Thousands of Flights Cancelled as Shutdown Rolls On, SCOTUS Tariff Skeptical, And Wichita Love

I'm alive. Welcome back to the LOOPcast. It's just Tom and Josh today. LOOPcast Deluxe, or I can't remember what we call it, but we have a great show prepared for you. The LOOPcast, of course, brought to you by The Loop, every American Catholic's favorite morning newsletter. Got a bunch of stories in here for you today. Lots of flights being canceled right now. We're going to get you the 411 on what's going there and the government shutdown. We even got a little bit from Tom McCluskey on deals on the table, that kind of thing.

We're going to nail that. Second, we have tariff talk. So SCOTUS heard the tariff case. It was really interesting to hear. It seemed like a lot of skepticism, but... I got some interesting details on what potentially could be done to that tariff revenue. It could really change a lot of economies around the world, so we got that. I got some great emails from some older listeners who I love. Love you guys so much. Again, I don't want to be sensitive to the boomers.

I love my boomers. About the tax situation in Texas, I thought you sent in a really good email. It gave me a lot of perspective. I'm going to give my response there, Josh. We're going to talk about it as well, but I appreciate you guys all being here to join us this morning on a lovely Friday. It's going to be nice fun. Friday show. Before we get into it, the reason we do today is this organization that's equipping nonprofits and accelerating their impact.

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Well, hey, is it Friday? It is Friday. I get all confused. I hope you don't have to fly anywhere. Well, I don't, but, you know, I know people who do. I mean, Kelsey, our fearless president, is flying a bunch today, and was flying earlier in the week, and flies again. You know, she's flying all over the place, and so I feel for her, and everyone else is traveling. I had a busy period of traveling, but I'm not doing it so much now.

I do hope that when we ever get around to getting this government turned back on. By the way, The government has been shut down for over a month. Yep. They have no authority to spend any more money, right? Yep. So, why do I still have to pay taxes?

Riddle me that, Batman. Riddle me that, Batman. I mean, okay, so I feel like we've officially reached the point where the government shutdown went way longer than anyone thought, and it's absolutely damaging to average American. I mean, if you're flying, we're reaching peak holiday season, et cetera. So, Erika wanted to leave in a little nugget. She misses you guys dearly.

Her senator, Chris Murphy, over there in Connecticut, said Thursday his party's, quote, brand could undergo substantial damage if Democrats were to cave and reopen the federal government following. There will be some pretty substantial damage done to a Democratic brand that has been rehabilitated if on the heels of an election in which people told us to keep fighting. We immediately stop fighting. We're going to start operating on an increasingly short calendar. The 2026 election is just 12 months away, and if we surrender without having gotten anything and we cause a lot of folks in the country who have started to believe in the Democratic Party to retreat again, I worry that it will be hard to get Get to sort of get them back up off the mat in time to fight for next election cycle.

Yeah, I have... Actually, you know what my response to that actually is? What is it? I'm not super angry, actually. That tells me he's worried that other Democrats are thinking about ending this, and he's trying to stop them and say, no, no, no, no, no, we can't. We got to keep the shutdown going. And so, that tells me that there are some sensible people in the, you know, somewhat sensible people amongst the Senate Democrats who realize this is going to be a real problem if we keep this going for too long.

And so, it feels like he's earnestly trying to say, no, no, no, keep going, keep going, and that some people are coming to their senses. We'll see. Yeah, a little bit of insight on the map here. I have it up for the YouTube show. The FAA just announced it's cutting air traffic at the nation's 40 busiest airports by 10% starting today as the government shutdown drags on. This means that up to 1,800 of the 44,000 daily flights could be grounded. Sean Duffy and FAA Chief Brian Bedford said this move is preemptive, a way to relieve pressure on air traffic controllers, many of whom are working without pay and calling in sick and picking up second jobs.

The shutdown is now. At the longest in U.S. history, and aviation workers are feeling the heat. I actually heard him specifically say, a lot of them are like, we can forego one paycheck, you know, we can make it work, we can dip into savings. No one can do a second paycheck. No one. No one can afford to wait another second paycheck. They will get back pay, but at this point, I mean, it is getting bad.

Yeah, I mean, obviously, one of the things that is happening right now is that a lot of the banks You know, every time you log into one of your bank accounts, you know, hey, are you a federal employee? Do you need help? And so, a lot of banks are trying to reach out to people because they know the federal government almost always ends up ending the shutdown, and everyone gets their back pay. So, it is not too risky for banks to lend this money.

It is still very stressful for federal employees. So, I do not want to try to undermine that or minimize that. So, they do seem to have some options here, but again, it is stressful, and they are trying to figure out what to do. So, it is not a great situation at all.

All right, can I get your hard politics hat on real quick, Josh? Well, real quick, I just want to reissue my call once we get this federal government shut down. Over with. It would be nice to have user fees on tickets, airline tickets, to pay for FAA, for all those guys running the traffic control kind of stuff, so that it's not dependent on shutdowns. That would be nice. See, for example... Right, but why would you pass the cost on to us, then, the consumer?

We pay the cost anyway. I mean, obviously, the taxpayers are paying it no matter what we do. Right? I guess. It's just whether or not you charge the people who actually fly the plane, pay for the ticket, or if you charge every U.S. taxpayer. But wouldn't this incentivize the government to continue to shut down? No, I understand it's still spending, but doesn't this move incentivize government to just stay shut down, right? Not necessarily. I mean, it is one pain point that people are, it might get people to stop the government shutdown, but again, I would just say, like, you know, the Postal Service right now is actually a quasi-private public agency, and it relies on revenues from stamps and stuff like that.

So, right now, the post office has been open for the last month, and it hasn't been interrupted service. So, why don't we do the same thing for the FAA? For example, you can apply for a passport, and because that's paid for by user fees, that is still getting processed. It's not shut down. So, the more and more things we can do, and I'd also like to have just good government. I would like to have it in a sense where I'm still paying for it with my taxes, so it would be nice if they would I just, in general, like, when Ted Cruz was like, let's shut down the government to try to repeal Obamacare, I knew that wasn't going to go anywhere, and I just, like, these libertarian fantasies, oh, now the government shut down, like, we're still paying taxes, we still have a regulatory regime that's horrible, it's not like we suddenly wake up in libertarian paradise, so get over this, like, fever dream, oh, it's so cool, government...

I don't think anyone thinks, I don't think anyone thinks that at this point. Some younger kids do, but... I don't even know about that, but I will say... So, we got inside scoop from Tim Foil Tom. He said, a deal has been worked out on opening the government, though there are a few last demands being made on Republicans. One is to rescind the RIFs, so that would be reduction in force. While not a good idea to begin with, it would also reinstate the Office of Population Affairs, talk about Orwellian, at the HHS.

It's an office completely run by Democrats, whom Joe Biden made into career bureaucrats there. For example, the office has Elizabeth Nash, who worked at the Guttemacher Institute for years. Super pro-war sort of organization. Right. So, Congress will still collect on Tuesday. We saw moves to block congressional pay for the direction of shutdown for Senator Kennedy and Rick Scott. So, put on the hat here. Should Republicans gave on this? Who do you think is going to move? Could it drag out even longer?

Is this a possible path forward? Well, I mean, I kind of feel like if our Republicans, I would not want to get rid of these reductions in force because that's the ballgame here. I mean, like, I guess, I mean, like, if they agree to, if Republicans take this deal and get rid of some of these reduction in force cuts, you know, I would only be okay with it so long as we're not also giving away the farm on Obamacare subsidies. You know, it's like, give me something.

You know, like, otherwise, then it's like you let the government, the Democrats shut down the government for 35 some days, and then you just give them everything that they want. Like, this doesn't make any sense at all. Like, getting rid of the Obamacare subsidies, you know, they phased out and not extending them would be. Painful to people who are going to have to have high costs of healthcare. And maybe then we can say, wait a minute now, this so-called Affordable Care Act, Obamacare, didn't work.

Let's actually get real reforms. But if you just keep subsidizing, I don't think we're going to get to getting the reforms. Like, I don't want the pain, but I certainly don't like the subsidies continuing. And so, like, if Republicans cave on Obamacare subsidies and also these reduction of forces, then what are we doing here, folks? Like, you got to have something. I know, but at this point, clearly, it's worked for the Democrats. I mean, they had a great election. They're in the back of a great election.

I disagree. In opposition. I think everyone's mad at everyone. So, if everyone's mad at everyone, then who does this fall on? Okay, for example, the assumption that the shutdown worked for Democrats, I disagree with that assumption. Just because they had a great night this year on election night on Tuesday. Again, whatever I've been saying from the beginning of the year, we're talking about Trump's in office that super angers the wine moms in the suburbs. The Democrats were going to have a good night whether the shutdown happened or not.

Did it add seats? Did it make their victory a little bit bigger? Of course, I agree with that. But the Democrats, I mean, I've been convinced all year that the Democrats were going to win big precisely because Of Trump derangement syndrome, he drives out their Democratic voters in off-year elections in a major way, and that low-propensity Republican voters who like what Trump has to say, they're like, wait, what is this? I don't even know there's an election this year. So, that's, you know, again, I don't think that, you can't just tell me, oh, the shutdown obviously helped Democrats majorly win.

Okay, so, okay, I understand you disagree with that assumption, but what's the off-ramp here? Well, I mean, I'm okay with some compromising. I mean, like, whatever. I mean, I don't think it's helpful for the, you know, you've got to give, you know, it makes sense to throw a little fig leaves or something at Democrats. You know, they don't want to just, no side likes to have absolute surrender and get nothing, you know. And so, if you throw them a few breadcrumbs, and they can say, we did this, and that was why we did it for, like, okay, fine, whatever, and then just move on.

Because, you know, I don't think it ultimately helped them. I don't think the voters are going to care about this 12 months from now, but if it continues on for, you know, for another three, four weeks, then it will be a problem.

Yeah. I just don't think it will. Interesting, interesting times. Okay, on to the next one. So, SCOTUS actually had, they heard, basically... How Trump has been applying tariffs, and I want to be specific in language, because it's not just on the use of tariffs in general, but it's the specific use of, I believe it's the IEEPA, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. It's a 1977 law allowing the president to regulate importation during a declared national emergency and authorize sweeping tariffs without Congress.

It's essentially what was done here, Liberation Day, and then targeted tariffs on countries that we deemed were national emergencies. The emergencies that he cited were in early 2025. One was for fentanyl trafficking tariffs, so that's the 25% to 50% on goods from China, Canada, and Mexico for failing to stop opioid flows, and then reciprocal Liberation Day tariffs that baseline 10% on nearly every country.

So, the interesting thing about this to me is we've already collected $90 billion from the world. And the projection is that we're going to collect $600 billion with the world. What could happen, potentially, is, depending on how the Supreme Court rules, that money could be considered improperly taxed, and so we would, theoretically, have to return it. Like, right now, it's just sitting in the Treasury, but we could return it, which would completely change the economies of many of these countries that we've gotten tariffs from, so there's a lot of things at stake.

Well, the Supreme Court might decide to do something else with regards to the remedy of it, but they could just say is that these are no longer in effect. Because they're unconstitutional, but we're not going to determine what should be done with the revenue gains done because it affects foreign policy or something like that. So, they could split the baby, as it's called, on that if they wanted to. Yeah, and I was listening through a lot of the oral arguments, and what really stuck out to me was just a general skepticism of the use.

And again, this is a specific ruling. This is just, can you use these emergency powers? Was it appropriate? Because you avoided Congress, essentially. And I think... I think in Trump's mind, he didn't want to use Congress because Congress would not want to have to vote on these very, they would be unpopular tariffs for many of their citizens. Even if he thought it needed to be done, if it was effective, he liked to do it this way because he could basically use it as leverage against countries for negotiation, as opposed to going to Congress, which would have to take an unpopular vote, and he would be able to use them in less targeted ways.

That's just my read on it. I don't know if you agree. My other read on that, too, I'm not disagreeing with that necessarily, but it's not like it was like. 40 or 50 years ago, in terms of like, you know, like, let us say, you know, Nixon or Carter or Reagan came to Congress and said, we need to slap some tariffs on, you know, China, Japan, whatever. Then you would have, you know, different, you know. You know, let us say it was tariffs on Japan for cars, then you definitely get, you know, states like Michigan, Ohio, that would be like, yeah, let us do that.

That would be economically beneficial. But today, things are so often seen through the prism of your partisan lens, both sides. I am not trying to exempt anybody on this. But the fact of the matter is, there are going to be a lot of Democrats who are not going to want to vote for anything that has to do with Trump, no matter what. So, that is kind of Trump's thought on this. I cannot go to Democrats who are in blue-collar areas. First of all, fewer and fewer Democrats represent blue-collar areas anyway, but there are no votes for me to get there because they are not going to vote for anything I have to do with this.

So, he is like, let us just use a current mechanism and just declare everything a national emergency and just go with it. On the Supreme Court side, here again is the problem. Again, partisan lens. This one, I am going to be a little bit more negative on the left-wing side because the fact of the matter is, if it was Joe Biden still president today and he was doing these tariffs, I think the three liberal justices would go along with it, period, and then it would be a question of what the six judges who are conservative-leaning would do, and if you could get two of them to agree with it, maybe you do or not, but I just feel like Rock solid.

Three Democrats. I mean, they're not even liberal judges. They're Democrats. They're going to do pretty much whatever the Democratic Party wants. Elena Kagan, every once in a while, shows some independence. So then, with regards to these six conservative judges, there is a tendency where You know, Alito and Thomas tend to be very pro-executive power, and they kind of always, you know, have, well, certainly when Republicans do, so maybe they're a little bit more partisan. But, I mean, you look at these guys like Gorsuch, he tends to be on the libertarian side of things anyway.

So, and he's shown more, quote, independence. He's less partisan inclined. Sometimes that makes conservative voters upset. Sometimes it doesn't. So, I think it wouldn't matter who was president. Gorsuch would be against these terrorists. He would think that this was an abuse, an exaggeration of the president's powers. Ultimately, what I think, you know, like, to me, Kavanaugh is pushing back and saying, well, wait a minute now. The president does have these powers because Congress delegated it to him. Nixon's used these powers before, and the courts have backed him up on that.

And I ultimately think you might be able to get to, it's not going to be completely wipe these things out, but the court might say, what national emergency do you have to slap tariffs on, say, France? I don't get it. What would that be? But if you're doing tariffs on China because China is doing aggressive trade wars, intellectual property rights violations, that kind of stuff. Yeah. Everything Trump does on China might actually get the A-OK from this court, precisely because of that.

So, the Supreme Court might actually rule and say his authority is not as unlimited as he seems to be doing it this year. And so, you might have to roll back a bunch of that stuff, but they may allow some of these to go through, especially with regards to China, especially if there's a clear and present emergency that would be, you know, whether or not they themselves would have declared an emergency, but if they could say, yeah, I could see how someone as a president could make that declaration.

Yeah, I think it honestly reminds me a lot of Declaration of War. So, when's the last time we've actually, I think it was World War II, the last time Congress actually declared war on another country? Every single time since then has been the president basically saying, oh, we're going to go in, and not really, you're not offering the American people the opportunity through the representatives to vote on whether or not you think that's a good idea. Yes and no. I want to make sure you're careful on this.

Okay. So, it is true. That World War II is the last time we declared war. Well, I thought we might have done it on Korea. I do not remember. I don't think we did. I think it was World War II. But, like, with regards to other wars, let's say Vietnam, certainly the Persian Gulf War, Afghanistan. Yep. What happened with these conflicts is Congress did this kind of Texas two-step on this, where they... I wish they would have done a declaration of war, but they did not.

But they did do an authorization of force, basically saying to the president, we're voting on this, and if you decide to go ahead and start war, we're okay with it. So, it's not like the president is going, Not necessarily on his own rogue in those cases, but it's just not, it's not what should be, that's not what the founders had. Right, exactly. Which was my point, which I appreciate the clarification. Yeah, right. I appreciate the clarification. But I think in terms of the...

It reminds me of war in that I think it makes sense if you're doing targeted strikes that need to be done immediately that are very specific, not broad, and don't have lasting implications, in which I'm still a little bit uncomfortable with that, but I guess I can understand that a little bit better. But the broad-based 10% tariff across the board, I feel like that's great. To me, that didn't make any sense when it rolled out. It was very confusing, and it also had huge implications, even if we made some money off it.

In the same way, if you're going to get us in a prolonged war... That should come from the will of the people, which in the case, it hasn't since then, and it feels like we're ramping up to that now in Venezuela, which I would also have a problem with if Congress doesn't have an opportunity to vote on that. Trump's actions here still might make sense. I'm actually not the super biggest fan of terrorists, let's say, against most countries like Britain or France or whatever.

I really like it against China because it basically serves as an arbitrage. Correct. We're on the same page there. Okay, but... It still makes sense for him to have done this, right? So, if he does this, he's got already concessions from lots of these countries on these deals, right? So, they've improved their conditions. They made it easier for us to sell goods in their countries. So, if the Supreme Court rolls this back, and these countries then say, oh, well, I guess we're going to go back to where it was before, and they chicken out on the deal that they had done before, then Trump could say, well, Now, Congress needs to give me this authority, because look what these countries are doing.

They're playing us for fools, and it plays into his hand, and Trump's got the perfect foil. This is why the economy... And again, I don't think our Congress is going to appreciate if these countries then suddenly back out of their deals just because of the court ruling. So, it could be really interesting. I think most of these countries will be like, probably won't try to do that. Because it would just invite. So, I found four possible options for how this could come down after the ruling, which they're going to expedite it, I think.

Ruling likely December 2025 or January 2026. So, they could uphold it, which would greenlight unlimited presidential trade wars in the future. They could strike it down, so it would be an immediate injunction. Government may owe $90 billion plus in refunds, narrow or broad. That would be really confusing. That was what a lot of the Supreme Court justices were kind of skeptical about, of like, okay, say we do strike this down or whatever. How do we… Return it? Where does it go?

What does this look like? Middle ground would be just limit it to fentanyl countries or to cap rates and duration. And then plan B, Justice Alito floated Section 338, a 1930 law, 50% tariffs, no emergency needed, never struck down. Trump could reimpose everything tomorrow, which is kind of an interesting thought. I love how Alito is like, hey boys, in case anyone in the Justice Department is paying attention. Yeah, exactly.

So, some interesting solutions, but two other points I wanted to go on economy, and I know people gave, so we did our analysis of the election. A lot of people were talking about favorability towards communism or socialism. So, the first thing that came up was that job cuts in October hit the highest levels in the month in 22 years. This is according to a Challenger report. October's always kind of bad anyway. Yeah, but relative to other Octobers, so they didn't do it like, okay, month to month, they did it October every year.

So, companies said they laid off 153,074 employees last month. That's the most since 2003. That's nearly triple the number of jobs cut in September, and it puts the total for the year through October at almost 1.1 million jobs lost, 44% more than in all of 2024. And again, this isn't... So, warehouses were the biggest job cutters at 48,000 layoffs, 33,000 in tech, Amazon, UPS, Paramount, Target. We talked about all of this. And it's not all doom and gloom. People are like, oh, is it just AI or whatever?

We're still kind of coming down off the high of pandemic overhiring, so a lot of companies had extra cash on hand. There was more demand, especially in consumer services, so everyone was just getting things off Amazon, for example, so they really staffed up, like big-time staffed up. So, some of it's coming down from that. Some of it's certainly AI, but then a lot of this, too, is uncertainty because of things like tariffs, because of the global economy. I saw that The guy from the big short just put in a huge short on NVIDIA.

So, a lot of people are kind of questioning, like, hey, do we… And that is a big AI company. NVIDIA is the chips company, so they make the chips, which I believe their valuation right now is bigger than the GDP of Germany, something like that. So, they are… I meant it is the chip that the AI guys are relying on them. Yeah, so everyone… AI related is what I am trying to get at. Absolutely. They are like the big, big player.

And so, there is a lot of speculation right now in the labor market, and Steve Bannon had this clip on, because then polls are coming out, like people are fine with socialism, people are fine with communism, and I just want to preface this clip with, I think it is similar to my read, but here, I will play it for you and see what we think. We don't have any capitalists. They got all these interviews with kids and polls with kids that come back.

These kids hate capitalism. They're all socialists. Well, hey, they never had a shot at capitalism. They're at the receiving end of corporatism. The Russian serfs, did the Russian serfs sit there and did they love capitalism? No, they'd never seen it, and what they saw of it wasn't good. That's what these kids are, and you remember where... The Russian serfs led to, that's the Bolsheviks, and that's what you got in, that's what you got in right now in New York City. I kept warning you at that National Conservatives, I said, hey, ain't Tehran where your enemy is right now?

Your enemy is in the streets of New York. Look at the DSA, look at the Democratic Socialist Party. Look at DSA, of what they want to do with Israel and Jewish people. Look at it. Check it out. We're in dangerous territory. We need more people on our side of the football. We need more capitalists. One way to get them capitalists, not just better wages, that's income. Let's get them a little buy-in to the financial. Let's get them bought into the financial structure of the country.

You can do that by reallocation. It's simple. The government should have stakes in this. These guys are grifting off you. They've socialized the risk. You're the sucker that's going to guarantee the loans. You're the sucker that's paying for everything that underpins it.

Well, they put these little companies together, and they make it a trillion dollars. It's all for them. Yeah, we get the risk. They get the profit. That's what corporatism is. It's not capitalism. I agree with him on that. Agree with him on that, and I think that is the point I want to make, because I shot up my dad. I was literally texting my dad. He is like, it is crazy how many kids are open to communism, and my dad, very smart man, and I think that this reinforces, and Steve Bannon kind of gets this right.

I think the problem is that kids don't, it is not that they understand the. Philosophical and political theories of Marxism, communism, socialism, they just don't like the current system. And I think people improperly— It's not just that they don't like it.

It's that they feel like it's failing for them, and they have no- 100%. It's failing for them, but people defend the status quo as capitalism, and I don't think that is a good strategy. I think it's a really bad strategy, number one, and it's not accurate. They're saying, if this is capitalism, give me socialism. Totally. And Steve Bannon and your dad and you and I are both on the same page, like, no, no, no, no, no. What we have now, in large part, is not capitalism.

It's not a really solid market economy. It's corporatism. And that started with COVID in a major way, and it got on steroids. And me critiquing, say, wealthy people doesn't make me a communist either, and I think that's another part of the discussion that needs to come out. Like, for example, the top 1% of U.S. earners now have more wealth than the entire middle class. Now, just stop and think about that for a second. That's people between the 20th percentile and 80th percentile of earning in the country.

Have now, collectively, less wealth than the top 1% of the country, and this is coming from the Federal Reserve, so this isn't just a graph made out of nowhere. The problem is, especially like, okay, think about my economic upbringing, what I witnessed. Like, I witnessed the 2008 bank bailout, which... They did everything wrong, and then got bailed out, and then got $5.5 billion in bonuses. Their CEO made $36 million for some of these banks. They have monopoly power. 44% of deposits go to the banks that got bailed out.

Big Pharma got a huge bailout over COVID, over the shots, etc. $100 billion in FISA revenue. You look at defense. They're only employers, the government. Of course, they're getting bailed out. So, Otto got a huge bailout, too, and from Detroit, I understand this as well. And I understand the rationalizations, but what ended up happening is it's protecting the monopoly status of these people. We get the bill. And AI currently, I think like Sam Altman and these AI, the CFO of OpenAI, is basically asking for a preemptive bailout, saying, we're going to make all these investments because we have this generational breakthrough technology.

It's going to change GDP. It's going to be great for the country, but you need to foot the bill, government, basically with tax money to Try to soften some of the downside, and I think he's correct. Steve Bannon's correct here. The economic reality of young people is watching mergers, big-time CEOs making tons of money off the mergers, and then getting bailed out when things go poorly, and then what happens during these mergers? People lose their jobs, as we're seeing here. So, the picture that this paints is super bleak, and I was looking into some of the alternatives that Steve Bannon supports, and I actually went down to Publix.

Shout out, Publix, if anyone. Has ever been to a Publix? I went to them when I was in Florida. That's like the convenience store gas station thing? It's a grocery store. Oh, okay. Yeah, it was like our grocery store in Florida that is big. I think it's big on the East Coast, too. So, they have something called an Employee Stock Ownership Plan. It's called ESOP in short. It's actually used right now by 6,500 U.S. companies, and they have 2.5% higher returns and lower layoffs over time.

So, Publix is America's biggest and richest 100% employee-owned company. So, what that means is a clerk or someone that signs up, they get offered stock in the company as soon as they sign up. It is just a part of what goes on, and then as the company succeeds, they succeed over time. So, you have this situation where people work in the deli for 20 years, and then they retire a millionaire because part of their salary is paid out in stock, so it just makes everyone more involved.

So, I think that I like that creative solution from Steve Bannon for Americans, and again, for American citizens only. So that people can get a buy-in into the system, and it lowers turnover, and it lowers firings, too, because people are better employees, and they want to be there. They see the value in being there. They see the value in the success, and I think that kind of solves a lot of the kind of- It's not just a job. It's not just a job, yeah.

And we get cultural things where people are like, oh, who cares if I, you know, like, oh, whoops, it broke. It's not me. It's some nameless corporation that owns it. It's like, no, no, no, no. You own it. I think this is great, actually. This is something that- It would be perfect for Senator Josh Hawley to champion, I think, because he's really embraced that, kind of like, what can we do to help the working class? This would be a perfect thing to do for him to emphasize.

Same with Riley Moore over in West Virginia. He was talking about a program that they do in West Virginia where they have savings set aside for people that go the trades route so that they have capital to buy the tools that they need to work in, say, an auto mechanic shop or capital to start up their own business. Because it's initiatives like this that allow people a piece of economic pie, and say, like, Elon Musk just got a trillion-dollar pay package, which, funny, like, Pope Leo's even opined on this as, like, this is crazy that anyone would make this kind of money.

It's not that we don't want people to succeed in the country, but we just need some recognition that, yes, we socialized the downside for, say, SpaceX, who's basically the only customer right now is the government. And SpaceX was able to succeed because the government invested in you at an early stage, either through tax credits or subsidies. Like, all these companies don't even really pay taxes. They have things offshore. Okay, great. You need to pay back. You need to reallocate some of that investment earlier, and it needs to go back to the taxpayers.

It just can't go into some vacuum and get used in some government program. But, like, the problem is, is basically everything we pay into right now. We never see again. We keep getting told about Social Security, how we're never going to see it, Medicaid. Theoretically, right? First of all, Elon Musk is paying a lot in federal income taxes, so we are getting a good chunk of that back anyway. But I take your earlier point, I do like better. I do feel like, look, we have tools available.

I'm not a libertarian, so in my mind, I would welcome... A change in the corporate tax rate, where you basically say, the corporate tax rate, whatever, it is 21%. Let us make it 19% for companies that start doing these employee stock options. You basically incentivize corporations like, wait a minute, we are going to pay a whole lot less in taxes if we allow our employees to get X percentage of stocks back. That, to me, would be an excellent reform. There you go.

Senator Hawley, go for it. Yeah, that is the thing about ESOPs, too, is that it is all not taxed. So, that is why they are able to make so much money off the stocks, is what they are paid to does not get taxed. It stays in its own little lane, and then eventually, you get like 50% of that, you can go diversify, too, cash out, which is really interesting. But I think initiatives like that allow younger Americans to feel bought into the system.

I remember Peter Thiel kind of opining on this back in 2020 as well. If there is no buy-in to the system and there is no access, To the system, to the capitalist system, people are going to revolt against it, and we are seeing it now. Exactly, which is why we were talking last time about housing affordability. It is not like younger generations, you know, like, it is not we are saying that, we are not saying that Gen X and the boomers and the silent generation didn't have to go through hard times and scrape and save, and gosh, why do these young people now have to go through such tough times?

Every generation, you know, when you first started out in the workforce in your 20s, I was an idiot in my 20s, okay? I thought I knew everything, and I was wrong, and I had to scrimp, and I had to save, and I had to hustle. Every generation has to do this. Yeah. It's no different. I get that. The only point is that we should at least Take a look every once in a while at, for example, the statistics, and it is true that with the GI Bill in 1946 and the baby boomers embracing the idea we should do four-year college, and then the cost of college exponentially going up much, much higher than inflation, it is now at the point where a lot of people are saying, this is too high.

Even though you get X number of earnings, it is too high. And also, the lack of starter homes. And so, the wage to the cost of house index is out of whack. Look, again, I say this again, because some people are complaining about this to me, saying, no, don't you understand? We worked hard. Look, and someone even said I was young. It was nice, actually. Thank you for calling me young. In 15 months, I'm going to turn 50 years old, so it's nice for people to still call me young.

But what I'm saying is I knew what my parents had to go through. When they purchased their house when I was just nine months old in 1977, okay, and I know they're paying like 16 or 17% interest rates, and I knew they had a scrimp and save, and it was really expensive, and it was really hard raising, you know, they had three kids all through the stagflation of the late 70s and Carter and all that malaise. It's tough. I get it.

I'm saying That the cost of living now for those in their 20s is harder now than it was in the 70s and the 80s, okay? So, I'm not saying that the people who are struggling in the 70s and 80s that were not understanding their pain. I do. I do understand that pain, and if the pain hadn't been so high, maybe the birth rate in the late 70s would have been higher. Maybe there would have been more kids in Generation X than there had been.

I totally understand this. So, I'm just saying, like, when we talk about these issues, and we're looking at the data, it's like every young generation complains, oh, everything's expensive, and I hate having to work, and it sucks. I'm like, I get it. You want to go blah, blah, blah, blah, whine, whine, whine. But it is worth stepping back and saying, college has gone up. In terms of the costs, way higher than inflation. And the price of housing, because of what happened with COVID, and the lowering of the interest rates, and the housing market.

And maybe, again, because we have millions of illegals that come to the country, and the cost of building houses is more expensive, and people tend to build bigger houses, and we have local regulations that make it harder to start our homes, there's all these factors that are coming together. And it's actually worth saying, now, hold on a second. Maybe these 20-year-olds aren't just whining for whining's sake. Maybe they got a point here. Maybe we should just take a look under the hood and see if we've messed things up a little bit.

And if we can't do something better, because I want my kids, who are going to be entering the workforce here soon, to be able to have a shot at the American dream. I want them invested. I want them to have a piece of the pie. I want them to feel like they can get a house and all that other kind of stuff. So, it does matter.

A good way for me to think about this, too, is whenever I think about legislation in the country that I want, the decisions that I make should be for my grandchildren. I never want to make legislation decisions looking backwards into the past. I guess something's wrong, but we've got to look forward, and I got a great email from Lori about this, about the Texas tax code, and I spent time, and I don't know if I have time today, going through my specific issues with the tax, with the legislation benefiting 65 plus.

I know that there's people that do struggle to pay those property taxes, but the justification of saying we don't have kids in school anymore isn't a good enough one in my mind, but I got so many responses, like really beautiful stories of frugality and virtue and sacrifice of people that really worked hard to raise their children in tough times, as you mentioned, Josh, and I honestly just, I read it. I'm like, this is inspiring and beautiful, and in the same way that I wouldn't want everyone to, I wouldn't generalize every boomer as like, I wouldn't generalize every member of Gen Z as lazy and entitled either.

Of course, there's going to be exceptions to every rule. But when we analyze the policies. We are not going to have a country going forward, literally, because of our birth rate, but then also because of potential political instability, because the system is so out of whack right now, and so we need to make changes to allow the next generation into the American project, and unfortunately, I've just seen, like, probably the last 30 years has just been the death of, like, proper capitalism and ownership in the system, and that's why everyone kind of feels right now we've overproduced college graduates.

that are doing jobs that are kind of held up by inertia, like they don't actually have concrete contributions. And people feel like they're a commodity to be fired and hired into some other project tomorrow, you know, like as opposed to you go back to the system before where people retire and got a watch, like they worked at their company for 30 years, they own stock in that company actually matters. And a lot of these are actually my kind of criticisms against the general globalism and opening up of trade, say to China, the World Trade Organization.

An accident of all of this is that our jobs have lost meaning in many cases, and until we address that, I don't think there's any way forward for the youth or the country in general. I mean, we're just going to get wiped out by other places that do that first. So, anyway, we move on to the good news now. We've got to keep it rolling. Thank you. Thank you for the emails, by the way. I love my boomers.

I seriously do. My grandparents are some of my favorite people in the world. So, Josh, you're up. It just shows the generational difference because literally… My mom and dad are boomers. I got a generation on you. Yeah, shout out Nana and Papa.

Okay, so, I mean, on the economic front, there is some good news. Gas prices are at like a four-year low. Someone else made the point that, I think it was GasBuddy, that the percentage of take-home pay that's spent on gas is at a decade's low, and so that's good. It's what we would call a leading indicator, and so if the cost of oil, and therefore gas, goes down, That's also going to drive down the cost of lots of other things, because all transportation costs, when the gas price was going up and up and up, well, you were going to pay for that.

Like UPS or Amazon or whatever, they're going to be charging. They have to pass that cost on to the consumer, even if it's free shipping, you're still paying for it. So, this is good news. Again, we'll see if this continues.

You know, cheap, affordable energy is a good recipe to try to get the economy going in the right direction. So, that is good news. Yeah. Okay, and I know we all, you know. Whenever we do these episodes, I know everyone says they miss Erika. So, my good news is related to the wonderful Erika Ahern. So, she did this fantastic episode called The Age of Liberal Priests is Officially Over. It was based on polling done by, was it the Catholic Project? I can't remember.

That's right, the Catholic Project with the Catholic University of America. Yes, and they went around and conducted a survey asking priests all kinds of questions, and they self-identified, so they would answer what they thought. They just left it open-ended. And specifically, the political views have drastically changed to the point where progressive political views among priests are pretty much extinct.

And so, Erika went through all of the findings of this report, and there's a lot of good news in there. There's definitely some troubling news in there, bad news, but it was just really fantastic. I can't encourage you guys to go over and check that out enough. That was one of my favorites down in recent memory. But I got a great email to the inbox about Wichita, Kansas. Shout out, Mark.

And I'm going to cut out a little bit from it, but I think a lot of the things implemented in this diocese really have led towards a vocations boom and something I'd like to see replicated elsewhere. So, I'm just going to read straight from Mark here. He said, And most of our parishes have sent multiple sons to the priesthood. Plus, I should also add that we have many other kinds of vocations in our diocese, including the quickly growing Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary Wichita.

So, what's different about Wichita? Actually, a lot. Here are a few of my thoughts, but someone really needs to dig deeper into this. Maybe we will. One, lots of vocations. The highest number of any diocese per capita in the nation. There was a study that said we were at 240% replacement for our retiring priests over the past 10 years. Very conservative and Orthodox priests, and as one priest told me from their recent priest retreat, they enjoy being together, the young and the old priests, and it shows.

High attendance of Catholics at Mass. I think we're close to 50%. Sounds terrible to me, but this is high, I guess. Oh, brother, is that high? Oh, yes. He did preface that he's an engineer, which made me laugh. It's not quite like, what is it, like in Vietnam? I saw the statistic. It was something like 90%. Oh, wow. Catholic schools in most of our parishes, and would you believe free tuition if you tithe? High school, too, even in our poorer parishes.

A very active Catholic homeschooling community, too. We are known worldwide as the stewardship diocese, and somehow we were able to fund everything. Perpetual adoration at every parish, or at least nearly every parish. My wife is friends with one of the ladies that got adoration going in all of our parishes, a Catholic conference that we have put on. For over 25 years, that is 100% staffed by volunteers, which I and all my family members are among. A Catholic retreat center for engaged encounter and other overnight retreats.

Attached to the retreat center is the priest retirement center and a retirement center for the elderly. We have multiple Catholic hospitals and Catholic food distribution facilities and houses for at-risk mothers and many, many support structures for the poor. We just purchased a summer camp location from the Boy Scouts and are actively growing it into a first-class family retreat center. Large families, if you don't have at least four kids, you're kind of odd in Catholic circles in Wichita. Low cost of living and good jobs, so a large percentage of moms can stay at home.

Totus Tuis started in Wichita. It is active in nearly every parish, and as a summer camp for youth, too. We have many other youth programs and send buses of children from every parish to D.C. for the March for Life in January. Mine was one of them, except in the Detroit area. So, our parishes have Bible studies, men's groups, parish missions, very active parishes with all daily Mass. Our priests have a podcast weekly called About Four O'Clock, based on John stating that Christ called him at about four o'clock.

It is so fun to hear our priests talk about how they got the call, and what they enjoy doing, and how much they enjoy being priests. We have several Latin Masses supported by our bishop, but beyond that, the normal Masses often have many traditional elements added, such as kneeling rails for communion and many other priests. Hopefully, soon, we will have a declared saint in our cathedral, Father Capon.

Now, this is maybe my favorite part. One more thing to share. My secondary parish is out in the country in a small town called Kingman. I have a cabin on a muddy lake out there. Kingman doesn't have much, but they still have a free Catholic grade school in their Catholic church. They're giving classical curriculum to the students. How do they make it? Well, the priest said there is a good friend of mine, and he told me a few of the details.

They have extremely generous parishioners. Some examples, one of the cattle ranchers gives each teacher at the school a side of beef every year. Some of the food from the school cafeteria is donated by the ranchers and farmers and gardeners. Sometimes they donate tomatoes. The repairs to the parish are often done by parishioners, and they have a small budget, but they make it every year somehow.

I've got to tell you, I love it. There's lots of things I would say that are going right with Wichita. Actually, by the way... There is what some call the pious prairie. So, if you go through North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and then the western part of Texas, that whole streak right there, the Protestant, Catholic-like tend to be much more devout. It just happens to be that. I mean, it tends to be a little bit more rural. There is not, you know, the flickers of urban life that cause distractions.

People live, you know, close to the earth, the farms, that kind of stuff, which, you know, Kansas in particular. So, you had in the 1980s, Operation Rescue. I am not weighing into the merits of that. But people were so concerned about trying to stop babies from being killed, they chained themselves to the door, right? And so, that just showed how urgent and how much we cared about saving our babies. Again, I am not weighing into the yes or no on this, but it shows how pro-life these people were, how much they took that seriously.

You mentioned, again, the schools. If you tithe, the Catholic schools are free. That is a wonderful model, and it is one of those things that other journalists have tried to look into and see what they are doing right, because what is fascinating about it is that it has worked very splendidly, and yet we have not seen any other diocese really pick up that model and try to run with it. We have it here in Indiana.

Okay, you're starting to do it now? Yeah, I think it's been going on at one of the churches near me for a while, and there's literally a wait list to go to the school. Well, your parish, you're saying. One of the parishes near me, yeah. I don't belong to it. Right, not on a diocesan level is my point. I don't think it's diocesan. I have to fact check that, but I don't think it's diocesan. Yeah, I mean, to date, I don't think there's been another diocese that's been willing to try it, and so that's always kind of baffled me.

Another thing about Kansas you had is in the late 1970s, I think we've mentioned this on the So, this is the question, isn't it? Where you had a great books program at the University of Kansas. Now, I know Lawrence, Kansas isn't necessarily right near Wichita or whatever, but again, these kind of ideas like, hey, classical education is big, and there is a lot of stuff that happened there that was quite exciting. John Senior, one of those guys. So, a lot of these ingredients came together, and yes, they are a great shining example of what can be done, like Eucharistic Adoration, conferences, that kind of stuff.

This weekend, if you happen to be in northern Michigan, pop on over to Gaylord, Michigan for the Marian Conference. My wife is running that, so go to MarianConference.org. But these kind of things we can do to try to promote Eucharistic Adoration, promote pro-life ministries, that kind of stuff, promote Catholic education, all of those things.

They're thriving while other dioceses are barely surviving, and not saying that other dioceses will be able to replicate everything that they're doing. But, you know, look at what they're doing and see what you can try to accomplish, you know? Yeah, no, I think what I think I like so much about the school thing. They're a model.

It's a buy-in, because too many, like the parish that's in my town, there's a lot of people that work even in for the church, and they're like, ah, is it really expensive to run this school? And oh, gosh. And I'm thinking to myself.

Do you want to just dump all the kids into the government schools? Like, do you not understand, like, what is the point of you being here? The school has been in Petoskey for 140 years. Keep it going. Like, you know, like, I just don't understand. Like, too many people in the church, I get it, we've been reeling with, you know, bankruptcy issues, the settlements for the sex abuse stuff is horrible. That's not the time to say, well, then, let's just, you know.

Rise the white flag and give up. No, it is the time to say, why are we Catholic? What is it that we are doing, and why are we losing so many young people? We need to bring them back, and the Catholic education is critical for that, whether it is homeschool, whether it is classical, just as long as it is.

You're passionately Catholic. That's what you've got to make sure, that you're not running away from it, not doing watered-down stuff. And you know what? That's the thing that's going to unite people. Nothing will motivate people. Who are in their 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, or 80s to open up the wallet book, quite like investing in our young. Yeah. So, I would just urge bishops to look at what Wichita is doing and try to think of what they can't do to make it better.

I think I really, I came from similar, so we didn't have a school at the church I was at, but we had a really vibrant homeschooling community, and I really do think it was a model for how to keep. So, of course, like, the sacraments were first and foremost, right? And then my classical satellite was right next to a church, and every day we went to Mass in the morning. I mean, it's crazy. You go to some of these legacy Catholic schools, which aren't even really Catholic anymore, and you're like, okay, so, like, do you guys go to Mass?

Like, do you do Mass still? And they're like, uh, like, once a month. You know what I mean? Like, maybe once a week, and it's not mandatory, and it's like, well, what are we doing here, first off? And then, second off, I always loved that, uh, My social nucleus as a child was the church. Like, it was, we had. Fantastic youth group. We had always had something going on at the church. We had like New Year's parties. It was just, it was constantly, something was always going on, and it didn't happen by accident.

It was because we had a really faithful priest that was like a total force. Like, it wouldn't have been possible without him, which actually, getting back to the priest report, one of the things they reported, there's a lot of good signs in terms of orthodoxy, but a new challenge that priests are experiencing is that they feel really burned out. That what is expected of them is actually above. What they can actually do, and I totally see this and understand that. I mean, we do have a genuine shortage, and the amount of ministry that's required to what people are looking for and what people need now, it just isn't matching.

So, I will say, if you have the opportunity, go talk to your priest and make sure that you get them a meal, have them over your house, ask what they need help with. Do they need help with certain ministry, helping out? I mean, I know that everyone, I feel like, in this audience, may have done something like this, but...

If you can help your priests in any way, I think a lot of times they are a little bit too stoic to ask. Go ask. See what they need. It might seem to be something really easy that would make a huge difference for them. That was my big takeaway from the report, was that we have a new problem, and it's not orthodoxy, it's not political leanings, it's actually burnout.

You know, and the fact is, what the church needs right now is lay men, masculine men, and we need priests and bishops to help inspire them, but, you know. Fight for this church to defend her and to help, you know, raise the next generation of Catholics.

You know, like a lot of men are willing to step up, but they need to be called. They're not going to be interested in felt banners and saccharine music, but they'll sacrifice, you know, to, you know, do pancake breakfast and roll up their sleeves and get together and whatever it takes to help these schools out. They have got to see a clear mission. I do wish, you said something about the donors in Wichita, whatever, giving the side of beef and all this stuff.

That is so cool. I love that. I do want to get to the thing where I do not want good money chasing after bad, but I do want more of the Catholics who have been very successful, to be a little bit more generous. You know, they can ask the questions and make sure their money is being spent wisely, but in Protestant circles... They are much more willing, the rich are much more willing to open up their walls and to try to make something happen, whereas Catholics are like, well, prove to me you are going to do something right.

Maybe I will donate. We need a little bit more generosity. There's a lot of people who are working in the vineyard. They need some help, and I do wish Catholics would be a little bit more generous about that. And, of course, can't get away without saying, we enjoy the support of many generous Catholics around the country, and the Champions Club is by far one of the most charitable group of people that I've ever been around. So, I think absolutely with that point, but it has to be said, we have some fantastic donors here and really appreciate all that we've been able to do because of that.

An army of champions who give $10 a month has been a game changer, and we saw that with 2024. Brian built a great machine, and President Trump was thankful, and now he was just on Fox News the other day talking about the problems going on in Nigeria and the ambassador. It is just weird to hear that, Ambassador Byrd. I know, yeah. He is on my TV now.

It's like the Wolverine meme of the guy touching the picture frame, and it's like Brian on Fox News. It's so hilarious seeing him as ambassador, because I've literally played ping pong with that guy back in the day. He was so competitive, throwing down. He T-boned me in go-karting. I'm like, man, he's an ambassador now? Crazy. Man, I love Brian. You play to win.

Dang right you do. Okay, Josh, twads on what you got. Oh, this is awesome, by the way. Yeah. So, Generation Z, or maybe it's even Alpha at this point, I don't even know, whatever, have decided to put themselves in a timeout.

And at first, I'm like, this sounds really stupid, but actually, I kind of approve of this. Check this out. Raw dogging. Okay, so I don't know if the video even makes sense. Text divide, raw dogging boredom for 15 minutes, day one. So, this young teen has decided to put a timer on their phone for 15 minutes, where they don't touch their phone, they don't do anything, they're a complete digital oasis.

And Serenity for 15 minutes, and it's their form of detoxing. Maybe it should be more than 15 minutes. Maybe it should be for an hour. But anyway. Josh, could you sit an hour and not do anything, just looking at the wall, thinking?

I do a lot of work. See, exactly. That's why the 15, I like the 15. I'm not kidding. Like, there's so many. There are logical benefits to this, too, of just, it's crazy, when I sat down, I was like, how much of my day is actually just, like, silence, and not movement, not on some device, not hearing some music, not listening to some podcasts, because basically, just how it is now, all the incentives all align for you to constantly be consuming something.

And I think more than anything else, it is impossible to pray or access God when you are doing something else. So, praying helps, adoration helps, but then just like picking up a book. You know, the non-digital thing, that can be helpful, too. Oh, yeah. Because you don't get the stimulus. Exactly, but you realize, like, when you try to read a book after being hyper-stimulated, it's impossible, because you're distracted, and you read, and you're like, it literally messes with your brain. So, I actually do see this as a way forward.

Not sponsored by them. Please sponsor us. Brick. Fantastic. I use it all the time. Well, and also, I would just encourage people, like, put your phone down, go for a walk. You know, it's one of the healthiest things you can do anyway, and it clears your mind. You get done with a walk, pick up a book and read, you know? Yeah. I'd just be walking, for real. That's like, I'd just go out and walk. Don't run. Don't jog. I'm just walking.

All right. I actually had a second one real quick. Oh, okay, okay. You should put this on here. The thing that never happens, happens again. Did you see this? No, I did not. A little news story here. No way. Number two? The mayor of Coldwater accused of election fraud. The charges come hours after he secured a second term in office. Attorney General Chris Kobach charged Mayor Jose Joe Ceballos with six felonies, three counts each of voting without being qualified and election perjury.

Kobach claims Ceballos is lawfully living in the U.S. But is a citizen of Mexico making him ineligible to vote? The AG alleges the mayor illegally cast ballots in the August 2024 primary, and November 2022 and 2023 general elections.

In large part, our system right now is based on trust. Trust that when the person signed the registration or signs the poll books saying that he's a qualified elector or that he is a United States citizen, that the person is telling the truth.

We reached out to Mayor Ceballos for comment, but have not heard back yet. The Coldwater City Council, though, released a statement on social media saying... This is a Kansas episode, so this guy was here, is not a citizen, but here... He's lawfully here in the United States, he's just not a citizen. I mean, people in this country can be here on visas or whatever, and not only is he voting, he got elected mayor of his city. I'm like, what? You're not even a citizen of the city?

What? Could you imagine if I just, like, showed up in Mexico and got elected mayor of one of these towns? Do you know Spanish? Not enough. Josh becomes mayor of a small town in Mexico? That sounds like a movie script. Maybe that'll be a next TV pilot for us. Yeah, that's crazy. Okay, mine.

Listen, she's been in the news a lot. I picked out a specific part of an interview. Yes, I'm talking about Sydney Sweeney. She's an actress. Here is a video clip from her interview. I think it's interesting for many reasons. Here we go. The criticism of the content, which was basically that, maybe specifically in this political climate, like, white people shouldn't joke about...

Genetic superiority. That was kind of the criticism, broadly speaking, and since you are talking about this, I just wanted to give you an opportunity to talk about that specifically. I think that when I have an issue that I want to speak about, people will hear.

Gen Z has destroyed the millennial smirk. There's a couple elements to this. They're talking about the ad campaign, which, whatever you think about it, it was a joke about Sidney Sweeney having good genes. It was like an American model thing. Because it's obvious that she's a beautiful woman. Right. We're not supporting her acting career and some of the choices she makes there, but it's obvious she's a beautiful woman, and she was in a commercial that, you know. Yes, they're using her sexiness to sell stuff.

We're not excusing that. Right. The whole point is, it's obvious that she's got good genes. Right. That was the thing, which the only people in any part of the world that would see that as somehow a tacit, like, Like, white supremacy, like, she's somehow, like, pro-white supremacy or something. Is this woman, who, like, people that live in these circles are so out of touch with reality that they thought this would be kind of a, she couldn't even really muster the courage to ask it directly.

She kind of had to do the, like, oh, well, you know, like, some people were thinking, and just obliterated by the Gen Z stare right here. Again, part of it, what she's going for, the interviewer here, is to try to trick. Sydney, into, like, some sort of friendliness to get her to say something. Of course. You trip on that, the media would go bananas over. Right, and, like, we're just, like, this is awesome. We're not playing the game anymore.

I love the response, like, if I have something I care about, you'll hear about it. You're not going to, like, ho-hum your way into me trying to. Bait me into making some statement on behalf of whatever. I just think this was a great nail in the coffin for like, we're done. We're not playing the dumb games. It's crazy to me that anyone would even take away that that was the intent of the ad. That's just like a hypermedia thing, but good for you, Sydney, for not playing the game.

I think it's dumb. I think it's identity politics, virtue signaling for no reason, and I just think everyone's kind of done playing the game. The JK Rowling stuff came up again. And she's a great example. Just don't play the game. This is so stupid. No one has to do it. The Gen Z stare, just obliterated.

Erika said that I do the Gen Z stare at her. There's a social media, there's like a thing trending on social media called the Gen Z stare, which is like people of my generation just like blankly staring at you when you talk with no expression, and so that's become a thing, and I guess I do it sometimes, which, listen, I probably do.

I probably do. As opposed to my Gen Z hyper sarcasm. Like, don't give a crap. Look. Well, Josh, you're a young man. So, you're a young man, according to some of our listeners. Some people say. Some people say, and you are young at heart, for sure. Man, I can't believe it's Friday. We got through another week of these, man. I don't know. Some of these news cycles just been like.

Crazy. So, I'm glad we can all go through it together. Thank you, first and foremost, to all of our champions and generous donors. Seriously, thank you so much. We wouldn't be able to do it without you, and I just want you to know, appreciate it. We're going to critique economic stuff. That is no way a critique of you. Thank you to all of our generous donors. So, fantastic deep from Erika. Go check that out. I also did get the Rachel Bovard interview on Arctic Frost up.

Sorry, I took a little bit of time there, but that is up if you want to check out and kind of get more of a personal detail analysis on that. She was spied on by the FBI. But we're going to end this week with some prayer, and I'll just have a heavenly king prayer in the name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Amen.

Oh, heavenly King, comforter, spirit of truth, who art everywhere present and fillest all things, treasury of blessings and giver of life, come and abide in us and cleanse us from every sin and save our souls, oh, good one. My hope is the Father, my refuge is the Son, my shelter is the Holy Spirit. Oh, Holy Trinity, glory to you.

Amen. And then I also want to end. I screenshotted it. I haven't memorized it yet, but Psalm 23, banger. Keep this in mind as there's stuff going on. uh psalm of david the lord is my shepherd i shall not want he makes me lot to lie down in green pastures he leads me beside the still waters he restores my soul he leads me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake yea though i walk through the valley of the shadow of death i fear no evil for you are with me your rod and your staff they comfort me you prepare a table for me in the presence of my enemies you anoint my head with oil my cup runs over you Surely, goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

St. Thomas More, St. Fidelis, Our Lady Guadalupe. Pray for us. Great show, guys. And I think I need to wait a little bit because people, it cuts off and people get mad about that, and I promise I wouldn't do that anymore. Hope you guys have a great weekend. We'll catch you guys ready to rock on Monday. Peace.