The World and Everything in It: January 27, 2025

JENNY ROUGH, HOST: Good morning!

Today on Legal Docket, smoking in the boys’ room: now companies appear to be pushing fruit-flavored vapes for kids.

KAGAN: Blueberry vapes are very appealing to 16-year-olds, not to 40-year-olds.

NICK EICHER, HOST: The Supreme Court will decide what authority the feds have to regulate.

Also today the Monday Moneybeat. Trump takes on the big banks over de-banking conservatives.

Later, the WORLD History Book: a space shuttle commander who loved creation AND its creator.

HUSBAND: It was just a time for me to really express my thanks to God for allowing me to do that.

ROUGH: It’s Monday, January 27th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Jenny Rough.

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

ROUGH: Time for news with Mark Mellinger.

MARK MELLINGER, NEWS ANCHOR:  Chicago immigration crackdown » The Trump Administration has launched an enhanced crackdown on illegal immigration in Chicago.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement -ICE, for short- says the immigration blitz started Sunday, and confirms it’s getting help from the FBI, ATF, Customs & Border Protection, and the U.S. Marshals service.

White House Border Czar Tom Homan tells ABC’s This Week that while his teams are prioritizing those with violent criminal pasts:

HOMAN: If you’re in the country illegally, you’re on the table because it’s not okay to, you know, violate laws of this country.

Homan says sanctuary cities like Chicago will see what he calls collateral arrests of non-violent immigrants, as his teams run across them while pursuing those who are threats to public safety.

That’s drawing criticism from Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker.

PRITZKER: They’re going after people who are law-abiding, who are holding down jobs, who have families here, who may have been here for a decade or two decades, and they’re often our neighbors and our friends. Why are we going after them?

ICE reported more than 1,400 immigration arrests nationwide in the three days leading up to Sunday.

Trump orders tariffs on Colombia » President Trump is announcing retaliatory tariffs on Colombia… after its president blocked U.S. military deportation flights from landing.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro says he blocked the flights because the U.S. needs to establish better protocols in its treatment of migrants.

Trump responded with a social media announcement of emergency 25 percent tariffs on Colombian imports, adding that’ll go up to 50 percent in a week.

Petro countered by ordering his country’s commerce department to raise tariffs on U.S. imports by 25 percent.

That’s one woman in Colombia expressing concern that the tariff standoff will affect the entire country and bring commerce with the U.S. to a halt.

Petro has left the door open to receiving repatriated migrants on civilian planes.

California rain, potential for toxic debris runoff » That’s the sound of members of the California Conservation Corps laying storm drain sock guards and sandbags. It’s a last ditch effort to stop toxic debris runoff, left behind by the recent wildfires, from running into the Pacific Ocean, amid weekend rain.

All told, the Los Angeles area could get about an inch of rain between Saturday and Tuesday. That should help firefighters put out several wildfires still burning.

But it’s also sparking concern about mudslides, flooding, and health hazards. The local government has urged people cleaning up in and around their homes to wear protective gear.

Tense Gaza ceasefire holds » It looks like the fragile ceasefire in Gaza between Israel and Hamas will hold, after a dispute put it at risk.

Qatar, which is helping mediate the ceasefire talks, says the two sides have reached an agreement to release an Israeli civilian hostage, and allow Palestinians to return to northern Gaza.

Under the deal, Hamas will release the civilian and two other hostages Friday, while Palestinians can start returning to Gaza today.

Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal tells Fox News Sunday it’s critical for the deal to hold.

BLUMENTHAL: We need to keep our eye on the ball because this ceasefire agreement can lead to normalization, expansion, of the Abraham Accords.

The Abraham Accords are a series of normalization agreements between Israel and some of its Middle East neighbors. The first Trump Administration brokered them, and now the president hopes to expand them in his second term.

Also Sunday, the White House ended the Biden Administration’s hold on sending 2,000-pound bombs to Israel. The potential use of those bombs had become a point of conflict in the Israel-Hamas war.

Trump wants Jordan, Egypt to accept more Palestinians » President Trump wants Jordan, Egypt and other Arab countries to accept more Palestinian refugees from the war-torn Gaza Strip.

TRUMP: I’d like Egypt to take people and I’d like Jordan to take people. You’re probably talking about a million and a half people. And we just clean out that whole thing.

That’s the president talking to reporters aboard Air Force One Sunday, saying he’s already discussed the idea with the king of Jordan, and he’ll be talking to Egypt’s president soon.

Trump says the resettling could be long term or temporary.

Jordan’s foreign minister, however, told reporters his country has rejected the proposed transfer, and called that position “firm and unwavering.”

Israeli forces open fire on Lebanese protesters » Gunfire rang out in southern Lebanon, where Israeli troops opened fire on protesters Sunday.

Lebanese health officials say 22 people were killed and more than 100 injured. The protesters were demanding the Israeli troops’ withdrawal, in line with the recent ceasefire agreement that ended the war between Israel and Hezbollah.

Later in the day, Israel and Lebanon said they’re extending that deadline to February 18th. That’s to give the Lebanese army more time to deploy and ensure Hezbollah doesn’t reestablish a presence there.

The Israeli military says it fired warning shots to remove threats in several areas Sunday where suspects were approaching its troops.

I'm Mark Mellinger.

Straight ahead: the Supreme Court must decide the power of the FDA to limit vaping companies. Plus, the Monday Moneybeat with David Bahnsen.

This is The World and Everything in It. 

NICK EICHER, HOST: If you didn’t know this song, I’d be surprised if you didn’t know of it.

Smokin’ in the Boys’ Room was a hit in 1973, undoubtedly the biggest song Brownsville Station ever did.

SOUND: But everybody knows that smokin’ ain’t allowed in school.

The rock band Motley Crüe covered it in 1985 and gave it a heavy metal edge.

It was something of an anthem of teenage rebellion, when lighting up in the school bathroom was practically a teenage cliché.

Today, school administrators have replaced “No Smoking” signs with vaping detectors and hallway monitors. Different era, same problem: Teens craving nicotine—only now it’s fruit-flavored vapes.

Today, we’ll talk about two Supreme Court cases on e-cigarettes—products said to be designed to help adult smokers quit, but accused of sparking a teen vaping epidemic

It’s Monday, January 27 and you’re listening to The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. Good morning! I’m Nick Eicher.

JENNY ROUGH, HOST: And I’m Jenny Rough. Time now for Legal Docket.

Vaping may not be allowed in the boys’ room, but that just makes it more enticing.

JOSEPH: Well, I know it’s a thing. I know that kids are doing it. They’re doing it all over the place, including bathrooms at schools. It’s like an epidemic.

Jim Joseph is a father of three teens. When he visited his daughter’s high school in Reston, Virginia, he was startled to find a faculty member stationed near the restroom.

JOSEPH: And I saw a woman sitting at a desk outside of the bathrooms. And I asked her, “What are you doing out here?” She said, “I’m monitoring the bathroom.” This is high school kids and they’ve got a monitor out there just in case kids are in there too long, or she sees something or smells something, she runs in there and checks on them. They’ve had to staff up for this. It’s crazy.

But kids tend to find a way around it. Jennifer Cannon lives in New Jersey and distinctly remembers the day her daughter came home from school.

CANNON: She said, “Yeah, I was in the bathroom today, and I came out of the stall, and this girl, ‘cause the kids would go to the bathroom to sneak and vape, said, ‘Hey, do you hit nic?’” And my daughter said, “Who’s Nick?” … My daughter, literally, it didn’t occur to her that she wanted to hit her vape, as the kids say.

Believe it or not, back in the 1970s, some kids didn’t even have to sneak.

SISTARE: I’m old enough that, in school, we had a smoking court in high school.

Billy Sistare attended high school in North Carolina, a leading tobacco exporter. Smoking court was where you smoked … not where you got in trouble for smoking.

SISTAIRE: You could actually go outside and smoke in the smoking court.  Most of the schools back then had smoking courts.

Sistare picked up the habit.

SISTAIRE: I started smoking probably when I was 14. My mom smoked, and I just started kind of stealing some of hers.

By his 50s, he smoked a pack-and-a-half a day. Real cigarettes. Paper, filter, tobacco, fire.

Three years ago, he wanted to quit.

SISTAIRE: So I started trying to vape to wean myself off of it.

It worked. Today, he vapes about one e-cigarette a week. That’s the equivalent of about a pack of conventional cigarettes a week. And he’s lost his taste for tobacco. He prefers other flavors.

SISTAIRE: Blue razz-ice and blueberry, a lot of blueberry flavors are my go-to thing.

EICHER: Now, that’s the crux of these two Supreme Court cases we’re covering today: Companies claim flavored vapes help adults quit smoking by providing an alternative to real cigarettes. But the Food and Drug Administration worries the sweet flavors get a new generation hooked on nicotine.

A federal law called the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act requires any new tobacco product to get FDA approval first. The FDA weighs whether the benefits outweigh the risks—especially the risk of teen addiction.

ROUGH:In the first case, two companies asked the FDA for permission to sell fruit, candy, and dessert-flavored vaping products.

The FDA said no. Its rationale was that the companies hadn’t shown enough scientific evidence that the benefits of helping adults quit outweigh the risk of tempting teens.

The companies sued and in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, they won. The Fifth Circuit said the FDA sent the companies on what it called a “wild goose chase”: Hinting at one set of requirements, then changing course. To the court, that’s arbitrary and capricious, to use the legal term of art. Agencies are prohibited by law from acting in an arbitrary and capricious manner.

The FDA appealed to the Supreme Court, where Deputy Solicitor General Curtis Gannon argued there was no flip-flopping.

He said the agency has always required good science.

GANNON: An applicant must show the marketing of its product would be appropriate for the protection of the public health. … Respondents’ nicotine solutions for e-cigarettes are flavored to taste like fruit, candy, or various desserts.

EICHER: Flavors like Pink Lemonade, Chewy Clouds Sour Grape, and Killer Kustard, “custard” with a “K.” Marketing.

Justice Clarence Thomas asked government lawyer Gannon about the switching standards.

THOMAS: Well, in fairness to Respondents, I think their argument is that the guidance were actually a moving target, that either they weren’t clear, or you changed the guidance as time went on.

GANNON: That is their argument, Justice Thomas, but I think that the key point is that they knew from the statute that they needed to be making this comparison about what the benefits were with respect to existing smokers and weighing that against the potential costs with respect to non-smokers and attracting youth.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wanted clarity on the FDA’s analysis of the pros and cons of the flavored e-liquids.

JACKSON: So the statute plainly requires the agency to evaluate benefits and harms. So can you just speak for a moment about why flavored e-cigarettes are more harmful than unflavored from the government's perspective?

GANNON: Flavors are attracting youth into smoking when they are non-users. Congress said that we need to evaluate the likelihood that non-users are going to start using tobacco products. The concern would be that they're getting addicted to nicotine at a time when nicotine is dangerous to their developing brains and may be, you know, sentencing them to a long life of needing to satisfy that addiction.

ROUGH: Attorney Eric Heyer argued for the two companies. He tried to hammer home the point that the FDA kept changing its position.

HEYER: Before, FDA said, quote, no specific studies are required for an application. After, FDA denied applications for over one million products and over 250 applicants because they lacked a randomized control trial, a longitudinal cohort study, or some "other evidence." FDA’s denial orders suffer from multiple flaws.

But Justice Elena Kagan thought the FDA adequately warned the applicants from the get-go to think hard about flavors, and the companies simply could not convince the agency they were necessary.

I’ve condensed this exchange between Justice Kagan and corporate lawyer Heyer.

KAGAN: Everybody basically knows that flavors are particularly dangerous in terms of kids starting the use of smoking products. 

HEYER: I respectfully dispute the fact that everybody knows this and everybody knows that.

KAGAN: Well, you that that, I mean, FDA has been completely upfront about this. Blueberry vapes are very appealing to 16-year-olds, not to 40-year-olds.

HEYER: I respectfully disagree, your Honor.

KAGAN: No, I'm not saying that you don't have a point of view on that question. I mean, there’s just not a lot of mystery here about what the FDA was doing.

HEYER: Well—

KAGAN: You might disagree with that because you think that, in fact, the world of 40-year-olds really wants to do blueberry vaping, but you can't say that FDA hasn't told you all about what it's thinking in this respect.

EICHER: Justice Sonia Sotomayor followed up on that. She pointed to the statute’s language to show it plainly lays out what’s required.

SOTOMAYOR: this is the statute speaking. This is not them. This is not a policy. This is not a guideline. Tell us that your product is going to help adults stop smoking cigarettes and show us that youth is not going to start.

EYER: Often the quitting journey is to move away from tobacco or menthol flavors because they don't want to be reminded of the combustible cigarettes. They want to move to these other options to be quit and to stay quit.

ROUGH: Nine in 10 adults who smoke picked up the habit in their teens. But even if the Court validates the FDA’s process here, the companies can always reapply.

The corporation involved in this case is Triton Distribution. It’s based in Texas. That’s within the Fifth Circuit. So when Triton initially appealed the FDA’s denial, it did so in the right venue. In the legal context, this means simply that it filed its appeal in the right place.

And the question of venue brings us to a second vaping case.

EICHER: Now this one is a little different. It involves RJ Reynolds Vapor Company. Because Reynolds is headquartered in North Carolina—it can’t file in the more favorable Fifth Circuit. The applicable law is particular about “venue.” It says if you want to appeal an FDA denial, you have to do it either in the D.C. Circuit or in the circuit where the company resides.

So RJ Reynolds Vapor convinced a couple of its Texas and Mississippi retailers to join its appeal. That would put it in the Fifth Circuit.

ROUGH: The FDA is fighting that move, arguing non-applicant retailers don’t have the right to challenge the denials. Yet the law does say that “any person adversely affected” by an FDA denial has a right to appeal.

Vivek Suri represented the FDA in this case and gave a masterful presentation, I noticed he didn’t even bring notes to the lectern. But the justices seemed suspicious of his argument that the retailers don’t belong; that the manufacturer is just riding their coattails. Here’s Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

KAVANAUGH: I mean, the retailer is losing money. And financial injury certainly sounds like adverse effect under any, as you would say, ordinary understanding of the term

And that’s this week’s Legal Docket.

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

NICK EICHER, HOST: Time now to talk business, markets, and the economy with financial analyst and adviser David Bahnsen. David heads up the wealth management firm The Bahnsen Group. He is here now. Good morning to you, David.

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

EICHER: Let’s begin with Davos: The World Economic Forum. President Trump made an appearance over Zoom, not in person. But he did make a splash, telling the CEO of Bank of America to stop de-banking conservatives, something we’ve talked about here and the efforts you’ve made to open up corporate America to conservatives and Christians. Let’s hear a bit of what President Trump said.

TRUMP: You've done a fantastic job, but I hope you start opening your bank to conservatives because many conservatives complain that the banks are not allowing them to do business within the bank, and that included a place called Bank of America. They don't take conservative business and I don't know if the regulators mandated that because of Biden or what, but you and Jamie and everybody I hope you're going to open your banks to conservatives because what you're doing is wrong.

Bank of America put out a statement later basically denying they do that. In the moment, though, CEO Brian Moynihan didn’t really engage with what the president said, but certainly didn’t contradict.

MOYNIHAN: Mr. President, I'll say that your friend Gianni said hello, told me to tell you hello, and we look forward to sponsoring the World Cup when it comes this summer for the club and next year, so thank you for getting that for the United States.

EICHER: But again, this is an issue near and dear to you, David.

BAHNSEN: Well, you know, it's a really good talking point for the right because there were so many bad things that did happen. It's in the banking sector. It was in the tech sector. There were a lot of these culturally discriminatory incidents a number of years ago. I think President Trump using that platform to push back against it, draws attention to some things.

Now, The Wall Street Journal ran a big feature story over the weekend that highlighted some of our efforts and the success we've had with JP Morgan, where so much of these things that had been happening were reversed, where they changed their policies over the payment processor they own, WePay, that was really, you know, explicitly ready to debank people—and JP Morgan changed there.

Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan, has been a leader in this front of publicly putting the bank's reputation on the line saying, “Not only do we deny it's happened, but we're very, very adamant, we're not going to let it happen.” And that's the angle you want, because then when incidents do come up, they're not going to defend it as saying, “Oh, it's okay it happened.” They're saying, “Yeah, it's not supposed to be happening.”

We saw Pepsi on Thursday of last week announced that they were putting language up in response to my resolution, that they would no longer have either a political or religious screen around some of the things that they are tolerating, supporting.

They're really getting very explicit in the ways that they're now advocating for a viewpoint neutrality, which is what we've been asking for when it comes to the way they behave as an organization.

So it was a really good week in a lot of these ways. Big victories that some of us have been working on for a number of years.

I don't want to suggest, Nick, that it's over. I don't think that the work is done, but I do think that President Trump putting a microphone on some of it, and the mainstream press highlighting the victories that have been achieved, it's a good moment. It’s one that should give an opportunity for those that sometimes become despondent and believe we've lost these things. I think it's important that Christians stay encouraged that if you keep doing the right thing the right way, good things can happen.

EICHER: My colleague Onize Oduah is working on a story about the BRICS nations—Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa—and one specific question she had was whether you think the five-nation bloc poses any kind of threat to the dominance of the U.S. dollar as a reserve currency. Is there much to that?

BAHNSEN: No, I think that it's really important that people stop worrying about what other currencies are doing and worry about what we're doing.

There is no possible way that a third-world country that doesn't allow capital in and out of its country, sometimes doesn't allow people in and out of its country, is ever a threat to the reserve status of the dollar.

The only issue that comes up is when we misbehave with our own currency. It has absolutely nothing to do with other currencies. The idea of the dollar being threatened by 0.002% of oil being denominated in another currency is a huge misnomer.

Now Trump doesn't care about currency very much himself, but he does care about the headlines around it looking like some countries are doing things that might push us down the ladder of importance.

That isn't happening here, but I think it's understandable he'd want to use the moment, I don't want to say cosmetically, but it's sort of symbolically he wants to maintain U.S. ascendancy on all fronts.

My only argument is the way in which our dollar remains the biggest and best currency in the world is for us not to use it for our own manipulative ends, for us to uphold rule of law and not use the currency as a weapon in that front. And if we do that, any conversation about a so-called BRICS currency is almost comical.

EICHER: We don’t have specific details nailed down yet, but we are committed to doing an online live event with David in February. We’ll talk with him more about the new administration, how he evaluates it, how he sees things shaping up. Once we set a date, we’ll let you know so you can be part of it if you’re interested in hearing more from David and maybe asking a question. So that’s to come. Be listening for details.

David Bahnsen, founder, managing partner, and chief investment officer of The Bahnsen Group. David writes at dividendcafe.com and regularly for WORLD Opinions. David, talk to you next week!

BAHNSEN: Thanks so much, Nick.

JENNY ROUGH, HOST: Today is Monday, January 27th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Jenny Rough.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Up next, the WORLD History Book.

Twenty two years ago this week, the families of seven astronauts are waiting for the return of the Space Shuttle Columbia. What they don’t know is the spacecraft was damaged on liftoff, and that a small breach would bring a big disaster.

ROUGH: WORLD’s Caleb Welde has the story of Columbia’s mission commander who believed he was right where God wanted him to be.

CALEB WELDE: Rick Husband had wanted to be an astronaut, ever since he was four years old.

HUSBAND: You hear little kids say “I want to be an astronaut,” or I want to be this or that. And you think “aw, that’s nice.” But I kept saying it.

After college, he joined the U.S. Air Force and became a test pilot in 1987.

When his first application to NASA got turned down, Husband and his wife Evelyn began to grow in their faith. He applied again, and was turned down a second time. After the third rejection he thought he’d probably never fly in space.

One day Husband got a letter from a friend who mentioned Psalm 37 verse 4…

HUSBAND: Commit your way to the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart. So I got to looking at that. It was almost like, it's almost like God asked me, okay, so what really are the desires of your heart?

This is Husband from a 2003 interview.

HUSBAND: And so I initially, the first thing that I kind of brought to mind was, well, I want to be an astronaut, but then it's like God said, no, no, no, no. Think about it for a little while and tell me what really is the desire of your heart.

He did think about it.

HUSBAND: And I finally came to realize that what really meant the most to me was to try and live my life the way God wanted me to.

Husband says it felt like a light bulb came on.

HUSBAND: I finally realized that this thing about being an astronaut was not as important as I thought it was.

But the opportunity came for Husband to apply one more time.

HUSBAND: And so then, sure enough, came the opportunity for us to apply, again.

On previous applications, Husband had not been completely truthful about his vision. This time he told the whole truth. While his vision wasn’t terrible, it was on the edge. So he admitted that he had worn contact lenses at one point, a fact that would usually take a candidate out of consideration. Husband argued with God the whole way to the post office.

HUSBAND: And I'm going, oh, you know this, how's this ever going to work? And he's saying, just trust me, just wait and see. Besides, if you said you don't care where you go or what happens, and you just want to live the way I want you to live, then don't worry about it!

He was certain NASA would notice the inconsistency, realizing he’d lied on his previous applications.

HUSBAND: They're going to say what a scumbag this guy is. And, you know, toss the toss the application. And you know, that's the kind of situation where you can say, The Devil loves a secret. Because if he knows that you've got something that you're trying to hide, he can use it against you in such a huge way. And so I just dropped the thing in the mail. I said, Okay, Lord, let's just see what happens.

Husband was also praying, “Lord, if this isn’t from you, please take away the desire, to be an astronaut.” Then, no word for months. He thought maybe he’d just never hear back.

HUSBAND: And then something would come in the mail, like my Air Force supervisor would send me a thing saying, hey, NASA, just sent me a survey for me to fill out on you. So here's a copy of what I sent them.

Then one day, NASA called and asked if he could come in for interviews the next week. He knew the interviews would include an eye exam.

HUSBAND: So I went into the first morning to take that test, and I flunked it?!

He asked if he could retest. NASA agreed. Two of Husband’s squadron teammates told him they’d fast and pray for him.

HUSBAND: And Evelyn was doing the same, and she had other people praying.

He passed. Both eyes improved. By this point, Husband says he didn’t care if he got hired or not. But NASA approved his application and his first mission was 1999:

When he got back, people asked if the trip changed his perspective on God. Yes… and no.

He tells this story about eating dinner with his wife after getting back.

HUSBAND: And we watched a really beautiful sunset down there on the on the Banana River. And as we sat there, I told Evelyn, I said, you know, this is every bit as beautiful as the sunrises or sunsets that I saw up on orbit and the great thing about it is that it lasts a whole lot longer, and you can sit and actually enjoy it. But it was just a time for me to really express my thanks, I think, to God for allowing me to be able to go and do that.

Soon, Husband began training to lead a mission.

The STS-107 Columbia mission would be his first. He was forty-five now and a colonel in the Air Force. There were a million things to do in the final weeks leading up to the trip. Husband prioritized recording individual video tapes for his kids.

EVELYN: And so each morning, Laura watched her tape, and Matthew watched his.

Evelyn Husband here on the Revive Our Hearts podcast.

EVELYN: And it was about five minutes long, he would read from their devotional books, and pray with them, read the Bible verse and a little story, and then just talk to them and say a prayer with them, just like he did at home.

He also prayed together with his wife:

EVELYN: We prayed over our children and we prayed for each other, and I don't think there's anything more powerful than that, to be still before the Lord.

Husband and his six member crew launched from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center on January 16th, 2003. They spent nearly 16 days in orbit.

On January 28th Husband called Evelyn from space. It was the anniversary of the Challenger disaster in 1986—when a shuttle exploded during take off. They both knew the seven astronauts who died that day. January 28th was also the anniversary of their first date.

EVELYN: And so his very first words to me that early morning were happy dating anniversary.

It was their last conversion.

EVELYN: Then Rick went on later that day to honor and remember the Challenger crew…

TV COVERAGE: We are breaking away from the Today Show now for the landing of the Space Shuttle Columbia…

Evelyn and the children were at the Kennedy Space Center, the morning of February 1st.

TV COVERAGE: Columbia approaching the coast of California now…

They could hear the live audio transmission between Mission Control and Columbia. Then, about 9 am Eastern Time, the transmission cut off.

WFAA: And we now have confirmation through the Associated Press NASA has declared an emergency this morning after losing communication with the Space Shuttle Columbia…

ABC: Columbia was at 200,000 feet going 12,500 miles per hour when it suddenly broke up…

The funeral service was held at the Husbands’ Grace Community Church in Houston. Pastor Steve O’ Donohoe described Husband as “probably the godliest man I’ve ever met.”

EVELYN: He wanted, more than anything else, to tell people, for people to know about Jesus, so much so that on his contingency sheet that he wrote out just in case something happened, to tell them about Jesus, that Jesus is real to him.

We end today with one final clip from Husband’s preflight interview. Words that take on deeper meaning looking back.

HUSBAND: it's always amazing how we can take a look at where we are now, looking forward, and wonder, how is God going to work this out? And I've learned over the years that if I just trust God, I don't have a clue how it's going to work out, but at some point, when I look back, it'll all fall into place so perfectly and in a way that I could never imagine. That even though you may have these pangs and you may think you want to worry about things, just think, just trust him, and he'll take care of it.

That’s this week’s WORLD History Book. I’m Caleb Welde.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: a first-hand report from the March for Life over the weekend in Washington. And, a prisoner held by the Taliban in Afghanistan is back home. We’ll hear his story. That and more tomorrow.

I’m Nick Eicher.

JENNY ROUGH, HOST: And I’m Jenny Rough.

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: “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein, for he has founded it upon the seas and established it upon the rivers.” —Psalms 24:1-2

Go now in grace and peace.

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