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The World and Everything in It: April 4, 2024

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WORLD Radio - The World and Everything in It: April 4, 2024

The Justice Department arrests members of a drug cartel near the U.S.-Mexico border, scientists to study the sun and Earth during Monday’s total solar eclipse, and combating rising crime by installing security cameras. Plus, space junk crashes into a home in Florida, Cal Thomas on the costs of going soft on crime, and the Thursday morning news


Houston Police Chief Troy Finner speaks during a news conference in Houston, Texas, on April 1. Getty Images/Photo by Mark Felix/AFP

PREROLL: The World and Everything in It is made possible by listeners like us. I am Tatum Bleckley, a third grade student at Veritas Classical School in Richmond, Virginia. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. I hope you enjoy today's program.


MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning! The southern border is threatening national security in many ways. We’ll talk to a former national security advisor.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Also, what makes Monday’s total eclipse worth taking time to see in person.

And neighborhoods using cameras to catch criminals worry homeowners about their own privacy.

BUSHELL: We had four incidents in the last six months and all of them involved stolen cars or stolen license plates.

And WORLD commentator Cal Thomas on the failure to support our protectors, the police.

BROWN: It’s Thursday, April 4th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

REICHARD: And I’m Mary Reichard. Good morning!

BROWN: It’s time for the news with Kent Covington.


KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Taiwan earthquake » In Taiwan, many are surveying the damage and some are mourning the deaths of loved ones after a powerful earthquake struck the island on Wednesday.

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre:

PIERRE: We certainly pray for all those who are affected, and the United States is standing by on the ready for any necessary assistance.

The 7.4 magnitude quake was the strongest to hit Taiwan in a quarter-century. It is blamed for at least nine deaths. And as of last night, at least 50 people were still missing.

The quake was centered in a rural area off the east coast. But it wreaked havoc about a hundred miles north in Taipei.

The owner of a pet shop recorded merchandise falling to the floor from rattling shelves.

SOUND: [Quake]

Tiles fell from older buildings, and some were even left listing at severe angles.

Gaza--Israel latest » President Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were scheduled to speak by phone today.

It’s the first conversation between the two leaders since an Israeli airstrike killed seven humanitarian aid workers in Gaza on Monday.

White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby:

KIRBY: We expect the Israelis to conduct a thorough, comprehensive, complete, and transparent investigation. We look forward to finding out the results of that investigation. And we’ll move on from there.

Netanyahu has promised that thorough investigation. Israel called it a tragic error and a case of mistaken identity.

SOUND: [Bodies transported]

The bodies of six of the aid workers killed in the incident were transported from Gaza to Egypt Wednesday.

Maryland shipping lanes » Commercial ships are once again sailing in and out of the Port of Baltimore after last week’s collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge cut off access to the port.

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore:

MOORE: We have opened two temporary channels that can and are focusing on supporting commercial traffic.

And they hope to open a third channel soon.

The port is a critical hub for U.S. trade and the new channels will partially alleviate supply chain concerns. But it’s still unclear when traffic in and out of the port will return to normal.

NATO weighs Ukraine relief plan » NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg says the alliance is weighing a plan aimed at providing Ukraine with long-term aid rather than depending on short-term measures.

STOLTENBERG: By doing that, we will give Ukraine what they need, and that is long-term, predictable, robust support. And that will also send a message to Moscow that they cannot wait us out.

Stoltenberg commenting there at a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels.

The idea is to have NATO coordinate Western military aid rather than the U.S. European Command.

The alliance would commit to financially supporting the plan over several years.

Pro-life protestors convicted » Four more pro-life demonstrators have been found guilty of a federal crime over a peaceful protest in 2021. WORLD’s Christina Grube reports.

CHRISTINA GRUBE: The four took part in a demonstration in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee. They were part of a group that sat in front of an abortion, sang hymns, and encouraged women on their way into the building … to reconsider their planned abortions.

The Justice Department prosecuted them under the so-called FACE Act which makes it a crime to obstruct the entrance of an abortion business.

They now face up to 6 months in prison and thousands of dollars in fines.

Defense lawyers argued that prosecutors showed no evidence that the demonstrators physically obstructed anyone.

Six other defendants from the sit-in were found guilty in January. They could face up to a decade each in prison.

For WORLD, I’m Christina Grube.

Disney shareholder's meeting » It will be business as usual at Disney after CEO Bob Iger and the company’s board won a proxy battle at Wednesday’s annual shareholder meeting.

They staved off an effort by former Disney CFO Jay Rasulo and investor Nelson Peltz to join the board of directors. Peltz, though, did speak during the meeting.

PELTZ: All we want is for Disney to get back to making great content and delighting consumers.

And he has said that means, among other things no longer injecting social activism into children’s programming.

Other shareholders also got a voice at the meeting, including Scott Shepard with the National Center for Public Policy Research:

SHEPARD: A clever pre-teen could have told you that making Disney synonymous with force-feeding radical gender ideology to small school children would send Disney’s core audience flooding away.

Disney’s pro-LGBT activism culminated in a political battle with the state of Florida over a parental rights law.

Over the past couple of years, the company has suffered the biggest box office bombs in its history, a shrinking subscriber base for its Disney+ streaming service … and even disappointing attendance at its parks.

I’m Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: Cracking down on the fentanyl supply chain. Plus, preparing for a total eclipse.

This is The World and Everything in It.


MARY REICHERD, HOST: It’s Thursday the 4th of April, 2024.

This is WORLD Radio and we thank you for listening! Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard

MYRA BROWN, HOST:  And I’m Myrna Brown.

First up on The World and Everything in It: our southern border.

The Department of Justice this week landed a major blow to a powerful Mexican drug operation … the Jalisco New Generation Cartel.

Alamdar Hamdani, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas, announced the bust. About two dozen suspected drug traffickers who operated out of the Houston area were taken into custody.

HAMDANI: Those charged are alleged to have sourced the drugs from Mexico, smuggled the drugs from Mexico across the border into the Southern District of Texas, into Houston and into places like Atlanta, Pensacola, New Orleans, Nashville, and Chicago.

REICHARD: Joining us now to talk about threats at the border is Anthony Ruggiero. He was a senior national security advisor to former President Donald Trump, and now leads the Nonproliferation and Biodefense Program for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Anthony, welcome back.

ANTHONY RUGGIERO: Well, thanks for having me. Good to be back.

REICHARD: This drug bust really shows the intensity of the border and drug problem. Twenty-three people arrested, with 16 suspects still at large. This one operation seized over a thousand pounds of meth, cocaine, heroin, pentobarbital and over twenty thousand fentanyl-laced pills. The Justice Department said all of those drugs were smuggled across the U.S. southern border. How is this happening?

RUGGIERO: Well, you're really seeing the core of the drug crisis right now, you know, layered on top of our border crisis, where you have drugs moving into the United States. And, you know, fentanyl gets a lot of the headnote headlines, and deservedly so since it's it's one of the leading killers, if not the leading killer of Americans 18 to 45. But there are other as you mentioned, meth and cocaine and heroin and other drugs that are that are either, you know, putting Americans into addiction or in some cases killing them.

REICHARD: I want you to connect the dots for us. I saw a piece that you wrote about this: China makes a lot of these precursors to drugs like Fentanyl. So how does it get here from there and who pays the middle men?

RUGGIERO: Yeah, this is the important part of the drug crisis, right? Americans are suffering. And China plays an important role in all of the different stages. So you think about the very beginning of the stage, right? As you asked, how do these, how are these drugs being made? If we're looking at fentanyl, precursors that are being shipped to Mexico, and then that's being created, and then it's being shipped to the United States. Then the issue is, so you have these drugs in the United States, and they're being bought by Americans, and then it's a cash business. And so how do the cartels get that money back into Mexico? Because it's not for free, they need that money to sustain this operation. And what you have is you have these innovative Chinese money laundering organizations that have stepped into the fold, have taken on a lot of the risk. Because when you're dealing with a money laundering operation and a drug operation, there's a chance for interdiction. And so those Chinese money launderers take that cash, U.S. cash, then they transfer it within the Chinese banking system, and then the cartels get their money back in Mexico. And so for the cartels, that's that's sort of almost the end for them. Then this money gets works its way back into the U.S. financial system, because you have Chinese citizens and others who cannot move this amount of money from China because of controls, and so they use it to buy real estate and pay for universities and other things. So you have this drug-laced money that is killing Americans, that is being laundered by the Chinese organizations and their banks, and is staying inside the United States, inside our financial system.

MR: It’s obvious that lax security at the border correlates to drug flow into the US. Talk more about that.

RUGGIERO: Right, I mean, obviously having, you know, issues at the border where, where people can come and go, and, you know, items come and go. There's a lot of seizures at the border. But I think we can all understand that, you know, last year, I think the number was the amount of fentanyl seized at the border around that area could have killed every American in the United States. But you know, they're obviously not getting everything. So there are, there there is fentanyl coming into the U.S. through that mechanism. You know, how do you stop the drugs coming in? You're using sanctions, using the Justice Department to go after the cartels, you're going after pill presses, because the other thing is when these fentanyl laced drugs are made, they're made to look like the real thing, right? They're illicit, but they look like the real thing. So they, they go after the pill presses. So they're doing that, they're at the front end of that cycle. But what we're not doing enough on is the following the money. And you know, Secretary Yellen, Treasury Secretary Yellen is supposed to go to China in the near future, I mean, that should be her number one priority. Americans are dying from this. China is playing a major role in this, they need to do more to stop it.

REICHARD: You’ve researched this matter for a long time. What options do we have to fight these criminal enterprises taking advantage of an insecure border?

RUGGIERO: Right, I, you know, I think there are ways to address this, I mean, you know, we've seen the Justice Department is using their tools. But, you know, when we look at a lot of these issues, you know, one of the things we see is that, sometimes an administration will will look at a subset of an issue and tackle that either because they think the broader issue is too complicated or, or for whatever reason. And you know, throughout my career in different phases and different subjects, I think there's always a benefit to going after the entire thing. And so, when we're talking about whether it's, you know, immigration or we're looking in this particular instance on the on the drug trafficking side, it seems that we are focused on a node of the problem and not the entirety of the problem. So you know, widen that aperture to address more of what we need to will pay dividends down the road.

REICHARD: Anthony Ruggiero is a senior fellow with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Anthony, thanks for joining us.

RUGGIERO: Thanks for having me.


MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: the solar eclipse.

On Monday, people from Mexico to Maine will have the rare opportunity to watch the moon cover the sun. Cities along the path of the eclipse have been preparing for a mass influx of visitors who hope to see it for themselves.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: According to estimates from eclipse cartographer Michael Zeiler at GreatAmericanEclipse.com, Texas could receive over a million visitors…while hundreds of thousands travel to Indiana and Ohio.

So, what makes this eclipse worth the effort to see?

Our producer Harrison Watters has the story.

HARRISON WATTERS: David DeFelice wasn’t sure what he’d do after retiring from a 38-year career at NASA. But he had an idea.

DAVID DEFELICE: I serve as a as an elder at Hope church, with the Christian Missionary Alliance in Brunswick, Ohio, and just felt God leading to do an event for the community there.

DeFelice previously worked in communications at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in nearby Cleveland, Ohio…a city with front row seats to Monday’s total eclipse.

DEFELICE: The path actually brings this eclipse through many more major metropolitan areas, from just outside San Antonio through Dallas, Fort Worth, Indianapolis, cities in Arkansas, over places like Niagara Falls, and Rochester, New York and into New England, so much greater ability for people to actually travel into the path of totality to see it.

The total eclipse will first be seen in Eagle Pass, Texas…just before 1:30pm Central Time. From there, it will cross the country and leave Maine at 4:30pm Eastern Time. DeFelice says for those who live near the path of totality, going the distance to watch it is worth it.

DEFELICE: You don't want to settle for even 99% eclipse, it's, the difference is the difference between night and day.

Because the earth and moon circle the sun on different paths and at different speeds, total solar eclipses don’t happen very often. And when they do, many occur over the ocean or other unpopulated parts of the earth. So with this eclipse so close to home, scientists at NASA have big plans to study it.

KORRECK: We'll be using rockets, planes and balloons, and on the ground observations to optimize the science return of the eclipse.

Kelly Korreck is NASA’s eclipse program manager. She and other department heads laid out plans during a press conference last week.

One focal point for study: the sun’s atmosphere—or corona. Pam Melroy is NASA’s Deputy Administrator.

MELROY: Things are happening with the corona that we don't fully understand. And the Eclipse gives us a unique opportunity to collect data that may give insights into the future of our star.

Heliophysicists, scientists who study the sun, generally use tools called coronagraphs to block the sunlight and study the atmosphere. But as Elsayed Talaat, the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, points out…

TALAAT: In a total eclipse, we see the corona in a way that not even coronagraphs can fully capture. This is why we call it nature's coronagraph.

The sun is just part of the scientific puzzle. Another question scientists hope to answer is how the total eclipse affects the earth’s ionosphere. Again, Kelly Korreck:

KORRECK: That layer is important as it's the one that our communication signals pass through. Disturbances in this layer can cause issues with GPS, and communications.

But not everyone on the ground will be looking at the sky. Some will be listening to the environment around them.

PIJANOWSKI: All of the sounds around you will be changing, I hope. I mean, that's my hypothesis.

Bryan Pijanowski is Director of the Center for Global Soundscapes at Purdue University. He and his students travel the world capturing the audio signatures of different environments. Back in 2017, Pijanowski was in Nashville when a total eclipse crossed from Oregon to South Carolina.

PIJANOWSKI: The birds that normally sing during the day started to quiet down. I mean, it just made a lot of sense. The insects like the crickets started chirping…it got cold. And the winds died down.

This time around, Pijanowski and his team have set up recording devices across the state of Indiana…in forests, near rivers…even in ponds.

PIJANOWSKI: To our knowledge, no one's recorded the sounds of underwater life. So we're going to be doing that…And then eventually we’ll come back to the lab and do a quick little analysis, we’ll run it through all of our routines, and see what we hear.

While many are approaching Monday’s eclipse with research top of mind, even NASA Administrator Bill Nelson recognizes that something more fundamental will take place as well.

NELSON: Eclipses have a special power. They move people to feel a kind of reverence for the beauty of our universe.

For DeFelice at Hope Church in Cleveland, that beauty is no accident. And it’s why the event he is putting together is called Glory in the Skies.

DEFELICE: You know, you read information from NASA, they talk about solar eclipses on Earth are a convenient coincidence, because the sun's diameter is 400 times larger than the Earth and the Sun 400 times farther away than the moon is, it's like, that's not a coincidence, you know, when, you know, having a Christian worldview, you can kind of see how God did that, and that’s not just an eclipse. The fact that we have laws of nature and that things are predictable points to a creator God who created the universe with uniformity and regularity that you can predict eclipses. And I think that all just shows forth God’s glory.

In order to watch even a partial eclipse safely, DeFelice says eclipse glasses are a necessity. NASA has details online for where to get glasses and binoculars…as well as instructions for home-made viewing tools. But for those watching the total eclipse, DeFelice has an important reminder.

DEFELICE: If you're looking at it…and you can't see anything anymore, it's time to take off your glasses, otherwise you'll miss it.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Harrison Watters.


OTERO: Is it heavy? Holy cow.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Something came crashing down through the roof of a home in Florida last month.

Homeowner Alejandro Otero at first thought maybe it came from space debris. Sound here from UPI:

OTERO: It almost hit my son. He was two rooms over and heard it all.

Eventually the family managed to pull a three inch long metal cylinder out of their floor, two stories down. Otero says the International Space Station was scheduled to expel debris… but it was supposed to burn up in the atmosphere.

OTERO: I was shaken. I was in disbelief. What are the chances of something landing on my house?

This week NASA said that the object probably came off the International Space Station. Nothing yet confirmed, though.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: That’ll be an interesting insurance claim… outta this world!

BROWN: It’s The World and Everything in It.


MYRNA BROWN, HOST:  Today is Thursday, April 4th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

Today on Concurrently: The News Coach Podcast, Kelsey Reed and Jonathan Boes explore the state of housing in America. What do rising home costs mean for our discipleship of kids and teens? Here’s a preview:

KELSEY REED: I'm thinking about how this has an effect on families, how it has an effect on what we're doing to raise children in this generation. That pressure of having two incomes, two working parents, that, again is overwhelming. It is unsettling to me to think about two parents outside of the home.

BOES: I think one of the things that we need to realize is that, as Christians, we are very concerned often with what it means to defend family in a culture that often wants to tear family apart. And some of the threats against family in today's, you know, kind of post-Christian world some of those threats are very obvious rates of divorce and changing ideas about sexuality. And those are the things that we often target as we need to protect the family from those things. But really, this issue of housing is an area where I believe the family needs defended, because if you cannot afford a home or if you cannot afford to be present with your children in your home, that has a real impact on the health of family.

You can hear the entire episode of Concurrently today wherever you get your podcasts. And find out more at concurrentlypodcast.com.

BROWN: Coming next on The World and Everything in It: neighborhood security.

All across the United States thousands of neighborhoods are fighting crime by buying cameras that snap a photo of every car that comes and goes.

The photos can help catch criminals with evidence. If someone steals a car, police can be notified in real time.

REICHARD: But does this go too far? WORLD senior writer Emma Freire has the story.

EMMA FREIRE: Alder Meadow is a small, affluent neighborhood in Auburn, Washington, a suburb of Seattle.

DON BUSHELL: It's a pretty nice neighborhood. The houses go for like a million 2, a million 3, a million 4. And they're pretty big houses.

That’s Don Bushell. He’s a lawyer, musician, and president of the local HOA. He has lived in Alder Meadow for 17 years and loves it.

BUSHELL: There’s owls, lots of owls. And, you know, I'll be in here playing music and as soon as I stop, they’re like singing with me.

In 2017, Alder Meadow installed a camera at the neighborhood entrance that snaps a photo of every car coming in. Thousands of HOAs across the country are doing the same thing, but Alder Meadow got a lot of local media attention.

NEWS ANCHOR: A small neighborhood in southern King county is trying to keep criminals away by snapping pictures of license plates.

That’s probably because many neighborhoods prefer to keep quiet about their use of these cameras, but Bushell is willing to talk about it in public.

Bushell was the driving force behind bringing the camera to Alder Meadow. It all started one afternoon in 2015. His wife came home not realizing a burglar was upstairs stealing cash and jewelry from her dresser.

BUSHELL: She parked the car in the garage and then came into the house and she heard our alarm system go beep beep. That meant somebody just opened the back door. So the guy who's ripping us off was leaving the house when my wife came in. And I'm not exactly sure, but I'm sure of one thing: my wife did a foot chase with the guy about 50 yards behind him. And he dropped some of the jewelry.

Afterward, Bushell connected with two other people who had been robbed by the same man. Using their home security cameras, they pieced together five out of six characters from the burglar’s license plate. Bushell took that to the police.

BUSHELL: So six months later, they had apprehended that guy and we showed up in court and, you know, spoke to the judge. Right before the guy went to prison for 13 months.

But homes in Alder Meadow continued getting burglarized. Bushell’s experience had taught him the value of a license plate in catching criminals. So in 2017 he suggested the HOA purchase a camera.

BUSHELL: I was shocked at the level of angst about it.

Residents worried a camera that records the comings and goings of their cars would violate their privacy.

Dave Maass understands their fears. Maass is director of investigations at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit that focuses on digital privacy.

DAVID MAASS: Law enforcement officers are required to get, in best case scenario, they're required to get an extensive amount of training before using license plate readers or accessing license plate reader data. And even then, abuses happen, breaches happen and problems happen and mistakes are made by police, even with all that training. And your average homeowner association is run by local members of the community with no law enforcement background, no training whatsoever before using this.

Maass says the best argument against placing these cameras in the hands of an HOA is the fact that, well, most people hate their HOA.

MAASS: And so the fact that you would like trust a body that you have so many issues with to begin with, with your privacy, with data about you, with this kind of powerful law enforcement grade technology, it just boggles my mind.

After the initial resistance, Alder Meadow residents had a meeting to talk through the concerns. Eventually they voted in favor of the camera and purchased one from a company called Flock Safety in Atlanta.

As president of the HOA, Don Bushell runs the system and praises its accuracy.

BUSHELL: It's a cool technology. The technology knows what kind of car it is. It'll say, oh, it's a 2016 Toyota sedan or something with the color. It'll be pitch black out, but it'll know it's gray. So it's pretty good. And it tells you how many times that vehicle has been in the neighborhood in the last 30 days. So if the vehicle's been in the neighborhood 10 times the last 30 days, it's probably not criminal activity because they're always coming in.

The plate reader system has two options. The HOA can keep the photos for itself and only share them with police after someone commits a crime. That’s what Alder Meadow voted for in 2017. But HOAs also have the option to give police automatic access.

That means the police get alerts if a vehicle that has been reported stolen enters the neighborhood, and they can respond quickly. Bushell thinks that’s a good idea because otherwise officers won’t act until a citizen calls 911.

BUSHELL: We had four incidents in the last six months and all of them involved stolen cars or stolen license plates. And we had another incident that was kind of even different. One of the incidents was somebody was firing a rifle in the middle of the night, shooting at deer that are out in the woods.

Bushell knows he needs the neighborhood's support before giving the police access and he won’t move ahead without it.

Bushell believes demand for license plate reading cameras is not going to decrease any time soon.

BUSHELL: This is a blue state. They heavily defunded the police. You know, the police agencies have less—I believe they have less—funding than they used to have and it kind of makes sense to use. Well, it makes great sense economically to use technology.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Emma Freire.


MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Thursday April 4th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown. Up next: WORLD commentator Cal Thomas on the recent murder of a New York City police officer.

CAL THOMAS: Another day, another dead police officer, another grieving widow.

With 136 cops killed in the line of duty in 2023, the familiarity of these incidents should breed more than contempt. Instead, we get meaningless condemnations from politicians who do not protect the public. Too many of them release career criminals, some of whom commit new crimes, including the murder of cops.

On March 25th, New York City cop Jonathan Diller was gunned down by a criminal with a lengthy rap sheet. Diller leaves behind a wife and a 1-year-old son. During the eulogy, Diller’s widow, Stephanie, asked this question:

DILLER AUDIO: How many more police officers and how many more families have to make the ultimate sacrifice before we start protecting them? I don’t wish this kind of pain on anyone. Jonathan lived his life doing good for people and it’s now time for people to do good for all the officers he represents.

In 2022, the widow of slain NYPD Detective Jason Rivera spoke during his memorial service. She said, “The system continues to fail us. We are not safe anymore. Not even the members of the service.”

Who is responsible for “the system”? It’s not only the people mishandling it, though they deserve plenty of blame. System members include New York Governor Kathy Hochul and New York County District Attorney Alvin Bragg. Bragg seems more concerned with “getting” Donald Trump rather than keeping dangerous criminals off the streets so New Yorkers feel safe and protected.

Other big cities with “woke” prosecutors are experiencing similar tragedies and disrespect for law enforcement. In Los Angeles, George Gascon is another failed DA who regularly gives get-out-of-jail-free cards to violent criminals. There are others. As the Heritage Foundation and other sources document, some of their campaigns were financed by billionaire lefty George Soros. Soros seems to have bought the view that criminals are unfortunates who haven’t had good breaks in life. Most people who might be said to have had bad breaks have not turned to crime, so that is a weak argument.

Those ultimately responsible are people who vote for governors and district attorneys who believe that criminals are victims and deserve second, third, even fourth chances.

What are voters thinking, especially when they have the power to change things by voting for law-and-order candidates? If Republican Lee Zeldin had won the last New York governor’s race, it is likely he would have worked to oust Bragg and others who coddle criminals. Too many people vote for a party label and not the policies of the candidate best positioned to fight crime. If voters don’t like what is happening, they should try something else. Otherwise, the blame is on them.

Women like Stephanie Diller should not be widows. Their husbands should be home with them and their children. They might not be widows if the criminals were in jail and the streets (and subways) were safe again.

Every Republican should make replacing soft-on-crime prosecutors, mayors, and governors a top issue in the November election. If not, expect more widows and fatherless children.

I’m Cal Thomas.


MARY REICHARD, HOST: Tomorrow: A new law in Scotland has troubling implications for free speech. We’ll talk about it with John Stonestreet on Culture Friday.

And, your listener feedback. That and more tomorrow.

I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

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 writes: “But I, O Lord, cry to you; in the morning my prayer comes before you.” —Psalm 88:13

Go now in grace and peace.


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.

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