The World and Everything in It: August 16, 2023

PREROLL: The World and Everything in It is made possible by listeners like us. Hello, we are Taylor and Ashley Sill from Anandale, Virginia. We are urban farmers on our cul de sac plot. We even picked 15 cucumbers today. Gardening teaches us important spiritual lessons and we see every day the abundant provisions from the Lord. We know you'll enjoy today's program.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

A fourth criminal indictment against Donald Trump, this one in Georgia. We’ll talk to a state attorney about it.

NICK EICHER, HOST: That’s ahead on Washington Wednesday. Also today, news from around the world on WORLD Tour.

And a new scholarship in Mississippi is making Christian higher education possible for hundreds of students. Some thought it too good to be true.

WALTERS: Somebody sent me the link. And the funny thing is, I didn't click on “accept.” That's crazy. This is not even possible.

And WORLD commentator Ryan Bomberger responds to conservative Sean Hannity’s notion that abortions should be rare, legal, and early.

REICHARD: It’s Wednesday, August 16th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

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

REICHARD: Up next, Kent Covington with today’s news.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Hawaii update » Authorities in Hawaii are painstakingly working to identify 99 people now confirmed killed in a massive wildfire. And they’re expected to release many more names of the victims today.

Gov. Josh Green told reporters.

GREEN: The scale of the destruction is incredible. And so our hearts are broken even a little bit more than they were 48 hours ago with the extra fatalities.

Crews with cadaver dogs have now scoured about 1/3 of the fire-ravaged area. Police are asking the families of those still missing for DNA samples.

Dana Lucio is a crisis mental health counselor:

LUCIO: I spoke to one gentleman who lost his home, his wife and kids, and his vehicle. I think he said his job also burned down. So he had literally lost everything.

Some of the wildfires still haven’t been fully contained. But it’s already the deadliest wildfire in the U.S. in more than a century.

Texas lawsuit » A federal court may soon decide whether Texas can recoup millions of taxpayer dollars paid to Planned Parenthood. WORLD’s Lauren Canterberry has more.

LAUREN CANTERBERRY: Texas wants to recover $17 million dollars in Medicaid payments the abortion provider received from 2017 to 2021 when Planned Parenthood was officially removed from the Texas Medicaid program.

A judge heard arguments in the case on Tuesday.

Planned Parenthood argues that it only used the money for things like cancer screenings and birth control access and not for abortions.

The state sued under the federal False Claims Act, which carries heavy fines for violations. The abortion provider says if it loses the case, it could be facing a judgment of more than a billion dollars.

For WORLD, I’m Lauren Canterberry.

Trump employee plea » The property manager of former President Trump’s Florida estate has pleaded not guilty to charges that he helped obstruct a federal investigation.

Prosecutors say Carlos De Oliveira lied to investigators about moving boxes of classified documents, and that he tried to erase security camera footage to keep it from investigators.

Donald Trump and one other co-defendant have already pleaded not guilty in the case.

Trump reaction » Meantime, Republicans continue to blast the latest Trump indictment, this time state charges out of Atlanta. Congressman Buddy Carter of Georgia:

CARTER: It’s a sad day here in America that our judicial system has been weaponized like it has been.

For his part, Donald Trump says the charges are purely political.

Democratic Fulton County prosecutor Fanni Willis insists she is enforcing the law impartially. She claims Trump and 18 co-defendants illegally plotted to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.

She also says she’s hoping to get the trial underway within the next six months. But former federal prosecutor David Weinstein says that’s awfully ambitious.

WEINSTEIN: We haven’t seen yet the volumes of evidence that she’s going to have to provide to all of these people, interlocking statements that are made by certain of the co-defendants.

Trump and his co-defendants have until Friday of next week to turn themselves in at the Fulton County Courthouse.

DC selective enforcement case » A federal appeals court Tuesday ruled in favor of pro-life demonstrators who say the city of Washington D.C. discriminated against them. WORLD’s Kristen Flavin reports.

KRISTEN FLAVIN: Police arrested two pro-life activists in August of 2020 for using sidewalk chalk to write the words “Black pre-born lives matter” on a public sidewalk outside an abortion center.

Two pro-life groups sued on behalf of the activists, saying the city unfairly targeted them. Their lawyers noted that police did not arrest Black Lives Matter protesters who defaced a federal mural with spray paint the very next month.

In a 3 to 0 decision, the court allowed the case to move forward, overturning a lower court’s dismissal of the complaint.

For WORLD, I’m Kristen Flavin.

Blinken on Iran prisoner exchange » Secretary of State Tony Blinken officially announced on Tuesday that Iran has moved several jailed Iranian-Americans from prison to house arrest.

He said that’s a positive step, but they’re still not home.

BLINKEN: We will not rest until our fellow citizens are back in the United States.

The State Department has been negotiating with Iran to release the five prisoners in exchange for unfreezing billions of dollars of Iranian cash frozen under sanctions in South Korea.

Blinken pushed back on complaints that the United States is effectively paying a “ransom” and funding Iranian terrorism in the Middle East.

BLINKEN: Iran will not have direct access to these funds. There will be significant oversight and visibility from the United States.

Iranian leaders dispute that, saying they’ll use the money as they see fit.

I'm Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: What’s in the new indictment against Donald Trump. Plus, getting a diploma without the debt.

This is The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s Wednesday, the 16th of August, 2023.

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

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

Up first: Georgia versus Donald Trump. On Tuesday, District Attorney Fani Willis announced that a grand jury in Fulton County Georgia returned a bill of indictment.

WILLIS: Charging 19 individuals with violations of Georgia law arising from a criminal conspiracy to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in this state.

This latest indictment contains 41 counts, ranging from racketeering to perjury.

Much of the information is the same as in indictment number two. That’s the one about mishandling documents that special counsel Jack Smith brought in July.

Smith also brought the third indictment for election subversion.

The first indictment back in March was for payment of hush money, brought by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg.

EICHER: But this indictment goes further than any previous one.

District Attorney Willis sets out to describe a criminal conspiracy. The co-defendants named include Trump lawyers John Eastman and Rudy Giuliani, as well as former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.

REICHARD: Joining us now to talk about it is Dave Aronberg. He’s been Palm Beach County’s state attorney for 11 years and was previously a Democratic member of the Florida Senate.

​​Dave, good morning to you.

DAVE ARONBERG: Great to be with you, Mary.

REICHARD: We’re talking today about the fourth indictment against Trump. What’s your impression of the gravity of this one compared to the three other criminal cases?

ARONBERG: You know, I was surprised when I saw the indictment, all 98 pages of it: 19 defendants 41 counts. It's a lot more ambitious, a lot more sweeping than most of us expected. In contrast, Jack Smith's indictment over a similar subject matter, it only indicted Donald Trump. He left off the other six unindicted co-conspirators because he wanted this to move fast. His indictment was built for speed. And by contrast, Fani Wilson's indictment, it really is, it's like drinking from a firehose, she just goes after the entire conspiracy from soup to nuts. I mean, she didn't leave any of the leadership out. So this is a lot more ambitious than I anticipated. It, I think, will pretty much ensure that this case will not be tried before the 2024 election. It's too expansive and it's going to be too complicated, I think, to get it done before the election.

REICHARD: Well, one way this indictment is different than the others is that it includes the racketeering charge, the Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations Act. RICO, in common parlance. Have you seen similar cases use this charge before in this way?

ARONBERG: Never against someone who tried to overturn the election, but we've never been down this road before. She has used it several times, though. She used it last week against the street gang. In fact, I think Young Thug was one of the defendants. But I think you also see her use this statute in other ways that are innovative, like against teachers during a cheating scandal. I mean, that's something that probably hadn't been done before. But RICO is not just for the mafia anymore. It is more expansive than that. And as long as you have an enterprise, and a pattern of racketeering activity, which is just defined as two or more qualifying crimes over four years, then you've got a RICO charge.

REICHARD: Well, this indictment quotes a whole lot of Twitter posts. And, Tweets themselves are not illegal, but Willis cites a number of them as so-called predicate acts which is legalese meaning actions that help facilitate a conspiracy.

Trump’s attorneys have publicly stated that all of these things that he said fall under the First Amendment, and so they’re protected. How do you think that's going to play out in court?

ARONBERG: That's his defense also, in the court of public opinion. The problem with that is a couple of things. Firstly, he's going to have to really testify in court, take the stand to say that, hey, I honestly believed the election was stolen and here's why. And I don't think his lawyers are going to want him to take the stand and walk into a perjury trap. So that's gonna be a tough defense for him. Plus, you know, election laws are really enforced by the states, not the feds. That's why this is a stronger case, in my opinion than the federal one, because in the state of Georgia, yeah, you can claim that an election was stolen, but you can't call an election official and pressure them to overturn the election. You can't lie to a legislative committee, you can't lie to state officials. So those are the crimes. It's not the words, but the actions and sometimes it is the words, in the context like going before legislative bodies like Rudy Giuliani did, he has every right to lie to the public, he has every right to lie at Four Seasons Total Landscaping, but he doesn't have a right to spew election lies in front of state leaders or at a state legislative body.

REICHARD: You know, kind of depends on whose ox is being gored, doesn’t it? Some say, you say, “trying to overturn an election.” Others say “an attempt to challenge reported election results.” But let’s stay on politics here: Willis is a democratic prosecutor in a democrat county. Trump says she's biased. She's just trying to distract. But Dave, what is your take on whether this indictment is just politics?

ARONBERG: You know, whenever you're an elected prosecutor, like Fani Willis or I am, you run as a member of a political party, but once you're in office, you just follow the evidence and the law. But there is a built in tension when you run as a member of a party, that when you delve into elected officials, political matters in your job, you're going to get accused of being partisan, you're gonna have the wrong motivations. There are some prosecutors who take it too far who do say things that really come back to hurt them, saying things like, I'm going to target Donald Trump. Now, that would be concerning that happened in New York and the Attorney General there who said that has had to walk that back, but you got to be careful. But in the end, we are elected by the voters of our community. We're entrusted to just do justice.

REICHARD: Yeah, I’m glad you brought that up because I want to talk about Hunter Biden. There's been an unusual turn in that Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed David Weiss as Special Counsel. How does that change the game?

ARONBERG: It's ironic that the same people who are calling for special counsel now don't want the special counsel. My head is spinning because I thought that's what they wanted all along. And they had said that David Weiss wasn't allowed to file charges outside of Delaware relating to Hunter Biden, well, now he is, and now they're still complaining because they didn't like that David Weiss gave him what they consider a sweetheart deal after two minor offenses, and so they don't trust him anymore. I mean, in the end, you got to justify your charges based on evidence and the law. And so far, despite the fact that people on the far right are obsessed with Hunter Biden and think he's an international criminal mastermind, the only thing to be able to come up with so far is that he lied on his gun application form, which was regarding a statute that's now been thrown out as unconstitutional about not using drugs while you're applying for a gun permit. And he didn't pay taxes for two years, and he's being treated the way that others in his situation are being treated. And if he is found to be guilty of other crimes, he should be charged with him if he's found a committed to have committed other things he should be. But let's not put the cart before the horse.

REICHARD: But David Weiss? Isn’t that putting the fox in charge of the henhouse? He let the statute of limitations expire on the most serious charges. He’s not from outside the DOJ, which is the norm for a special counsel. He wasn’t brought in until Republicans got control of the House and started looking into all of this. This doesn’t pass the smell test, does it?

REICHARD: Well, I read the Special Counsel statute, you could have someone appointed like David Weiss to do this, who comes from within. I mean, the Durham Report, remember, John Durham was special counsel to investigate the origins of the Russia investigation. He came from within the Department of Justice, just like David Weiss did. And just like David Weiss, both he and John Durham, have stayed on appointed, kept on even though they were both appointed under Donald Trump, and for those who think that this is the politicization or weaponization of the DOJ. I don't recall Bill Barr ever doing anything like this where he allowed a holdover from the Obama administration to investigate someone close to Donald Trump. That's what's happened here. David Weiss is a holdover from the Trump administration. He was appointed by Donald Trump so—but affirmed by, and affirmed by two Democratic senators from his state.

ARONBERG: Correct, correct, but still appointed by Donald Trump, only the finest people. And, you know, I just I think at some point, you just have to trust that the people who are career prosecutors are there to follow the evidence and the law, especially those who are appointed by the guy who's now complaining.

REICHARD: Here's my final question here. Something that jumped out at me while listening to Attorney General Garland’s statement last Friday. He said that Mr. Weiss told Congress that he's been granted the necessary authority in the matter. Why didn't Garland just say that the Department of Justice granted him the necessary authority?

ARONBERG: I don't know. I've criticized Merrick Garland for being too timid in some ways, and, you know, just you know, there's some things I just can't explain. I think one of the reasons why Donald Trump is now able to say that this is political is because the DOJ took so long to finally get an indictment in his case, I mean, I think this thing could have been expedited. It took Jack Smith to come aboard to do it. So I don't have an answer to the question why Merrick Garland didn't say it as opposed to David Weiss, but he is now authorized to file charges anywhere in the country regarding any matter relating to Hunter Biden, so hey, have at it.

REICHARD: Dave Aronberg is the state attorney for Palm Beach County in Florida. Dave, thanks so much for joining us!

ARONBERG: Thanks for having me, Mary.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: WORLD Tour with our reporter in Nigeria, Onize Ohikere.

ONIZE OHIKERE, REPORTER: Niger coup update — Today’s World Tour starts off in Niger.

SOUND: [Protest]

Junta leaders late Sunday said they now have enough evidence to try the ousted President Mohamed Bazoum for high treason.

ABDRAMANE: [Speaking French]

Col. Major Amadou Abdramane says Bazoum undermined Niger’s internal and external security by speaking with foreign leaders and international organizations.

Junta leaders detained him last month and dissolved the country’s democratically elected government.

The coup has received some support in Niger.

SOUND: [Singing and dancing]

Thousands of people crowded a sports stadium in the capital city of Niamey on Sunday. They sang and waved flags at the concert set up to support the army.

Meanwhile, the regional West African bloc has activated a standby force ready to stem the latest military takeover.

LAWALI: [Speaking French]

Salif Lawali, a Niamey resident, says he believes regional leaders will be forced to negotiate with the junta.

On Saturday, a Niger military delegation visited military leaders in Guinea to thank them for their support as they seek to tighten alliances against rising international pressure.

SOUND: [Pakistan's National anthem]

Pakistan’s new PM — In Pakistan, authorities have sworn in a new caretaker prime minister after much political instability.

Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar, a former senator, took his oath of office on Monday.

ANWAAR-UN-HAQ KAKAR: [Speaking Urdu]

He is now tasked with choosing a new cabinet ahead of elections slated for November.

Pakistan has battled political unrest after former Prime Minister Imran Khan was ousted in a no-confidence vote last year. He received a three-year prison sentence this month and is disqualified from running for office for the next five years.

Russian pastors detained — Next to Russia where secret police arrested evangelical pastor Albert Ratkin last week while investigating charges of discrediting the Russian army. Ratkin pastors an evangelical church in the Russian city of Kaluga. He has been a longtime voice against government overreach and has been outspoken against the war on his YouTube channel. In 2021, he spoke with WORLD about his concerns about Russian believers’ rights.

RATKIN: If you invite someone to the church, the law says you must have a special document to invite people. We said, “No no no, it’s in our constitution we confess our faith!” They said: “No no no! You must have special documents from your religious organization to preach or to invite people.”

Police kicked down doors in Ratkin’s church before confiscating computers and other electronic equipment. They also arrested his wife and searched his home.

AUDIO: [Russian news report]

This report on Russia’s main television channel accused Ratkin and Moscow pastor Yuri Sipko of connections to an “extremist pro-American religious group.”

The charge of discrediting the Russian army carries a penalty of up to 15 years in prison.

Yemen hostages freed — We head over to Yemen, where five U.N. security staffers have regained their freedom after 18 months of captivity.

Insurgents from al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula abducted the group in February 2022 from Yemen’s southern region of Abyan.

David Gressly is the U.N.’s humanitarian coordinator for Yemen.

GRESSLY: They’re in good health, good spirits, despite everything that they went through, but they went through a very difficult, very difficult period of 18 months of isolation.

Gressly added the terror group poses an increasing threat in the country.

SOUND: [Piano]

South Africa piano tech — We close today in South Africa with the first black African to get certified as a Steinway piano technician.

SOUND: [Music] 

Tshepiso Ledwaba tunes concert pianos to prepare them for professional performances. It’s a dying art since not many people can afford the expensive instruments.

Yet Ledwaba says it’s an important skill.

LEDBAWA: We need to teach it, it's artisanry, it's like every field of artisanry. Everyone needs to know how to use their hands.

SOUND: [Music]

His work has inspired some music students.

STUDENT: Seeing him on the field actually makes me, it made me glad and more passionate actually, yeah, to encourage other people also to went into music not only to play but there's also other fields around music or maybe around the industry I could put it, they can actually work on, yeah, master their crafts.

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

NICK EICHER, HOST: You probably heard this one. The lady who was out mowing the lawn when a snake fell from the sky. It landed on her, coiled around her arm really tightly. And to make matters worse, the hawk who dropped the snake came to reclaim!

MARY REICHARD, HOST: I heard that story!

EICHER: Right. Peggy Jones is her name. People were kind of laughing about it … of course they weren’t in a battle with a snake and a hawk … but this was serious and Jones was philosophical.

JONES: In the blink of an eye and the snap of a finger, your life can change.

No argument there.

Her husband ran out when he heard screaming. He raced her to the hospital and she wasn’t bitten. But there was venom on her eyeglasses. That’s how close.

She’s just thankful to be alive.

JONES: I just love everybody and everything more, even when I eat a piece of chocolate it tastes so much better now you know (laughs) than it did.

REICHARD: Attitude of gratitude!

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

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Wednesday, August 16th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day. Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Coming next on The World and Everything in It: paying for college. It can be expensive. According to the Federal Reserve, more than half the nation’s college students graduate with debt.

EICHER: For those committed to a Christian college education, the cost can be out of reach.

But not for students at one school in Mississippi. A board member established a scholarship that removes tuition worries for every student. Here’s WORLD Senior Writer Kim Henderson.

KIM HENDERSON, SENIOR WRITER: Two years ago, high school student Erin Slade fell in love with Mississippi College during a campus visit. It’s a Baptist college in Clinton, Mississippi. But Slade thought Christian higher ed was out of reach.

SLADE: My parents were very hesitant. They were like, “We don't know how you're going to afford this. We cannot afford to send you there.”

Slade visited other colleges. Secular colleges that were much less expensive. She tried to put MC out of her mind.

SLADE: But there was something there that kept drawing me back. I think it was the community.

By that time, Slade had introduced her friend, Ayla Jackson, to MC. She, too, felt the appeal of Christian higher ed.

AYLA: So I went, and I fell in love with it. I mean, I stepped on campus, and I was like, “I have a peace. This is where God called me to be.”

Jackson’s parents also liked MC, but the cost was prohibitive. Still, mom Andrea really wanted to make it work.

ANDREA: I was like, I'm not going to undo everything I have worked for my whole life for my kids, and send them to school for four years—and pay for it—for them to undo what I've done. I'm just not interested in that. So Christian education is huge, huge priority for us, but the expense was an issue.

Then came the Speed Scholarship.

AUDIO: [NEWS CLIP]

This month, 650 new students will arrive on campus at Mississippi College. None of them will pay a penny for their tuition, which is about $20,000 a year. The students are all recipients of the school’s new Leland Speed Scholarship. To be eligible, they only had to do three things: be Mississippi residents, agree to live on campus, and meet the school’s basic admission requirements.

Free tuition on that large of a scale is unheard of. Anita Walters is the guidance counselor at the high school Erin and Ayla attended. When news about the scholarship broke in October, Walters didn’t believe it.

WALTERS: Somebody sent me the link. And the funny thing is, I didn't click on “accept.” That's crazy. This is not even possible. And then somebody else sent me the link. And I was like, “Okay, let me go read about it.”

Fast forward to February of this year. Instead of finalizing her admission to a state school, Erin Slade is visiting MC. She’s making sure everything is in order with her recently-awarded Speed Scholarship.

SLADE: They are going to start typing up my accommodation letter so that I can hand it out to my professors and kind of get that ball rolling.

The accommodation letter is related to Slade’s dyslexia.

SLADE: I will be just getting extended time, which is a time and a half on some tests and quizzes, just because my brain works different than everybody else's.

She also stopped by the Baptist Student Union building.

SLADE: We walked in. There was somebody making cookies.

AUDIO: [Photoshoot]

A month later in Memphis, Ayla Jackson is getting her senior photos taken at Dixon Gallery and Gardens.

Her mother is standing off to the side by a bed of tulips. She can’t help smiling, watching Ayla.

AUDIO: [Photoshoot]

They’re both thrilled Ayla is heading to MC this fall, thanks to the Speed Scholarship. Ayla wants to be a child life specialist. That’s a healthcare role.

ANDREA: Her dream job is St. Jude, where she would come alongside doctors and the families and be the gap to be able to emotionally support the children, even the relatives, the mom and the dad, the siblings.

AUDIO: [Graduation]

At their graduation May 5, both Ayla and Erin were named “Ambassador of the Year.” Administrators usually give it to the one senior who’s been the best Christian leader in the class. This year, it had to be two.

AUDIO: [Graduation]

Ayla and Erin have been through orientation at MC, and they know which dorm they’ll be in. They know their roommates’ names.

They also know their free-tuition scholarship made it all possible. A small Christian college being able to offer free tuition for 650 students, well, it’s really rare.

Ayla expresses their gratitude for the donor.

AYLA: It just shows you how much of an impact it can have in somebody's life. The impact that your schooling can have on your life.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Kim Henderson in Olive Branch, Mississippi, and Memphis, Tennessee.

REICHARD: To read the feature story about the scholarship, look for the August 26 issue of WORLD Magazine. You can also find a link in today’s show notes.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Wednesday, August 16th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Last year, the Supreme Court in Dobbs returned abortion to the states. But now that Republicans have the chance to legislate some of them are getting a little queasy.

WORLD commentator Ryan Bomberger says Christians ought to speak clearly in defense of life at every stage.

RYAN BOMBERGER, COMMENTATOR: In June 2022, our nation was given an opportunity to reassess decades of needless human destruction. The Supreme Court reversed its ruling in Roe v. Wade which allowed unborn human beings could be commercially killed throughout pregnancy. But the landmark Dobbs decision changed everything, for better and for worse.

The GOP, a Party whose platform calls for a Human Life Amendment, has gotten some things right. The Pro-Life movement and its GOP allies have successfully banned or severely restricted the violence of abortion in fifteen states including Mississippi (where Dobbs originated), Texas (where Roe began), and Georgia.

Tragically, the Democratic Party, Planned Parenthood, and their mainstream media allies have been fatally successful, too. California amended its constitution to enshrine abortion as a fundamental right, and the state’s website now says you can have an abortion “at any time to protect your life and health.” Taxpayers also funded a staggering 100,741 abortions in 2020 in California via Medi-Cal. New York’s Reproductive Health Act removed most restrictions on abortion and even erased the crime of fetal homicide. In Michigan, Proposal 3 made abortion a constitutional “right”, and the state now allows abortion throughout pregnancy… all the way until birth.

Increasingly, some GOP leaders and conservative media pundits seem unable to articulate why abortion is wrong, how it hurts women, and what extreme measures the Democratic Party will go to in order to codify unrestricted, taxpayer-funded abortion. Recently, Fox News’ Sean Hannity had a terrible solution. After insisting he is “pro-life”, he expressed concern that the GOP may be losing votes for being “very restrictive.” Invoking former President Bill Clinton, Hannity proclaimed abortion should be “rare, legal” and allowed “very early in a pregnancy.”

That’s not principled conviction. That’s responding to a political condition. And politics change like the wind. Still, one thing that hasn’t changed–the Left radically eliminates the most vulnerable. The Right–at its best–radically elevates the most vulnerable.

That’s why Republican legislators in Congress introduced the Unborn Child Support Act last year. It requires men who father children to be financially responsible from the first month the child was conceived. The Providing For Life Act allows tax credits for unborn children. The Standing with Moms Act requires the (pro-abortion) U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to provide information about pregnancy-related support services. On the state level, Texas is pouring over $100 million into its Alternatives to Abortion program, and Florida allocated $143 million for pregnant and postpartum women and children in its Heartbeat Protection Act bill.

Slavery was once “safe” (for slaveowners), “legal” (throughout most of the country), and “rare” (in that most Americans didn’t own slaves). It was still, unquestionably, wrong. It took a long time to abolish, but that turn of justice was exactly what this great nation needed.

I’m Ryan Bomberger.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: Checking in on Afghan refugees who fled the Taliban takeover. And, it takes an education to work as an exterminator. We’ll visit the Rat Academy in Washington D.C. That and more tomorrow.

I’m Nick Eicher.

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.

Jesus said: Everyone who comes to me and hears my words and does them [is like] “a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when a flood arose, the stream broke against that house and could not shake it, because it had been well built. Luke chapter 6, verses 48 and 49.

Go now in grace and peace.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.