The World and Everything in It: December 6, 2023

PREROLL: The World and Everything in It is made possible by listeners like us. Hi, my name is Danielle. I'm an army wife and mom and I live in El Paso, Texas. I hope you enjoy today's program.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning! Today on Washington Wednesday, a congressional expulsion and gridlock over funding for wartime allies.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Also today: World Tour. And reaping a different kind of harvest at a Christmas-tree farm.

NIEMAN: Even if I never made a nickel out of it…people are being happy because of something we’re doing. That makes me happy.

And commentator Ryan Bomberger on grim new abortion data.

BROWN: It’s Wednesday, December 6th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

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

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

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: FBI surveillance » FBI Director Christopher Wray says when it comes to the current threat level of a terrorist attack in the United States. He’s never seen anything like it.

WRAY: I have never seen a time where so many of the threats are all elevated, all at exactly the same time.

He said the threat level has jumped since the start of the Israel-Hamas war.

Wray testified before a Senate panel urging lawmakers to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The counterterrorism program is slated to expire at the end of the year.

WRAY: 702 allows us to stay a step ahead of foreign actors located outside the United States who pose a threat to national security.

But Americans could be spied on incidentally — without a warrant, if they’re in contact with a targeted foreigner.

Republican Sen. Mike Lee cited documented alleged abuses of surveillance power. And he said for years, he’s pressed numerous FBI directors for civil rights assurances.

LEE: Every darn one of them has told me the same thing: ‘Don’t worry about it. We’ve got this taken care of. We’ve got new procedures. It’s going to be different now.’ It’s never different. You haven’t changed.

But Wray argued that allowing the program, created in the wake of 9/11 to expire would be “devastating” to US national security.  

Gaza » Israel’s ground war against Hamas has entered a bloody new phase with troops now fighting in Khan Younis…Gaza’s second-largest city.

The Israeli military says it’s engaged in the most intense fighting since the start of the war.

But that also means more civilians caught in the crossfire.

And UNICEF spokesman James Elder says there can be only one solution:

ELDER: Only a ceasefire. Only a ceasefire is going to save the children of Gaza right now.

That call comes even as Israeli authorities release new information about Hamas atrocities.

AUDIO: [Speaking Hebrew]

This eyewitness describes seeing a woman raped and physically mutilated by Hamas on October 7th.

President Biden said he’s heard the shocking stories from recently released hostages … and called the terror group’s actions “appalling.”

Campus antisemitism » Harvard President Claudine Gay told a House committee:
College presidents from Harvard to MIT say they’re doing what they can to combat a recent rise in anti-Semitism on their campuses.

GAY: We have increased security measures expanded reporting channels and augmented counseling mental health and support services.

But students from several universities also gathered on Capitol Hill yesterday to say their administrations are not doing enough.

STUDENT: Today, in 2023, at NYU, I hear calls to gas the Jews, and I'm told that Hitler was right

Pro-Palestinian demonstrations have spiked on college campuses since the start of the Israel-Hamas war.

Rights groups have also reported an increase in harassment against Muslims in America.

Speaker Johnson on Ukraine aid/border security » Lawmakers continue to argue over aid to Ukraine. The debate is over the terms of that aid.

House Speaker Mike Johnson said Congress must address the crisis on the U.S. southern border before approving more money for Ukraine.

JOHNSON: We have to affect real policy change at the border, and that is a necessary condition to anything we do going forward.

White House Deputy Press Secretary Olivia Dalton says President Biden is willing to talk with Republicans about border and immigration policies. But …

DALTON: What we cannot do is delay on funding our critical national security needs… which by the way, includes a request from the president to fund border security and stem the flow of fentanyl into the country. which by the way, includes a request from the president to fund border security and stem the flow of fentanyl into the country which by the way, includes a request from the president to fund border security and stem the flow of fentanyl into the country.

Biden is pushing Congress to approve a $106 billion dollar security package. Most of that would fund wartime assistance for Israel and Ukraine. It does include nearly $14 billion for the border.

But Republicans say that won’t cut it without major policy shifts, including restarting construction on the border wall and tightening asylum rules.

Tuberville » Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville says he’s dropping his blockade on hundreds of military promotions.

Tuberville held up the promotions for months to pressure the Pentagon to stop using taxpayer dollars to cover abortion-related travel expenses for servicemembers.

Tuberville told reporters:

TUBERVILLE: It was pretty much a draw I mean they didn't get what they wanted we didn't get what we wanted and you know when they change the rules it's hard to win.

He’s largely lifting the blockade, but will continue to block promotions above the rank of 3-star general.

Biden fundraising » President Biden is making one last push this year to raise money for his reelection campaign. 

GOP debate preview » Meantime, Republican White House hopefuls are gearing up for the fourth Republican debate of the year tonight, this time in western Alabama.

Once again, frontrunner Donald Trump will not participate. But four GOP rivals will: Gov. Ron DeSantis, former governors Nikki Haley and Chris Christie and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy.

NewsNation will host the debate at 8pm Eastern. And it’ll stream on the social media platform Rumble.

I'm Kent Covington. 

Straight ahead: Foreign aid and George Santos on Washington Wednesday. Plus, World Tour.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Wednesday the 6th day of December, 2023.

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

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. First up on The World and Everything in It: Washington Wednesday.

Today, a conversation with political scientist and World Opinions contributor Hunter Baker about the end of the career of George Santos.

BROWN: But first, the impasse in Congress over foreign aid to Israel, Ukraine, and beyond.

Here’s Washington Bureau reporter Leo Briceno with the story.

LEO BRICENO, REPORTER: For Jonathan Meola and his wife, Eva, Israel’s war with Gaza is thousands of miles away from their house in Florida, but every bit of news hits close to home. They’re Jewish and dual citizens of the U.S. and Israel who used to live right outside Jerusalem. One of their friends from that season of life, a young man named Ezra, is fighting in Israel’s war with Hamas. WORLD has withheld his last name to protect his family.

JONATHAN MEOLA: He lived with us for the better part of two years. Every Friday night to Saturday night he would pretty much stay with us, bring his friends over. Our house was always full with him and his buddies. Basically, we were basically like their...

EVA: —Kitchen.

JONATHAN: Kitchen. Yeah. Haha my wife’s in the background. He messaged, and he got called back up. And he can’t say much about where he is, but he’s probably in the thick—.”

EVA: He’s in Gaza.

JONATHAN: He’s pretty much on the Gaza frontier. I’ll just leave it at that.

That’s one of the many reasons Jonathan has kept an eye on the $14.3 billion aid package for Israel that’s currently making its way through Congress.

JONATHAN MEOLA: The fact is that if this support passes, it shows that America recognizes and says ‘this is something we know you have to do and at least we’re going to have your back in that.’

But Israel is just one of many countries the United States helps. Between 2012 and 2021 the U.S. spent $500 billion dollars on foreign aid and tens of billions more in the years since then. Some Republicans in Congress are tired of prioritizing foreign crises over problems at home.

Republicans in the Senate and the House of Representatives—won’t pass an aid package unless it also beefs up border security. Democrats have said those are two separate issues and won’t accept an aid package with strings attached. At the same time, some Democrats are calling for conditions to be placed on funding for Israel including a guarantee that the war in Gaza ends with a 2-state solution.

Meanwhile, The Pentagon announced on Monday that it will be unable to continue providing weapons to Ukraine’s war effort without additional funding. Since Russia’s attack last year, the United States has spent over 44 billion dollars on aid to Ukraine.

OWEN: That’s investing in the relationship and both sides plus third parties come to expect that to continue, that relationship to continue.

That’s Dr. John Owen—a professor at the University of Virginia’s Department of Politics and a senior fellow at the Miller Center for Public Affairs. I called him up to learn just how much countries around the world depend on the US for some level of military aid.

OWEN: The U.S. support for Israel of course is massive. Financially it’s our biggest recipient of foreign aid over the years. In the case of Ukraine, the Ukrainians are clearly dependent on the U.S. military and other kinds of aid. The Europeans—who desperately want Russia to if not lose the war then at least stop, stop with the parts of Ukraine it has—are also heavily dependent on the United State continuing to do this.

With Ukraine funding running low, a majority of House Republicans have expressed strong opposition to sending more aid.

But over in the Senate, Republicans are on board with funding Ukraine as long as the package includes measures to secure the U-S Southern border. Yesterday afternoon, the Senate met for a closed door briefing about the aid for Ukraine. Here’s Utah Senator Mitt Romney afterwards:

ROMNEY: We agree Ukraine needs the money, and it's in America's interest to get the money to help Ukraine. But we also recognize that the President put border security on the table as part of this supplemental and unless they're willing to shut down the 10,000 a day being released into the country, they're not going to get a deal done.

While Democrats and Republicans have vastly different foreign policy priorities, legislators in both parties agree that the U.S. has to pass some sort of aid package—and soon. What remains to be seen is whether that agreement also allows them to address the crises at home.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Leo Briceno.

EICHER: In other Washington Wednesday developments, the House vote to expel New York congressman George Santos. The move came after months of investigation into his campaign finances and false statements in the runup to the 2022 midterms.

Back in May, Santos was indicted on 13 charges related to fraud with ten more charges added in October. His trial is scheduled for next September.

Santos is only the 6th House member to be removed by a vote of his peers and the first in recent history to be expelled without a legal finding of guilt.

BROWN: Joining us now to talk about the story is Hunter Baker. He’s a professor of political science at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee, and a regular contributor to World Opinions. Good morning Hunter.

BAKER: Good morning.

BROWN: What do you make of the timing for Congress to expel Santos? On the one hand, this is coming months after the truth came out, but on the other hand, it’s weeks or even months before Santos gets his day in court. What does political prudence look like in this kind of situation?

BAKER: Well, he tried to forestall the result by saying that he would not run again. And it is unusual, as you pointed out in the open, that he was expelled without a conviction. You know, the previous people who were expelled from Congress had either joined the Confederate rebellion against the union, or were convicted of crimes related to bribery, you know, directly related to the function of the office. One of them was even captured in an FBI sting back in the 1980s, I think. So this on the one hand, it seems pretty clear, you know, just exactly what he did, and how he defrauded those who contributed to his campaign and spent money on Botox and vacations and things of that nature. But boy, I don't like the precedent of expelling somebody on a mere charge. It seems like anytime you have a closely divided Congress, that there would be a lot of attempts to do this, and maybe try to swing the balance of power.

BROWN: Yeah, because what does this say about, you know, the notion of innocent until proven guilty?

BAKER: Certainly, that's right. And I think this is really not only in politics, but in a broader cultural sort of a sphere, we kind of have evolved the standard of credibly accused. And if somebody is “credibly accused,” there's a lot of pressure to take action. And on the one hand, there are good reasons for that, because you want to protect people from bad actors. But on the other hand, you could definitely sweep up some people who were innocent, or wrongfully charged by that kind of a standard.

BROWN: What does Santos’s expulsion mean for the Republican majority in the House?

BAKER: What it means is it gets that much tighter, right? I think that now, you can probably only afford to lose three or maybe four members if you're the Republicans on a vote. And that is really tight. I mean, when you're talking about a body with over 400 members, you know, and your caucus has, you know, over over 200 in it, it's pretty easy to lose one or two or three or or seven or eight or nine. And so the Republicans are pretty unhappy about this. And the speaker, Mike Johnson, you know, he said he was worried about not waiting for a conviction. And so he voted against the expulsion, certainly, unstated, he was also worried about losing even that little bit of margin.

BROWN: In a recent WORLD Opinions article, you compared the expulsion of Santos from the House to the Senate’s reluctance to do the same to Democratic Senator Bob Menendez after being indicted for corruption and bribery. What’s your assessment?

BAKER: Well, so the thing about Menendez is that it appears that he has used his position to aid the Egyptian government and perhaps to share sensitive information with representatives of the Egyptian government. So on the one hand, you have George Santos with questionable spending of campaign money on himself. I mean, it's shifty, it's stupid, it's bad. But that is really nothing compared to someone perhaps aiding a foreign power through the use of their still more powerful position of Senator. And the excuse so far as the Senate has said, Well, he hasn't had any ethics committee process. But why not, right? Why hasn't that happened? We've been aware of these problems for quite a while now.

BROWN: Hunter Baker is a professor of political science at Union university in Jackson, Tennessee and a regular contributor to World Opinions. Hunter, thank you!

BAKER: Thank you.

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

SOUND: [Street]

ONIZE OHIKERE: Guinea Bissau foiled coup — We start today’s roundup in the West African nation of Guinea-Bissau where calm has returned to the capital city after a thwarted coup attempt.

SOUND:  [Gunbattle]

The country’s army on Friday said it retained control after a gun battle broke out between members of the National Guard and special forces guarding the president.

The unrest began after National Guard members stormed a police station to extract the finance minister and treasury secretary. Both men were under investigation for alleged corruption.

At least two people died in the fighting.

Here’s the country’s President Umaro Sissoco Embalo:

EMBALO: A commission of enquiry will be set up and you all know who is involved in this coup.

He says here that authorities will launch an inquiry into the coup. He has dissolved the country’s parliament and will later announce the date for the legislative elections.

It was the second attempted coup to hit West Africa within a week. Last week, authorities in Sierra Leone also detained several soldiers who attempted a takeover.

SOUND: [Cheering]

Venezuela-Guyana rift — We head next to Venezuela where a referendum has sparked tensions with its eastern neighbor.

Electoral officials say 95 percent of Venezuelan voters backed the country’s claim to the oil-rich Essequibo territory controlled by Guyana. The 61,000-square-mile territory is larger than Greece and accounts for two-thirds of Guyana.

Venezuela has insisted the territory was stolen when the border was drawn more than a century ago. But Guyana sees the referendum as an annexation.

MADURO: [Speaking Spanish]

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro says here that the referendum is settling a 150-year imperial dispossession.

Tensions have risen since September when Guyana took bids for several offshore oil exploration blocks on the territory.

Guyanese President Irfaan Ali assured his people they have nothing to fear.

ALI: We always say that our first line of defense is diplomacy and we are in a very, very strong position in this first line of defense.

Ahead of the vote, the International Court of Justice asked Venezuela not to take any action to alter Guyana’s control over the territory.

Maduro is up for reelection next year.

SOUND: [Reaction]

Philippine bombing — Over in southern Philippines, chaos hit a college gymnasium after a deadly bomb attack during Sunday Mass at 7 a.m.

At least four people died and dozens more were injured after the explosion at the Mindanao State University in Marawi.

A group linked to the Islamic State later claimed responsibility. Security officials had earlier said the attack was likely a retaliation for recent military operations against Islamist militant groups.

This 21-year-old student says the explosion hit while congregants listened to the first Scripture reading.

AUDIO: [Speaking Tagalog]

He explains here that everyone started running. He looked behind and saw people lying on the floor.

The university suspended classes and deployed more security.

SOUND: [Evacuation site]

Meanwhile, dozens of people set up temporary tents at an evacuation site after a 7.6-magnitude earthquake. It struck off the coast of the country’s Mindanao island on Saturday. At least three people died and eight others were injured.

SOUND: [Opera singing]

South Africa Opera — We wrap up at a theater in Cape Town, South Africa where two students are preparing to perform their rendition of Mozart’s opera, “The Marriage of Figaro.”

AUDIO: [Sound from practice]

The University of Cape Town is the only opera school in the country that offers a comprehensive curriculum. Lessons include acting, opera, and languages like German, French, and Italian.

Many of the students got into singing late in life and often unexpectedly. This 23-year-old student says the opera scene in her city is very limited.

STUDENT: We do have a theatre but not much goes on. And I think that’s what is really encouraging me to just do well so that I could go back one day and just like develop the theatre, liven it up.

UPSOUND: Careful, the first one is like this. Mozart set you a little trap.

Jeremy Silver is the director of the opera school.

SILVER: If we are the only full opera training academy in the country, or on the continent, then we owe it to these young people to tell them of our existence and to make it clear that they’re welcome.

That’s it for today’s WORLD Tour. Reporting for WORLD, I’m Onize Ohikere in Abuja, Nigeria.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Police near Toronto ended a days-long chase.

AUDIO: So just after 3 a.m. our officers were on patrol.

Staff sergeant Chris Boileau told the Canadian Broadcast Company that he and his men were finally able to corner the runaway.

But she didn’t go quietly.

AUDIO: Only one of the officers is actually struck in the face during the apprehension, but he'll be just fine and we won't be continuing the investigation.

Struck in the face?

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Doesn’t sound very lady-like.

No, not very. But this was no lady. This was a kangaroo.

Turns out she got away while on her way to a zoo in Quebec. She’s now cooling her heels at the Oshawa Zoo near Toronto. 

The officers posted online this was just another day-in-the-life that the matter was merely — wait for it — Roo-tine.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Wednesday, December 6th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day. Good morning. I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. This week on Concurrently: The News Coach Podcast, Kelsey Reed and Jonathan Boes discuss the growing trend of anti-Semitism in the wake of the Israel/Hamas war. Here’s a short preview:

REED: If—I'm not necessarily anti-semitic in my thinking, but what are some ways that that can come out in me? Where in my own life have I experienced this tendency towards blaming or ostracizing the other, failing to do that kind of neighbor love? And how does that work itself out in operation, and maybe even that will lead us into thinking about other places we've seen that type of engagement of our nation, or other nations in history. I'm just thinking right now about the state of our nation right now and how we feel about immigration, how we feel about our borders, how we want there to be a security, and how we can get really outraged and inflamed and be ready to try to stamp out any opposition, regardless of the fact that it's another human being across from us.

BOES: In comparison, thinking about this universal, I guess, tragedy sin, for lack of a better term of entire societies. singling out usually is a minority group as the scapegoat as the source of the problems. We see problems in the world. It'd be so easy if we could just single out one group of people and put it all on them.

EICHER: You can hear the entire episode of Concurrently today wherever you get your podcasts. And find out more at concurrentlypodcast.com.

BROWN: Well coming up next on The World and Everything in it: pining for Christmas.

Some farms grow sweet corn. Others: wheat and potatoes. But one farmer in Lexington, Kentucky, raises a very special kind of crop. WORLD Reporter Travis Kircher takes us on a tour of a Christmas tree farm.

ERIN: I wish this were fluffier right there.

TRAVIS KIRCHER, REPORTER: Erin Schuler and her husband, Kevin, are on the hunt for a Christmas tree. But not just any Christmas tree.

KEVIN: [LAUGHS] It’s hard to keep track.

ERIN: I know! They all start looking the same! I think maybe it was this one…

A sad, droopy-dry Charlie-Brown-tree ain’t gonna cut it.

ERIN: So I kinda like this one…

They’re looking for The Perfect Tree

ERIN: Well, um, with kids, I like the needles to be kind of soft. So I don’t like a dry tree, for sure. I like symmetry, I guess, with the tree. What do you look for Kevin?

KEVIN: Just a tree that’s kind of – basically that’s kind of fat, and doesn’t have holes in it. [LAUGHS]

It’s the first Saturday in November. Most families are just starting to think about the Thanksgiving turkey and dressing. But not Kevin and Erin. They loaded up their boys—2-year-old Nathaniel and 8-month-old Christian—and drove to Tom Nieman’s Christmas tree farm. Their mission: to find, tag, and reserve this year’s Christmas tree nearly a full month before it’s even cut.

KEVIN: RRRRRR! Christian – you feel it. Which one do you like? Do you like that one? You like that one?

Now, you might think it’s a little early, but not this couple. They know other families are looking too. And in the search for “the perfect tree,” the competition is fierce.

KEVIN: It looks like half of them are already picked.

ERIN: I think one year we came and they, like, had, like, totally sold out.

KEVIN: Oh yeah. Early.

Meanwhile, 86-year-old Tom Nieman, the owner of Nieman’s Christmas Tree Farm is inside a Kubota tractor, planning his schedule with an employee.

EMPLOYEE: Uh…Schuller is here. And then Passman just called. They said they’re gonna have to push to about 2:15.

Other families have made appointments to tag their trees today. Nieman says they started all the way back on Labor Day.

NIEMAN: We probably have a dozen people would have tagged in June and July if I would have let them come.

A retired professor, Nieman taught landscape architecture for 39 years at the University of Kentucky. He and his wife moved to this farm in the 1970s and started growing tobacco…but when tobacco became less profitable, they switched to growing Christmas trees.

NIEMAN: This patch is seven years old, and that’s what we’re selling out of this year. So we’ve got seven years of tending the trees before they’re ready to go.

Mitchell McCown is one of Nieman’s employees who’s been shaping and tending these trees since he was a boy.

MCCOWN: I came and asked Tom when I was 12. I asked for a job and I’ve been here ever since. I’m 23 now. I owe a lot of credit to him. He’s been a huge part of me growing up.

McCown rattles off a list of the farm’s crop. It includes White Pine, White Fir and Blue Spruce trees…as well as Fraser Fir—what he calls the Cadillac of trees. It’s a tree that’s usually only found in the Appalachian Mountains.

He says people don’t recognize how much work and tender loving care goes into growing Christmas trees over the years.

MCCOWN: Whether that be keeping them clean, keeping them mowed, keeping the weeds off of them, making sure that they’re pruned properly. Every tree is pruned by hand by a pair of hand shears so you really get a kind of an intimate experience with that.

McCown says that’s an organic experience that is missing from fake or artificial trees. Tom Nieman grudgingly admits artificial trees have their place. Sort of.

NIEMAN: Fake trees are easier. They’re simple. People buy them and put them away in the closet and pull them out next year. So it’s – it’s kind of a cop-out, so to speak, on the issue.

Out in the field, the search has ended for one family. Little Harrison Morgan and his sister Peyton, proudly survey their tree.

HARRISON: It’s really tall and our house is really big, so we wanted to get a really big tree.

PEYTON: I like it because, it’s, like, there’s no, like, bald spots, and it’s not too big but not too tall. Well, it is tall, but…

HILARY: It’s the perfect shape.

Meanwhile, Erin and Kevin Schuler are still searching. They think they’ve finally narrowed it down to two trees, but then Erin decides to make a surprise play for a third…

ERIN: There’s one more maybe you should take a look at. It’s an intermediate softness! [LAUGHS HARD] Come here!

But even though this couple admits they’re a little bit picky, they finally spot their tree. The Perfect Tree. And at just over an hour, the search didn’t take too long.

ERIN: I like the shape and the color, I think.

KEVIN: Yeah, I would say the symmetry. And also the softness.

A month later on December 2nd Kevin is back. This time, to bring the tree home. And the farm is a much noisier place.

SOUND: Tree being cut.

The trees are cut, loaded onto vehicles, and headed for buyers’ homes. Where Nieman says families have a chance to make memories that are just as evergreen as the perfect tree.

NIEMAN: When they come back next year, they show me the pictures, or show their children are growing up, and they want to do it all over again, and that just tears at my heart. I just really enjoy that. Even if I never made a nickel out of it, the fact of people being happy with – people are being happy because of something we’re doing. That makes me happy.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Travis Kircher, in Lexington, Kentucky.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Wednesday, December 6th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Up next, the rising abortion rate among black families.

Commentator Ryan Bomberger says that contrary to the talking points of the abortion industry, there is no “lack of access” to abortion in the black community. Here are his thoughts on the consequences of that.

RYAN BOMBERGER: COMMENTATOR: One percent. I hear those two words so often.

Less than one percent of the 36,060 abortions in New York City in the last reported year were among White women. Yet, abortions in the black community–only 23 percent of the population–comprised the largest percentage of the city’s deaths in utero: an astounding 38 percent! The numbers get even more alarming when you look at the abortion ratio in each group identified by the New York State Department of Health. For every 1,000 live births in the black community, there were 763 abortions. This is a ratio that is 7 times higher than Whites and 2.2 times higher than Hispanics.

Despite these numbers, pro-abortion activists today often claim that there is a “lack of access” to abortion in the black community. This narrative was the drum beat long before Roe was overturned.

Like nearly everything in pro-abortion activism, it’s blatantly false. How can the black community simultaneously “lack access” yet comprise the largest percentage of those impacted by the violence of abortion? And don’t let the because-it’s-poverty mantra fool you. Hispanics in New York City have higher poverty rates than black individuals and families yet have roughly half the abortion rates.

The Center for Disease Control’s newest Abortion Surveillance Report confirms a decades-long trend of decreased abortions among White women and drastically increased abortions among black women. By the way, the CDC snuck out this latest and devastating report the day before Thanksgiving, a day when Americans would obviously be distracted. But numbers like these should wake us up: nationwide, nearly 42% of America’s abortions are now committed on black babies.

Abortion, no matter the beautiful hue of skin, is a tragedy. I point out these new statistics not to elevate anyone’s value above another but to highlight an insidious fiction deeply rooted in mainstream media news coverage, academia, and Democratic politicians’ bogus talking points.

Somehow, they believe “racism” is preventing people of my complexion from “accessing” abortion–a violent act that disproportionately kills black lives. One clinic affiliated with Planned Parenthood bizarrely claims: “Due to the robust legacy of racism in the United States, a disproportionate number of black people face harmful barriers to accessing quality, affordable health care services.”

By “harmful barriers” to health, do they mean their own relentless targeting of vulnerable women and babies? The reality is that the abortion industry, led by Planned Parenthood, is the most robust legacy of racism in this country.

Back to that one percent. I would estimate that only one percent of what the nearly $2 billion abortion chain says is true. Sadly, a large majority fall for their lethal lies.

I’m Ryan Bomberger.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: The controversy in the UK over the treatment or non-treatment of gravely ill children. Families are starting to push back.

And, a special report from Israel. That and more tomorrow.

I’m Nick Eicher.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

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

The Psalmist writes, Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy! He who goes out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing his sheaves with him. —Psalm 126: 5, 6

Go now in grace and peace.

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