The World and Everything in It: July 15, 2026

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LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Good morning!

Today on Washington Wednesday: Iran’s grip on the Strait of Hormuz may be weakening.

NICK EICHER, HOST: We’ll talk about that and more with Hunter Baker, who’s standing by.

Also, today World Tour: Islamist kidnappers struck again—and Nigerian families say justice still hasn’t come.

Later: Why community college isn’t always the fast track to a four-year degree.

MARKLAND: At a big community college, students sometimes can get lost.

And WORLD Commentator Cal Thomas dusts off a 50-year-old interview and brings back a surprisingly current message.

MAST: It’s Wednesday, July 15th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Lindsay Mast.

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

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

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Iran latest / no fees in strait » President Trump is backing off his plan to charge ships for protection in the Strait of Hormuz.

He'd floated a 20% toll on cargo passing through to fund the U.S. forces guarding it. But Tuesday, he dropped it saying Gulf allies offered another path to compensate the U.S.

TRUMP: They've been very strong partners. And they said, we'd love to do it a different way. We'd love to invest in the United States with billions and billions of dollars.

U.S. Navy ships are enforcing a blockade around Iran's ports this morning, after Iran attacked oil tankers in the strait. Washington lifted it last month, under the ceasefire meant to end the war, but that truce that continues to falter.

TRUMP: We had a deal two days ago. It was done, and then all of a sudden they couldn't do it. They didn't like something about the deal. And they shot first. And that was a big mistake.

House Speaker Mike Johnson says the problem in trying to achieve lasting peace is who's across the table.

JOHNSON: They're not good faith actors. They cannot be trusted. They'll say one thing and literally walk out the door and do the opposite.

Iran says it, not Washington, controls the strait.

Mediators led by Pakistan are trying to get both sides talking again. Before the war, a fifth of the world's oil moved through the strait, but traffic has again slowed to a trickle.

SCOTUS justices testify » Two Supreme Court justices did something Tuesday that no justice has done in about seven years: testify before Congress.

Elena Kagan and Amy Coney Barrett went before a House spending panel to defend the court's budget, and to ask for more money to counter a rise in threats against the justices. Justice Kagan:

KAGAN: For some of us, those threats have come very close. And all of us live with the knowledge that they may again materialize.

Justice Barrett also shared how threats have impacted her family. More on that later in the program.

Lawmakers on Tuesday also pressed the justices about ethics concerns. Several justices have faced scrutiny over book deals and gifts they've received. Democratic Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro:

DELAURO: As justices of the Supreme Court, you can and do accept these gifts without any committee or without hesitation.

But Justice Barrett pushed back:

BARRETT: We are not permitted to accept gifts, with some nuances and some exceptions, from litigants before the court.

And Justice Kagan pointed to separation of powers and warned against letting either the White House or Congress police ethics at the nation's highest court.

KAGAN: You don't want a president picking an inspector general to decide which of us is breaking the rules.

The justices adopted their own code of conduct nearly two years ago, but it carries no means of enforcement. Critics in Congress want that to change.

Darlene Graham Nordone sworn in as senator » Elsewhere on Capitol Hill

AUDIO: Can you please raise your right hand…

Senate President Pro Tempore Chuck Grassley administered the oath of office to Darline Graham Nordone, who takes her later brother’s place in the US Senate.

AUDIO: Do you solemnly swear that you will support and defend the Constitution of the United States…

Sen. Lindsey Graham died on Saturday night and South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster appointed his sister to serve out the remainder of his term, which expires in January.

AUDIO: …of the office on which you are about to enter, so help you God? I do. Congratulations.

Darline Graham Nordone is a longtime South Carolina public administrator.

No word yet on whether she will run for a full term in November.

Kevin Warsh remarks » The new chairman of the Federal Reserve is vowing to crush inflation.

In his first appearance before Congress, Kevin Warsh told House members Tuesday:

WARSH: Inflation's a choice. The members of our committee have no tolerance for persistently elevated inflation, and we share a resolute commitment to ensure price stability

With the Iran war reignited and energy prices climbing again, hopes of a rate cut have largely evaporated.

Warsh again vowed that the Fed will remain independent, and said he's confident about the road ahead:

WARSH: If we get policy right, and I can assure you we will, the inflation surge of the last five years will be a thing of the past

His pledge came just hours after a new report showed inflation cooling. The yearly rate dipped to 3.5%, from 4.2%, as gas prices fell during a lull in the Iran war.

The Fed's next rate decision comes in two weeks.

House passes bill to make Daylight Savings permanent » There will be no turning back the clock if the House has its way. WORLD’s Benjamin Eicher explains.

BENJAMIN EICHER: The House passed a bill Tuesday that would make daylight saving time permanent. The vote was 308 to 117.

The country tried this once before. In 1974, it switched to year-round daylight saving time to save energy, then ditched it within a year, after dark mornings turned the public against it.

Opponents of the bill are again highlighting darker mornings, especially in the winter. But supporters say it would give Americans more daylight in the evening, when they're most active.

The bill now heads to the Senate, where its odds are unclear. The Senate passed a similar measure four years ago, but it died in the House.

For WORLD, I’m Benjamin Eicher.

France / Ukraine » In Paris:

SOUND: [Bastille Day parade]

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy joined French President Emmanuel Macron to oversee a Bastille Day military parade Tuesday.

Representatives of several nations in the so-called "Coalition of the Willing" took part in the festivities. The group aims to support Ukraine’s defense against Russia.

Meanwhile in Washington, plans are moving ahead for Congress to advance a bill that would levy new financial penalties against Moscow. House Speaker Mike Johnson:

JOHNSON: We've long supported a Russia sanctions bill—the vast majority of the Republicans do. I was heartened to hear that apparently Senate Republicans and the White House have come up with a formula that they think will work.

President Trump said the sanctions would honor the memory of the late Senator Lindsey Graham, who spearheaded it.

I'm Kent Covington.

Coming up on World Tour: outcry in Nigeria over a string of abductions in Western-style schools. Plus, the complicated path from community college to a bachelor’s degree.

This is The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s Wednesday, the 15th of July. Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It.

Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast. Time now for Washington Wednesday.

Senate Republicans are confronting an unexpected transition after the sudden death of South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham over the weekend. Graham had become one of President Trump’s closest allies on Capitol Hill, chaired the Budget Committee, and was deeply involved in everything from judicial confirmations to foreign policy.

EICHER: Graham’s sister, Darlene Graham Nordone, will serve the remainder of his term until a special election later this summer. But Graham’s death, coupled with former Republican leader Mitch McConnell’s continuing health problems, raises a broader question: What happens when a generation of institutional knowledge leaves the Senate all at once?

Joining us now to talk about it is Hunter Baker. He’s a senior fellow at the First Liberty Center for Religion, Culture, and Democracy.

Good morning, Hunter.

HUNTER BAKER: Good morning.

EICHER: Well, Hunter, Lindsey Graham spent more than 30 years in Congress. Beyond the headlines, what does a senator like that actually know that your typical freshman senator simply cannot know?

BAKER: Lindsey Graham is a special figure in the history of the Senate. He has, in addition to his career in the House, he has served multiple terms in the Senate and was widely respected.

So, what he knows is not only the mechanisms of the Senate, the procedures, but also the people and how to gain respect. If you notice, when Lindsey Graham died, he gained favorable comments from people like Cory Booker and Amy Klobuchar, and in this environment where we see the Democratic Socialists being elected in various offices, and people like Chuck Schumer or Hakeem Jeffries being derided as too moderate and too much of sort of compromising figures, there is some risk in in giving respect to Lindsey Graham in the wake of his death, and yet these major figures chose to do so.

I think that says something about the high regard in which he was held and how strong his achievements were.

EICHER: Well, talking about political change, Hunter, Graham’s politics actually changed pretty dramatically over the course of his career, from bipartisan immigration deals, the Gang of 14, that sort of thing to becoming one of Donald Trump’s closest allies in the Senate. How should we see that?

He maintained that respect, but was there a little political opportunism, or would it be an example of just adapting to changes in the party?

BAKER: We have talked about the binary nature of American politics, and it’s basically one or the other. And so, when Donald Trump became the dominant figure in the Republican Party, someone like Lindsey Graham has to make a decision: Does he want to continue to be relevant?

Does he want to continue to matter? Does he want to continue to be able to affect the course of events and to affect policy, or does he want to stand outside and act as a kind of a prophet?

Graham decided he wanted to be an operator, and I think this is the same sort of decision that Marco Rubio made. That he wanted to be able to, he wanted to be relevant.

He wanted to be able to affect policy, and he has obviously done that. I don’t think it’s opportunism so much as I would say it is sort of pragmatic politics in the American context.

MAST: Well, and one of the striking things about Graham is that he seemed to matter whether you agreed with him or not. Are senators today rewarded for becoming institutional players, or primarily for becoming media personalities?

BAKER: To some extent, a figure like him is very hard to replace. Those, those individuals who really master the dynamics of the Senate and who really figure out how to relate to whoever’s in the White House.

They’re very special, and they can operate whether they’re in power or out of power, and they can make a difference. So that’s that’s always going to be there for those who are willing to go to that extent and can figure out how to master the dynamics.

It doesn’t hurt that he was in a completely safe state. South Carolina was never going to throw out Lindsey Graham.

This it’s this sort of new thing that Ben Sasse has talked about, where some of these politicians want to be media personnel. Or TikTok celebrities, or something like that, but those people are rarely going to be affecting policy the way a figure like a Lindsey Graham would.

MAST: Well, Hunter, I want to ask about the South Carolina governor appointing Graham’s sister to finish the remainder of his term. What did you think about that move, especially considering you really can’t practically hand that job to a would-be competitor without tipping the scales in the special election,

BAKER: I think that’s part of what was going on. I think part of it.

I think that President Trump had a special place in his heart for Lindsey Graham, which really says something because Lindsey Graham was a close ally of John McCain and opposed Trump vociferously in the beginning. So, I think that what this shows is that Trump came to respect Lindsey Graham and to really value him, and so Trump is the one who first mentioned that he thought Graham’s sister should be appointed. But I do think that you’re right that what this does is it allows a little time to sort out the politics of who’s going to run to be the Republican nominee in that position, and there are some significant figures in North Carolina, sorry, South Carolina politics who are going to want that job.

EICHER: Well, Hunter, when you put Lindsey Graham’s sudden death together with the decline of Mitch McConnell, his declining health. Are we watching the end of an entire generation of senators who understood the institution differently than the current crop of, of senators and even members of Congress?

BAKER: I certainly hope not. I worry we’ve become increasingly polarized, and there are a lot of incentives to punish people who try to compromise or meet in the middle.

But if we’re going to govern, we need some of that, and we need some of those figures like a Lindsey Graham or a Mitch McConnell or any, any number of others that we might point to who have served that sort of function in the past. I very much hope that we will once again come to value that sort of person and that we will continue that tradition instead of moving into more of a political celebrity type of a mold.

MAST: Well, Hunter, switching gears as we heard from Kent Covington a few minutes ago, Supreme Court Justices Elena Kagan and Amy Coney Barrett testified on Capitol Hill about the need for more security for those sitting on the court due to a rise in threats. Here’s Justice Barrett.

BARRETT: When threats to my life were particularly intense a few years ago around the time of the Dobbs leak. My security details sent me home with a bulletproof vest and I carried it into my house, put it into my bedroom, dropped it down on a table, turned around and my 12-year-old son was standing in the doorway of my bedroom and he wanted to know what it was and why I had it. And I didn't know how to respond because maybe I lack imagination, but I didn't expect that performing this service was going to put me in the position of explaining to my children what a bulletproof vest was and why I had to wear one.

And it appears to have gotten worse. Supreme Court police put the rise in threats for this year up by almost 40 percent.

Here’s Justice Kagan.

KAGAN: Our strategy has been consistent across security functions. Expand incrementally but effectively to meet evolving security challenges.

And federal judges generally are also under increasing threats. The 370 so far this year sets the pace at a possible rise there of more than 30 percent.

So, Hunter, what are the political drivers that get us to this point, and is there a way back?

BAKER: I’m very concerned about this sort of direction of things. You may recall that when the legal thriller writer John Grisham first came to prominence, one of his earliest books, The Pelican Brief, later made into a Denzel Washington and Julia Roberts film, was about someone who was assassinating Supreme Court justices in order to affect the balance of power for purposes of changing environmental policy. I think that we have had so much spotlight on the court, and I think largely because of Dobbs, largely because of reversing Roe, that there are more and more people focused on finding ways to change the composition of the court, and so you’ve seen all this talk about packing the court.

You’ve seen these attempts that I think were efforts to change the court. These ethics violations charges, things like that, and I think that yet another angle of that is that you see people who want to try to remove somebody through an assassination or something like that.

So that’s where we are, and we need responsible people right now, primarily on the left, to walk us back away from that.

MAST: Well, speaking of putting the spotlight on the court in a negative way. Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the committee, tried to raise the issue of judicial ethics, saying the current ethics rules are “woefully inadequate.”

And she also called for what she called more transparency through financial disclosure. Now, Hunter, that’s a) not what this hearing was about, and b) not anything those two justices have anything to do with. How do you read this?

A member of Congress raising a non-germane issue to try to embarrass Justice Barrett.

BAKER: This gets back to that issue of trying to delegitimize the court. You had all these ethics charges specifically against Alito and Thomas.

I think trying to embarrass them into resigning or to find some, some sort of way to gin up, maybe, an impeachment process or something like that, and here she is sort of this. So we talked about the role of the statesman, the deal maker.

There’s also the role of the indefatigable partisan who goes around trying to kneecap somebody, and that’s what I saw from Rosa DeLauro.

EICHER: Well, Hunter, turning briefly to Iran, where control over the Strait of Hormuz continues to dominate the on part of the on again, off again war. When Trump was pushing the MOU ceasefire, Iran seemed to have him on the political ropes, you know, because of the danger to oil supplies and, therefore, the high cost of energy on the global market, including the U.S. where part of the global market. But does Tehran still hold that kind of leverage?

Do you think, or has the president decided that he’s got the ability now to fight through that disruption until Iran no longer has that credible—and I’m putting in quotation marks here,—“nuclear option” against the world economy that is controlling the Strait.

BAKER: I don’t think that Tehran is in the same position they were when they initially surprised everybody by asserting control over the strait and basically blocking everything up and causing this incredible spike in oil prices. That situation seems more contested now.

There seems to be more ability to get at least some oil through the strait. So they don’t have quite the whip hand that they had, but they, but they do have strength.

And they have, I think I have to say, they have surprised Trump again and again. I’ve talked before about how he expects everybody to act in a rational way, and that is not necessarily going to be the case here.

And Clausewitz famously said that war is the continuation of politics by other means, and I think that we are reaching the state of other means. It’s a, it’s a very bad situation.

I spoke with one foreign policy expert who said rather bluntly, it may come down to figuring out how many people we have to kill. So if we don’t, if we can’t make a deal, it may, we may come down to that sort of a grim calculation.

EICHER: Hunter, before we go, want to thank you for working through one of the hardest trials in your life. You had traveled to be a part of a memorial service for an important mentor in your life, when the very morning of that memorial service, you learned that your own dad had died suddenly.

So you had all of that going on as we were processing the news about Senator Graham. Death really has been an unwelcome theme here the past few days.

BAKER: It has really dominated my life here lately, but I just want to say about my father: death is hard under any circumstances. It’s a little easier when you can look at the legacy of your father, and you can feel really grateful for it.

My father was one of the great family men, a true servant. I wish I could just sit here on the podcast and talk about him for half an hour. But you know one thing that’s relevant to us on Washington Wednesday?

I had a friend who was a community organizer, and he figured out that a very large part of the problems of the poor came down to fatherhood, the lack of effective fathers in the home. My dad did that, and we should call upon everybody who can hear this podcast and who can talk to other people.

Fatherhood is important, and it makes all the difference in the world. And it made all the difference in the world for me.

MAST: Hunter Baker is a senior fellow at the First Liberty Center for Religion, Culture, and Democracy, and our regular Washington Wednesday analyst, Hunter. Thank you so much.

We’ll see you next week.

BAKER: Thank you.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: World Tour.

In Nigeria, dozens of children are in captivity after a recent series of school abductions. Many have criticized the government’s failure to ensure justice for victims, as many of them face recurring violence.

Africa reporter Onize Oduah has our report.

SOUND: [Rejoicing]

ONIZE ODUAH: That’s the sound of a mother rejoicing and thanking God after learning that Nigerian authorities had rescued her child and other abducted students over the weekend.

Back in May, armed Islamist insurgents captured more than 40 children and teachers from schools in southwest Oyo state. That’s far away from the usual terror targets in the north.

Nigerian authorities said at least eight insurgents were also arrested in the rescue operation.

Maria Balogun was among the celebrating parents.

BALOGUN: [YORUBA] I won’t deceive you. All I did was cry and pray every day. Our community prayed constantly, and so did Nigerians across the country.

She says all she did was cry and pray every day as community members and other Nigerians also joined in praying.

The news comes as Nigerians grapple with a recent string of school abductions.

The same week as the Oyo kidnapping, gunmen abducted at least 40 children from another school in northeast Borno state.

SOUND: [Protesters yelling]

Later, angry parents and community members protested in the Borno town of Lassa where gunmen kidnapped teenaged students as they wrote their final exams.

Sean Nelson is the senior counsel for global religious freedom at ADF, the Alliance Defending Freedom International.

SEAN NELSON: The whole kidnapping for ransom, along with the sort of with the Islamist terrorist threats against it, it really wraps very clearly up into the Boko Haram ideology that that they have, that the Islamic State West Africa has, which is that children should not be receiving good education, Western-style education that helps them to advance, so that's a sort of corrupt system, and that if they're not following the terrorist vision of what Islam should be, that they deserve to be terrorized and attacked.

Abductors of the just-released children did not identify with any known terror group. But they reportedly demanded a money transfer, and called for Sharia law and the release of terror leaders.

NELSON: It's something that does seem to be an explicit goal of the terrorists and a way for them to justify their ideology.

Nigerian authorities have touted some recent progress against the insurgency, including the deaths of Islamic State fighters in joint U.S. operations and the rescue of hundreds of Boko Haram abductees.

But the United Nations special rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief highlighted a lack of justice.

NAZILA GHANEA: The victims also see the authorities, both at the state and federal level, as culpable. One victim spoke of being displaced six times over the last 10 years.

Nazila Ghanea’s comments came after a fact-finding mission in Nigeria. She blames the spread of violence on a lack of accountability.

Last month, authorities in Borno state said they have reintegrated 720 “repentant insurgents” into society. Nelson said that sort of action doesn’t instill confidence.

NELSON: It seems that, that you know, justice is not fully being served in terms of the crimes that those folks have committed, so that's concerning.

Last week, the United States said it has withdrawn troops deployed earlier this year to aid local authorities in targeting Islamists.

Nelson says the move now allows Nigerian authorities to act beyond a military response.

NELSON: I think the next shift over the next few months is really going to be, are they able to implement more structural reforms that bring peace, that provide additional security to these very vulnerable communities that are repeatedly attacked. Are they going to be able to implement early warning systems? Are they going to have plans to get the millions of internally displaced persons who are also targets?

That’s this week’s World Tour. I’m Onize Oduah in Abuja, Nigeria.

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s Christmas in July!

At least it is in Denmark.

Where about three dozen professional Santas showed up from all over the world for the annual World Santa Claus Congress.

AUDIO: Norway, Sweden, England, Israel, Australia.

They marched through town., they swapped stories, they compared beards, and just generally kept one another’s spirits up, months before Christmas.

Organizer Peter Gislund—you just heard him—he says local reaction to the timing of the get-together runs the gamut.

AUDIO:  The grandmas say, “Oh, it’s too early!” And the kids say, “Hooray, Santa’s here already!”

The gathering gives Pro Santas a chance to compare notes and talk shop before the holiday rush.

After all, even Santa has to do a little homework.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Today is Wednesday, July 15th.

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

Good morning. I’m Lindsay Mast.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: Transfer troubles.

Students often enroll at community college as a first step toward a bachelor’s degree. But a confusing and difficult transfer process can be a roadblock keeping many from achieving that goal.

MAST: WORLD’s Lauren Smyth has the story of how one student beat those odds.

LAUREN SMYTH: Sydney Davis knew she was going to Hillsdale College, just like her older brother.

DAVIS: I thought of Hillsdale as this big, awesome place, like a castle. I was just dreaming about it for so long.

But when she applied—she didn’t get in.

DAVIS: I got deferred my senior year because of my SAT scores. And Dean Pete was like: “Come back in two years. Go get your associate’s and come back.”

That meant enrolling at a community college. Most only offer a few bachelor’s options–if any. Instead, students can start or complete certificate and associate’s degree programs and then transfer to a four-year college.

MARKLAND: I would say well over half, maybe 60% of our students come in thinking that they want a bachelor’s degree, at least at some point.

That’s Scott Markland, vice president at Sinclair College, a community college in Ohio. Three years ago, the school received a grant to build its Transfer Center. Students can connect with representatives at other colleges and get help with finances and credit transfer.

MARKLAND: The research is clear that planning is what matters, but, you know, at a big community college, students sometimes can get lost.

Community colleges are in high demand. About 40% of U.S. undergraduates are enrolled at one, looking for affordable, flexible ways to get an education. But of those, fewer than 20% will go on to complete a bachelor’s degree within six years.

Some students just don’t need an advanced degree. But others face too many hurdles: credits that don’t transfer, higher tuition costs at four-year schools, or a swamp of confusing paperwork.

DAVIS: That’s another thing, is also the process of learning who to email. And I know that seems so miniscule, but it’s really not.

Davis had her sights set on that four-year degree. She spent two years at a local community college and got her associate’s degree in psychology. Then she applied to Hillsdale again and watched her mailbox.

DAVIS: Something came in the mail today. It says “good news from Hillsdale…. “Dear Sydney, I am pleased to offer you admission for the fall 2021 semester.”

That acceptance letter was only the first step.

DAVIS: So the transfer process was awful. I’m not going to sugarcoat it. Hillsdale is a great college. The one downfall is that when you transfer, not all of your credits will transfer.

Hillsdale College didn’t have a transfer agreement with Davis’s community college, so she had to restart her psychology major from scratch.

By her fourth year of school, physical and mental fatigue began to weigh her down. She was diagnosed with a nervous system disorder and had to walk with a cane.

DAVIS: If I move my posture, I feel like I’m going to faint. And imagine trying to do that while going to class, and going to the student union and grabbing lunch, and with tons of people, not being able to find seating all the time. I had a conversation with the head of my department, and I told him, “I’m going to quit.”

Davis decided to go part-time. That gave her the chance to rest and heal, but it also meant she’d have to stay for at least another year and potentially incur extra tuition costs.

Here’s Scott Markland again.

MARKLAND: It’s the part-time students that struggle the most, because they need a lot more support, and they have this longer duration of time. And the longer the duration of time, the more opportunities for other things to come up in their lives that make education more difficult.

Markland says it’s common for part-time students to need up to a decade to finish their degree. At Sinclair College, the transfer center can sometimes stay involved with students for even longer than the traditional college career. But Markland believes the struggle is worth it.

MARKLAND: The economic and social mobility outcomes are—I mean, look at the data. It’s clear that if you can get on track and stay on track, the outcomes are going to make a huge difference for you and your family.

Those with a bachelor’s degree earn 86% more on average than peers who didn’t attend college. They’re significantly less likely to be unemployed, and they report greater financial wellbeing than groups with any other level of education.

Davis stuck it out and made it through her final semesters at Hillsdale. Five years after her first day at community college, Davis graduated with her bachelor’s degree in psychology.

She didn’t know how rare that achievement was. If she had:

DAVIS: I think I would’ve worked a little harder. Like, I worked hard, and I did fine, but still probably worked a little harder, stressed out a little less. Knowing that I’m part of a statistic makes it feel so much more different and real.

Davis is now a case worker with CPS. She says it’s a job that lets her help her community, and one she never would have landed without that bachelor’s degree.

For WORLD, I’m Lauren Smyth in Hillsdale, Michigan.

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

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast. Nearly 50 years ago, WORLD commentator Cal Thomas interviewed a young congressional candidate—a physician by the name of Ron Paul.

Listening back today, he was struck by how little the argument over the size of government has changed.

CAL THOMAS: The French writer Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr observed: “The more things change, the more they remain the same.”

I was reminded of that when I found a videotape of an interview I conducted with congressional candidate Ron Paul in April of 1976.

The election had been delayed because of—what else?—a malfunctioning vote-counting computer.

Sound familiar?

Here’s part of that conversation.

THOMAS: We say apparent because... they’ve had a big problem with a computer down in Brazoria County.... Dr. Paul, despite that problem, will you go so far as to claim victory tonight?

PAUL: Certainly looks like it is going to be a victory. I don’t see how it could turn into anything else right now.

The computer glitch wasn’t what caught my attention.

It was what came next.

THOMAS: What do you feel was your biggest strength in this race? What appealed to the voters?

PAUL: I think there was one thing that was really, really clear cut. The issue of big government. Government is too big, and the people are fed up with it.

Ron Paul campaigned beneath a billboard showing an overweight Uncle Sam.

Its message was simple:

“Put big government on a diet.”

So I asked where he’d begin.

THOMAS: Where is the biggest fat in the government budget that you would seek to operate on first?

PAUL: The biggest is in HEW... but it’s big every place, every agency... they’re spending too much money.

HEW—Health, Education, and Welfare—became two distinct agencies. It was split into today’s Department of Health and Human Services and Department of Education.

But government didn’t exactly go on a diet. In 1976, HEW accounted for a little more than six percent of the nation’s economy. Today, those two successor departments account for roughly seven.

The name changed. The organization multiplied. The government’s footprint got even bigger.

The national debt tells a similar story.

In 1976, it equaled about one-third of the American economy. Today, it’s larger than the economy itself.

That’s a much bigger change than inflation alone can explain.

Fifty years later, the names have changed.

The agencies have changed.

The dollar amounts have changed.

But the debate?

Not so much.

For WORLD, I’m Cal Thomas.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Tomorrow: A life-saving medication that can reverse opioid overdose may carry a hidden cost. And, a moral philosopher tackles the biggest delusions in our culture today. That and more tomorrow.

I’m Lindsay Mast.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

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 Bible says, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.” —2 Corinthians 1:3–5

Go now in grace and peace.

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