The World and Everything in It: August 6, 2025

Editor's note: The following text is a transcript of a podcast story. To listen to the story, click on the arrow beneath the headline above.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Good morning!

Political roadblocks in Washington and Texas, stalled nominations, new voting maps, and an out-of-work job counter.

TRUMP: I mean, the numbers were ridiculous, which she announced

NICK EICHER, HOST: Washington Wednesday coming up.

Also today a WORLD Tour special report on violence in Colombia.

And disaster-relief chaplains carrying the weight of someone else’s hardest day.

HOWINGTON: All that impact, those strong emotions, they're just… now they're part of their DNA.

And WORLD Opinions contributor Brad Littlejohn on President Trump’s AI Action Plan.

MAST: It’s Wednesday, August 6th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Lindsay Mast.

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

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

SOUND: [Gaza aid drop]

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Israel-Gaza latest » Hundreds of Palestinians scrambled to collect aid packages dropped from cargo planes over central Gaza Tuesday. Fistfights broke out and gunshots could be heard as residents fought for food and other provisions.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar insists that Israel is doing what it can to help starving civilians in Gaza.

SA'AR: Israel facilitating huge amounts of aid into Gaza. No other country acts this way in war under such difficult circumstances.

Meanwhile, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce said the United States is holding out hope for another ceasefire as well as a humanitarian corridor for aid to flow into Gaza.

Bruce refused to comment when asked about reports that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's war cabinet is discussing plans for a full occupation of Gaza.

BRUCE: Regarding that reporting, again, reporting is one thing, real plans might be another. We are not in the business of interpreting statements from foreign governments when and if they're made.

President Donald Trump added that it is up to the Israeli government to decide its course in Gaza.

Trump narrows Fed chair candidates to four » President Trump has narrowed down his list of potential candidates to lead the Federal Reserve. He told reporters at the White House:

TRUMP:  We've also, uh, we're looking at the Fed chair and, uh, that's down to four people right now.

In an interview with CNBC, he named two of those candidates: National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett and former Federal Reserve Board member Kevin Warsh.

TRUMP:  I say Kevin and Kevin both. Kevins are very good. There are other people that are very good too.

He did not say who the other two candidates are, but he has ruled out Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, saying Bessent prefers to stay in his current role.

The term of current Fed Chairman Jerome Powell is set to end next year.

President Trump has been highly critical of Powell over the Fed’s recent stance of holding off on cutting interest rates.

Trump on tariffs » Trump also said Tuesday that he’s planning to add small tariffs soon on imported pharmaceuticals. But he says while they will start small, they grow considerably at some point next year.

TRUMP:  In one year, one and a half years maximum, it's gonna go to 150%, and then it's gonna go to 250% because we want pharmaceuticals made in our country.

He connected that move to broader tariffs on semiconductors and chips, which he says will be announced “within the next week or so.”

Trump says it is vital to ramp up America’s ability to produce those things domestically.

Texas House unable to vote with missing Democrats » Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has issued civil arrest warrants for Democratic lawmakers who fled the state this week to block a vote on a newly drawn congressional map.

The warrants have no power across state lines, so some see them as merely symbolic.

By leaving the state, Democrats have denied the state House the quorum it needs to vote.

State Congressman Ramon Romero:

ROMERO:  We're defending the rights of all Americans to value their vote and never be discouraged by way of a map drawn to say that your vote doesn't matter!

But republican U.S. Congressman Pat Fallon of Texas says those Democrats are camping out in blue states that have gerrymandered their district lines to a far greater extent.

FALLON:  The top five blue states in the country, which are California, Washington, Illinois, New York and New Jersey. There are 117 congressional seats. In those five states, the Democrats controlled 93 of them for 79%.

The new Texas congressional map could create five more Republican-leaning districts ahead of next year’s midterm elections.

New Hampshire children protected from transgender interventions » New Hampshire is the first state in the Northeast to protect children from transgender medical interventions. WORLD's Benjamin Eicher has more.

BENJAMIN EICHER: Two measures are set to take effect in January. One of them bars doctors from prescribing cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers to minors.

The other makes it illegal to perform so-called transgender surgeries on children.

Republican Gov. Kelly Ayotte signed both measures into law late last week.

More than half of all states in the country have some form of similar legal protections for children.

The U.S. Supreme Court in June upheld Tennessee's law protecting minors from transgender interventions.

For WORLD, I'm Benjamin Eicher.

California wildfire » A massive wildfire is burning in California, from Santa Barbara County through the Los Padres National Forest to points farther east. As of Tuesday, it had burned well over 80,000 acres.

Santa Barbara County Fire Captain Scott Safechuck:

SAFECHUCK:  So you have this extreme fire behavior that's occurring, which is creating a lot of smoke, a huge smoke column, usually during the middle of the day when it's peak burning hours.

Authorities say roughly 2,000 personnel are battling the blaze.

It grew out of several smaller fires that erupted Friday between Santa Maria and Bakersfield.

At least Three people have been injured.

The flames are threatening nearly a thousand structures.

I'm Kent Covington. 

Straight ahead: a conversation with Hunter Baker on political news during Washington Wednesday.  Plus, ministering to the hurting.

This is The World and Everything in It.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: It’s Wednesday the 6th of August.

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

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

Time now for Washington Wednesday.

Today, political shenanigans in Washington and Texas.

World Opinions contributor Hunter Baker joins us shortly to discuss the big stories this week, but first, an update on last week’s nominations battle in the Senate.

WORLD reporter Carolina Lumetta has the story.

CAROLINA LUMETTA: The Senate stayed in town for rare Friday and Saturday votes last week.

More than 100 executive nominees have made it through committee and are waiting for a floor vote in the Senate. Normally, the chamber gets through the approvals quickly by bringing the names to the floor in batches and asking for unanimous consent to approve them. But Democrats have jammed the process by forcing the chamber to vote on each one individually. Here’s Democratic New Jersey Senator Cory Booker.

CORY BOOKER: I have a real problem with a lot of these nominees. And I just have some concerns about us making sure that we honor a process where we're doing our advise and consent.

Now 6 months into the second Trump administration, the Senate has only confirmed 127 of the president’s 368 nominees so far. The President will need Senate approval for roughly 1,300 during his term. I asked Booker whether he’d consider supporting batch approvals for less controversial names on the list.

BOOKER: I don't even want to put those into the categories that you just mentioned. There are– every single nominee by the mandates of the Constitution deserves our examination and scrutiny.

The delay is prompting Republicans like Texas Senator John Cornyn to look for workarounds. I spoke with him in the Capitol subway.

CORNYN: We've never seen obstruction like this before so I think it calls for something something extraordinary.

The Texas Republican is one of several who want to remove debate time requirements. When Republicans were in the minority, they often blocked unanimous consent to slow down the Democratic agenda. But this is the first time the tactic has been used for all presidential appointees. Senate Majority Leader John Thune displayed a chart in a floor speech on Saturday showing how unanimous consent rates have been declining for every president since Obama.

JOHN THUNE: These numbers are not moving in the right direction, which is why I would argue that we’ve got to change the process by which we do this, otherwise we’re going to deteriorate to where any president that comes in here is going to be very very hard pressed to do the job the American people elected him to do.

In the end, though, the Senate called it quits Saturday night…confirming just 8 more nominees. No changing any procedural rules, and a massive backlog still to work through.

Republican leaders said they would revisit both goals in September. When they return, they will have to reckon with that promise…as well as a government funding deadline.

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

MAST: Joining us now to talk more about this and other stories is political scientist and WORLD Opinions Commentator Hunter Baker.

Hunter, good morning.

BAKER: Good morning.

Hunter, you heard Senator Booker saying every nominee deserves full Senate scrutiny, but as Carolina noted the “all nominees” move is a new tactic. Do you see it as a principled move or just playing politics, and I wonder whether we’ll see more of the same when the shoe is on the other foot. What do you say?

BAKER: It’s politics, and it’s been going on increasingly for, you know, maybe the past 20 years or so. I think in particular this instance, some Democrats have pointed back to the end of the Obama administration, after Justice Scalia died, and the Republicans said we are not going to have any process on looking at another Supreme Court Justice until after the election. And so some of them are basically saying, hey, you know, payback is tough. Now it's your turn. Now, what's different is, is that we're not talking about a single high profile position. We're talking about kind of everybody, right? You know, just this big blank slate. And the reason they have given is, in my mind, more of a rhetorical reason than a real reason. Basically, they're saying these candidates are historically unqualified. I find it extremely difficult to believe that's the case. I think instead, it's more just a matter of political combat.

EICHER: Speaking of gumming up the works (or whatever he says), dozens of Democratic state legislators in Texas walked out, actually left the state, to block a vote on a new election map. The effect was to deny Texas Republicans a quorum and essentially shut down the legislature. Democrats fled to several different sanctuary states: New York, Massachusetts, Illinois. Here’s Texas Democrat John Bucy III speaking from the Land of Lincoln:

REP. JOHN BUCY III: Not for fairness, not for representation, but to manufacture five more Republican seats in Congress to enable Trump to cling on to power.

The at-large lawmakers are facing fines of $500 a day they remain AWOL, but donors appear willing to foot those bills—for now at least.

Hunter, of all the issues Democrats could stage a walkout over, why this one?

BAKER: Well, there's a history here. So it's really kind of a legacy of the Civil Rights period in American history, there was a time when the courts, in an attempt to ensure fairness and representation, would essentially mandate and support the formation of majority minority districts, right? So in other words, to use gerrymandering specifically to create, say, a black district. You know, similar logic applied to federal management of many school districts for a very long time. I think that it was probably only within the last 15 years that the federal government had stopped supervising some of the districts in the south. And so what's happened is, is that a federal appeals court in Texas has said those majority minority districts are no longer constitutionally necessary, and Texas is basically saying, okay, then we would like to redraw the lines with the idea that we no longer have to create majority minority districts.

MAST: Hunter, do you think they have a moral high ground to stand on when it comes to accusations of gerrymandering? And really does any politician?

BAKER: No. Nobody has a moral high ground on gerrymandering. I was in Georgia working as a lobbyist around the year 2000 when there was redistricting at that time, and I have never seen anything as acidic and unpleasant as the gerrymandering that was done at that time. Now, at that point, it was Democrats trying to hold on to a Democratic majority in the state of Georgia, but it's nobody likes it if you're on the other end of it, right? If you're in the minority, then you hate it. Because what happens is the majority is using their power to sort of squeeze that map in the most advantageous way possible. But there is just nothing unusual about it. What's what's a little unusual is the fact that they're doing it kind of halfway through a decade instead of waiting for the next census. So I'm not surprised. It's bitter. I'm also not surprised that they have fled, because when you're deeply in the minority in a body, there's nothing else you can do other than just lose.

EICHER: As we reported Monday, really rough jobs report for July, but even worse for June and May. For those two months the jobs figures were revised down by more than a quarter million. President Trump was so angry about it, the lead economist in charge of the agency that counts jobs, the Bureau of Labor Statistics well, he added her to the job-loss totals:

TRUMP: I mean, the numbers were ridiculous, which she announced, but that was just one negative number. All the numbers seem to be great.

Yep, he fired her. I did talk this week with David Bahnsen and he said this is not a good look, but what do you say about it from a political standpoint?

BAKER: I would say that politically at first blush, it looks bad, right? You know, this is the kind of person, a reporter of official statistics, who is supposed to be non-political. However, that being said, I actually think that it's somewhat naive to think that those statistics and that position is purely non-political. You know, one thing that you learn in the world of social statistics is, first of all, there are lots of measurement problems. There are lots of assumptions that have to be made, and a person can lean in different directions as they make those assumptions right to get the numbers. Now in this case, was that happening? I don't know, but what I can say pretty authoritatively is that particular number has not been very accurate from report to report for quite a while. I think that there are measurement problems, and I think that they do need leadership that's going to find a way to get past some of the measurement problems of these surveys.

MAST: Hunter, I have a follow up to that. What do you think this says about the credibility of numbers like this, as does this chip away at people's trust in these numbers in terms of them being an economic indicator?

BAKER: Yeah, so it is a problem, right? I mean, if you if you look at the stock market, the stock market reacts to these numbers. It's really problematic if people make major money decisions based on based on an incorrect report. Now, how do you get past it? I'm not sure, because, you know, some of this stuff is developed via survey, and the problem is, is that it is really hard to get responsiveness to surveys in the same way that we did in the past. So you know, we need to not only worry about being non political, but we need to worry about being accurate. And there may have to be a paradigm shift in how we develop accurate information.

MAST: Ok, Hunter Baker is a political scientist and WORLD Opinions Contributor. Thanks so much!

BAKER: Thank you.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: a World Tour Special Report.

The South American nation of Colombia was once plagued by drug cartels and violent armed conflict. But by the early 2000s  it became a relatively peaceful regional power.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: This summer, though, after the traumatic shooting of a popular opposition candidate, Colombians worry the country is returning to its violent past.

WORLD’s Jenny Lind Schmitt reports.

AUDIO: [Moment of Miguel’s shooting]

JENNY LIND SCHMITT: Colombian Senator Miguel Uribe comes from a long line of leaders targeted for their work. His grandfather led Colombia in the 1980s at the height of the country’s security crisis. Uribe’s mother, a journalist, was taken hostage by the Medellin drug cartel and eventually killed during a rescue mission in the 1990s. Then in June, Uribe’s presidential campaign ground to a halt when he was shot in the head twice during a speech in the nation’s capital.

AUDIO: [People protesting]

Authorities charged a 15-year-old boy for carrying out the shooting, but continued investigating to find out who planned the attack. National Police Director Carlos Fernando Triana admitted in June that Colombia’s Armed Revolutionary Forces, also known as the FARC, was likely behind the attack.

TRIANA: Hoy tras esa captura importante, cobra relevancia esta hipótesis. Sin embargo no podemos descartar absolutamente nada… Ahí seguimos trabajando… para llegar hasta la última persona que participó de este hecho.

[TRANSLATION: After today’s important arrest, this hypothesis has gained relevance. However, we cannot rule out anything... We are here working... to track down every person who participated in this crime.]

FARC was once the deadliest rebel group in Colombia before signing a peace treaty with the government and disbanding in 20-16. But some factions of the FARC rejected the terms of surrender and have increased their activity in the years since then.

Even more worrying is the rapid growth of other criminal actors competing for power inside Colombia. WORLD’s Carlos Paez spoke with Carlos Chacón, a security expert and executive director of the Hernán Echavarría Olózaga Political Science Institute in Bogotá.

CHACÓN: Todas son organizaciones de crimen organizado dedicadas a extraer rentas de forma ilícita, donde encontramos no solamente el narcotráfico y la extracción y comercialización ilícita de oro, sino otras economías como el contrabando, la trata y tráfico de personas de armas.  Y lo que han venido haciendo es enfrentar no solamente al estado…sino con otros grupos criminales, lo cual ha llevado a una crisis.

[TRANSLATION: They’re all organized crime organizations dedicated to illegal rents like drug trafficking , illegal gold mining, and also other economies such as smuggling, human and arms trafficking. And what they have been doing is confronting not only the State... but also other criminal groups, which has led to a crisis.]

Guerilla groups are also spreading across borders. Rebel factions like the National Liberation Army have expanded from Colombia into Venezuela to increase their numbers and black market trading.

CHACÓN: Sin un cambio democrático en Venezuela, la situación de amenazas a la seguridad de Colombia va a ser permanente.  Venezuela, especialmente desde la llegada de Hugo Chávez al poder se convirtió no solamente en un santuario y un retaguardia estratégico de organizaciones criminales como el ELN y las FARC, sino que además se convirtió en un teatro de operaciones.

[TRANSLATION: Without democratic change in Venezuela, threats to Colombian security will be permanent. Venezuela, especially since Hugo Chávez came to power, has become not only a sanctuary and strategic rear base for criminal organizations such as the ELN and the FARC, but also a theater of operations.]

But the conflict has expanded beyond guerilla groups and the military. It also increasingly affects Colombian civilians. On July 2nd, Colombia’s attorney general confirmed the murder of 8 civic and church leaders in Guaviare, in the south-central region of the country. FARC militants captured them earlier in the year.

Evangelicals are increasingly vulnerable to pressure from belligerent groups. Carlos Paez also spoke with Rosa Erazo. She’s the deputy officer for Colombia with Christian Solidarity Worldwide.

ROSA: ¿Pero cuando usted predica el Cristo de perdonar a los enemigos... entonces los enemigos que son paramilitares están acá, pero la guerrilla es la que está gobernando la región, ahí sí, no? Entonces ah, no, ese, ese evangelio no nos gusta, dice la guerrilla… porque usted está perdonando a los paramilitares enemigos de nosotros.”

[TRANSLATION: What when you preach about forgiving your enemies… and the enemies are here, but the guerrillas are the ones ruling the region, right? So, ah, no, we don't like that gospel, the guerrillas say... because you are forgiving our enemies, the paramilitaries.]

Complicating the issue is the fact that President Gustavo Petro was himself a former guerilla fighter with the Cuban-backed M-19 rebels. Petro initially promised “Total Peace” by resuming talks with the insurgents. But peace seems more distant than ever. Rebel groups this year boast 22,000 soldiers – a 45% increase since the start of Petro’s term in 20-22. According to the Global Peace Index deaths from armed conflict have more than doubled since 20-23.

Juan Rey-Rubio is a Colombian graduate student at the George Washington University Elliott School of International Affairs. He told Carlos Paez that Petro’s peace strategy was doomed to fail.

RUBIO: So you know, to have a president that at one point stood alongside and took up arms is obviously going to embolden these, these groups, to act and to continue fighting, because they feel like they are going to be backed up. And unfortunately, it kind of seems like they are.

President Petro’s gradual reduction of the Colombian military and his repeated attempts to pardon criminal bosses has raised concerns among many Colombians who no longer feel protected by the State. Here’s security expert Chacón again.

CHACÓN: Y entonces, si justificamos delitos de tipo político, pues eso lleva a que los grupos criminales tengan un incentivo para enfrentar al estado… lo cierto es que no hay paz si no hay imperio de la ley, no hay paz si no hay garantías de seguridad.

[TRANSLATION: And so, if we justify political crimes, this leads to criminal groups having an incentive to confront the State... the truth is that there can be no peace without the rule of law, there can be no peace without security guarantees.]

According to polls from Chacón’s organization, two-thirds of Colombians fear for the nation’s democracy under Gustavo Petro. Miguel Uribe has shown miraculous signs of recovering from his injuries, and leads the polls ahead of elections next May. But rehabilitation just started, and it's uncertain if he will fully recover. In the meantime, CSW officer Rosa Erazo says Colombians must fight to support each other.

ROSA: Tenemos que aprender a hacer las denuncias, tenemos que aprender a levantar la voz, tenemos que aprender a hacer redes donde podamos protegernos los unos a los otros…Si hay ese amor y esa confraternidad en medio de todo eso, de un momento a otro vuelve a levantarse algo bonito y Colombia en algún momento va a ver la luz.

[TRANSLATION: We have to learn to report crimes, we have to learn to raise our voices, we have to learn to build networks where we can protect each other... If there is love and brotherhood in the midst of all this, something beautiful will rise again from one moment to the next, and Colombia will eventually see the light again.]

For World Tour with reporting from Carlos Paez, I’m Jenny Lind Schmitt.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: You’ve heard of therapy dogs? How about if your therapist has hooves and tries to play piano?

Meet Victoria Nodiff-Netanel, former dressage rider turned founder of Mini Therapy Horses.

NETANEL: She was doing a number on her keyboard which is what all my horses do and it brings a lot of smiles to everyone.

It all started with one miniature horse named Pearl. Now there are nine of them, washed, braided, shoed and ready to stirrup those smiles in hospitals, fire stations, and disaster zones.

The pint-sized pros visit veterans every Monday.

NETANEL: We love our veterans and our horses have been there every Monday for 17 years now.

And no long faces when they’re done.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Today is Wednesday August 6th.

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

Good morning. I’m Lindsay Mast.

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

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: when disaster strikes, help comes in many forms.

In Texas hill country, historic floods swept away homes and took more than 100 lives. But for many survivors in other flooded areas in Texas, the most needed help wasn’t physical. It was spiritual. WORLD’s Todd Vician reports.

GRACIELA BRIONES: [Speaking in Spanish, explaining what happened]

TODD VICIAN: BJ Harp is a disaster relief volunteer.

BJ HARP: She said that this street right here gets underwater. And so she just thought that it was just going to be underwater like always.

She’s translating for Graciela Briones, who’s just lost her home.

HARP: And then she got out of bed and put her feet down on the floor, what she thought was the floor, and the water was already up to her knees.

It’s almost three weeks after the deluge, but Briones still vividly remembers the floodwaters that shocked her and the entire community that early morning.

HARP: The water was flowing so hard that even with her son and neighbor, it would knock him down, they’d fall into the water, and then they’d stand up for a few minutes. And then they came and got her with the walker and took her across the street, and they were able to sit down in a chair.

Briones and her husband raised their children in the small, one-story house they’ve lived in for 30 years. She’s calm as she describes to chaplains seated alongside her the rising water, rescue, and even how others responded that day.

For chaplains, disaster ministry is complicated but rewarding. They navigate emotions like fear, sorrow, regret, and guilt as they provide spiritual and emotional care. They get questions but don’t always have the answers. Most of all, they offer hope and healing to those hurting.

MELANIE HOWINGTON: Sharing your story, it's a very important part of the healing process. This is the first time she's been able to share her story and that's huge. As chaplains, that's what we're here to hear your story.

Melanie Howington is the state chaplain coordinator for Texans on Mission. That’s one of the many disaster relief teams on scene here. Howington has volunteered for about 10 years—the last 8 as a chaplain.

HOWINGTON: We call it the ministry of presence, you just be there. You just be there for them, and you sit and you listen, and you listen to the same story 100 times if you listen to the same story 100 times.

Hundreds of volunteer chaplains commit to spending 10 to 14 days in the field after a disaster strikes. Before deploying for the first time, they have to complete a 16-hour training program that helps them minister in different settings.

HOWINGTON: We talk about the people who are impacted, not only those whose homes are impacted, but the people who are working and the people behind the scenes as well. Your first responders, the family members, you know, the family members of those who have had a tragedy.

The training includes role playing during the various stages of grief, how to recognize when a survivor is emotionally drained and talking just might not help, and what to say and what not to say when praying with survivors.

HOWINGTON: You never, never dismiss their feelings, because it's very real and it's very hard and it's very tumultuous. And it's just up and down roller coaster everything, and you never discount that. You know it's not going in with this naive Pollyanna thing, oh, everything's going to be okay. You don't go in like that (right) because it is highly emotional for them.

Chaplains watch and listen for signs of concern in volunteers who sometimes think that showing any distress means they’re less capable than others are to serve.

HOWINGTON: If you know your team, you can pray for your team, you can know what's going on with them, you know, in the midst of all this and and there's these things called triggers that that people have where it reminds them of something, and then they're put they're all of a sudden, they're mentally off kilt you know, it's like things like that.

Bob Hourahan, or “Chaplain Bob” as he likes to be called, arrived in San Angelo after ministering to search teams and survivors in Kerrville. He says questions like, “Why did this happen,” or “Where is God in all this?” are common.

BOB HOURAHAN: Could God have prevented this flood? Yes. Could God have saved any victims? Yes. Why didn't he? I can't answer that. That's usually how it goes for me, and I'm assuming most chaplains as well, because we don't think the way he thinks, and we don't know what he knows. We just trust and follow Him.

Chaplains are good listeners. They’re trained to avoid immediately jumping in with solutions in the midst of recovery.

HOWINGTON: Sometimes they ask questions. They don't want answers. They're just asking questions, and you don't really, you know, they don't want the answer. They're just asking questions. They're venting.

Serving after a disaster can be exhausting. Long days, short nights, and bare-bones accommodations are the norm. Howington preaches self-care to her fellow chaplains.

HOWINGTON: You can't un-feel it. All that impact, those strong emotions, they're just—now they're part of their DNA. Does that make sense? It's part of them now. And you have to learn to just like first responders have to deal with it. Your chaplains have to come to be able to have to deal with that.

And Hourahan, who’s a retired Air Force master sergeant trained to take care of Airmen, keeps an eye on the volunteers in yellow shirts and dust-filled jeans.

HOURAHAN: Volunteers feel their pain. Volunteers are affected. You look around, there's 25 of us today. Some are brand new. This is their first call out. I have to bird-dog, if you will, be sensitive to their needs, their signs, because they may never experience somebody in so much pain or seen so much devastation.

Howington sums up their mission after a morning filled with prayers and encouragement.

HOWINGTON: People think if they can evangelize or they can preach they can be a disaster chaplain, and that’s not necessarily true. You're just trying to come alongside and just walk with them through a season.

AUDIO: [Sound of hammers and saws]

And sometimes that ministry of presence leads to something more. Graciela Briones, who earlier recounted being rescued, accepted God’s offer of salvation before the chaplains and volunteer workers left her house.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Todd Vician in San Angelo, Texas.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Wednesday August 6th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast.

Up next, a national action plan for AI.

Last week, the Trump Administration released its roadmap for building American AI infrastructure.

White House Chief Scientist Michael Kratsios

KRATSIOS: America has to win the AI race. As I said before, as a country we have to have the most dominant technological stack in the world and that's critically important for our national economic security

NICK EICHER, HOST: Some compare the AI race to the arms race during the Cold War, but WORLD Opinions Contributor Brad Littlejohn says today’s decisionmakers need to recognize the stakes are even higher.

BRAD LITTLEJOHN: The advent of artificial intelligence already represents a technological breakthrough at least on par with the harnessing of nuclear energy nearly a century ago. Like nuclear energy, it is a technology clearly capable of doing extraordinary good for humanity or extraordinary harm. And like nuclear energy, its breakneck development is happening in the midst of tense international competition between superpowers.

The White House’s AI Action Plan recognizes the high stakes and high risks of this competition, seeking to roll back overly burdensome regulations that would stifle innovation, but without dismissing the real risks of AI. For instance, the plan highlights our current woeful ignorance when it comes to understanding the inner workings of major large language models and calls for DARPA research to better understand and control AI. And it warns that “The most powerful AI systems may pose novel national security risks in the near future in areas such as cyberattacks and the development of chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, or explosives (CBRNE) weapons.” With AI as with nuclear, our government seems to be attending to the maxim “with great power comes great responsibility.”

That said, there are at least three significant differences between our situation today with AI and with nuclear science eight decades ago, which together suggest the need for this administration to expand and deepen its AI Action Plan—if it is to secure our American future.

First, nuclear technology was initially almost entirely a military and industrial technology. It was housed in powerful reactors requiring enormous infrastructure, not in your living room or your pocket. While AI systems require enormous investments in data centers and research labs, they also have innumerable consumer applications that already saturate the market. This consumer-facing AI poses a whole slew of additional questions and challenges largely unaddressed by the Action Plan: in a world where 75% of teens have already experimented with AI companions, how can we combat the retreat from reality these technologies are likely to engender? How are we to address the rampant cheating that is leading to a breakdown of education, or the atrophy of human skill and knowledge that comes from overreliance on easy (and often misleading) AI answers? Such questions are just as urgent as “how are we going to beat China?” since “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world, but loses his soul?”

Second, any attempt at sensible AI regulation today has to reckon with the immense power of entrenched industry players. This was not the case with the Manhattan Project, where the federal government took the wheel to develop a new industry while drawing on the industrial might corporations like DuPont. Today, the government is playing catch-up. NVIDIA, which has established a near monopoly in advanced AI chips, currently enjoys a market capitalization of over $4 trillion, with AI-powered titans Microsoft, Alphabet, and Meta not far behind. Such immense market power has already enabled them to sway critical Trump administration AI policy in their favor.

Finally, today we are living in an increasingly post-religious and post-truth world, and that poses a problem for one of the AI Action Plan’s stated goals: promoting “human flourishing.” To promote human flourishing requires a commitment to human nature, something few in our tech companies seem to be truly invested in. And whereas White House policy lays great stress on the need for AI models to “pursue objective truth rather than social engineering agendas,” as Pontius Pilate famously said, “What is truth?” One cannot simply demand that AI models be truth-seeking without a commitment to order society itself around objective truth—as revealed in nature and Scripture. Is that something that this White House is truly prepared to do?

The challenge before us, in short, makes the nuclear race look like a walk in the park. Our leaders will need exceptional wisdom, courage, and determination if we are to win the AI race without losing our souls.

I’m Brad Littlejohn.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: The trade war between the United States and Brazil heats up. And, how one truck driver uses his time over the road for eternal purposes. That and more tomorrow.

I’m Nick Eicher.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast.

WORLD’s Latin America associate correspondent Carlos Páez reported and wrote today’s World Tour.

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio. WORLD’s mission is Biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

The Bible records a scribe asking Jesus which commandment is most important. “Jesus answered, ‘The most important is, Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these.’” —Mark 12:29-31

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.