The World and Everything in It: October 2, 2025

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.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

The U.S. government pledges more funding for autism research, but is it moving in the right direction?

KENNEDY: Despite the cataclysmic impact of the epidemic on our nation's children, we are now replacing the institutional culture of politicized science and corruption with evidence based medicine.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Also, how autonomous cars could reshape America’s transportation.

And the quiet influence of a teacher who helped light the fire of faith.

WEBER: More important than best practices in teaching is making sure that God is present in all of your teaching.

And WORLD commentator Cal Thomas on the will to reign in runaway government spending.

REICHARD: It’s Thursday, October 2nd. 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: Up next, Kent Covington with today’s news.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Government shutdown latest » There is no end in sight to the partial government shutdown.

The Senate voted once more Wednesday on a measure to fund the government temporarily and end the shutdown.

But the tally was the same as a failed vote the night before.

AUDIO:  On this vote, the yeas are 55 and the nays are 45. Three-fifths of the Senate duly chosen and sworn not having voted in the affirmation, the motion is not agreed to.

Republicans offered a clean stopgap bill to keep funding into November. But Democrats demanded policy add-ons, including Obamacare tax credits and rollbacks to parts of what President Trump called his “one big beautiful bill.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries says Democrats do not intend to back down.

JEFFRIES:  House Democrats and Senate Democrats remain, uh, consistent and in lockstep in defense of the healthcare of the American people. And that's not gonna change.

Republican Sen. Steve Daines is urging his Democratic colleagues to support the temporary funding bill:

DAINES:  It is passed the house. We have bipartisan support in the Senate. Five more Democrats and we'll have this and then we can get back to negotiating.

A quick correction: On Wednesday we reported that two Democrats joined all 53 Senate Republicans in voting for the stopgap funding bill. In fact, one Republican — Kentucky’s Rand Paul — voted no. And Independent Sen. Angus King, who caucuses with the Democrats, voted yes.”

Hamas members arrested in Germany » No answer from Hamas yet to a20-point Gaza peace plan that the White House put forward this week. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters:

LEAVITT:  I can, uh, tell you that there are some very sensitive discussions that are taking place, but I certainly don't wanna get ahead of any announcement at this podium. Uh, I'm gonna let, uh, special Envoy Whitcoff and the president of the United States handle that.

Meantime, in Brussels, German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt announced that authorities arrested three alleged members of Hamas in a coordinated raid in several cities.

DORBRINDT: [Speaking German]

He said “today we have succeeded in averting a terrorist threat.” He added that “Terrorists affiliated with Hamas had been making detailed plans to carry out attacks in Germany.”

Authorities believe the men were plotting against Jewish targets and had weapons and ammunition in their possession at the time of their arrest.

The suspects are set to appear in court today.

Hamas claims it has no connection to the three suspects.

Israel latest » And in the Middle East today, Israel is recognizing one of the holiest days in the Jewish calendar. WORLD's Travis Kircher reports from Jerusalem.

TRAVIS KIRCHER: The streets of downtown Jerusalem are normally bustling with traffic and squealing breaks. But last night, they sounded like this:

SOUND: [Streets on Yom Kippur]

KIRCHER: The roads closed shortly after sundown Wednesday in honor of Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement.

Joseph Shulam is founder of Netivyah Bible Instruction Ministry...

SHULAM: We fast and pray all day long. From the morning till about 6 at night. So it's a very intense day because none of us eat or drink for 25 hours.

KIRCHER: Last night Shulam addressed a special Yom Kippur gathering at a Messianic congregation in Jerusalem. He spoke from Leviticus 16 about Old Testament sacrifices...but said since then God provided a new means of atonement.

SHULAM: Well we have Yeshua. God took our sins and transferred it not to a goat, but to His son. And that's very significant for us.

KIRCHER: The holiday comes as Israel intensifies its offensive in Gaza City. Yesterday Israel's defense minister said anyone still there must leave the area immediately. He called it their last opportunity, and said from this point forward, anyone remaining inside the city “will be considered a terrorist.”

Reporting for WORLD, I'm Travis Kircher in Jerusalem.

EU leaders consider using Russian assets to fund Ukraine loan » European Union leaders are weighing a plan to provide long-term financial and military support to Ukraine using hundreds of billions of dollars in frozen Russian assets.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen:

LEYEN:  We have to increase the pressure on Russia, and this is why I have proposed reparation loans for Ukraine on the basis of the immobilized Russian assets.

She said the EU would not be confiscating the assets, and that Ukraine would have to pay back the loan if Russia pays reparations.

The Kremlin, of course, does not like the idea.

PESKOV: [Speaking Russian]

Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the EU is scheming to—his words “illegally confiscate Russian property,” which he called “theft.”

The biggest pot of ready funds is held in Belgium, and amount to nearly $230 billion dollars.

Louisiana Planned Parenthood » Planned Parenthood is out of business in the state of Louisiana. WORLD’s Benjamin Eicher reports:

BENJAMIN EICHER: The nation’s largest abortion provider says it has shut down its two Louisiana locations.

Governor Jeff Landry celebrated the closures, calling them a victory for women and children.

Planned Parenthood also closed its Houston facility — described by Students for Life as the largest abortion site in North America.

Those closures add to a growing list: multiple clinics in California, Ohio, Michigan, and Minnesota have also shut their doors this year.

For WORLD, I’m Benjamin Eicher.

Philippines earthquake update » In the Philippines, rescuers continue a frantic search for survivors from a powerful earthquake. Crews digging through debris with tractors and jackhammers.

Army troops, police and civilian volunteers have also been carrying out house-to-house searches.

SOUND: [Searching houses in the Philippines]

The 6.9 magnitude earthquake hit a central region of the Philippines on Tuesday night.

The death toll has risen to at least 69 and is expected to rise further.

Jane Goodall obituary » Jane Goodall has died. She was a British primatologist renowned for her discoveries in chimpanzee field research.

The evolutionary anthropologist also founded the James Goodall Institute, which promotes wildlife research and conservation.

Goodall is best remembered for living among chimpanzees in Africa decades ago.

She documented the animals using tools and doing other activities previously believed to be exclusive to humans. She also noted their distinct personalities.

The institute said Jane Goodall died of natural causes in California. She was 91 years old.

I'm Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: the search for a cause, the HHS eyes Tylenol and other potential autism factors. Plus, how a 5th grade teacher can change much more than a student’s life.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Thursday the 2nd of October.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

First up: Pain meds and autism.

Last week, President Trump joined Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at a press conference on autism treatments. In it, Kennedy questioned whether the use of Tylenol during pregnancy could affect the development of unborn babies.

Here’s WORLD reporter Emma Freire.

TRUMP: Today, we're delighted to be joined by America's top medical and public health professionals as we announce historic steps to confront the crisis of autism.

EMMA FREIRE: After President Trump appointed vaccine-skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to the top job at HHS, Kennedy promised to investigate the causes of autism. His promise this spring to release preliminary findings by September was met with raised eyebrows. Last week’s press conference did little to lower them.

TRUMP: So taking Tylenol is not good.

Trump started by announcing the FDA would notify physicians that taking Tylenol during pregnancy can be associated with a higher risk of autism for the baby. Trump was unequivocal in his advice regarding Tylenol’s active ingredient acetaminophen.

TRUMP: So ideally, you don't take it at all.

The FDA’s actual letter to physicians is much more cautious. It stresses that the science is far from settled and Tylenol is still safer for pregnant women than other over-the-counter medicines like Ibuprofen.

SINGER: There was no news there for us at all as doctors.

Dr. Jeffrey Singer is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. He said doctors have long known there are tradeoffs when it comes to Tylenol during pregnancy.

SINGER: This is something we've known for a while, and that obstetricians have discussed with their patients.

But the press conference sends a message that autism is high on the Trump administration’s list of priorities.

TRUMP: The meteoric rise in autism is among the most alarming public health developments in history. There's never been anything like this. Just a few decades ago, 1 in 10,000 children had autism. And now it's 1 in 31.

Numbers like that have led many to distrust the medical establishment’s efforts to understand and treat autism, and they are happy to see the president shining a spotlight on it. Mary Holland is the president of Children’s Health Defense, a nonprofit advocacy group founded by Kennedy.

HOLLAND: The President and the Secretary of HHS are deeply, deeply committed to ending the autism epidemic and to identifying causes and to informing people in a real time kind of way, and so that major message was incredibly welcome and had never been said before by anybody in that level of authority.

While the press conference was supposed to focus on Tylenol, Trump took the opportunity to once again link autism and vaccines. He echoed many of the concerns Kennedy has expressed over the years.

TRUMP: On the vaccines, it would be good instead of one visit where they pump the baby, load it up with stuff, you'll do it over a period of four times or five times.

Interest in delayed vaccination schedules grew after the 2007 book from Dr. Robert Sears recommended a more customized approach to the shots.

After the press conference, the American Academy of Pediatrics put out a statement criticizing Trump’s comments and stressing the importance of not delaying or spacing out the vaccines on the schedule.

When Kennedy took the podium he promised a new approach to tackling autism.

KENNEDY: Historically, NIH has focused almost solely on politically safe and entirely fruitless research about the genetic drivers of autism. And that would be like studying the genetic drivers of lung cancer without looking at cigarettes. Despite the cataclysmic impact of the epidemic on our nation's children, we are now replaced -- we are now replacing the institutional culture of politicized science and corruption with evidence based medicine

Singer, at the Cato Institute, thinks the use of the word “epidemic” to describe rates of autism is overblown.

SINGER: So that's to call it an epidemic Is really not to take into account the, the evolution of our understanding of autism over the last 50 years. It's the spectrum. So it depends on what end of the spectrum you’re on.

Holland disagrees. She thinks epidemic is exactly the right description. She thinks the true autism rate may be as high as 1 in 20. She argues autism must be placed within the wider context of high rates of chronic disease in America.

HOLLAND: Most people in the United States have some kind of chronic health condition. That's not normal. Over half of kids have some kind of chronic health condition, be it severe allergies, obesity, diabetes, asthma, ADHD, autism, cancer.

Later in the HHS press conference, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya who heads the National Institutes of Health announced the launch of major new research into the causes of autism.

BHATTACHARYA: The NIH has launched the Autism Data Science Initiative to turbocharge autism research, devoting an additional $50 million to the cause of studying autism. The NIH reviewers and peer reviews chose the 13 best projects focused on root causes and therapies.

The research grants encouraged groups like the Autism Science Foundation and Autism Speaks, who offered cautious support.

However, Singer fears the massive influx of funding will actually distort research into the causes of autism.

SINGER: So anybody who's wanting to do research on the subject, obviously is going to be more likely to get a grant if the way they they make their research proposal suggests that it's going to reinforce the idea that acetaminophen can cause harm during pregnancy.

Mary Holland of Children’s Health Defense is also concerned about some of the grantees. She worries they will continue looking at potential causes for autism that she thinks have already proven to be dead ends.

HOLLAND: They are largely grantees who seem to have been in the pipeline before. They don't seem to be really using innovative approaches or really completely aligned with what the President and Secretary Kennedy spoke about on Monday.

Many of the research projects will take 3 years to complete, and Kennedy has promised to give updates as soon as he has them.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Emma Freire.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: does the future of driving look driverless?

Autonomous vehicles, or AVs, are already part of city life in places like Austin, Atlanta, and Los Angeles. Tesla recently announced plans to roll out its Robotaxis on Nevada’s highways later this year. And Google’s Waymo is hitting the streets in Denver by next year.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s been almost a decade in the making. Phoenix, Arizona became the proving ground back in 2016. By 2020, Waymo was offering fully autonomous rides there. Still, despite an exceptional track record, people remain uneasy about trusting their lives to an empty driver’s seat.

WORLD’s Emma Eicher went for a spin in a Waymo to find out what it’s really like.

WAYMO: Hello, from Waymo! This experience may feel futuristic, but the need to buckle up is the same as always. So keep your seatbelt fastened please …

EMMA EICHER: Waymo offers a luxury roadtrip. Calm, ambient music plays. An electric Jaguar engine hums beneath the black leather seats. There’s a screen in the center console to change the music, or tap a button to talk to a real person at Waymo headquarters.

WAYMO: We’ll do all the driving. So please don’t touch the steering wheel or pedals, during your ride. We may use interior cameras, check on riders, improve our products, and more.

The wheel rotates on its own, and the turn signals click on automatically. Waymo uses a combination of radar, cameras, and sensors to assess the road. The experience is supposed to be relaxing, but the car makes abrupt starts and stops.

At the Phoenix airport, some out-of-towners take pictures of the Waymos as they roll up to the curb. One couple hails from Philadelphia, where AVs haven’t yet arrived.

AIRPORT COUPLE: I’m not sure I’m ready to get in a car without a driver just yet. Maybe local, but not here on the highway.

The idea of driverless cars has been around since Ford’s Model A. And there’s no shortage of cinema depicting futuristic machines. Like the 1977 horror film The Car, where a driverless car runs down pedestrians. Eventually, the police chase it up a mountain.

RAY: Got him! He’s driving himself up there. Yahoo, come on guys!

Many of these stories are pessimistic. The technology eventually fails in the end. Or, in the worst cases, the cars go rogue.

A 2024 video promoting Waymo seemed to acknowledge that negative perception.

WAYMO: Well, it’s finally happening. The robots. They’re coming…

Almost fifty years on from movies like The Car, autonomous vehicles are fast becoming reality.

WAYMO: Hm. Maybe that’s a good thing.

And they’re expanding—especially in America’s big cities.

Companies like Google and Tesla are eager to help urbanites accept them as part of city life. A few months ago, Google released an impressive six-year driving record for their Waymo fleet. Compared to human-driven cars, Waymos have 92% fewer crashes with pedestrians. And human error caused the majority of accidents involving Waymos. Google says their AVs follow cutting edge safety practices, and are generally better drivers than humans.

But how safe is “safe enough”?

BRYAN REIMER: Do I think Waymo vehicles are doing really well on our roads? Absolutely. Do I think they have reached the North Star of safety? No.

Bryan Reimer is a research scientist for transportation logistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

REIMER: At the end of the day, safety is not so simple, and causation is something that we need to dive deep into understanding so we can hone these systems over the decades ahead.

AVs are still fairly unregulated. States have their own mixes of laws, and there’s no federal licensing rules for operating AVs. For example, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is primarily focused on collecting data on the A.I. in autonomous vehicles, and they don’t enforce specific safety standards for sensors or cameras.

Recently, Tesla’s robotaxis came under fire for using inaccurate 360 degree cameras, posing major safety issues.

GABE KLEIN: There is no rating system per se right now…

Gabe Klein is the former head of the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation.

He says there will be some roadblocks, as regulators navigate the new industry, but the future is bright.

KLEIN: I think it's going to be complex. It's gonna take some time to work out, but they're definitely here. They definitely can impact safety for the better. And what we want is the right tool to be used for the right job.

Still, AVs are limited to certain areas of the country: mainly, cities with good weather. So it’ll be difficult for a fully autonomous car to become a mainstay with the American public until they’re more reliable in less predictable conditions. Tesla has been making inroads with their Full Self Driving feature, but the electric car’s popularity plummets outside urban areas.

As networks of AVs expand, many of the top players in the industry see car ownership changing with it. But America’s landscape revolves around transportation, especially out in the country. And MIT researcher Reimer says many people aren’t ready to let go of their own cars just yet.

REIMER: At least in America, where car ownership is a status symbol, and many of us live miles apart in rural America, outside of dense urban cities, car ownership is going to succeed for as long as I have to worry.

Reimer recently authored a book called How to Make A.I. Useful. And in it, he explains the uphill battle: it will take time to fully integrate AVs using A.I. into city infrastructure.

But in the meantime, there may be a much more obvious solution to society’s need for smarter, more efficient cars.

REIMER: I do believe highly automated features are going to evolve in the decades ahead, where we will potentially subscribe to an automated driver who can pilot my car from one point to another.

Reimer envisions semi-autonomous vehicles which still rely on humans to make the executive decisions. On our way to get ice cream with the grandparents, we tell the car which street to take. The car uses A.I. to take care of the rest—getting us from point A to point B.

WAYMO: You’re here. Please make sure it’s clear before exiting.

As the technology improves, AVs are likely to make certain aspects of our lives easier. And in the meantime, we’ll still need to keep at least one hand on the wheel.

REIMER: The real value to AI, to me, is not replacing us, it's amplifying us. It's really much like the computer, the smartphone. It is providing me with tools that can allow me to do things better.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Emma Eicher in Phoenix.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: The feathers really flew in New Zealand’s latest election! The annual Bird of the Year poll crowned the champion as the karearea falcon! It’s a lightning-fast raptor that eats its rivals for breakfast!

SOUND: [Falcon screech]

The falcon is even on New Zealand’s twenty dollar note, flipside of Queen Elizabeth the Second.

Nicola Toki is Forest and Bird Chief Executive.

TOKI: They are fierce. They are the spitfire of the bird world, and one of our most effective and one of a handful of avian predators.

Move over Kiwi! This falcon just dive-bombed its way to the top perch.

SOUND: [Falcon screech]

It’s The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Thursday, October 2nd.  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.

Up next, the teachers of future leaders.

Christian conservative Charlie Kirk became a Christian at an early age. Here he is on CBN not long before his assassination:

HOST: When did you accept Christ?

KIRK: Fifth grade at Christian Heritage Academy. I remember it. I mean, I was kind of, I heard a hot Gospel. And so I realized the stakes in fifth grade. I was like, ‘oh my goodness! I’m a sinner, I’m selfish, I’m broken,’ and only thanks to Jesus’ perfect sacrifice coming and living a perfect life that I get something that I do not earn but has been given to me, this free gift of eternal life.

REICHARD: Cindy Weber was Charlie’s fifth grade teacher. She thinks of him simply as “my sweet Charlie.” And she taught at Christian Heritage Academy near Chicago for 18 years. My own kids attended that same school at that time.

Her classroom? A daily laboratory for the Christian faith.

A place where prayer, science, math… all subjects pointed to the Creator.

I visited with her in her home in the Chicago suburbs last week. Her heart now is for mentoring other teachers.

WEBER: So whether it was intentionally making sure that someone felt seen if I felt like they were not easily making friends, just trying to even like having an inside joke with each of the students or the class as a whole. So let’s translate that now to faith in Christ.

That intentionality structured her week. Monday prayers for missionaries, reminding students they also were missionaries. Tuesday prayers for government leaders. Wednesday prayers for their school. Thursday prayers for gratitude.

WEBER: …and then Fridays we prayed for unsaved family members and unsaved friends. And so that topic was always an open opportunity for me to ask my students: And what does it mean to be saved? And I heard this saying from a pastor, a local pastor, one time like—and this analogy falls apart quickly if you look into it too deeply. But for the fifth graders, it would always make them laugh, and it would make them kind of, there was like a little light bulb that would go off: walking into a garage no more makes you a car than walking into a church makes you a Christian.

Later in her career, she added response cards for the students. That allowed the children to privately mark whether they’d accepted Christ, rededicated their lives, or still had questions. It created opportunities for Spirit-led discussions.

But her Gospel teaching wasn’t formulaic. She borrows a phrase from a book that called forming faith in children “the mundane, the miraculous, and the mysterious.” That resonated with her own life in the classroom, including the one young Charlie Kirk was in.

WEBER: They were talking about the forming of faith in children, the formation of faith and he broke it down to being there’s the mundane—like the daily intentionality of going through what seems like the motions, of not growing weary of doing well by trying to talk to a child’s heart, trying always to point to Jesus in all the subjects that we’re talking about. Every student in my class, heard that same—whatever information Charlie heard. Everyone else heard that information too. And there could be others who came to know the Lord that year too. I don't know of them, but, but there was the miraculous that you know, the Holy Spirit tugged on Charlie's heart, opened his eyes, removed the veil, and he finally saw and understood. And then there's the mysterious, like we don't know when and why and how exactly it's going to happen when faith is forming in a child.

Faithfulness includes shaping character. When unkindness showed up between students, Mrs. Weber would address their hearts, not merely their behavior.

WEBER: Just to bring it down to a heart issue: what you are doing to another person is making them feel this way, and what does that say about the condition of your heart?

But with the child who is being bullied, I found it helpful and powerful to give them opportunities to lead and to serve. And the term I had heard was social equity—give them social equity—helping, doing things with me in the classroom, just trying to show I value this person, and help the other children. Let that speak to their heart.

Into that environment stepped a boy with big glasses and even bigger ideas. Mrs. Weber remembers Charlie Kirk as focused and bright, respectful in class, who always handed his work in on time and who was a leader on the playground.

WEBER: Every recess I don’t remember a recess where this wasn’t true, he would organize a football game, and he was always the quarterback, and everybody was invited and included. And that is how he spent his recesses. He was very much a leader, very much his own person.

She laughs to recall that Charlie Kirk could be described as an “athletic nerd,” equally at home analyzing ideas as he was in calling plays in sports.

She doesn’t really know the precise moment of Charlie Kirk’s conversion to Christ. But years later she heard him credit that fifth grade year for it.

WEBER:It was only the Holy Spirit and I just happened to be there. And I happened to be there, being intentional, and I happen to be there trying to point the kids to Jesus every day, like thousands of other Christian educators.

And her influence went beyond the one who became famous. Former students still call her, decades later. One came back to talk even after choosing a lifestyle not aligned with the faith. The teacher welcomed her former student with the same steady, solid love as she always had.

WEBER: I had to constantly remind myself not to grow weary of doing good. And so don’t squash these precious children. Don’t squash them. Let them be who God created them to be, but help mold them to behave in a way that’s appropriate to not distract the other peers around them. But help them grow in the strengths.

Mrs. Weber told me that is the core of her advice to teachers: Be ready before the bell rings. Build a bond with each child. Bring Scripture into every subject.

After all, God’s fingerprints really are everywhere you look.

WEBER: More important than best practices in teaching is making sure that God is present in all of your teaching. Like if we just learn only about math but we don’t know God’s connection to math? If we learn only about science and how the world works but we don’t understand God’s connection to that then I feel like it’s futile.

God is a God of order. He created the earth in a very orderly way, very specific things on certain days. And math is very orderly. And we see God’s character in math, and we see God’s creativity in science.

Now that Charlie Kirk is gone, Mrs. Weber thinks about his worldwide influence, recalls the massive memorial service that lifted up the name of Jesus.

She is amazed. But she isn’t surprised.

WEBER: My sweet Charlie. (slight chuckle) He was my sweet Charlie. Yeah, yeah.

From the mundane to the world stage, Cindy Weber’s fifth-grade classroom became the seed bed for a future leader, and for countless other children loved by their Creator.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Thursday, October 2nd. 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, what it’ll take for the government to stop spending beyond its limit. Here’s WORLD commentator Cal Thomas.

CLINTON: We come here today Democrats and Republicans, Congress and President, Americans of goodwill from all points of view and all walks of life to celebrate a true milestone for our nation in a few moments I will sign into law the first balanced budget in a generation….

CAL THOMAS: On August 5th, 1997, President Bill Clinton and the Republican-controlled Congress, led by Speaker Newt Gingrich, enacted the Balanced Budget Act. This bipartisan agreement aimed to balance the federal budget by 2002. Most of the credit goes to Gingrich because Clinton had vetoed previous Republican proposals for reducing the debt. The deal resulted in four consecutive years of budget surpluses, a rarity. But the big spending addicts returned and so has the debt, now more than $37 trillion dollars.

We are once again in another so-called “government shut-down.” Democrats are hoping the current one will be blamed on Republicans…as in the past. Perhaps it’s time to bring back Clinton and Gingrich to work their previous magic. As with President Trump’s DOGE, Gingrich exposed large amounts of wasteful and unnecessary spending.

In an email, Gingrich tells me he visited Capitol Hill last month and gave budget committee staff of the House and Senate a “workbook” detailing how to balance the budget and pay down the national debt.

Gingrich says public support is crucial. He Gingrich believes voters must be convinced debt reduction is a necessity. He references a 2014 Gallup poll which found respondents believed the government wastes 51 cents of every dollar it spends. A 2025 YouGov-Cato found that number had increased to 59 cents per dollar. America’s New Majority Project reported last month that 69 percent of voters support a constitutional amendment requiring Congress to balance the budget.

Gingrich writes this: “A major part of any serious balanced budget-debt repayment program, must include hearings and reports highlighting waste, fraud, inefficiency, and ineffectiveness. The theme must be that a modernized, effective government would deliver better results for the American people at a much lower cost. This theme is especially important in health and health care, which must be improved dramatically if the budget is ever to be balanced. Health care is 18% of the GDP and the largest expense of the federal government. It costs $1.7 trillion—nearly twice what we spend for defense. More than 27% of all federal spending is focused on health care.”

He adds that messaging is key, and many variations should be tried until the right one is found. Among them might be Ronald Reagan’s line: “We don't have deficits because people are taxed too little. We have deficits because big government spends too much.“ Gingrich says “Government spending went up 58% from 2019 to 2025 while the population only went up 3%.”

The former Speaker proposes three steps: “First, there must be a concerted communications effort to, in (Margaret) Thatcher’s language, ‘win the argument and then win the vote.’ One possible future means economic decay, fiscal bankruptcy and massive tax transfers from working Americans to foreign bond holders. The effect of that decaying future on the economy, American society and our national security must be driven deeply into the collective mindset. It is simply irresponsible and destructive to allow the current wasteful, self-indulgent and selfish system to continue.

Second, there must be a broad coalition that sustains this vision for years. The American system, and especially the American news media, has a powerful commitment to having the urgent drive out the important. Elected officials alone do not have the time or communications weight to sustain such a big strategic goal over time. Many people and institutions must be committed to saving America by re-establishing fiscal stability. They must return to this commitment daily, without regard to headlines that seek to distract from the vital long-term goal.

“Third, elected officials, congressional staff and the Executive Branch must commit to be the team that saves America from bankruptcy and economic collapse. If one-third of the Republicans in Congress and the Executive are seriously, constantly focused on balancing the budget and paying off debt, their party and institutions will follow. They must be prideful and militant about doing something historic. The dramatically better future will be worth the time, conflict and frustrations.

There’s much more in the Gingrich “workbook.” Reducing debt and balancing the budget can again be achieved. All that is necessary is the will.

I’m Cal Thomas.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Tomorrow: Katie McCoy is our guest for Culture Friday. And, some surprising big-names turned up on the recent Reagan movie soundtrack. Arsenio Orteza talks with the producer. 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 Psalmist writes, “Teach me your way, O Lord, that I may walk in your truth; unite my heart to fear your name. I give thanks to you, O Lord my God, with my whole heart, and I will glorify your name forever.” —Psalm 86:11, 12

Go now in grace and peace.

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