The World and Everything in It: August 14, 2025

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MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning!

Thousands of Ukrainian orphans are missing. Advocates want the US to keep the pressure on Russia.

SOBOLIK: There's a renewed conversation right now on weapons to Ukraine. And so I'm looking for ways to publicly highlight talking about the children as well

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Also new marriage data shows divorces are down, but there’s trouble hiding in the numbers.

And a longtime boardwalk witness faces new limits on what he can do.

BYRD: You have so many opportunities to wait for the right person, to wait for the person to be engaged.

And WORLD commentator Cal Thomas on crime in Washington D.C.

BROWN: It’s Thursday, August 14th. 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: Time for news now with Kent Covington.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Alaska summit: Trump remarks » Final preparations are under way for tomorrow’s meeting between President Trump and Russia’s Vladimir Putin in Alaska.

The White House says the president sees this as an opportunity to take the measure of Putin — to get a sense for where he’s truly ready to negotiate in good faith toward ending the Ukraine war.

Trump says after the Friday summit, he will call Ukraine’s president and European leaders.

TRUMP: I'm gonna call President Zelensky and then I'll call probably in that order, the leaders, uh, there's a very good chance that we're gonna have a second meeting, which will be more productive than the first, because the first is I'm gonna find out where we are and what we're doing.

That second meeting, he says, would include President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Trump also told reporters Wednesday that Russia will face consequences if Putin does not show any real movement toward peace.

TRUMP:  Yes, they will. Yeah. There will be — There will be …

REPORTER: Sanctions? Tariffs?

TRUMP: I don't have to say, there will be very severe consequences.

Alaska summit: location » The summit will reportedly be held at a U.S. military base. The Associated Press, citing a White House official, says they’ll meet at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage.

Defense analyst Benjamin Jensen with the Center for Strategic and International Studies says the setting makes sense for both sides.

JENSEN:  The last thing Putin and his propaganda inner circle want is pictures of Americans protesting Putin being there at a public setting. No one's getting into the military base who isn't supposed to be there.

Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson was crucial to countering the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War.

And planes from the base still regularly intercept Russian aircraft that fly into U.S. airspace.

Washington policing update » The White House says federal officers are on the streets of the nation’s capital around the clock as of last night.

D.C. Metropolitan Police Chief Pamela Smith told TV station WTTG that she sees the collaboration with federal law enforcement as an opportunity:

SMITH:  Building those relationships with our federal partners, but then after the surge is over, right, being able to continue those relationships so when we, when we have opportunities where we can do small surges or, or take downs across our city, we can count on them to be a part of that.

The number of National Guard troops serving in a support role in Washington will also ramp up to as many as 800.

President Trump on Monday declared a public safety emergency in the District of Columbia and put local police under the authority of the Justice Department for 30 days.

Declassified Clapper email » U.S. intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard had released a newly declassified email that she says is further evidence of an organized effort within the Obama administration to push what she called the Russia hoax. WORLD’s Benjamin Eicher has details.

BENJAMIN EICHER: Gabbard Wednesday published a December 20-16 email … which shows then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper as the sender.

The message stated that intelligence agencies might need to—quote—"compromise on our 'normal' modalities"—end quote … in order to meet a January 20-17 deadline for the Russia report.

That report eventually asserted that Russia tried to tip the 20-16 election in Donald Trump’s favor.

Current intelligence director Tulsi Gabbard Wednesday cited Clapper’s acknowledgment that producing the report had become a—quote—“team sport.” Gabbard says that showed top-down pressure to fall in line … in service of a political deadline.

Gabbard further highlighted that then‑NSA chief Mike Rogers warned that his team lacked sufficient time or access to fully review the intelligence.

For WORLD, I’m Benjamin Eicher.

NATS: Gaza children loaded onto aircraft

Israel-Gaza » A group of Palestinian children and families from Gaza in need of medical care were loaded onto an Italian Air Force plane yesterday.

The plane took off from an Israeli airport carrying more than 30 children and their families to receive medical treatment in Italy.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Palestinians who wish to leave Gaza … should be allowed to do so voluntarily. And called on other nations to take in Palestinian refugees.

NETANYAHU: In Hebrew

The prime minister also says that the opportunity for a partial ceasefire deal with Hamas—quote—“is behind us” after the terror group repeatedly misled negotiators.

Netanyahu says the only acceptable deal now is one in which Hamas releases all remaining hostages and surrenders.

NYC Mamdani sanctuary city » In New York City, the Democratic nominee for mayor, Zohran Mamdani, is not just running against several other candidates for the office. He’s also looking to score points with the party’s base by campaigning against President Trump.

Rallying supporters in Staten Island Wednesday, the self-proclaimed socialist took aim at the president’s crackdown on illegal immigration.

MAMDANI:  We are fighting to keep this city a sanctuary city.

That drew this response from Trump’s border czar Tom Homan:

HOMAN:  He says he wants to uphold the sanctuary city policy. How about upholding the law? The law says it's a crime to this country legally.

The latest polls show Mamdani with a comfortable lead in a five-person race that includes incumbent Mayor Eric Adams and former New York Governor Andew Cuomo, both running as independents.

I'm Kent Covington.

Thousands of Ukrainian orphans are missing. Advocates want the US to keep the pressure on Russia. And later: Divorce numbers are down but there’s a catch.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Thursday the 14th of August.

Thanks for listening to WORLD Radio! Good morning, I’m Myrna Brown.

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

First up on The World and Everything in It, Ukraine’s missing children.

On Friday, an American president will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin for the first time in four years.

BROWN: The leaders are expected to talk about ending the war in Ukraine, and human rights advocates want President Trump to raise another urgent issue: tens of thousands of abducted Ukrainian children still missing inside Russia.

WORLD’s Carolina Lumetta reports.

CAROLINA LUMETTA: Since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, between 19,000 and 35,000 children have gone missing from Ukrainian territory now in Russian control. The exact number is hard to pin down because Russia has been systematically erasing the children’s identities. And now, they’re showing up on Russian adoption websites.

RAYMOND: This is the single largest kidnapping in world history since World War II.

Nathaniel Raymond is the executive director of the Yale Humanitarian Research Laboratory. The lab houses the Conflict Observatory, an underground effort to track the abducted children.

RAYMOND: The critical breakthrough in December is that we identified three interconnected databases run by Russia, including their Ministry of Education. And they were putting children from Ukraine up for adoption and fostering through these databases, basically eBay for orphans.

As Russia inches closer to a Trump-imposed deadline to make peace with Ukraine, advocates say the return of the children needs to be central to any deal.

SOBOLIK: There's a renewed conversation right now on weapons to Ukraine. And so I'm looking for ways to publicly highlight talking about the children as well

Chelsea Sobolik is the director of government relations at World Relief, a Christian non-profit. World Relief led a coalition of faith leaders to send a letter of concern to the White House and the State Department in April.

SOBOLIK: We believe that families belong together. But then there's also a number of laws that govern the most vulnerable and that govern how citizens and how children are to be treated during times of war and conflict. And Russia is very actively violating those laws

The U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Geneva Conventions contain provisions on how to treat children during wartime. Typically, all adoptions are paused because there is no guarantee of appropriate oversight and paperwork. In the event that an enemy recovers children during a battle, they are supposed to notify the Red Cross and send them to a neutral third country. None of that has happened over the past three years.

SOBOLIK: In those cases, children should not be crossing borders, especially being taken by the aggressor in this case. So it's extraordinarily concerning.

Some of the missing children were forcibly sent to Russian summer camps before the war even started. In 2022, Russia changed its civil code to allow a Russian adult to renounce a child’s Ukrainian citizenship, even if their parents are still living. Instead of returning home, the Yale lab found that planes in Putin’s own fleet have flown children into Russia. The Yale lab also found photos of children with new names and birthdates on Russian adoption websites. Prospective parents can filter the options by physical characteristics and personality traits, like being respectful to adults. Here’s Raymond:

RAYMOND: It's not just about the kids in this war. It's about the kids in all the wars of the future to prevent there from being a green light to perpetrators of abduction crimes against children… If that happens, it rips a hole in the integrity of the Geneva Convention for generations to come.

The Yale lab’s research was previously funded by a State Department grant. The Department of State canceled the contract in March and then renewed it for six weeks to allow the lab to send its findings to Europol. It continues to operate through private donations but is petitioning for renewed federal funding.

In June, Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota introduced the Abducted Ukrainian Children Recovery and Accountability Act. It would support Ukraine’s efforts to track and rehabilitate children when and if they return home. Congressman Robert Aderholt of Alabama also told WORLD in an office building hallway that the children are a top concern for the House.

ADERHOLT: This is totally unacceptable and that we need to make sure the administration is taking this to account when they're doing negotiations or trying to encourage negotiations between Ukraine and Russia

During a briefing on Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt characterized Friday’s talks with Russia as a “listening exercise” and said the priority for Trump is ending the war in Ukraine. I asked her about the children.

LUMETTA: Is their return a red line for the president in any deal ending the war?

LEAVITT: … I don’t want to set red lines for the president on his behalf from this podium. However, the president did encourage Ukraine and Russia to speak directly to one another in terms of these humanitarian issues… and that remains a concern, but it’s one that Russia and Ukraine need to iron out together and why this president has encouraged them to speak.

In 2023, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Putin and other Russian leaders due to the child abductions. Putin and Trump will meet at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska, tomorrow. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was not invited to attend, but Trump said he would call him immediately after the talks.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Carolina Lumetta, in Washington.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: the state of the unions.

Divorce rates have dropped since their peak in the 1980s, and couples marrying today have a strong chance of staying together.

But behind the good news…there’s a troubling twist.

Here’s WORLD’s Anna Johanson Brown.

ANNA JOHANSON BROWN: Family law attorney Tiffany Lesnik says divorce litigation follows a seasonal pattern.

TIFFANY LESNIK: So when the children are out of school, families are taking vacations. We’ll see a slowdown many times in divorce and separation.

Once the school year kicks back into high gear, Lesnik expects to see more couples file for divorce.

But overall, divorce rates have been slowing down for decades. Couples just aren’t separating as often as they did a generation ago.

Recently, researchers noted other positive trends about marriage. In late July, Focus on the Family published a 31-page report called “Marriage Health in America.” They found that the majority of couples are content in their marriages. Bob Paul is vice president of the Marriage Institute at Focus on the Family:

BOB PAUL: So the surprising thing, which was kind of refreshing compared to all the bad news we get, is that 74% of the individuals that were surveyed rated their marriage as healthy.

Just 21% of the couples they surveyed believe their marriage is in crisis.

Conventional wisdom has long held that half of marriages will end in divorce. That’s likely an overestimation…though not by much. According to the Institute for Family Studies, roughly 40% of the couples marrying today will eventually separate. And even the apparent good news of decreasing divorce rates has a major downside:

PAUL: One of the reasons that we’re seeing the divorce rate falling is that people are just not getting married. So, you we're looking at the state of people that are married, but fewer and fewer people are actually even bothering to get married. Many people, young people today are seeing marriage, the institution of marriage is sort of an out of date institution. It's not relevant in their minds today.

In 1949, nearly 80% of households in the US were headed by married couples. Today, that’s true in less than half: 47 percent of households are headed by a married couple.

Changing attitudes about the purpose of marriage have fueled that reversal.

PAUL: Today, it's becoming increasingly something that people see as an achievement that you work toward. Instead of finding someone to build a life with, you sort of build your life and then you find someone to join with you to go forward.

That’s why many single Americans delay marriage until their late 20s or early 30s. Many people wait to get married until after they earn advanced degrees or establish high-earning careers.

RACHEL SHEFFIELD: It's more likely that you have college-educated, higher-income individuals marrying. So you have people who have more economic resources, and it's become this select institution for kind of the upper third of the country.

Rachel Sheffield is a research fellow with the Heritage Foundation. She says the good news is many of these selective marriages are likely to last. But the bad news is, if marriage is becoming more of an elite benchmark, that isn’t great for the rest of society.

SHEFFIELD: You're also seeing more instability in relationships for everyone else because there is less marriage.

About 10% of Americans live together but aren’t married. Many of those cohabiting couples never get married. And that leads to another problem: low birthrates.

SHEFFIELD: Married couples are much more likely to have children than single women are. So as marriage declines, the birth rate declines with it.

For those cohabiting couples who do have children, Sheffield notes that cohabitation decreases stability for them.

SHEFFIELD: So, if we, you we have the divorce rate, the official divorce rate, but then we also have just relationships, kind of families that are formed outside of marriage. And, know, there's not any official, you know, document or recognition of that to kind of count as a divorce rate.

Divorce studies miss this. Unmarried couples with children splitting up aren’t traceable with traditional methods. So, it’s hard to tell how many couples are actually separating.

If current trends continue, the share of married adults is expected to drop from 46% to below 40% in the next 15 years. This means that divorce will likely become less common too.

Attorney Tiffany Lesnik says that’s a net positive, especially for children. But there’s still a lot of work to do.

LESNIK: I mean, it's just the long-term damage to children's lives when their parents divorce. You know, it is devastating. And I think psychologically, we want to try to normalize the divorce process by saying, we just do like 50-50, have equal time, kids are resilient, they're going to be fine. And that's just the way that the culture is now that children are accustomed to having families with divorced parents. I think that's an excuse.

For WORLD, I’m Anna Johnanson Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Last week, the U.S. Constitution pulled a disappearing act, at least online.

The Library of Congress’s ‘Constitution Annotated’ site lost chunks of the founding document. Here’s David Birdsell, Kean University Provost on Fox 5 New York:

BIRDSELL: What was missing most prominently is Article One, Section nine, which guarantees people the right not to simply be apprehended without cause.

Well, it was no coup despite some online hysterics. Just a coding glitch. Internet sleuths saw it, the Library fixed it, and the good ol’ U.S. Constitution is the same.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Thursday, August 14th.

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.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: proclaiming the gospel seaside.

The Boardwalk Chapel in Wildwood, New Jersey, has been sharing Christ in the popular beach town since the 1940s, reaching the lost and training believers to share their faith.

BROWN: The message hasn’t changed. But this year, the staff are navigating new challenges. WORLD senior writer Emma Freire traveled to Wildwood to find out more.

AUDIO: Watch the tram car, please. Watch the tram car, please.

EMMA FREIRE: Visitors to Wildwood, New Jersey are pestered by the sound of tram cars shuttling passengers around the boardwalk. Millions of people flock to this acclaimed boardwalk every summer and the tram car has been in operation since 1949.

SOUND: [Boardwalk noise]

As vacationers walk past endless shops selling ice cream and funnel cakes, they also regularly pass teams of 4 to 5 people wearing red t-shirts that read "Boardwalk Chapel."

The teams are passing out gospel tracts. One of them holds a sign that reads “Are you going to heaven? Free test.”

Some vacationers are curious and stop to accept a tract or take the test. Micah Foster is serving on the Boardwalk Chapel’s staff this summer and joins the evangelism teams nearly every night of the week.

FOSTER: And if someone walks up, then we'll use kind of the evangelism explosion questions, which there's two questions. The first is: on a scale of one to 10, how confident are you that you're going to heaven? And then the second is, if you were to die tonight, and you were to stand before God, and He said, ‘Why should I let you into My Kingdom’ what would you say? And so we really are able to gauge where people are.

Pastor Chris Byrd is the chapel’s director of evangelism. He says the staff often don’t know how effective their ministry is.

BYRD: I don't think we'll know until the great day, you know, all the way that God has used this ministry to minister to people. But sometimes He gives little windows to see. We've gotten in the last couple years some emails from people who said they converted, or they have, you know, a child that was converted because they talked to someone here.

But this summer, the team’s work is even more challenging. After decades of freely evangelizing all over the Boardwalk, the teams’ movements are being curtailed.

BYRD: They changed some of the local ordinances. And so right now, we're limited to a couple of spots on the boardwalk.

Byrd says he understands some of the reasons behind the change.

BYRD: It's partially, it's a safety thing, because people are handing things out in the middle of the boardwalk where the tram cars are coming down, it can kind of clog up traffic, and it puts people in front of the tram car. So, and then, number two, they don't want businesses like just basically harassing people to try to buy their products.

The chapel often sends 40 to 50 people out on the Boardwalk each night. Fitting them all in the designated spots can be challenging. That’s partly why Byrd says the chapel is challenging the restrictions.

BYRD: But we want to do it in a way that's not unnecessarily souring relations, you know, with the local government. Which, by and large, you know, we've had a good relationship, and for a ministry that's as visible as we are and as active as we've been, it's a testimony to God's grace that we haven't had more opposition from people and from the township.

While they can’t hand out tracts wherever they want, the chapel is still free to put on an evangelistic service inside its shopfront on the boardwalk each evening.

BYRD: So we want to fill up the chairs in the font, that way we leave plenty of room for our guests, people that come in off the boardwalk.

The program features short gospel messages.

SPEAKER: And He was sent because of the great love of His Father sinners.

There’s evangelistic skits and there’s also plenty of singing

CHOIR: Oh, victory in Jesus, my Savior forever
He sought me and bought me with His redeeming blood
He loved me 'ere I knew Him and all my love is due Him
He plunged me to victory beneath the cleansing flood

Outside, many of the people walking by pause to take a look. Noises from the boardwalk can sometimes interrupt the program.

AUDIO: Watch the tram car, please.

The programs are organized by the chapel’s staff of around 40 people. They’re mostly volunteers.

And throughout the summer, church groups from across America travel to Wildwood to help out. Everyone gets evangelism and apologetics training.

SOUND: [Boardwalk noise]

And they put their training into practice immediately. Each night after the program wraps up, they hit the boardwalk to evangelize.

Two young men wear baseball caps that say “security.” They often escort women and children volunteering at the chapel along the boardwalk because the evangelism continues until late in the night.

One of the young men, Andrew Zhou, says problems are rare. But occasionally, they have to deal with people who get unruly.

ZHOU: Usually you don’t get that much chaos. But there are times you just need to kind of escort people out but there’s no violence in any regard.

Foster thinks reaching people while they are on vacation represents a unique opportunity. Visitors sometimes stroll the boardwalk for hours in the evening without any fixed plans.

FOSTER: There's people walking up to the sign and taking tracts and wanting to talk. And people just have time. They're not rushing. And you have so many opportunities to wait for the right person, to wait for the person to be engaged. And people have time so they’re willing to slow down.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Emma Freire in Wildwood, New Jersey.

CHOIR: Spring up, O well, within my soul/Spring up, O well, and make me whole/ Spring up, O well, and give to me/ That life abundantly

[Applause]

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Thursday, August 14th. 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 WORLD commentator Cal Thomas on crime in D.C. and what to do about it.

CAL THOMAS: I was born in Washington, D.C., at the end of 1942. Growing up in the suburbs there was so little crime that when it happened, it made the front page in the city’s three newspapers. Today, unless someone who works on Capitol Hill is murdered, or associated with a prominent business, stories are usually buried in the Metro section. Then, you could walk the streets at night, and feel safe. Now, you may be taking your life in your hands.

President Trump has ordered National Guard troops into the city to help D.C. police control violent crime.

As U.S. Attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro noted at a White House news conference Tuesday, many teen criminals are assigned to family court where they are not being rehabilitated:

PIRRO: What you get is yoga and you get ice cream socials in family court. Well, I'm done with yoga and ice cream socials. We've got to change the law to bring them into the justice system.

Video of store lootings are so common they have lost their shock value.

As the saying goes: “there are facts, lies, and statistics.” Democrats claim statistics show violent crime is down in D.C.

At the same time, a D.C. police commander is under investigation for allegedly making changes to crime statistics in his district. The police union claims supervisors in the department manipulate crime data to make it appear violent crime has fallen considerably compared to last year.

The White House has issued a list comparing actual D.C. crime statistics with other cities and countries:

– In 2024, Washington, D.C., saw a homicide rate that was the fourth-highest in the country — nearly six times higher than New York City and also higher than Atlanta, Chicago, and Compton.

– D.C. is currently on pace to surpass last year’s crime numbers.

– Washington, D.C.’s murder rate is roughly three times higher than that of Islamabad, Pakistan, and 18 times higher than that of communist-run Havana, Cuba.

– In 2012, the homicide rate in Washington, D.C. was less than half the current numbers per 100,000 residents.

– The number of juveniles arrested in Washington, D.C., has gone up each year since 2020 — many of whom have had prior arrests for violent crimes.

– Vehicle theft in Washington, D.C. is more than three times the national average — ranking it among the most dangerous cities in the world.

– Carjackings increased 547% between 2018 and 2023.

– Last year, there were triple the number of carjackings compared to 2018.

These statistics are not only troubling on their own, but they also likely understate the level of crime in Washington, D.C. as many residents don’t feel safe reporting crime. Nationwide, more than half of all violent crime goes unreported.

One recent WUSA9 newscast led with this story:

WUSA9: DC Police say the numbers show crime is down, but many people living and working in the district say those numbers don't reflect what they see and feel every day. So the question we're hearing from our neighbors is, what's being done to make our communities feel safer?

CNN online notes: “Extending the takeover for a longer period requires Trump to formally notify the chairs and ranking members of congressional committees handling D.C. affairs. Any control lasting more than 30 days would need congressional approval and must be passed into law, a highly improbable scenario given the current gridlock in a closely divided Congress.”

Area residents know what needs to happen in addition to swift punishment of the perpetrators. They include employed fathers in the home and school choice to free especially poor kids from failing public schools that give them nothing on which to build a life. Without these the National Guard will only be a temporary fix.

I’m Cal Thomas.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Tomorrow: Culture Friday with John Stonestreet. And, the quiet brilliance of singer-songwriter David Ackles. Plus Word Play with George Grant. 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 records that Satan tried to tempt Jesus in different ways: “And the devil took him up and showed him the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time and said to him, ‘To you I will give all this authority and their glory, for it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.’ And Jesus answered him, ‘It is written, “You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve.”’” —Luke 4:5-8

Go now in grace and peace.

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