The World and Everything in It: July 21, 2025

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JENNY ROUGH, HOST: Good morning!

It’s been a full year since the Supreme Court okayed local bans on homeless encampments on public property. But has it made a difference?

NICK EICHER, HOST: That’s ahead today on Legal Docket.

Also, today the Monday Moneybeat. Economist David Bahnsen is standing by. We’ll take stock on the 25th anniversary of the worst business deal ever made, what economic lessons stick?

And the WORLD history book, today, a Founding Father’s lesser-known legacy.

BRANDS: Franklin realized, ‘There is no future for me or for people like me within the British Empire.’

ROUGH: It’s Monday, July 21st. 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: Up next, Mark Mellinger with today’s news.

MARK MELLINGER, NEWS ANCHOR: Tenuous ceasefire holds in Syria » A U.S.-brokered ceasefire in southern Syria appears to be holding.

Syria’s government says there were no reports of gunfire Sunday between Bedouin tribes and the majority Druze group in Suwayda province.

The deal was struck Saturday, and Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, translated through an interpreter, says his government won’t tolerate violations.

AL-SHARAA: The Syrian state is committed to protecting all minorities in the country, and is proceeding to hold all violators accountable.

There’s a history of tension and clashes between the Bedouins and Druze, both offshoots of Islam. The latest fighting started after members of a Bedouin tribe attacked and robbed a Druze man.

Last week, Syrian government troops intervened in the fighting, prompting Israeli airstrikes on Damascus. Hundreds of Israeli Druze had crossed into Syria to help with the fighting, and Israel said it carried out the strikes to protect the Druze.

Deadly weekend in Gaza » After hopes for a ceasefire in Gaza washed out last week, the conflict is once again intensifying.

Sunday was reportedly the deadliest day of the conflict for Palestinians seeking food and other help, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry. It reports Israeli gunfire killed at least 85 people Sunday, a day after it claimed 32 were killed Saturday.

Israel says it’s aware of the casualty claim and is still examining details. Dr. Travis Melin is an anaesthesiologist working in Gaza:

MELIN: Sadly, no, this is not an abnormal day. The days where we don’t have a mass casualty are sort of the surprising ones.

Israel says it issued warnings to residents in several different parts of Gaza to stay away from combat zones. It also says its troops fired warning shots Sunday to remove an immediate threat posed to them when a gathering of thousands of Gazans was identified in the northern Gaza Strip.

Ukraine offers Russia third round of peace talks » Ukraine is offering to meet with Russia for a third round of peace talks to end the ongoing war between the two countries.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is calling on Russian leaders to meet next week for ceasefire talks. The latest round of talks in June ended after about an hour.

This comes as the White House threatens new sanctions if Russia doesn’t end the war soon. Democratic Congressman Adam Smith tells Fox News Sunday President Trump needs to now act with clarity, after pressuring Ukraine in the early months of his second term.

SMITH: The rhetoric has changed ever so slightly in the Trump Administration the last week or two. But we’ve got a long way to go for the Trump Administration to make it clear that we’re with Ukraine, and we’re going to stand with Ukraine, and we’re going to stop Putin from taking over the country. If that happens, that can force Putin to the table.

A Kremlin spokesman says Putin is ready to move toward a peace settlement, but Moscow’s main objective is to achieve its goals.

Russia has stepped up its drone and missile attacks on Ukraine significantly over the past few weeks.

U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement renegotiation coming » Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick says President Trump will be renegotiating one of the signature trade deals from his first term: the U.S.-Mexico-Canada agreement, or USMCA.

Under the deal as it stands now, 75 percent of goods from Mexico and Canada come into the US tariff-free. But Lutnick tells CBS’s Face the Nation that doesn’t benefit America.

LUTNICK: It makes perfect sense for the president to renegotiate it. He wants to protect American jobs. He doesn’t want cars built in Canada or Mexico when they can be built in Michigan and Ohio.

Lutnick says negotiations could be as much as a year away. A revamped deal would extend the USMCA another 16 years.

Texas GOP aims to redistrict this week at Trump’s urging » Republicans in Texas are holding a special legislative session to redraw the state’s congressional maps this week.

President Trump is pushing for the move, hoping it’ll create a handful of winnable new U.S. House seats for the GOP in next year’s midterm elections.

Democrats, however, are thinking about staying away from this week’s special session, potentially denying the state legislature the minimum number of lawmakers to convene. Former Democratic Texas Congressman Beto O’Rourke says that’s the right move.

O’ROURKE: I think it's time that we match fire with fire. I think Democrats in the past too often have been more concerned with being right than being in power.

The purpose of the special session isn’t only to redraw the maps. Lawmakers will also address flood response measures after that devastating July 4th flooding in central Texas that killed at least 135 people.

Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton says any Democrats who don’t attend should be arrested.

Gabbard wants Obama officials prosecuted for falsified Russia info » U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has forwarded documents about the Obama Administration to the Justice Department for possible criminal referrals.

Gabbard says the documents show top Obama White House officials falsified intelligence information in 2016 to make it look like Russian interference had played a role in Donald Trump’s election.

Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas tells Fox News:

MARSHALL: There are new documents that are showing that President Obama was in the room and they did this conspiracy… There was a conspiracy to try to throw out this misinformation to try to address, make this an illegitimate election.

Gabbard didn’t specify whether she’s referring specific officials for possible prosecution.

Democrats say Gabbard’s claims are baseless. They point to a Republican-led Senate report from 2020 that shows Russia tried to help Trump through social media, but found no evidence of Russian tampering with the actual voting process.

I’m Mark Mellinger.

Straight ahead: revisiting a Supreme Court decision on banning homeless encampments on public property. And later, a Founding Father’s lesser-known legacy.

This is The World and Everything in It.

JENNY ROUGH, HOST: Jennifer McDaniel felt helpless as paramedics worked to save her boyfriend, a guy named Tomaz.

JENNIFER MCDANIEL: They pumped on his chest, and I was just watching them.

ROUGH: Tomaz had overdosed.

MCDANIEL: Crack. Crack cocaine.

ROUGH: McDaniel has been homeless for much of her adult life— at one point, living on the streets with Tomaz.

MCDANIEL: We were homeless in Georgia. Sleeping on park benches, walking around. … That was one of the scarier times.

ROUGH: They scrounged gas stations for free food.

MCDANIEL: And you can go in there and get a little tiny cup like this big. You can taste their chili or you can test out their soup. And we would go there and get a bunch of crackers. And that's all we had during the day was a little tiny paper cup of chili. And then we started panhandling.

ROUGH: McDaniel spent her money on French fries. She didn’t do drugs. Tomaz did—and it was the last thing he did.

MCDANIEL: And he's, I don't know how he was doing it, but he blew his lung out. And he actually flatlined on the way to the hospital. … And then … they told me to go down the other way, because I was just sitting there bawling my eyes out.

ROUGH: After Tomaz died, McDaniel returned to her home … Oregon. A small city tucked in the Rogue Valley: Grants Pass.But despite the miles … she wound up in much the same place … this time with a homeless man named Joe. At one point they lived in an SUV parked at Riverside Park. 

It wasn’t just the two of them. McDaniel’s sister lived in the car with them.

MCDANIEL: And her three kids. And my mama. … And three dogs. … One was Fatso, Buster, and Princess. … Me and Joseph in the front seat, my mom and two of the kids in the middle, and my sister and her little baby … and the dogs … in the back.

ROUGH: Riverside Park was a place that had become a flashpoint in the city’s effort to address homelessness. Legal controversy around the policy would land Grants Pass at the epicenter of a U.S. Supreme Court case last year.Grants Pass had put in place anti-camping laws … banning people like McDaniel from sleeping outside in public, including the tent cities that had sprouted up in Riverside Park and others.

It also prohibited what she was doing, sleeping in cars on public property. Something McDaniel says is hardly a luxury:

MCDANIEL: My legs had swelled so big they were leaking. So I had really big wounds on my whole leg. Both my legs were this big. You can’t be homeless and not have health problems.

ROUGH: It’s Monday, the 21st of July.Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Jenny Rough.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Time now for Legal Docket.

Policymakers in Grants Pass said the bans were meant to promote public health and safety. The theory was that the threat of fines and jail time would steer the homeless into services and shelters … like the Gospel Rescue Mission.

BRIAN BOUTELLER: Last year, we had a pretty low amount of people come through our program. I had like 375 people come through.

EICHER: Brian Bouteller is the executive director of the mission in Grants Pass.

BOUTELLER: And here’s the thing. A third of those people that came into our program left with a sustainable income and a home. I got a third of them out of homelessness.

EICHER: But because of the laws … homeless people ran for the courthouse instead. Lawyers corralled a group of them into a class-action lawsuit. Their claim was that the anti-camping bans ran afoul of the Eighth Amendment’s cruel-and-unusual-punishment clause. Cruel and unusual, they said, because the laws essentially punished them for sleeping outside, and sleep is a biological necessity.The court ultimately held the limited fines and jail time were not cruel and unusual. And whether the “outside” part was a necessity wasn’t an Eight Amendment question. So it found no constitutional violation and upheld the bans.

Today, we unpack that decision … and find out what’s happened in the year since.

ROUGH: Let me acknowledge the full story has two big pieces. Law and policy. Today, we focus on the law.I made a reporting trip to Grants Pass last April … right before the Supreme Court heard oral argument in the case. Being there made it easy to see why the city passed these laws.

Before I even got to Riverside Park, three locals warned me: Leave nothing visible in the rental car. Lock the doors. Theft is commonplace. The moment I stepped into the parking lot, the stench of marijuana smoke filled the air.

At first glance, I only saw Riverside Park’s beauty. Ponderosa pines soared. The redbuds were in bloom. Ducks waddled along the banks of the Rogue River. But it was otherwise eerily empty. The playground, abandoned. Parents no longer brought their kids because of drug deals and disorderly conduct. The disc golf course had been taken over by about 30 tents, two porta potties, and everywhere you looked, garbage.

RACHEL: They call this stuff outside our tents rubbish.

ROUGH: Rachel considers it treasure, not trash. She lived in a green tent on a small hill.

RACHEL: It’s actually our life’s belongings. And if they don’t like how we have it, they’ll throw out our whole tents.

ROUGH: Rachel said she didn’t do drugs … but it was hard to believe. She did admit substance use was widespread in the camp. Alcohol, meth—

RACHEL: You have fentanyl … and that’s just taken a toll on a lot of the younger ones … because they don’t have nothing to look forward to.  There’s nothing to look forward to anymore, it’s like ho-hum.  Why work so hard when we’re not going to get nothing from it.

ROUGH: She said living there gets even more stressful when the weather turns cold. The Gospel Rescue Mission right down the street had empty beds and warm blankets. But Rachel wouldn’t pay the price.

RACHEL: You have to stop smoking, drinking, cigarettes, everything. Any controlled substance. … You can’t just cut people off like that and expect them to cope.

ROUGH: Every few days, she had to move. Law enforcement came through to make sure all people in the tents regularly cleared out. The Ninth Circuit had issued a temporary injunction that prevented the city from fully enforcing the anti-camping bans until the case was ultimately resolved.

GORSUCH: When it comes to homelessness, which is a very difficult problem, you’re saying 

ROUGH: Eleven days after my trip to Grants Pass … I was inside the Supreme Court for the arguments—nowhere near the complicated reality on the ground. And that reality is far more than merely finding a place to sleep. The shelters are there with empty beds. But to the extent they’re rejected, the rejection is of structure and accountability. 

EICHER: If the place of the court is to get into the muck, its job is to get into the muck of the law and constitutional principles. For example: The broad question of whether the camping bans are legal. And generally, when it comes to criminal laws like these, states are free to tailor them.

JOHNSON: States have a lot of latitude to define criminal liability however they want.

ROUGH: Joel Johnson is an attorney formerly with the Department of Justice, and now teaches at Caruso School of Law. He filed a friend-of-the court brief in the case. He says an Eighth Amendment challenge in the Grants Pass case may seem odd. Because—

JOHNSON: —the Eighth Amendment had been thought to apply only to issues related to what type of punishment could be imposed after someone had been found guilty of a crime.

ROUGH: Like methods of execution in death-penalty cases.

JOHNSON: It had not been previously understood to put limits on the front end of what could be made criminal in the first place. 

EICHER: And generally, it’s still thought of as limiting types of punishment, not types of crimes. But there’s this odd Supreme Court case from 1962, Robinson versus California. A California state law made it a crime to be addicted to narcotics.Defendant Robert Robinson was an addict who was arrested under the law. But he said it violated his Eighth Amendment right … it was cruel and unusual punishment because it would force him to quit drugs cold turkey in jail.

Johnson says this novel argument was probably due to nothing more than sloppy litigation.

JOHNSON: The Robinson’s-lawyer strategy seemed to have been just throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks. There’s about a dozen different arguments for why that California addiction law was unconstitutional. And the Eighth Amendment argument … looked like a throwaway argument.

ROUGH: The argument that made more sense? A Fourteenth Amendment one. That says no state shall deprive a person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. That was also one of Robinson’s strands of spaghetti.But back in 1962, the Fourteenth Amendment was more limited than it is today.

It’s always encompassed procedural rights … meaning everybody has a right to a “fair” trial.
But throughout the Supreme Court’s history, some justices had flirted with extending it also to mean substantive rights … rights that aren’t expressly listed in the Constitution. They’re inferred.

EICHER: Quick word on procedural vs. substantive due process: Think football. Procedural due process is like instant replay—did the receiver have control of the ball? Did the officials follow the rules? Substantive due process asks whether the rule itself makes sense—why does a slight bobble on the ground erase an otherwise obvious catch? Procedural due process judges the replay. Substantive due process judges the rulebook.For that reason, it’s controversial.

JOHNSON: That label is often associated with culture war cases, like the abortion cases, gay marriage cases.

EICHER: It’s still a hot topic. And a pet peeve of conservative justices, especially Clarence Thomas.But substantive due process isn’t only a question in culture-war cases. It’s broader than that. It comes up in criminal law cases, too.

JOHNSON: It’s simply asking the question whether a law that purports to deprive someone of life liberty or property is justified by a sufficient purpose? In other words, at a minimum, there can’t be an arbitrary purpose.

ROUGH: But in 1962, the court had not yet held that. So although the debate bubbled up during the Robinson case, the Court simply was not ready to adopt it.So to justify striking down the law making drug addiction a crime, the Court pulled another argument from the mess of defenses:

JOHNSON: Here’s this random piece of spaghetti on the wall, Eighth Amendment, let’s go that route.

EICHER: The court held that arresting Robinson amounted to cruel and unusual punishment. Not because it would require him to quit drugs cold turkey, as he’d argued. But because punishment for a crime has to be tied to a person’s conduct … like buying, possessing, or selling drugs. Not a person’s status … like simply existing as a drug addict.So that’s why the plaintiffs in the Grants Pass case brought the Eighth Amendment claim. They relied on Robinson to say they were being punished for their status.

The Supreme Court didn’t buy it. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the 6 to 3 opinion. The Eighth Amendment is about methods of punishment. He said the anti-camping bans were generally applicable laws that target conduct.

So in that sense, he confirmed the basic principle of Robinson—criminal laws do need to be tied to conduct. But he noted that the Eighth Amendment was a “poor foundation” for that principle. He suggested it would make more sense to bring challenges to anti-camping bans under a due-process theory.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor brought that up in her dissent:

JOHNSON: Near the end she draws attention to the fact that the majority left open this possibility of due process protection in these circumstances. … It makes it pretty clear that the Court would at least be open to some further arguments under a due process theory.

ROUGH: And in the year that’s passed, that’s exactly what’s happened.According to the National Homelessness Law Center, since the Supreme Court’s decision, 150 cities across 32 states have passed anti-camping laws.

EICHER: California alone accounts for about a quarter of the nation’s homeless population. That state in particular has seen a surge in local bans. And right on their heels, another round of litigation … and arguments like it’s a due process violation when the law bans things the homeless consider survival gear, like blankets and tents.

ROUGH: And in Grant’s Pass? Bouteller of the Gospel Rescue Mission says he’s still less than half full. An Oregon law that requires cities to make “objectively reasonable accommodations” has made clearing the camps difficult. We’ll come back to the issue of homeless people being so deeply addicted that they want to choose death over what could be life in Christ.

Grants Pass begins to force the issue—removing the option of camping in public spaces. For Jennifer … she chose the shelter.

MCDANIEL: I don’t ever want to be homeless again. … I don’t want to be cold. I don’t want to be scared. I don’t want to be not being able to rest. I want to be able to be productive and give back to people that I know pour their love into me, I want to pour love into others like God tells us to. Love others.

ROUGH: Bouteller told me he’s not heard from Rachel.

BOUTELLER: It’s really hard for the average person to get their head around. … We just think, well, if I were in that situation … I would want to come in. … This is not what’s happening here. … Sin’s not rational. … I keep hoping that if we tell the story long enough … that people will want to come … and go, maybe I can change. Maybe there’s some hope for me.

ROUGH: And that’s this week’s Legal Docket.

JENNY ROUGH, HOST: Coming up next 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 advisor David Bahnsen, David heads up the wealth management firm the Bahnsen Group. He is here now. Good morning to you, David.

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

EICHER: Well David, let's begin with the big picture. We just got fresh consumer price index and producer price index numbers, so set the table for us. What are these reports and the other data you're watching tell you about the current state of inflation and the overall economy?

BAHNSEN: Well, one of the things I've decided I really want to do on Moneybeat is not hold back in trying to give a more thorough explanation about inflation because sometimes I can't do it on television, you have a limited amount of time and they're going for kind of a quick thing. Are prices higher or prices lower? And it's a political thing, right? Is this gonna be bad for President Trump or was it bad for President Biden about prices? Inflation economically, Nick,—and I really hope listeners can understand all this 'cause it's important—“inflation is always and forever a monetary phenomena.” That's a quote from the great Milton Friedman. Too much money chasing too few goods and services. He didn't say and services, but the point being an economy made up of the goods and services. If there's too much money chasing those goods and services, then that's what's called inflation. And so, you want a responsible level of money supply level relative to the size of the economy. And when we talk right now about inflation, this last week as the consumer price index number came out, the producer price index number came out. And everyone's wondering if Jay Powell at the Fed is thinking there's inflation that will affect what he does with interest rates. Nobody's talking about that inflation. They're talking about whether or not prices come up from tariffs. And I believe that it is a bizarre conversation that anybody would wonder if prices would go higher because of their costs going higher. Of course they would.

And President Trump had sent a really, I think, troublesome tweet or social media post out on Friday threatening Walmart saying you already make enough money, you already made billions of profits, don't raise your prices because of tariffs. And that is most certainly, you know, not something I want to see from the president talking to the private sector about what amount of profit they're allowed to make and what they ought to be doing with their cost. I don't believe government should be involved with that stuff. But the issue with like, for example, the producer price index, you saw energy inputs come down as oil prices were lower and you saw consumer electronics wholesale prices go up quite a bit. But see, that's not inflation, that's a particular impact from one and a different impact on another.

Politically, I totally accept that people go to the grocery store and see prices higher because of tariffs. That's what I call political inflation. It's going to be problematic, but the overall price level going up is a monetary phenomena. And so, I understand that it may be semantics to some people, did prices go up or not? That's all I think inflation is tariffs are if tariffs are implemented.

That's the other piece is people are wondering where inflation is from tariffs that haven't happened. But if tariffs increase prices of some things that will be talked about it will be problematic. I don't think it has anything to with the Fed. I don't think it has anything to do with interest rates. And it is only inflation as a monetary phenomena, if it leads to production of less goods and services. Because then you might have the same money supply, but less goods and services because of less trade, that can become inflationary. So there's a lot of nuance in this, but it's important nuance. And unfortunately, it doesn't lend to a quick, did this hurt a politician or not hurt a politician. That's what people are going for. That's most often what the media is going for. But it's a little bit more complicated of a subject than that.

EICHER: Well, David, you have long noted it's a tight regulatory environment that chokes housing supply off. Now Barack Obama is telling Democrats much the same thing. Last week he said you all had better get behind an abundance agenda or keep losing elections.

Do you think the former president is genuinely pro-growth here or is this just a different brand of pro-growth rhetoric?

BAHNSEN: Yes and no. It's an important distinction you've helped tee-up, because there are plenty of people in the Yimbyism movement that yes in my backyard, which I'm a part of, as opposed to the Nimbyism movement that’s not in my backyard, which is what he's criticizing. There are plenty of people that make strange bedfellows, okay. In other words they may be in agreement on a certain conclusion but coming at it from a different reason there are plenty of people that are driven by something very different than I am.

I want the production of more housing stock to let the market satisfy matters of supply and demand and prices level accordingly and I believe that Nimbyism is that artificial distortion to market forces caused by a whole number of things: environmental interventions, and often just cultural interventions. Which is usually what people on the right are guilty of, that in affluent neighborhoods.

But right-wing people just say, I don't want new growth anymore. I like my life how it is. I don't need a building, you know, down the street. I don't need new traffic or parking or whatnot. And so they want to use zoning laws to kind of impact because they don't want the noise or the construction or the interruption. President Obama is likely, as a lot of the center left, abundance people.

Ezra Klein has a new book along these lines that I generally liked. But again, they're not necessarily coming at it because they're desiring market forces to drive it. But they are after a similar outcome, which is removing impediments to get more housing stock built. And in the end, do I think that Yimbyism, the center left Yimbyism would actually want to see governmental subsidies to drive more low income housing? I think it would. And that's not what I mean by the term.

So I guess that I'm giving him a mixed report card. He's probably saying something I agree with, but for a little different reason, and more than likely would end up proposing somewhat different solutions. That's been my experience with left wing or more progressive Yimbyists.

EICHER: Well, David, this month marks 25 years since the blockbuster AOL Time Warner corporate merger. It's still the textbook example of how to destroy shareholder value.

You've called this the largest wipe out in corporate history, would you walk us through what went wrong and the key lessons we would be wise to keep front of mind today?

BAHNSEN: Well, there's the obvious sense that a lot of mergers and acquisitions in corporate America are vanity driven and should be avoided for that reason. But what I would say is more stark here is that you had a logic and intuition that said why is this company that has far inferior revenues, inferior earnings and a much less dependable, reliable, proven business plan, how are they swallowing up a company that has Time Magazine, Life Magazine, HBO, Turner broadcasting, CNN, sports illustrated, Warner Brothers, Warner Music, this Time Warner group that AOL swallowed up was iconic and real and using this preposterous stock price of AOL based on smoke and mirrors.

So the takeaways are first of all, accounting matters when you're looking at something that is what's called heavy on goodwill and trying to justify it as opposed to more traditional accounting metrics that are a little more reliable. It doesn't mean that all of it is always going to go astray but at least have more scrutiny, more validation.

And then ultimately I make the argument, too, that when they say we're going to grow the numbers this way and even then if they had it was basically leading to a place that wasn't really all that attractive. They were never going to grow with the way they said. But even if they had, it didn't justify what the deal was.

You were just dealing with something that looked like a bubble, felt like a bubble, quacked like a bubble, and people refused to call it a bubble. And a couple hundred billion dollars later, at one point combined market cap of this deal is over three hundred billion dollars and they were projecting to get to five hundred eighty four billion. Well in two thousand eighteen AOL sold from Verizon to Apollo with Yahoo for four billion. Okay. So hundreds of billions of dollars set on fire and a lot of lives ruined, a lot of careers ruined, but a very valuable and learned. Whether you're adjusting for inflation or not, this was the worst deal in American history. And maybe what we can just say out of an ending is let's keep it that way. Let's never ever do another deal this bad again.

EICHER: Alright, David Bahnsen is founder, managing partner and chief investment officer at the Bahnsen Group. He writes regularly for WORLD Opinions and at Dividendcafe.com.

David, thank you so much. We'll see you next week.

BAHNSEN: Thanks so much, Nick.

JENNY ROUGH, HOST: Today is Monday, July 21st. 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. The United States postal service processes millions of pieces of mail a day, and it promises to deliver to even the most remote addresses.

ROUGH: But it was not always that way. 250 years ago, a Founding Father traveled on horseback to help create the post office system we still have today. WORLD’s Emma Eicher reports.

EMMA EICHER, REPORTER: On January 29th, 1774, Postmaster General Benjamin Franklin appeared in front of the British Privy Council in London. And he was brought there under false pretences.

He stood in the middle of the room while angry councillors and nosy citizens surrounded him.

Franklin thought the subject at hand was to replace two colonial officials. But the British solicitor general, Alexander Wedderburn, had other plans.

Colonial frustration at the British Empire had been brewing. Wedderburn suspected Franklin was spreading sedition among the colonies, and that he was using his position as Postmaster General for the Crown to do it.

So Wedderburn decided to make an example of him.

He insulted Franklin and accused him of treason. The diatribe lasted for an hour. Audio from an interview with John C. Van Horne, Director at the Library Company of Philadelphia, and courtesy of a Biography documentary:

BIOGRAPHY: The solicitor general took the occasion to excoriate and vilify and humiliate Franklin. And the berating of Franklin went on for an hour, and Franklin stood there silently and took it all.

Then, Wedderburn dismissed Franklin as Postmaster General.

But that turned out to be a big mistake.

Before this, Franklin had been moderate in his attitude toward the British Empire. He urged compromise with his frustrated colonial friends.

BIOGRAPHY: He considered himself a British Empire man. He was a true Briton. He loved the empire, thought well of it, and believed that America had a very firm and solid place in the imperial scheme.

But now he was furious at losing his title.

Audio from a PBS interview with biographer H. W. Brands.

PBS: Franklin walked in an Englishman. And walked out an American. At that point, Franklin realized, ‘there is no future for me or for people like me within the British Empire.’

It was a great loss for England. For years, Franklin had worked hard to completely transform the post office network in the colonies.

Before Franklin, people dropped off letters at inns and taverns. They hoped sailors would deliver them when they could. That meant it could take months for people to receive any mail at all. For local mail, faithful travelers delivered it on their routes. But that was also unreliable.

So Franklin crafted a network in the colonies that worked efficiently, and quickly. He surveyed roads around the country to establish the best postal routes. And he had workers ride horseback through the night to deliver bags of mail in the morning.

Under Franklin, delivery time went from months, to weeks, to one day. In just 24 hours, Philadelphians could send a letter to New York and get a reply.

Now, Franklin turned to other means to aid the revolution against Britain, but he didn’t have to wait long for another job.

In 1775, the colonies schemed to set up their own postal service to compete with the Empire. And they knew just the man to run it.

On July 26th, 250 years ago, the Continental Congress appointed Franklin as postmaster general of the United Colonies. He immediately set to work again to improve the mail system. And when he left office in 1776, there were 75 post offices in the country.

Nowadays, there are more than 31,000.

Audio from a 1948 postal service documentary, courtesy of PeriscopeFilm.

PERISCOPEFILM: [The] biggest retail business in the world today is the United States Post Office. Devoted exclusively to the service of its owners: the American public…

America still uses the same routes Franklin carved out in more ways than one. Today, the I-95 highway from Florida to Maine is the same road postal workers first traveled on horseback in the 18th century.

PERISCOPEFILM: When you drop a letter in the mailbox, you probably don’t give a thought as to how it reaches its destination …

And the post office still has to get creative with how they transport mail to remote locations.

In the Grand Canyon, mules carry mail down steep pathways. And in Alabama, small postal boats chug along the Magnolia River delivering to homes on the water year-round.

In the near future, you might even see a robot delivering your mail, because the postal service is looking into using mechanical “helpers.”

PERISCOPEFILM: The United States post office—as it has since it was founded—still provides the one means of communication which reaches into every corner of the land, facilitating the exchange of news and ideas, which has helped to make America great.

Benjamin Franklin’s likeness has appeared on more than 130 postage stamps. And this month, the USPS will release exclusive Franklin stamps in honor of America’s 250th birthday.

A small token of his enduring legacy.

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

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow, Afghan refugees in the U.S. under the temporary protected status have to find another solution or risk deportation. We’ll have an update. And, how do you top a trip to the moon? You’ll hear first-hand from the youngest of the still-living moonwalkers: astronaut Charlie Duke. 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 Bible says, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.” Psalm 19:1

Go now in grace and peace.

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