and that is a 440% increase from the same time last year, and the highest that it s been since 2009. our next guest ran one of america s biggest stores and warns we may be in a world of hurt if the white house does not act soon. bring in bill simon, former walmart ceo and president. your perspective on the economy means a lot. you ve seen a lot. you know the behavior of the consumer. what should we make of what we are seeing right now coming off this recent report, especially that 64% of the country is living paycheck to paycheck. well, it s good to be with you, sandra. the point i was trying to make was that inflation is really what we should be focused on right now. there s a lot of discussion about recession and whether we are going to be in recession or in a recession or not, but the real issue every day americans are facing is inflation. it hurts 100% of the people, not just a small percentage of the
according to notes from the white house. he has exceeded that so far. john: gee, a big surprise. i covered the last two years of his presidency, it was an interesting ride. a college board meant to prepare high school students for the next level is doing an about face on the curriculum for one a.p. course after florida governor ron desantis complained of woke content. phil keating is live in miami and the latest on this. criticism of the governor only seems to be getting louder about this. absolutely, john. just yesterday, last night in fact, on the first day of black history month one of the members of the miami-dade black advisory group called him a racist over all of this, and said the governor is using black floridians as political footballs. this is just the latest salvo by ron desantis against what he calls the woke agenda, and one example, black queer theory, he called indoctrination, not
john: brand-new at 2:00, america s crime crisis kids edition. cities across the nation seeing huge spikes in violent crime committed by children and teens. sandra: instead of cracking down, democrat-led cities and states are making it even easier for teens to do the crime and serve no time. the same progresstive prosecutors for things like no cash bail in new york are branching out, bringing similar soft on crime policies to teens. critics ask why would this time be any different. john: welcome back as america reports rolls into a second hour on this friday eve. hi, sandra. john: john, great to be with you. so-called juvenile justice reforms have a lot of people scratching their heads. a 12-year-old brought a gun to school without fearing any criminal charges as a result. lawrence jones is one of the people asking how that is
so if we do go into a recession, likely will be shallow and short. but if we can t get control of inflation, particularly food and rent inflation, then our economy will sort of the consumer, which is two-thirds of the engine of our economy, will falter and then we could fall into something that makes a short shallow recession seem like a day, a walk in the park. sandra: really interesting, and this coming off also the report we just covered last hour, more and more people are tapping their 401(k) for hardship withdrawals, and that, too, is not a great sign. most should hold off as long as possible, right, bill? appreciate you joining us on that. really interesting perspective. thank you. thank you. john: sandra, a rodent rivalry making this groundhog day a little complicated. nick has that story live from fox weather. nick, what s going on? that s right, john. can you believe it we have
justice for anyone. he ll join us ahead. fox news alert. can you say how many people the white house counsel s office added to prepare for the house invest investigations? i would refer you to the white house counsel office with staffing or how they are moving forward dealing with that. john: the white house press secretary, more questions over his son s infamous laptop. news on that story this afternoon. sandra: hunter biden s lawyers are requesting investigations into people they say unlawfully accessed his data, including the laptop repair store owner, but now hunter s lawyers say that does not mean that they are admitting that the laptop was actually his. just that his data has been improperly accessed. new york post columnist miranda