The World and Everything in It: April 19, 2023

PREROLL: The World and Everything in It is made possible by listeners like us. Hi! My name is Joanna Wirth. Our family lives in Kalispell, Montana, near beautiful glacier park. We are thrilled that our school plays the daily ten minute episode of World Watch news for the middle school students everyday. I hope you enjoy today’s program.

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: Good morning!

Last week authorities arrested the suspected leaker of classified documents. We’ll talk about what went wrong and what to do about it.

THOMAS SPOEHR: Nobody in JWICS should have the ability to just range freely throughout the entire system, and pick and choose those things for which they find interesting.

NICK EICHER, HOST: That’s ahead today on Washington Wednesday. Also our weekly roundup of international news.

Plus we’ll meet a former advertising exec who traded in his white collar for a hardhat.

MICHAEL BAILEY: I just got tired, you know, of being dumb! Not knowing how to build. Not teaching my sons how to work with their hands.

And a conservative experiment at New College Florida. WORLD’s Janie B. Cheaney weighs in.

BUTLER: It’s Wednesday, April 19th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Paul Butler.

EICHER: And I’m Nick Eicher. Good morning!

BUTLER: Up next, Jill Nelson with today’s news.

JILL NELSON, NEWS ANCHOR: Fox news settlement » Fox News will pay $787.5 million to Dominion Voting Systems under a settlement reached Tuesday. That is nearly half the amount Dominion sought in the defamation case.

Dominion Voting Systems CEO John Poulos:

JOHN POULOS: Fox and Dominion have reached an historic settlement. Fox has admitted to telling lies about Dominion that caused enormous damage to my company, our employees and the customers that we serve.

The two sides reached an agreement just before a weeks-long trial was set to begin.

Dominion accused Fox of knowingly reporting false claims that the company’s voting machines changed ballots in the 2020 election.

Fox said it was reporting on statements made by former President Donald Trump. It released a statement Tuesday acknowledging a judge’s ruling that certain claims it made about Dominion were false.

Dominion Lawyer Justin Nelson:

JUSTIN NELSON: For our democracy to endure for another 250 years and hopefully much longer, we must share a commitment to facts.

SCOTUS » The Supreme Court on Tuesday heard the case of a Christian postal worker who observes the Sabbath on Sundays. The post office at first accommodated his beliefs, but then Amazon came along.

Gerald Groff faced disciplinary action for declining to work on the Sabbath, as the online retail giant demanded more Sunday deliveries.

He told his supervisor that he felt forced to choose between his conviction and his job.

GERALD GROFF: And I said, I mean no disrespect whatsoever, but I have to choose God. My conviction is that strong, come what may, you know.

A federal law from 1964 says employers must accommodate religious practices unless they inflict an undue hardship.

Groff is asking the Supreme Court to overturn a 1977 ruling that allowed employers to deny religious accommodations that would cost more than a negligible amount.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked what happens when religious accommodations cause harm that’s hard to quantify.

JUSTICE BARRETT: What if it’s just morale? And things that might be very difficult to prove and put a dollar amount on? Employees aren’t as productive because they’re grumbling, they’re not willing to go the extra mile, put their best foot forward.

Three current justices have said the court should reconsider its ruling.

Charles Stanley » Longtime megachurch pastor Charles Stanley has died. He was senior pastor of First Baptist Church Atlanta from 1971 until 2020 and a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention.

He founded and hosted the Christian broadcast program In Touch Ministries and authored more than 60 books.

CHARLES STANLEY: At some point out there when this journey is ended, the Son of God who rose from the dead, who made us all these wondrous promises, is going to be standing there waiting for us.

Stanley and his wife of 34 years, Anna, separated in the 1990s and divorced in 2000. Some church leaders called on him to resign because of the controversy, but his congregation eventually voted to keep him as senior pastor.

Stanley’s son, Andy, left First Baptist after the divorce and is now a well-known megachurch pastor at North Point Community Church in Atlanta.

Ukraine » 

VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY: [Speaking Ukrainian]

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaking about visiting Ukrainian troops on the front lines yesterday, a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin visited the warfront.

The visits come before an anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive by forces armed with Western weapons.

Meanwhile, a judge in Russia has ruled that detained Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich must remain behind bars until his trial.

Parking garage » New York City firefighters say they rescued everyone who was inside a collapsed parking garage. One person died and at least five more were injured in the collapse on Tuesday.

Fire Department chief John Esposito:

JOHN ESPOSITO: At this time we believe that we have the workers that were in danger in the building all accounted for.

Officials confirmed that the garage had prior building safety violations.

Sudan » Fighting continues in Sudan even after a 24-hour cease-fire was due to begin Tuesday evening.

Two rival Sudanese generals reportedly agreed to the temporary truce, but residents in the capital of Khartoum said they still heard gunfire around the city.

The national army and a rival paramilitary group issued statements accusing each other of ignoring the cease-fire, and the army said it would continue operations to secure the capital.

Man: [Speaking Arabic] Hospitals closed.

This hospital director in the capital is saying that most of the staff has left. There is a shortage of medicine and oxygen.

About 200 people have died since fighting broke out Saturday and thousands have been injured. Hospitals have been damaged across the country.

Feinstein » U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein’s seat on the Judiciary Committee will remain empty for the time being, delaying the approval of some of the president’s judicial nominees.

Many of the president’s judicial nominees have won the support of one or more Republicans on the Senate floor.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell:

MITCH MCCONNELL: Senate Republicans will not take part in sidelining a temporary absent colleague off a committee just so Democrats can force through their very worst nominees.

The 89-year-old Feinstein has been in California recovering from shingles for the past six weeks. McConnell himself just returned from a long medical absence after suffering a concussion in a fall.

I’m Jill Nelson. Straight ahead: The fallout from a shocking military documents leak. Plus, building new homes from old materials.

This is The World and Everything in It.

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: It’s Wednesday the 19th of April, 2023.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Paul Butler.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

First up on The World and Everything in It, Washington Wednesday. Today a breach of security with classified documents.

Two weeks ago, social media was buzzing over the documents that appeared to have been leaked from the Pentagon. Within days, both the Departments of Defense and Justice had opened investigations, but by that time, the documents in question had already been online over a month.

BUTLER: Immediately the word went out that the documents might be a Russian misinformation scheme. But then last Thursday, the New York Times broke the news of who the leaker was. Shortly before the FBI arrested the suspect, a 21-year-old air national guardsman named Jack Teixeira.

The next day, Teixeira was arraigned at a federal courthouse in Boston and charged with mishandling national-defense information and classified documents.

Today he’s in court again for a detention hearing to determine if he will be held in custody until his trial.

There are a lot of unanswered questions, but let’s start with the most glaring one: how did a 21-year-old guardsman get access to all of this classified information?

According to former lieutenant general Thomas Spoehr, Teixeira’s job put him in a unique position.

THOMAS SPOEHR: He was an Airman First Class in the Massachusetts Air National Guard as a... It was called Cyber Defense Operations Journeyman. And so he would have had responsibilities within his unit to protect the the information in the National Guard and his unit and support others in that endeavor. Lots of times the National Guard because of a shortage in the regular armed forces, you know, they are called upon to mobilize and come help regular army and those type of units do their mission. So he could have been in that kind of capacity. I don't think we know all that yet. And what, what capacity he was acting when he accessed these documents. That will come to light, but it hasn't come to light yet.

EICHER: Spoehr currently heads up the Center for National Defense at the Heritage Foundation. He says in order to access many of the documents Teixeira allegedly posted online, he would have needed top-secret clearance, and that’s not easy

SPOEHR: So to get that level of clearance, you do a full scope investigation going back 10 years in a person's life. You look at their references, their friends, their parents, their family, where they've lived, their jobs, any criminal history, any credit history. You look at all those things for any sign of an issue. He must not have had any, because he obviously got that clearance. Normally 21-year-old military members don't get that level of a clearance. That type of clearance comes later in a career when you have a higher level assignment. But in his case, because of his military occupational specialty, he was involved in cyber and communications. And the military needs people like that to run their classified networks. They need people that can connect all the wires and make sure that people can communicate. That's that's why he had that level of clearance. And it's in it's doubly rare that he was a member of the National Guard, because again, those type of clearances normally, you find mostly in the active component, the regular forces and not in the reserves and the guard forces.

BUTLER: As intelligence forces and journalists reviewed the files Teixeira allegedly leaked, it appears he had pretty wide access to something called the Joint Worldwide Information Communications System, too much access even. You’ll hear Spoehr refer to the system by its acronym J-WICS.

SPOEHR: By all accounts, this guy Jack was able to get access to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff daily intelligence briefing. He was able to get intel access to the CIA's daily intelligence briefing - documents that he could have no conceivable use for in his current occupation. And so I would want to know, how did he get access to these level of documents? Because within this system that I talked about, JWICS, there are supposed to be internal firewalls that say, Hey, your job is this and you are therefore granted access to this group of files or this group of materials. But nobody in JWICS should have the ability, the license, if you will, to just range freely throughout the entire system, and pick and choose and grab those things for which they find interesting. That should not be the case, it's not the case, and so how did that system break down in this particular event?

EICHER: In addition to the way Teixeira was able to access classified information, another question is, if he did it, why did he do it? Some in the media are comparing Teixeira to previous leakers who considered themselves whistleblowers. But Cato Institute senior fellow Patrick Eddington says that there’s a fundamental difference here.

PATRICK EDDINGTON: In the case of a lot of the previous whistleblowers that we've had, and I certainly would not classify Jack Teixeira as a whistleblower in this case, I'm thinking about individuals like former Army Captain Christopher Pyle, in 1971. His revelations about unconstitutional army surveillance, which he shared with Senator Sam Ervin and his investigative committee; guys, like Dan Ellsberg, of course, easily the most famous American whistleblower ever, revealing US war crimes and related things in the Vietnam War; Thomas Tam, former Justice Department attorney, who revealed George W. Bush's illegal Stellar Wind mass surveillance program to the New York Times. And then, of course, Ed Snowden, who revealed to the Guardian newspaper initially in June of 2013, the illegal mass surveillance taking place under the section 215 Patriot Act authority. Teixeire, you know, basically was a kid is what it boils down to here. And he took this material and shared it with people on this particular Discord, I think, to just you know, impress his friends, most of whom, from what we can gather so far, were younger than him. And I think, you know, that was, that appears to largely be the motivation.

BUTLER: So it appears that Teixeria downloaded the classified information about U.S. involvement in Ukraine for personal use, not as part of something bigger.

But folly has consequences, and regardless of Teixeira’s motivation, his alleged leak has created a foreign-policy mess for the U.S. in three ways. Again, Thomas Spoehr.

SPOEHR: A huge level of detail that no, nobody had ever seen before, and it’s now you know, obviously, in the hands of the Russians, and anybody else that's interested. And it talks about Ukrainian vulnerabilities, how they're running short on munitions. And even though, you know, the information might have been cut off in March, a lot of these problems will linger on the status and the readiness of Ukrainian brigades. That's, that's very damaging kinds of operational detail. And then there's another category of stuff, which show people how the United States was monitoring our allies and friends and reading their communications— countries like Egypt, South Korea, other countries. I think everybody probably has grown up enough to know that that type of thing happens. But it's normally not talked about. And when countries are presented with evidence that the United States is reading their mail, if you will, and listening in to their phone calls, it becomes very embarrassing for this country, because those other countries now have to explain to their citizens, you know, why are we allowing the United States to monitor our communications? Aren't these people supposed to be our friends? So it damages our standing in the eyes of other people. And then finally, you know, there's lots of intelligence that's been released on Russia and their status. And there's, there's indications that some of this information was gained through access to Russian military and intelligence sources, which may now be compromised. And it's very conceivable that people could lose their lives because they have now been outed, if you will, by this intelligence, and so I can't conceive of a scenario where you do not say that this has been a significant breach of US intelligence and national interests.

EICHER: While the State Department and Pentagon work on damage control, Teixeira is in federal custody. He has yet to enter a formal plea.

He’s probably looking at serious charges for violating his duty to protect national secrets, but whatever happens it won’t mean life in prison. WORLD’s Washington Bureau reporter Carolina Lumetta explains the reason for that.

CAROLINA LUMETTA: Teixeira will be facing two criminal accounts, both under Title 18. The first is under the Espionage Act. Section 793 prohibits unauthorized retention and transmission of National Defense Information. And that carries a maximum prison sentence of 10 years. The second count is under Section 1924, which prohibits unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or material. For that one, he could face up to five years in prison. If convicted on both counts and served the maximum sentence, he would be spending 15 years in federal prison.

BUTLER: The Pentagon meanwhile is going to need to take a long, hard look at how it handles classified information. And as recruitment numbers continue to drop, finding and keeping reliable service members will be that much more important.

Carolina Lumetta is WORLD’s Washington Bureau reporter. You can keep up with her coverage of stories like this in her weekly newsletter, The Stew. Check it out at wng.org/newsletters.

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It:

World Tour with our correspondent in Europe, Jenny Lind Schmitt.

JENNY LIND SCHMITT, REPORTER: France pension ruling — We start off today’s international roundup here in Europe.

SOUND: [Protesters singing]

French President Emmanuel Macron has signed into law a pension bill after months of protests.

The legislation came just hours after the French Constitutional Council voted in favor of key parts of the bill on Friday.

The measure raises the retirement age for public employees from 62 to 64. Macron said the change would help keep France’s pension system viable. The nine-member council rejected the opposition’s request for a referendum on the decision.

SOUND: [Clashing protesters]

The proposed changes sent crowds of protesters out to the streets for months…with some demonstrations turning violent. Labor unions organized strikes.

Garbage filled the streets of Paris last month as the city’s garbage workers stopped work in protest.

Railway unions are calling for a day of “railway anger” on Thursday. Other trade unions are also planning mass Labour Day protests on May 1 to coincide with International Workers’ Day.

Sudan unrest — Next, to Sudan, where deadly fighting has persisted in the capital city of Khartoum.

SOUND: [Gunfire]

The Sudanese military forces and a powerful paramilitary group known as the Rapid Support Forces are battling for control. The two generals on the warring sides are former allies who orchestrated a coup in 20-21.

About 100 people have died and hundreds more injured as gun battles, shelling, and airstrikes continue. Both sides are claiming control of key parts of Khartoum. Fighting also hit other cities.

Two Sudanese governments have already been toppled in the past four years.

Sudan’s former Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok says violence is only a setback on the return to democracy.

ABDALLA HAMDOK: Transitions never go in a straight line. I'm absolutely confident that we will be able to open the road again for this transition to take it to its prospective and desired destination by the majority of the Sudanese people.

A regional African group has said it will send the presidents of South Sudan, Djibouti, and Kenya to Khartoum to mediate the conflict. But the country’s international airport remains closed.

Meanwhile the Sudanese doctors’ union warned residents who are trapped at home are starting to face water, food, and electricity shortages.

Yemen prisoner swap — We head over to Yemen.

SOUND: [Welcome ceremony]

Rebels and a Saudi-led military coalition have wrapped up a prisoner swap that saw nearly 900 people gain freedom. The three-day operation that ended Sunday marks Yemen’s largest prisoner exchange in three years.

Yemen’s war began in 20-14 when Iran-backed Houthi rebels seized control of the capital city of Sanaa (sah-NAH ) and much of northern Yemen. A Saudi-led coalition stepped in several months later to try to restore the internationally recognized government. The ongoing conflict has sparked one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

The released prisoners include more than 700 Houthis, senior military officials, and four Yemeni journalists sentenced to death in a Houthi-controlled court.

SOUND: [Speaking Arabic]

The brother of one detained journalist explains he missed eight years with his children who are now 10 and 13 years old.

The deal came after the warring sides said they made progress in talks towards a ceasefire and ending the conflict. On Monday, the coalition released more than 100 additional prisoners in a unilateral move.

Chile work schedule — We close today in Chile.

SOUND: [Applause]

Chile’s President Gabriel Boric has signed a bill reducing the country’s work week from 45 to 40 hours.

The new law will phase-in over five years, with the work hours dropping by one hour each year until it gets to 40.

The legislation prevents employers from cutting salaries over the change. It also allows workers to switch to a four-day work week.

Authorities say about 500 companies have already implemented the change.

SOUND: [Speaking Spanish]

President Boric says here the reduced work time will bring a better quality of life for children and workers in the country.

Chile now joins Ecuador and Venezuela to hold Latin America’s shortest work weeks. Argentina, Mexico, Peru, and Panama still have 48-hour work week schedules.

And that’s it for this week’s World Tour. Reporting for WORLD, I’m Jenny Lind Schmitt in Porrentruy, Switzerland.

NICK EICHER, HOST: You know I get over to WORLD headquarters pretty frequently. It’s a beautiful place in Asheville, North Carolina, surrounded by the Pisgah National Forest, so as such it pays to be, as they say, “bear aware.”

Well, one Asheville man is hoping the bears might start returning the favor.

David Oppenheimer was out in his carport at the end of the day, feet propped up, reading, relaxing when an adult black bear just walked up, right between him and his doorway, when his door-cam chimed.

Imagine the shock. And because the camera captured the moment, you don’t have to imagine, he was shocked.

The audio here from TV station W-L-O-S.

DAVID OPPENHEIMER: I didn't want to startle it and jump out of the chair or something like that. And so I guess we were both waiting to see what was gonna happen next and the bear took off. I was grateful for that.

Grateful is the right word. Yeah, they just stared at each other for, I counted more than three seconds. Just frozen.

Which evidently was the right thing to do as this wildlife expert said in the TV story.

JODY WILLIAMS: That bear does not look at you as food. It is more scared of you than you are of it.

Yeah, okay. That bear was pretty poker face then, because Oppenheimer’s expression … he was terrified. And I don’t blame him.

But now he gets to say he stared down a black bear and lived to tell.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: Today is Wednesday, April 19th.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Paul Butler.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Coming next on The World and Everything in It: an unexpected career change.

Years ago, Michael Bailey owned his own ad company—and hadn’t ever built anything with his hands.

But that didn’t stop him from deciding one day to leave it all and start building homes.

WORLD Associate Correspondent Travis Kircher has the story.

TRAVIS KIRCHER, REPORTER: Michael Bailey is sometimes mistaken for a vagrant. His long gray hair, Army green toboggan hat, and scraggly beard give off a certain look. But Michael Bailey is anything but homeless.

MICHAEL BAILEY: This is actually our second barn house.

He lives in a converted 9,000 square foot barn that he and his family built themselves...

BAILEY: Come on in! (Door opens)
KIRCHER: Oh, that is neat.

…out of repurposed historic materials.

BAILEY: So the barn is from 1890. All of the logs you see between the barn bents and the framing is actually from an 1880s warehouse in Louisville. 

Bailey paid for some of the materials, but got most of it for free. He says landowners just wanted it off their hands.

As he moves through the house, it’s clear Bailey and his family included some unique features. Like the waterfall and the pond. In the living room.

BAILEY: Who puts a pond in their living room? (LAUGHS) I just thought it would be a good idea. But we probably would not have done it if we’d hired a professional, who would have given us five reasons to Sunday why it wouldn’t have worked.

By now you’re thinking Bailey was born with a socket wrench in one hand and a power saw in the other, but you couldn’t be further from the truth.

Thirty years ago, Michael Bailey was a very different man.

Back then, in his 30s, he was clean shaven, the owner of his own advertising company, and had never built anything in his life.

BAILEY: Back when I was in advertising, if my step broke on my deck, I’d hire it done. Which is hilariously funny! You know, I’d never built anything.

All of that changed when he and his wife Lori decided to move their family from the suburbs to the country. Bailey decided he was going to build their home himself while his family camped out.

BAILEY: I just got tired, you know, of being dumb! Not knowing how to build. Not teaching my sons how to work with their hands.

But he soon realized he was way over his head – and winter was on the way. That’s when he went to the Lord for guidance.

BAILEY: We went to The Lord in prayer, with a kind of childhood heart prayer with my sons and daughters. Every day, we basically said, you know, ‘We need help!’

Bailey also sought help from friends in the trades – carpenters, masonry workers and construction workers.

BAILEY: I basically said to them, ‘I want you to come here. I want you to show me. Watch me. But I don’t want you to do the work.’ Now some of them listened better than others.

He absorbed it all like a sponge, and soon, his whole family was in on the project.

BAILEY: Every kid helped. My children have beat the concrete off bricks with brick-hammers by the thousands. I mean thousands of bricks.

They finished their first barnhouse in 1995, but they only had four years to live in it. In 1999, they lost that home in a fire.

BAILEY: So we rush home, and the house is literally just ashes. Every single bolt, every floor, everything we had done was ashes. But what a good object lesson that is, showing that things are temporal.

Now the family faced a tough decision: What next?

BAILEY: We had a family meeting and said, ‘Who wants to build another barnhouse?’ (LAUGHS) And it was unanimous. We didn’t have one kid saying, ‘I don’t want to do that again!’

At nine-thousand square feet, their second home may sound enormous, but not when Bailey’s 10 children and 21 grandchildren come for a visit. It also gives Bailey a chance to practice what he calls ‘the lost art of hospitality.’

BAILEY: You know, hospitality is not inviting your friends over. Hospitality is showing kindness to strangers. Is your house built so that you are sheltering people, having them over, engaging them in important discussions about the Savior, and about truth?

As the Baileys’ barnhouse grew, so did Michael’s reputation as a builder. He started getting calls. That’s when he decided to quit his white-collar job and open up Bailey Construction.

BAILEY: I just loved working with my sons every day and I said, ‘To heck with advertising. I’m gonna change gears and work with my sons every day.'

After more than 20 years, Bailey and his sons have restored 80 Civil War-era buildings.

One of those sons is 22-year-old Jarin—the baby of the family. He’s the last remaining son to work with the company.

JARIN: That’s been my favorite part about working with reclaimed lumber, is you can take something that is, sometimes, in a barn stall and then turn it into something beautiful. That’s my favorite part about this home.

And Bailey? Now at 66 years old, he’s going through another career transition…into consulting. He wants to teach young couples how to build homes debt-free, from reclaimed lumber. And he wants to help others restore historic buildings.

His latest job is helping Lakeview Springs—a Christian camp—turn a cabin from the eighteen-hundreds into a Welcome Center.

Making something old into something new again.

BAILEY: They have every interest in this building being here until it’s no longer needed. Which will be when Christ returns.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Travis Kircher, in Corydon and Lanesville, Indiana.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Wednesday, April 19th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: And I’m Paul Butler. This time of year, many colleges and universities are in the home stretch, winding down their spring semesters. For students and professors, summer jobs and beach vacations seem just around the corner.

But for one unique college in Florida, the hard work to reverse cultural trends is just getting started. Here’s Commentator Janie B. Cheaney.

JANIE B. CHEANEY, COMMENTATOR: In the heady days of June 1962, the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) met for their first convention outside Port Huron, Michigan. They produced a manifesto, the Port Huron Statement, that would have wide-ranging effects.

The document begins, “When we were kids the United States was the wealthiest and strongest country in the world,” but these wised-up kids now recognized the corporate soullessness, the Jim-Crow injustice, and the greed of the military-industrial complex in this supposed “golden age.” Apocalyptic urgency spurred them to ask urgent questions. Such as, “if we wanted to change society, how would we do it?” Answer: The University.

The potential was enormous. What other institution possessed the social influence, the openness, the adaptability, and the resources, all in one place? What better incubator for the “new left” to plant its ideas and distribute them throughout the nation?  

The Statement makes no mention whatsoever of the value of family, neighborhood, or church. All solutions are political. All remedies should come from the state, guided by enlightened university grads.

We can see how that worked out. Critics across the political spectrum are increasingly alarmed about the hard-left academic tilt that stifles free thought and expression. Correcting the tilt through special endowments has had little effect. Conservative exceptions like Hillsdale College are few. Brave start-ups like the University of Austin are encouraging but daunting. Now Florida offers another approach.

New College of Florida began as a small, private, unconventional institution that became part of the University system in the 1970s when the state assumed its debts. It’s still small and unconventional, but earlier this year Governor DeSantis replaced six members of its board of trustees with conservative academics and activists—including Christopher Rufo, who has made a name for himself exposing woke trends in corporate board rooms and university campuses. The trustees replaced the College president with a former (Republican) speaker of the Florida House and abolished the College’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion office.

Bold, decisive, brazen, chilling, chaotic—the adjectives rolled in. Is New College standing athwart the long leftward march shouting “Stop!”, or is it a fascist fist slamming down on free thought?

More than anything, it’s an experiment. Specifically, a political experiment, and that’s where it gets dicey. True, New College is a public institution that should serve the public, not the boutique fads of intellectual elites. But even organizations like the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) caution that any makeover “must be careful not to trade one orthodoxy for another,” adding ominously, “we await further details on the proposal.”

Rufo claims he only wants New College to be open to all views. Without some orthodoxy, though, any institution will drift, almost always in a leftward direction. A clear, consistent vision that avoids the messianic language and political focus of Port Huron would signal a promising start. But only a start. Real renewal is spiritual, not political.

I’m Janie B. Cheaney.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: a mom sued her local school over a counselor who encouraged her daughter to keep her in the dark about the daughter’s gender transition. We’ll talk about parental rights in education.

And, another in our series of pro-life answers to pro-abortion questions.

That and more tomorrow. I’m Nick Eicher.

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: And I’m Paul Butler.

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio.

WORLD’s mission is biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

The Psalmist says: “I will not set before my eyes anything that is worthless. I hate the work of those who fall away; it shall not cling to me. A perverse heart shall be far from me; I will know nothing of evil.”

Psalm 101 verses 3 and 4.

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.