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There are days when the news feels less like a series of unrelated stories and more like one big flashing warning sign.

Yesterday was one of those days.

On Rush Hour, I kept coming back to the same question: When did personal responsibility become somebody else’s job?

Take Florida.

Ron DeSantis announced new restrictions on how certain welfare benefits can be spent. No tobacco. No vaping products. No drugs or intoxicants. No pornography. No theme park tickets. No tattoos. No tanning beds. No fortune tellers.

Fortune tellers!

I confess, I didn’t even know you could walk into a fortune teller with government assistance and ask Uncle Sam to pick up the tab.

And naturally, there are critics.

The argument, apparently, is that if recipients now have to use their own money for cigarettes, tattoos, pornography or whatever Madame Zelda is charging these days, they will have less money left over — therefore making them poorer.

Well… yes.

That is generally what happens when you spend your own money.

But somewhere along the way, we seem to have forgotten that public assistance is supposed to help people who genuinely need help pay for necessities. It is not supposed to turn the taxpayer into your personal entertainment account.

And that brings me to Meta.

The company reached a massive settlement over allegations that its social media platforms harmed children, with billions of dollars at stake and major changes involving age verification, usage limits, nighttime restrictions and mandatory breaks.

Now, there are serious questions about what social media companies know about the effects their products have on young people, and those questions deserve answers.

But I couldn’t get past something else.

Where are the parents?

We have reached a point where government and corporations are increasingly expected to regulate when children go online, how long they stay online and when they need to take a break.

I understand the concerns. I really do.

But if Meta is now supposed to tell your child it is bedtime, we have a much bigger problem than Instagram.

That theme — adults surrendering responsibility and institutions rushing in to replace them — kept popping up throughout the show.

It even surfaced in one of the most bizarre social-media clips I came across, supposedly from a kindergarten teacher describing how she asked children who wished they had been born another gender, separated the kids who didn’t participate and had students choose new names and pronouns.

I said on the air that I’m skeptical the story is even real. It sounded designed to get a rise out of people.

But the reason it gets a rise out of people is important.

Parents no longer automatically trust that schools will stay in their lane.

And schools no longer automatically assume parents should have the final word.

That is not healthy.

Neither is what we are seeing in politics.

Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner talked about one day “blowing up” President Trump’s planned White House ballroom — clearly in the context of destroying the project, not announcing an actual bombing plot — but consider the office this man holds.

He is the district attorney of one of America’s largest cities.

Maybe Philadelphia has enough problems to keep its district attorney occupied without fantasizing about what he wants to do to a White House construction project.

This is where politics has taken us. People in serious positions say ridiculous things, everyone races to social media, outrage follows outrage, and somehow the actual responsibilities of the office become secondary.

I had plenty more sitting in front of me yesterday — Lindsey Graham’s South Carolina victory, another conservative learning that Donald Trump has a very long memory, Democratic outrage, lawsuits, the usual Washington noise.

At one point I finally said: screw all this political stuff.

Because sometimes the stories that matter most aren’t really about Republicans or Democrats.

They are about whether we still expect grown adults to act like grown adults.

Whether government assistance is assistance or an entitlement to anything you want.

Whether parents raise children or Silicon Valley does it for them.

Whether schools educate children or attempt to redefine them.

Whether public officials do their jobs or spend their time performing for the cameras.

Different stories.

Same problem.

We have spent years shifting responsibility away from individuals and families and toward institutions — and then we act surprised when those institutions become more powerful, more intrusive and more expensive.

Maybe we don’t need another government program, another corporate safeguard or another politician promising to save us from ourselves.

Maybe we just need the adults back in charge.

— Bo Snerdley

Rush Hour airs Monday through Friday and moves quickly through the day’s hottest political stories, breaking developments and media absurdities. It is the fastest hour in American media because there is always more happening than the legacy media has time—or desire—to explain.

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