The World and Everything in It: July 1, 2025

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MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

Today that Supreme Court ruling on birthright citizenship the dueling opinions revealed how divided the justices are on the role of judging.

WEINBERGER: And already we see this exchange getting circulated all over social media …

NICK EICHER, HOST: That’s ahead on a special Tuesday edition of Legal Docket.

Also today, the church members who stopped a potential mass shooting.

TROMBLEY: As every person that God put in exactly the right spot—we were put there to stop this evil man.

And a shared grief brought two families together in unexpected ways.

REICHARD: It’s Tuesday, July 1st. 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:  Big beautiful bill  »   Lawmakers debated on the Senate floor through the night and into the early hours of this morning, as Republicans pressed to pass President Trump’s so-called “one big beautiful bill.”

Democrats argued that the bill only benefits the wealthy and that it will cut benefits to many Americans. Sen. Adam Schiff:

SCHIFF:  No, it does nothing to make it easier for your kids or mine to buy a house, pay their rent, ,or fill up the car for a family vacation. Instead, it throws more coal in the engine, barreling down a track to nowhere.

Republicans said their Democratic colleagues were not telling the truth about the bill. Sen. Mike Crapo:

CRAPO:  This bill does not take Medicaid away from children or the elderly or any recipient. The program was originally designed to help. It increases eligibility to home and community-based services.

He said the legislation would only cut waste, fraud, and abuse from Medicaid while creating new opportunities for all Americans.

The Senate is not the final stop for this legislation. Even though the House already passed it, changes to the bill in the Senate means the House would have to take action on it again before it can head to President Trump’s desk.

Iran latest » Iran says it has no plans to open new diplomatic talks with the United States.

President Trump last week said U.S. and Iranian officials would likely meet this week.

But Teheran says there will be no talks until Washington guarantees no further U.S. military strikes while talks are ongoing.

Foreign Minister Majid Takht-Ravanchi told the BBC:

TAKHT-RAVANCHI - We have not agreed to any date. We have not agreed to the modality. Right now we are seeking an answer to this question: Are we going to see a repetition of an act of aggression while we are engaging in dialogue?

The U.S. government felt Iran was stonewalling and trying to buy time during negotiations before last month’s US airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.

And the Trump administration does not believe Teheran is in a position now to dictate terms.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe:

RATCLIFFE:  Iran's nuclear program's been severely damaged. And it's gonna take, uh, years, not months for Iran to try and rebuild those, uh, nuclear facilities, even if they try.

But the White House indicated that indirect talks with Iran are ongoing through backchannels.

Netanyahu to return to White House » President Trump will reportedly host Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Oval Office again next week as the president pushes for a ceasefire in Gaza. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt:

LEAVITT:  This has been a priority for the president since he took office to end this brutal war in Gaza. Uh, it is because of this president that humanitarian aid is being brought into the region.

Israeli government spokesman David Mencer says his country has never been the obstacle to peace in Gaza.

MENCER:  The obstacle lies with Hamas, but we are working through various means to overcome it.

But he said after Israel’s recent military campaign in Iran, Hamas may be further weakened. The Iranian government has long funded and supported the terror group.

MENCER: Now with the success of Operation Rising Lion in partnership with our American Allies, many opportunities have opened up now following this victory.

The Associated Press reports that Netanyahu will meet with Trump on Monday. It will be the prime minister’s third visit since Trump returned to White House in January.

Trump EO Syria sanctions » President Trump is hoping a more stable Syria will bring more stability to the Middle East.

He signed an executive order Monday ending U.S. sanctions against the country.

Karline Leavitt told reporters at the White House:

LEAVITT:  This is again, an action that the President promised and shocked the world with in Saudi Arabia because he's committed to supporting as Syria, that is stable, unified and at peace with itself and its neighbors.

Trump met with Syria’s interim leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, in Saudi Arabia in May and told him he would lift sanctions and explore normalizing relations in a major policy shift. That came at the urging of the United Arab Emirates months after deposed Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad was driven from power.

Idaho firefighters » In Idaho, investigators say the suspect who fatally shot firefighters battling a blaze in northern Idaho opened fire on them after they asked him to move his vehicle.

But Kootenai County Sheriff Bob Norris says that doesn’t mean it was an impulsive act.

NORRIS:  We do believe that the, uh, that the suspect started the fire, and we do believe that it was an ambush and it was intentional.

The 20-year-old suspect opened fire with a high-powered rifle.

The firefighters took cover behind fire trucks, but two were killed and a third was wounded during a barrage of gunfire over several hours.

The gunman apparently took his own life before law enforcement found him.

No word yet on a possible motive.

Straight ahead: the dueling opinions revealed how divided the justices are on the role of judging. Plus, something that’s ahead but not immediately straight ahead.

I'm Kent Covington.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s The World and Everything in It for this 1st day of July 2025. We’re so 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, and today we continue our analysis of Supreme Court opinions from the final week of the term.

Those final-week opinions often come with high drama—and few more so than Trump v CASA, the so-called birthright citizenship case. But headlines aside, it wasn’t really about birthright citizenship, even though it did stem from that. President Trump issued an executive order aimed at denying automatic citizenship to children born on U.S. soil to illegal immigrants.

REICHARD: The question presented was procedural, not constitutional. But it’s rather a consequential procedural question: Can a single federal district judge block a government policy nationwide, even for people who never sued over it?

That kind of court order is known as a “universal injunction.” And the Supreme Court in a 6 to 3 opinion written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett said a single federal judge cannot do such a thing.

I called up Lael Weinberger, law professor at George Mason and a former law clerk to Justice Neil Gorsuch.

WEINBERGER: The bottom line of the majority opinion is that universal injunctions are not okay, and the court embraced a modest view of the judicial role.The majority opinion is an admirably clear explanation of the historical view of the judiciary's role, which is resolving disputes between individual parties, and it is a rebuke to those courts that have gone beyond that role and have been willing to offer what people have called universal relief, relief, or remedies for people who are not part of the case, and that historically, is just not what courts have done.

EICHER: Justice Clarence Thomas made that very point during oral argument in May:

THOMAS: We survived until the 1960s without universal injunctions.

Supporters of this decision see it as a return to first principles—Constitution 101. Judges are supposed to interpret the law and apply it to the parties before them. It’s not their job to write nationwide policy, that’s up to the other two branches.

WEINBERGER:This is a case that requires them to talk at a really fundamental level about what they think they are doing. And so the sharpest disagreement comes between Justice Barrett’s majority opinion and Justice Jackson’s dissent.

And that dissent was fiery. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson called the majority opinion “an existential threat to the rule of law.” She broke with tradition and skipped the collegial and customary: “I respectfully dissent.” Instead, she used the sign-off: “with deep disillusionment.”

REICHARD: Justice Barrett, with her five colleagues endorsing it, didn’t let the matter go unanswered. She zeroed in on the contradiction at the heart of Jackson’s argument—and delivered a pointed rejoinder: “Justice Jackson decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary.” It was a sharp line, and Lael Weinberger says it’s already doing what sharp lines tend to do: cut through the noise.

WEINBERGER: That is a strongly worded disagreement, and that line about an imperial executive doesn't justify an imperial judiciary. That is going to be a memorable encapsulation of this disagreement that I think is going to be understandable, not just to readers of this opinion, but also to a broader public, which is only going to hear this in in excerpt form, and already we see this exchange getting circulated all over social media and many people who are not going to click to read almost 120 pages of PDF opinions are going to see these lines.

I also called up Ilya Shapiro, a constitutional scholar at the Manhattan Institute. He sees the Court’s ruling as a long-overdue course correction:

SHAPIRO: Finally, they've given it basically by saying that nationwide or universal injunctions generally go beyond federal court authority that they, courts have to tailor their rulings to the parties before them. Courts look at cases and controversies, and they don't just get kind of derivative authority to control parties who are not before them.

During oral argument, some justices offered a possible way to streamline disputes like this one: class actions. If challengers sue as a class, then relief could be broader, without violating judicial limits. Shapiro says it’ll have to be a work in progress:\

SHAPIRO: And Supreme Court does have nationwide or universal jurisdiction, but also we will see skirmishes in the lower court over class certification. If you have class actions that certainly binds much more broadly than just the specific individuals before you, as well as skirmishes over third party standing. That is, if states, as some states are involved in this birthright citizenship litigation, can they block policies just for that state? Would we end up with a patchwork whether for birthright citizenship or say, for rules of entry, for travel restrictions. Can there be a different rule if you're flying into, say, Atlanta International Airport versus JFK versus LAX? Those are going to be the battles going forward.

EICHER: That just might spur Congress into action. As US Solicitor General John Sauer said at oral argument, just five judicial districts issued 35 universal injunctions this year alone. Some say forum shopping is way out of hand. 

Law professor Weinberger has seen how the court operates from the inside. He says the real story is how the justices manage to disagree, but then come back together:

WEINBERGER: …even as we read the really strident and strong disagreements that are expressed in this set of opinions, it's still the case that these justices, they've done this before, and then they go away for a summer, and then they come back and they're working together with the same group of nine people again and again and again. And this is one of the reasons that the Supreme Court, as an institution, has long had this practice of taking summers off, because there is this sense that the court is doing hard work under a lot of public scrutiny, under certain degrees of time pressure. This particular case happened under great time pressure because it went on a super expedited schedule and and yet, you have to find ways to to disagree, because these are justices with very different views of the law and of the Constitution and of how to understand its its words, and then they have to find ways to come together and work with these same people all over again. And that's not an easy thing to do.

REICHARD: I’d wondered why Justice Barrett was assigned to write the majority opinion. I asked Shapiro about that:

SHAPIRO: It could be that Chief Justice, that justice, Barrett, when she was a professor, was into civil procedure. So knows this area of law very well, with this respect to injunctions and the authority of district courts. It could be that he saw that she could keep all her colleagues in line, perhaps even more than the chief himself could. I don't know what there would be a lot of speculation about that, but it does play in nicely. It kind of ties a nice, nice bow in terms of the all of the criticism that she has gotten from the President's allies the last few months that between this and her writing in the Skrmetti case really, you know, takes a wind out of those criticisms.

EICHER: Bottom line: Going forward, the merits of each presidential executive order will still need to be tested in court. But it won’t get shot down because a single federal judge says so.

REICHARD: One more ruling to cover for today, Riley v Bondi.

This one’s also related to immigration it went 5-4 with Justice Neil Gorsuch joining the liberals in dissent. It clarifies a key timing rule in immigration cases.

Pierre Riley overstayed his tourist visa in the 1990s. Years later, he was convicted on drug and firearms charges and landed in prison. He got an early release during the pandemic, and when he walked out, immigration agents were waiting to deport him to Jamaica.

EICHER: Riley asked not to be sent back, saying a drug lord there had threatened to kill him. But the Board of Immigration Appeals turned him down. He tried to appeal that, but the government said he was too late.

The question was when does the clock start running on time for appeal?

The majority cut him some slack, saying the rule isn’t so strict because it’s a “claim processing rule” and not a mandatory “jurisdictional rule.” It’s flexible.

REICHARD: Bottom line for Riley is he gets another shot at avoiding Jamaica and the government has to respond: no automatic dismissal over a timing technicality.

And that’s today’s Legal Docket. More tomorrow from my colleague Jenny Rough.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: Gunfire at God’s house.

Now just a quick word of warning, this story deals with scary situations that may be too intense for younger ears. Parents with young children may want to fast-forward about 10 minutes and come back later. We’ll give you a moment to reach for the podcast controls before continuing

NICK EICHER, HOST: Just two Sundays ago, police say a gunman dressed in tactical gear opened fire outside a Michigan church during that congregation’s vacation Bible school program. WORLD Reporter Travis Kircher spoke with several members of the congregation about what happened next and how it could have been a lot worse.

REPORTER TRAVIS KIRCHER: June 22nd wasn’t a typical Sunday morning service at Crosspointe Community Church in Wayne, Michigan. As sound technician Dustin Fuoco explains, it was supposed to be about the children.

FUOCO: This was following our Vacation Bible School program, and instead of doing our regular worship, we had the children up on stage doing some performances and songs and dance and stuff.

Church member Ronald Amann, age 63, was enjoying the program with his grandchildren.

AMANN: And I was sitting midway, holding my grandson, my wife and other grandson was next to me.

Meanwhile, one of the church deacons decided to switch up his routine and make breakfast before heading to church—causing him to be late for the service. As he arrived in his F-150 pickup truck, he noticed someone driving donuts in the church parking lot. The driver then got out of his vehicle, and the deacon knew something was horribly wrong.

Jay Trombley serves on the church security detail.

TROMBLEY: He had some tactical gear on and some camouflage, mostly all camouflage. And he proceeded to put on more tactical gear, some sound protection over his ears, and then grabbed a large rifle.

Trombley said the deacon called out to the man.

TROMBLEY: You know, “Hey buddy! What's going on? You need something?” And the man looked at him and smirked, and walked away and started walking down the sidewalk, towards the main lobby entrance.

Trombley said the deacon had mere moments to act before the gunman would be inside the church. So he got back in his truck, and barrelled toward the man. Trombley said the gunman didn’t hear him, because he was still wearing ear protection.

TROMBLEY: And the deacon hit him with his F-150 and put the man down.

At that point, Trombley says the gunman opened fire.

TROMBLEY: The man was on the ground, but he shot the deacon’s pickup, and incapacitated the truck immediately.

Fuoco says the sound of the commotion reached the inside of the sanctuary. Audio here from the church’s livestream.

FUOCO: We heard what ended up being, I'd say, about 10 gunshots, and it sounded just like a jackhammer, I'm up in the sound booth area in the balcony, and I look over to our video guy, and we didn't know what it was.

That’s when a woman who had seen what happened ran into the sanctuary to warn the congregation.

FUOCO: Everybody began scattering at that time, and instantly, without hearing that somebody had a gun, seeing everybody scatter, hearing those noises, I instantly knew what it was.

Both Trombley and Amann are members of the church security team and carry firearms. Amann said he handed his grandson off and started heading toward the sound of gunfire.

Meanwhile, calls flooded into the 911 dispatch center, and from all over town, police began heading to the church.

DISPATCH: All west units, if you can make Wayne City, 36125 Glenwood.

Audio here courtesy of Broadcastify.

[cont]: They have an active-shooter situation in the parking lot. Male is continuously shooting.

Fuoco, rushed for the nursery, where he’d left his wife and newborn baby. But when he arrived, there was no one there.

FUOCO: Very much panic moment for me right there. Did not know where they were, did not know where the shots were coming from

Meanwhile, Amann had joined Trombley in the lobby, and saw the gunman outside in full combat uniform with an automatic weapon. Trombley said the shooter was firing on another security team member, who took shelter behind some air conditioning units.

TROMBLEY: The gunman fired multiple, multiple, multiple rounds in that man's direction and did damage to a lot of the AC units...a lot of bullet holes strafed down the side the front of our building...I did not know he was shooting at my team member, my my good friend who was covered by God's hand behind that AC unit that is damaged from rifle rounds.

But Trombley said the gunman quickly turned his attention to the church lobby, and opened fire on both his and Amann’s position. Amann remembers the windows in front of him shattering, before a bullet ripped through his leg, knocking him to the ground.

AMANN: It didn't hurt immediately, so I attempted to get up, and I knew I had no leg strength to get up, so I said, “Something's wrong here.” And I looked at it, and the bone wasn't straight anymore, and there was blood pouring out of it. So I said, “Well, I'm shot.”

Trombley said he quickly checked on Amann, then made his way to a shattered window and opened fire on the gunman.

TROMBLEY: I do not know how many I fired, I'm thinking, in the six to nine range. I know, I fired one round. I had a malfunction with my weapon. I cleared it. I fired more rounds. I didn't count.

While all of this was going on, Fuoco said members of the congregation were running away from the scene as fast as they could.

FUOCO: There was a field where everybody was scattering. Some people were running in the woods. Some people were hiding behind trees, and everybody that I encountered, everybody I kept running past. I asked if they saw what happened to the people in the baby room. Nobody did.

Trombley said special attention was given to those who struggled to get away.

TROMBLEY: Able-bodied men were grabbing the feeble and the elderly that couldn't walk well or quickly and were carrying them.

But the threat, was soon over. The gunman died in his exchange of gunfire with Trombley and another security team member. Trombley said he and two others approached the suspect. They seized his rifle as well as a handgun they found on his person.

At around this point, Trombley caught sight of the deacon, the one who hit the gunman with his truck.

TROMBLEY: He was out in the yard praising God for his safety, because his pickup was full of bullet holes...there was a circle around his windshield of where he'd been looking out of bullet holes. God, just put his hand down and protected him from being hit from any of that.

Church staff quickly rushed to Amann’s aid.

AMANN: One of our people came and they found a tourniquet, or a band that they used as a tourniquet, and then started packing the wound...they're trying to stop the bleeding by just packing rags and stuff into it.

RESCUE CREW: Dispatch from Engine Five, Engine Five is on here responding with Rescue Five.

Trombley estimates it took police just over three minutes to arrive after the first 9-1-1 call.

RESCUE CREW: Do we have multiple patients or a single patient? Sir we cannot confirm exactly how many are wounded. We do have one CPR in progress for sure and then had another party with a possible shooting to the leg.

The church security team members handed over their firearms, and were interviewed separately.

Meanwhile Fuoco, was still in a nearby field, about to celebrate a reunion.

FUOCO: At that 15 minute point of being out there, me and somebody from our church began praying together...not even kidding, the minute—the second—she said, “Amen,” heard somebody call out from the distance, “Is that your wife and son?”

It was them. Resting near a creek. Alive and unharmed.

FUOCO: I keep saying that I hugged my wife tighter than I've ever hugged her,

In the days that followed, all three men gave glory to God for the fact no one from their congregation died that day. Jay Trombley says he believes God specifically orchestrated the deacon’s change in routine.

TROMBLEY: If the deacon had not put that man down—if he made it in that sanctuary, in that lobby—I wouldn't be having this conversation with you, sir. My firepower that I carried would not have sustained me against him.

At the same time, he says he’s having to cope with the heavy burden of shooting a man.

TROMBLEY: I hate the fact that I took a life. But we as a safety team, and as the deacon and as every person that God put in exactly the right spot, we were put there to stop this evil man.

And at times, he’s overcome with emotion when he thinks about how he had the opportunity to give back to the congregation he calls his family.

TROMBLEY: It's just such an honor to be able to defend them. That God put His trust in me—that God put His trust in me—to take care of them people. That's the first time that thought's come into my head. That's amazing.

For his part, Ronald Amann is still recovering at home from his bullet wound.

AMANN: It hit the tibia and shattered the bone, so they got me to a trauma center. Later that evening, they did surgery on me, So I have a steel rod in there now and right now, it's all in a cast and wrapped and all that, so I don't even know what it looks like.

And Dustin Fuoco? He’s already been back to the church. He says he’s there as often as he can be, spending time with fellow believers and helping out where he can. He calls it therapeutic. He says anyone who has put his or her faith and trust in Jesus Christ, has nothing to fear.

FUOCO: If, you know, the worst case scenario happened if the shooter were able to accomplish what he tried to accomplish, we don't even want to think about that. But being saved, we know what's on the other side.

Police have since identified the 31-year-old shooter. At this time investigators have not determined a motive, but Wayne Police Chief Ryan Strong said police do believe he intended to commit a mass shooting. Strong also had high praise for the staff of Crosspointe Community Church:

STRONG: I’m telling you right now, their actions prevented dozens of people from being murdered today.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Travis Kircher.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Tuesday, July 1st.

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

Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: Honoring loved ones after death.

In 1 Thessalonians the apostle Paul encourages Christians not to grieve as people who have no hope. But while we trust in the promise of the resurrection, grief is always difficult. And when a parent loses a child, the pain can be unbearable.

EICHER: Steve and Anjie Lynchard lost their son Jared at age 23. Amid their grief and shock, they began to look for ways to honor his memory, and it resulted in an unexpected reunion.

WORLD senior writer Emma Freire visited the family at their home in Maryland to hear their story.

EMMA FREIRE: Jared Lynchard and Philip Carroll became best friends when they were 10 years old. Their families lived across the street from each other.

ANJIE LYNCHARD: Philip would even come to the house before Jared was awake. [Group laughing]

That’s Anjie Lynchard, Jared’s mom. She and her husband, Steve, are reminiscing with Philip’s mom, Mary Ann Carroll, about those care-free days.

ANJIE: He would knock on the door, and I'd say, ‘Oh, Jared’s still asleep.’ And then Jared would get up. He's like, ‘No, I'm not mom.’

The boys were inseparable until the Lynchards moved away.

After Jared grew up, he struggled with mental health issues, especially during the pandemic. He saw a Christian counselor and eventually joined the Marine Corps. His parents believed his struggles were behind him.

STEVE LYNCHARD: Since then, we've learned we kind of characterize it as emotional cancer, just like a liver cancer or any sort of other sort of bodily, biological cancer. It's an emotional cancer that his emotional immune system just eventually failed him.

Jared died by suicide in March 2024. His parents’ grief was beyond words.

STEVE: It was like a nuclear bomb went off in the family, as you can imagine.

To help deal with their grief, the Lynchards resolved to find ways to honor Jared’s memory. They went on two foreign missions trips shortly after his death.

ANJIE: I knew that if I didn't do something, I would just cry all day at home and just probably go to a deep, deeper depression than I was already in.

Around that time, their former neighbor Mary Ann Carroll showed up at their house to give them a prayer shawl. She had gotten one herself from a friend when her father died.

MARY ANN CARROLL: That was the only thing I could think of that I could, could do to bring them comfort in such a trying time.

As the two women talked, Anjie noticed Mary Ann looked unwell. She asked her what was going on.

Mary Ann told her she’d been struggling with health issues for several years. Eventually, doctors diagnosed her with a rare liver disease. The only cure was a liver transplant.

CARROLL: I had actually, you know, started thinking about making sure my beneficiaries were all updated, doing all that stuff with your wills and everything.

A healthy person can donate a portion of their liver due to the organ’s special ability to regenerate itself. But no one in Mary Ann’s own family was a match.

Anjie offered to pray for Mary Ann. But later, when she saw Mary Ann’s Facebook post asking for a live liver donor, Anjie felt God calling her to get tested to see if she was a match.

ANJIE: That stuff that we did in our mission trips was so healing … It felt so good to help other people. I said, I want to keep this going. I'm gonna see, I told Steve, I'm gonna see if I'm a match.

She was a match and doctors at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore performed the surgery on December 3, 20-24. The day afterwards, hospital staff got Mary Ann up and she made her way to Anjie’s room. They were wearing matching pajamas that Mary Ann’s daughter got them. Steve remembers the joy that filled the hospital room.

STEVE: I remember the general sentiment was just how grateful and thankful they both were from each of their own individual perspectives. Yeah, you know Mary Ann, of course, you know a chance of you know renewed life and Anjie, of course. You know, honoring Jared by the grace of God, to have the faith and the courage to go through with it.

Mary Ann still has some health struggles, but she is feeling much better since the transplant. Anjie says her liver grew back within 4 to 6 weeks and she is fully recovered. But healing from Jared’s loss will be a lifelong process.

Paul Tautges says that’s how it should be. Tautges is a pastor and the author of several books on grief. He says in our modern era the grieving process is often cut short .

PAUL TAUTGES: I think that we live in such a hurried culture that I fear we are rushing through grief, which is naturally a slow process. I think that God created grief to be a slow process.

Tautges thinks an act of love like Anjie’s can be helpful.

TAUTGES: I think that acts of remembrance, acts of service - whatever you have to do to make remembrance active rather than passive - I think it helps the healing process, because it takes the initiative to process the emotions, rather than just waiting until they show up.

For their part, the Lynchards hope the benefits extend beyond their family.

STEVE: Because at the end of the day, we're hoping people not only will get saved through organ transplant or what have you, but hopefully you know, hear this story and consider their eternal perspective as well.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Emma Freire in Ellicott City, Maryland.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Tuesday, July 1st. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. We’ve had a lot of heavy subject matter today, and in the midst of such stories, it’s important to remember the gifts of joy and laughter. Comedians often help us to see the humor in life.

WORLD Opinions contributor Daniel Darling says one humorist he frequently returns to is Nate BargatzE, an evangelical who’s found unexpected success in the mainstream as a “clean comedian”.

DANIEL DARLING: The comedian frm Nashville is having a moment.

SNL APPEARANCE: It’s crazy, look, if you’re watching at home mom, I’m just as shocked as you are… [DUCK UNDER]

For the last couple of years, Nate Bargatze has been regularly hosting Saturday Night Live, participating in the hilarious ongoing sketch where he’s George Washington crossing the Delaware and musing on American oddities.

Bargatze was chosen to host the 2025 Emmy Awards. He fills stadiums around the country for his stand up, and his streaming comedy specials are increasingly popular. Esquire says, “Bargatze is, quite simply, the most successful stand-up comedian working today.”

What’s amazing about this success is that the deadpan comic famous for his dry humor is doing all of this while performing “clean comedy.” He says his approach is to have a show that he could do in front of his parents. He recently told the New York Times that he sees comedy as a calling.

Bargatze grew up as a homeschooled Baptist and is still a committed evangelical churchgoer. He says, “God has a path, and I'm just here to follow the path, so I just kind of wait and see where the doors open. [God] opens the doors that need to be open, and you just point me where you want to go.” He adds: “I'm grateful to get to be the one that was chosen to be this vessel.”

Bargatze’s rise shows that there is a market for comedy that doesn’t offend families. This kind of entertainment is arguably more difficult. It’s easy to insert cuss words and sexual references into a monologue, but it’s much harder to observe everyday life and get a laugh out of a broad cross-section of the population. His aim, he says, is to make grandmothers laugh. In this endeavor, Bargatze is subtly counter-cultural, redeeming humor for humor’s sake, rather than as a vessel for decadence.

This is more difficult than it seems. Even those of us who believe we have a sense of humor would have a hard time sustaining it over an hour. Comedy writing may be one of the hardest forms of creativity. Jerry Seinfeld said, “A laugh is such a pure thing. There's no opinion to it. Almost every other creative field has to suffer the interpretive opinion culture, but not a standup comic. You may not like this guy, but if he's getting laughs, he's gonna work.”

So Nate Bargatze’s secret is not merely that he’s safe and clean, but he’s actually getting laughs. He’s funny enough for people to spend time and money to see him perform. He’s funny enough that he doesn’t resort to the easy rhetorical crutch of vulgarity.

For the serious Christian, it is tempting to see entertainment like this as trivial, but to laugh is therapeutic and good for the soul. The wisest man in all the world wrote in Proverbs 17:22 “a cheerful heart is good medicine.” Job 8:21 promises that God will “fill your heart with laughter.” To laugh is not incidental to being human. It’s a necessary part of the way God created us.

Excellent comedy that avoids cruelty or crassness is a mental palate cleanser, a form of rest from the stresses and difficulties of life. In his essay, “Laughter,” G.K. Chesterton observes, “Laughter has something in it common with the ancient words of faith and inspiration; it unfreezes pride and unwinds secrecy; it makes people forget themselves in the presence of something greater than themselves.”

Christianity is a deadly serious mission. But that doesn’t mean we have to take ourselves so seriously. Thankfully, Nate Bargatze believes this and, through his unique calling, is bearing witness with his gift of humor. That should make us smile.

I’m Daniel Darling.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: More on the Supreme Court including that 6-to-3 ruling on protecting kids from pornography.

And, we’ll hear about a religious freedom case in the UK as a priest in the church of England comes under fire for his views on marriage.

That and more tomorrow.

I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

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The Psalmist writes: Let everything that has breath praise the Lord! Praise the Lord! Verse 6, Psalm 150.

Go now in grace and peace.

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