The World and Everything in It: August 10, 2022

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

There’s fallout after the FBI raided Donald Trump’s home on Monday.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: That’s ahead on Washington Wednesday.

Also WORLD Tour with our reporter in Africa. Today, stories from Ghana, Colombia, Italy, and Iceland.

Plus faith on the football field.

REICHARD: And navigating the college campus with Christ in mind.

It’s Wednesday, August 10th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

BROWN: And I’m Myrna Brown. Good morning!

REICHARD: Now the news. Here’s Kent Covington.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: FBI raid reaction » Republican leaders are blasting the FBI raid of former President Trump’s home.

Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said the raid is unprecedented and called it “deeply concerning.”

MCDANIEL: I think most Americans right now are horrified. If this can happen to a former president of the United States, what can they do to an average American?

Dozens of FBI agents burst into Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort on Monday, searched his residence, and left with boxes of records and documents. The raid is believed to center on questions about whether Trump removed classified presidential documents from the White House.

GOP Sen. Roger Wicker says top law enforcement officials have a lot of explaining to do.

WICKER: FBI Director Wray and Attorney General Garland need to get in front of America today and explain to them and answer the tough questions.

As of Tuesday night, still no public explanation from the Justice Department.

Former President Trump called the raid a coordinated political attack against him.

Court: Trump tax returns must be handed to Congress » 

And on Tuesday, a federal appeals court ruled that Congress can access Trump’s tax returns. WORLD’s Anna Johansen Brown reports.

ANNA JOHANSEN BROWN, REPORTER: A three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld a lower court’s ruling.

That prior decision stated that the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee has broad authority to request Trump’s tax records, and the Treasury Department should hand them over.

The three appeals court judges agreed.

They rejected Trump’s argument that the request was problematic in part because it did not include a promise to keep the records confidential.

It wasn’t immediately clear whether Trump would appeal or if the case will be resolved before a new Congress takes office in January. If Republicans recapture control of the House in November, they could drop the request for records.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Anna Johansen Brown.

Chips and science act  » On the South Lawn of the White House Tuesday,

SOUND:[SIGNING]

Lawmakers and business leaders applauded as President Biden put pen to paper, signing the CHIPS Act into law.

The law will spend $280 billion dollars to boost high-tech manufacturing with more than $50 billion of that devoted to making semiconductor chips.

BIDEN: These companies see what I see that the future the chip venture is going to be made in America

A shortage of semiconductor chips has caused major supply issues for everything from computers to new cars. The bill passed with broad bipartisan support in hopes of making the United States less reliant on importing the chips from overseas.

Iran Nuclear deal » Iran and Western powers may be close to sealing a new nuclear deal. WORLD’s Josh Schumacher has more.

JOSH SCHUMACHER, REPORTER: At recent talks in Vienna, top diplomats from the US, Europe, and Iran reportedly crafted the “final text” of a pact that would replace the defunct 2015 nuclear deal.

E-U Foreign Affairs Chief Josep Borrell said the draft is complete and there is no more room for negotiation.

Negotiators did not disclose details of the newest proposal, but the 2015 agreement granted sanctions relief in return for Iran agreeing to slow its nuclear development and allow UN monitoring.

Critics of that deal and new diplomatic efforts say it won’t stop Iran from developing nukes.

Washington and the EU have signaled a willingness to move forward with the deal leaving its fate in the hands of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Josh Schumacher.

Arrest in killings of Muslim men » Albuquerque police say they’ve arrested a suspect in the murders of four Muslim men in the past nine months.

The killings have incited fear in Muslim communities nationwide. Ahmed Assad is president of the Islamic Center for New Mexico.

ASSAD: We’ve never gone through anything like this before. This is really a surreal time for us. We’re here of the safety of our children, our families.

Three of the killings happened in the past week.

Authorities asked citizens to watch out for a four-door Volkswagen sedan connected to the crimes. Police found that vehicle, and detained the driver.

As of Tuesday night, police had yet to charge the driver or identify the suspect.

Lamont Dozier dies »  SONG: BABY LOVE 

Motown songwriter Lamont Dozier died on Monday at his home in Arizona. He was 81.

He was part of a songwriting trio produced 25 top ten songs in the 1960s.

SONG: YOU CAN'T HURRY LOVE

Their chart toppers included “You Can’t Hurry Love” sung by The Supremes and “Reach Out (I’ll be there)” performed by Four Tops.

SONG: REACH OUT (I’LL BE THERE)

Dozier’s family said he died peacefully. He is survived by his six children.

Serena Williams to retire »

ANNOUNCER: And Serena Smashes Steffy’s record. It’s number 23.

Serena Williams said Tuesday that the “countdown has begun” to her exit from tennis.

The 23-time Grand Slam champion posted on Instagram that it’s time for her to focus on parenting and business ventures

She said she’s not “retiring,” per se, but at age 41, it’s time to move on to things that are more important to her.

Only one person—Margaret Court of Australia— has won more Grand Slam singles titles.

I'm Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: The fallout from the FBI’s raid of Donald Trump’s South Florida home.

Plus, faith on the football field.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Wednesday, the 10th of August, 2022.

So glad you’ve joined us for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Myrna Brown.

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

Today is Washington Wednesday, but instead of all eyes on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, all eyes are on 935 Pennsylvania Avenue, FBI headquarters.

On Monday night, dozens of FBI agents raided former President Donald Trump’s home in South Florida. According to his son Eric Trump, agents ransacked the Trump residence at the Mar-a-Lago resort and hauled away boxes of files and records.

BROWN: The FBI’s search is believed to center on files Trump took with him when he left the White House. The National Archive says those files may include classified presidential documents that must be preserved in Washington.

So what does this mean for the former president and for the FBI, which has come under fire in recent years over accusations of political partisanship within the bureau?

Joining us now to talk about it is Mark Caleb Smith. He’s a political science professor at Cedarville University, a Christian college in Cedarville, Ohio.

REICHARD: Good morning, professor, welcome back to the program.

SMITH: It’s always good to be with you.

REICHARD: What are we talking about here? What sorts of documents might Trump have taken that the National Archive would object to?

SMITH: We really don't know. And I want to be very clear here. I mean, we're operating with a little bit of speculation. But I think there are probably two kinds of records that they may be worried about. One would be classified information. Obviously, if there are security concerns there, they may be worried about that information, finding its way to another party that would make the United States vulnerable. And so there'd be a worry with classified material.

The other one would be information related to the President's time in office. We've really tried to since 1978, and the Presidential Records Act, we've really tried to preserve and maintain this record of the President's official duties while the President is in office. And so those things wouldn't be as legally problematic, obviously, compared to classified material. But it's also possible that that information contains matters relevant to criminal investigations and other things as well. And so we'll know more once we learn more about the the search warrants and what was in it precisely. But right now, that's my best guess.

REICHARD: What do presidents typically take with them when they do leave the White House?

SMITH: Presidents are certainly allowed to take personal correspondence, matters relating to their family, and other things, and maybe even information between them and other people that they work with that really aren't relevant to their official duties. But they're expected to preserve material that would give historians or scholars or other people sort of an insight into the workings of the White House itself. This law sort of harkens back to the Watergate era, Richard Nixon tried to take documents from his administration and destroy them. And this law really grew out of that conflict. So I think we have to assume that whatever we're looking at here, doesn't involve Mr. Trump's personal correspondence, but involves something else.

REICHARD: Is there any kind of precedent you can think of for an FBI raid on a former president’s home?

SMITH: You know, there's nothing even really remotely close. I guess you could say the closest that we've come was really the Watergate investigation that I just referred to. In there, Richard Nixon had a lot of conflict with the Senate that was investigating him at that point, as well as federal courts that had sort of subpoenaed material from the White House and demanded information, especially revolving around recordings in the Oval Office. Richard Nixon refused to turn that material over. Eventually, he gave some of the material but there is an 18 and a half minute gap in one of the audio recordings. And once that was discovered, and he really couldn't account for it that really began the end of the Nixon administration. So that was a conflict with the judiciary, with the Senate and with the President. This, you know, having the FBI execute a search warrant on a former president like this, there's really nothing like that we've ever seen before.

REICHARD: You know many of us will remember that Hillary Clinton had a private email server in her home, which allegedly contained classified government communications.

Professor, take us back to handling of that situation. How’s that different? What questions should the FBI answer with regards to it?

SMITH: You know, I think you've touched on a real key question here. If the FBI and the Department of Justice want to maintain legal credibility and political credibility. They have to appear to be sort of beyond and above politics. A lot of President Trump's supporters are going to point to Mrs. Clinton and say, “You know what, she didn't get prosecuted. There are real allegations there that she mishandled classified material. Why are the standards different here?” I really look forward to hearing the FBI and the DOJ talk about that, because at some point, I think they're going to have to, but let me give a couple of differences that emerge, I think, pretty quickly between Mrs. Clinton's case and Mr. Trump's case. One is and it may feel like a formality, Mrs. Clinton was not president at the time, she was not bound by the Presidential Records Act in the same way that Donald Trump was. And so you do see a difference there. With Mrs. Clinton, if I recall correctly, the real issue is whether or not her possession of the server was itself a violation of federal law. With Mr. Trump it’s whether or not the documents that he had reveals other criminal activity potentially. And so we have a slightly different legal question at work there, which the FBI could argue, creates a different standard for Mr. Trump, compared to Mrs. Clinton. And I think we have to assume to some degree, President Trump has not been very cooperative with this investigation, which led to the execution of the search warrant itself. And so it could be that his actions with DOJ investigators eventually provoked them to execute a search warrant, since he was unwilling to maybe provide or hand over information that he did indeed have. But again, you know, some of this is speculative, and hopefully, we'll know more concrete information soon.

REICHARD: And coming on the heels of the January 6 hearings, it would be understandable that the former president wouldn’t be so willing to hand over things because it feels kind of like a fishing expedition.

SMITH: Yeah, and I can, I can understand that. I mean, the President is former president is some legal vulnerability, as it relates to January 6, and if information within those documents is relevant to January 6, then you could understand why he would want to protect them. You wonder, though, to some extent, whether or not this, why this hasn't really become a legal challenge between the president, you know, there have been some ongoing litigation between Mr. Trump and the Department of Justice. And this could be a question of executive privilege, it could be a question of lots of other things. So but yeah, this is a really tense political atmosphere, the January 6 committee is part of it, Mr. Trump is part of it, we have midterm elections coming up. And it just feels like no matter what you think of the execution of the search warrant, the timing of this just ratchets up the pressure in the environment that we're looking at right now.

REICHARD: Well it really does. You know, long before this raid happened, GOP lawmakers have spoken up about political partisanship within the FBI, Biden, Clinton, and other people. If Republicans get control of one or both chambers of Congress in November, do you think then the FBI will be investigated?

SMITH: I think that the FBI probably will. And this is the real danger that you look at when when we have a former president being served with this sort of a search warrant, there's going to be a real temptation for Republicans, understandably so, to investigate this. And then maybe even in the future with a Republican administration and the White House to execute similar kinds of search warrants against former office holders who happen to be Democrats. Well, we really don't want to see is sort of a tit for tat between the two parties, where they just sort of snipe at each other, and use the law enforcement community to sort of score political points against each other. You know, that, as Republicans have rightly said, that's sort of a warning sign of a banana republic, you know, it's just not the kind of country that we want to be. And so I think there is a real chance that they will investigate, and unless the DOJ and the FBI can give good concrete answers for what they've done and why they did it, they probably do deserve the investigation.

REICHARD: As far as Donald Trump is concerned, what’ll this mean for him if it’s determined that he took classified documents home with him? From a legal and political perspective?

SMITH: From a legal perspective, we're really in a territory we're not clear with if it involves the Presidential Records Act. The Act doesn't have an enforcement mechanism. It's never been enforced in a way that would bring about potentially criminal charges. And so it's not necessarily clear what might happen. Now, there are other provisions in the federal code that do have punishments in place. And some of those punishments would even include potentially barring an officeholder from running again, or even stripping them from the office that they currently occupy. Now, that obviously could be politically explosive if it's brought to bear against Mr. Trump, but it would also cause a lot of constitutional questions, I think with whether or not that statute supersedes Article Two of the Constitution. Politically, you know, I think that this what happened probably strengthens Mr. Trump more than anything else, at least in this particular moment. There were some rumblings you even heard some Republican primary candidates and some office holders suggestion and maybe Mr. Trump should sit out 2024, maybe the party needs to move in a different direction, maybe we'd be better off focusing on the future and not sort of litigating the 2020 election. I think after what happened yesterday, if you if you paid attention to social media and other things, the Republican Party rallied around the president, and universally has called this an abuse of judicial power and an abuse of political power within the Department of Justice. And so given that, I think this has actually strengthened him. Now if we find out that there is real criminal activity, and that the DOJ and the FBI have the so-called ‘goods’ on President Trump, that maybe in the end, this will be really damaging to him. And we're beginning to see the beginning of the end of President Trump. But in the short term, I think that it emboldened him. And I think right now he's stronger than he has been for quite some time within the GOP.

REICHARD: Mark Caleb Smith from Cedarville University. Professor, thanks so much!

SMITH: Thank you.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: WORLD Tour with our reporter in Africa, Onize Ohikere.

U.S. Ghana visit— We kick off this week’s roundup in Ghana, where the United States ambassador to the United Nations addressed the global food crisis.

AUDIO: WELCOME MUSIC

Linda Thomas-Greenfield’s three-nation tour included stops in Uganda and Cape Verde. During her address at the University of Ghana, Thomas-Greenfield said many nations are battling a complex mix of crises.

THOMAS-GREENFIELD: Russia's war in Ukraine only makes an already horrific food crisis even more dire. And all of these problems; energy, climate, COVID and conflict combine into a complex cocktail that has led to the worst hunger crisis in our lifetimes.

She said she was not trying to pressure African leaders to pick a side in the Russian war in Ukraine. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov visited four African countries including Uganda and Ethiopia, a week earlier.

THOMAS-GREENFIELD: [2:09-2:31] - Africans have the right to decide their foreign policy positions free of pressure and manipulation, free of threats. But let me be clear, I'm not here to tell you or any Africans what to think, but I do want to present the facts.

This week U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is visiting South Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Rwanda.

Colombia Inauguration— Next, to Colombia.

AUDIO: [CROWD CHEERING]

Hundreds of thousands of Colombians gathered in the Plaza de Bolivar in the capital city of Bogota [Bow-ga-tah] on Sunday to witness the swearing-in of Gustavo Petro as president.

Petro is the nation’s first-ever leftist president. His victory in June elections put an end to decades of conservative rule.

AUDIO: [PETRO OATH OF OFFICE]

The 62-year-old is a former guerrilla and one-time mayor. He pledged to work on an amnesty deal for armed groups, invest in healthcare and education, and reform the police after a violent crackdown on anti-inequality protests last year.

Iceland volcano— We head over to southwest Iceland, where a volcano has started erupting.

AUDIO: [LAVA FLOWING]

Red lava gushed out of a fissure in a valley near Mount Fagradalsfjall, 20 miles southwest of the capital.

The Icelandic Meteorological Office has warned that noxious gasses from the volcano threaten a village of 1,000 residents some three miles from the valley. The pollution could spread to the capital.

The field of lava from the eruption covered more than 144,000 square meters. It comes just eight months after the volcano’s last eruption formally ended.

Italy protests— We conclude today with protests in Italy that followed the murder of a disabled Nigerian man.

AUDIO: [PROTESTORS CHANTING]

A widely circulated video showed Alika Ogorchukwu strangled to death two weeks ago as people looked on and recorded the incident. Police detained a 32-year-old Italian suspect known to have psychiatric problems. They ruled out any racial motivation, sparking further outrage.

Police said the suspect struck Ogorchukwu with his walking crutch, but it’s unclear what first sparked the altercation.

Ogorchukwu’s tearful widow led one of the marches in the Adriatic beach town on Saturday. Black Italians led a second march along the same route later in the day, demanding authorities recognize the role of race in the murder.

Desmond Okudaye joined the Saturday protests.

OKUDAYE: Italians see us like animals, see us like, we are black, we are animals, and then this. Imagine what would happen in a time like you are fighting, two people fighting, you can see the video camera looking at them, nobody separated them.

City officials are concerned the killing will further fuel tensions over immigration and racism ahead of parliamentary elections next month.

That’s it for this week’s World Tour. Reporting for WORLD, I’m Onize Ohikere in Abuja, Nigeria.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Some people are creative.

There’s a guy in Canada who moved into a new house. The refrigerator had a single piece of string cheese still in it.

REICHARD: I’d have tossed that right out!

Well, most of us would have. But Angel Domingo is a business man on the lookout to make a deal!

He bought a billboard in downtown Toronto and put a picture of that string cheese on it. The billboard read:

“FOR TRADE: One Cheestring.

Accepting trades.... Marble flavour. Still in original packaging. No lowballs. I know what I have.”

And then it lists his phone number.

Domingo says he’s traded all sorts of things, but this is a first.

He said he’s already received multiple offers ranging from cereal to two Persian cats.

REICHARD: Whodathunkit?

It’s The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Wednesday, August 10th.

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

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN: And I’m Myrna Brown.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: faith and football.

Jessie Bates is known as one of the best safeties in the NFL. He’s spent the last four years with the Cincinnati Bengals, and they’ve offered him a fifth season, if he’ll have it.

REICHARD: I can’t believe I even know this, but weren’t the Bengals in the Super Bowl this year?

BROWN: Right, Mary! Bravo on knowing that! They didn’t win, but the Bengals are still one of the top-ranking teams in the NFL.

So what’s it like playing at the peak? WORLD correspondent Whitney Williams brings us his story.

WHITNEY WILLIAMS, CORRESPONDENT: Twenty-five-year old NFL player Jessie Bates isn’t one to talk about himself.

If he were, he’d have plenty to say. Others surely do.

SPORTS COMMENTATOR 1: Right now with Jessie Bates, it’s the talk of the town in the NFL right now. What’s gonna happen? Are the Bengals gonna let him go? Right now it sounds like he might hold out. I wanna go to Tyler first.

SPORTS COMMENTATOR 2: Kick him to the curb. That’s what I’ve gotta say on that.

GMF COMMENTATOR 1: Complete this sentence: The Bengals will return to the Super Bowl if what happens …

GMF COMMENTATOR 2: If Jessie Bates plays. I really do think he’s that important.

“But enough about me,” Bates might say—were you to sit down with him. He’d rather talk about others.

BATES: There's a lot of people that came before me that sacrificed a lot for me to be where I am today.

At the top of that list, he says, is his mom.

BATES: She's the one that's been my rock throughout my life.

Bates’ dad wasn’t in the picture, so as a single parent, his mom wore a lot of hats.

BATES: I would get her Father's Day cards. She was my coach. She was my mom. She was my best friend.

A hard worker, too, according to Bates. He says his mom worked multiple jobs around Christmas time to ensure he and his siblings had a special day.

BATES: She's a grinder. I remember just—nothing wrong with living in an apartment or living in, you know, a bad area—but just watching her knock goals down, setting goals. Really showed me what work ethic is.

He gets a bit emotional talking about where his mom started and where she is now.

BATES: She runs her whole entire building for Kroger distribution center. I'm just really proud of her …

Wait, this NFL star’s mom still works? She’s not sippin’ lemonade poolside at a big mansion somewhere?

Bates explains:

BATES: A lot of people don't understand that, you know, sometimes the NFL stands for “not for long.” The average, you know, years of playing in the NFL is three years.

So instead of living like he’d just won the lottery when the Bengals drafted him in 2018, Bates decided to invest a large part of his earnings. And now, coming up on year five in the NFL, his wise stewardship is starting to pay off.

BATES: I've been getting investments back, dividends back that were bigger than my game checks in year four.

Rest assured, his mama’s day’s comin’. But for Bates, it’s bigger than that. Bigger than himself and his family.

BATES: I think God, he, he chose me, he chose me for a reason. I'm still figuring out what my calling on this earth is. But one thing I do know, is I'm going to help others and make sure I spread the faith, the love that God has instilled in me.

Speaking of that faith …

BATES: I always tell people that God is madly in love with you. He wants to have a connection with you. He wants to have a relationship with you.

But still, Bates admits, it’s easy to stray.

BATES: There's a lot of things that when you have money, and you’re young, a lot of stuff that can cloud up the vision of what your calling really is on this earth …

Part of the way Bates stays on track spiritually is by surrounding himself with the right people.

BATES: TALKING TO TEAMMATES

He shares about the Christian community he’s found among other NFL players. Praying together before every game, attending Saturday morning Bible studies …

BATES: I think that's the coolest part about it is we all are successful, we all are these superheroes that people think we are, but at the end of the day we all have that kind of connection and it all comes back to God …

When asked what makes him stand out to his coaches, Bates says:

BATES: I've never been the fast guy. I've never been the strongest. But I think the main thing they always talk about is just the way I always would carry myself. I always led people in the right direction.

Bates credits his coaches with much of that character development. He remembers spending the night in some of their homes, having conversations with them that he couldn’t have with his mom, and observing how they led their families. They taught him a lot:

BATES: But the main thing always stuck with me was you have a born date, and you have an end date. And whatever that in between, that dash mark that's on the grave site, that's what you're going to be remembered as. And that's your character and how you treat other people.

Making the most of the dash, the time God has given him on this earth … it's important to Bates. So, how does he know he's on the right path? Well, he says, that’s where faith comes in.

BATES: I would say the biggest leap of faith that I had was when I left college early.

After two years of playing college ball at Wake Forest University, Bates was invited to the NFL scouting combine … he’d have to quit school.

BATES: I stayed up multiple nights. I prayed. I asked my mom, just everybody just continue to pray just to give me answers, give me signs to where, where I should take this journey. It was a scary, scary moment for me. A lot of guys take that leap, and they don't get drafted.

But Bates did.

DRAFT AUDIO

God gave him a testimony. One that he takes joy in sharing with fans.

BATES: Just being able to give them faith to be not just a football player, whatever they want to do in life, no matter where they come from, no matter what circumstances they experience. Don't use any of this stuff that you're that you're going through, through your childhood, don't use that as an excuse, use it as motivation to get you to change that narrative of your family or whatever it is.

YOUTUBE VIDEO FOOTBALL GAME, AMBI OF BATES PLAYING

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Whitney Williams in Dallas, Texas.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Wednesday, August 10th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Here’s a familiar phrase: “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech or of the press.” That’s the First Amendment of the US Constitution.

Here’s WORLD’s Emily Whitten with a reflection on what that means for Christian college students these days.

EMILY WHITTEN, COMMENTATOR: Free speech has been under fire on campus for decades. But this summer, it got personal for our family. My husband, two teen daughters, and I all woke up at zero dark thirty to visit Tennessee’s largest public university, Middle Tennessee State. While my oldest took the ACT, the rest of us tooled around, testing out the student experience.

For the first time, I tried to envision my own children running labs in the new science building. Or working at the coffee shop with the trans barista. Or studying in the library, one of 16 designated “safe zones” for LGBT+ individuals.

One bit of good news for parents like me–this fall, as nearly 20 million college students head to class, many do so with more speech protection than in previous years. Repressive speech codes and tiny free speech zones used to be popular on campus, but many schools now have rules more in line with the First Amendment. And those that still restrict speech often back down when confronted.

Take Daniel Brezina, law student at American University, Washington College of Law. This summer, the university investigated him and seven other students for discussing abortion in a college group chat. Here’s Brezina in a youtube video.

BREZINA: What we said was simply strong disagreement on the issues.

With the help of lawyers and advocates at FIRE–or Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression–the university dropped its investigation.

Still, the fight goes on. That’s partially because campus censorship now often comes from students–not faculty. In the 2017 book, The Coddling of the American Mind, president of FIRE Greg Lukianoff explained this phenomenon. Here’s Lukianoff this July on Bari Weiss’s podcast, Honestly.

CLIP: Prior to about 2014, students on campus for my entire career were good on free speech…[cut words]...That changed like lightning struck in 2014. Suddenly students were demanding new speech codes, they were demanding disinvitations, they were demanding new censorship, but using medicalized language to justify it… [fade out]

Since then, many of these problems have moved online. Universities and students continue to expand online learning and social networks. That gives companies like Twitter and ZOOM more control over speech standards for students and faculty.

Danish lawyer and activist Jacob Mchangama’s new book titled Free Speech: From Socrates to Social Media highlights the dangers here. It’s true, private companies aren’t bound by the First Amendment; they are free to set and enforce their own terms of service. But Mchangama says in fact, government officials in Washington, London, and around the world exert huge influence over these platforms. They use congressional hearings and other carrots—and sticks—to get what they want. That’s especially concerning since “No government in history has ever been able to exert such extensive control over what is being said, read, and shared… across the world.”

Which brings me back to the ACT. It’s possible my daughters might get miracle scores, enabling them to attend private colleges. But more likely, they’ll end up as worldview minorities at some state college. For this reason and more, I’m grateful for the recent gains in free speech on campus…and I hope that trend continues. It won’t make college easy for my girls, but it can give some protection when they speak God’s truth in love.

I’m Emily Whitten.

MARY REICHARD, HOST:  Tomorrow: A Christian college in Washington state has sued the state Attorney General for violating its First Amendment rights.

Plus young mothers find a way to help other mothers facing the shortage of baby formula. We’ll visit a milk bank in the Chicago suburbs.

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 Bible says: Do not be deceived. Bad company ruins good morals. (1 Corinthians 15:33)

Go now in grace and peace.

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