The World and Everything in It: August 25, 2025

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JENNY ROUGH, HOST: Good morning!

Today on Legal Docket, the rise and fall of affirmative action.

THOMAS: Every time the government uses racial criteria purporting to bring the races together, someone gets excluded

NICK EICHER, HOST: And the Monday Moneybeat. Today, economist David Bahnsen on Fed chair Jay Powell’s rate-cut hints. and the central bank’s bold economic experiments.

Later, the WORLD History Book. This month, the 35th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

THORNTON: I think that's what the ADA did, was create intentionality in our culture to include people with disability.

ROUGH: It’s Monday, August 25th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Jenny Rough.

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

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

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Ukraine: Independence Day » Many nations and world leaders joined Ukrainian President Volydymyr Zelenskyy Sunday in marking Ukraine’s Independence Day 34 years after it declared independence from the Soviet Union.

In Paris, the Eiffel Tower was aglow with blue and yellow lights, the colors of the Ukrainian flag.

In Kyiv, Zelenskyy greeted senior European officials and Canada’s prime minister at a defense forum:

ZELENSKYY: We are very thankful to your leaders, governments, and to yourself. Thank you so much for your long term support for Ukraine.

Zelenskyy awarded U.S. envoy Keith Kellogg with the Ukrainian Order of Merit, 1st Class … He said that was for Kellogg’s work to help strengthen Ukraine and bilateral relations.

Zelenskyy also thanked President Trump for his letter. In it, Trump praised the country’s “unbreakable spirit” and “courage.” He also added … “The United States supports a negotiated settlement that leads to a durable, lasting peace that ends the bloodshed and safeguards Ukraine’s sovereignty…”.

Ukraine: Ceasefire push » But Democratic Sen. Jack Reed says we’re no closer to a negotiated settlement after recent US meetings with Russian leaders, including Vladimir Putin.

REED:  Nothing has resulted from these meetings. Uh, Putin remains, uh, obstinate, refusing to consider anything other than surrender of Ukrainian territory, which I think would be a prelude just to a future attack.

Reed said he didn’t care for the “red carpet treatment Putin was afforded” during his recent meeting with President Trump in Alaska.

But Vice President JD Vance told NBC’s Meet the Press that Democrats’ criticism rings hollow.

VANCE:  Frankly, president Trump has done more to apply pressure and to apply economic leverage to the Russians, certainly than Joe Biden did for three and a half years when he did nothing but talk, but do nothing to bring the killing to a stop. So you asked me what I'm enraged by. What I'm enraged by is the continuation of the war.

Russian forces are again advancing in Ukraine’s east, seizing two more villages over the weekend. Moscow claims to now control about 20% of Ukraine’s territory.

John Bolton » The vice president on Sunday also pushed back against accusations of political targeting by the Trump administration after the FBI raided the home and office of former Trump adviser—turned critic, John Bolton.

Prominent Democratic Senator Adam Schiff called the raid targeted retaliation against Trump dissenters. But Vance fired back, accusing Democrats of weaponizing the Justice Department under President Biden.

VANCE:  We don't think that we should throw people, even if they disagree with us politically, maybe, especially if they disagree with us politically. You shouldn't throw people willy-nilly in prison. You should let the law drive these determinations, and that's what we're doing.

In 2020, Bolton published a memoir, which detailed his brief tenure as Trump’s national security adviser. Months later, the Department of Justice opened a criminal probe into whether his book disclosed classified information. But the Biden Justice Department closed that investigation.

 Last week, FBI Agents raided Bolton's home in Maryland and his Washington office, likely searching for classified information. No charges have been filed.

NYC mayoral race » Residents in New York City will elect their next mayor just a little over two months from now. And former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is taking aim at the frontrunner.

Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani, a self-proclaimed Democratic socialist, wants to hike taxes on corporations.

CUOMO:  It's antithetical to New York City to be anti-corporate. New York City corporations are, are already high taxed, as are the individuals. Uh, and I think it would be a, a death knell for New York City and he is, uh, dangerous, frankly, for New York City.

Mamdani also wants to freeze rent for many residents, provide free buses, free childcare and open city-owned grocery stores.

Cuomo, who was elected governor three times as a Democrat is running as an independent, as is the incumbent, another former Democrat, Eric Adams.

The latest polls show Mamdani with a big lead over the rest of the crowded field.

Illegal immigrant truck driver in custody » A Florida judge over the weekend denied bond to a truck driver arrested after a fatal crash earlier this month.

The driver, Harjinder Singh, is charged with vehicular homicide and immigration violations. The judge said Singh is considered an "unauthorized alien" and a high flight risk.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis slammed leaders in California, where Singh was licensed.

DESANTIS:  They issued a commercial driver's license to an illegal alien, uh, who didn't speak English. Uh, worked for a California company and he ended up killing three people in Florida recently, and we're now holding him accountable.

Authorities say Singh entered the U.S. illegally from Mexico in 2018.

He is accused of making an illegal U-turn that killed three people.

Singh is being held in St. Lucie County Jail.

Wildfires expand in Oregon and California » Wildfires in California wine country and central Oregon are expanding, forcing hundreds of evacuations.

Calfire says the Pickett Fire in Napa County had grown to more than 10 square miles Sunday. And in Oregon, the Flat Fire has grown to almost 34 square miles. Officials say that fire is threatening nearly 4,000 homes and some 10,000 people there are under some sort of evacuation notice.

I'm Kent Covington.

 Straight ahead: revisiting the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision prohibiting race-based admissions. Plus, considering rate cuts by the Fed on the Monday Moneybeat with David Bahnsen.

This is The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s Monday the 25th of August.

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

JENNY ROUGH, HOST: And I’m Jenny Rough.

Just over two years ago, the Supreme Court stuck down race-based college admissions programs.

THOMAS: Such discrimination is plainly and boldly unconstitutional.

Such discrimination is plainly and boldly unconstitutional.

MONTAGE: President Trump wants to bring more transparency to the college admissions process. / Saying the move will ensure that meritocracy and excellence / characterize American higher education. / The president is expected to sign an executive order directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to revamp a federal database … / “They are just going to look at whether there’s a racial disparity in test scores” / and now he’s saying many schools are not following a Supreme Court decision that essentially barred affirmative action. / “The Trump administration wants to pressure schools to conform to those measures, to the exclusion of black students and other students of color.” / “What they can’t do is determine that someone is a minority and maybe give them more points in the admissions.” / The Trump administration says it wants to shine a light on how colleges decide who gets in and who doesn’t.

EICHER: Last fall was the first year colleges and universities had data on freshman class demographics following the court decision.

ROUGH: This year is year two. So let’s unpack the decision and evaluate the new landscape.

ROBERTS: These cases involve the admissions system used by Harvard and the University of North Carolina.

Chief Justice of the United States, John Roberts.

He’s reading from the bench on June 29, 2023, the day the court announced the opinion in Students for Fair Admissions versus Harvard, and Students for Fair Admissions versus the University of North Carolina.

EICHER: Typically, we don’t get to hear the justices announcing the court’s opinions from the bench. On Legal Docket, you do get to hear clips from oral arguments but that’s because recordings of the arguments are released the same day. The court holds on to recordings of opinions for about a year before releasing them.

ROUGH: Roberts started with a brief summary of the facts:

ROBERTS: Both schools acknowledge that they use race as one factor in making their admissions decisions, and that race is a decisive factor for some of the students that they admit.

Students saw the issue through the lens of fairness.

POLANCO: I love that part of UNC, being in the classes…  developing myself as a scholar, a writer, a researcher.

Cecilia Polanco was a student at the University of North Carolina from 2012 to 2016.

Polanco doesn’t know if her ethnicity gave her a leg up in her admission to UNC. But she does remember when she applied, she included this in her essay:

POLANCO: I talk about growing up and realizing I was Latina but not Mexican. Actually Salvadorian. And what does that mean? Why are we here? Why did my family immigrate here?

Polanco’s junior year, Students for Fair Admissions filed its lawsuit. Polanco intervened as a party in the case in support of the university’s affirmative action program.

EICHER: Here’s how the Chief Justice framed the legal issue:

ROBERTS: The question in these cases is whether Harvard and UNC’s program is permissible under the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

… and the court’s ruling:

ROBERTS: We conclude they are not.

The equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment says, “no state shall … deny to any person within its jurisdiction equal protection of the laws.”

The text doesn’t mention race or ethnicity. But the context seems to. The states ratified the 14th Amendment in 1868, in the wake of the Civil War. Its core purpose was to protect black Americans coming out of slavery, to shield them from ongoing discrimination.

ROUGH: Students for Fair Admissions was not the first time the court considered whether race-based admissions violate that clause. Chief Justice Roberts walked through a timeline, starting with what happened after the 14th Amendment took effect.

ROBERTS: Now as anyone familiar with American history knows, however, for many years thereafter, the equal protection clause failed to live up to its full promise. Jim Crow laws and decisions of this court upholding them—

Decisions like Plessy v Ferguson.

ROBERTS: —meant that state-enforced discrimination continued in many parts of America for decades. It was a sad and egregious chapter in our nation’s history.

Plessy v Ferguson from 1896 imposed the principle of “separate but equal.”

ORGAN: And that meant we were a very divided society in terms of theaters, restaurants, beaches, water fountains, buses, all sorts of things.

Jerry Organ is a founding faculty member of the University of St. Thomas School of Law in Minneapolis.

ORGAN: And that finally changed in Brown versus Board of Education.

Brown was a primary-school segregation case the court used to overturn Plessy.

Organ analyzes school enrollment data in higher education. He says affirmative action in college admissions was one way to compensate for the residual effects of racial discrimination.

ORGAN: But it’s hard to implement affirmative action without saying we are going to treat some people differently than others.

It is, and the court struggled for decades with universities that used racial preferences in admissions. In 1978, the Supreme Court decided Regents of the University of California versus Bakke. It said race-based admissions were kinda okay.

But it was a highly fractured decision. Chief Justice Roberts again:

ROBERTS: The case produced six different opinions, none of which commanded a majority of the court. But one opinion written by Justice Powell for himself alone would come to serve as the touchstone for race-based admissions policies going forward.

EICHER: Justice Lewis Powell said racial quotas violated the equal protection clause. Meaning, universities could not reserve a certain number of seats for only minority applicants. But he contended that schools could consider race as one of many factors.

Fast forward 25 years to 2003. The Supreme Court again considered race-based admissions in two companion cases arising out of the University of Michigan. In Grutter versus Bollinger—

ROBERTS: A majority of the court, for the first time, held that universities could make race-based admissions decisions to pursue the educational benefits of diversity.

But the Grutter decision came with an expectation.

ROBERTS: Grutter imposed one critical limit on race-based admissions programs. At some point, the court held, they must end. The court made this important point six different times in six different ways.

A 2016 case, Fisher versus the University of Texas also upheld race-based admissions.

ROUGH: And that brings us to 2023 and the Students for Fair Admissions cases.

Cecilia Polanco, the student who intervened in the UNC case, told me that being a party helped her better understand the arguments.

POLANCO: Coming in, I think … I was very convinced about my position. So seeing the expanse of the arguments, I saw … there might be cases in which affirmative action might not be serving its purpose. And other situations where yes, this is needed in a corrective way.

She also gained insight into how judges are supposed to apply the law — not personal policy preferences.

POLANCO: And through the legal perspective it is much more to what is the precedent set by the law so far about this? And is it time for it to be updated?

The court said, it is time.

Under the legal test of strict scrutiny, the court had been finding that diversity in education was a compelling interest—so long as race was used narrowly, considered one factor among others.

To the present day, Students for Fair Admissions, the court changed its mind. It said diversity goals are not a compelling interest after all.

ROBERTS: Courts may not allow the separation of students on the basis of race without an exceedingly persuasive justification that is measurable and concrete enough to permit meaningful judicial review.

So why did the same Constitution, the same 14th Amendment, considering the same legal question ,result in so many different opinions? Well, the facts change, the Court changes —and the question itself strikes at the heart of human limitations, as Professor Organ explains.

ORGAN: We’re flawed. You’re talking about human institutions with human beings who are flawed. We have kind of tribal instincts. … We tend to socialize with people like us. And the obvious difference is skin color. ... You know, are we a less discriminatory society than we were 100 years ago? Yeah. ... But there are still challenges. ... We still have problems to work through. But particularly for Christians it requires us to remember all of us are created in God’s image. … One way of embracing that is that the equal protection clause makes sense. … We're all of equal worth and dignity, and we should be treated equally.

EICHER: The court’s opinion also made much of the fact that neither Harvard nor UNC had an end-date in sight to stop its current programs and start applying race-neutral ones.

And it pointed out that racial boxes in application forms are arbitrary and confusing. Asian American, for example, doesn’t distinguish between South Asian and East Asian.

ORGAN: And what do you do about someone from Lebanon or Iran or Egypt? … If you don’t fit in this box, you default as white.

Polanco ran into that problem.

POLANCO: I don’t identify with a race. Maybe if there was a brown race, maybe that. You know, just to line up with the colors. … I hear people say, “I don’t see color.” No, it’s about actually seeing it. … It’s just, make the space for this whole color wheel.”

ROUGH: At the court, I remember I passed Lady Justice with her blindfold.

And as I’ve talked with Christian lawyers about this case, some told me the ideal is impartiality, not favoritism by race. Yet ignoring God’s design in making us different can also mean failing to see real challenges.

That moment in front of Lady Justice brought to mind a famous Supreme Court quote.

THOMAS: As Justice Harlan proclaimed in dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson, our Constitution is colorblind and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.

EICHER: Justice Clarence Thomas again. Of the three justices who wrote concurring opinions, he’s the only one who read aloud from the bench. He echoed the chief justice in calling racial preferences in admissions a zero-sum game.

THOMAS: Every time the government uses racial criteria to bring the races together, someone gets excluded … and the person excluded suffers an injury solely because of his or her race.

 He said skin color doesn’t define viewpoints.

THOMAS: The racial boxes into which universities place applicants are little more than stereotypes, suggesting that immutable characteristics somehow conclusively determine a person’s ideology, beliefs, and abilities. That is decidedly false and dehumanizing.

And remedial measures once permissible, he said, no longer apply.

THOMAS: Today’s 17-year-olds, did not live through the Jim Crow era. They did not enact or enforce segregation laws or take any actions to oppress or enslave victims of the past. Whatever their skin color … they do not shoulder the moral debts of their ancestors.

Not all the justices agreed. Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, arguing the Court ignored the 14th Amendment’s history.

ROUGH: The majority did leave one opening. Chief Justice Roberts said universities could consider an applicant’s story—but not their race alone.

ROBERTS: We do not suggest today that universities must ignore an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise.

Barry McDonald is a constitutional law expert and professor at Pepperdine University law school. He says the essay exception could open the door to more racial gamesmanship.

MCDONALD: So it’s just really messy how this is going to work. …

Counselors are going to tell prospective applicants to just write essays talking about their racial and ethnic experiences and how they attempted to overcome that.  So I think there’s going to be a lot of litigation about this where you’re probably going to have plaintiffs coming in and saying that university was putting way too much weight on life experiences and not enough on raw academic indicators.

But raw academic indicators are not as race-neutral as they might appear. Empirical data show that whites and Asians perform better on tests because they tend to come from wealthier households. Money can buy things like tutors and prep classes. Also, schools consider other factors, from athletics…

MCDONALD: If you can throw a good curve ball … 

… to legacy admissions.

MCDONALD: You can no longer take into account race in college admissions, but you can continue to grant all this legacy, which is affirmative action for rich kids. 

ANDERSON: Did your parents go to Harvard? Did their parents go to Harvard? Then you get extra points.

That’s David Anderson, an author and the pastor of Bridgeway Community Church in Maryland. He points out the Bible says there’s only one race, the human race. Yet he says the sin we know as “racism” is assigning value to people based on color or ancestry—and that sin still lingers. His own family lived under segregation.

ANDERSON: Did my parents go to Harvard? My mom grew up in Mississippi. She’s 89 years old. She remembers when you couldn’t drink water from certain water fountains. She never got a degree. … My mom and my mom’s mom, they never had a chance to start legacy.

EICHER: Clarence Thomas lived his own version of that story. He was admitted to Yale Law School in 1971, during a period when the university was putting in place an affirmative action policy. Thomas conceded that while it helped him access an elite education, it also cast a shadow of doubt on his accomplishments, as he explained in a memoir.

THOMAS: Now I knew what a law degree from Yale was worth when it bore the taint of racial preference. I was humiliated and desperate.

A friend, economist Glenn Loury, explained further in a P-B-S documentary on Justice Thomas’s life.

LOURY: He thought that his degree was devalued, that he didn’t get the same kind of cachet out of the degree once he was looking for a job and trying to move in his career. He assumed that others were assuming that it’s a Yale law degree but with an asterisk next to it.

In his career in government, going back to the Reagan administration when he served as chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Thomas repeatedly criticized racial preferences. Instead, he promoted the “O” in EEOC: opportunity, not equal results.

THOMAS: Where you do run into the conflict is when you have a system set up under the guise of affirmative action that is called preferential treatment.

And in the summer of 2023, when the Court struck down the admissions programs at Harvard and North Carolina, Thomas finally saw that principle prevail. After decades of dissents, Thomas closed his concurring opinion by pointing to the promise of the 14th Amendment.

THOMAS: The equal-citizenship guarantee codified in the Fourteenth Amendment made us all citizens of one nation, governed by one Constitution. The Court today lives up to the promise of the second founding and ensures that the promise of equal citizenship continues to be fulfilled.

ROUGH: Justice Thomas’ story has come full circle. But the debate over affirmative action continues. And legal challenges are still emerging.

That’s this week’s Legal Docket.

JENNY ROUGH, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: The Monday Moneybeat.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Time now to talk business, markets, and the economy with financial analyst and adviser David Bahnsen. David heads up the wealth management firm The Bahnsen Group. He is here now. Good morning to you, David. It’s been too long, good to talk to you!

DAVID BAHNSEN, HOST: Good morning, Nick, good to be with you.

EICHER: David, Fed Chairman Jay Powell was in Wyoming for the annual Jackson Hole Symposium put on by the Kansas City Fed, and this year he suggested the Fed may finally be ready to ease interest rates. Translating the Fed-speak we’re about to hear, he points to inflation pressures on one side, job market weakness on the other, and hints it may be time to respond. Let’s listen.

POWELL: Risks to inflation are tilted to the upside and risks to employment to the downside—a challenging situation. When our goals are in tension like this, our framework calls for us to balance both sides of our dual mandate. Our policy rate is now … closer to neutral than it was a year ago, and the stability of the unemployment rate and other labor market measures allows us to proceed carefully as we consider changes to our policy stance. Nonetheless, with policy in restrictive territory, the baseline outlook and the shifting balance of risks may warrant adjusting our policy stance.

So, again, in plainer terms, Powell seems to be saying the softening job market to his way of thinking outweighs any inflation pressures he's still seeing, so all that, his words: “may warrant” a change. Now, I’ve learned from you to look at the futures market for the real odds, not just the headlines and media speculation. But before he spoke, the market put a September cut at about 70% likely. Afterward, that jumped to nearly 90%. So run with this where you want, and if you'd like to talk about the interest rates, please do—but I do want to get to the heart of your Dividend Café argument this week about the bigger story of the Fed balance sheet, QE and QT. But we can start with interest rates.

BAHNSEN: Well, I think that there’s pretty much no question after the speech. And as you point out, Nick, the futures market reaffirming that we’re getting a rate cut in September. You know, 70% is not 90%—we should point out it was basically near 100% about 10 days before, and then that number fell after the hot PPI number that we had discussed last week, and so there was some ambiguity.

But I think that the market response to Jay Powell’s speech on Friday was a lot less about the September assurance, which, even though it wasn’t as assured, it was pretty assured already that we were headed to a rate cut in September. The bigger issue was the posture, the language, the concessions that he gave were all pretty directionally on the dovish side.

You know, we now have to think more about the other way, and getting in front of what could be economic softness. I think it was some of the weakening of the labor data that he’s kind of referencing. And even apart from the futures market in the Fed funds rate, which is what the futures are telling you the rates will go to into the future, the current bond rates on Friday dropped significantly.

So all that to say, when you kind of filter through the different numbers out there, the thing that sticks out to me the most is that we are in the futures market at a much higher forecast for three rate cuts by the end of the year. And that’s the more aggressive side. It’s not an assured thing you’ll have that much. But I do believe that the general posture that the chairman took in Jackson Hole gave people the indication that he’s now in—you know, singing from a different hymnal than he’s been the last couple of months.

EICHER: All right, David well, of course I mentioned yet another hymnal, so to speak, not just the interest rate policy tool but the balance sheet policy tool that you laid out in this week’s DC. Meaning quantitative easing versus quantitative tightening, we’ve heard a little bit about that, and you make the point that that policy toolset is just as important. Could you walk us through why that is such a big deal? Go ahead and take the time you need.

BAHNSEN: Well, the Dividend Café on Friday was a bit wonkier than normal because the whole terminology of quantitative easing, quantitative tightening, the Fed doing asset purchases on its balance sheet. You know, I just said five or six things that might have tuned out, you know, half of our listeners. And I hope that’s not true, but I don’t mean it to get into a deep dive of certain monetary, economic concepts. It’s to indicate that there’s this other really significant tool in the toolbox of our central bank that has been one of the primary uses of either affecting easing monetary conditions, trying to pump more credit growth, or tightening monetary conditions, trying to limit liquidity in the financial system—going back now, what is 17 years since the financial crisis and all of this began.

So I walked through the history of how all of that played out under then Chairman Ben Bernanke after the financial crisis. And the point that I am trying to make is that the interest rate the Fed uses is a big tool. But while we’re sitting around wondering, are they going to cut or not cut, they’ve still been tightening monetary policy by continuing to pull liquidity out of the financial system.

And there was over $2 trillion in what is called the Fed’s reverse repo facility a few years ago. It’s now empty. There’s nothing left there. So when they do quantitative tightening now, they’re pulling money out of bank excess reserves, which is literally reducing money in the banking system. And then when you factor in leverage off of money lent out, then that amounts to a pretty significant reduction of liquidity of credit in the financial system. And I think that the Fed at this point is very, very likely to be done with quantitative tightening.

Now, the interest rate has been the biggest monetary policy tool for decades, and then after the financial crisis, to try to kick it up a notch, they used this thing called quantitative easing using their balance sheet—the thing I just got done talking about. The issue, I would say, is when you’ve now exhausted two different policy tools and the market is already aware of it, what is the next thing you could do?

I’m not talking about a recession, Nick, but if there were a slowdown of economic conditions and the Fed decided they wanted to stimulate, what is the most likely tool they would use at this point? I think it would be reducing the interest they pay on the reserves that banks hold at the Fed. Right now, they’re paying an attractive rate of interest, and that gives the banks incentive to hold deposits at the Fed and not lend it out. And if they were to reduce that rate, that would probably become a more aggressive monetary policy tool.

So we’re living in an era, and I’ve been trying my best to study it for a good portion of my adult life. I think I lack the adventurism of central bankers to keep up with how aggressive they’re willing to be. But this is the story playing out—central banks from Japan to the United States to Europe being way more aggressive, way more experimental than they’ve ever been, and not really fearing the consequences. Pretty okay with the idea that, “Oh, we’ll see what happens here.” That, to me, is extremely noteworthy.

EICHER: All right, well speaking of adventures at the Fed, let's talk succession. Chairman Powell's term is coming to an end, and we're starting to hear some names floated—Chris Waller, Kevin Hassett, Kevin Warsh, Stephen Mirren. What do you make of that conversation? And what does it tell us about the future direction of the Fed?

BAHNSEN: Well, I really hope from that list, it’s Kevin Warsh. I believe it should be, and I do think that he has the highest odds of those four, but I don’t think those odds are above 50%. I mean, the President’s holding this close to the vest. There’s no question that Scott Besant, the Treasury Secretary, is going to play a big role in advising the President.

Kevin Hassett, I continue to question if I think he really would want the job for, you know, various reasons. I would prefer it not be Steven Mirren. And then, you know, Waller is definitely in the mix at this point, and he’s on the Fed now, and there would be the most continuity there.

The advantage he has is that he’s interviewed very well for the position by going out in the press and criticizing Jay Powell a lot and saying all the things President Trump wants to hear. The thing he has going against him is President Trump doesn’t know him. And President Trump has really said privately, including to some people I know, that he doesn’t want to do what he believes was a mistake again, which is go off of other people’s recommendations.

Then the Treasury Secretary, Steve Mnuchin, recommended Jay Powell. President Trump didn’t know him, and he ended up regretting that decision. And Waller may be in that camp where he’s saying the right things, but Trump doesn’t know him. He knows Kevin Hassett and and he knows Stephen Mirren now, but Warsh he’s interviewed several times.

Warsh was in the mix in the first term as well. But there’s, there’s a lot of talk as to whether or not the President is comfortable. Warsh is probably the best of those four. That’s what I’ll say.

EICHER: Well David, before we let you go, I want to let the WORLD Radio listening audience know about plans we have for three weeks from tonight, Monday, September 15th. If you live in or near Houston, Texas, we’d love to meet you. David and I, along with members of the WORLD team, will be there as we launch a new live event series we’re calling The WORLD Stage.

We’ve asked David to speak on the theological themes that are so close to his heart—ideas he explored in his newest book, Full Time: Work and the Meaning of Life. After a short speech from David, we’ll have a Q&A on stage, then take questions from you in our audience. And when the formal program wraps up, David will hang around so we can all visit informally.

It’s shaping up to be an exciting evening of ideas, encouragement, and fellowship. We hope you’ll join us at First Baptist Houston, downtown. Space is limited, so reserve your spot today at WNG.org/TheWORLDStage.

And here’s something fun—David and I have been friends for years now over our virtual studio line, but this will actually be the very first time we’ve met in person. So we’re looking forward to that part, too.

BAHNSEN: Well, I’m looking forward to it. I think that you know this to be true, and I know it, but it may be funny for listeners to hear, but it’s a real—when you see someone on a video screen and do this every single week, as we have, it really doesn’t feel like we’ve never met.

But it will be, it will be good to meet in person and and to meet a lot of other WORLD listeners, and be able to to be part of that community. It’s going to be fun. And so look forward to being with everyone in Houston.

EICHER: Again, WNG.org/TheWORLDStage, there’s no charge, but there is economic scarcity here because space is limited and you’ll want to sign up fast. Three weeks from tonight, September 15th, meet David Bahnsen, taking to The WORLD Stage. We’ll link to the event page in today’s transcript.

All right, David Bahnsen is founder, managing partner, and chief investment officer at The Bahnsen Group. He writes regularly for WORLD Opinions, and at dividend-cafe.com. David, thanks.

BAHNSEN: See you next week.

JENNY ROUIGH, HOST: Today is Monday, August 25th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Jenny Rough.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Up next, the WORLD History Book.

Think about all the places you go in a day: work, school, the store, maybe a ballgame. But for millions of Americans, those ordinary routines used to be out of reach. Thirty-five years ago, that began to change with the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

WORLD’s Mary Muncy reports on why the law was needed and what has changed since then—starting with a person who faced the old barriers firsthand:

MARY LOU BRESLIN: The restrooms in my high school were not accessible so it wasn’t possible, actually, to use the restroom during the day.

MARY MUNCY: Mary Lou Breslin is the co-founder of the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund. She talked to PBS about what life was like as a high school student confined to a wheelchair in the 1960s.

BRESLIN : But I finally figured out that I could go into a parking lot, put my foot up on a bumper, slide up to edge of my chair and pee on the ground.

And she wasn’t alone. People all over the country were wrestling with infrastructure that wasn’t made with them in mind.

JOURNALIST: A curb is just a curb and steps are just steps, unless you’re in a wheelchair. And even where the barriers have been brought down, attitudes can sometimes be even more formidable. From people to take up the handicap parking places, to employers who blame insurance policies for not hiring the disabled.

But as disabled veterans started coming home first from World War II, then the Korean and Vietnam wars attitudes started to change.

In 1973, President Richard Nixon signed a bill to establish funding for rehabilitating veterans and helping them find gainful employment. At the end of the bill, in section 504, these 45-words:

No otherwise qualified handicapped individual in the United States… shall, solely by reason of his handicap, be excluded from the participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.

After several years, that short passage became the basis for a movement.

NEWSCASTER: Well Isabelle, what’s going on now, is an overnight sit-in.

In 1977, demonstrators occupied buildings all over the country, demanding that the government start implementing and enforcing Section 504.

CHANTING: Sign 504.

They’re chanting “sign 504.”

Most of the occupations only lasted a few hours, maybe a day, but in San Francisco, it kept going and going.

NEWSCASTER: Well I’ve just gotten word that these people are now locked in the building. At 6:00 this building did close down.

The protesters had to rely on federal staff and volunteers to bring them food, blankets, and medicine. Some had to rely on them to help them turn over and eat.

Meanwhile, other activists went to Washington, DC, to negotiate with legislators.

PROTESTER: We’re down to the basic issue here. Are we going to perpetuate segregation in our society? We’re one of the largest minorities in this country.

Finally, after 28 days of occupying the building in San Francisco, the protesters got what they demanded.

SOUND: [CHEERING]

Federal officials signed legislation to enforce Section 504

But it was still an uphill battle.

Businesses were worried about the costs of making their buildings handicap accessible, or about being forced to hire people who couldn’t perform the role.

Over the next several years, the bill faced lawsuits, and new laws were shot down. Until 1988.

FRIEDEN: This is perhaps the most significant piece of legislation that’s been introduced.

That’s Lex Frieden. He helped craft the first iteration of the Americans with Disabilities Act, or the ADA, just in time for George H.W. Bush to court voters with disabilities.

BUSH: I’m going to do whatever it takes to make sure the disabled are included in the mainstream. For too long, they’ve been left out, but they’re not going to be left out anymore. [cheering]

Congress shot down the first iteration of the ADA, but two years after Bush took office:

BUSH: We must not and will not rest until every man and women with a dream has the means to achieve it. And today, America welcomes into the mainstream of life all of our fellow citizens with disabilities.

Bush signed the current version of the ADA into law.

SHAWN THORNTON: Some of the first changes were in bathrooms.

Shawn Thornton is president of Joni and Friends.

THORNTON: Then also curb cuts began to appear pretty quickly. There were some parts of this that were very obvious and easy.

But other parts, are still being worked out like employment law. There are so many kinds of disabilities that it’s hard to write policy that covers them all while still being clear for the people who are implementing it.

But Thornton says at least people are trying.

THORNTON: I think that's what the ADA did, was create intentionality in our culture to include people with disability.

And he says that’s where the church can go above and beyond the call of the law.

THORNTON: Churches sometimes are excluded from a lot of the ADA stuff because of religious protections, but we want to as Bible teaching, Christ-centered churches, we want to show those values and go the extra mile, even in the area of ADA, to even go beyond it.

Thornton is also a pastor and says his church is constantly asking who would be excluded if they held an event say, on the lawn instead of inside? Or do they need to have extra helpers at a kids event?

Right now, there are between 45 and 75 million people living with some kind of disability in the United States and thanks to the ADA, the US is at least about thinking about how to bring them into public spaces.

THORNTON: Christ always was drawn to those who were the most marginalized in culture, and he was always looking for them and showing them value, because he saw that as the creator. He knew the dignity, inherent dignity they had being made in the image of God.

That’s this week’s History Book. I’m Mary Muncy.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: a report on synthetic opioids even more dangerous than fentanyl and a visit to an American church with a rare collection of historic relics.

That and more tomorrow.

I’m Nick Eicher.

JENNY ROUGH, HOST: And I’m Jenny Rough.

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 told the parable of the lost coin: “What woman, having ten silver coins, if she loses one coin, doesn’t light a lamp and sweep the house and seek diligently until she finds it? And when she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’ Just so, I tell you, there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” —Luke 15:8-10

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