The World and Everything in It — January 19, 2021

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

President Trump’s term comes to an official end at noon tomorrow. We’ll review his many achievements during his time in office.

MEGAN BASHAM, HOST: Also advocates for school choice hope the Biden presidency won’t gut their efforts. They find some hope in his pick for Education secretary.

Plus The Olasky Interview. This time a conversation on the gospel and politics.

And commentator Cal Thomas on President Trump’s departure.

REICHARD: It’s Tuesday, January 19th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

BASHAM: And I’m Megan Basham. Good morning!

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

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: FBI vetting national guard troops ahead of inauguration » The FBI is taking a very close look at thousands of National Guard troops arriving in Washington for tomorrow’s inauguration to guard against any possibility of an insider attack.  

Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy said after some of the Capitol rioters were found to have military ties, he’s leaving nothing to chance.

MCCARTHY: We’ve also been vetting them through the FBI, getting support from the Federal Bureau of Investigation to continue the vetting of every man and woman that comes here. 

McCarthy said he has warned commanders to be on the lookout for any problems within their ranks. He said Guard members are also getting training on how to identify potential insider threats.

But so far, he and other leaders say they have seen no evidence of any threats.

As many as 25,000 troops will help provide security for President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration.

Biden, Harris honor MLK » Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris took a break from inaugural prep on Monday to mark Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Harris told reporters…

HARRIS: When we look at where we are as a country today, when we look at recent events, we know that the fight that Dr. King was engaged in is still a fight in America. 

Both took part in service projects. Biden and his wife, Jill, joined an assembly line with an organization that distributes food to people in need. 

Many ceremonies to honor King have gone virtual this year amid virus concerns. 

COVID-19 hospitalizations dip in United States » The number of Americans filling hospital beds after testing positive for COVID-19 reached its lowest point in more than two weeks on Sunday.

Hospitalizations now stand at about 124,000. That’s down from a record high of 132,000 on January 6th.  

In at least 10 states, fewer people contracted the virus in recent days. The decline comes as some states are beginning to see the holiday surge of new cases level off. 

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Monday…

CUOMO: Yes, the numbers are coming down today. If we have a second wave by a new strain, you’ll see that number go back up. 

Health officials are concerned about new strains of the virus taking hold. 

Dr. Amesh Adalja with Johns Hopkins University says he believes a new, more contagious variant from the U.K. will eventually dominate.

ADALJA: We have a little window of opportunity now to get as much vaccine as possible in people’s arms to protect them. And then we have to really double down on how well we follow the common sense recommendations of wearing a mask, washing our hands, and trying to avoid crowded places to keep this variant at bay. 

Cases are still on the rise in most states, with hospitals overflowing in some areas as states race to distribute vaccines. 

Azar: Vaccine rollout going well in most states » And outgoing Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar says that race is going well in most states. 

Some governors have blamed a lack of federal leadership for a bumpy rollout in some places. But Azar on Monday said most governors, Democrat and Republican, say the vaccination effort is going well.

AZAR: They’re working well with us. It’s the natural scale up. You’ve got some governors, who are frankly the ones who are failing, who have administered 50 percent or less of the vaccines that have been shipped to them. That’s places like Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan. They’re failing and they’re just looking for somebody else to blame here. 

The five most efficient states so far in administering vaccines  are North Dakota, West Virginia, South Dakota, Connecticut, and Texas. 

The five slowest rollouts so far are in the states of Alabama, Georgia, Virginia, Idaho, and California. 

Russian judge rules Navalny must remain in jail for 30 days » A Russian judge on Monday ordered that opposition leader Alexei Navalny remain behind bars for 30 days. 

Authorities arrested Navalny at a Moscow airport on Sunday immediately after he arrived from Germany. He is a loud critic of the Kremlin and President Vladimir Putin. 

And Russian political analyst Maria Lipman said Navalny knew this was coming. 

LIPMAN: During the days leading to his return, the government made it clear that he would be arrested right upon arrival. But that failed to intimidate him. He will continue to be a problem behind the bars or not. 

A crowd of Navalny supporters outside the precinct shouted “Shame!” as the judge announced the ruling. U.S. and European officials have also heavily criticized his arrest. 

Navalny spent months recovering in Germany after being poisoned by a Soviet-era nerve agent. 

In a video statement released after the ruling, Navlany told Russians—quote— “Don’t be afraid, take to the streets. Don’t come out for me, come out for yourselves and your future.”

130 dead after violent clashes in Darfur » Well over a hundred people are dead in Darfur after violent tribal clashes in Sudan’s western region. WORLD’s Kristen Flavin has more. 

KRISTEN FLAVIN, REPORTER: The death toll from tribal conflicts between Arabs and non-Arabs in Sudan now stands at about 130 people, including women and children. 

That according to a doctors committee with the Sudanese Professionals Association.  

The latest bout of violence in Darfur started when a fistfight broke out Friday at a camp for displaced people. It then escalated and lasted until Sunday.

Nearly 200 others suffered injuries, including newborn babies. 

The committee called the violence “unprecedented” and said the death toll is likely to grow. It added that “The scale of the crisis in West Darfur is unimaginable,” and that “The transitional government should bear its responsibilities and declare the province a disaster area.”

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Kristen Flavin.

I’m Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: the Trump administration’s lasting accomplishments.

Plus, Cal Thomas considers what might have been.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Tuesday the 19th of January, 2021.

You’re listening to World Radio and we are so glad to have you along today. Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

MEGAN BASHAM, HOST: And I’m Megan Basham. First up: a review of the Trump administration.

Tomorrow, Chief Justice John Roberts will administer the oath of office to President-elect Joe Biden, making him the 46th President of the United States.

REICHARD: Presidents come and go, but sometimes the changes they make stick around. So before President Trump leaves office tomorrow, WORLD’s Sarah Schweinsberg reviews some of his administration’s most enduring achievements.

ROBERTS: Please, raise your right hand and repeat after me. I, Donald John Trump, do solemnly swear. 

SARAH SCHWEINSBERG, REPORTER: At his inauguration four years ago, President Trump promised to shake up the status quo—both at home and abroad. 

TRUMP: We assembled here today are issuing a new decree to be heard in every city, in every foreign capital and in every hall of power. From this day forward, a new vision will govern our land. From this day forward, it’s going to be only America first — America first. 

That philosophy largely shaped the president’s approach to foreign policy and trade. 

President Trump questioned international trade agreements. He withdrew the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership—a trade deal between America and 11 other nations. He said it sacrificed American jobs and sovereignty. 

In 2018, he also announced he would withdraw the country from the North American Free Trade Agreement. It had governed trade between the United States, Mexico and Canada for more than two decades.

Last January, President Trump signed a rebooted agreement. 

TRUMP: And today we are finally ending the NAFTA nightmare and signing into law the brand new U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement. 

The president also took on China and what he called its unfair international trade practices, including theft of intellectual property and state subsidies for competing businesses. 

In July 2018, President Trump imposed sweeping tariffs on Chinese imports.That started an ongoing tariff war. 

Colin Dueck is a foreign and defense policy researcher at the American Enterprise Institute. He predicts the “America first” trade approach will stick.

DUECK: I don’t think you’re going to have a move back to, you know, big, multilateral free trade deals. So there’s been a kind of protectionist shift right across the board. 

Elisabeth Braw also studies foreign and defense policy at the American Enterprise Institute. 

She says the Trump Administration also successfully pressured its allies to drop 5G infrastructure contracts with Huawei—a Chinese telecoms company. 

Braw says that change will protect many nations from potential Chinese espionage. 

BRAW: Once you put infrastructure into place, you don’t change it that quickly. So this is something that will look likely to last for a very long time or at least until we get 6G.

On the foreign policy front, President Trump also called into question agreements with international allies. He withdrew from the Paris Climate Accords, an international agreement on climate change. 

He left the Iranian Nuclear Deal and reimposed stringent sanctions on Tehran. 

Jim Phillips is a Middle East scholar at the Heritage Foundation. He says those sanctions have weakened Iran to the advantage of peace in the region.

PHILLIPS: Well, I think by weakening Iran, the U.S. has given peace a chance because Iran supports not only Hezbollah, but Islamic extremist Palestinian groups, such as Hamas, Palestinian islamic jihad.

And he called on European nations to pay their fair share for NATO defense. The United States was spending 3.3 percent of its GDP on NATO while countries like Germany spent less than half that. 

Now, eight other NATO countries have raised their defense spending to 2 percent or more of their GDP. 

AEI’s Colin Dueck says President Trump reshuffled the post-World War Two world order. 

DUECK: He sort of shocked Europeans into realizing that they cannot necessarily count on the U.S. to just continue to go on providing the exact same level of support that it has for generations.

President Trump also broke with decades of U.S. policy and recognized the contested city of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. 

And this fall, the Trump administration helped broker peace deals between Israel and several majority-Muslim nations, including Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates. 

Heritage’s Jim Phillips says those agreements for normalized relations will be long-lasting. 

PHILLIPS: I think the Trump administration by going to the outer circle, to the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Oman, Morocco and Sudan helped advance Arab-Israeli peace without the participation of the Palestinians who still cling to their maximal demands. 

At home, President Trump left his most lasting marks on the judiciary. During his time in office, he nominated, and the Republican controlled-Senate confirmed, three Supreme Court Justices: Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett.

He also appointed more than 200 federal judges. 

Tom Jipping is a judicial scholar at the Heritage Foundation. He says these appointments could reshape how the judiciary behaves. 

JIPPING: President Trump has consistently appointed judges who are in the more traditional mold, whose approach to judging is more modest, who don’t believe that they can substitute their own views for what the constitution or statutes ought to mean. That’s been very consistent. 

Other notable domestic policies include establishing a new branch of the military, the Space Force. 

And in 2017, President Trump and a Republican led Congress passed a tax reform bill. A year later, the president signed the First Step Act, a prison reform bill that shortened mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent drug offenses.

And just this month, the Trump Administration completed nearly 500 miles of new wall construction along the southern border. 

Joe Biden plans to undo many of the Trump administration’s policies within his first 100 days in office. But AEI’s Colin Dueck says there may not be as many reversals as people imagine, especially on the international stage.

DUECK: There’s a surprising number of areas where I think you’re going to see lasting effects. For all of the fury of the last election campaign, I think you’re gonna see some continuity.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Sarah Schweinsberg.

MEGAN BASHAM, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: education policy.

President-elect Joe Biden plans to reverse many of the Trump administration’s initiatives. He’s promised student debt forgiveness, tuition cuts, and changes to the way colleges handle sex assault reports. Biden also opposes private school vouchers, and he reportedly considered union leaders for education secretary. That signals hostility toward school choice.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: But Biden nominated Miguel Cardona, a teacher from Connecticut. Cardona is a bit of an unknown; still, the nomination gives school choice advocates some hope.

WORLD’s Esther Eaton reports.

ESTHER EATON, REPORTER: Miguel Cardona was born to Puerto Rican parents living in Connecticut public housing. He began kindergarten speaking only Spanish, later attended a technical high school for automotive studies, and was the first person in his family to graduate from college. He moved from fourth grade teacher, to principal, to education commissioner of Connecticut before Biden tapped him for the nation’s top education post. 

Cardona highlighted his past during his nomination acceptance speech.

CARDONA: I, being bilingual and bicultural, am as American as apple pie and rice and beans. 

Although not well-known on the national stage, Cardona got a much warmer welcome from public school advocates than his predecessor did.

Outgoing Education Secretary Betsy DeVos came into the role as a true outsider. She was a well-known advocate for school choice and an outspoken critic of the public education establishment. During her four years in the Trump administration, DeVos focused on free speech and rolled back Obama-era affirmative action policies. She also strongly supported private schools. That earned her the ire of teacher’s unions, even as school choice supporters cheered her on. 

Jamison Coppola is with the American Association of Christian Schools.

COPPOLA: We have a very, I think, a charitable perspective on her tenure. I know, not all of our colleagues do. But I think she was a diligent, dedicated public servant.

Coppola says it’s hard to predict how much of DeVos’s work the Biden administration will undo.

COPPOLA: We’re in a time period where there’s such a stark difference between administrations that, you know, we’re starting to see almost a ping pong element to regulations being written then removed and rewritten. And so how much of the changes that were made during her time at Ed remain? I wouldn’t even know how to game plan that.

Cardona has a history of working to improve academic outcomes for minority and low-income students. He supports universal preschool and wrote his doctoral thesis on helping English language learners. As an assistant superintendent, he took new teachers on tours of students’ neighborhoods to help them understand economic and racial differences. 

But in his acceptance speech, he called out widespread failure in public education.

CARDONA: For me, education was the great equalizer, but for too many students, your zip code and your skin color remain the best predictor of the opportunities you’ll have in your lifetime. For far too long we have allowed students to graduate from high school without any idea of how to meaningfully engage in the workforce while good paying, high skilled technical and trade jobs go unfilled.

Charter school advocates hope Cardona will give their education model a chance. Nina Rees is with the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.

REES: We have, you know, a lot of charter schools that have demonstrated that not only can you close the achievement gap, but you can graduate students, send them to college, and graduate them from four year colleges. So to turn a blind eye to that success, at a time when we need to figure out ways to ensure more students, especially students from low income backgrounds, are getting an access to the American dream, would be a mistake.

During his time as Connecticut’s education commissioner, Cardona approved every charter up for renewal. He placed three charter schools on probation for failing to improve their discipline records, but told them he wanted to support them as public schools. 

Since he’s mostly worked with traditional public schools, Rees isn’t sure what to expect.

REES: We don’t know him very well. But based on the feedback that we’ve received from our friends and allies in Connecticut, it sounds like he’s a straight shooter, that he is sincere and committed to excellence in equity. Our hope is that the next administration treats charter schools as the public schools that they are.

One of Cardona’s first challenges will be persuading schools to reopen. Biden wants most classrooms closed during the pandemic to welcome students back during his first 100 days in office.

And Cardona does have some experience with that. He helped facilitate remote learning in Connecticut early in the pandemic. And he allowed each district to make its own decision about when to reopen in person. 

But he did urge districts to reopen. He used federal aid to buy masks, plexiglass, and other safety equipment. And he emphasized data suggesting the coronavirus wasn’t spreading through Connecticut schools. In December, about one-third of the state’s public school students had the option to return to class.

Nina Rees says that’s a good sign for how he’ll approach school reopening nationwide.

REES: We’re encouraged by the fact that he was able to open the schools in Connecticut. So first order of business is going to be opening schools and opening them safely, so the fact that he has some experience in that respect is encouraging to us.

That might put him at odds with teachers’ unions. They’ve praised his nomination, but have been critical of efforts to reopen classrooms in some places. Jamison Coppola with the American Association of Christian Schools says educators outside the traditional public system are cautiously optimistic.

COPPOLA: He doesn’t seem to be hostile towards some school choice. Now, whether he’ll work to advance that, that remains to be seen.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Esther Eaton.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: We’ve all forgotten passwords from time to time. It can be really irritating when you have to reset it. 

But what if you didn’t have the option to reset? In that case, if you can’t find your password, you’re locked out. Forever. 

Usually this is not life changing, but for a man in San Francisco? Listen to this. 

Stefan Thomas has Bitcoin (that’s virtual currency) locked away on a hard drive that will erase its data after 10 password attempts. He wrote the password down on a piece of paper years ago and lost it. And he’s already used eight of his 10 password attempts. 

Megan, see how much money he stands to lose? 

BASHAM: $220 million. 

Can’t even imagine! He told KGO-tv that he gets a lot of unsolicited advice.

THOMAS: Everything from the silly to like, for example, one person suggested – have you tried the word ‘password’?

BASHAM: Mmmm, don’t think so. 

Yeah, Thomas said he’s accepted that the money locked away on the hard drive is almost certainly gone forever. 

But he waxed philosophical about it. He said it was quite a milestone to realize he wouldn’t define himself by how much money he’s got in the bank.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Tuesday, January 19th. Thank you for making WORLD Radio part of your day. 

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

MEGAN BASHAM, HOST: And I’m Megan Basham. Coming next on The World and Everything in It: the Olasky Interview.

Today, a conversation with conservative blogger and talk-show host, Erick Erickson. 

WORLD’s editor in chief Marvin Olasky spoke to Erickson in early December during the heat of the election drama and before the protest in Washington a couple weeks ago. Their topic: “gospel-centered politics.” Olasky starts us off.

MARVIN OLASKY:  So we have opponents. And it’s important to debate and to argue. But how do you keep from turning opponents into enemies, which is what we often seem to be doing and a lot of our media?

ERICK ERICKSON: Oh, I sometimes fall down on this as well. Sometimes it’s easy to get into hating someone else. And, and I there are people out there that I do just generally abhor. Unfortunately, I find now that that the list has become who has the wrong letter next to their name as to who these people actually are. 

And I have to remind myself, that we’re all sinners and see the world in different ways. And I really do and this gets me so much hate for my own side, having worked at CNN for a number of years where I grew up in a lot of the people I worked with, they were the enemies growing up, they were Bill Clinton staffers and others. And then I got to know them, and we disagree on everything politically, but actually, are good friends. 

And it’s a reminder to me that you can disagree in politics, and still be kind to each other. You can love your neighbor, even if you disagree on politics, but also, I’ve got to remind myself, there are people who see the world differently from me. They’ve got different values and presuppositions, and they’re not my enemy, nor do they want to destroy the country. They just genuinely believe as much as I do in my way of thinking that their way of thinking would lead to better outcomes for the country. 

And we’re gonna disagree on this, but I shouldn’t hate them for wanting to take care of the country and go about it in a different way, even if it’s a way that I think actually would be ruinous.

OLASKY: So let me ask you about the underlying problem here, of turning politics into something that’s primary. What do you do with that basic problem?

ERICKSON: Part of this is a problem for churches. There are a lot of people who call themselves Christian in the same way people describe themselves as Catholic or Jewish. And they actually mean it more ethnically than they mean it as a matter of faith. 

There are a whole lot of people who call themselves Christian who never darken the door of a church. They’re out on their bass boat, on Sundays instead, and I really, I go back frequently these days to Jeremiah 29, “to seek the welfare of the city in which you live and pray for it, and there, you’ll find your welfare.” And I think there are frankly, in the evangelical community now, there actually are a ton of churches out there that are not really engaged in their community, they’ve ceded the ground towards more liberal, progressive, theologically oriented churches, who believe in a social gospel. And these evangelical churches take the idea of if you, if you want me to fill your soul with the gospel, come hear us. But if you want us to feed your stomach, well, you’ve got the Episcopal Church down the road go there, they’ve got the food bank. 

And I really think one of the things that we is, is if you’re an evangelical and you’re involved in politics, you’ve got to be mindful of the fact that you will change your local community more than you will change Washington, and your local community will change you more than Washington will change you. And we’ve lost our perspective. And we need to reorient our perspective. 

I actually, yesterday, I did a monologue on my radio show where I pointed out that there are these 12 guys who never got involved in politics, they really couldn’t get involved in politics. They were all friends with a guy and none of them had real power except for their friend. And he died and conquered death. And these 12 after he was gone, went out and changed the world for him with the help of the Holy Spirit. They never cast a vote, they never ran for office, but yet they were able to improve the lives of the whole world. 

And I think Christians need to have that perspective. At this point, particularly at a time, we’re gonna not have a president of the White House who shares our values. But you’ve got lots of people in your community who are suffering, and that guy in Washington is not going to help them but you actually can. And if you help them and improve their lives, you’ll see your life improved, regardless of what happens in Washington—if you are just willing to recalibrate your perspective ever so slightly.

OLASKY: Tombstone question, what do you want people to remember you for when you’re gone?

ERICKSON: I think I want to be remembered as a guy who was willing to share the gospel, even if it costs me.

OLASKY: I’m asking that because my friend Warren Smith five and a half years ago asked you that question, and you said, on your tombstone: “Here lies Erick Erickson, who said what needed to be said, even when people didn’t like it.” So in five years since then you are more specific about the gospel than you were then…

ERICKSON: Yeah, you know, look, I…a part of it is it’s my personality. When people tell me not to do something, I tend to do it. Maybe it’s the southern in me, although my dad is Swedish. But I’m doing five hours of radio a day, the radio landscape is changing part of it. Sadly, with Rush Limbaugh’s health situation, you have a lot of people looking at the national platforms. 

And I have been told more in the last six months than in the last nine years on radio, you can’t talk about these issues if you want to be successful nationally. And I don’t believe that’s true. I think a lot of people who say it or people who aren’t believers, and they run the industry. And I’ve just committed to the fact that when people are telling me I shouldn’t be sharing the gospel, that’s a sign that I should be sharing the gospel. I should be telling people the truth they may not necessarily want to hear and part of that right now is absolutely that. We’ve got a God and He is coming back and you need to be on his side and with him. If you’re going to have salvation, and they if I can use my platform to do that, and if it costs me, well, you know, Christ said you can have all sorts of things, but you’ll have persecution too. And if it costs me now, that’s fine, because I know where I’m headed.

REICHARD: That’s Erick Erickson talking with Marvin Olasky. To read more of their interview, check out the January 16th issue of WORLD Magazine. We’ll include a link to it in today’s transcript at worldandeverything.org.

MEGAN BASHAM, HOST: Today is Tuesday, January 19th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Megan Basham.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Here’s commentator Cal Thomas now on President Donald J. Trump.

CAL THOMAS, COMMENTATOR: As the Trump administration comes to a close, I keep thinking of this bit of wisdom from John Greenleaf Whittier: “For all sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest are these, ‘It might have been.’”

On his final day in the Oval Office, President Trump must surely be contemplating what went wrong.

Before 2016, if a pollster had asked voters whether they would grant a second term to a president who has accomplished what Trump has in foreign and domestic policy, I suspect the response would have been a resounding “yes.”

But history is full of incidents where people self-destructed by giving in to the furies of their lower nature.

In a speech last week that was too little, too late, President Trump spent a little more than five minutes addressing the nation from the Oval Office.

The president’s tone was, well, presidential. For a change he didn’t claim to have won the election. He didn’t blame “fake news.” Instead, he denounced violence and urged his supporters not to participate in it during Joe Biden’s inauguration.

Choose your analogy: This was a case of closing the barn door after the horse escaped. Or it amounted to calling the fire department after the building has already gone up in flames.

President Trump leaves office with a long list of accomplishments. But many will be undone by his successor, and that is the biggest tragedy. Government will again dictate what is good for us.

Joe Biden’s proposed $1.9 trillion spending plan for virus relief and vaccine distribution will swell the national debt and incentivize American dependency. The best cure for our economic ailment is reopening businesses with caution and allowing people to earn a check, rather than getting a check from the government. That will only create more addicts to Washington and the Democratic Party.

Trump could have won a second term, even as the coronavirus raged, had he not made everything about him.

Can he make a comeback? His supporters hope so, and it’s not unheard of. 

In 1960, Richard Nixon lost the presidential race to John F. Kennedy. Two years later he lost the California governor’s race to Pat Brown. In the 1968 presidential race, Nixon successfully re-cast himself as the “new Nixon” and won. Four years later he won a second term in a landslide. But the old Nixon returned. The Watergate affair and the subterfuge surrounding it led to his political downfall.

Assuming Congress doesn’t bar Donald Trump from future office, he’ll need to do more than recast himself as the “new Trump” to make a political comeback. He’ll need the equivalent of a religious conversion. And it must be genuine. For that, he’ll need to consult a Power higher than himself and try putting on a cloak of humility.

I’m Cal Thomas.

MEGAN BASHAM, HOST: Tomorrow: We’ll tell you what to expect from Joe Biden’s first 100 days in office.

And, the life and legacy of pro-life advocate Joe Scheidler.

That and more tomorrow. 

I’m Megan Basham.

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.

The Lord says in Isaiah that He has blotted out your transgressions like a cloud and your sins like mist; return to Him, for He has  redeemed you.

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.