Monday morning news: July 14, 2025

Editor's note: The following text is a transcript of a podcast story. To listen to the story, click on the arrow beneath the headline above. 

Two killed in Kentucky church shooting » Two women are dead after a gunman opened fire at a church in Lexington, Kentucky Sunday.

Here’s how it all unfolded, according to police: The gunman got into a confrontation with and shot a state trooper during a traffic stop near Lexington’s airport Sunday morning, then carjacked a vehicle, which he drove to Richmond Road Baptist Church.

There, he shot and killed two women -ages 72 and 32- and wounded two other victims, one critically. The trooper who was shot is in stable condition.

Lexington Police Chief Lawrence Weathers,

WEATHERS: Sometimes things happen, you just, don’t have a reason why. But we’re going to be here, for the people of Lexington.

Police shot and killed the gunman at the scene. Chief Weathers says there’s evidence the gunman might have had a connection to people at the church.

Search suspended in Texas » In central Texas, heavy rain forced crews to temporarily suspend search and rescue efforts along the Guadalupe River Sunday.

It was the first time a fresh round of severe weather paused the search for victims of the horrific July 4th flooding.

Colt Lee was one of the thousands of volunteer searchers, waiting it out.

LEE: There’s a possibility that the erosion can, you know, move some things around and make some things more discoverable that might not have been. But generally speaking, it is just a hindrance at the moment, you know, ‘cause it does pause everything.

By late afternoon, teams in part of the area got the ‘all-clear’ to resume their search efforts. The July 4th floods killed at least 129 people, and left at least 170 still missing.

Sunday’s round of severe weather damaged about 100 homes and forced the rescues of dozens of people across several counties.

Noem pushes back re: NYT story on FEMA call response » U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is pushing back on The New York Times’ report of a shortcoming in the federal response to Texas’s July 4th floods.

The report found only about 16 percent of calls to FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, were answered on July 7th, three days after the fatal floods, because contractors at the phone bank had been laid off when a federal contract expired July 5th.

Noem claims that’s not true, telling NBC’s Meet the Press those phone banks were staffed.

NOEM: These contracts were in place and those people were in those call centers and they were picking up the phone and answering these calls from these individuals. So, that report needs to be validified [validated]. I’m not certain it’s accurate.

Noem insists cost-cutting didn’t hamper the federal response, and says any criticism is an attempt to politicize the tragedy.

Gaza ceasefire talks stall, deadly Israeli airstrike goes wrong » Ceasefire talks on the war in Gaza have stalled.

After several days of negotiations in Qatar, Israel and Hamas are now blaming one another for holding up a deal.

The main sticking point appears to be where the Israeli military would redeploy once a ceasefire takes effect.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, speaking in Hebrew, translated into English through an interpreter,

NETANYAHU: We accepted the deal, Hamas rejected it. And what does it want? It wants to stay in Gaza. It wants us to leave, so it can rearm and attack us again and again. I will not accept that.

Meantime, Israel acknowledges an airstrike targeting an Islamic Jihad terrorist in Gaza went wrong Sunday.

Video from the scene shows multiple casualties, including children. Al-Awda Hospital in Gaza says six children were killed in the strike.

New Russian sanctions gaining steam on Capitol Hill » The idea of imposing tough new economic sanctions on Russia is gaining steam on Capitol Hill.

Senators from both parties are working on a bill applying new pressure on Russia to end the war in Ukraine, or face 500 percent tariffs on exports like gas, oil, and uranium.

The Senate hopes to pass the bill this month. Over on the House side, when asked if he’d bring it to the floor, Speaker Mike Johnson told Fox News,

JOHNSON: I would. I think there’s a big appetite for that in the House as well. I think tough sanctions are called for. Vladimir Putin has shown an unwillingness to work with President Trump to bring an end to this unjust war, We’ve got to talk tough and we’ve got to act tough. That’s what he responds to. He’s a bully.

Trump says he wants to make some changes to the proposed penalties in the Russia sanctions bill, and he still wants to continue peace talks.

This comes as the president considers approving new funding for Ukraine for the first time since taking office in January.

One year post-Butler PA, new security failures reported » One year after the assassination attempt on President Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, a new government report reveals the depth of the Secret Service’s failings that day.

The report, from the Government Accountability Office, shows Secret Service officials knew 10 days before the rally in Butler that Trump’s life might be in danger, but didn’t share that information with their own teammates working the rally.

Also, the Secret Service’s air surveillance drone wasn’t flying that day. It was broken and the lightly-trained operator didn’t know how to fix it.

Senate Homeland Security Committee Chair Rand Paul tells CBS’s Face the Nation..

PAUL: It was a cascade of errors. It was just one error after another. When we talked to the people in charge of security, everybody pointed a finger at someone else

The new head of the Secret Service says the agency’s made substantive reforms over the last year to address the security lapses in Butler.
I’m Mark Mellinger.

Straight ahead: Pursuing justice for persecuted Christians in Africa. And later, what’s at the root of President Trump’s intensified criticism of the Fed chair in the Monday Moneybeat.

This is The World and Everything in It.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.