day that the fed has a long way to go. they're going to have to keep hiking rates because inflation is not yet under control. and as they continue to the hike rates, the by-product is a recession, again, probably the most telegraphed recession ever. but i think it's very highly likely that we'll be in one within the next quarter or so. maria: yeah, it's a great point. let's just recap. january core cpi at 5.6%, the overall number up 6.4%. this was worse than the markets were expecting. markets are mixed trying to understand where things go from here ahead of the next federal reserve meeting. christine mcdaniel with, congressman bryan steil,my concern michele tafoya, mark tepper, liz peek, thank you so much. seize that day, "varney & company" begins now, ashley webster in for stu. ashley: we are seizing it. good morning, maria, and good morning, everyone.

i'm ashley webster in today for stuart varney. well, yes, the latest read on inflation coming in at 6.4% year-over-year and 5.6% higher for the core cpi year-over-year. now, the futures initially turned negative after that report, then we saw a quick rally, and now, well, as you can see, they are flat. a little bit of everything. the dow and the s&p slightly higher, we'll just call it flat across the board, nasdaq down just a little bit. now to the news, we're learning more now about that train crash in ohio. turns out there were more toxic chemicals on that train than originally thought. so where is transportation the secretary the pete buttigieg? well, so far he's just tweeted about it, but he is focusing, apparently, on white construction workers taking jobs from communities of color. we'll get into that. the white house still staying tight-lipped about three objects shot out of the sky over weekend. they will say, however, that they cannot rule out that the unidentified flying objects were

not conducting surveillance. the very vague. and as concerns grow over our dependence on china, ford announcing it will collaborate with a chinese supplier on a new $3.5 billion battery plant in michigan to make electric vehicles. that's interesting too. we'll take it on. as always, a big show. congressman byron donalds will be here, k.t. mcfarland, mike turner and vivek ramaswamy. big show on tuesday, pen 14th. oh -- february the 14th. oh, yes, happy valentine's day. varney and company is about to begin. ♪ ♪ ♪ think you gotta keep me iced, you don't. ♪ even if you were broke, my love don't cost a thing ♪ ashley: well, there you have what looks like a traffic jam on sixth avenue in midtown the

manhattan. we haven't seen that many vehicles for quite a while, not much fun sitting in that jam. good morning, everybody. jennifer lopez says, lo don't cost -- love don't cost a thing, but we do have the latest on inflation, and those consumer prices up 6.4% from a year ago. yeah, i mean, progress? good morning, lauren. take us through the report. lauren: slow progress. i think the bottom line is a small improvement, but inflation is sill way too hot. where is -- still way too hot. where is it most pronounced? in the things you need to live, rent, food and energy, gas with rising 2.4% last month alone. that was for gasoline, the third number on that screen. so better than fearedded, ashley, but signaling that the fed will likely stay on the rate-hiking course. next up, the fomc meeting is the end of march, march 29th. ashley: all right, lauren, thank

you. as we mentioned, the futures went down, they went up, now their somewhere in the middle, in other words, flat. as you can see, slightly lower, but we'll say flat. ryan payne is here this morning. of ryan, what do you make of this cpi report? are we expecting to see better progress given what the fed hasp done up til now? >> i think it's a little bit unremarkable, if i was to put a word on it as the market's kind of not doing anything this morning. obviously, the year-over-year number is a little higher than expected, but the month over month if number is where service the, .5%. and i think the bigger news is we've already seen the fed acknowledge that the disinflationary process has started. jay powell mentioned it, like, 11 times in the his speech the other week. backwards looking, you think about rentals, you remember that's a big lag in the actual cpi numbers. and if you, you know, if you're on the ground floor here, you know rents are starting to come down even here in new york city, housing prices have started to

come down, housing market has slowed, so those numbers aren't going to be seen in that cpi number for a couple months here. i think forward looking and even the 10-year treasury rose a little bit in anticipation of a higher rate here as markets have already priced this in. and i think bottom line there's nothing that exciting or remarkable coming out of this number or the fed in general, you know? i was focused on the fed, but i think we already know what the fed's going to do. ashley: yeah. but, ryan, you know, the fed's target is, what, 2%. we all know that. but there are those the that say there's no way we're getting under 3% this year unless we have a version. do you agree? -- a recession. >> i don't think we're going to the get 2, absolutely. but remember, the fed can change their metrics, they do it all the time. the fed always pivots, so i think it's dangerous to take the fed at their face value. twelve months ago they told us inflation was going on the transitory, ask if here we are many, many months later and, you know, the inflation's cone exactly the opposite what the

fed said it was going to do. so i wouldn't trust the fed if here, i'd trust the bond market, and the 10-year treasury's come down a lot since the summertime, kind of signaling that inflation is actually coming down, it's not as big a problem as everyone's making it out to be. ashley: are the markets being complacent about inflation? i hear that a lot from analysts. >> just surprising like that pink tie today, ashley, which looks phenomenal. i wish i wore one for valentine's day. no, i think the surprises have been in the positive here. we expected earnings to come in worse thanment expected. they're not great, but at this point, 69-70% of companies have beat, and economic data keeps coming in better than better. inflation's coming down, this is as good as it get, and i think the market's telling you that. i've been adamant about that for 12 is months. i was looking foolish, but now i've been vindicated which feels pretty good. ashley: ryan payne, thank you for the shout-out for my tie. i'm very proud of it. a recent poll shows 41% of

people say they are not better off financially than they were before joe biden took office. i want you to listen to what senate majority leader chuck schumer had to say about it. >> can you explain the disconnect between what we are seeing in the successes and what the polling is showing? >> i think, first, you can't always believe polling. second, i think part of it is that we now have to make sure the american people -- they've read what we have done. >> yeah. >> but they haven't seen it. and this second year is going to be a year of implementing, getting the good things that we did out. ashley: you know, you only believe in polls when they're in your favor, right? congress congressman byron donalds, republican fromfall, joins me this morning -- from florida. i mean, look, do people in your district, for instance, feel better off than before joe biden? >> no. nobody does. we all know that. joe biden spent a bunch of money we don't have, he created an inflation we didn't have. he made the pandemic go much

longer than it ever should have. our kids have fallen behind one to two full school years in america. no reason for that. so nobody should feel better now than they did before joe biden became president because he's been an awful president. ashley: you know, you mentioned inflation. we just got the latest reading, consumer prices up 6.4% year-over-year. it is very hard to get this inflation under control. what do you think the administration is doing to address it? >> nothing. they're actually, they've made it worse. like i said, the inflation reduction act is nothing but, that's just a green new deal, green subsidy cans all in that. you started the inflation with the american not rescue plan, because all it did was pay people to stay home. what we're going of the to do is a couple things. one, we have to start producing more energy domestically. if we start domestic energy production, really opening up that work flow here in the united states, that will

actually help us get energy prices under control, because a key place of prices rising are electricity bills. that's hitting every american. number who the, we have to find ways to get food prices under control as well and, number three -- [inaudible] control spending. ashley: and good luck with that. next one, congressman, transportation secretary pete buttigieg claiming the white construction jobs are being taken by white workers from communities of color. i want you to listen to this, and i'll get your response. >> we have heard way too many stories from generations past of infrastructure where you got a neighborhood, often a neighborhood of color, that finally sees the project come to them, but everyone in the hard hats on that project looking like, you know, doing the good paying jobs don't look like they came from anywhere near the neighborhood. ashley: your response to that, congressman. >> i don't want even know why we

pete buttigieg seriously. the only reason he's in his job is because of his intersectionality. let's just be honest. he's actually been a terrible transportation secretary. i mean, look, when the supply chains were messed up, nobody knew where the man was at. i'm not responding to his foolishness. i was on a construction site yesterday in my district in the naples, florida. there are white workers, black workers, hispanic work e. this man doesn't know what he's talking about. it's this woke foolishness that's basically meant to divide people. ashley: he's always late, it seems. we have this train crash in ohio, he's always playing from behind. i just don't understand it. >> oh, look, i understand it, because he doesn't know what he's doing. he's like joe biden. joe biden is always late are to the game. pete buttigieg is always late to the game. things happen to the american people, then they show up with some talking points plan that doesn't amount to anything. it's the same old same old from

democrats like pete buttigieg. if he was actually good at his job and was qualified for his job, he would be ahead of this, actually leading the more than people when it come -- the american people when it comes to the transportation. but he gives a good sound bite, talking point, but with when you actually examine his job performance, he's been substandard to awful. ashley: right. congressman donalds, you're always short, sharp and to the point, and that's why we love having you op on the show. thank you very much for joining us, congressman. we do appreciate it. all right, now this, florida's governor, ron desantis the, is cracking down on environmental, social and governance investments. lauren, what proposals is the governor out thing? lauren: he wants to bar esg from florida's muni bond sales. this is an expansion of his anti9-woke push. so so far in florida, ash arely, no esg in investment decisions by the state or in the contracting process. and now he's adding in bond issuance. this is how desantis the views

it, he puts it like this: circumventing the ballot box to the implement their radical ideological agenda using their capital and their influence. he says that distorts the free mark, and that's what floridians care about -- can free market. ashley: no esg, we got the message. lauren, thank you very much. we'll take a look at these futures. investors having time to kind of think through the latest inflation report and, well, they're not that impressed. flat to slightly lower. we'll continue to follow that. of course, the opening bell comes in just over 18 minutes from now. all right, coming up, two-thirds of americans say they are dissatisfied with the number of migrants entering this country illegally. will this administration ever get a handle on the border? we're going to the talk about that. also the white house ache thing a swipe at the trump -- taking a swipe at the trump administration for failing to detect china's spy craft program. k.t. mcfarland will respond to the that accusation and more next. ♪ ♪

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of pilates, yoga, and spinal stabilization, the aerotrainer creates a therapeutic movement experience unlike any other. de-stress and feel your best with aerotrainer. ♪ ashley: president biden and his administration have refused to answer any questions about the objects that have been shot down. mark meredith is at the white house this morning. mark, we understand the senate is getting briefed could we start to get some answers as a result of that? >> reporter: well, the briefing's going to be classified, so it's possible the senators are going to have to that stay tight-lipped. president biden has also been fairly tight-lipped even though he's under growing pressure to address the decision to shoot down these multiple flying objects in both canadian and u.s. air space. right now we don't expect to the

hear from the president odd the on this issue, but we are hearing from his defense secretary the, lloyd austin, who talked about the recovery operations already underway. >> because we've not been able to definitively assess what these recent objects are, we've acted out of an abundance of caution to protect the, our security and interests. that's why we have teams working hard to track down the debris from over the weekend. >> reporter: but that debris is spread out over multiple different sites including the ones there on your screen many some fairly remote areas, the yukon territory in northeast alaska. while officials stress they don't know what these objects were, some speculating can be sky trash or some sort of weather equipment even though the national weather service has been telling fox they don't believe it was their it is. late monday the pentagon released brand new photos of the work happening off the coast of south carolina as they're working to recover the chinese spy craft. weather conditions have been really rough off the coast of myrtle beach ever since friday,

but we're told some electronics and sensors have been removed from the atlantic. today as you talked about the u.s. senate set to get a classified briefing, but some lawmakers tell fox news they don't expect to learn all that much. >> i suspect as these briefings often are, we won't learn much more than what's already been leaked to the media. that's why it's so important that joe biden himself speak directly on camera to the american people. >> reporter: we're also hearing from senator mike lee of u.s. on twitter, he says by failing to address these incursions, president biden appears to be shirking his respondent to protect our concern responsibility to protect our nation. ashley, the president is going to be seen on camera odd the, he's going to a hotel not too far from the white house to give remarks to the national association of counties, so we are going to the aerofrom the if president today, but we don't know if he's going to the crease what's happening with these objects or wait for more information to come to light first. ashley? ashley: don't hold your breath on that. mark meredith at the white house, thank you very much. by the way, the biden

administration is now ripping into former president trump's team for failing to detect the chinese spy if craft program. -- spy craft program. roll the tape. >> when president biden came into office, he directed the u.s. intelligence community to do a broad assessment of chinese intelligence capabilities. we were able to determine that china has a high altitude balloon program for intelligence collection that's connected to the people's liberation army. it was operating during the previous administration, but they did not detect it. we deeducate thed -- detected it. we tracked it, and we have been carefully studying it to learn as much as we can. ashley: we detected it. a lot of emphasis there. kt mcfaction or far -- mcfarland is here. how do you respond to john kirby's accusations? >> you know, every time they're caught flat footed, what is their response? oh, let's blame trump.

we're off the hook, nobody's going to blame us. if the trump administration had known about it, if the intelligence services and the military intelligence had detexted it and told president trump, what do you think he would have done? the he would have been right down there in the white house situation room shooting it down himself. so the idea that they're saying, oh, trump, he was soft on those chinese or he was too dumb to figure -- come on. what i want to hear out of these people is this is a threat to the united states, republicans and and democrats. we need a president to go to the oval office and sit at his desk and talk to the american people saying this is what happened, this is what we know so far, this is what we don't the know. here's how we've responded. and finally, this is our overall plan to deal with china and the new cold war which china started 20 the years ago and we have finally woken up to. ashley: what do you make of this balloon strategy from the chinese? are you surprised? it doesn't feel very high-tech. i mean, they steal high-tech

stuff, but what's your response to this, kt? >> well, i think what they're doing is, you know, for the if last five or so years they've been on a major militaryup. and -- buildup. and what key element is to create a new force of icbms, in other words, missiles capable of going from china's mainland to the united states and carrying nuclear weapons. so they're looking for a target list. they now have more icbms than the united states, so they're looking at the target list. so that's why how all these spy balloons, that's why they're all going after where critical infrastructure is, our national labs, our irk cm bases, our military installations. they've got to come up with a target list for all these icbms. ashley: wow. we'll have to leave it there, kt. as always, i could talk to you all day. kt fcc marland, thank you so much for joining us today. we do appreciate it. by the way, in the absence of answers from the white house,

some people have begun theorizing that the flying objects were actually the first wave of an alien incursion. when you don't tell anyone what's going on, all sorts of theories are out there. lauren, has the white house confirmed or conditioned the alien theory? lauren: good job with the straight face, ashley. [laughter] the president's been very quiet about all of this but, yes, karine jean-pierre clarified one point. listen. >> -- to make sure we address this from the white house. i know there have been questions and concerns about this, but there is no, again, no indication of aliens or extraterrestrial activity -- [laughter] with these recent takedowns. again, there is no indication of aliens or terrestrial activity with these recent takedowns. wanted to make sure that the american people knew that. lauren: i love e.. the, but it's justs a movie. if it's not aliens, who and what is it, and why are we just shooting everything down now after letting that chinese spy balloon take a joyride across the country? is that a policy shift by the

biden administration? so lot of questions, not many answers. there's a briefing today. ashley: i wouldn't want to be in the hot air ballooning business right now, that's all i'm going to say, lauren. thank you very much. [laughter] let's take a look at the futures, if we can. they've been flat to slightly lore, and that's where they are in the premarket. the opening bell coming up in about 6, 7 minutes from now. let's see where with we go because, guess what? the opening bell coming up next. ♪ and i'm all in, nothing left to hide. ♪ i'm falling harder than -- . ♪ i spent a week away from you last night ♪ lomita feed is 101 years old this year and counting.

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ashley: markets pointing to a slightly lower open as investors digest the latest reading on inflation. let's bring in ray wang to talk about all of this and in particular you're our tech guy, and i wanted to talk about a.i., ray. it's been dominating the news cycle recently. china that introducing its own, apparently, chatgpt clones. question is, can they hold a candle, do you think? >> there's definitely a war on a.i. and generative a.i., it's

all the rage, and the chinese tech companies are following suit, right in and they've got an rang -- advantage because it's large networks that allow them to do it, baidu, netease, alibaba, they're all coming in. ashley: is chinese government, as we know, are they concerned about this particular type of a.i. getting past their very strict censorship? >>st the definitely a concern, right? highly regular rated -- regulated, they just cracked down on the tech companies, so they're talking about how they're using their a.i. for their services, but they're not creating the general purpose genrive the a.i. that we're seeing with open a.i., for example, jd come is looking at it from their -- jd.com is looking at it from the their supply chain, alibaba looking at it for commerce, baidu looking at it for their earning chat bot. they've got a great database to go after that, but you can expect the ccp government to

come in the with their regulatory restrictions. they've got policies for recommendation ares, they've got words that are blacklisted that you can't use, all those kind of things won't happen in that market. but what they are worried about the is -- is the american.com the nance that could the happen if google and amazon and microsoft all jump in. ashley: very quickly, ray, does google's bard a.i. recover from its faux pas on its demo day? [laughter] >> i think we're still going to see a lot of faux pas on generative a.i. to come. but there's a precision that we expect, so that's going to the happen for quite some time. ashley: we'll have to leave it right there. it's always quick but, ray, thank you so much for joining us the morning as we take another look at the markets getting ready to open. everyone's smiling, clapping, waving. there you go. and we are off and running. pushback but thank you very much, sir. right out of the gate we're down 71, 72 points on the dow.

pretty much where we thought we would be. and as we take a look at the dow 30 board, a lot more red than green butten -- but, again, we're just getting going. apple and salesforce.com at the bottom, home depot down at the bottom as the dow now down 105 points. 9 let's take a look at the s&p as well, down half a percent at 4115 on the s&p. what about the nasdaq? be interesting to see where the nasdaq is on in the day, already down three-quarters of a percent. of course, all the markets gained about 1% yesterday, so we're giving it all back in the early going. taking a look at the big tech names, most of them lower except for microsoft up slightly. but alphabet, amazon, apple and meta all down more than 1%. by the way, we had some earnings before the opening bell today. let's begin with coca-cola. good morning, susan. what did we hear from coke? susan: i didn't think it was bad. profit actually beat sales were in line, they actually raised prices to keep up with inflation

with only a slight tick downwards in volume sales as a result are. good enough. and what we call pricing power in this environment and pretty much what pepsico also reported, guidance was in line. apparently, coke zero sugar are selling well for coca-cola. also travel boom continues, marriott reporting this morning, they said the travel command remains strong. leisure is past pre-covid levels. business travel still recovering, 90% of the way will there nor business travel. that's impressive. and then burger king owner, restaurant brands also reporting a strong quarter to end last year. high inflation and a slowing economy, that means consumers are now trading down and eating out cheaper. at the same time, we've heard really across the entire fast food space whether it's taco bell owner yum and mcdonald's, restaurant brands says a new ceo is coming in on march 1st, and they're elevating the coo to be the new leader of the company. ashley: all right. i want to look at palantir.

surging, apparently, after their earnings report. look at that, up 9, 10%. they actually turned a profit. susan: service the up 20% -- it was up 20% in the afterhours yesterday, the initial reaction to its surprise profit way ahead of schedule which really surprised wall street. they actually made money in the final quarter of last year. so a palantir, what it does is it provides software in order to analyze all that data that these company collect. known for its work really with a lot of governments around the world including right here in the u.s., but what really boosted the bottom line was u.s. commercial customers increasing 80%. they now say that they have 143 corporate dust customers, and that's why palantir is guiding for its first profitable year ever in the company's history in 2023. one example of the work that tallen tier does for its corporate customers, they can tell you how many can key can bars will be sold concern candy bars will be sold if it's the raining outside.

[laughter] ashley: they've been looking at me, clearly. take a look at ford. ford partnering with a chinese company for a new ev battery plant. coyes know eight -- do we know anything more about this in. >> 2500 jobs for that michigan battery plant that they plan to build with catl, a big chinese electric car battery maker, one of the biggest on the planet. and ford says they're willing to take the political risk to work with the chinese technology partner, and that's because they need to lower costs and make these batteries closer to their production lines which, as you you know, will be in michigan for commercial fleets. so they need mass manufacturing in realtime. and, by the way, since this michigan plant does come with jobs, they're also cutting 3800 jobs on the european side. now, the stock, i would say, has been hurt the last few weeks because of a terrible report card where they lost a billion dollars in the last three months of last year, and that's because of lost sales with execution issues. but that's a whole.

2023 has started off well, they're up 13% so far in 8 weeks. ashley: you mentioned job losses, susan. we've got a whole wave of job cuts coming from various tech company, right? take us through it all. susan: let's start with roomba, the vacuum maker. 7% so that 85 workers are being cut, and then yesterday we heard from microsoft and their social media arm called linkedin there are 800 million users, they're laying off as part of microsoft's 10,000 job cuts, we don't have the specific number, but then twilio yesterday also cutting 1500 jobs, 17% of head count going. this is what we call a rolling recession that's taking place, and it's been called -- it's called a rolling recession because different industries are cutting at different times and going through a slowdown. tech is cutting the bulk of recent jobs after overhiring during the pandemic. ashley: all right. and, susan, interesting. what's this about tesla employees looking to unionize?

susan: that's interesting because tesla has are reversed a 2% premarket rally. we're looking at new york employees. they're launching a campaign to get together to form a union arguing for better work conditions and higher pay. and this is a plant that analyzes autopilot technology in buffalo. so we're talking about 800 staff, and they want to curb the workplace monooring the -- monitoring. some of these monitoring practices some would say really kind of bends privacy. [laughter] also they want to be paid more and really the driver of this unionization drive at tesla is a starbucks union. remember them? starbucks did it last year, apple did the same. in terms of the stock, george soros bought a lot of tesla stock to end last year. 242,000 more shares. so that's roughly almost, what, quadrupling of his tesla stake. and you know tesla has killed the shorts by $8 billion with its 50% rally so far year.

ashley: yeah. talk about the short squeeze. we've got to talk about warren buffett -- susan: always. ashley: everyone wants to know what he's doing. apparently, he's pouring money into occidental. how much is he buyingsome. susan: yeah. and goldman if upgrading the stock as well. we're awaiting what we call 13f filings. this is what we call whale watching because the hugely successful and most powerful investors co, this berkshire hathaway filing should come any minute now. people are expecting an increase in occidental. we know he bought more tsmc. on the flip side, we just got bridgewater's 13f filing, bridgewater is the world's largest hedge fund. what i found really interesting is that they tripled their gamestop holdings, they increased their amc holdings by 74%. so this is not just the retail investor buying into these meme stocks. the world's largest hedge fund also buying into these meme

names as well and making a lot of money in the process. ashley: fascinating. susan: yeah. they doubled their money. ashley: they are. of. susan: in gamestop. ashley: covered a ton of ground, as always, susan. thank you very much, appreciate that. coming up, health concerns are mounting in east palestine, ohio, after a train derailment released toxic chemicals. listen to this. >> the evacuation order was lifted too early, prematurely, and if you don't have to go back yet, try to stay where you are. >> i was here five minutes, and i have a headache right now. ashley: doesn't sound good. republican lawmakers demanding answers from transportation secretary pete buttigieg who has remained silent. ohio congressman mike turner will be here to talk about that. politico reports the ceo of anti-woke inc., vivek ramaswamy, has his eye on the white house. well, does vivek plan to run? guess what, i'm going to ask him, he's here. the white house is touting progress being made by the

inflation reduction act, but inflation has jumped 6.4% many just the past 12 the months. larry kudlow will be here to sound off on the biden economy right after this. ♪ -- on the highway to hell, on the highway to hell. ♪ highway to hell, i'm on the highway to hell ♪

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ashley: consumer prices rose half a percent in the past month, up 6.4 president from a year ago -- 6.4%, slightly better than december but certainly higher than estimate thed. and guess what? the man himself, larry kudlow, is here to talk about it. larry, good morning. will the president be able to take a victory lap on the report? >> he may have to do a somersault, but then again -- [laughter] his eyes are to the skies.

i thought i'd sneak that by you. his eyes -- look, he's ballooning right now. i don't think he can be worried about the cpi. i mean, you never know what's going to the fly over. but in all seriousness, this report kid come in -- did come in heavy. and i want to just invite your attention. food prices up 10.1%. for the last 12 months. ashley: yeah. >> that is a very sticky problem. food, groceries, you know, food at home, food at restaurants, that's a very difficult problem. the other thing i want to highlight, ash, is average hourly earnings now for the month of january fell 1.8% year on year. so that continues a long-term dechain in that -- decline in that measure of living standards, essentially. people have lost 2% of purchasing power. cpi's up about, i don't know, 15% since joe biden took office. so that's a huge problem, it's

an ongoing problem. i mean, i don't think this report's the end of the world, i'm just saying inflation is going to be sticky, the fed's going to have to tighten some more, there's no question about that. and one thing i want to say, you mentioned biden's economic policies. look, if you examine his state of the union message, right, take a look at that thing. it is, like, unlimited welfare expansions trying to control every nook and cranny in the economy. no work requirements and, finally, tax successful earners, tax businesses. now, that is every line, every sentence, every punctuation mark, every semicolon if he has semicolons. all that stuff is inflationary. [laughter] everything in that thing is inflationary. it's low growth, high prices. i mean, that's what you're

facing here unless the republican house, you know, can put this stuff dead on arrival which i think they will try. but i've never seen a budget like this. total welfare, raise taxes on the private sector. it's totally inflationary and control everything, control. control -- if you take a vacation, he wants to control what you have to pay for your resort. which he says may not be a resort, it might be a hotel, it might be motel 6, i don't know. [laughter] ashley: quickly, larry, i want to get back to the economy. i think it's going to be very difficult for the fed to get anywhere down below 3% this year unless there's a big recession, and even then it's unlikely. we're heading towards recession? >> yeah, i think we are. you know, we may get better numbers on retail sale sales tomorrow. the job numbers, you know, a week ago were way above

expectations. but i think the problem here is, you know, number one, you've got sticky inflation so the fed is going to stay tight. the money supply growth continues to decline. it went up a lot in 2021, but it keeps falling now. the index of leading indicators continues to fall. and the yield curve is deeply inverted. and more so now, i think. so, you know, those are macro numbers, and you've got whatever you've got here, a 6.4% cpi inflation rate. i mean, the odds of recession, i think, are still above 60%, still above 60%. ashley: on that happy note, we'll leave it are there but always great to chat with you, larry kudlow. always on the ball. thank you so much, larry. and, of course, we'll be watching you at 4 p.m. eastern time today the with everyone else. the great larry kudlow. we've told you about the

high cost of groceries, and larry just did as well. come in here, lauren are. it's actually cheaper to go out the a restaurant now, is that right? lauren: my mom told my father that for decades, she really di- [laughter] but now it's true. it's also cheaper and a easier to the go out to eat. [laughter] so we're seeing this all over social media from young people. they've become very cost conscious, right? the they started cooking at home to save money, but then food got overwhelmingly expensive that they're now saving money by eating out again. proof is in the data we got about an hour ago. look at this, food at home up 11.3% in the past year, it's the up 8 82% at restaurants -- 8.2%. one tiktoker tried making a chipotle staple at home. it cost her $13 to buy it at the restaurant, about clash 15 to duplicate it making it in her own kitchen. i know, so so there you have it. another tip is for adults to order the kids' meal.

i've been doing that for years. they never really is ask for proof of age. [laughter] ashley: mom is always right, that's all i know, lauren. [laughter] another one for you, a shocking number of people say their financial stability relies on president biden's student debt forgiveness plan? how many exactly? lauren: 53%. 5 if -- 53% say their loans really need to be forgiven for them to be financially stable. i say they should start budgeting now, because at the end of june they're going to have to start to repaying or their loans again. while the biden administration's debt forgiveness plan is in legal limbo, a supreme court decision is due this summer. either way however they rule, the payments are due on loans again starting this summer and, clearly, borrowers aren't ready because, well, they haven't budgeted for this, the right? they haven't paid for three years, and they keep being told that it's going to be the forgiven. ashley: uh-huh. gotten used to not having to

repay it. all right, lauren, thank you very much. coming up, i want you to take a look at this op-ed. it reads: weaponizing of government must end, and republicans, dems should work together to make it happen. good luck with that. carl sa bow wrote that, and he's here to tell us why americans should be horrified that the government would work to suppress speech. then, to the biggest debate of the day, in the really is, should kids be allowed to eat in restaurants' dining rooms? a new jersey restaurant says no and banned kids under 10 years old. lauren has little one, i wonder what she makes of that. stay with us. ♪ kids, i don't know what's wrong with these kids today. ♪ kids, who can understand anything they say? ♪

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stuart: fox weather is tracking two storm system systems passing over the country. they've going to the the bring heavy rain, snow and possibly tornadoes with them. jason joins us from the fox weather station. this sounds like springtime weather. what's going on? >> it's interesting that you

bring up the fact that this feels like spring, it's because we have dual systems that are happening. in the eastern half of the country, we're experiencing above average temperatures, anywhere from 5-25 the degrees above where we should be for this time of year. out west it's feeling much more like winter. we're talking about. s 10-20 the degrees below where they should be right now. let's talk about storm number one right now as we take a look at the ray car. we're starting to see some rain showers moving from not only the dallas area, but into oklahoma and then eventually into places like nebraska as well as kansas. kansas, by way, really needs this moisture, i mean, more than half the state is even in extreme or exceptional drought can. but because of the winds as well as the potential for some snow, we do have some weather alerts to tell you about here including for those of you in south dakota as well as minnesota. we even have a blizzard warning for fargo as well as watertown the. this is all due to the fact that the visibility is going to be going downhill, and we're also

going to see the winds really picking up here. i mean, look at these winds later on today by about 6:00, places like fargo could see the wind gusts all the way up to about 40 miles per hour. over in the st. cloud area, even though we're going to initially see rain, we could see winds up to around 40 miles per hour into the overnight hours. and duluth we could see visibility go downhill as well here all because of some of the snow here. so, you know, ashley, when we talk about, you know, snowfall, we like to see it, it's just when you have to factor in the winds with this, that's part of the reason why it can remain danger, and that's -- dangerous, and that's why you need to download the fox weather app. ashley: indeed you do. they're heart i think folks in fargo, jason, they can handle it. by the way, just to reiterate what jason said, stay on top of the forecast by downloading the fox weather app or streaming on your favorite connected device. still ahead, ohio congressman mike turner will be

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