The World and Everything in It: March 13, 2025

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

A government watchdog, or more bureaucracy? The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau may be on the ropes. We’ll hear from opposing sides.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And an Israeli father held hostage since October 7th is finally home, but the road to recovery is long. We’ll hear from the brother of Or Levy.

And a family’s perspective on God’s mercy changed while caring for their disabled son.

KARA DEDERT: Our suffering is never pointless, and actually this is the very means that he will use to know Him more and to bring joy in ways that you had never imagined.

And economic deja vu. WORLD commentator Cal Thomas brings a history lesson.

REICHARD: It’s Thursday, March 13th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

BROWN: And I’m Myrna Brown. Good morning!

REICHARD: Now here’s Kent Covington with today’s news.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Ukraine » The world will await Russia’s response. Two days after Ukraine agreed to a 30-day ceasefire proposed by the United States, President Trump said a U.S. delegation was on its way to Moscow.

TRUMP: People are going to Russia right now as we speak, and hopefully we can get a ceasefire from Russia.

The ceasefire proposal that Ukraine agreed to this week also calls for both sides to spend that time negotiating a lasting peace.

Ukrainian President Voldymyr Zelenskyy heard here through a translator:

ZELENSKYY: If we are going to have 30-day truce, these 30 days will have to be used to put certain matters on paper.

President Trump briefly halted military aid to Ukraine to pressure Kyiv to the bargaining table. And he hinted that he’s prepared to play hardball with Russia as well, if it comes to that, possibly through sanctions and tariffs.

But he stressed that he’s not anxious to do that, and that he is hopeful that Moscow will agree to a ceasefire and further peace talks.

Trump hosts Irish prime minister » At the White House on Wednesday, Trump hosted  Ireland's prime minister in the Oval Office.

TRUMP:  Thank you very much. It's a great honor to have Micheál Martin, Taoiseach — Ireland, it's a special place and he's a very special guy.

The two leaders honored the annual White House Shamrock Ceremony, a tradition that dates back to the Truman administration in 1952.

Martin called it a great honor:

MARTIN:  To celebrate St. Patrick's, uh, with you. Uh, and I thank you for your hospitality, uh, and the warmth of your reception.

Trade war » The annual ceremony is a symbol of the two nations' close partnership. But it does come at a time of trade uncertainty.

The European Union, of which Ireland is a part, just announced retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods in response to new U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum imports that took effect on Wednesday.

But Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the EU measures won’t change the president’s mind.

LUTNICK:  Nothing's going to stop that until we've got a big, strong, domestic steel and aluminum, uh, capability. And by the way, he's going to add copper to that mix too.

Trump sees strong domestic production of things like computer chips, steel, and aluminum as vital to America’s economic future and national security.

The EU announced the tariffs on about $28 billion dollars worth of U.S. goods will begin on April 1st.

Inflation down » The trade war has triggered some anxiety on Wall Street in recent days, but:

SOUND: (Closing bell)

Markets finished up on Wednesday, encouraged by better-than-expected inflation numbers for February.

Inflation, measured by the Consumer Price Index, rose 2.8% compared to February of last year. That’s better than the 2.9% analysts expected. And it breaks a four-month trend of rising inflation rates.

Education Department » Education Sec. Linda McMahon says big cuts at the Department of Education were necessary and part of an effort to return power over education back to the states.

MCMAHON: We are not taking away education. The President never said that. He's taken the bureaucracy out of education so that more money flows to the states.

Roughly 2,000 workers at the Education Department have been laid off or agreed to retire or resign. That’s about half the department’s workforce.

Those affected by the cuts will receive pay and benefits through early June.

President Trump's ultimate goal is to shutter the department completely, but that would require an act of Congress.

Khalil hearing » Demonstrators shouted outside of a federal courthouse in lower Manhattan on Wednesday in support of Mahmoud Khalil. That's the Columbia University student who helped lead pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel protests on campus last year.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt:

LEAVITT: Secretary Rubio revoked this individual's visa based on the Immigration and Nationality Act because this individual clearly poses an adversarial effect—consequence—to the foreign policy and national interest of our great country.

The Trump administration charges that Khalil showed solidarity with Hamas, a designated terror group, and that is grounds for deportation.

Khalil’s attorneys say he is now a legal U.S. resident and argue that the administration is violating his First Amendment rights.

A judge has temporarily halted his deportation while his legal challenge plays out.

I'm Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is on the proverbial cutting block. Is that a good thing or bad? Plus, finding faith and hope through disability.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Thursday the 13th of March.

This is WORLD Radio and we thank you for listening! Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

First up, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau—its past, its future, and the debate over whether it should even exist.

REICHARD: Last week, the Senate Banking Committee advanced President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the agency: former FDIC board member, Jonathan McKernan. The committee vote was split along party lines—13 Republicans in favor, 11 Democrats opposed. The nomination now goes to the full Senate for a vote.

BROWN: The CFPB was formed in response to the 2008 financial crisis. It aimed to protect consumers from deceptive lending practices. But even its existence has been controversial.

The agency’s been in limbo since early February. That’s when the Trump administration ordered it to suspend all operations, cancelled $100 million dollars in contracts and fired 70 employees.

Some people are outraged; others see it as much needed reform.

REICHARD: The CFPB is the brainchild of Senator Elizabeth Warren and she is its fiercest defender. Here she is touting its successes at a rally last month to bolster support for it:

WARREN: The CFPB is the cop on the beat. And that cop is the one that caught the crooks and so far has made them give back $21 billion dollars.

Abuses the CFPB has uncovered include banks opening accounts for customers without telling them—Wells Fargo comes to mind—and payday lenders that make sure consumers never pay off the debt.

Adam Rust is with the Consumer Federation of America. He argues that the CFPB plays a critical role in financial oversight.

RUST: The CFPB has penalized those institutions. Payday lenders, there was one that was, again, incentivizes employees to make sure you rolled over your loan that you never really paid it off but kept adding another round of fees and another round of fees that traps people in debt and can actually just destroy their financial stability. So those are some examples.

BROWN: Some rules in limbo now are quite popular among consumers. For example, a rule that bans the inclusion of medical debt on credit reports. The CFPB says this would keep debt collectors from using erroneous medical bills to pressure people to pay up to improve credit scores.

Rust says that without CFPB enforcement, predatory financial practices will flourish. But financial analyst David Bahnsen sees the CFPB as poorly run and structured, and another unnecessary bureaucracy for taxpayers to fund.

BAHNSEN: Why would we have needed new alphabet soup regulatory, with all of the alphabet soup regulatory we already had? If Wells Fargo was opening accounts for people that didn't need them, which they were, and we don't want that to happen. What is the FDIC doing? What is the Federal Reserve doing? What is the treasury department doing? There are plenty of other regulatory bodies, including state regulatory which has primary oversight of this that would have, could have and should have done the exact same thing to identify Wells Fargo's bad behavior that the CFPB ended up doing. What the CFPB did was get the press release for it. Any number of other regulatory agencies would have, could have, and should have stopped Wells Fargo's bad behavior.

Rust counters that the CFPB fills a particular role in the scheme of government financial regulation:

RUST: Nothing is really out there aside from the CFPB that is focused exclusively on consumer financial protection. Those kinds of gaps at the federal level were identified prior to the financial crisis when there were a number of, especially non-banks, for some mortgage lenders that aren't banks that…employing risky practices and …pursuing short-term profits, but at the expense of the broader economy. And so people lost their homes, they lost their jobs, their businesses. There were all kinds of impacts and it really raised the issue that we had gaps to cover and the CFPB was assigned to.

REICHARD: Yet Bahnsen points to the unintended consequences of well-intentioned people. Layers of regulations have burdened small banks in a way that just doesn’t affect big banks. The CFPB reduced or removed overdraft fees for example, which led small banks to end points and rewards programs on their credit cards that consumers liked. That weakened the small banks. For big banks, those fees are only a small portion of their business so they find ways to absorb the costs.

BROWN: Bahnsen says those unintended consequences of CFPB rules hurt the very people the agency was created to protect.

BAHNSEN: There's no question that a focus on things like pay paycheck loans, where where people are able to get loans on Pay Day at high interest rates a couple days early before their paycheck has come for low income people that are in need of extra liquidity, that those things sound like they're really helping people, because these are high fees, and it sounds predatory, and yet, there's no question that the consumers receiving those loans vitally needed them. And so what they did is demonize an element in the economy that was actually needed by low income people that the CFPB says they were there to protect. And so their efforts there harmed those that they were there to protect by taking away a form of liquidity that was necessary to people who didn't have necessarily another avenue. And all it did is force them into a black market, loan sharks, other, you know, arrangements of desperation, that were suboptimal in every way.

Rust sums up his take on that argument:

RUST: You don't want access to dangerous services. That's not what anyone wants. And if you want to argue that it's the underserved that are going to be the ones that lose out on access to credit, well, essentially what you're saying is the underserved won't have access to dangerous credit.

REICHARD: The larger question brings to mind a famous exchange from 1979 between economist Milton Friedman and talk show host Phil Donahue. Donahue asked if it isn’t better to let the experts govern us?

FRIEDMAN: You know, I think you're taking a lot of things for granted. Just tell me where in the world you find these angels who are going to organize society for us?

BROWN: That argument aligns with people who oppose the creation of the CFPB and see it as an unnecessary intervention in the free market.

REICHARD: Yet supporters say financial institutions left unchecked have a history of preying on the vulnerable. And without an independent CFPB, they argue, the burden falls disproportionately on consumers alone to figure out the complexities of the financial system.

BROWN: Meanwhile, the agency’s fate remains uncertain. President Trump has made known his desire to dismantle the CFPB. And McKernan, his nominee to lead it, has pledged to enforce consumer financial laws but also criticized what he calls the agency’s ‘excessive enforcement.’

As the full Senate prepares to vote for a new director of the CFPB, one thing is clear: a number of lawsuits are pending, and the battle over the CFPB isn’t over.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: home at last.

Now just a quick word of warning: This story may be too intense for some of our younger listeners. Parents, use your discernment, but you may want to fast forward seven minutes and come back later.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: On October 7th, 2023, Hamas terrorists stormed the Nova music festival, where Or Levy and his wife Eynav, were celebrating. Enyav was killed. Or was dragged into Gaza and held hostage for nearly 500 days. He was finally released last month as part of the initial phase of the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. But the conditions of his captivity and release drew international condemnation.

WORLD Reporter Travis Kircher spoke with Or’s brother, Michael Levy, about the long and difficult road to recovery.

SOUND: HAMAS VIDEO

TRAVIS KIRCHER: When WORLD last spoke with Michael Levy in January, the last images he’d seen of his brother Or were from a Hamas video taken on October 7th. It was Day One of his time as a Hamas hostage.

MICHAEL: For 491 days, we didn't know if he is alive or dead.

But all of that changed on Saturday, February 8th.

SOUND: HAMAS RELEASES HOSTAGES

Or and fellow hostages Eli Sharabi and Ohad Ben Ami were released as part of the initial phase of Israel’s ceasefire with Hamas. Before they were freed, armed Hamas militants paraded the three hostages onto a stage before a crowd of Palestinians. Michael was watching the video and says he was shocked at his brother’s appearance.

MICHAEL: He looked awful. It was obvious that he was starved. Unfortunately—and I hate this comparison—but the only time I saw people looking like this was back at the Holocaust.

Despite their appearance, Michael says Hamas forced the hostages to thank them for feeding them. He also confirms that Hamas gave some of the hostages, for lack of a better term, a grab bag before they were handed over to the Red Cross.

MICHAEL: It's just another demonstration of how sick and twisted they are. I mean, they gave them their version of souvenirs from Gaza…The only thing Or got was a certificate. But I know that from other hostages that were released, that some of them got pictures of city of Gaza, or a scarf of Hamas, or headband of Hamas, or something like that.

Meanwhile in Hostage Square in Tel Aviv, cheers of a different sort:

SOUND: CHEERS FROM HOSTAGE SQUARE

…as Or and his two fellow hostages arrived by helicopter at the hospital and reunited with their loved ones. Audio here of Or reuniting with Michael and his other family members courtesy of the Hostages and Missing Families Forum.

MICHAEL: His legs were so thin. I don't think I've ever seen someone so thin. It was practically bones and skin. That's it.

Michael says his brother was still clinging to the hope that his wife Eynav had survived. Michael had to tell him that Eynav had indeed been murdered, more than a year earlier.

MICHAEL: He kind of knew, but he wasn't 100 percent sure...he did not see it...actually his first question was, is asked for assurance that Eynav is not alive, and unfortunately, that was the fact.

But despite the bad news, there were also moments of sheer joy. Like the moment Or reunited with his son Almog…now three years old. Michael says these reunions are sensitive and must be handled with care. They spoke first on the phone. Then there was a video call. Then:

MICHAEL: When Almog got to the hospital, he ran to the corridors of the hospital and yelled, "Where's my daddy? Where's my daddy?" Everyone was crying around him...it was an amazing moment to see them hug and it was as if they were never apart for a second.

In the past few weeks, Michael says he’s been learning more about the conditions his brother endured in Gaza. He’s up-front about the fact that he’s withholding some of the more horrific aspects of Or’s captivity…but here’s what he can share. He says his brother was kept in underground tunnels where he couldn't stand and was barely able to breathe. What little water he was given was either polluted or seawater, and at times he was forced to live on no more than a single bite of pita bread a day.

MICHAEL: The conditions that Or and the rest of the hostages were in was worse than anything human mind can understand.

Now that he’s home, Michael says his brother is relishing the simple pleasures of life. Like eating Shabbat dinner on Friday evenings with his family, something Michael admits a non-Jewish audience may not understand.

MICHAEL: We drink wine, we talk, we laugh, we celebrate, we argue about meaningful things that are not very important sometimes, but it's a lot of fun.

Or has been home for every Shabbat dinner since his release. And he’s rediscovering another love: basketball. Michael says on Friday, he and Or attended a game to support Maccabi Rishon-Lezion, their hometown team. Michael says it was an emotional moment for both his brother and the team.

MICHAEL: When we got into the arena, everyone cried. After the game, the players took us to the circle in the middle of the arena, and we celebrated together with them. We were hugging and jumping and dancing and just seeing his face was an amazing moment.

For now Michael says his brother’s life consists of normal things. Like taking his son Almog to kindergarten. Trying to keep him out of trouble. And grappling with the horrific things he’s endured. Michael says he knows WORLD listeners have been praying for his family, and he wants that to continue.

MICHAEL: And I want them to keep praying, not just for us, but for the rest of the hostages that are still there.

And Michael says his brother hasn’t forgotten those left behind. One of the first things Or wanted after his release from the hospital was to visit Hostage Square. Against his doctor’s wishes.

MICHAEL: After a lot of fights and arguments with us...we and the doctors finally agreed that he'll go, so...

The two brothers went with their father early on a Friday morning when the square was nearly empty. Then Or did something he’d been wanting to do for a long time. He tore down the signs with his picture on them.

MICHAEL: and it was amazing to see an amazing, amazing closure, to see him there alive, and that he was able to remove those signs.

Today, Michael says they still visit Hostage Square, but instead of holding signs about Or, they’re there to represent another hostage: Alon Ahel, who was kidnapped along with Or.

MICHAEL: Obviously, we want all of the hostages back—all of the 59 that are still there. But yeah, Alon has a special place in our heart, because Or love him like a brother.

Mediators continue to meet in Qatar, hoping to negotiate a new ceasefire deal that would see the release of more than half of the remaining hostages. Late last week the Trump administration confirmed that it is now engaging in direct talks with Hamas.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Travis Kircher.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Katherine Kiefer thought she lost everything in January’s Palisades wildfire, including her cat Aggie. But two months later, the cat came back, skinnier but somehow still alive. 

But maybe cats really do have 9 lives! 

Kiefer’s daughter racked up a million likes on social media of their tearful reunion at the vet’s office.

VET: She’s such a sweetheart, the sweetest girl. I’ve been sitting with her all day. 

KIEFER: Oh, you have?! 

VET: I have. She’s the sweetest. You want to hold her? 

KIEFER: I’m so happy to see you! Hi, baby! 

VET: You take all the time you guys need. 

KIEFER: Okay. Hey, Aggie! Hi, sweetie! Sweetest girl.

Aggie’s vet bills are piling up, but so are the donations. So they’re going to be alright.

Kiefer says she can’t wait to bring Aggie home today—and she has just one message: “Don’t underestimate cats.”

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Because clearly, they always land on their feet!

BROWN: It’s The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Thursday, March 13th.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: finding purpose in life’s hardest moments.

WORLD’s Leah Savas takes us to Michigan, where one family’s journal of caring for a child with disabilities has reshaped their understanding of suffering—and the dignity of every life.

NURSE BRENDA: Did you sleep good last night, Calvi? There’s a smile.

LEAH SAVAS: It’s a little after 8:30 in the morning in the Dedert home. Nurse Brenda VanAanhold is busy in a sunny back room, where a boy lies on a bed. He’s hooked up to tubes and cords. That white noise is the sound of an oxygen machine and a ventilator.

NURSE BRENDA: [Singing] Good morning to Calvi, good morning to Calvi.

Brenda holds the boy’s arms and swings them as she sings.

Calvin Dedert is 15 years old, the fourth of five siblings. But he can’t talk, walk, or move much on his own. He has a laundry list of medical conditions, including cerebral palsy, chronic lung disease, and microcephaly. That’s a neurological condition that results in a small head and brain. Calvin can only see light and dark. But he has great hearing, and he can move his eyes, wiggle his tongue, and smile.

NURSE BRENDA: I’m going to get your other neb going, Calvi…

Calvin is in the middle of his morning routine.

NURSE BRENDA: …and move on to the next thing. Right, Calvi? You’re always busy.

Brenda is giving him medications and then will use a few devices to clear his lungs of any fluid that might have built up overnight.

SOUND: [Tapping sound]

She pours formula into a plastic bag attached to a feeding tube.

He’s had it since he was about a year old. That was the first of many hard calls his mom Kara says she and her husband Darryl had to make after Calvin’s birth. But the first warning signs of his conditions came during an ultrasound at 38 weeks.

DEDERT: And we saw there was definitely a deficit where the brain matter was supposed to be and so we knew something was very wrong. Just as a mom, you’re reeling. We just had no answers for it.

They were missionaries in Cambodia at the time. And it wasn’t until later that they discovered the issues were likely due to the Zika virus, which Kara had contracted at about 13 weeks of pregnancy.

As a newborn, Calvin seemed like a normal baby. But they eventually discovered that he was aspirating while nursing. The milk was going straight into his lungs.

They also learned from a neurologist that Calvin would never walk or talk.

DEDERT: She recommended not doing anything. And we said, well, we've also been considering a feeding tube. And she was very much if you, if you do a feeding tube, almost like “I wash my hands of this” is what the feeling was. She didn't say that directly. We felt this weight of, are we causing additional suffering?

Kara and Darryl later realized the doctor’s issue was less with the tube and more with the value of Calvin’s life.

DEDERT: There is something totally unrelated to quality of life that is so valuable to recognize in every single person, and there is just intrinsic value in being brought into life.

The desire to meet his basic needs fueled their decisions as the years went by and other interventions arose.

DEDERT: He would have these episodes where he would cry. And then he would go completely blue and limp. And we thought he was dying.

Turns out his airways were collapsing. He wasn’t getting the oxygen he needed. That led to a tracheostomy tube—or trach—in his neck. By then, he was about three years old.

But Calvin’s condition remained fragile.

DEDERT: It was constant, trying to keep him from basically suffocating from the fluid that would constantly build up in his lungs.

That meant repeated stays in the ICU for weeks at a time as Calvin fought infections with the help of a ventilator. They often didn’t expect him to live.

DEDERT: I mean, I wouldn't buy clothes often for the next season. Because he was so frail and so fragile.

During one extended hospital stay, it became clear that he could no longer live without a ventilator. Going home without it would just mean a slow, painful death by suffocation. So, when they left the hospital that time, they brought a ventilator with them. That was in 2020. He’s been on it ever since.

DEDERT: Where we are today is it's a progressively deteriorating situation. And yet just a surrendering of his life to the Lord knowing that the Lord knows how many days he has.

SOUND: [Sound of lift]

Back in the sunny room, nurse Brenda operates a lift to move Calvin from bed. Now that he’s a teenager, he’s too heavy for anyone to lift him except his dad. So, to get him out of bed, they strap him to a hammock-like seat hanging from a track on the ceiling. It moves up and down with the push of a button.

SOUND: [Sound of lift switching off]

Brenda lowers him onto a blue mesh stretcher and rolls him into a bathroom with a walk-in shower down the hall.

SOUND: [Sound of shower and singing]

Calvin is totally dependent on the help of others. From the world’s perspective, he doesn’t contribute to society and uses up time and resources.

DEDERT: We equate all suffering with bad things, but God, actually creates different meaning for suffering for those who are trusting in Him, our suffering is never pointless, and actually this is the very means that he will use, not only to refine you, but also to know Him more and to bring joy in ways that you had never imagined.

Kara said Calvin’s life has taught her to seek the Lord in ways she never did before he was born.

There was even a time she resisted learning about how to care for each one of Calvin’s medical needs. She didn’t want to be a neurologist or respiratory therapist. She just wanted to be a mom. But she’s since embraced it as an intentional work God has done in her life.

DEDERT: The way I view Calvin, the way I view even the mundane things like changing diapers and caring for him, these are actually acts of faithfulness and trust, and that these are the good works that he's prepared for me to do.

Kara recalls one time in church years ago, when the pastor asked a loud rhetorical question during his sermon: have any of you ever experienced the mercies of God? At just the right time, almost as if in response, Calvin let out a loud, satisfied yell.

DEDERT: And we all just looked he was so—it seemed so intentional towards the question, and just this huge smile on his face. And sometimes those coincidences just seem too coincidental, but it just seemed like he was testifying. Yes, I have received, I've experienced the mercies of God many times!

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Leah Savas in Belmont, Michigan.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Thursday, March 13th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Up next, economic deja vu.

It’s been a bumpy week for the U.S. stock market, but WORLD commentator Cal Thomas says we’ve been here before.

CAL THOMAS: When I began investing in balanced mutual funds in 1983, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was just under 12-hundred points. Even after a few choppy days this week, the Dow is still hanging out around 41-thousand or better. It’s the difference between looking at short-term vs. long-term investing.

I called my financial adviser who told me not to worry about the latest declines because I am diversified. Besides, she said, “it’s only paper.” That may not sound reassuring until one considers we’ve been here before.

The year was 1981 and the country was struggling with double-digit inflation—thirteen and a half percent at the end of the Carter presidency. Unemployment was high—8 percent. Interest rates were even higher as mortgage rates soared to well over 16 percent. Public confidence was at a historic low.

It took Ronald Reagan nearly two years to turn the economy around, beginning with the 1981 Economic and Recovery Tax Act. It substantially reduced taxes and eventually led to strong economic growth.

Bruce Bartlett, who drafted an earlier version of the bill, defended it in an article for The Washington Post. He writes: “Keynesian economics, which was the dominant theory at the time, said that higher taxes would curb inflation by reducing people’s disposable income and spending, and that any tax cut would exacerbate inflation.” He goes on to say: “Our thinking, by contrast, was that lower taxes would increase the incentive to work, save and invest. If that led to an increase in the supply of goods and services, then the impact would be anti-inflationary.”

So it was, and so it did.

Reagan’s approval rating sank to 35 percent in 1983, but as the economy began to recover, it soared to 61 percent by November 1984. He won re-election in a landslide.

President Trump has expressed a “wait and you’ll see” attitude about his economic policies. He promises a great economic boom and a new “Golden Age.” We’ll see if that replicates the Reagan pattern. Trump didn’t help consumer confidence when he punted after being asked twice whether a recession might be coming.

Writing in The New York Post, Fox Business commentator Charles Gasparino advises investors to ignore the stock market because Wall Street is dealing with “painful detox from (its) government spending addiction.”

Gasparino writes: “Think of the current U.S. economy as a junkie weaning himself off heroin, which is never easy…”

As with President Reagan, Trump is still having to deal with the fallout from his predecessor’s economic policies. Those include Biden’s “Inflation Reduction Act,” which caused inflation and produced the high prices and other negative consequences Democrats are claiming are Trump’s fault. Really? After only six weeks in office and with his last cabinet officer confirmed by the Senate just this week?

Detox is painful, but the result is worth the effort. Our problem is that too many Americans have become over-reliant on government to take care of them, while ignoring the old Puritan ethic of self-reliance. Politicians don’t care because it contributes to their careers and power. That attitude has contributed to our $36 trillion national debt and inflation which the administration, with the help of Elon Musk and his DOGE squad, are trying to reduce.

Economic roller coasters can be scary, but like the rides at the fair, the end produces satisfaction, relief and even a thrill. So, hang on.

I’m Cal Thomas.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Tomorrow: John Stonestreet is back for Culture Friday.

And, Collin Garbarino reviews a new Looney Tunes movie that offers some fun nostalgia for the family.  Plus Word Play with George Grant. That and more tomorrow.

I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

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: “So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, ‘If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’” —John 8:31-32

Go now in grace and peace.

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