40% of Students At Stanford Claim Disability, Trump Accounts, And Therapy Culture

And we're live. Welcome back to the LOOPcast. It's Tom, Erika, and Josh. The LOOPcast is brought to you by The Loop, every American Catholic's favorite morning newsletter. Got a great show for you today, guys. We have a really shocking piece about the disability problem, as it were, or maybe they're not disabled, would be maybe my take, going on in major colleges across the country. I saw 40% of students registered as disabled at Stanford University, an elite academic institution. We have a lot to talk about on college there.

That is kind of the entryway, so we are going to hit that first. Second, we had the announcement of Trump accounts. Trump accounts. Trump accounts. Catchy name, well titled. An interesting solution to maybe a social security problem. I am not sure. Erika did all the research on that. It has her two cents. And yeah, we will see what is going on there. Finally, Wikipedia has released its top search terms for the years. What was most searched on Wikipedia?

I'll see if any of them surprise Josh. Josh is all dressed up today, looking fantastic. I see a feast day of St. Francis Xavier. Yes. That's not dear to you. Is this correct, Josh? Yeah, he's one of, I mean, he's a great missionary saint. One of the, you know, he went to East Asia and spread the faith. He was one of the good Jesuits back then. All the Jesuits were really awesome. Yeah, they were the man. In fact, he was one of the OG.

Right. Original seven. And today, nowadays, the judgment is not so good. But his legacy lives on. My town of Petoskey, the church is named after St. Francis Xavier. It is a gorgeous, gorgeous Gothic, like almost mini-cathedral. It is a beautiful church.

St. Francis Xavier is definitely an inspiration to so many people, and that is where my kids go to do St. Francis Xavier school for K-8. Hey, and shout out to my own Xavier on his name day. We had a little celebration this morning involving sausages. It was wonderful. I don't know if that's connected. Is that related? No.

There's a taste for it. He's a 12-year-old boy. He just wants meat. A man after Josh's heart. Very spiritual. Before we get into the Stanford disability story, we have our sponsor today, Charity Mobile. Are you still spending your hard-earned money with a phone company who doesn't value you or your beliefs? Charity Mobile is a pro-life phone company serving the pro-life customers and causes. They send 5% of your monthly plan price to the pro-life, pro-family charity of your choice at no extra cost to you.

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I personally remember we had one of those. Maybe others had this, too. It was the little figures, and they had Velcro on them, and we had, like, pockets for every day, and you take it out, and I remember trying to do the math to see what, because we all had to split between my four brothers. It's like, what days are the best days? Like, do I get an angel, or am I getting, like, a sheep? You know what I mean? Yeah.

Who gets Jesus at the end? Who gets the wise man? I was a big wise man guy, so I want to make sure I lock in a good wise man slot, so we had to figure out at the beginning who's getting what. And now I just let my son do it, because that would be probably improper for an adult to fight over when to do it. But, Josh?

Just a little bit of a breaking news, so I have to set it up for just a second, but back in May of 2024, President Trump Trump blasted Joe Biden for the fact that the FBI and the DOJ went after Democratic Congressman Henry Quaylar. He's out of Texas. He's like the only Democrat left who will vote against abortion. He doesn't vote pro-life all the time, but every once in a while, he's not the only one that would ever do anything good.

So, Trump blasted President Biden when he went after Henry Quaylar back in May of 2024. And so, what happened then is his daughters I sent a letter last month to President Trump detailing the FBI and the DOJ, because that continues, the investigation into the Congressman Quaylar and his wife, Imelda. And so, just this morning, just a half hour ago, President Trump announced that he has given a full pardon to Congressman Quaylar and his wife, Imelda. So, I am not going to weigh into all the facts, whether I was justified or not, but I do find that interesting.

Well, you know, immediately, of course, the reactions on... What was he going after him about? Well, Henry Poehler was one of the only Democrats who complained about Joe Biden's reckless open border policy. Right. And so, that is what, you know, again... Target on his back.

Yeah, you can investigate anybody over anything, just about, if you really wanted to in this day and age, you know. So, the question is, were the investigations justified? Were they just going on a witch hunt to try to find something? Some smoking gun on him? I am not saying that Henry Clear doesn't have some skeletons there in the closet or whatever. I am not trying to defend him. I just find that very interesting. Breaking news, so, of course, people are like, oh, you know.

You know, it's probably got implications for Congress. Maybe he'll switch. People are going to say, oh, he's going to switch parties. There's probably some backroom deal. Who knows? It might affect the Texas Senate race coming up. I have no idea, but I just thought that was keeping our eyes on that. A little insight into Josh's political mind. The filing deadline for Texas is next. Wait, Josh, are you suggesting to me that there's members representing the people of the United States that do things that are a little unseemly or illegal?

Shocking, I know. It does happen. Not politicians. No. Not our public servants. Never. So, the 435 squeaky clean members of the House of Representatives, Joe Biden just happens to go after the Democrat who attacked him on open borders. Shocking, I know. Oh, man. Okay, shocking, I know. Speaking of shocking, if you want to get into the top story today, this one really launched off on X. Derek Thompson basically put the main points together, and then I actually went and dug through the whole article.

So, the tweet came out. This is a great piece with some mind-boggling statistics. At Brown and Harvard, more than 20% of undergraduates are registered as disabled. At Amherst, more than 30%. At Stanford, nearly 40%. So, almost half of the students at Stanford currently are registered as disabled. Soon, many of these schools may have more students receiving disability accommodations than not, a scenario that would have seemed absurd just a decade ago, as students and their parents have recognized the benefits of claiming disability, extended time on tests, housing accommodations, etc.

The rates of disability at colleges, and especially at elite colleges, has exploded. America used to stigmatize disability too severely. Now, elite institutions reward it too liberally. It simply does not make any sense to have a policy that declares half of the students at Stanford cognitively disabled and in need of accommodations. Wow. Whoa, that is a big leap. Big leap. Bring back stigma. So, I want to give credit. So, she is actually, she was on the UC Davis story, too. Her name is Rose Horowitz.

She wrote this article for The Atlantic called Accommodation Nation. America's colleges have an extra time on tests problem, and I was going through the background on this of, like, how could you possibly get to the place where some of the most elite universities in the country, over half, or about half, are disabled, and they trace a lot of this back to the Americans with Disabilities Act, the ADA. He was passed in 1990, and the example they were using was, there were little to no accommodations for actually physically disabled people going to college.

It was an example of someone in a wheelchair being the first that wrote for the Stanford Review, I think, or the Harvard Review, something like that, and he would literally have to drag himself up the stairs because or be in the back of the classroom, whatever. So you know, I think like most people think like, okay, it's good, we should have some accommodations. I remember. Yeah, I'm sure you probably literally remember it. But then in 2008, Congress amended the ADA to restore the law's original intent.

The government brought in the definition of disability, effectively expanding the number of people the law covered. And then eventually, the head Association of Higher Education and Disability, an organization of disability services staff, released guidance urging universities to give greater weight to students' own accounts of how their disability affected them, rather than relying solely on a medical diagnosis.

Which is where things start going downhill. 2013, the American Psychiatric Association expanded the definition of ADHD. Previously, the threshold for the diagnosis had been one of clear evidence of clinically significant impairment. After the release of the DSM-5, the symptoms needed only to interfere with or reduce the quality of academic functioning.

According to the patient's perception of what was going on, right? Self-diagnosis. And so, of course, ADHD explodes. Everyone says that they have it, and then they are now able to get accommodations that lead to them having advantages, such as more time on tests. There's an example of someone literally being allowed to bring their mother to class, and their mother was an enthusiastic participant in class. So, of course, this just has blown up. I actually remember, so it's... It is funny. Now, everyone is getting in their own personal stories on this.

This was kind of well-known. I was at a small private university, but it was well-known that people were getting extra time on tests, and that it was really easy to get prescriptions for things like Ritalin if you wanted to. Basically, you could just say, hey, I am having a hard time focusing. Bam, you get Ritalin or something like that, and people use these advantages. I think the interesting thing to me is, and then I want to get in on your thoughts and reactions, was that there are people that study.

So, we have Robert Weiss. He is a psychology professor at Denison University. He pointed me to a Department of Education study that found that middle and high schoolers with disabilities tend to have below average reading and math skills. These students are half as likely to enroll in four-year institutions as students without disabilities. and twice as likely to attend a two-year community college if the rise in accommodations were purely a result of more disabled students making it to college. The increase should be more pronounced at less selective institutions than so-called ivy plus schools.

Josh, you can go first. Well, to me it just Again, part of it is that the shame, is that there's no sense of shame. I mean, you know, the same reason why, at my age, no boy would ever want to play on a girl's team, because it would be so shameful. Like, what? Are you a girl? Come on. That's just weird. That's gross. The only way you can win at... At volleyball, is to pretend like you're a girl. So, the same thing with this.

The only way you're able to succeed on your test, parents are just like, hey, this is a scam. This is an opportunity. We can just claim this, even though it's not. This is a classification that was made for people who have severe physical or mental deficiencies or handicaps, and they need this kind of a little bit of extra help.

An accommodation, and to you, abuse that. To me, it's just like the family that basically rents a disabled person so they can go into Disneyland and get at the front of the line. I just find it so abhorrent that they would do this, and again, the other thing I hate about this is that it's good to accommodate people, but between this and then also the racial stuff with DEI stuff, what we've done is we've created a society where It's almost like it's an obsession with labels.

Oh, I have ADHD, or I'm, you know, American Indian, or I'm black, or I'm LGBT, and therefore, that's my identity. It's like we're so on the computer age, we're so drained, you know, with screens all the time, that it's like an avatar society. Like, this is how I'm going to... It just drives me kind of crazy. You're more than just your label. You're more than just your disability. You're more than just your race or your sexual orientation, but we're so into these classifications because there are special treatments for it, and there should be.

And like almost all identity politics, like what began as an appeal to people's sense of we ought to help those who are less fortunate than us, now has become really another system by which privileged kids can get even further ahead. And I think that was what really struck me going through this, where all these stories from, and it wasn't just the colleges, but She actually did the work to trace it back into some of these really elite school systems, like Scarsdale, New York, I think was the example that really stuck out to me, of students, even in the process of applying to these colleges and universities, using these identities that they had adopted for themselves to sort of build this intersectionality of, not only am I a POC person of color, but I'm also LGBTQ, and I also have ADHD, and I also have a mommy complex.

And using all of these in order to get ahead, not to genuinely present to the world who they are, but to create, like you said, Josh, an avatar that will then have an advantage in these elite school systems, which have been built around identity politics. Another line that stuck out to me here was that we're developing a two-speed student population. So, at a school like Stanford… At a school like Stanford, you end up with almost half of the kids who test at one speed, and then just over half of the kids who still actually go through the academic rigor that the professors have designed.

And this physics professor was describing how one of the things he's testing when he designs a physics test and applied mathematics and all of this, he's actually testing for speed. Like, that's a sign of mastery. So, the students who have these accommodations are missing out on 30% of the assessment for the course. So, there are parents, and these students too, by trying to get this advantage so that they always get an A. Right, they always get an A because they have more time.

By trying to get an advantage, are in the long run going to be the actual disadvantaged students, because they still can't do it at speed. They still haven't mastered. Maybe. Yeah, maybe. Well, I mean, 15 years ago, I would have said, all this accommodations for oncologists for, you know. safe spaces and treat these millennials like who are woke give them you know pamper them baby them give them crying rooms all that kind of stuff you're like oh well wait till they get to the real world and they're going to get the then again what happened is they entered the world and they changed a lot of the world towards what they were doing and so now you know A lot of the corporate jobs and all that kind of stuff, it is a lot feminized.

That is what Helen Andrews was getting at, and so it does make a difference. These kind of accommodations, at first, I would be like, just wait, buddy. You try to get a job in five, six years from now, and they are going to be like, you look like you are perfectly capable. What are you doing? No. Josh, it is worse than that. It turns out you are actually preferred because you have said identity or disability or whatever. You are moved up on the hiring list than someone that.

Did go through honestly, and doesn't have some type of racial or sexual, you know, disadvantage. It's literally encoded into our law, in American law right now. You can get a loan because you're a minority, just because you're a minority. Just imagine what kind of that's going to do the nation's productivity in about 30 years. Right, the nation's productivity and spiritual health. I mean, yeah, maybe they have a little leg up because the system is rigged for people. You're gaming a system, but you're also miserable.

Kids who graduate from these schools and go the liberal route are more anxious, more depressed, more incapable of having a fulfilling human life. So, yeah, I agree with you. On one level, maybe they are setting themselves up for future success by gaming the system, but on another level, on the human level, the actual point of formation and education, Well, it is virtually a corrosive algorithm through that. Well, what comes out of all of this is like... The reason why people didn't do it before is because you would have been embarrassed to claim that you had a disease that you didn't have.

Yeah, social stigma is going to be a healthy thing. Social stigma, and then I believe that there's also stronger moral formation, and you got that moral formation from physical people in your life. That moral formation didn't come from outsourced to an algorithm or social media or the internet or whatever have you. Most of your moral formation came from people, and I'm not saying everyone did a great job of that, but you would have gotten... Dressed down in your community by your parents, by your teachers.

Teachers also came from your community, and we are just seeing the effects now of taking away all of the power of all the different safeguards of people that should have dressed you down at a certain point, and so that is one part of it. The second part of it, I saw a really interesting line in here.

They were talking to someone who is the director for the Center of Learning Disorders at the University of Georgia, told me the fastest growing group of students who come to them seems to be those. Who have done their own research and believe that a disability is the source of their academic or emotional challenges, quote, it's almost like it's a part of their identity, Lindstrom said. By the time we see them, they've convinced themselves they have a neurodevelopmental disorder. And again, what happened when all of the adults left the room in the scientific community as well, when they started bending over backwards for non-scientific things or injecting things that are clearly anti-rational into that community is.

You just bend over and you allow people to be tyrants, and it just feels like just about everywhere, there was an abdication at some point of an opportunity to reinforce moral character, right and wrong, because if you have someone that actually does have a strong sense of right and wrong, that goes outside of the systems that they're in, but is, I don't know, something transcendent, something like there's an understanding of consciousness and the conscience itself, and that there's rewards and punishments outside of.

Whether or not you get ahead in the short term, people wouldn't do that, but I think largely that has just been lost, and you look at this as an opportunity to get a leg up, to get an advantage, and I don't actually, I mean, I do because it's wrong to do it, but I understand the rationale of people that are like, well, look, these people are gaming it. Everyone's the system. I'm getting behind. I have half the time to take the test, and if the pressure on that is if I don't get this degree, if I don't have the GPA, if I don't do this, I'm not going to get a job.

I'm not going to be able to feed my family because of how much. That is with college. Then I see why people are pressured into this. Yeah, it's like a survival pressure. Yeah. Well, and it's, you know, colleges are sort of more inoculated and isolated from, you know, cost pressures, and so they're able to hire additional staff, make all these accommodations for these kind of students, much in the same way that they did it for racial stuff. Give me an example.

That's why it's such an easy one to do. The University of Michigan. The University of Michigan has 249 full-time staff members who work on DEI stuff, just the University of Michigan, and that is like about $32 million a year that the university is spending on that. So, I mean, again, just to give you an idea, like, When something comes like this along, like, I fully support the Americans with Disability Act of 1990. I've met people who, it changes their lives. It's a very good thing.

But when you alter the law, or you bend it, you twist it, and, you know, it becomes abused like this, we need corrections on it, because otherwise, you get in a situation where you do have this. 40% of the students at Stanford are disabled. That's obviously an abuse of the definition of disability. And the only thing I would say is, like, just like with DEI, You get a system where people start gaming it, and there are all these bad incentives in it, right?

So, like, if we ever came to the reckoning as a society, like, maybe we're a lot better off, and maybe we don't need race-based stuff anymore. Well, there's... 250 employees at the University of Michigan are going to be opposed to any anti-DEI efforts because that is their job. It has become a money-making thing at this point. Right. Right. So, just be careful. There are perverse incentives sometimes in a system, even if it has what would seem to be a noble intent at the beginning.

Yeah. It reminds me of, very quickly, where it is going to be the subject of The Deep this week, is that viral piece on the poverty line. Look out for that. Oh, it is next week. Yeah, next week. Sorry, next week. And they were talking about, he wrote a follow-up to that article. Basically, he used a metric used in the 60s to calculate the poverty line, and then used that to calculate what it would be at now. And a bunch of people came out, and they essentially, I think he called it a mockery machine.

They take a part of your point that was not your actual point. Stretch it to its most extreme, and then attack that point. So, they're not actually, well, would that be like strawmanning or something? It's total Alinsky method. Yeah, exactly. It is the Alinsky method. And who was it, but it's always interesting, who was attacking his assertion that the middle class is completely being eroded on purpose by all these different, exactly. It was the AEI, right? It was AEI. It was all these think tank people being like, no, no, no, no.

It's actually good. You're crazy. The numbers are all green. Like, these people are literally employed. Their employment is dependent upon defending the system, so you always need to have a grain of salt when you listen to, say, the DEI people or college administrators or whatever who are going to defend the status quo because it is awesome for them. It is literally their job. They are paid to do it. I think, too, if I could just slide into this lady, Rose, who wrote this article, also wrote an article, which will be a future subject of The Deep as well, about why college students cannot do math anymore.

Yeah. And it was an article basically talking about how in the UC system, University of California system, They have to add these remedial math courses. It has happened at Harvard as well, and there are kids that come in that cannot do fractions, like they cannot do algebra questions, let alone calculus, like really like five alarm fire, like how the heck did you get to college and not be able to do this? I feel like we have already had that reckoning when it comes to English as well, but math is kind of like, okay, it is pretty objective.

It is hard to argue against, but of course, it is because the UC system stopped accepting the SAT and ACT. Briefly, they said that they're not going to do it for equity reasons or whatever, so that safeguard was taken away, right? Like, that should have picked people out to be like, okay, you can't do it. And then in the high school level, all these teachers are pressured to give A's. Because parents will come in and complain and use all kinds of excuses because they need to get the A's so they can get into the college.

But of course, if you do that, then you lower the standards. So, it is like, this is a big time, like, where are the adults in the room holding up the standards, but when the system continues to expand to attack the adults in the room, they are just going to acquiesce. They're largely going to acquiesce, not all of them. They'll acquiesce or they'll be fired. It's just human psychology, right? It's the psychology of it. So, what really drove home for me, and it reminded me, and this does connect with the hate speech issue that we're seeing in the UK right now, and these kinds of morasses that we get ourselves into can be traced back to that moment when we took the term disability.

which was applied to people who have real struggles and real challenges in life, like, and that the ADA was addressing. And we, instead of making the law more precise and more applicable to get to the people who needed the help, they decided to explode the definition and make it this sort of gray area. So now in the UK, what we're seeing with the hate speech thing and people getting prosecuted for praying silently in their heads on the wrong street corner.

What we're seeing there is you took the definition of hate speech, and you said, well, it's whatever the person who feels attacked thinks it is, and we'll know it when we see it. And the point being that then as a citizen of a country like that, or a citizen or a user of a system like the education system, where disability means whatever the person who comes to you with an identity thinks it is, is that... The people who want to use the system and build a society in goodwill are left with a sense of Just uncontrolled law that's going to be used against them and turned against them, to your point, Tom.

So, these precise definitions in law are so necessary to get back to, and that's why I really appreciate our Supreme Court justices like Thomas and Barrett and listening to them, because they're so intent on getting the United States back to precise definitions to prevent these sort of Huge morasses that we're seeing in education and that they're seeing in the UK with these arrests.

So, precision, people. Precision, which is what education is supposed to train the mind for. True, but to even go deeper than that, I think you're saying what is going to need to happen. It's almost unfortunate it needs to happen because we used to live in a society where there was high trust. And if you had a high trust society where the citizens knew each other, they could be accountable to each other, they were of the same thing, believed in the same gods, held the same traditions.

Like a Pat Buchanan definition of America, this would have never happened, right? Like no one would have, you would have been shamed out of polite society if you lied about having a disability to get an advantage over other honest, you know, upright moral people. But because that is, unfortunately, it's not the definition of America anymore. Like we've, we've mass immigration, mass migration, we're among people that we don't trust, that we can't relate to. And also no one voted for that, by the way, no one voted.

To have all these people having to have it all without our control, you have people gain the system. We have students coming here from China. Right, and then the state steps in with yet another law and rule and guideline. But unfortunately, it needs to happen. That is the stage we are at, where it is just we have to get more specific, we have to get more authoritarian. That is the unfortunate result of the lax policy towards migration and society. In a moral society, in a moral university system, you wouldn't even need the ADA, right?

In a moral university system, you would have people... Who are on the watch for people in the community, like in a wheelchair, and they're like, you know what? We should accommodate that. You wouldn't need the state to step in and say, oh, you have to build XYZ wheelchairs and have these bathrooms and all. Right. We should be able to do that ourselves, but when we fail to do that, when we fail to raise a moral generation, and multiple moral generations, when we're untethered from morality and natural law, then the state is going to have to step in.

Or we just import generations from cultures that are not our own. I mean, it is a two-pronged problem, and that is why I do not think the answer to all the college stuff, because I think, rightfully, we are pointing out all these flaws. I mean, we are graduating people, as Josh said, that are like, oh, that is going to be solved when they get to the workforce, and clearly, we have employment problems. This makes the workforce worse, right? But I do not think the answer is to import people not of our culture to take those jobs in a fraudulent system like H-1B.

The answer is to solve the problem, and I see that. That would be better. That would be much better. It would be much preferable, and it would be better for the American people, American citizens, as I understand them to be. Because I don't think that these kids... Are inherently lazy, or there's any IQ problems? I think we have really smart industrious. The American DNA still exists. The systems need to be adjusted at this point to actually cause them to succeed. Colleges, essentially, neither a liberal arts education, as probably understood, or a good jobs training program, they're just kind of like access to people in power at this point.

It's like the Ivy Leagues dominate all the... Powerful position. So, it is just like a credential system. So, change the training or change the liberal arts, but where we are at now is untenable. I just wish that, in general, everyone in American society had just kind of a basic level of economic understanding of stuff.

I know that is a fantasy, but there is this idea that we teach in economics, like with every choice you make, there is an opportunity cost. And what the opportunity cost is, that which you gave up because you chose A, you know. And so, with regards to Americans with Disabilities Act, I think, obviously, it was a great thing that we passed that in 1990 to help accommodate and open up access to people who have physical disabilities to get into buildings, to be able to, you know, go around society.

It has been a big blessing. But it is an opportunity cost, because it does cost money to make all these ramps and all this stuff. Worth it, yes, but it's just important for us to understand, like, when you do something like that, which is a good thing, it does come with a cost. It's not nothing, you know, it can be expensive, and you have to grandfather it, and you don't have to go around every school that was ever built before that and say, now you got to do all this stuff.

It can be kind of cumbersome and costly. We should always have that kind of thing. Okay. We should make this change as a society. And anytime we think it can only be good, that is dangerous. I always be on the lookout for like, well, wait a minute, why could this backfire?

Obviously, there is a lot of women today who are happy that women are able to participate in the workforce. That was something that we culturally allowed, and the law caught up with it over the course of the late 60s all through the 70s and 80s. I am happy to be here, guys. But there is also an opportunity cost to even that, too, because now you've just doubled the labor supply, and that means the cost of labor is a little bit cheaper.

I mean, we should always, as a society, be willing to say, hey. Is this a good thing? Instead of being shouted down all the dang time, like, hey, is it a good thing we bring in tens of thousands of Somalians to live in St. Paul and Minneapolis, Minnesota?

Hmm. Well, it shows how virtuous we are. Oh, good. I'm glad that's great for you, but there might be some side effects. Turns out... Oh, Tom. Well, we're at, yeah, I changed my microphone, I think, right? Yeah, you sure did. It sounds terrible. It sounds far away from it. Oh, it's bad now? I'm brokenhearted.

Is it better now? You sound like you're at the end of a tunnel. Bye, Tom. Oh, wait. See ya. All right, that's better. There, oh, he's back. Phew. Much better. I was back at the end of the tunnel. So, to end this section, we're at a place now.

Where 62% of Americans, according to the latest NBC poll, ages 18 to 25, are enrolled in college, okay? 62%. That was a stated goal of public policy not long ago, so I think it'd be considered successful by that metric.

But 63% of U.S. voters say a four-year degree isn't worth the cost, citing high debt and weak job skill preparation. Major shift in opinion over the past decade, even. In 2017, voters were nearly split, and in 2013, a majority believed a degree was worth it. The decline spans both parties, but is more dramatic among Republicans. 43% saw colleges worth it in 2017 versus 22% now, while Democrats show a smaller decline. Even those with degrees have become more skeptical. 46% of graduates now say colleges worth the cost, down sharply from 63% in 2013.

Not great. There's going to be a policy shift. I talked about this before, the amount of money upon which parents can borrow. Through the plus parent loan through the feds is going to be capped at like $20,000 per family.

But that's just, I think it's a very minor. Parent plus loans, that's above what the individual. Yes, and so what it is going to do is it is going to make people and parents have to make some of these choices about whether or not, like, okay, if we cannot afford, you know, you have to consider other options. That is why I think more and more families are going to consider, you know, community college as a way to, you know, for the first couple of years to save money.

I would also encourage any parents or grandparents out there to tell your kids about CLEP tests. That is another way where you can take a few, you know, study for a couple of weeks or months or so, and like take a test.

You get college credit for that class. Like, okay, so you can get a lot of your prereqs done. Here is what I say. I agree in principle with what you are saying, but I actually think that we need to put the screws to a lot of these colleges. Like Trump himself promised, that is like, maybe you still got this going on behind the scenes. So, here is an example. There is a viral speech by this guy, Scott Galloway. Now, I am not a huge fan of everything he says, but I think that he did a pretty good job painting the picture here.

In 1987, the average admission rate at top schools across the country was 27%. In 2022, that's 5%. It has not changed much since then. College debt as a percent of first-year income in 1987 was 31%. In 2022, it's now 53%. And then, of course, house price to first-year income in 1987 was 4.4 times what that was. 2022, it's 8.5 times.

But, in that meantime, Harvard, in 1986 to 2023, has increased its endowment by 435%, but has only increased enrollment by 4%. Yeah. So, we have an issue with a lot of these colleges getting very rich. They're essentially hedge funds that teach classes on the side. Yep, I was going to say. He had an interesting solution to this. Just like our federal government is a navy that sells insurance.

Exactly. I forgot that line. That is a great line. So, I am curious. His proposed solution to this was, because Biden was going to forgive college loans, and he is like, a better use of that money would be to give a $1 billion grant per school to the top one-third of public universities in the country in exchange for reducing tuition 2% a year. I am not sure if he misspoke and meant 5% a year, but reduce tuition 2% a year is what he said in the speech.

Expand enrollment 6% each year. And increase vocational tech slash nontraditional degrees to 20%. In 10 years, that doubles freshman seats and halves the cost. That's why I thought it was that 5% number if it halved the cost, but maybe I'm missing something there.

There's that, and then I actually predicted this. Private companies are going to start stepping in. So, there's a piece on Palantir, whatever you think about them. They had a Palantir fellowship program, and there was kids that were accepted into Ivy League schools that took that. I think 500 people applied, 22 of them got in. I think 500 people got in. And I think on the third day of the fellowship, they were already out doing engineering jobs with, like, Palantir people, and at the end of the semester, they were either offered a job or not offered a job.

They had a time to take a look at them, but many of them are going to take that job, and they're never going to look back. And I think it's not for everyone who's 18, but... I think that that is much closer to the model that we had before we started blowing up universities with public money was apprenticeship programs, and I think that once the dam is going to break on the debt ratio here, people just aren't going to go. People are going to start stepping in.

The private companies are going to step in and say, hey, here you go. Do a fellowship program. We'll see what we like. It's worth the investment for them because they get good employees. They get the cream of the crop, and then it's great for the people because they get a job. And can start making money right away and not have to go into a ton of debt. So, that is where I see the future going. I do not know if we are going to be able to put the screws to these public universities in a significant way.

I think it would be great if we did. The only thing I would add as an addendum to this is that a lot of people will say, well, the purpose of college is, you know. Education, the liberal arts, to learn more, to free yourself from it. I don't really necessarily disagree with that, but I guess my thought should be, that should be what your high school education is.

You know, Regina Chaley, homeschool, all this kind of stuff, and then the Chesterton Academies, which are doing so great. You give your kids a grounding, and they should have, then, a good, proper moral formation by the time they're 18, and then once they're 18, do they really need to do four more years, accumulate $70,000, $100,000 in debt, or can we switch them towards, like, okay, now is the time to start thinking about what you're saying, an apprenticeship. What is going to be the ways in which you're going to provide for your family?

Going forward. I think that actually makes a lot more sense. And I'm seeing this in the homeschool community in the last even 15 years that I've been in. I was in educational leadership for Regina Chaley, and then just now even listening to parents in our large homeschool group here in Connecticut. The parents are thinking about what happens after high school in much more creative ways. And like you said, Josh, a lot of us grew up, so in the 80s and 90s, homeschoolers were like, well, here we go again, and it was like, what can this be?

We're going to train our kids so they're ready to go to Tom Sequina's college, or Christendom, or these Newman Guide schools, which are still awesome, and I'm glad they're there. And they still should be there, right? They should be there, because like Tom and I were talking before the show, we still need to train Catholics to be the next Supreme Court justices. We need them to lead companies. We need them to have that, to go through that model where they're going to these rigorous four-year programs after high school.

But that means that there's also a large percentage of Catholic kids who are going into the trade school, going to community college. So, parents, as Catholic parents, the primary educators of our kids, it's then incumbent upon us to make sure that that 7th through 12th grade swath there is where they're getting grammar, logic, rhetoric, the great conversation, the great books, and we're finding ways to get that to our kids, no matter where they end up afterwards.

And I think Mother of Divine Grace is a homeschool curriculum that saw this coming about 10 years ago. They started offering what they call the rigor classes in high school for kids who know that they're going into the trades, so they can actually get philosophy and theology in before they graduate from high school. So, there's a lot of people who are building toward that goal that Josh is describing even now, and it is so exciting. Can you tell? I'm excited. It is really neat.

I mean, Thomas Jefferson. Take it back, Catholics. Well, and also, we've done our share to highlight this. Erika, you had that great interview a year or so ago with Harmel Academy, and we promoted St. Joseph the Worker in Somerville, Ohio. So, we want to let people know that there are alternatives out there, rather than just immediately going into a four-year track. Make a wise decision.

Yeah. The decision is going to be forced on people, so now it's like the cool stuff is going to start happening. Email me. I have ideas. Yeah, I was reading the bio on Thomas Jefferson. He was reading The Odyssey in Greek at age 14.

Well, it is like- That is going to make you feel stupid, then reading about the- I am not a dummy, but that makes me feel pretty dumb. Yeah, President Kennedy had a bunch of scholars over at the White House. He said, this is the best collection of minds here since Thomas Jefferson dined alone.

That is funny. I think Hamilton would go out and plow the fields and come back and translate the Aeneid. For fun. For his evening recreation. Yeah, we binged Netflix. He was translating the Aeneid for fun. Yeah, no, I do think that spirit of, I see it kind of coming back in a way, obviously, maybe not to the same extent, but there is something inherent to the American character of being a self-made man. And self-educating, like Thomas Jefferson was very proud that he was self-educated, and I think he should be.

It is something to be really proud of, and if you, like the cool thing now is like we have access to everything that they did, if not way more. We have more distractions, which is the problem, but go to your local library. They have all of this. I think I saw like you give someone a better college education by just dropping them off in your local library and saying read for eight hours a day with a reading list. Then if you go somewhere, I think.

To an extent, that's true. I mean, I think back to Charlie Kirk, too. Like, he would go on these college tours, and he would just challenge kids, like, are you actually, what'd you read? What'd you read? What'd you read? And he'd come back, he's like, he did all that reading himself. It's possible. It's not easy, but it's possible. Okay, on to Trump accounts at this point. Erika, I did very little research. I hear that my child is going to get some cash.

That's all I got at this point. Yeah, I mean, if you were thinking about having a baby next year, you might want to go ahead and do that. We have Trump accounts rolling out. So, starting July 4th, happy birthday, America, 2026, the U.S. Treasury will deposit $1,000 into investment account for every child. In America, the original was 2025 to 2028 children only, but actually, turns out, you read the text and children up to 10 years old now are going to be able, parents can open these accounts on behalf of their kids.

The accounts will be tax advantaged. They're structured for long-term growth, and I'll tell you why in a minute, and they're meant to help children build financial momentum from the beginning. Families and employers will be able to contribute from their pre-tax income, right? So, you put it in before you assess for your taxes, which is a big help. Others can add to it, and by age 18, the account can be, basically, the kid cannot access the account. No one can access the account but the child when they reach their majority at 18, and then only for approved expenses like education.

For job training, buying a first home, or putting it into future savings. Approved. Expenses. Every child, I'm sorry, not under 10, under 18 is eligible to open one of these accounts. There's also a major donation from the Dell family. So, some philanthropists are giving the program a jumpstart for kids from lower income areas. Michael and Susan Dell, you probably saw their faces if you're watching the news about this on Tuesday, said that they would deposit $250 into individual investment accounts. For 25 million children, an amount totaling, that is $6.25 billion.

For all you math mavericks out there, it is one of the largest philanthropic gifts ever to go directly to Americans. This is historic. The money expands the number of children who will receive seed money for the investment accounts, called the Trump accounts. The federal government is going to give $1,000 to babies born between January 1, 2025.

And December 31st, 2028. So, basically, anyone under 18 can open an account. The feds are going to put $1,000 into your account if you were born between J-1, 2025 and December 31st, 2028. The Dells gift then extends to the children up to 10 years old who live in zip codes where the median household income is below $150,000. So, it's looking at kids from lower income areas.

So, if you want to get this, you have to fill out a form. Yes. And you know what the form is? It is form 4547. I love that. It is very Trump-y. 454. That is a very Trump-y gesture. This whole thing is very Trump-y. This whole thing is so Trump-y. Trump accounts and the form 4547. For those people in your Belinda, that would mean he was the 45th and 47th president. Yeah, just to spell it out for the audience. Can you pull up this graph here, Tom, the potential, what these accounts could look like?

So, if you get one of these accounts this year, and you are a little tiny baby, and You have people in your life, your employers, your parents, grandparents, contributing the maximum amount, $5,000 a year, until you hit 18. By the time you reach your majority, you could have as much as $191,000 sitting in that account for you to pull from. And you can see the Fox News business people on the screen getting very excited. That's assuming, I assume, a modest return, like a 6% return or something like that?

Yeah, and these can only... The federal government can only invest this money in very low-risk, modest stock market, basically. So, it's not a high-risk thing. They're not going to play around with the money here. Some of the critiques, we have some critiques. Well, actually, first, I want to talk about compound interest, because I love talking about compound interest. Okay. This was from the Free Press ran an article by Michael Dell, and I would encourage everyone to read it. Forgot to get the link for you, Tom, but it's out there at the Free Press.

He wrote about his rationalization for making this massive donation to boost these Trump accounts for disadvantaged kids. He said, I started my company with $1,000. I know what a financial foundation can mean, and his vision is that these children, while watching the balance grow in these accounts, will take their first look at compound interest, as he did.

It's a little bit of an elitist childhood story, because he starts waxing lyrical about how his mother was a hedge fund manager, and they would have a Wall Street Journal hanging around the house, and at the dinner table, they would- It's the classic Trump saying, I got a small loan of a million dollars from my dad. Yeah. Go ahead. Oh, and Josh, what are you going to say? I just have to say, this segues so well. So, when you're done, this segues so well into my twilight zone.

I'm pumped. All right, we're going to move that up. And he talks a lot about, he's so into compound interest, and he's just, this is the answer for American children looking to their future. He says, compound interest is the quiet workhouse of wealth building. Instead of earning interest only on money you put in, you earn interest on your interest. So, you. Make your money work for you. Todd tells me this all the time. Make your money work for you. Is he reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad, or Dave Ramsey?

He did. He sure is. Yeah, that is a great one. That is a great one. Classics. The principle is time on the market. So, if we can get these kids into the market, and they have a stake in the market early, early on that no one can touch, then through patience and prudence and personal responsibility, they can actually start life later on. With some seed money. And there are some fair critiques, right? Can I ask some questions? Yeah, go for it, go for it.

So, you get $1,000 from the government, but then after that $1,000, you can just contribute, say parents, grandparents, or whatever, could do up to $5,000 in this account. Yeah, it is kind of like a traditional IRA at the end, like when you start. Right, but so, like with an IRA or 401k, I can choose what to invest it in. In this case, that would not be the case. The government would choose what to invest it in. Yeah, that seems to be what was published yesterday.

So, I am sure there is more details forthcoming, but in the initial, it is the law, it restricts the government to a certain level of risk with these accounts. But the principle of playing the stock market is that it just, it is... It's riding the waves, right? It's riding the ups and downs. So, by giving these kids an 18-year on-ramp, the likelihood is that in 18 years, no matter what happens between now and then, at some point after 18 years, there will be a time when they can harvest, right?

Yeah. I mean, this is a million times better than Social Security. This is so much better than Social Security. Oh, sorry. Oh, Josh. I thought you were excited. All right, Josh. Early Twilight Zone. I will go to my twilight zone. So, I mean, this little thing happened on the internet, like with all the things going on in Somalia, where you have tens of thousands of people who left their country to come to the United States to take a crap on the United States and to scam taxpayers in Minnesota for millions of dollars.

And send the money back to Somalia. Yeah. So, one of my favorite accounts, Oilfield Rando, he's a fun guy. He complains about this and says, this is terrible. This is why we're in such a mess we are with all the debt, and we're paying for these people who are just leeching off the treasury, and we're paying welfare to all of them.

Ah, well, another account, again, no one uses their real names, I guess, anymore. Crusader Pepe lands Oilfield Randall. That could be his real name. And Crusader Pepe, yeah, he said- He's a recovering libertarian, just like you, Josh. He said, boomers vote at higher, okay, because the whole point, oil field rando, is that people get money from the federal government, these welfare things, and then they vote for Democrats to give them more money and all that kind of stuff. It is a bad pattern.

Well, Crusader Pepe said, well, look, boomers vote at higher rates than anyone else, and you will never guess where most of the federal budget goes, and it is meant to be this sick burn against the boomers. Who are retiring now and are getting a lot of money from Social Security and also from Medicare.

So, here is a, I know that, you know, of course, Tom is a young guy, always rips in the boot. Dude, no, don't give me that. Hold on a second. Let me finish. Let me cook. But I have attacked the baby boomers time and time again on this program. Arguably harsher than me, by the way. Yeah, absolutely. And I will concede that. Because I grew up in their shadow as a Gen Xer forever. But today, I will stand and I will defend the Baby Boomers against the senseless attack from Crusader Pepe, and this is why.

White knighting. If Somalian immigrants are coming into this country, and they are, first of all, the fraud thing is a whole other story, but if they are just using the regular means of the generous social services that are provided to them, not only from the state of Minnesota, but the photo government, you can make the case that, boy, they are an economic drain on the system, a lot of them are, because they are just kind of sitting around collecting a lot of welfare.

Why is that categorically, a different category, why is that categorically different than baby boomers who are retiring on Social Security? Well, duh, because baby boomers spent 40 years paying into the system. I actually went to mysocialsecurity.gov, and I got my earnings, by the way. I tallied this all up. I'm 48 years old, okay? Guess what?

Everyone who is listening to the LOOPcast, if you like the CatholicVote and you like the Loop, I noticed that I received a massive 60% decline in my income in 2005 to start a CatholicVote. I hope you appreciate that. Thank you, Josh. That kind of still hurts, Galania.

But, let us just talk about it. You mentioned compound interest. I have, since the end of last year, I have paid in $244,000. So, what does that mean? Well, see, the Crusader Pepe and all these others are like, yeah, but, you know, if you retire at 67 and you get like $4,000 a month, it'll burn through that pretty quick. And I guess that makes a point. It'd be like four or five years it'd burn through, right? It doesn't make sense. Ah, aha.

You're forgetting something. Tell me. Compound interest. Love it. If, instead, the federal government had said, when I was 18 years old and working as a cashier at the Snyder Drugstore, We're going to make sure that 12.4% of your income is actually not taken from us to pay current retirees, but put into an account, sort of like you're talking about this. Yeah, the Trump account.

You just do a S&P 500, very safe over the course of time. It wouldn't have been $240,000. At the end, it would have been $1.47 million, almost $1.5 million. So, not a quarter million I paid in. I paid in the equivalent of what I could have had, 1.5 million, and so that amounts to 30 years. So, it is not the problem. Wait, is that an opportunity cost? Yes, yes. Let me tell you how many times I could have used that money.

My goodness gracious. I cannot think about it. I get too upset. I return to my call here. In our country, we do not want people to starve. So, we provide food stamps to people so that they don't starve. That doesn't mean the government has to own the grocery stores, okay? By the way, we should do that for education and pensions. Just because we want everyone to get an education doesn't mean the government has to provide all the schools, like the groceries, okay, stores.

That would be dumb. We do it, though. And just because we need to make sure people retire with some money doesn't mean the government has to take that money and throw it into an oven and burn it. We can actually tell people just the same system we do for car insurance. If you want to drive on the roads, you have to have car insurance. It doesn't mean you have to buy the government's car insurance. Private sector competition, it works better. 100%.

I love it. So, can we get this guy in charge? How is this a defense? Look, I want to give you your points. How is this a defense of the boomers? You're saying they got screwed by Social Security too? Well, I'm just saying that the- The concern that people are, like Oilfield Randall, I do not even know if he is a boomer, but he was being attacked because he was citing the moochers of the system. People come to our country, and they just start taking benefits, welfare benefits, housing benefits.

They get free education in their schools. They are an economic drain on the system. Now, if they are fleeing persecution, okay. Right, but that is obviously not what we are talking about. It is a different category, but if they just come to this country, and you start mooching off the system. You're a drain on the economy. You're a drain on your neighborhood and your community, and he was making, I think, a good point, and someone shot back at him, probably a young whippersnapper, probably about the same age as Tom.

Yo, I knew this was going to happen. Come on. I love you. I tease you because I love you, but the retort was, oh, stop it, Boomer. Don't you realize most of the money going out of the treasury is for Social Security and Medicare? And I'm like, yeah, but. It is going to people who paid in a lot of money, and that money could have been better spent than the government. This idea that the government takes your money for Medicare and Social Security and puts it in what Al Gore liked to call a lockbox is a bunch of baloney.

It is disgusting. Oh, wait. Who said that? Al Gore? It was spent. Oh, that might have been the best lie I have ever heard. Election 2000. That is a whopper. That is a whopper. It is a bunch of crap. What happened was, again, in the late 1990s, there was a lot of people, the boomers were in a high... earning years and the number of people retired the ratio wasn't so bad and i'm like yeah just wait 25 years and here we are here we are yeah but the boomers are not to blame because of the social security system it was enacted in the you know 30s and they actually you know there was attempts to try to change it and then the the democrats say oh you want to push grandma over the cliff they had commercials where they had a cartoon oh my gosh the cliff you want to kill grandma so It's, again, we are spending a lot of money on Social Security, and we're spending a lot of money on Medicaid, I mean, Medicare for senior citizens, but my point would be like, these are people who spent 30 to 40 years of their income paying into a system, and the system is stupid.

Yeah. It's not the boomer's fault. Yeah, I also somewhat agree on houses, too, because I know we've been having a hard time about property taxes, and I do think that specific carve-outs for ages on... Stuff like funding schools is not a great precedent to set at all. I think it would turn horrible. But their housing prices have inflated, you know, kind of outside of their own control, and you might think, oh, that's great. But the only way to recoup those gains is to move in another house or to die.

So, it's almost like they didn't get anywhere. Like, sure, it's great. Zillow is saying my house is $800,000 now, but like, if I were to move, like, I can't realize those gains unless I were to, you know, move into an apartment or something. You know what I mean? They have to pay property taxes based on the new evaluation done by Zillow, so none of that was done by their followers because of low interest rates and printing money. The only thing I would say, though, is to Erika's point about these accounts, the hope that the Dell family, by getting these accounts and getting people to see how compound interest works, it could form a way of educating.

The law can be an educator, and the fact of the matter is, Senator Roth from Delaware, a Republican from many, many decades ago, Fought hard to expand and open opportunities for people to invest money in IRA accounts, and that was transformative. That was, I don't know, late 70s, early 80s, and that kind of stuff, what it did is it started creating, like, people were getting wealth, and they're learning, wait a minute, I can lower my tax burden now by investing money, and then I'll get it when I retire, and I don't have to worry, you know, whether or not Social Security will be there for me, so that was very helpful.

And in fact, Democrats were like, oh, maybe we should start trying to clamp down on this, and they realized it was too late. They couldn't do it, and people backfired on it. So, that was helpful, and to the extent that these Trump accounts with the Dell family help could actually get people's eyes awakened to how, you know what, you can actually have your money work for you, all to the better. I think that's a wonderful thing. It could be a blessing of liberty.

And I think that it's an example of a culture, this could actually drive a cultural change in. In some areas, for people who do take advantage of this, for school systems that take advantage of this, because now you have a classroom full of kids. They all have $1,000 in the bank. You could actually teach them about their own money instead of being like, well, we can't talk about it because they don't actually have a stake in this. This could actually drive more change than just, oh, some American children will have $19,000 at the end of the year or something like that.

Sweet. Erika, we moved up, Josh. What's your good news, Erika? Oh, I have some great news. Are you kidding me? Okay, so this was a headline this morning in The Loop. We have a great visual here, Tom, of the students at Arizona State University welcomes a record 52 students into the Catholic faith just this last month, just in November. In fact, they had such a large group of students wanting to enter the church that they had to accept 52 of them in the fall, and they're expecting, this is the best news.

They're expecting the same number at the Easter Vigil in the spring, and this was a wonderful story. Shout out to Mary Rose, one of our new writers, but she actually interviewed people down there at the Arizona Center and just talking about, this was a quote from Ryan Ayala, who's the director.

Of the Newman Center, he said, college students, Gen Zers, are hungry for truth, belonging, and an unwavering Catholic faith. Our campus ministers, missionaries, and priests see that and have committed to meet this moment with passion and urgency. Welcome to the church. Welcome home. There is an indirect hero that we can give on this for Arizona State that might sound a little surprising, but actually Monsignor James Shea, president of the University of Mary, way up in Dakota, he established a satellite university at Arizona State, and he did this about eight, ten years ago or whatever, so that young men who are thinking about becoming a priest in the Diocese of Phoenix They could get a lot of their training there, and so you, Mary, University of Mary, sent professors down to Arizona State so that they wouldn't have to, because, you know, Phoenix- Why Arizona State?

Why Phoenix? Well, so Arizona was growing, you know, was, you know, 40 years ago, 70, you know, it was tiny, but it exploded in population, and they don't have as much Catholic infrastructure. Like, there's no seminary. Like, where do you go? And so- Monsignor James Shea, University of Mary, brilliant idea. He meets with the bishop in Phoenix back then. Olmsted is like, hey, what if I sent some professors down to Arizona State, and kids would just enroll in Arizona State. They would get a lot of the classes that they would need for college education to become a priest, but then we would be able to teach theology and this kind of stuff, and it worked out like a great deal.

The new bishop who came in, Dolan, who I am not a big fan of, he kind of looked at it and goes, yeah, I think he kind of wanted to shut it down, but couldn't. That is just a little... Wait, Dolan? Like in New York City? No, no, no. No, no, no.

Dolan is still in New York City. A lot of creative ingenuity, and I have to tip my hat to my senior, James Shea. That's not to take away from the really good, hard-working people at Arizona State who are doing this. At the Newman Center, too, for sure. Yeah, they're phenomenal, but I think just having those young men that are at that school as a seminary kind of thing, I think it helps, certainly. Yeah, it's in holiness is catching, right? Like, that's the story of St.

Francis Xavier. If he wasn't at college with Ignatius Loyola, like, who knows what would have happened with the Jesuits and all those souls that he baptized. And I want to just point out, too, that it was a brilliant movement by, move by Monsignor Shea, because what professor who is teaching theology in Bismarck, North Dakota would not like a sabbatical in Phoenix, Arizona once in a while. I mean, am I right? Like, get a little, it just helps. Very true, very true.

Well, I mean, and also. Like, I think University of Dallas, University of Mary, Franciscan University, Ave Maria, all these gems of our church are, you know, my daughter goes to University of Mary. These are all great options, much better than Georgetown, you know, Holy Cross, you know, whatever. But my point would be, like, if some of those are maybe not within reach, per se, it would be better for a kid to go to Arizona State than to go to Georgetown University, though.

Yes. Like, Georgetown University is where your faith will be lost. At least at Arizona State, there'll be a Newman Center like this, or Texas A&M, some of these other places in Michigan State that have really good Newman Centers. So, you know, I'm not giving an endorsement of state universities, but it'd be better than a nominal Catholic. That would be the worst. Catholic and name-only university is the worst, worst option.

That's facts. That is facts. Josh, you were going to use... Hey, the good guy in Tennessee won. Yeah, so the woman that said she hated Nashville didn't win an election for it? Indeed. That line aside, she still would have probably lost. I mean, this is a district that Donald Trump won by 22 points.

But here is the interesting point. The idea is, could she make it close? He ended up winning it by nine points. It was a solid victory. The question is, if Democrats didn't nominate a total psychopath, if they had nominated a former governor or something like that, they might have made this a close race.

And if Van Epps still won the race, but if he only won it by one point in a Trump-plus-22 district, then Democrats would have been crowing all week. They would have been celebrating how much. You know, this is going to show, next year is going to be a bloodbath, and of course, you know, Republicans would have freaked out or whatever. So, this is good news that, and again, this is why candidate selection matters.

Brad, you don't have to run the clip, I'll just summarize it real quick. Brad Todd, this conservative commentator, was on CNN, and he explained it, because Marsha Blackburn is a solid... Conservative, she's a senator from Tennessee. When she first ran in 2018, it was also kind of a bad environment for Trump, you know, and she only won this, you know, she ran statewide for Senate, but she won this exact same district by only one point that year, because the Democrats had nominated somebody who wasn't a psychopath, a former Democratic governor, their attempt to try to make the race close.

She ended up winning fairly solidly, but this is why when we're talking about elections, Candidate quality matters. It does not just matter if they agree with you on the issues. The question is, can the person convince people to support their campaign? Can they get people to make it work? Can they communicate effectively in the media? There are a lot of things that go into candidate quality. Just because you agree with them on everything, like, look, I agree with my brother on everything, but if he ran for office, boy.

Go turn, Jake. You think I'm bad. Anyway, good news for the good guys. Yeah, I know a lot of people were watching that because she was getting a lot of attention. Yeah. And, yeah, it looks like... Trump called her the AOC of Tennessee.

I still can't believe anyone had a clip of her saying, I hate Nashville, and you're just like, come on, bro. You just can't. Come on. You can't say that. Never say never. Okay, quickly, my good news. We're in the wrong election again, though, for the same seat. People are like, why? You lost. And she's like, well, because she convinced enough wine moms to donate money to her. Yeah, true. It's like the Beto O'Rourke thing, right? Come on, wine moms. Okay, my good news.

It's not that the Patriots are good again, although I kind of feel happy for them a little bit. They're my team, guys. So, running back Travion Henderson had, so the my claws, my cleats thing, they allow them to do custom cleats to support whatever cause the player has going on, and he did his cleats for Global Persecuted Christians, which I thought was pretty awesome.

Here are the cleats. Very cool. It has pray for persecuted Christians, global Christian release with praying hands, and then Matthew 5.10, faith endures on the back, and it even had like heat maps on where Christians are being persecuted around the world, and I was like, wow, those are sweet cleats, and then I went through his account. He has, like, the most Jesus account I've ever seen. For an athlete, the thing is, I am nothing without God. Him pointing up after a touchdown, Jesus saved my life, Father of Jesus Christ running back in that order.

That's awesome. And I think he was a product of this Ohio State kind of revival thing. Maybe he was before. Yeah, that was awesome. But I remember seeing the headlines there, and yeah, his pinned tweet is, I'm living proof of what the mercy of God can do for all the things I've done and the choices. Made that I regret I would still be lost, but Jesus took the old me, and he made it new.

That's what the mercy of God can do. But God is so rich in mercy, and he loved us so much that even though we were dead because of our sins, he gave us life when he raised Christ from the dead. It is only by God's grace that you have been saved. Ephesians 2, 4, 5.

So, shout out to Travia and Henderson. I thought that was pretty awesome. A great, great cause to bring attention to. I mean, it's really, it's dire around the world for a lot of these people, so I just love seeing that. Love it. Okay, quickly, Josh, do you have any guesses on what the top Wikipedia most read articles are for the year? Top five.

Biggest aura, maybe. I don't know. No, no, no. People. They're all people. Top five people. Well, yeah. Well, I guess. Yeah. Well, Donald Trump. Donald Trump, number four. Good job. Kamala Harris. Wrong. Thank God. Oh, 25. I was thinking 24 already. Yeah.

Zelensky? No. One is the leader of a global church. Obviously, Pope Leo. Yes. Number five. Number one. Number one should be obvious. Taylor Swift. No. He lost his life this year in a very public way. Oh, well, Charlie Kirk, certainly. Yeah, Charlie Kirk was number one. The third one, Ed Gein. Does anyone know who Ed Gein is?

I had to go click into it. I had never heard of it, but I don't understand. Oh, the serial killer? Yeah. Was there like a documentary or something about him? There must have been a documentary on Netflix, like a real crime, true crime drama or something. Born in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Oh, sorry, La Crosse. That's in the neck of the woods, I was going to say. Again, not chill. That's in 2025, was number two. I feel like that always comes up.

And then number four, Donald Trump. Number five, Pope Leo. Yeah, Ed Gein, there must have been a documentary, because the other one, that was in the movie category. And politics. Okay, let us do politics. This is your test, Josh. Five top political searches. Stories.

Wait, we already said Donald Trump. Gavin Newsom would be another one. He is not on there. All political figures, five of them. U.S. ones, or no? Yes. Should I sing a song? New York, New York. What's Schumer? No, Schumer.

New Mayor. Mom's Donnie. TikTok politics. Check out the deep. It was a great episode. Then it could be Mario Cuomo, because he's running. Andrew, no. AOC? No. Probably not. Doge. Elon Musk. Okay, the last one surprised me, even, but he is a member of the Trump cabinet, currently.

Hegsteth. Adelphi? Nope. Marco Rubio? Mm-mm. Besant. Who is it? J.D. Vance. He's not in the cabinet? Is the vice president in the cabinet? I thought that was technically his cabinet, right? The vice president is brought into the, you know, cabinet. He's at the meetings.

Anyway, J.D. Vance, so that's good. J.D. Vance. I threw him off the scent. And the word of the year. The word of the year. Any guesses? Race fade. Indeed. Someone just accused me of rage-baiting every episode, and I'm like, probably fair to a certain extent. Accused me of that? No, no, no, that was the word of the year.

No, they accused me of rage-baiting. No, me. Pogo. Not you. I think they misunderstood the term. My wife gives me a rage beat all the time, which is, you know, totally accurate. So, Josh has defended the boomers. Erika now has twards on her. Yeah, I'll just do my fun one, the brain candy at this point. So, we have some White House whiplash, because Jill Biden is no longer in charge of decorating the White House. If you will remember, Jill Biden. Decided to decorate the White House that last time.

Okay, on the left, we have it. We've got crazy, weird, psycho, Moulin Rouge-style dances through the White House. By a dance troupe that their mission is to basically, like, tell white people how horrible they are. There's a white guy dancing there. They're getting down. Well, you know, I mean, he's got some intersectional something, I'm sure. But that was what we got last year for the final Biden hurrah at Christmas. And this year, on the right on the screen, you will see Melania.

America, 250. What would Trump's... It's just so classy. So, Trump's... The nativity scene. Trump's decoration style would be considered art deco, right? What would the design be? I would say Gilded Age. Gilded Age, okay. He likes gold. He likes gold. Melania is not as... Yeah, she's not as... She's as gilded as he is in terms of like everything is covered in gold, and here's all the gold vases, and here's my Trump 2028 hat collection behind a gold door that I show to people when they walk in.

She's much more refined, and I think she... Oh, Josh left. Yeah, Josh already did. All right. See you, Josh. But anyway, my twilight zone is remembering what was and what might have been, and being glad that we are unburdened by...

What could have been had Kamala Harris been in that White House for Christmas this year? Yeah. Praise Jesus. All right, I'll round it out. I make this point like once a week, I think, to my wife, but here's a video of someone talking about therapy culture and young girls. Kind of a cliche thing to say now, but I do think therapy culture has replaced religion.

And that's not a new thing to say. People have been saying that for a long time. So, Christopher Lash was writing about that in the 70s. Frank Ferudy writes about it really well now. But in recent years, since social media, I would say, therapy culture has just escalated to the point where I think young women don't see it as a worldview. They just see that as kind of life. So, they interpret everything through this therapeutic lens. So, their lives, their relationships, their emotions.

And I think it has elevated to the level of religion. So, you think of all the kind of characteristics of religion, we just mimic them with therapy culture. So, instead of praying, we just repeat our positive affirmations. Instead of seeking salvation, you'll go on a healing journey. Instead of resisting temptation from the devil, you'll reframe your intrusive thoughts. And so, I think for young women in particular, who are becoming less religious, This kind of therapeutic worldview has completely replaced that void.

What does a therapeutic worldview consist of? What does that mean? Like seeing problems in your life, kind of pathologizing problems and experiences as something medical, rather than I'm just experiencing this emotion or kind of age-old anxiety now it's become.

A medical issue. So, things like talking in the language of attachment styles and trauma, and losing the language of just ordinary hurt and disappointment, and things like that. And for some reason, this is giving some kind of solace or comfort, order being brought out of chaos.

I think it gives the comfort religion gives, and the consolation of like, you see young women on TikTok saying things like, they won't pray to God, but they'll give a request to the universe, like have faith in that. And so I think it gives all the comfort of religion, but it takes away the inconvenient parts.

Any actual demands on you, or kind of restrictions on your freedom, or anything like that. Being held to standards of behavior, etc. So, it has what women are craving in modern life, I think, which is belonging, and security in something, and faith in something, but it is a much easier version of religion. Slippery religion. Yeah, yeah. How many of these girls are in therapy, do you think?

A lot. There was a study recently showing that 32% of all 12 to 17-year-olds in America have either had therapy, been on medication, or had some kind of treatment in 2023. Over a single year, one third. Which is insane. And I was talking to someone about that statistic, and they were like, oh, that's great. That's amazing. And I was thinking, that's a bleak statistic. So, yeah, I think.

There's the girls that are in therapy, which is a lot, but then there's also the girls who are just like living in therapy culture. So, it's just, they scroll through Instagram, and it's all about attachment styles, trauma. They go on TikTok, and it's like a trauma-informed therapist telling them like red flags they should watch out for and stuff. It's just like, there's the actual therapy, which I'm sure there is.

There's useful therapists, but there's also just this culture, which is just the world that they're swimming in. Yep, that's where we live. Come on. We'll pat on the back for rounding in a bow. It's almost like this is related to why we have 40% disability claimed at Stanford. Yep. In multiple reasons.

So, we have a guy on staff here who basically, he's a book collector, and he has like all these like forbidden books. Like, they're books that are like out of print, or you know what I mean? Like, he just has all these cool books. And one of the OG ones that he actually wrecked to me and I got almost immediately was, it's called Psychological Seduction. I don't believe it's in print anymore. You can get it. I think I got it like secondhand on Amazon or something like that.

Psychological seduction. There's an apple and a snake. And the central thesis, as written in the 80s, is about how therapy and psychology have replaced Christianity in America. And it was basically every point that she made there was a part of this. And this is not to say, too, in the same case with the colleges, where there are legitimate instances where a therapist could be applied properly. Like, if you do actually have something really serious. A therapist could help you with that.

And I'm not saying going to therapy is bad at all, and it's the same way as, like, there are legitimate disabilities that we should help people with when they're at college, but, of course, it becomes a problem when half the school becomes disabled, or a third of women feel that they need therapy of some kind. A third of teen girls, right. Yeah, not even women, girls, 12 to 17. I mean, that's, like, shocking crazy. I mean, everyone's head should be held up.

Adolescence is hard, but we shouldn't all be pathologically sick when we're 12 to 17 girls. That's frightening. Right, and a great point there about it's like, I think someone in the chat, Carlos in the chat was talking about like, therapy has kind of become to people like, it's confession without the grace. Like, it's confession without the sin, the forgiveness, right? Like, yeah, exactly. It's like the sin. And, oh man, praying to the universe, but not to God and not seeing that as the same thing.

Or, and of course, holding yourself to standards similar to the college thing. It's like, Standards are important, and I think that's kind of why. So, you see 52 people coming into the church in Arizona State, and it just feels in a lot of ways like the ground beneath us are kind of shifting, especially with AI. It just feels like we have a hard, hard time telling what's real and what's fake.

The, the, my, one of my favorite parts about Catholicism is the sacraments. The sacraments, there's seven sacraments. They're all super concrete. They have rich intellectual history of four-man matter, and it's not just like thinking in my head, oh, I'm sorry, now I got to move on. It's like, just like anything else, I feel like when you have real problems going on, they, they become, they have less power over you when you speak out loud to someone else, whether they're your friends, but then also seeking legitimate healing for What are the sins that you've committed or that have affected you or how you affect other people, and you go speak to the people that can actually help you with that, to priests, and you go to Mass on Sunday, physically receive our Lord every Sunday.

There's a rhythm to that that I think is much more natural to everyone, really. It just is like there's a peace and a supernatural peace that comes with that that I think is just becoming more and more appealing. I see more and more conversions on the horizon because... That feels to be the one rail of society right now that is offering what people are looking for and can't find. Yeah, and I think what she's describing has been a long time in coming.

I'm reading for Advent. I'm reading a few of his homilies, The New Doctor of the Church, John Henry Newman, and his critique of liberalism in religion, this sort of Christianity without the cross. Nice Christians, again, it starts off with this impulse to spare suffering to people. So, they're like, oh, we'll remove the cross from Christianity, remove any of the demands that it makes upon you, and any of the acknowledgement of our need for redemption. Why did God become a little baby to be born in a stable and to grow up with all that comes with having a body and having real human relationships?

What would drive God? To come down to that depth. And the desire of liberalism and religion was to just remove any of that question and that suffering, to spare people somehow. And then, of course, going up through the 20th century, I think of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Protestant pastor who gave his life. He died under Nazism for resisting Hitler. He was actually part of Operation Valkyrie in a very small way to assassinate Hitler, but that is a whole other story. But he talked about the cost of discipleship and how What she's describing here is therapy culture and the therapeutic religion.

It wants all the consolation of Christianity without any of the cost, but when you gut the cross from Christianity and you remove the cost, you also thereby remove the consolation, and it becomes fake and psychological and therapeutic, and you become dependent on dopamine hits. I mean, that's why she's talking about Instagram there. Instead of real, deep, true, abiding joy in the fruits of the Spirit, right? Love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, all of those. So, yeah, that was a great clip. I think she nails it.

She puts her finger on the pulse of what's wrong. Yeah, and like you said, it reinforces the need for true Christianity, which, of course, is found in the Catholic Church. Psychological seduction, worth a read. Psychological. William Philpatrick or Kirkpatrick? I forget.

Is it Kilpatrick or Kirkpatrick? I think my mom had that book. Yeah, it's like one of those cool forbidden books that when you get it, you're like, this is out of print. Oh. I've been running into some hardcore book collectors these days, and I'm like, you guys are sick. They're cool. Yeah, it's cool. They're just trying to get text all the time. I could be considered. Yeah, I think I could be considered. You probably got, yeah, I wouldn't doubt that you have.

A couple thousand, a couple thousand books here. A couple thousand, I think you're in the category, yep. Congrats. Which my husband has moved every time I've had to move states. Thank you, Todd. Bless you. It's not about Christianity with a cross. That's my wife's book. Wait, you haven't heard that you could just get a Kindle? Like, you can just, it'll all be the same, right? I've been told that this is, this would be more Christian with me, but no. It's not the point.

I want the smell of the books. I want them in my hands. Okay. Great show, gang. Charity Mullen, thank you for sponsoring the episode. Leave us a review, Apple Podcasts and Spotify, where you can do that. We have a good episode of The Deep coming for you tomorrow about Catholics and AI. Yeah. Should you feel guilty? It's coming. We're using AI, Catholics. So, be ready. If you want to support us, join the Champions Club, CatholicVote.org slash champions is where you can do that.

Thank you to all of our champions. I saw we had a new champion in the comments of the last episode. Thank you so much for supporting us. It's the only way we can do what we can do, and we've got a lot of great new things coming for you very soon, so stay tuned for that. We're going to take care of our champions. We've got a lot of cool stuff coming. Yeah, Josh had to dip out of here, but I am sure it was for something important.

He was dressed up. He was dressed up for the nines today. He is nined up. Yeah, he is probably meeting with Trump or something like that, something casual. Trump accounts. But we will end in prayer today, in our daily prayer. In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Heavenly Father, I come before you seeking your calming presence to bring peace to my troubled heart. My soul feels like a restless sea, tossing and turning with worries. I place my trust in your boundless love. Knowing that you will heal the stress and anxiety that weights me down and burdens me, light up the darkness, Lord, and let your light shine the way for me. Amen. St. Thomas More, St. Fidelis, Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us. Great episode, gang. Have a great Wednesday. We will catch you for the deep on Thursday, and then good show on Friday. Peace.