Harris Flies to Michigan, Fed Hikes Rates, $9.5B Paid to Not Work

Kamala Harris is returning to Michigan. When a politician arrives in your community, ask what they're actually requesting of you. This is The Gospel Briefing. I'm Charles King. Here's what we know. Former Vice President Kamala Harris will campaign next Tuesday for Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed. El-Sayed is a doctor who ran health departments in Detroit and Wayne County. He's the Democratic nominee against Republican Congressman Mike Rogers. The event is a roundtable on Black maternal health. Harris endorsed El-Sayed in August. Her spokesperson framed the visit as an effort to, quote, flip the Senate. The visit follows Rogers skipping a scheduled debate on Fox two Detroit last week. He accused the moderator of bias. The moderator denied it. El-Sayed spoke for an hour beside an empty podium. That is a striking image. One candidate talking. One podium empty. A former Vice President flying in to fill the void. Campaign season tempts every citizen to trade discernment for fandom. To cheer a person instead of weighing a policy. Scripture speaks directly here. Jeremiah seventeen, verse five. "Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart turns away from the Lord." That is not a verse against voting. It is a verse against worship. If you want to sit with that passage today, keep Jeremiah seventeen open in Bible Copilot and read the whole chapter slowly. Second story. The Federal Reserve raised interest rates yesterday. The first hike since 2023. Chairman Kevin Warsh moved the benchmark rate up by a quarter point. The new range is three-point-seven-five to four percent. The vote was unanimous. Warsh said inflation has run above target for more than five years, and the war in Iran is pushing energy prices higher. President Trump responded on Truth Social. He wrote, in all caps, that rates should be one percent or less. Here's why it matters. Credit cards. Car loans. Mortgages. All of it gets more expensive. Consumer sentiment is already thirteen percent below where it was a year ago. Proverbs twenty-two, verse seven reminds us the borrower is slave to the lender. That is a household statement before it is a political one. If you have room to reduce debt this fall, do it. Third story. The Government Accountability Office reports federal agencies spent nine-point-five billion dollars on administrative leave in 2025. That is salary paid to workers who were not working. The increase was driven by the DOGE effort to shrink the federal workforce. Cutting a workforce by paying it to stay home is a peculiar kind of stewardship. Whatever you think of the goal, the mechanics deserve scrutiny. Luke sixteen calls us to be faithful with a little and faithful with much. Taxpayer money is a much. Pray for the people inside those agencies. Some are relieved. Some are anxious. Most are trying to feed a family. Pray for wisdom today before you repeat what you have heard. This episode is presented by Bible Copilot. Today's verse is Jeremiah seventeen, verse seven. Open Bible Copilot and study the Verse of the Day first. You'll get a guided study that walks through what the passage says, what it means, what it teaches about God, and how to apply it. Three questions each day are free. Start at mybiblecopilot dot com slash gospel. That's mybiblecopilot dot com slash gospel, or search Bible Copilot in the App Store. Jeremiah seventeen, verse seven. "Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord." Politicians come to Michigan. The Fed changes course. Billions move on paper. Underneath all of it, one question. Where is your trust anchored today? Thanks for listening to The Gospel Briefing. The empty podium always gets filled eventually. But the throne of your heart is yours to guard. I'll see you tomorrow.