The World and Everything in It: January 19, 2026

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MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning! It’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

At the Supreme Court—civil rights and women’s sports. The justices consider two cases that go to the heart of what the law means, and what fairness requires.

ALITO: Title IX prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex. It’s a statutory term. It must mean something.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Also today, the Monday Moneybeat. And the WORLD History Book.

911 CALL: “9-1-1, what’re you reporting?”

“He grabbed a little girl and he took off toward town with her. She hollered real loud.”

A case from 30 years ago, with consequences still unfolding.

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

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

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

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Greenland » The European Union held an emergency meeting Sunday as President Trump turns up the pressure in his effort to buy Greenland.

Trump says he plans to impose 10% tariffs starting February 1st on a list of US allies who are not on board with the Greenland takeover bid.

Treasury Sec. Scott Bessent echoed the president’s position, told NBC’s Meet the Press that Trump believes enhanced security is not possible without acquiring Greenland:

BESSENT:  If there were an attack on Greenland from Russia, from the, some other, other area, we would get dragged in. So better now. Peace through strength, make it part of the United States, and there will not be a conflict.

But Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide countered:

EIDE: That's exactly why we are stepping up our, uh, uh, presence in Greenland. We cause, uh, if there are security concerns, we can meet them jointly in both bilaterally, Denmark, in the us, but also as a NATO alliance.

 The countries on President Trump’s tariff list are pushing back.

Denmark's Prime Minister said Europe will not be blackmailed. The UK Prime Minister said that these tariffs are completely wrong, and the Prime Minister of Ireland said the EU will retaliate.

SOUND: [Minnesota protests]

Minnesota protests / National Guard » In Minnesota, anti-ICE protests continue outside of a federal building in Minneapolis.

Demonstrators are chanting and cursing at federal agents as they go by. And the protests have, at times, turned violent.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Todd Lyons accused Democratic city and state leaders of fomenting unrest and violence against ICE agents.

LYONS:  ICE agents and deportation officers have arrested murderers, gang members, serial rapists, people wanted from their home country for heinous crimes. Yet unfortunately, you don't hear that. We're automatically assuming from uh, elected officials that ICE is out there doing something wrong.

The Pentagon has ordered about 1,500 active duty soldiers to be ready in case of a possible deployment to Minnesota.

Gov. Tim Walz, he has mobilized the National Guard to help quell the violence but has not yet deployed guardsmen in Minneapolis.

Iran protest update » Iran’s supreme leader is blaming President Trump for unrest in Iran — as Trump backs the protests and has not ruled out possible U.S. action.

Republican Senator John Cornyn, who serves on the Foreign Relations Committee, said of Trump:

CORNYN:  He, uh, has multiple options and, uh, only he knows which of those options he will choose. But, uh, I'm glad to see him standing up for these protestors.

Demonstrations in Iran have thinned out considerably in recent days.

During the protests, Trump had told demonstrators that “ help is on the way ” and said his administration would take action if the killing of demonstrators continued or if Iranian authorities executed detained protesters.

But he later said Iran had cancelled executions, and suggested he was satisfied with that. However, he has not taken any response off the table.

Reuters reports that an unnamed Iranian official has admitted that the death toll during the demonstrations has topped 5,000.

Appeals court reinstates parts of Ohio pro-life law » An Ohio appeals court may have given new life to parts of a pro-life law. WORLD’s Dennis Crowley explains.

DENNIS CROWLEY: In 2023, Ohio voters passed an amendment to the State Constitution, stating that every Ohioan has the right to make personal reproductive decisions, which it said included abortions.

The state’s Republican attorney general tried to preserve some protections for unborn children under the state’s pro-life heartbeat law.

But a judge later ruled that the heartbeat law could not be enforced after the constitutional amendment.

However, an appeals court said the trial judge went too far by striking down every part of the law. And it ordered the lower court to go back and decide, piece by piece, which provisions of the law can still stand.

For now, none of the pro-life protections have yet been reinstated.

For WORLD, I’m Dennis Crowley.

Spain train death toll » Two high-speed trains have derailed and collided in southern Spain, killing at least 21 people and injuring more than 100 others.

The accident happened Sunday near Adamuz in Córdoba province, when a train from Málaga to Madrid jumped the tracks and struck another train coming from Madrid to Huelva.

Rescue crews worked to free passengers from twisted carriages.

Authorities warn the death toll could rise as they continue their work at the scene.

I'm Kent Covington.

 Straight ahead: Civil rights and women’s sports at the Supreme Court. Plus, the Monday Moneybeat.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s The World and Everything in It for this 19th day of January, 2026. Glad you’ve joined us today. Good morning! I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. It’s time for Legal Docket.

AUDIO: This is absolute nonsense [Crowd sounds] 

On the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court a week ago tomorrow, hundreds gathered to argue over women’s sports.

For generations, the term required no explanation.

Now, the Court is being asked to decide what it means.

But before we get to legal doctrine or definitions, there’s another basic reality the justices will not be able to avoid:

That sports are zero-sum.

Meaning: There are limited roster spots. Limited starting positions. Limited scholarships. Limited podiums.

In other words, one athlete included means another excluded. And unjust inclusion equals unjust exclusion.

REICHARD: That reality sits at the center of two cases the high court will decide before summer recess… cases that could determine whether states may safeguard athletic opportunities for female athletes only.

One is Little v. Hecox out of Idaho, and the second is West Virginia v. B.P.J. The legal questions in both are identical. A group of boys who say they identify as girls mounted legal challenges to both laws.

EICHER: And it’s important to be precise about what the Court is NOT deciding. These cases are not about whether states MUST protect women’s sports. They’re about whether they MAY. Whether legislatures can recognize sex-based differences in athletics—or whether doing so violates federal civil-rights law.

REICHARD: For athletes like Macy Petty, it’s no abstraction.

PETTY: I played volleyball in high school and college, and had to play against a man during my recruiting process to college, and that's kind of what brought me into this fight to begin with.

That was eight years ago, before so-called “trans” rights became an issue. Today, she’s a spokeswoman with Concerned Women for America and she’s not forgotten what she went through:

PETTY: It was totally humiliating… All I knew… was this was blatantly cheating. And I was confident that USA Volleyball, the sanctioning organization for the event, was going to find out that this man was cheating and put an end to it, because I was completely naïve to believe that these sports institutions had anything having to do with my good in mind.

EICHER: Petty expected the adults in the room would step up. Especially the NCAA. She says she attended its annual conference year after year to try to speak with leadership.

PETTY: As a female athlete, I felt like I was nothing but a burden to them… despite them wearing Title IX shirts and shirts that say they want to empower women…. I had… extended public invitations to Charlie Baker, the president of the NCAA… because the court case oral arguments are the biggest things to happen to women's sports in a very long time. And this man who claims to champion women's sports was nowhere to be found…

REICHARD: She never heard back. I didn’t either. I reached out to the NCAA for comment but received no response. That silence is important, because when governing bodies decline to draw lines, legislatures often do.

EICHER: Inside the court, the work of legislatures in Idaho and West Virginia were at issue. Both states passed laws grounded in biology. Supporters say the goal is straightforward and easily verified: preserve fairness and safety in sex-segregated competition. Medical verification can be as simple as a cheek swab, the same as for drug testing already required of athletes.

REICHARD: And that brought the dispute squarely into federal court.

In West Virginia, a boy identified in court papers only as “B.P.J.” began taking on a female identity as early as third grade and has reportedly used puberty blockers and estrogen ever since.

Challenging Idaho was a young man identifying as a young woman: Lindsay Hecox sued after trying out for Boise State’s women’s cross-country team.

EICHER:Defending the Idaho law that kept Hecox off the team was state solicitor general Alan Hurst.

HURST: Idaho’s law classifies on the basis of sex, because sex is what matters in sports. ….Gender identity does not matter in sports. It treats all males equally and all females equally regardless of identity. Idaho’s law is a substantial fit for 99 percent of males, and a perfect fit is not required. If it were, that would be the end of all sex-based classifications.

He pointed to male advantages in size, muscle mass, bone density, heart and lung capacity, along with safety concerns and cases where male athletes have injured females.

REICHARD: At that point in the argument, another problem surfaced. The case turns on sex-based classification—but the language used in the courtroom was anything but settled.

Throughout oral argument … lawyers and justices—conservative ones, too—repeatedly relied on categories that do not appear in the statute (terms like “cisgender”) and in several instances referred to a man as “she,” as though those premises were already resolved in law.

But they’re not. And that matters, because Title IX prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex. Not gender identity, not self-perception.

Like so many Supreme Court questions, precision of language matters here. The legal test depends on it.

EICHER: At argument, lawyer Kathleen Hartnett represented boys wanting to play girls’ sports. She said the laws are overly broad, adding that experts agree the naturally occurring hormone testosterone after puberty is what drives the advantage boys have. Her client, she argued, gave up much of that by using female hormones.

HARTNETT: Lindsay Hecox has mitigated that advantage because she has suppressed her testosterone for over a year and taken estrogen.

…going on to say that if her client had not taken female hormones, he wouldn’t be on the girls team, just like any other boy.

HARTNETT: That analysis would come out the other way for the untalented cisgender boy. He would have the same sex-based advantage, the circulating testosterone. He just would not be as good at sports.

But that framing depends on treating sex as something other than a biological classification. Rather as something mutable—something that can be medically adjusted. That uncertainty surfaced repeatedly during questioning from the bench.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

SOTOMAYOR: There’s no question here that a male who identifies as a female but is a male is being excluded from a female sport, correct?

HURST: That’s correct.

SOTOMAYOR: All right. By its nature, that’s a sex classification …

REICHARD: By contrast, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson disputed the entire premise:

JACKSON: …you have an individual who says what is happening in this law is that it is treating someone who is transgender but who does not have, because of the medical interventions …who does not have the same threat to physical competition and safety and all of the reasons that the state puts forward….So you're not treating the class the same …

Justice Jackson returned again and again to the same point of confusion. In her Senate confirmation hearing almost three years ago, then Judge Jackson encountered Senator Marsha Blackburn. The senator anticipated a case with facts like these, where definitions would be central. She challenged Jackson to provide a definition of the word “woman.”

JACKSON: Can I provide a definition?

BLACKBURN: MM-hm. Yeah.

JACKSON: I can’t.

BLACKBURN: You can’t?

JACKSON: Not in this context. I’m not a biologist.

Over the course of the argument last week, Justice Jackson expressed uncertainty at least seven separate times when questioning the state’s reasoning.

JACKSON: I’m not sure I understand. I don’t understand. And I don’t understand why that is. I guess I don’t understand. I don’t understand why that’s the case. I don’t understand why … still struggling to understand why the state would …

The uncertainty is notable, given the legal standard at issue.

Because this case involves sex-based classification, the Court applies intermediate scrutiny. That requires the government to show an important objective for a law and that law must be substantially related to achieving it.

And it’s difficult for the analysis to proceed unless the Court first agrees on what sex means.

EICHER: Justice Samuel Alito pressed the point directly in questioning lawyer Harnett, representing the boys.

ALITO: Do you agree that a school may have separate teams for a category of students classified as boys and a category of students classified as girls?

HARTNETT: Yes, Your Honor.

ALITO: If it does that, then is it not necessary for there to be, for equal protection purposes,...an understanding of what it means to be a boy or a girl or a man or a woman?

HARTNETT: Yes, Your Honor.

ALITO: And what is that definition? For equal protection purposes, what does --what does it mean to be a boy or a girl or a man or a woman?

HARTNETT: We do not have a definition for the Court. 

ALITO: Well how can a court determine whether there’s discrimination on the basis of sex without knowing what sex means for equal protection purposes?

Justice Alito kept pressing, and caught Hartnett in an illogical tangle. That forced a concession that under her theory, a school can exclude a so-called “trans” athlete based on fairness concerns…which means discrimination on that basis is permissible.

ALITO: Can the school say no, you cannot participate on the girls team?

HARTNETT: Yes, they can.

ALITO: is that person not a woman in your understanding? If the person says, I sincerely believe I am woman, I am, in fact, a woman?

HARTNETT: I think we—

ALITO: —is that person not a woman?

HARTNETT: I—I would respect their self-identity in addressing the person, but in terms of the statute, I think the question is, does that person have a sex-based biological advantage that's going to make it unfair for that person to be part of the women's team. And that —that's the rationale for the regulation, and so that's the reason—that's the way we would be testing that hypothetical.

ALITO: Well, the—the reason I'm asking has to do with discrimination on the basis of transgender status. So what you seem to be saying is, yes, it is permissible for the school to discriminate on the basis of transgender status …

In other words, under the challengers’ theory, schools may exclude a so-called “transgender” athlete for fairness reasons—even while saying sex itself cannot be defined.

Hartnett seemed to realize the tangled knot she was in in this exchange with Justice Brett Kavanaugh:

HARTNETT: …this is an important moment to just take a step back and say, “is this law actually responding to a problem in a rational manner, or is it actually overreacting on the presumption that transgender women are categorically going to be strong athletes when that's not the case?”

KAVANAUGH: Well, just to put the big picture, and you know this,  obviously, one of the great successes in America over the last 50 years has been the growth of women and girls’ sports and it’s inspiring.

REICHARD: It’s worth noting how the Court arrived here.

Five years ago, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion in Bostock v. Clayton County. That was an employment-law case that held discrimination based on sexual orientation or transgender status could violate federal civil-rights law.

That decision explicitly said it did not address sports, bathrooms, or Title IX.

But the reasoning didn’t remain confined to employment. Schools and athletic associations adopted broad “inclusion” policies anyway—often preemptively—out of fear of lawsuits or financial pressure.

Those policies are now colliding with sex-segregated sports—and landing back before the Court.

EICHER: Justice Kavanaugh has two daughters and coaches their teams. So he knows:

KAVANAUGH: Usually with teams, there’s cuts. Those mean a lot to people. There’s starting lineups. Those mean a lot to people. Who gets a college recruit. That means a lot to people….I think we have to recognize on both sides the zero sum. It’s not like, oh, just add another person to the team. That’s not how sports works. It’s someone else is going to get disadvantaged.

REICHARD That’s what women like Macy Petty keep saying: women’s sports create opportunities like scholarships, records, championships, trophies … and safety and dignity.

Yet women deprived of those things had no representation in court.

EICHER: A final note: at a Women in Sports Gala last week put on by Alliance Defending Freedom, Abby Cross told of her daughter’s track team, where a boy joined and began dominating.

CROSS: He was suddenly throwing 25 feet farther than the, you know, than he had been, which was not an increase that the other girls were making…

Cross said even the coach was afraid to speak up.

CROSS: The one guiding factor that has kept us going through this given us the courage to speak up is our relationship with Jesus. I've realized that my relationship with God has given me something stronger than fear to answer to…

REICHARD: From fear to faith to the Supreme Court and the meaning of words, as Justice Alito put it:

ALITO: Title IX prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex. It's a statutory term. It must mean something. You're arguing that, here, there's discrimination on the basis of sex. And how can we decide that question without knowing what sex means in Title IX?

Good question.

And that’s this week’s Legal Docket.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Next up on The World and Everything in It, the Monday Moneybeat.

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s time now to talk business, markets and the economy with financial analyst and advisor David Bahnsen. David heads up the wealth management firm the Bahnsen Group, and he is here now. Good morning to you.

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

EICHER: Well, the White House appears to be narrowing the field for the next Federal Reserve chair. We have said for months that it has been a jump ball between the two Kevins, Kevin Hassett and Kevin Warsh.

Kevin Hassett is currently the director of the National Economic Council, coordinating economic policy across the administration, widely seen as a front-runner to succeed Jay Powell. And we will get to Powell in just a moment, because that is its own story.

But President Trump has now said that he wants Kevin Hassett to stay put, to stay right where he is.

So that leaves Kevin Warsh as the top choice. He is a former Fed governor. He is now at Stanford and the Hoover Institution. He has deep ties to the private sector.

Warsh now increasingly the clear alternative, this coming at a moment when tensions between the White House and the current Fed chair could hardly be higher.

So David, when you step back from the personalities for just a moment, if that is even possible, how meaningful is it when we hear, “Kevin Hassett, you stay put”? How meaningful is that signal from the president?

BAHNSEN: Well, I have been on record for some time that I very much would prefer that the president nominate Kevin Warsh. And I even separate from my hope that he nominates Kevin Warsh, very much hope that he does not nominate my old friend Kevin Hassett.

I will say it does not mean that there is not what one source of mine is predicting, which is a door number five, a candidate that will materialize that is not currently being discussed.

So it would be really hard to believe, after what the president said Friday, that Kevin Hassett will remain on that list. If that was not a way of saying he is not, then I certainly do not understand it, although the president does sometimes like keeping people on their toes. But that was a rather explicit way of doing it.

What does it mean? Well, look, for all of us listening, in terms of just people wondering what it means for interest rates, it means nothing, because there is not going to be a person nominated that is not going to do what the president wants in the immediate term.

The issue here is beyond 2026. The president is going to nominate who he wants, as is his right to do, and he will nominate someone that he has a virtual certainty is going to cut rates a couple more times this year. That much I am quite confident of.

Now, let us say you were to get something in 2027 or 2028 where the data suggests a different course is taken, or there are just different things that require Federal Reserve action that may not be in line with what the president wants.

What person is most likely to then go be a Fed chair as opposed to an order taker from the president? I think Kevin Warsh is more likely to be that person.

Where a lot of people are focusing on here, Nick—and I will wrap this up—is just way down the line, even when President Trump is out of office, is anything happening that is going to really undermine the credibility of the U.S. dollar, of the bond market, of our own Federal Reserve?

So far, the answer has been no. And the reason is because I do not think most credible financial actors have taken all that stuff seriously.

I do not think it is good. I do not think this process has gone very well. But I do think that we are really just talking about a short-term decision, and that the longer-term things will hold, even though the precedent has deserved a little more respect than it has gotten.

EICHER: Well, David, you have been clear for quite some time that you preferred Kevin Warsh as Fed chair, and it seems like that may be the case.

But help me understand the preference for Warsh. What does he bring to the job that Hassett does not?

BAHNSEN:Well, I know both of them, and I first of all would make the comment on just financial markets credibility, that I believe sovereign wealth, the bond market, the currency markets would view Warsh as a more credible candidate than Hassett.

The reason is that I have known Kevin Hassett for decades as an incredibly strong free trader, who now in the last ten months has become an anti–free trader.

When Kevin Hassett was the chair of the Council of Economic Advisers in the first term of President Trump, he fought back against Peter Navarro. He fought back on the COVID stuff that happened. He fought back against some of the really extreme tariff issues that were proposed.

Now he is the head of the National Economic Council in the second term, and I hear him say things almost weekly that he has never believed, and it has done a lot to undermine my confidence in his ability to be independent.

Therefore, my Warsh advocacy is much more about my Hassett opposition.

Now, that said, I was a managing director at Morgan Stanley in the time period that Kevin Warsh was an economist at Morgan Stanley. I was very fond of his work.

I have seen him in the past, when he was a Fed governor, take an opposition viewpoint, take a minority viewpoint, make an argument about some of the concerns he had with quantitative easing, for example—something I would point out that Jay Powell did as well back in the day.

So Kevin Warsh is not a risk-free pick, but he is one who I just think, on the margin, has more credibility at this moment than Kevin Hassett does.

EICHER: Well, David, all of this is going on against an incredible backdrop.

We found out last Sunday night that Jay Powell and others at the Federal Reserve are now evidently under investigation over cost overruns tied to a renovation project at the Fed’s offices in Washington, D.C.

Now, for a full year of the second Trump term, it seems that Jay Powell and Donald Trump have been at odds, and Powell has been almost completely unflappable during these confrontations with the president.

But what we saw this week was very different—Jay Powell releasing a video rejecting the whole thing, saying there is nothing to it.

I have never seen a fighting-mad Jay Powell quite like this.

So how does that kind of aggressive pushback strike you, David? Does it strengthen the Fed’s institutional credibility, or is there some downside risk here?

BAHNSEN: Well, it was an incredibly successful week for Jay Powell, because what he did by getting in front of it that way and taking that posture was get the support of literally everybody.

He got the White House to completely retreat and actually have to put out a narrative that, oh, the president did not even know about it, and we were not even a part of it, and this U.S. attorney, Janine Pirro, formerly of Fox News, was doing this all on her own.

There is not any question that it is ridiculous and outrageous. If cost overruns are now a criminal offense, then I have got to have a talk with my wife on a few things.

EICHER: Well, maybe that, and check in with your member of Congress as well.

BAHNSEN: And every government employee in human history.

No one believes that there is really a concern about legality and criminality of cost overruns. It is a bullying technique.

Now that I have heard the whole story and had a few days to talk to people and process it, I think it is entirely possible that Pirro was on her own and that the president was not a part of it.

Either way, this man has a few months left. His term is going to end, and there is absolutely no rationale for this.

But what happened this week, Nick, that is important—and why I say it was such a successful week for Jay Powell—is you could not find a Republican that was willing to defend what happened. Everyone was taking Powell’s side of it.

Remember, there are enough Republican senators that are leaving that they can hold up votes, and that is exactly what happened with Senator Thom Tillis of the great state of North Carolina, saying, “I will not approve more Fed replacements if this thing is not put away.”

So the leverage is not with lawfare right now. The leverage is with the Fed in this thing.

Look, it is unfortunate that the relationship deteriorated the way it did. I am not defending all the monetary policy decisions Jay Powell has made, but a criminal investigation is ridiculous.

I am looking forward to being on the other side of this drama so we can get back to the other drama of interest rate policy.

EICHER: Oh and drama galore.

Let us turn to the drama involving voter sentiment.

David, a new Wall Street Journal poll finds that voters are broadly unhappy with the economy. They are skeptical of the administration’s handling of inflation. They are not convinced that economic growth is improving their lives.

That is what came through pretty loud and clear in the Journal poll.

Do you think that voters are misreading the economy? Possibly? Are they responding to something that the data do not fully reflect? What do you say?

BAHNSEN: Well, remember, the economy is not something that people read. The economy is something people do and feel.

Somebody who believes their standard of living is going down or not getting better, or certain particular promises that were made to them are not happening—there is no data point you can offer to make them feel better.

I am one who believes the inflation rate will actually be heading down from here, despite various elements that tariffs are pushing higher, just because I am quite confident that housing and some of the rent numbers are going to be coming lower, which will help the data point.

But for people to meaningfully feel better, you will have to see something in housing and rent levels.

Right now, we are seeing a couple of different proposals a week come from the White House that are just really disappointing and really awful.

But what could very well happen when some of the provisions from the big, beautiful bill get enacted is I am very hopeful you will get an increase in capital spending, capital expenditures, business investment—something to drive productivity.

If the only thing we have going to try to boost productivity is stuff adjacent to AI, then I do not think that is going to be a great narrative this year.

But there could very well be more.

I would just want to remind people the new tax bill gives businesses 100 percent immediate expensing on capital expenditures and useful things put to work, the ability to deduct research and development expenditures.

Some of those things I hope will be stimulative.

I do spend more time criticizing the things I do not like that the administration does, and there have been a lot more of them than I expected.

We are now at the one-year anniversary, and I feel disappointed in the way the first year has gone compared to the way I felt after the first year of the first term, where I was largely very encouraged.

But there have been some positive things, and those things could very well pull through in 2026—the energy independence, the deregulation.

The problem is a lot of the deregulatory efforts are being offset by other regulatory suggestions, and so it is really going to be difficult to make voters feel good.

But I will say this, Nick: one of the ways to not disappoint voters is to not promise them stupid things, and to promise voters that you are going to do things that you really cannot do as a politician.

Everyone has to do it, I guess, to get elected. But I long for a day where we do not.

EICHER: All right.

David Bahnsen is founder, managing partner, and chief investment officer of The Bahnsen Group. He writes at DividendCafe.com and has a new article out at WORLD Opinions as well.

David, hope you have a great week. We will talk to you next time.

BAHNSEN: Thanks so much Nick.

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

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. A quick note before we continue: our next story includes details that may not be suitable for younger listeners. We’ll pause for a few seconds now before moving ahead.

Up next, a story that begins with a single heartbreaking crime—thirty years ago this month—and ends with a nationwide response. WORLD’s Emma Eicher has the WORLD History Book.

EMMA EICHER: It was 30 years ago on a January afternoon when a 9-year-old girl named Amber was kidnapped in broad daylight. Amber was with her younger brother Ricky. He remembers that day in a documentary about Amber’s disappearance.

RICKY HAGERMAN: We would always ride our bikes around the neighborhood, and we did it very often …

It was warm and sunny in Arlington, Texas. Amber and Ricky had just arrived at their grandparents’ house. They went out for a ride. Amber had just gotten a new bike for Christmas—a pink one.

Amber’s mom, Donna, remembers when they rode off.

DONNA WILLIAMS: And I just hollered down, ‘Ya’ll stay together. Come right back.’ And Amber turns around, and she looks at me, ‘Okay Mommy, we will.’

The kids usually just rode around the block and came right back. This time, they didn’t.

RICKY: We took a left, where we weren’t supposed to go. We went to an abandoned parking lot that had a little ramp we could ride down.

Worried they might get in trouble, Ricky turned back. Amber stayed and Ricky biked home alone.

When their grandfather asked where Amber was, Ricky said she was still in the parking lot.

RICKY: He grabbed me and put me in the truck and we went to go look for her. We just found her bike laying there.

Around the same time, someone nearby called 9-1-1.

911 OPERATOR: Arlington 911, what are you reporting?

CALLER: Yeah I saw a black pickup truck pull up over here on Abram Street and he grabbed a little girl and he took off toward town with her. … She hollered real loud ‘cause I could hear it plumb over here. So that’s what made me think there was something foul about it.

OPERATOR: Okay, we’ll be out there shortly, sir.

That caller was a neighbor who lived near the parking lot. He gave police a description. Patrols started pulling over black pickup trucks all over the city. And officers called local media to spread the word.

Local news crews surrounded the family’s house, interviewing Donna and Amber’s dad, Richard.

DONNA: Please bring her home safe.

RICHARD HAGERMAN: If anybody out there has seen anything, call the police, let them know.

As the search widened, investigators turned their attention to Amber’s parents—Donna and Richard Hagerman—and the grandparents, as family members are often the first suspects in abduction cases.

By day three they were all cleared.

Police worked round the clock. Every lead, a dead end.

Day four, the search was over.

911 OPERATOR: Arlington 911, what are you reporting?

CALLER: Uh, yes ma’am, my neighbors are yelling right now. They’re saying they found the little girl’s body that they’re looking for.

A man walking his dog found Amber’s body in a creek.

More than 2,000 people attended her funeral. Police kept searching for the murderer, but the case turned cold.

JOHN BISCHOFF: Unfortunately, her murder, her untimely death, horrific, still remains unsolved.

That’s John Bischoff. He works with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. He says what happened to Amber forced the community to ask what could be done differently.

BISCHOFF: The community, you know, were looking for answers. One person, a lady by the name of Diane Simone, suggested a program to notify the public when a child was critically missing.

Simone began looking for a faster way to get the public’s help. At the time, there was already an Emergency Alert System used only in the most extreme situations.

But Simone wondered if it could be used for local crimes too, specifically for child abduction.

BISCHOFF: And hence started the first iteration of what an AMBER Alert is today.

With help from police and local media, the AMBER Alert system was established later that year in Arlington, Texas named for Amber Hagerman. And also forming an acronym standing for America’s Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response.

SOUND: [AMBER alert]

It was first used in Amber’s hometown in 1997.

REPORTER: This is an activation of the AMBER Alert system at the request of the Arlington Police Department. Arlington police say a child, 2 month old, white female baby has been kidnapped …

The alert led police to that baby within 13 hours of her disappearance. She was the first of many rescued children.

BISCHOFF: When an AMBER Alert’s involved, about 89% of the children are recovered within 24 hours.

By 2003, the AMBER Alert became a national program, and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children began collecting statistics on its effectiveness.

BISCHOFF: It’s actually really effective. If you take a look over time at all the AMBER alerts that have gone out, only 40 remain still active today.

For Ricky Hagerman, it’s a bittersweet comfort to know that his sister’s tragic death created a chance for other children to be saved.

RICKY: Every time I hear an AMBER Alert, I say to myself, ‘It’s time to go to work, sis. Do your thing.’ I just wish that Amber had something in place at the time.

This story draws select audio from the documentary Amber: The Girl Behind the Alert. If you want the full account, the film is available to stream on Peacock.

That’s this week’s WORLD History Book. I’m Emma Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Tomorrow: A teenage athlete injured on the court—and the questions that followed. Payton McNabb, now, in her own words. And what makes art an investment? That and more tomorrow.

I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher

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