The World and Everything in It: August 26, 2025

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MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

California debates a bill that expands who can take custody of a child if the parents are detained or deported.

DACUS: It’s a direct assault on parental rights.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Also a deadly new opioid is spreading into the US. We have a report.

And a little church that’s home to thousands of relics.

JELINEK: Each one is a jewel. Each one is a little masterpiece.

And the religious left gets a big platform.

REICHARD: It’s Tuesday, August 26th. 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: Trump executive orders: flag burning » Burn the American flag, and go to jail.

That was President Trump’s message at the White House as he signed an executive order that seeks to penalize anyone who desecrates the flag.

TRUMP:  You burn a flag, you get one year in jail. You don't get 10 years, you don't get one month. You get one year in jail and it goes on your record and you will see flag burning stopping immediately.

But there is no jail sentence outlined in the order. Instead, it directs the Justice Department to prosecute people for setting fire to the flag by using existing laws like those penalizing an incitement to violence.

TRUMP:  When you burn the American flag, it incites riots. People go crazy.

The order also instructs the attorney general to challenge a 1989 Supreme Court ruling that that protected flag burning as political expression.

Critics say the president is overstepping his authority. Legal challenges already in the works to that order.

Trump exec orders: Cashless bail » And to another executive order Trump signed on Monday.

That one targets cashless bail, whereby some states and jurisdictions now allow many suspects after their arrest to leave jail, pending trial, without posting a cash bond.

President Trump and other critics say that allows more criminals out on the street.

TRUMP:  Somebody kills somebody, they go in. Don't worry about it, no cash. Come back in a couple of months, we'll give you a trial. You never see the person again.

But proponents of the policy called Trump‘s remarks an exaggeration, saying cashless bail reforms generally apply to nonviolent offenses.

And they say the cash-based bail system is discriminatory because some people have the financial means to post bail that others do not.

Trump’s executive order threatens to withhold federal funds from cities and states that refuse to scrap cashless bail.

Trump-South Korea president meet » A short time later, President Trump welcomed the new president of South Korea, Lee Jae Myung, to the Oval Office.

MYUNG: Mr. President, let me begin by thanking you on behalf of the Korean people. I would like to thank you for giving your time for today’s meeting.

Before a row of cameras, Myung praised Trump’s peacemaking efforts around the world, and had kind words for his economic policies.

In trade talks, the two presidents moved closer to a deal to cut US tariffs on South Korean imports from 25% to 15%, with Seoul also pledging to invest another $350 billion dollars in the U.S.

Before the meeting, Trump voiced concern over political raids there — including government crackdowns on certain churches and even a prosecutor’s search at a joint U.S.–South Korean military base. Myung called it a misunderstanding.

Abrego Garcia » Attorney General Pam Bondi told reporters Monday that federal authorities had arrested Salvadorian national Kilmar Abrego Garcia

BONDI: We've got him under control. He will no longer terrorize our country. He's currently charged with human smuggling and including children.

The Justice Department says he’s a member of the MS-13 gang and a danger to society. Garcia denies those accusations.

Authorities on Monday arrested him shortly after he met with federal officials for an immigration appointment. The Trump administration plans to deport him now to Uganda.

Defense attorney Simon Sandoval‑Moshenberg:

ATTORNEY: For them to insist on fighting out a deportation to Uganda shows that the real motive in this matter is not getting him out of the country. It's punishing him and keeping him locked up.

Garcia entered the country illegally in 2011, but he had been shielded from deportation by a judge’s order. The Trump administration mistakenly deported him earlier this year, sparking a legal battle and political firestorm … before prosecutors say they brought him back to the U.S. to face charges.

U.S.-Indonesia drills » The United States and Indonesia today launched joint military drills in the Indo-Pacific region aimed at keeping China in check. WORLD’s Benjamin Eicher has that story.

BENJAMIN EICHER: Thousands of troops are training with tanks, artillery, helicopters, and warships in the annual exercises.

Indonesia is leading the drills, along with the United States and nearly a dozen other countries. It’s an annual exercise known as the Super Garuda Shield, which began back in 2009.

Over the years, it has become increasingly focused on countering the threat that China poses in the region.

Beijing has grown more aggressive, claiming more of the South China Sea as its territorial waters.

Jakarta has expressed its own concern about what it sees as Chinese encroachment on its exclusive economic zone in the sea. Though Indonesia generally maintains positive ties with Beijing.

This year’s drills will wrap up next week with a combined live-fire drill.

For WORLD, I’m Benjamin Eicher.

SpaceX Starship launch » SpaceX had to scrub a scheduled launch of its Starship rocket again last night, this time due to weather.

Officials had hoped to try again one day after engineers had to call off a Sunday launch due to problems with the ground systems at the Starbase launch site in south Texas.

No word yet on when they’ll try again.

The mission is designed to test upgrades to the rocket’s engines and heat shield — key steps toward future deep-space flights.

I'm Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: California families are voicing concern about a proposed law that’s supposed to protect minors. Plus, a visit to a Pittsburg church with an interesting collection of religious artifacts.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Tuesday the 26th of August.

This is WORLD Radio and we’re so glad you’ve joined us today. Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

First up on The World and Everything in It: Assembly Bill 495 in California. The measure would let non-parents care for children when parents can’t—and it’s sparking protests.

Supporters call it a safeguard for children of detained or deported parents. But opponents warn it’s a dangerous threat to parental rights.

WORLD associate correspondent Elisa Palumbo reports.

ELISA PALUMBO: A few thousand people have gathered on the Capitol lawn in Sacramento, California. Some wear MAGA hats, others are dressed in red, white, and blue. Most are holding hand-made signs with slogans like “Protect CA Kids NO AB495.”

JACK HIBBS: And so with that, I'm going to ask right now for you guys to somehow find the shade that you can get a hat on your head.

That’s Pastor Jack Hibbs from Calvary Chapel in Chino Hills. He worked with pro-family advocacy groups to organize this rally against Assembly Bill 495. They say the bill’s language is too vague.

Brad Dacus agrees. He’s an attorney from Pacific Justice Institute, a non-profit legal defense organization. He claims AB 495 could allow complete strangers to gain custody of any child in the state of California. He says the bill needs to be killed immediately.

BRAD DACUS: This is the human trafficking, pedophile, estranged spouse holiday, and that's why we need to oppose it. It's a direct assault on parental rights.

California Assemblywoman Celeste Rodriguez introduced AB 495 in April as the Family Preparedness Plan Act of 2025. She drafted it as a response to increased ICE raids. She says the intent is to make it easier for a child of deported parents to receive care from a trusted, nonfamily member.

The problem is how the bill expands the definition of relatives and caregivers… raising concerns from many California parents that it could be misused.

Nicole Young is a mother of six who testified against AB 495 twice in the California Senate. She says when she first read it, she was shocked by its ambiguous language.

NICOLE YOUNG: It's not a well written bill. The language is very broad and it has the possibility of unintended consequences. And I said this in my first testimony, we can help vulnerable immigrant families, but not like this.

California has had the Caregiver Authorization Affidavit in place for 30 years. It’s a legal tool that allows for non-parent caregivers who are already living with the child to enroll them in school and consent to school-related medical treatment. The current version of the affidavit does not require a parent’s signature—presumably because the parent in question is unable to care for their child due to addiction or incarceration.

SPEAKER: It is the name of the adult claiming to be a caregiver and their home address, and then they can have access to that child's ability to have dental care, medical care, and be a caregiver in place of the caregiver without the parent’s consent.

But AB 495 would take that a step further—particularly in cases where a child’s parents have been detained by ICE. It expands the current law…allowing nonfamily members to use the Caregiver Affidavit.

Karen England is president of the Capitol Resource Institute, a pro-family public policy group.

KAREN ENGLAND: It's clear it expands the definition of a family to include a mentor, coach, all of that. So it's in the bill. You can read it.

The bill defines a “nonrelative extended family member,” as any adult who has an established “familial or mentoring relationship” with the child or relative of the child.

Monica Madrid is a spokeswoman for CHIRLA, an immigrant rights group lobbying for AB 495. She says the opposition is spreading misinformation.

MONICA MADRID: One of the things that they're saying is just anyone can pick up the child for school. Schools already have protections for that.

Madrid says the bill updates existing protections to make it easier for immigrant children to receive temporary guardianship from trusted individuals who might not be direct family members. It’s meant to keep these kids from being taken by Child Protective Services.

MADRID: We're not updating the affidavit like we're not going through the affidavit itself. We're just adding to include in the case of the child's parents being detained or deported by federal administration, not the full on affidavit.

But some of the protesters I spoke to say that as it’s written, the bill is not just for children of immigrants. Nicole Young again:

YOUNG: The language does not say that. It does not. It says if the parent has been detained, deported, or is unreachable. Unreachable could be I'm in a doctor's appointment, can't answer my phone, so it is a very vaguely written. If they, even if they just removed that, it would change the whole fabric of the bill.

When Young testified in the senate, she asked that the bill be amended for clarity. The bill’s authors ignored her requests.

The current affidavit only requires a caregiver to say the child lives with them and provide their driver’s license number. Opponents worry that the lack of additional verification allows for anyone to take a child into their custody.

Madrid says this is fear-mongering. She explains the bill does not allow for a complete stranger to pick up a child.

MADRID: the goal is to have someone that's trusted both by the parent and the child, to be the temporary guardian, not a complete stranger.

Both sides of the debate say they want what’s best for immigrant kids. But critics of the bill want to safeguard parents’ rights. The creeping erosion of parental rights in California has given its citizens cause for concern.

YOUNG: Let's seek a solution that that everybody's safe and everybody is careful. This is not it.

AB 495 is currently in appropriations. It has until August 29th to move forward from committee. If it moves forward, it will go to the senate floor and eventually to the governor’s desk.

HIBBS: Lord heal our land, we pray, and we've gathered together to do that very thing.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Elisa Palumbo in Sacramento, California.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: monster opioids.

There’s a new wave of synthetic drugs that’re more powerful and deadly than fentanyl.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: They’re called nitazenes, opioids so dangerous they were never approved for human use. Today they are killing people across Europe.

And now they are trickling into the U.S. Experts warn there’s never been a more perilous time for those who abuse drugs.

EICHER: Here’s WORLD’s Anna Johansen Brown.

ANNA JOHANSEN BROWN: Robert Pennal served more than 24 years as a special agent with California’s Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement. Today he helps law enforcement stay up to date on trends in the illicit drug underworld.

ROBERT PENNAL: The first thing that really got our attention in the Central Valley was right around 2021-22, we started seeing colored fentanyl. Purple. Yellow. Silver. We had never seen that before.

Last year, California law enforcement partnered with the FBI to investigate a ring of Honduran drug traffickers. The traffickers were operating out of Merced County in the state’s central valley.

PENNAL: One of the things they find is that they offer Fetty, which is fentanyl, but they were also offering ISO.

ISO is the street name for Isotonitazene, which tends to be five to 20 times more powerful than fentanyl, though some is well over 40 times more potent. Law enforcement intercepted messages between a dealer and his customer discussing the deadly drug.

PENNAL: They talked about, first of all, you know that you know it was like it was a gray powder and had a kind of vinegar smell on it and they told them: hey listen you be really really careful because this stuff's really really powerful so you'd be careful using it. Well, the problem is the guy who is buying it says basically, "Don't worry about me. I know what I'm doing." Well, he didn't know what he was doing, see, and he overdosed and died.

Isotonitazene is one of at least eight different kinds of nitazenes. Scientists developed the class of opioids in the 1950s, around the same time as fentanyl. Researchers tinkered with the formula, hoping to create a different kind of opioid for managing pain—something with a chemical structure that was significantly different from morphine.

PENNAL: What they found was that nitazenes’ safety profile had real unacceptable side effects: respiratory depression and death. So it was never created.

But covert chemists operating underground began sifting through historical research for more ways to create synthetic opioids.

PENNAL: You have what are called patent pirates. And these are individuals that are always looking all over, whether it be on the dark web, whether it be all over open source material, they’re always looking for analog and new drugs, and they found nitazene, and they started reading about nitazene. You only have to have an organic chemistry background to make it.

Nitazenes exploded in the United Kingdom in 2023. There, at least 400 people died from nitazene-involved overdoses from July of that year to January 2025.

Some experts say the death toll is probably much higher than what’s officially documented since toxicology labs didn’t know what they were looking for or how to test for nitazenes when they first showed up.

Most individuals consume nitazenes thinking they are taking another substance. Here’s one British heroin user sharing his experience with a UK-based news podcast after he took a nitazene-laced version of the drug:

AUDIO: I had quite a big tolerance at the time and I just remember passing out basically as soon as I had it. And it just not tasting right, like it wasn’t right. I got a little bit and it instantly knocked me out. I couldn’t even stand up.

Nitazenes emerged in Europe after the Taliban began cracking down on Afghanistan's opium industry and heroin became harder to access.

Keith Humphreys is a drug policy researcher at Stanford University. He says the rise in synthetic opioids over natural opium comes down to money.

KEITH HUMPHREYS: Someone needs to harvest. Hope the weather holds, then you have to, you know, process it, export it past the border, get it on a boat, however many thousands of miles you're sending it to Europe or the U.S. or Canada or whatever, and there's risk of seizures all along the way. So that's a pretty expensive business model.

Creating and shipping synthetic opioids through the dark web eliminates many of those costs.

HUMPHREYS: Contrast that with making fentanyl or a carfentanil or a nitazene, which can just be done in a lab, close to the source of where the customers are. So the production cost is probably 1 % to make a synthetic opioid as heroin. And as a result, that over time is inevitably going to force heroin out.

Unauthorized chemists also tweak drug formulas to evade government regulations. More than 80 fentanyl-related substances have been reported to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Here’s Robert Pennal again.

PENNAL: We just had a recent seizure that involved carfentanil. Carfentanil is an extremely powerful opiate that is used by veterinarians to anesthetize elephants and rhinos. In big zoos, we use carfentanil.

Pennal said Mexican cartels are becoming more deeply embedded in Canada, where they are turning their attention to producing incredibly dangerous synthetic opioids.

PENNAL: One of the most popular ways to purchase or ingest fentanyl is these counterfeit oxy blue M30 pills. But we had a batch show up in Idaho that were all nitazene.

Law enforcement raided two large labs in Canada last year that were producing nitazene pills.

PENNAL: It's literally following the same track as fentanyl.

Fentanyl killed nearly 73,000 Americans in 2023. Overdose deaths are now starting to decline thanks in part to the widespread availability of the anti-overdose drug naloxone. But nitazene overdoses are even more difficult to reverse than fentanyl or heroin.

PENNAL: You have the reversal drug naloxone and you get a powerful opiate like nitazene where before it might have taken four to eight milligrams or two dosages of naloxone. Now it may take four.

Pennal says there’s never been a more risky time to experiment with drugs.

PENNAL: The problem you run into now is everything is either diluted or it's cut with or it's in combination with different drugs. One of the big things you'll get from people is that, "Well, really, Bob, they don't want to kill all their customers." Well, that's not true at all anymore. There are so many millions of customers and people, they don't really think like that, you know, that they don't want to kill off their customers. It's just all about making money.

I’m Anna Johansen Brown with reporting from Addie Offereins.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Okay, so they tell me there’s a new dating trend making headlines. It’s called “Shrekking.” And it comes from the animated film Shrek, where the leading lady falls in love with the title character—an ogre. The tradeoff is: accept ogre looks for a princely personality.

AMY CHAN: The problem is it’s backfiring …

Amy Chan is author of Breakup Bootcamp:

CHAN: … these ogre-like guys are not treating women well, hence the word, getting “shrekked.”

So what’s a girl to do?

CHAN: The lesson here isn’t to only date conventionally attractive people, but to develop better skills for assessing someone’s value, character, emotional availability, regardless of what package they come in.

In other words, forget Shrek and maybe look to 18th-century literature, The Vicar of Wakefield: handsome is that handsome does.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Haha. I bagged both.

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

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Tuesday, August 26th.

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: faith, history, and mystery.

In a small church in Pittsburgh, ancient Catholic relics draw hundreds of people making the pilgrimage year after year.

REICHARD: Across the centuries, relics have stirred devotion—and debate. But what do they mean for faith today? WORLD’s Emma Eicher takes us to one of the world’s largest collections.

SOUND: [Door open and close, sound of church]

EMMA EICHER: In the hilltop neighborhood of Troy Hill in Pittsburgh, there’s a little chapel called St. Anthony’s.

It’s home to the most Catholic relics in the world—second only to the Vatican.

GREG JELINEK: Here's where that little thread from Mary's veil would be …

Deacon Greg Jelinek has served at St. Anthony’s for more than 50 years.

JELINEK: At that top little enamel medallion, there's a picture of Mary, and then a little piece of her veil underneath. And then with Christ's head rock from the tomb where he was buried. And then here: a little thread from St Joseph's clothing.

He grew up in this church, wandering through the pews as a toddler.

JELINEK: On the archway there's an inscription which reads corpora sanctorum in pace sepulta sunt. The bodies of the saints are buried here in peace. And I think that was the goal of our first pastor, Father Mollinger, who built this chapel.

In the late 19th century, Suitbert Mollinger used his wealth to buy relics. And he placed them in elaborate “reliquaries.” That’s a place where relics are displayed often hand crafted and decorated.

JELINEK: This one is a relic of our Lord's cross. It's the little splinter in the center of the reliquary there.

Here, the reliquaries range from intricate embroidered displays to stunning, gold-washed crosses a few feet tall. That splinter Jelinek pointed out is held in an ornate cross under a particularly elegant reliquary:

JELINEK: It’s four golden pillars with a dome. There are four carved angels, one on either corner of the dome, and the dome is covered with a red velvet fabric. Just a fairly opulent way to honor this particular relic.

There are more than 5,000 relics in the chapel. And they’re everywhere—mounted on walls, or clustered together on shelves going all the way up to the high, arched ceiling.

JELINEK: Each one is a jewel. Each one is a little masterpiece.

Relics come from the bodies of Saints canonized in the Catholic church. They can be anything: bones, pieces of skin, hair, blood, and the church has to officially verify their legitimacy.

The popularity of relics dates back to Medieval times. Michael Haykin is a professor of church history at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kentucky.

MICHAEL HAYKIN: Relics become a very, very significant part of the life of the church—not only the spirituality of individual believers, but they become essential to the large-scale building projects that take place in the Middle Ages.

People paid money to see relics from the saints, which guaranteed revenue for cathedrals and church buildings.

And their significance to the church was a holdover from even more ancient ideas.

HAYKIN: One of the key elements of Roman paganism was that certain objects and places had spiritual power associated with them, it’s called Numen.

So when people joined the church during the Middle Ages, they brought a pagan understanding of numen with them.

HAYKIN: And so it was believed that if a person had lived a remarkably holy life after their death, things that they may have touched, but also especially their body, was still charged with spiritual power, almost kind of in some ways, like radioactivity.

Not only would people go to see the relics, but they would touch, kiss, or even kneel to them. It’s called “veneration” in the Catholic faith. And it means giving honor or respect to someone in a special way. It usually involves praying directly to the saint whose relic is being venerated, asking for intercession.

Greg Jelinek says Catholics don’t see the relics as magic or possessing powers. But, he says, they serve as important reminders of martyrdom.

JELINEK: It's the example and life and presence of the saint herself or himself that give us the courage and the strength.

And Jelinek believes the Holy Spirit may still dwell in the bones of the saints—even centuries later.

JELINEK: St. Paul teaches us, do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit dwelling within you, given to you from God? And that's no more true for any of us than for these saints who lived lives that were filled with the work of the Holy Spirit, and who were truly inspired by the Holy Spirit. And when the soul leaves the body, does the body become negligible?

But while the Catholic church officially holds that veneration is not worship, Michael Haykin says real spiritual dangers can appear regardless.

HAYKIN: I mean, the Roman Catholic theologians make this distinction between worship and veneration. I think that line is lost on the person in the pew in many Catholic churches. It has tended to take the focus away from Christ and from the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and the Spirit's power.

There are still some things Protestants and Catholics can agree on. Haykin says relics don’t have spiritual power, but they do hold a different kind of significance. For everyone.

HAYKIN: There are men and women who have lived remarkably holy lives that can be models for us. And I think the impulse there is similar to the impulse that you find in the Roman Catholic veneration of relics, which is the need for heroes.

And Jelinek agrees.

JELINEK: If you know that these are the remains of people who are great models of faith, then to be in the presence of their physical remains makes me want to strive to learn from them and to become more like them in my own spiritual life, in my own faith quest.

St. Anthony’s still holds weekly Mass and worship services for its small congregation. Tourists come and go, peering up at the relics of saints long gone—locked behind glass and gold.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Emma Eicher, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Tuesday, August 26th. 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.

Texas passes a law to put the Ten Commandments on classroom walls. A Democratic senator, and seminary grad, says it’s not only unconstitutional, but as he sees it, unchristian. WORLD Opinions contributor Daniel Darling looks at what happens when the religious left gets on the national stage with one of America’s top podcasters.

JAMES TALARICO: Well, I think broadly we should say that using religion to control the people is a tale as old as time, right?

DANIEL DARLING: In a recent episode of his popular podcast Joe Rogan talked with Texas Democratic State Sen. James Talarico, a mainline Presbyterian seminarian. His Christian language has some pundits enthusiastically predicting he could “turn Texas blue.” I have my doubts.

JOE ROGAN: What is the Biblical evidence for being pro-abortion?

TALARICO: In Genesis, God creates life by breathing life into the first human being, which we later call Adam. That life starts when you take your first breath is actually the mainline position in Judaism...

Talarico might be a seminarian, but his exegesis needs work. Besides claiming that Scripture declares life begins at “first breath”, he also suggests the incarnation of Jesus is a defense for elective abortion.

TALARICO: Creation is one of the most sacred acts that we engage in as human beings. But that has to be done with consent. It has to be done with freedom. And to me that is absolutely consistent with the ministry and life and death of Jesus.

Rogan’s more than two hour conversation with Talarico began with the senator’s opposition to a new law in the Lone Star State. A law that requires every public-school classroom to display a poster of the Ten Commandments.

TALARICO: I told my colleagues that I thought the bill was unconstitutional. I thought the bill was un-American. But I went one step further and I said I thought the bill was unchristian…

Talarico says that he’s a Christian who firmly believes in the separation of church and state. He isn’t alone in his opposition to the law. The ACLU has of course weighed in, but some conservatives also wonder if it violates the establishment clause of the First Amendment.

As a Baptist who believes that a “free church in a free state is the Christian ideal,” I’m allergic to state-compelled religion. For instance I don’t believe the government should demand non-Christian students to pray Christian prayers. The government should not trample the conscience.

However, I don’t think the Texas 10 Commandment law falls into this category. First, it’s undeniable that this set of laws is not only at the heart of the Christian faith, but is at the fountainhead of Western moral law. Consider the words of founder John Adams. He wrote: “If ‘Thou shalt not covet,’ and ‘Thou shalt not steal,’ were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society, before it can be civilized or made free.”

His son John Quincy Adams was even more explicit: “The law given from Sinai was a civil and municipal as well as a moral and religious code; it contained many statutes … of universal application—laws essential to the existence of men in society.”

To post the Ten Commandments in the classroom is not an imposition of the Christian religion by the state but an acknowledgement of history by public schools. The Founders’ desire to resist the establishment of a state church wasn’t intended to scrub any contact with Christianity from the government. Christianity wasn’t the only influence on the formation of American democracy, but it wasn’t an insignificant one either.

Sadly, in the last several decades, American jurisprudence has sought to rob American students of knowing the full history of their country. Most of America’s past leaders from Thomas Jefferson to FDR to Martin Luther King would not recognize the secularism that has dominated our discussions. They all understood and acknowledged Christianity’s influence on the republic.

Additionally, public schools often post signs and posters from numerous historic events on classroom walls. Many post motivational quotes and signs. Some even push messages about sexuality.

What’s more, the mere presence of a poster containing the Ten Commandments will not harm even those who don’t share the Christian faith. They can look away if they are so inclined. But if those students do happen to catch a glance, they might be inspired to not steal or not covet. And that would be a good thing indeed.

I’m Daniel Darling.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: Washington Wednesday with Hunter Baker. And, a new vision for shelter, helping the homeless feel at home, not just warehoused. 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: “One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much.” —Luke 16:10

Go now in grace and peace.

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