The World and Everything in It: July 21, 2026

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MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning!

Iran says it wants diplomacy. Its missiles are speaking louder.

RUBIO: Their behavior has to change in order for ours to change

NICK EICHER, HOST: We’ll talk to a military analyst on what’s next.

Also today, a global call to fight left-wing terror.

And after a year without, Planned Parenthood starts getting taxpayer dollars again.

Later, when a child dies, what helps and what doesn’t.

FLOYD: I've been through a lot—but God helps me use that stuff to help other people.

And WORLD Commentator Cal Thomas says: Do not doubt the Democratic Socialists.

BROWN: It’s Tuesday, July 21st. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

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

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

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: New U.K. prime minster » The UK has another new prime minister. Andy Burnham received the keys to Number 10 Downing Street on Monday.

BURNHAM:  I am acutely conscious that I am the sixth person in the last ten years to walk up this street, the seventh Prime Minister since 2016.

But Burnham said he intends to stick around and deliver change. He said Britain needs to show the world:

BURNHAM: … that we can regain our stability once again, and that is our challenge, to make politics work, to make it work better

Burnham’s remarks came a short time after now-former Prime Minister Keir Starmer made his exit official after 2 years in office.

STARMER:  I'm about to visit His Majesty the King to offer my resignation and close the book on my time as prime minister. My work is done

The transition nudges the British government further to the left. Burnham is pushing for stronger government intervention in the economy, social services, and climate change, among other things.

Iran latest » The U.S. military bombed Iran again last night, its 10th straight day of strikes to force open the Strait of Hormuz.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio says the U.S. will keep military pressure on Iran, but sees a way out if cooler heads in Tehran prevail. For now, he says, they haven't, adding that Iran's leadership appears to be split:

RUBIO: … Between those that understand that their economy is in shambles and they need to do something or they're gonna be in a lot of trouble very soon, and others who are very militant in their view of life and in their view of the world and continue to launch missiles.

Iran still claims it controls the Strait of Hormuz and that it has every right to do so.

Meantime, the Pentagon has named two fallen US servicemembers killed in recent Iranian attacks: 19-year-old Army Private Isabella Gonzales of Texas, and First Lieutenant Tyler Feehan, 25, of Hawaii, killed in an Iranian airstrike in Jordan.

Later today, President Trump heads to Dover Air Force Base, as their remains return home.

Ukraine latest » In Ukraine:

SOUND: [Zaporizhzhia attack]

Emergency workers pick through the rubble of several homes and a garage after a Russian airstrike Monday on the region of Zaporizhzhia. WORLD’s Benjamin Eicher reports:

BENJAMIN EICHER: Local officials say at least three people were killed in the Zaporizhzhia attack.

Separately, 10 people were killed, when a Russian missile strike hit a ship carrying corn near Ukraine's port city of Odesa.

Meanwhile:

AUDIO: [Russian state media]

EICHER: Russian state media ran reports Monday accusing Ukraine of killing five civilians—including a child—in a drone attack on a bus in Russia's Belgorod region.

SOUND: [Demonstrations Day 5]

EICHER: And Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is feeling more political pressure, after Monday brought a fifth straight day of demonstrations. Protesters are angry over Zelenskyy's dismissal of Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov last week.

For WORLD, I’m Benjamin Eicher.

Trump imposes 50% tariffs on Canadian goods » President Trump says the U.S. will impose 50% tariffs on most goods from Canada, saying Canada discriminates against U.S. cars, alcohol and cheese. He pointed to provinces that pulled American liquor from shelves and to Canadian tariffs on U.S. vehicles. Canada says those moves were a response to Trump's earlier tariffs.

Energy, potash and fish are exempt, and the tariffs won’t begin for 30 days, leaving room to negotiate. Ontario Premier Doug Ford is urging Canada to strike back dollar for dollar, while some business groups on both sides are pressing for a deal.

Incendiary device arrest » A man set fire to the entrance of a federal immigration building in New York on Monday. Officials say he doused the steps of 26 Federal Plaza with gasoline and lit them ablaze.

Border czar Tom Homan says the incident fits a pattern.

HOMAN: This is yet another example today of what happened in front of the federal buildings, another example of attacking ICE. And I'm sure if you ask that person why he did it, he can repeat the talking points you hear from Democratic members of Congress, the Democratic mayors and governors who simply want ICE to go away.

The suspect also shot off fireworks that grazed a bystander, before a security guard tackled him.

Police have identified him as 43-year-old Andrew Arrabaca, an Army veteran.

The FBI says Arrabaca was carrying anti-ICE material, plus knives and a machete. It says he told investigators he didn't care if he hurt or killed anyone inside.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is one of those Democratic mayors critical of ICE. But of Monday's incident, he said:

MAMDANI: What occurred outside of 26 Federal Plaza this morning was deeply disturbing. I'm relieved that no one was seriously injured and that a suspect is in custody.

The FBI calls him an anti-American, anti-government extremist. Its Joint Terrorism Task Force is investigating.

China landslide » Rescuers in southwestern China are still clawing through rock and mud, searching for dozens still missing, days after a landslide buried more than 10 apartment buildings. WORLD’s Kristen Flavin reports:

KRISTEN FLAVIN: Officials say at least eight people are dead, and 34 are still missing.

The rain-soaked hillside gave way early Friday near the city of Chongqing. A wall of boulders and soil, one rock bigger than a house, crushed homes where families were sleeping.

Crews with excavators and search dogs have pulled ten people out alive, and they've detected signs that others may still be alive underneath. But they're moving slowly. More than 120 experts are mapping out each dig, afraid a wrong move could trigger a second slide.

Officials have moved more than a thousand people nearby to safety.

For WORLD, I’m Kristen Flavin.

I'm Kent Covington.

Coming up, Iran says it wants to negotiate, but its missiles are doing the talking. And later, after a year without, Planned Parenthood starts getting taxpayer dollars again.

This is The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s Tuesday the 21st of July.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Nick Eicher.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown. Up first…the Iran War heats up.

SOUND: [Explosions]

Iranian missile and drone attacks over the weekend killed three U.S. service members and wounded several others in Jordan and Iraq. The Pentagon identified two of them as Private Isabella Gonzales of Texas and 1st Lieutenant Tyler Feehan of Hawaii…both served with air defense artillery battalions in Jordan.

EICHER: Iran also continues to launch attacks on commercial ships attempting to pass the Strait of Hormuz without paying tolls. They’ve also attacked civilian infrastructure in Gulf Nations, including desalination plants that turn sea water into fresh water.

The U.S. responded by striking Iranian command centers, and missile and drone launch sites.

Reporters on Sunday asked Secretary of State Marco Rubio what the new attacks mean for the outline of last month’s peace deal. He said Iran may talk about diplomacy, but its attacks say otherwise.

RUBIO: Look, Iran a week ago was supposed to put out a statement saying the Straits of Hormuz would be open, that they would no longer attack shipping. And instead of doing that, they attacked three ships. That was last Friday and Saturday. So, I mean, their behavior has to change in order for ours to change.

BROWN: Rubio also said there’s evidence of a split in Iran’s leadership between political leaders who want to negotiate a deal and military leaders who want to keep fighting.

RUBIO: If the guys that want to do something productive for Iran win and take control of that system or take control of the negotiation, that'll be a very positive development. That's not where we are tonight, unfortunately.

Joining us now is Cameron McMillan…he was a U.S. Army Field Artillery officer in Iraq, leading a defensive weapons unit. He now studies U.S. military power for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

EICHER: Cameron, good morning.

MCMILLAN: Good morning. Thanks for having me.

EICHER: You bet. Well you have the relevant military experience to tell us a bit about what the service members killed on Friday were responsible for and why Iran happened to be targeting that particular base.

MCMILLAN: Yeah, we've seen certainly in the past few days Iran obviously has been targeting U.S. bases throughout the Gulf, throughout the entirety of the conflict. Though some of these bases are, are different, some are large airfields, some are kind of remnants, if you will, of the counterterrorism campaign in Iraq and Syria during Operation Inherent Resolve. In this one, seeing what CENTCOM released about the identities of the two soldiers that were killed were both assigned to air defense units, the U.S. Air Force overwhelmingly relies on the U.S. Army to provide its air defense. So whether it's kind of the big ticket items like Patriot or THAAD missile defense systems or shorter range threats like I used to work on, things like C-RAM. These are U.S. Army soldiers assigned to these units that are responsible for air defense of these large airfields, whether they're in Jordan or Qatar or Saudi Arabia or Kuwait or elsewhere.

BROWN: President Trump has said that the old government is gone and we're dealing with officials two or three levels down. Cameron, what do we know about the military commanders calling the shots today?

MCMILLAN: Yeah, we've seen a lot, or I've seen a lot of discussion and somewhat debate of trying to distinguish whether it's the Iranian foreign minister, head of the IRGC, what's left of the IRGC's command and control network. I think there's a lot of debate and it's been a debate for a long time in kind of U.S. circles of who are the moderates. I would say at the end of the day the Islamic Republic is a radical regime. It is run by the RGC. It has been for some time. I don't think I think that's increased, if anything, lately. I think the president's hope going into this was he could find a Delcy Rodriguez figure. And I think unfortunately the president found out that the IRGC and the Islamic republic, they're serious. . It's horrific, many of the things they believe in and their their quest to oppress their own people and spread chaos throughout the region, but they believe it and they're willing to die for it.

EICHER: Right, very different from Venezuela. The Houthis, another shot has been called here. The Houthis are, are threatening Saudi shipping through the route that the Saudis have been relying on to bypass Hormuz. Do you think the U.S. has the forces to secure both of those important choke points?

MCMILLAN: Well, we've certainly seen that U.S. forces, at least as, so far as has been politically acceptable, I'd say, for them to be applied, have not been able to deal with the Hormuz threat on its own. So the Red Sea would certainly add an additional complication. And I think anyone that's been watching the conflict has kind of been wondering when this shoe is gonna drop. I mean the Houthis were always the hand that the Iranians could play, shutting down the Strait of Hormuz themselves, then you throw in the Houthis to the picture. Well, now we're talking about two global supply choke points, not just one. And that will be an additional complication for CENTCOM as its own forces are strained, whether they're naval forces, air defense, in theater, they're trying to deal with a lot right now. So I'd imagine that that will continue to place pressure on what are already finite and in many cases expended resources.

BROWN: Iran is also targeting civilian infrastructure in the Gulf states, including a desalination plant in Kuwait. How are Gulf states responding and what can they do to get out of Iran's stronghold on the Strait of Hormuz? This is their neighborhood after all.

MCMILLAN: Yeah, I think it obviously depends on the country. But desalination plants has been another big card that the Iranians could always play. We've obviously seen they've been willing to attack civilian infrastructure. And the Strait of Hormuz is something that obviously impacts the entire world. But desalination plants would be one that, that impacts these countries specifically. So the Iranians have shown, you know, they're not done. And I think it's kind of important to take a step back and kind of realize where are we here in the military picture? If you listen to Admiral Cooper, the commander of CENCOM, he laid out three types of kind of target buckets: missiles, drones, and naval capabilities. And he said the goal is to “destroy,” not degrade them, destroy them in order to eliminate Iran's ability to project power outside of its borders. Whether it's killing American soldiers in Jordan, whether it's shutting down the strait, whether it's hitting desalination plants in Gulf countries, they still obviously retain the ability to, to project power outside of their borders, whether it's with drones, missiles, or even with a basically crippled navy, overwhelmingly in the maritime domain.

EICHER: Just real quickly before we go, diplomatic question. What do you think the renewed military campaign is doing to the regional coalition? Or might they be pushing the Gulf states closer to us? What do you think?

MCMILLAN: Yeah, again, I think it depends on the country. I think they, they certainly again throwing everything out of the bag by going after Gulf states. You know, the UAE to an extent was kind of all in to the extent that they could be. Whereas others have said, you know, bottom line is whatever gets the Strait open, so that their economic lifeline can reopen. I think it'll depend, but in terms of the larger diplomatic picture, I think we've kind of always been looking at somewhat of a, of a dream here. I mean this MOU seems to have been propagated by hope and hope alone that if we say something it will materialize, and it is not. And what can be gained out of these additional strikes? It appears the administration is simply just trying to coerce Iran to come to the table in hopes of what type of agreement, I'm not really sure. It appears to change by the day. But what I do know is that hope's not a strategy. The Islamic Republic has shown that it is willing to continue taking punches, so I have little hope that that coercion will result in a consequence that is acceptable to American interests any time soon.

BROWN: Cameron McMillan is a Senior Research Analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Cameron, thanks so much.

MCMILLAN: Thank you.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Secretary of State Marco Rubio also came out last week to call attention to left-wing terrorism as an international issue. He’s calling on other countries to join the United States in fighting it.

His comments came as leaders from more than sixty countries gathered in Washington, last week for a special “ministerial.” A ministerial is an international meeting where government ministers gather to coordinate policy … and make commitments on a specific issue.

NICK EICHER, HOST: The secretary of state started by calling to memory the most devastating terrorist attack in American history.

MARCO RUBIO: On the 11th of September, in the year of 2001, 19 men murdered, 3,000 people here in my country.

GEORGE BUSH: Two airplanes have crashed into the World Trade Center in what appears to be an act of terrorism.

EICHER: 9/11 served as a catalyst for substantial changes in law enforcement and government agencies.

RUBIO: We built intelligence and law enforcement systems capable of anticipating and stopping attacks before the public even hears about them. Every country represented here today has disrupted a terrorist threat at some point emanating from this source.

Rubio credited the recent decline in Islamic terrorism to these advancements. But he warned decision makers against focusing only on Islamic violence. He said failing to consider political terrorism by far-left extremists is a dangerous blind spot.

RUBIO: Even today, the very idea that far-left terrorism could be a serious threat is treated as a right-wing fever dream, or worse, as a dangerous fascist conspiracy.

BROWN: Rubio argued ideological prejudice has made Americans willing to excuse terrorism from far-left actors.

RUBIO: A bomb planted by a neo-Nazi group was a nefarious and murderous act of evil. It is. But a bomb planted by a Marxist revolutionary, well, that's just merely a tragic excess of idealism.

He gave historical examples of far-left extremism and terrorism from around the globe.

RUBIO: Every one of our friends here from the nations of the Western Hemisphere remember….You remember the tens of thousands of Marxist guerrillas trained to kill in Castro's terrorist camps….

All of you here from Europe remember….You remember the Red Army faction's nearly three-decade campaign of bombings, kidnappings, and assassinations in Germany.….

And here in America, we remember…..In one 18-month period between 1971 and 1972, the FBI counted some 2,500 bombings on American soil, a rate of nearly five a day.

The Global Terrorism Index says that in the decade of the 1970s, there were nearly 17-hundred politically motivated terrorist incidents recorded in the West. More than 9 in 10 of them were carried out by terrorist groups classified as far-left."

Rubio said the problem has continued.

RUBIO: It does exist. And we're actually underestimating it. And our nations bear the scars to prove it. And today we face a new wave of this old evil.

Here in the United States. The share of left-wing terrorist attacks and plots has risen to levels not seen in decades. In Germany, far-left violence has jumped by more than 40% in just the last year alone….These are not abstract statistics. Americans have seen what those numbers mean.

An all-out assault on our immigration officers, sniper attacks, explosives, armed ambushes, a transgender shooter opening fire on Catholic elementary school students..

AUDIO: As police investigate this mass shooting that happened in Minneapolis this morning at the Annunciation Roman Catholic Church…

Two children, ages eight and ten years old were killed, 17 other people injured and 14 of those 17 total injured are also children.

EICHER: Rubio pointed to the murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson and attempts on the life of President Trump.

RUBIO: Multiple assassination attempts on a sitting president.

ABC COVERAGE: A very disturbing 24 hours in American history. The attempted assassination of former president Donald Trump.

SOUND: [Gunshots and screams]

ABC: Gunfire erupting at his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

And he concluded with the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk in front of college students.

SALT LAKE TRIBUNE COVERAGE: [Gunshot] Oh my! [Screaming]

RUBIO: This is a distinctive and unique evil. It has always been driven by a hatred, above all else, a hatred for civilization itself.

BROWN: The Ministerial comes after a string of actions by the Trump administration following Kirk’s death. Those actions include designating Antifa as a domestic terror group…a move the ACLU warned could lead to an infringement on First Amendment rights.

EICHER It also named four other far-left groups as Foreign Terrorist Organizations. Rubio said more will be added to that list. The State Department is offering a reward of up to $10 million for information about the funding of these groups.

Rubio’s speech did not directly tie domestic events to foreign actors but he called on world leaders to work together to fight the violence.

RUBIO: Through intelligence and information sharing, through coordinated law enforcement strategy, through financial targeting and disruption, we will dismantle these networks brick by brick.

In May, 14 countries joined the United States for the first counterterrorism law enforcement workshop. Rubio announced the United States will co-host the second workshop with partners from Germany.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Up next, abortion providers like Planned Parenthood are once again eligible to receive Medicaid dollars.

NICK EICHER, HOST: They stopped receiving federal funds last summer, but lawmakers failed to renew the restriction on them.

WORLD’s Lauren Canterberry has the story.

LAUREN CANTERBERRY: About three miles down the road from the Planned Parenthood of Sioux City, Iowa, Her Health Women’s Center offers women facing unplanned pregnancies options besides abortion. Executive Director Kristi Nathaniel says she and her staff are keenly aware of its presence.

KRISTI NATHANIEL: We pray for them every Wednesday and the reason we do Wednesdays is because that used to be when the abortion days were here. But we pray that truth will be revealed to them—right?—that they will see truth, they will honor life.

Those prayers have continued even after Planned Parenthood closed the facility last year. It was one of four shuttered in Iowa, and one of the 54 closed nationwide.

Two factors led to the closures: first, federal officials froze Title X funds to the organization. Then, what was known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act prohibited abortion providers from receiving Medicaid funds for a year. That took effect last July.

But when the provision expired this Independence Day, Planned Parenthood once again became eligible for federal money. Under federal law, the organization can only use the money for services other than abortions but pro-lifers say that requirement is difficult to monitor.

Kelsey Pritchard is the communications director for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America.

KELSEY PRITCHARD: There’s no way to separate Planned Parenthood from abortion. It’s all fungible. If they have this money coming in they can use it for all sorts of things.

Planned Parenthood says abortions only account for about 4.4% of its yearly services, while contraception and testing for sexually transmitted infections make up nearly 80%. Still, in its most recent annual report the organization reported killing more than 434,000 babies in one year–a record.

Planned Parenthood claims that its nearly 600 facilities provide critical reproductive healthcare, especially in rural areas. The group pointed to the loss of federal funding as the primary reason for their closures. But Pritchard said many of them were already struggling. More women now buy abortion drugs online and Planned Parenthood has been the focus of reports about a variety of problems across the organization.

PRITCHARD: I think we were all bracing ourselves for the horror stories of “oh, I couldn’t go to my Planned Parenthood and this happened.” There weren’t any stories like that. There hasn’t been any big outcry.

The pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute estimates that for every Planned Parenthood there are about 15 community health clinics fully equipped to serve low income and rural patients. And Pritchard says those clinics offer better and more comprehensive care.

Back in Sioux City, Nathaniel says local health clinics and the pregnancy center have stepped up services to fill any gaps.

NATHANIEL: I’m sure some people do miss Planned Parenthood, but I don’t think we’ve seen that them closing did devastating results.

She says the organization still markets to women in the area and refers them to nearby states with weaker pro-life protections.

NATHANIEL: I hope Planned Parenthood doesn’t reopen just because they are getting Medicaid dollars. If they do, then we pray for them. We should be praying already.

It remains unclear if any of the closed facilities will reopen, or if the abortion group will expand its offerings now that Medicaid funds are back on the table.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Lauren Canterberry.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Britain has discovered there’s only one thing hotter than a debate over climate change:

A British building without air conditioning.

Organizers canceled a London Climate Action event titled "Extreme Heat: Improving Governance and Improving Action Around the World."

The reason? Just one.

It was simply too hot.

A record heat wave sent temperatures at the meeting site to nearly 97 degrees

... utterly intolerable if you can't control the temperature in the room.

And in the stuffy old library at the London School of Economics—where you'd think they understood tradeoffs—they offer no air conditioning at any price.

But that's fairly typical in Britain, where fewer than one in five homes has A/C.

One opposition politician calls this hot mess ...

“… a miserabilist net zero mindset.”

Climate action? Absolutely!

Turn on the air.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Tuesday, July 21st.

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

Good morning. I’m Myrna Brown.

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

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: Sitting with grief. For parents who have lost a child, sorrow can come without warning: it can happen in a grocery aisle, it can be triggered by a familiar smell, or just being in a quiet room.

BROWN: In Savannah, Georgia, one bereaved mother opens her home to others who know that easy answers cannot fix grief—but rather, that it requires someone who’s willing to sit with the grieving and help them bear it.

WORLD’s Jessica Eturralde has the story.

JESSICA ETURRALDE: In Debbie Floyd’s living room in Savannah, a group of women settle into chairs beneath the steady click of a ceiling fan working hard against the Georgia heat.

The women are part of a group called The Compassionate Friends. It’s a peer-support organization for parents, grandparents, and siblings who have lost a child. Floyd leads the group and welcomes bereaved mothers into her home, practicing a ministry she first learned from grief’s other side.

14 years ago, Floyd was a woman who kept everything running. She owned a commercial cleaning business, taught at a Christian school, and read—constantly.

FLOYD: My husband used to get aggravated with me. He would walk in the room and try to say something to me, and I would not hear him if I was reading a book.

In January of 2012, that controlled world stopped.

Floyd had her phone turned off while at a friend's birthday party. When she powered it on, the screen filled with missed calls and messages.

FLOYD: The last person that had tried to call was my son, my oldest son, and I called him, and he’s like, “Where are you, Mom?”

Someone had repeatedly stabbed her other son, nineteen-year-old T.J.

Investigators later said two men ambushed him and his friend during a marijuana deal turned robbery.

He was dead.

FLOYD: Ah, I cannot even describe it. There was a scream that came out of me. It was like nothing I've ever heard before, and it came out of me over, and over, and over again. And for years, I could still hear that scream. It's awful.

The person Floyd had been did not survive that night.

She tried to return to teaching that fall, but couldn't.

FLOYD: I got back in there, and this stuff looked—it might as well have been a different language, and I had been doing that for years.

The women seated in Floyd's living room relate. All of them have struggled to return to the ordinary machinery of life that keeps running whether they are ready or not.

One woman thought she was doing better. It’s been 8 years since her adult son was gunned down. But then, the other day she saw his favorite popsicles at the grocery store. She abandoned her cart and left the store sobbing uncontrollably.

Sergio Wooden, a GriefShare counselor in Savannah, calls this a “grief ambush.”  

WOODEN: It's a phenomenon that happens when, you are emotionally triggered by a smell, or a sound, or a place, or an event that reminds you deeply of your loved one.

These ambushes leave a person feeling the loss as fresh as the day it happened. He encourages his patients to embrace it.

WOODEN: When those moments come, those are genuine feelings, and those are feelings that God gave to you. It's an expression of how deep the love and the relationship was to the person you lost.

What changed for Floyd was not the grief. It was what she learned to do with it.

She learned forgiveness—not easy, she says, for anyone in the homicide community.

FLOYD: My husband died broken completely, completely broken.

He spent the decade after T.J.'s death drinking to numb the pain.

FLOYD: I said "Terry, you have got to reach out to God. You've got to pray." And he said, "Okay." And that's the last time I ever talked to him.

Floyd had also wondered whether God had abandoned her. She lost her mother, stepmother, father-in-law and T.J.–all in the same year. Her grief compounded for years with her husband’s alcoholism and health deterioration. Then Floyd received a breast cancer diagnosis followed by surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation. One day in the car, Floyd confronted God.

FLOYD: I can remember being in the car one day and screaming at him and saying, “Why do you hate me? Why do you hate me?” And at the moment I felt like he did, but I can tell you now that he doesn't. He loves me. I've been through a lot—but God helps me use that stuff to help other people.

The grieving women in Floyd’s group share their struggles. They smile tearfully as they recall memories, quirks, inside jokes, and for a moment they almost forget their child is gone.

Then the room falls quiet. Eyes drift to the floor. Faces return to their fixed, fogged expression. Only the click of the ceiling fan echoes in the room.

SOUND: [Ceiling fan clicking]

Floyd knows that grief is different for everyone. She prays for the women in the group but she steers clear of offering solutions.

FLOYD: I cannot carry you. But I’ll sit with you all day long.

It’s the only thing she knows that works.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Jessica Eturralde.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

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

The Democratic Socialists of America has put its ambitions in writing. Its new platform reaches far beyond higher taxes and expanded government benefits. WORLD commentator Cal Thomas says Americans should read it carefully—and take the organization at its word.

CAL THOMAS: Members of Congress—and the vice president—take an oath to support and defend the Constitution “against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”

Foreign enemies are usually easy to identify.

Domestic threats are harder—especially when they come not with weapons, but with a political program.

The Democratic Socialists of America has now published one. It is called “Workers Deserve More.”

The organization says it wants to “draft a new constitution” and create “a democratic socialist republic.”

That is not an accusation from its opponents.

It is DSA’s own language.

Here’s DSA national co-chair Ashik Siddique on C-SPAN

SIDDIQUE: Let’s start with abolishing the Senate. The Senate is a very undemocratic institution because a state with a small population has the … same representation as a state that has 40 million people, like California does, or New York State, … which are the most populated states in the country. But they have the same representation as a much smaller population. So the House of Representatives is more democratic that way, and we just don’t see the point of the Senate.

Nor do they see the point of the Electoral College.

DSA would replace the president and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary chosen by Congress—and subordinate to it.

It would extend voting rights to permanent residents who are not citizens.

It calls for public ownership of the largest corporations and essential industries.

It proposes aggressive wealth taxes and publicly owned housing.

Healthcare would come at no cost to individuals.

ICE would be abolished. And the platform calls for steps toward fully abolishing the police and prison system.

When a political organization tells us exactly how it intends to restructure the country, we should believe it.

DSA asks voters to imagine life without capitalism.

No debt. No need for health insurance. No mortgage. No landlord. Retirement publicly funded.

Food, education, energy, medicine, and transportation would no longer be businesses. They would become what the program calls “common goods and utilities.”

The answers to the obvious questions are simplistic.

Who pays?

Billionaires, they say.

America has roughly a thousand of them. Confiscate their entire combined wealth, and—on paper—it would fund the federal government for less than fourteen months.

Then what?

And most of that wealth is not cash. It is ownership in companies. Seizing it would make the government the owner.

Who allocates resources?

The platform says they would be allocated “democratically.”

That means politically—by elected officials and government agencies.

And who decides what each person receives?

The same people.

Socialism does not eliminate scarcity.

It centralizes power over scarcity.

DSA identifies its enemies, too.

Not merely individual bosses, police officers, judges, or presidents—but, in its words, “the entire global system of capital” and “the entire anti-democratic structure of our society.”

Again, we should take them at their word.

Americans have a right to advocate constitutional change.

But the rest of us have a right—and a duty—to understand what is being proposed.

This is not simply a demand for higher taxes or another government program.

It is a plan to replace America’s constitutional order with a socialist republic.

Calling fellow citizens enemies should never be done lightly.

But neither should we ignore a movement that announces its intention to discard the Constitution’s basic structure.

The answer must be peaceful and lawful—in elections, legislatures, schools, and public debate.

But there must be an answer.

For WORLD, I’m Cal Thomas.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Tomorrow: We’ll talk politics on Washington Wednesday with Hunter Baker. And, a Russian artist captures the essence of life in portraits. That and more tomorrow.

I’m Myrna Brown.

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 records the words of the Lord to Solomon, “When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command the locust to devour the land, or send pestilence among my people, if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land. Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayer that is made in this place. For now I have chosen and consecrated this house that my name may be there forever. My eyes and my heart will be there for all time.” —2 Chronicles 7:13-16

Go now in grace and peace.

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