that they’re pricing rent and rent expectations and stuff around the shelter side is going to keep coming down.

But I don’t think that the PCE thing is the White House’s concern. It’s really to my point that they need to get this economic growth narrative right, and there’s so much confusion right now on tariffs, it’s hard to do it, and a confused PCE number doesn’t help.

EICHER: All right. David Bahnsen—founder, managing partner, and chief investment officer of The Bahnsen Group. He writes at DividendCafe.com and at WORLD Opinions. David, hope you have a great week.

BAHNSEN: Thanks so much Nick.

JENNY ROUGH, HOST: Today is Monday, February 23rd. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Jenny Rough.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: an American original.

When Johnny Cash was honorably discharged as a staff sergeant from the U.S. Air Force in July 1954, no one could’ve foreseen what his future held. Not least Cash himself.

But just over a year later, he would write and record the first of his many country top-10 hits. And over the next 50 years, he’d become not only a country- music star but a pop-culture icon as well.

This week would have marked his 94th birthday.

WORLD’s Arsenio Orteza now with an appreciation of the life and music of Johnny Cash.

ARSENIO ORTEZA: Before he became Johnny Cash, he was simply J.R. Cash, initials that didn’t so much represent names as a compromise: Cash’s mother wanted to name him “John,” and his father—Ray—wanted to name him “Ray.” J.R. Cash didn’t become “John Ray” Cash until 1950 when the Air Force wouldn’t let him register without a first and a middle name. And he stayed “John” until he began recording for Sun Records’ Sam Phillips, who thought Johnny better personified youthful rebellion. The rebellious part marked Cash’s career, the youthful part not so much. Though just 24 when he scored his first chart-topping single in 1956, he already sounded like someone who’d lived more lifetimes than one.

MUSIC: [“I Walk the Line” by Johnny Cash]

In a sense, Cash had lived more lifetimes than one. Born into a poor, Baptist, cotton-farming family in Arkansas, he was the fourth of seven children and learned early the connection between hard work and survival. It would serve him well. He also learned the inevitability of tragedy. When he was 12, his older brother Jack, a devout Christian whose faith had made a strong impression on him, died as the result of a sawmill accident.

Faith, hard work, and tragedy would eventually come to characterize his music as well and prove a potent and popular combination. As a solo performer, Cash recorded 45 Billboard country top 10s and 13 number ones. With June Carter Cash, Waylon Jennings, and the Highwaymen, he scored even more. Faith and tragedy—not necessarily in that order—also made him newsworthy. His immersion in the popular-musician lifestyle took its toll on his first marriage and young family. And he nearly killed both his career and himself with a steady diet of amphetamines, barbiturates, and alcohol. It was his marriage to June Carter—which began as an affair and was his second marriage and her third—and a return to his Christian faith in 1968 that stabilized him and led to his second classic period.

MUSIC: [“Folsom Prison Blues” by Johnny Cash]

“Folsom Prison Blues” was the lead track from his live album At Folsom Prison. By 2003, both it and its 1969 follow-up, At San Quentin, had gone triple platinum, making them two of the bestselling country albums recorded during the 1960s. They also reestablished Cash as a first-rate performer and in so doing made him into a survivor. Survivors are, by definition, sympathetic figures. When faith comes into the picture, they can become persuasive figures too. Between 1969, when he released the album The Holy Land, and 1973, when he released the film The Gospel Road and its soundtrack, Cash became one of the most outspoken Christian celebrities in America.

MUSIC: [“I See Men As Trees Walkin’” by Johnny Cash]

From 1969 to ’71, Cash also hosted a popular TV show, and for the next decade he often performed over a hundred concerts a year. There were times when he seemed to be everywhere. But the overexposure took its toll, and sales of his music sagged. He was ordained as a minister by the Charismatic preacher Bill Hamon in 1977. But, instead of igniting a period of spiritual fervor, the event seemed to signal a last gasp. By decade’s end, Cash wasn’t affiliated with any particular body of believers, and he was abusing pills again—by some accounts even worse than he had in the ’60s. He wouldn’t overcome his addictions for another 10 years.

TURNER: His life story is a series of victories and relapses, really, which is, I guess, why people can relate to him.

Steve Turner is the author of the excellent 2004 biography The Man Called Cash: The Life, Love and Faith of an American Legend. I asked him what he made of Cash’s notorious ups and downs.

TURNER: I remember asking him when I interviewed him, like, ‘Would your life have been better if you'd been Pat Boone?’ In other words, if he'd kept on the straight and narrow, if he'd never got into all that stuff and never taken drugs. And he said, “Well, it might have been in that I might have got more work done,” you know, because taking drugs and being sick, obviously takes the edge off your work. But he felt that the experiences have been valuable and, I think that's true. He looked like a man of experience and he kind of sang like a man of experience.

The hip-hop and heavy-metal producer Rick Rubin tapped into that experience in the 1990s. Beginning with the album American Recordings, Rubin and Cash recorded seven albums and one box set, some released posthumously. These projects made Cash cool again and found him recording all manner of songs. Some were Cash originals, but most were cover versions–and rather unlikely covers at that.

MUSIC: [“Hurt” by Johnny Cash]

This 2002 rendition of “Hurt” by the industrial-rock band Nine Inch Nails was instantly recognized as one of Cash’s most powerful performances ever, in part because of its award-winning video. The video also made clear how much the 70-year-old Cash’s health had degenerated. He’d suffered numerous debilitating ailments, and, as a result, he looked–and no doubt felt–10 if not 20 years older. Larry King asked him whether he’d grown bitter.

CASH: Bitter?

KING: Yeah. Angry? I mean, you know, you're a young guy. You're only 70.

CASH: No, I'm not bitter. Why should I be bitter? I'm thrilled to death with life. Life the way God has given it to me is just a platter, a golden platter of life laid out there for me. It's been beautiful. Yeah, things have been good, and things will get better all the time.

KING: So you have no regrets?

CASH: No regrets.

KING: And no anger at the—why did God do this to me?

CASH: Oh, no, no. I'm the last one that would be angry at God.

As if to show how angry at God he wasn’t, he’d even written a song, brimming with biblical language, about looking forward to the second coming of Christ. It was the title track of his then latest album, American IV: The Man Comes Around.

MUSIC: [“The Man Comes Around” by Johnny Cash]

The Man Comes Around was the last of his albums that Cash would live to see released. And he sounded less youthful than ever. But his rebellion—against despair, against bitterness, against the spirit of the age—remained.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: The U.S. builds up its military presence in the Middle East as the clock ticks on talks with Iran. And, tomorrow marks four years of the war in Ukraine. We’ll hear from a pastor who chose to stay on the front lines with his congregation. That and more tomorrow.

I’m Nick Eicher.

JENNY ROUGH, HOST: And I’m Jenny Rough.

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio. WORLD’s mission is biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

The Bible says, “Riches do not profit in the day of wrath, but righteousness delivers from death.” —Proverbs 11:4

Go now in grace and peace.

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