The World and Everything in It: April 7, 2026

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MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

Details from a daring rescue mission in Iran.

CAINE: We will always come find you, and we will always bring you home.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Also, the astronauts of Artemis II make their way around the moon.

And Carl Trueman on what happens when a culture rejects God’s design.

TRUEMAN: If the problem we face today is desecration, then the answer is consecration.

And WORLD Commentator Daniel Suhr on the quiet cogs in the wheels of justice.

REICHARD: It’s Tuesday, April 7th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. 

I’m Mary Reichard.

MAST: And I’m Lindsay Mast. Good morning!

REICHARD: Time now for the news with Kent Covington.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Iran: Trump ultimatum » Iran has until tonight to open the Strait of Hormuz… or face massive U.S. strikes on its infrastructure. That’s the word from President Trump, reiterating that threat once again at the White House on Monday.

TRUMP: Where every bridge in Iran will be decimated by 12 o'clock tomorrow night, where every power plant in Iran will be out of business, burning, exploding, and never to be used again.

The Iranian regime has used terrorist strikes and the threat of them to largely close the Hormuz Strait to shipping since the start of the war.

Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut warned that even partial strikes on those kinds of targets could kill thousands of innocent people, calling it — quote — "a war crime."

Trump has issued similar ultimatums before, pulling back each time after citing diplomatic progress.

Ceasefire talks involving Pakistan and Oman are still ongoing.

Iran: Rescue » Also at the White House on Monday, the president and other top officials touted that daring weekend rescue of two American aviators from a downed F-15 fighter jet in Iran.

TRUMP: A rescue that's very historic. It'll go down to the books.

Joint Chiefs Chairman General Dan Caine said it sends a message to every American in uniform:

CAINE: That you will not be left behind. We will always come find you and we will always bring you home.

The pilot was recovered quickly, but the weapons systems officer spent nearly 48 hours evading Iranian forces. Earlier information suggested he sustained serious injuries, but officials now say he escaped with only a sprained ankle.

More on that rescue later in the program.

Israel latest » In Israel:

SOUND: [Sirens in Netanya]

Residents of the coastal resort city of Netanya rushed to shelters Monday..as air raid sirens warned of incoming Iranian missiles. No injuries were reported. That wasn't the case though in the northern Israeli city of Haifa:

SOUND: [Haifa body recovery]

...where crews on Monday recovered the bodies of an elderly couple and two others who died when authorities say an Iranian missile hit a residential building overnight.

One resident of Haifa told reporters:

SIMHON: We try to keep living normally to do the things we are used to do and to try to lift the spirit, and we're not, we're not leaving Haifa . We want to stay here, we stay here. It's safer than driving outside of the city, and yeah.

Meanwhile…

NETANYAHU: [Speaking Hebrew]

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday claimed the Israeli military destroyed Iran's largest petrochemical plant. He says Israel continues to destroy Iran's factories and kill its senior leaders.

Brief Artemis update teaser » The Artemis II mission crew is on its way home after circling around the moon and traveling deeper into space than anyone has ever traveled.

The crew on Monday snapped pictures of the far side of the lunar surface in the first deep space mission in more than 50 years.

We will also have more on that story later a little bit later.

Death toll from extreme weather in Afghanistan » Flooding and landslides have killed at least 110 people across Afghanistan, with seven people still missing and more dangerous weather on the way. WORLD’s Kristen Flavin reports.

KRISTEN FLAVIN: Afghanistan’s Disaster Management Authority says storms have been battering most of the country for nearly two weeks, destroying more than 200 miles of roads, and damaging or levelling thousands of homes.

The military airlifted two people to safety in the western province of Herat after they were trapped by floodwaters.

Two major highways remain closed by landslides and floods, including the main road linking Kabul to the Pakistani border. Authorities have issued more weather warnings for toda, urging people to stay away from rivers and flood-prone areas.

For WORLD, I’m Kristen Flavin.

Steve Bannon » Former Trump advisor Steve Bannon has won a Supreme Court order that’s expected to lead to the dismissal of his criminal conviction for refusing to testify to Congress. The justices on Monday threw out an appellate ruling upholding Bannon’s conviction for defying a subpoena from the House committee that investigated the Capitol riot.

The move frees a trial judge to act on the Republican administration’s pending request to dismiss Bannon’s conviction and indictment.

The dismissal would be largely symbolic. Bannon already served a four-month prison term after a jury convicted him of contempt of Congress in 2022.

I'm Kent Covington.

Still ahead, a closer look at that daring rescue mission in Iran. Plus, the Artemis II mission crew set a new deep space record while rounding the moon.

This is The World and Everything in It.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: It’s Tuesday, the 7th of April.

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

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

First up: a daring rescue.

President Trump and the heads of the Department of War and the Central Intelligence Agency yesterday laid out the details of the weekend rescue of two American aviators in Iran.

HEGSETH: In two extraordinary combat search-and-rescue operations deep inside enemy territory in Iran, our warriors executed missions of breathtaking skill, courage, and precision.

MAST: Iranian forces shot down an F-15E Strike Eagle on Friday. The pilot and weapons specialist on board both ejected from the plane, leaving them behind enemy lines.

The rescue of the pilot involved a 7 hour daylight mission over Iran by helicopter.

REICHARD: But the weapons specialist on board landed a significant distance away, and was injured in the process.

TRUMP: Despite the peril, the officer followed his training and climbed into the treacherous mountain terrain and started climbing toward a higher altitude, something they were trained to do in order to evade capture. He scaled cliff faces, bleeding rather profusely, treated his own wounds, and contacted American forces to transmit his location."

MAST: That made getting to him more difficult. But CIA Director John Ratcliffe called it a “no-fail” mission.

RATCLIFFE: The CIA possesses unique capabilities that only the President can deploy. Some of these capabilities fall under covert action authorities. And because covert means exactly that, I’m not going to tell you everything that you want to know.

Even with specialized tools and operators, he compared the task to hunting for a single grain of sand in the desert.

RATCLIFFE: CIA executed a deception campaign to confuse the Iranians who were desperately hunting for our airmen. On Saturday morning, we achieved our primary objective by finding and providing confirmation that one of America's best and bravest was alive and concealed in a mountain crevice, still invisible to the enemy, but not to the CIA.

REICHARD: Secretary of War Pete Hegseth recounted the first message received from the weapons officer:

HEGSETH: “God is good.” in that moment of isolation and danger, his faith and fighting spirit shone through.

A massive rescue mission to retrieve him got underway. The President said it involved 155 aircraft.

TRUMP: 4 bombers, 64 fighters, 48 refueling tankers, 13 rescue aircraft, and more.

Once the weapons officer was found, getting everyone out involved a contingency plan. Planes meant to evacuate the crews got stuck in the wet sand of a rudimentary landing strip. The President said three more were waiting.

TRUMP: 15-minute intervals, one load out. One load out. One load out. It happened. we were watching and we said it's amazing. In many ways, I was almost more impressed by the contingency that we had than the fact that if we had a runway or decent soil.

MAST: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Air Force General Dan Caine said the planes flew out protected by tactical drones and strike craft. He said the rescue made good on a promise to members of the military…

CAINE: This was an incredibly dangerous mission. Incredibly dangerous undertaking but a filled promise made to every American war fighter that you will not be left behind.

but chalked the success up to the aviators’ tenacity.

CAINE: The single most important contributor to a successful rescue operation is the spirit of attack inside the heart of that downed aviator. Their will to survive, their will to evade, their will to recover is everything.

MAST: Joining us now, is Andrew Miller. He’s a retired Lieutenant Colonel from the United States Marines Corps and Air National Guard. He served for over 20 years in roles that included training and instructing. Lt. Col. Miller, good morning!

ANDREW MILLER,: Good morning, Lindsay.

MAST: The rescue mission sounds remarkable. I want to start at the beginning of what you can tell us about what goes through a soldier’s mind when they know they’ve been hit and need to get out. How does someone psychologically prepare for something like this–separated from the pilot, on your own, and having to make life-or-death-or-possible-Prisoner-of-War decisions alone?

MILLER: Well, the first thing that you have in mind is at least when I was in the service, I had complete confidence that I'd be rescued. I had confidence in my wingman that I was flying with, that he was going to do everything in his power to keep me safe. And then follow that up with the, the CSAR rescue teams, the combat search and rescue teams. They're the elite of the elite in the world and they will do whatever possible and anything possible to get to you. And then finally, I had just confidence in the military writ large. So with that in mind, I was going to do my part to make their job as easy as possible.

MAST: I want to talk a little bit about this from the rescuer side. In 1980 the U.S. lost 8 soldiers and some equipment trying to get the American hostages out of Iran. So talk about the attitude and training from that side because suddenly the mission gets a lot bigger and in many ways exponentially more serious in terms of potential for lives lost.

MILLER: Well, I would imagine—not being a part of the combat search and rescue squadrons, but I would imagine that they train their entire lives on a mission that they hope they never do. Everything has to go right because much like you see the incident that happened in Iran back in 1980, things can go wrong, go sideways really quick, and the entire mission can fall, whether it's an equipment breakdown or bad weather or something along those lines. So you have to be trained to a high level in order that this one person, that all these resources are being provided to, can come home safe.

MAST: The weapons officer was a colonel. With that high of a rank, does that change how much of an imperative it is to rescue him given the level of classified information he might know?

MILLER: I don't think so because really any member of the United States military that's in that scenario, they are all the same worth in the military's eyes. They all have important information in their head, but also they are important just from the sense of they're an American serviceman. We need to get them back before the enemy gets them.

MAST: Can you speak how unique that is to the American military mindset versus other places, other countries?

MILLER: Well, I think it first starts from the idea that it's an all volunteer force, right? So the idea that if you're going to volunteer to join the military and put yourself in harm's way, then I would imagine that you would want, or at least I did, that if I volunteered for these dangerous missions, that the military is going to support getting me back. So we owe this to him as well.

MAST: What else as you're reading and learning about this rescue mission, what else stands out to you?

MILLER: There's been times in the military's past where, you know, the, you know, we talked about the Iranian mission, the embassy in Iran, where hostages were paraded out in front of the cameras. I've seen the video of pilots that were captured and held in the Hanoi Hilton back in the Vietnam War area. I think the United States Military and the United States in general has learned from those incidents that that is not a winning strategy for us as a country. If we're going to dedicate our most valuable resource, men and women that are going into these dangerous missions, then we should be equally as willing to dedicate resources to rescuing them as well and not allowing things like that to happen. You know in the streets of Mogadishu a pilot was dragged through the streets. The emotions that go through me just thinking about those items even though it's been some time since I was in the military Certainly incurred would encourage me to do whatever is possible if I was in that scenario to protect, save, rescue an airman, a soldier, an operator that's on the ground.

MAST: Andrew Miller is a retired Lieutenant Colonel from the United States Marine Corps and Air National Guard. He served for over 20 years in roles that included training and instructing. Lieutenant Colonel Miller, thank you so much.

MILLER: Thank you very much.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: A deadline looms for Iran.

President Trump on Monday laid out the stakes for Iran if it does not make a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz by this evening.

TRUMP: Every power plant in Iran will be out of business, burning, exploding and never to be used again. I mean complete demolition by 12 o'clock, and it will happen over a period of four hours if we want it to. We don't want that to happen.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Joining us now to talk about it is Janaten Sayeh. He focuses on Iranian domestic affairs and the Islamic Republic’s regional influence at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Janaten, good morning.

JANATAN SAYEH: Good morning, great to be with you.

MAST: Janaten, you’re from Iran. Talk to us about the Iranian perspective as this deadline looms. The Trump administration says the events of the weekend have left the country humiliated. What’s your sense about whether the regime would agree?

SAYEH: The regime would of course try its best to save face domestically, but ultimately the videos speak for themselves. The heavy loss of regime figures also are a great indicator of loss. If the Supreme Leader is gone, his son is nowhere to be seen, many of the IRGC commanders have been eliminated or in hiding—that is indicative of a regime that is paranoid and is weakened. On the other hand, it does boost anti-regime morale. Of course, Iranians on the ground continue to see this as a war against their oppressors. But that said, any threats that go after Iranian critical infrastructure or bridges or petrochemicals would send the wrong message to the average Iranian. But ultimately, this is an avenue that the Islamic Republic has opened up by closing the Strait of Hormuz. So Trump's remarks are mostly reactionary, meaning once the regime goes after economic targets, Israel and the United States can only respond the same way.

REICHARD: Over the weekend, President Trump posted a threatening message for Iran on social media. He's had to do some damage control on it. It included obscenities and some religious mockery. I am curious, we've seen how that goes over here in America a bit. How does that go over in Iran? How did they read a message like that?

SAYEH: You pointed out two components. One was the humorous angle of ridiculing some of the ideology of the Islamic Republic. And that is the best way to resonate with Iranians. Of course, being oppressed by Islamism, they are the first to defend freedom of speech when it comes to countering Islamism. It goes a long way with them. And I do remember growing up there, to see that there is a president out there that hears our voices and knows what our concerns and grievances are and knows what is the best way to signal that diplomatically, of course resonates greatly.

On the other hand, threatening critical infrastructure is a double-edged sword. On one hand, there is an understanding that this is an Islamic Republic that is embedding itself in civilian infrastructure and there's only one way to go about it. On the other hand, you want to ensure that should there be a new government in Tehran, you want them to have the resources and assets to stand on their own. But as an Iranian, talking to folks on the ground as often as I do, comes down to one main sentiment, which is that Iranians can rebuild all this infrastructure, but they cannot revive the tens of thousands that have been killed and are getting executed daily on sham political trials.

MAST: So you think President Trump still has the respect of the Iranian people?

SAYEH: Without a doubt, so long as the campaign is ongoing and the message is clear that they are going after regime officials and military infrastructure or facilities that enable Tehran's kleptocracy to prevail. Ultimately, when we talk about petrochemicals, for instance, or we talk about bridges, these are all assets that the regime exploits. They use the same bridges to transfer munitions and personnel.

They use petrochemicals to launder money and of course they've monopolized every corner of Iran's economy. So to the average Iranian, it's debatable whether any of these infrastructure was benefiting them to begin with. Of course the situation is less than ideal, but we have to remember Iranians are still very desperate, but they're eager for change.

So ultimately comes down to how messaging toward them is being carried out. Few instances here and there are not going to change the overall image. And as the president noted on February 28th, he was the only American president willing to aid the Iranian people. And that signal in itself is strong enough that a few tweets here and there are not going to change anything systemically.

REICHARD: Janaten Sayeh focuses on Iranian domestic affairs and the Islamic Republic's regional influence at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Janaten, thank you so much.

SAYEH: Thank you so much for having me.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Up next, a new record in space flight.

The astronauts on the Artemis II mission traveled farther into space on Monday than any other humans have gone. They snapped pictures of the moon and scoped out a place for NASA to land a spacecraft in the future.

WORLD’s Mary Muncy reports.

MARY MUNCY: The four astronauts on the newly christened Integrity spacecraft dimmed the lights and aimed their cameras at the moon as they waited to break the record.

Then mission control came on the radio again:

MISSION CONTROL: On April 15, 1970 during the Apollo 13 mission, three explorers set the record for the farthest distance humans have ever traveled from our home planet… Today, for all humanity, you're pushing beyond that frontier. Integrity over to you.

CAPTIAN WISEMAN: From the cabin of Integrity here, as we surpass the furthest distance humans have ever traveled from planet Earth, we do so in honoring the extraordinary efforts and of our predecessors… but we most importantly choose this moment to challenge this generation and in the next to make sure this record is not long lived.

The crew planned to travel over 250,000 miles away from the earth. That’s about two thousand miles past Apollo 13’s record. As of last evening, NASA had not confirmed the exact distance traveled.

For the next few hours, the Integrity crew took pictures of the moon from about 4,000 miles away.

ASTRONAUT: It is blowing my mind. What you can see with the naked eye on the moon right now, it's just unbelievable.

NASA says the human eyes of the astronauts may be able to pick up different aspects of the moon’s surface than their cameras can. So they documented everything they saw.

At 6:44 Eastern Time, the Astronauts approached the far side of the moon and entered a zone where they couldn’t communicate with Mission Control.

MISSION CONTROL: It's a privilege to witness you carrying the fire past our farthest reach. Thank you, Godspeed.

ASTRONAUT: Thank you for that, Jenny… Christ said, in response to what was the greatest command that it was to love God with all that you are, and he also said the second is equal to it, and that is to love your neighbor as yourself. And so as we prepare to go out of radio communication, we're still to feel your love from Earth and to all of you down there on earth and around Earth. We love you from the moon.

For about 40 minutes, the astronauts were completely cut off. They could not communicate with — or even see their home planet.

During that time, they reached their farthest point away from earth and their closest point to the moon.

And at around 7:25 pm, as the astronauts gazed out the windows of their Orion capsule, Earth reemerged from behind the moon.

ASTRONAUT: Houston, Integrity. Com check.

MISSION CONTROL: Integrity, we have you loud and clear.

ASTRONAUT: Houston we have you the same. And it is so great to hear the earth again.

On Sunday, the four celebrated Easter. Pilot Victor Glover is a Christian and shared a message from space.

GLOVER: I'm trying to tell you, just trust me, you are special in all of this emptiness.

He says seeing Earth from space made him realize how few differences there are between nations and cultures, and that living together on one planet is special.

GLOVER: This is a whole bunch of nothing, this thing we call The Universe. You have this oasis, this beautiful place that we get to exist together.

The crew now heads back toward Earth with plans to splash down in the Pacific Ocean on Friday off the coast of San Diego.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Mary Muncy.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Reports of the death of the world’s oldest living land animal were greatly exaggerated.

Jonathan—the giant tortoise believed to be about 193 years old—is alive and well on the island of St. Helena.

Local officials calling word to the contrary “a hoax”, the false report spreading quickly on, you guessed it, April Fool’s Day.

And as these things so often do, the fake story was halfway round the world before truth even had its pants on.

The post drew millions of views—and an outpouring of condolences. People meant well.

As for Jonathan, now he’s outlived empires, wars, and internet rumors too.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Tuesday, April 7th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: What makes us human.

The first chapter of the Bible records that: “...God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them...” Our guest today says that by rejecting that one fact, modern man has spiralled into the current crisis of falling church attendance, rising cases of suicide, and plummeting birth rates.

REICHARD: Carl Trueman’s new book, “The Desecration of Man: How the Rejection of God Degrades Our Humanity,” lays out that case, and offers some ideas for what true re-consecration might look like. Trueman is a professor of biblical and theological studies at Grove City College, and a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and he joins us now.

MAST: Carl, good morning!

CARL TRUEMAN: Great to be here, thanks for having me on.

MAST: The term disenchantment has been appearing more frequently over the last few years. Hear it particularly in discussions among those who are pondering the evidence of Western civilization's decline. But you wrote a whole book to say that perhaps the better term is desecration. Can you explain that?

TRUEMAN: Yeah, I think disenchantment, which is a term popularized in the wake of Max Weber early in the 20th century, captures something of the modern experience. We tend to feel these days that we are numbers. We tend to feel that we're treated as categories. We lack the feeling that the world has depth and mystery in a way that the previous generations did, but it doesn't really explain some of the things that are happening today. And in the book, I look, for example, at the language surrounding abortion, which has moved for its advocates have said it should be safe, legal and rare to being something that is to be shouted and boasted about. And I think that you can explain the former with disenchantment, but the latter, there's something deeper going on. And ultimately as human beings, fallen human beings, what we want to do is to declare our liberation from God. And therefore the modern project, the modern project of liberation really requires a kind of desecration, a rebellion against God in order for us to feel truly authentic and truly liberated.

MAST: You talk a good deal in the book about technology, and I don't think you're anti-technology, but you say that our own physical and intellectual limitations have seemingly become problems to be defeated through innovation, technological innovation. So I want to talk a little about how we can establish a clear moral framework to distinguish between technology that, and if we're just talking about medicine here, that legitimately heals the body and technology that crosses into the technology that crosses the line into what you might call the realm of, and I love this term, the meat Lego.

TRUEMAN: Yeah, that's actually Mary Harrington's term. I wish I'd coined it, but it was Mary that did that. Yeah, I think that the question of technology is a significant one. As you say, I'm not opposed to technology at all. We're interviewing over the internet at the moment. Clearly, I'm deeply embedded in a technological world, but I want to encourage people, in particular Christians, to think critically about the way they use technology. Is the technology that's being developed, for example, in the sphere of medicine, is it something that allows us to restore what it means to be normatively human, or is it something that leads us to aspire to transcend what it means to be human or go beyond what it means to be human? For example, if a child is born with one leg, I see no problem in a technological solution that allows the child to grow another leg in the future, to have two legs. The normative humanity is being restored. But if we use that same technology to grow a third leg, something fundamental about what it means to be human is being transformed. So really, I'm worried that Christians in particular have not thought critically about how they use technology. And we've allowed technology to reshape what we think it means to be human.

MAST: I want to talk a little bit about young people, young Christians in particular. You write that transgression of that once considered sacred has become the primary task of the cultural elites rather than just an accidental outcome of social forces. So given that many young people, many young Christians aspire to enter elite institutions, how can they remain faithful to their convictions?

TRUEMAN: Good question. Well, I think first of all, they need to be well grounded in a local church. To put it simply, if the problem we face today is desecration, then the answer is consecration. Where do we find ourselves consecrated? It's in the teaching and the worship and the practice of Christianity within the church community. So for young people out there wanting to move into the realm of the cultural movers and shakers, say, you don't stand a chance unless you're well-grounded in a local church. Secondly, I think that the time is ripe in some ways for the presentation of an alternative picture. Another of the things that lies in the background to me writing the book is the number of intellectuals over the last few years who've begun to take religion seriously again. And I think that provides a tremendous opportunity to our young people that they can have conversations with elite culture makers that I couldn't have had when I was a younger person. So I think be grounded in the local church and then seize the conversations and the opportunities that come your way.

MAST: You write a lot towards the end of the book about the importance of that local community worship. We are in a culture that is characterized by very personalized non-communal experiences. Talk about how the rituals of the church practically shape the moral imagination of members who probably spend the majority of their week immersed in a very desecrated, as you say, self-centered world.

TRUEMAN: Yeah, well one very, very simple way, and this was quite a surprise to me when I researched into it, is in the church we tend to sing communally. It's one of the only contexts today where human beings sing communally. And there's been sociological research done that indicates that anybody who sings communally, if you're part of a choir, for example, will instinctively feel more connection to the people around them. In other words, singing communally makes you less autonomous, makes you feel more responsible for others, makes you feel more dependent upon others, restore something, I think, of that biblical vision of what it means to be a human being. So that would be one very simple way in which the church does that. Of course, there are other ways. In the book, I talk about the importance of doctrine of understanding what the Christian faith stands for and how that doctrine can shape the liturgy so that going through the drama of the liturgy each week shapes our imagination. And also how that plays over into hospitality. If the problem today is that we are autonomous and we tend to think of ourselves as sovereign and supreme, where is it that we can engage with other people, give ourselves to other people in a way that makes us feel more human and makes them feel more human. I've said one very simple way is opening our homes to other people in hospitality. I don't remember many lectures, if any lectures at all, from when I was a university student. I do remember spending time socially with professors. Why? Because that was when my humanity and their humanity were most richly developed, I would say.

MAST: Well, Carl Trueman is a professor at Grove City College, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and the author of his latest book, The Desecration of Man: How the Rejection of God Degrades Our Humanity. Carl, thank you so much for your time.

TRUEMAN: It’s been a pleasure. Thanks for having me on.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Lindsay Mast.

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

When we think about how government works, we tend to picture elections, court rulings, and big speeches. But a lot of the real work happens in places you don’t typically see.

Here’s WORLD Opinions commentator Daniel Suhr.

DANIEL SUHR: When most people think about the Department of Justice, they think about the attorney general, or whatever case is dominating cable news that week.

They probably do not think about the Office of Legal Counsel.

If you want to understand how governing actually happens, you have to look in places like this—offices that operate outside the spotlight, where policy gets translated into action.

OLC serves as the executive branch’s in-house law firm. When the president or federal agencies face a difficult legal question—what they can do, what they cannot do—they turn to this office. Its opinions do not make law on their own. But they help establish the legal framework that allows policy to move forward.

At his Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing, nominee T. Elliott Gaiser described the office’s role this way:

GAISER The functions of OLC date to the Judiciary Act of 1789, and it has served to uphold the rule of law and the separation of powers into the modern era by issuing opinions and answering legal questions according to the best reading of the law.

And in recent months, that framework has been moving policy in a distinctly conservative direction.

Take a familiar example: the federal Lifeline program—the one critics dubbed the “Obamaphone” program.

Now, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr is making sure benefits go only to those lawfully entitled to receive them. That means no dead recipients. And no ineligible noncitizens.

But that effort depends on a legal foundation. And part of that foundation comes from the Office of Legal Counsel—through opinions correctly concluding that certain federal benefits programs are limited to citizens and lawful long-term residents.

Here’s how Gaiser puts it:

GAISER: When you're a law clerk, your first task is to do your best to state the law in a way that the judge can use your work, and you're not the decider. You’re there to do research, to provide your independent, candid and honest view of the law. And should I be so fortunate to be confirmed …, that would be my primary aim to always provide the … legal advice that I could give.

There are other examples of the office’s impact.

OLC has concluded that race-based education grant programs cannot stand under the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection, especially following the Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions.

In another case, OLC withdrew a prior opinion that allowed abortion in VA medical facilities—arguing that Congress had already made clear that the VA may not provide abortions.

And OLC has cleared the way for lawful gun owners to ship firearms through the mail—reasoning that these longstanding restrictions could not be squared with the nation’s history and tradition of firearm regulation.

None of these decisions, on their own, dominate the news cycle.

But taken together, they show how governing actually works.

Let me put it this way: Campaign promises do not implement themselves. They have to be translated into actions that are legally defensible that turn the president’s priorities into policy.

That may not make headlines.

But it is one of the places where the real work of governing gets done—quietly, and often out of view.

For WORLD, I’m Daniel Suhr.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Tomorrow: we’ll talk politics on Washington Wednesday with Hunter Baker. And, parliamentary elections in Hungary. We’ll have a report. 

That and more tomorrow.

I’m Lindsay Mast.

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

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 Bible says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” —John 1:1-5

Go now in grace and peace.

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