marriage

Kevin Warsh: Fed Has ‘No Tolerance’ for High Inflation

Newly minted Chairman of the Federal Reserve Kevin Warsh testified before lawmakers on Tuesday, promising to bring inflation down and pledging officials have “no tolerance for persistently elevated inflation.”

Warsh succeeded Jerome Powell to head the Fed, our nation’s central bank, on May 22, 2026. The Fed is tasked with steering the economy towards maximum employment and stable prices.

Under Powell’s tenure as Fed chairman from 2018 to 2026, the U.S. experienced an inflation crisis with the U.S. Consumer Price Index (CPI), the measure of the average change consumers pay for goods and services, hitting a four-decade high of 9.1% annually.

“If we get policy right—and we will—the inflation surge of the last five years will be a thing of the past,” Warsh affirmed Tuesday. “Inflation’s a choice, meaning monetary policymakers need to choose lower prices.”

Warsh’s testimony comes on the same day the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported inflation fell to 3.5% in June from 3.9% in May, the largest 1-month decrease since April 2020.

The CPI decreased 0.4 percent as gasoline prices fell substantially due to a temporary ceasefire in the Iran War, after rising 0.5 percent in May.

Several items saw substantial year-over-year increases, including:

  • Energy, rising 15.7%.
  • Apparel, increasing 3.9%.
  • Shelter, increasing 3.3%.
  • Food, rising 3.0%.

“June finally brought some relief on inflation,” Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, told CNBC. “The concern is that this relief will be short-lived as the war in Iran re-starts. It’s too uncertain to know how the inflation story ends.”

Ryan Young, a senior economist at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, said June’s inflation relief is “likely temporary,” the Washington Times reports.

“The latest Iran flare-up will likely push July’s inflation numbers back up,” he said. “Uncertainty about the president’s strategy and goals in Iran makes it unlikely that energy prices will come back down to pre-war levels until at least next year.”

June’s inflation decrease is certainly welcome news for many families feeling a financial pinch today. According to new research, millions of Americans are relying on debt to buy groceries and are unable to pay their credit card balance in full or missed their minimum payment.

Additionally, a record number of Americans – 9.16 million – are in default on their student loan payments, meaning they’re more than one year behind.

All told, millions of Americans – for a variety of reasons – are struggling financially today. Yet, even if inflation falls back to the Federal Reserve’s 2% target, Americans won’t see a decrease in the high prices they’re experiencing.

According to the BLS’ CPI Inflation Calculator, $100 U.S. dollars in June 2016 has the same buying power as $138.56 today. Unless families have seen at least a 38% wage increase over the last decade, they can afford less now than they could 10 years ago.

For prices to fall, the U.S. economy would have to experience a negative inflation rate, which generally only happens during recessions or depressions. This means Americans can expect high prices to stay – even if the rate of increase moderates to 2%.

For American families, financial struggles can increase the importance of intentional communication and planning. A 2017 study by Ramsey Solutions found money fights are the second leading cause of divorce, behind infidelity.

Nearly half of couples with at least $50,000 or more in consumer debt cite money as a top reason for arguments, while those who say they have a “great” marriage are almost twice as likely to frequently discuss money compared to those who say their marriage is “okay” or “in crisis.”

“Both high levels of debt and a lack of communication are major causes for the stress and anxiety surrounding household finances,” the study found.

Craig Constantinos, MA, LPCC, a counselor in Focus on the Family’s Counseling Services Department, said couples can use financial stressors as an opportunity for growth in their relationship.

“Stress and anxiety about the economy can often lead to frustration and conflict in marriages, as finances is one of the areas where different perspectives are most obvious,” Constantinos told us.

“Having a grace-filled conversation about budgets and spiritual and financial goals can lead to deeper understanding in a marriage, which can turn the challenge of financial uncertainty into an opportunity to build one’s relationship with God and their spouse.”

To learn more about how you can successfully handle finances in your life or marriage, check out our free resources below.

To speak with a family help specialist or request resources, please call us at 1-800-A-FAMILY (232-6459).

Related articles and resources:

Counseling Consultation & Referrals

Unlock the Secrets to a Financially Secure Marriage

Being Wise With Your Money During a Crisis

Healthy Budgeting Habits for Your Marriage

When Your Money and Marriage Clash

Getting on the Same Page Financially in Marriage

Getting a Reluctant Spouse Onboard with Budgeting

Working with Your Differences

Money Talk: The ‘You’ in ‘Unity’ is Silent

The Total Money Makeover Updated and Expanded: A Proven Plan for Financial Peace

Inflation Rises to 3.8% Making Life More Unaffordable for Families

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John and Abigail Adams: The Marriage That Helped Found America

As the nation prepares to celebrate its 250th birthday this Independence Day weekend, it’s high time that we consider how instrumental John and Abigail Adams’ 54-year union was to the formation of our union.

In fact, that one remarkable marriage is a microcosm of the incredible good the institution exerts on culture and society in ways big and small. Good marriages aren’t just beneficial for the husband and wife but also for their families and those within their circle of influence.

“Marriage matters for the neighborhood,” observed Dr. Brad Wilcox, professor of sociology and Director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia. “It matters for the city. It matters for the state, the country. A lot of Americans think marriage is just a private affair. But what they don’t see is that it actually affects the common good.”

Known as the “Atlas of Independence,” John Adams was a 24-year-old lawyer when he first crossed paths with 15-year-old Abigail Smith. A friend of John’s was dating Abigail’s older sister when he first stopped by the family home. Given her youthfulness, John didn’t pay much attention – but they met again two years later and then married after a two-year courtship.

As a lawyer, John’s work took him away from his home for extended periods of time. Wanting to remain in touch prior to getting married and certainly after tying the knot, John and Abigail began what would become a legendary habit of exchanging long and heartfelt letters. That written form of communication lent itself well to the quiet and reserved temperament of Abigail Smith.

“My pen is always freer than my tongue,” she once wrote.

To understand the profound influence that the Adams’ marriage had on everyone and everything else, one needs to understand that Abigail wasn’t just John’s wife, but also his most trusted confidant and advisor throughout his life and political career. Theirs was a marriage built on trust, candor, and mutual respect and encouragement.

In fact, husbands and wives today can learn a whole lot about how to enjoy a more fulfilling and loving union by studying the marriage of John and Abigail Adams.

By exchanging over 1,100 letters over the years, John and Abigail made it clear they were each prioritizing the other. They shared details of their days, shared inside stories, and remained fiercely curious about one another. Their correspondence was also playful at times. John referred to Abigail as “Miss Adorable” and Abigail nicknamed John “My Dearest Friend.”

It’s evident from reading the letters between John and Abigail that the two felt absolute freedom to be forthright with one another. In a famous letter from 1776, Abigail vents a bit to her husband, who was in Philadelphia debating next steps in the American Revolution:

I cannot say that I think you are very generous to the ladies; for, whilst you are proclaiming peace and good-will to men, emancipating all nations, you insist upon retaining an absolute power over wives. But you must remember that arbitrary power is like most other things which are very hard, very liable to be broken; and, notwithstanding all your wise laws and maxims, we have it in our power, not only to free ourselves, but to subdue our masters, and without violence, throw both your natural and legal authority at our feet.

Abigail would urge John and his fellow revolutionaries to “Remember the Ladies” when constructing America’s new government. Modern feminists often point to her admonition as evidence she was calling for something of a gender revolution. In reality, she was urging her husband and fellow delegates to treat women with the same spirit of love, kindness, and favor we all enjoy from God.

Both devout Christians, John and Abigail had six children, though one died at birth and another as a toddler. Of course, their son, John Quincy, grew up to be the sixth president of the United States.

A staunch abolitionist, Abigail urged her husband to hold fast in his anti-slavery convictions.

“It always appeared a most iniquitous scheme to me — to fight ourselves for what we are daily robbing and plundering from those who have as good a right to freedom as we have.”

When John began growing weary with the war and the colonists’ quest for independence, she provided much-needed encouragement. She wrote him, “These are the times in which a genius would wish to live.” Great wives offer perspective when we sometimes get too close to a situation and lose our objectivity.

Abigail also challenged her husband to remain engaged and active in his later years. “Wisdom and penetration are the fruit of experience, not the lessons of retirement and leisure,” she wrote.

Whether via letters or in-person, John and Abigail Adams modeled for their contemporaries and for generations to come the attributes of a strong marriage, which was rooted in their mutual Christian faith. As Abigail lay dying, she reportedly told John, “Do not grieve, my friend, my dearest friend. I am ready to go. And John, it will not be long.”

After her passing, John wrote, “I wish I could lay down beside her and die too.” He then added, “My friend, my companion, my wife of fifty-four years, in all the trials and afflictions of life, is no more. She was my all.”

John would die eight years later – July 4, 1826 – the same day as Thomas Jefferson and the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

Marriage and the Pursuit of Happiness

It is the greatest line Thomas Jefferson ever conceived, in the greatest document he ever penned:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

As our nation celebrates its 250th birthday, launched by the unparalleled greatness of the Declaration of Independence, it is important that we consider the unalienable rights our Creator equally endowed to all people. Jefferson listed life first, the right to be alive and to live one’s life. We also possess the right to live that life in liberty.

But what about this curious third right, “the pursuit of Happiness”?

Is “happiness” too cheap and transitory a value to be listed among “life” and “liberty” as foundational human values? The great Bob Dylan sure thought so. A reporter from Rolling Stone magazine asked him in 1991 on his fiftieth birthday if he was happy. He fell silent, stared at his hands and retorted, “You know, these are yuppie words, happiness and unhappiness” adding, “It’s not happiness or unhappiness, it’s either blessed or unblessed.”

Dylan then quoted the first line of the Psalms to the reporter, “As the Bible says, ‘Blessed is the man who walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly.’”

Yet, Jefferson was certainly not referring to a mere feeling of happiness, but something deeper. It is likely the Founding Father was inspired by George Mason’s Virginia Declaration of Rights penned just three weeks earlier, which guarantees “the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.”

Years later, Jefferson wrote to a school master in Maine who asked for some irrefutable wisdom to pass on to his students. Citing Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations, Jefferson explained that there is no happiness without virtue. For Cicero stated, “It is certain that without virtue there can be no happiness” and as such, “a happy life is the consequence of virtue.”

For Jefferson and others in that era, this is what happiness meant. Not the pursuit of pleasure or a fleeting feeling, but the pursuit of virtue – a habit or trait that leads to goodness and human flourishing.

Few in the world today would consider marriage an important schoolhouse for learning virtue, but it certainly is. And the character-shaping nature of marriage leads to greater overall life happiness, especially when husband and wife have a serious faith. This is amply demonstrated in findings from the General Social Survey, the gold standard of sociological population research.

Wives who regularly attend church are more likely to report being “very happy” compared to their unmarried and secular peers, as demonstrated here.

The Institute for Family Studies (IFS) recently reported that “religious, married women and men aged 25 to 55 are more than twice as likely to report being ‘very happy’ in life compared to unmarried religious counterparts.”

The happiness differentials for faithful married men look like this:

A 2025 IFS report on what life factors lead to strong, stable marriages explains:

Our analysis found that wives who attended church regularly with their husbands had odds of being very happy in marriage that were 112% higher than women who attended less often or not at all. For husbands, regular shared church attendance was associated with a 212% boost in their odds of being very happy in marriage compared with their less religious or non-religious peers.

The Daily Citizen has reported on recent research demonstrating the powerful happiness premium marriage provides for men and women. Professor emeritus Sam Peltzman of the University of Chicago found, “Being married is the most important differentiator with a 30-percentage point happy-unhappy gap over the unmarried.” This remains true when controlling for important socio-economic factors like age, race, sex, educational status, income and geographical location.

And this has remained consistently true across the decades when married men and women are compared to their cohabiting and single peers.

Marriage is a profound and consistent happiness boost. In fact, Peltzman calls it a “landslide.”

The happiness landslide comes entirely from the married. Low happiness characterizes all types of non-married. No subsequent population categorization will yield so large a difference in happiness across so many people.

Peltzman adds, “Conservatives are distinctly happier than liberals,” indicating married conservatives enjoy an even higher happiness dividend.

As we consider the wonderful founding of our nation and the opportunities the United States affords to so many for a better life, it is essential we appreciate how much faith and marriage contribute to our collective pursuit of happiness.

Only 4 States Still Have “Alienation of Affection” Laws

Can an individual be sued for participating in an extramarital affair that then leads to the breakup of a marriage?

The answer is “yes” if the impacted party lives in one of four states: North Carolina, Mississippi, South Dakota and Hawaii.

Known as “alienation of affection,” “heart balm” or “homewrecker” laws, they find their origins in English common law dating back to the 17th and 18th centuries. They became commonplace in the United States by the 1800s and early 1900s.

While relatively rare, the occasional case in one of the four states will sometimes make headlines – as in a recent filing involving former U.S. Senator Kyrsten Sinema.

The one-time Arizona lawmaker is being sued by a North Carolina woman named Heather Ammel. Ms. Sinema has admitted to a sexual relationship with Matthew Ammel, Heather’s former husband. But she says they never engaged in sex in North Carolina, so the suit is invalid. The suit from Heather Ammel alleges the actions led to the breakup of their 14-year marriage.

The lawsuit also alleges that Matthew Ammel, who was on former Senator Sinema’s security detail at the time, was seduced by her and that the relationship began with her sending Ammel “romantic and lascivious” messages.

While the Ammels have since divorced, Heather Ammel is seeking $75,000 in damages from Sinema. In response, the former senator has filed a motion asking the court to dismiss the case, claiming North Carolina doesn’t have any legal authority over the situation as the sexual behavior never took place in North Carolina. The court has yet to render a decision.

Incidentally, while the House of Representatives passed a resolution banning members from having a sexual relationship with employees, the Senate doesn’t have the same such restrictions. However, the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Ethics does have a rule that prohibits “conflicts of interest or the appearance of a conflict of interest.” Obviously, sexual relationships with subordinates inevitably lead to all kinds of egregious and damaging circumstances – including the breakup of marriages.

“Alienation of affection” laws began losing popularity in the early part of the 20th century for several reasons: a rise in blackmail and extortion, embarrassing litigation and concern that too many people were trying to monetize the collapse of a marriage.

Juries in North Carolina, where the law is still on the books, have been known to award tremendous judgments in cases where offense has been found. In 2011, Carol Puryear was awarded $30 million after another woman gave her husband her phone number at a funeral. Two other recent cases resulted in $8 million and $9 million payments. 

The four states where such laws remain on the books recognize that marriage is a legally and contractually protected relationship. They are acknowledging that adultery causes considerable and devastating harm to all parties involved, especially children. While no amount of money can restore or repair the damage that sexual infidelity causes, the law provides some degree of relief to its victims.

Laws that deter, discourage and disincentivize adultery and the resulting breakup of families are a very good thing. Just because 46 states have moved away from “alienation of affection” laws is no reason why they couldn’t and shouldn’t reinstate them.

It is a conversation and debate worth having. 

How Elites Are Actively Celebrating Polycules, Polyamory and Throuples

The invention of new family forms never stops. It just continues.

It started in the 1960s and 70s with the separation of sex and babies from marriage, marriage from parenting with the expressive divorce, and the single-parent-by-choice revolution. That was followed through the 1980s and 90s with drastic rises in cohabitation. Then we had the radical redefinition of and de-sexing of the family with same-sex marriage.

Now it’s polyamory, throuples and polycules. And these new forms are going mainstream. Within days, The New York Times recently published two features highlighting the mainstreaming of polyamory.

For the uninitiated, polyamory is group pairings as the word literally implies: many loves. Of course, this is a perversion of that very important four-letter word. It is not love. It is agreed upon infidelity among multiple partners that often evolve in number.

The first Times article recently highlighting polyamory was published February 28 of this year, reporting on the growing legal recognition of this experimental relational form. They report, “A wave of recent local ordinances in large liberal bastions like Portland, Ore., … would confer the beginning of legal protections to polyamorous relationships.” But this ordinance is not the beginning.

The city council of Somerville, Mass., gave legal recognition to people in polyamory relationships in early 2023. One of those city councilpersons explained before their unanimous vote, “Everyone on the City Council knows someone who is polyamorous. This is Somerville.”

The Times noted that a recent polyamory initiative in Olympia, Washington, grew out of demands from queer activists. They quote Robert Vanderpool, an Olympia City Council member who explained, “We heard from people in our L.G.T.B.Q. community who wanted more protection, including people living polyamorously.”

Yes, many of us, years ago, warned that when you define male or female out of marriage and family, there is no reason to keep either to two adults. It’s how this works. We were called ridiculous. Of course we were not. It was obvious this was coming.

The second recent piece from the Gray Lady, published March 4, was a splashy feature of a woman named Lindy West who “thought she couldn’t handle polyamory.” They explain, “She was wrong.” West married a man named Ahamefule Oluo in 2015 who fashionably goes by they/them pronouns. A woman named Roya Amirsoleymani is now their third partner.

As you can guess, it was West’s husband’s idea to “diversify” their relationship by hooking up with Roya as his new girlfriend. Lindy didn’t take it well, but she was forced to adjust. Liberal patriarchy at work.

The Free Press even observed, writing about Lindy’s unconventional home, “Say it with me now: open marriages never work.” They note Lindy “loves being treated like a child by the man she was supposed to grow old with – and the woman who has taken her place in his bed.” Women are never empowered by non-monogamy.

In 2024, The New York Times Magazine also did a splash on a similar, but different kind of new relationship configuration: polycules. The piece is entitled “Lessons From a 20-Person Polycule” with the subtitle “How they set boundaries, navigate jealousy, wingman their spouses and foster community.” A polycule is essentially a super-sized polyamorous relationship. More is better. The photo accompanying the article features at least eight men and women embracing romantically. They admit, “It’s difficult to describe a polycule.”

Katie, a member of this confab, honestly confesses, “The polycule is like this weird family.” Ann, another member, tells us they all make up a “chosen family.” She admits, “It works like complex kinship networks work — just a little kinkier,” adding, “It reflects radical queer values.” Katie explains there are more than 20 people in their polycule and age ranges from mid-20s to mid-40s. She confusingly explains:

There are self-identified males who identify as heteroflexible, heterosexual, bisexual. There’s a nonbinary person. Every femme-presenting person or woman identifies as queer. A lot of people are married and have primary partnerships. They’re coming to it from the opening of a monogamous relationship.

Yes, they are just making up new words and identities. But Nico explains the group is governed by “a bunch of queer women who say we’re not going to follow the rules.”

Some polycule’s boast including several children in their family experimentation. The Guardian even claims, incredulously, that such homes bring no harm to these children. We all know that is not true.

And then there are throuples. In mid-December, The Wall Street Journal broached the vexing problem in a handsome spread of how one upper-middle class Chicago throuple maneuvered decorating the $1.71 million home they share together.

David and Ryan were a couple, but they made room for Michael in their relationship after a few years as they all became sexually involved. They are certainly not unique as same-sex attracted men their experimentation. The Journal notes that real-estate agents “are noticing more throuples and polycules buying homes together.”

It is true. Once you open Pandora’s Box of creative relationship construction that get called a family, it is mind boggling where it can lead too. And we can expect to see more legacy press celebrate their creation.

Photo Credit: The New York Times