The World and Everything in It: July 22, 2026

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LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Good morning!

A cultural comeback for a former president as the next generation is “Nixonmaxxing.”

NICK EICHER, HOST: We’ll talk about that, as well as Britain’s new prime minister and democratic socialism on Washington Wednesday with Hunter Baker.

Also today, World Tour, the problems compounding Cuba’s humanitarian crisis.

And later, why one portrait artist still insists on the old-fashioned way.

BABAILOV: A portrait is not just a visual likeness. It’s a story of the person.

EICHER: And WORLD Opinions Editor Albert Mohler on the medical establishment’s continued gender confusion.

MAST: It’s Wednesday, July 22nd. 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: U.S.-Lebanon » At the White House, President Trump hosted the leader of one Middle Eastern nation for the first time in 17 years.

TRUMP: Mr. President it's an honor having you.

AOUN: Thank you. I've been looking forward to this visit for a long time.

Cameras clicked in the Oval Office as the president of Lebanon Joseph Aoun shook hands with President Trump.

Aoun was there to push for some kind of lasting calm after months of war between Israel and the terror group Hezbollah, which is based in Lebanon and had largely controlled much of the southern part of the country for years.

TRUMP: As you know, there's a Hezbollah problem. But we've done some things that I think, the world will take notice.

Auon said his goal was lasting peace between his own country and Israel.

AOUN: And I know your vision is peace. Your vision is stability. And I think my vision coincides with your vision. And together I think we will be able to achieve and to secure success in that regard.

TRUMP: I agree with that.

Trump said Israel was in the process of withdrawing from Lebanon and redeploying but didn't elaborate.

Iran latest » White House reporters also asked President Trump about a Wall Street Journal report, stating that Iran has moved nuclear centrifuges deep inside a fortified mountain south of Tehran, a site called Pickaxe Mountain.

Trump said the U.S. is tracking the material, and:

TRUMP:  We'll be hitting that area very, probably pretty soon. Exactly. And there's not a, not a thing they can do about it. Uh, you know, normally I wouldn't say that. If I thought they could do something about it, I would never say that.

The White House says the U.S. will do whatever it takes to ensure Iran can never build a nuclear weapon.

But not everyone in Washington is behind the war. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer says his party remains committed to pulling the plug on the war effort.

SCHUMER: Senate Democrats will now force another vote this week to end this unauthorized war and bring our troops home.

Meantime, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth testified to a Senate committee Tuesday estimating the cost of the war thus far at around $38 billion dollars. He's pressing Congress for a nearly $88 billion request, much of it for Iran. But he says the spending is about more than the Iran war.

HEGSETH: If we don't make critical investments right now in tech, in compute, in AI, in autonomy, in space, our adversaries who are already making these types of investments could outpace us.

The money moves through a process that lets Republicans pass it without a single Democratic vote. But it's no sure thing. Speaker Mike Johnson's majority is razor-thin, and deficit hawks like Ohio's Warren Davidson are balking because none of it is paid for. The House takes a first vote on the funding this week.

Anti-fraud » A federal task force investigating healthcare fraud announced new actions on Tuesday. WORLD’s Harrison Watters has more from Washington.

HARRISON WATTERS: Health and Human Services will withhold a combined $1 billion in Medicaid funding from California and Minnesota, according to Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

RFK JR.: If Governor Gavin Newsom or Governor Tim Walz wants this funding released, all they have to do is to provide basic documentation showing that these services are legitimate and not fraudulent,

HHS also held back hundreds of millions of dollars from California and Minnesota for Medicaid earlier this year.

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz pushed back on social media, saying this is about politics, not fraud, and accused the administration of cutting people's health coverage.

Sec. Kennedy also said HHS is handing the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services the power to shut bad actors out of federal health programs on its own, without going through the states. The money stays frozen until the states show Washington how they'll root out the fraud.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Harrison Watters in Washington.

Graham funeral arrangements » The late Senator Lindsey Graham will be honored in funeral services in the coming days.

Next Tuesday in Washington, Congress will honor him at the Capitol, followed by an invitation-only service at the National Cathedral, where President Trump and visiting world leaders are expected. Those events are closed to the public.

The next day, the public will be able to pay respects in South Carolina during a service at the State House in Columbia. A private family burial will follow in Pickens County.

Gulf tropical storm » Tropical Storm Bertha is spinning over warm Gulf waters this morning, taking aim at Louisiana.

Forecaster Philippe Pappin at the National Hurricane Center:

PAPPIN: kind of right along the Louisiana coastline here Wednesday evening into Thursday morning. And then the track takes it basically right along the Gulf Coast, but during this period it weakens to a tropical depression, potentially getting into Texas producing some heavy rainfall.

Right now, the heaviest threat runs from the Florida Panhandle west to Louisiana, with a storm surge of up to four feet, heavy rain, isolated tornadoes, and dangerous rip currents.

Emergency crews are already handing out sandbags, and officials are urging people near the coast to be ready to move to higher ground.

Afghanistan floods kill at least 23 » In eastern Afghanistan, crews are digging through mud and rubble, searching for scores of people still missing after flash floods swept through the mountains. WORLD’s Kristen Flavin reports:

KRISTEN FLAVIN: Officials say at least 23 people are dead and 80 injured. And more than a hundred others are still missing after the floodwaters toppled entire buildings.

The floods hit the eastern province of Nuristan on Monday, reducing homes and shops to piles of mud and stone. Some residents are digging by hand, looking for loved ones.

Forecasters warn more heavy rain and flooding could reach ten of the country's thirty-four provinces in the coming days.

Afghanistan sees deadly floods nearly every year. Many homes there are built of mud, and offer little protection when the water comes fast.

For WORLD, I’m Kristen Flavin.

I'm Kent Covington.

Coming up: Will recent economic changes make a difference in Cuba? Plus, how painting a church helped one Russian artist beat the odds to jump start his education.

This is The World and Everything in It.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: It’s Wednesday, July 22nd.

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

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

Time now for Washington Wednesday, and joining us is Hunter Baker, senior fellow at the First Liberty Center for Religion, Culture, and Democracy. Good morning to you.

HUNTER BAKER: Good morning.

EICHER: All right. Issue one is Nixon’s revenge.

MAST: Hunter, more than 50 years after Watergate, Richard Nixon is suddenly cool again—at least among a surprising number of young conservatives. The Wall Street Journal reports that "Nixonmaxxing" has become an online phenomenon. There are memes and merchandise, not to mention a broader reappraisal of Nixon as an America First precursor, much more than simply the disgraced president who resigned in 1974.

EICHER: Vice President J.D. Vance recently argued that Nixon’s historical reputation deserves a renaissance, and many younger conservatives see him less through Watergate lenses than through his fights with the media, the bureaucracy, and the foreign policy establishment. So, Hunter, why Nixon, and why now?

BAKER: I think the first answer is social media. For those of you on Instagram, the Richard Nixon Library Foundation people have got some serious social media game. They have compiled so many fantastic clips and quotes. Nixon being interviewed, Nixon speaking, Nixon riding through ticker-tape parades, and just all kinds of amazing stuff. He comes across as incredibly strong, just as a great president.

Now, yes, it’s true that he was brought down in a massive way by Watergate. But before that happened, Richard Nixon was a dominant politician. He was on the national ticket five times, and four of those were winners. The last one was a huge winner.

So a lot of people are interested in paying attention to Nixon. I guess, with modern suspicion, people wonder about Watergate. Was Watergate right? In a different media environment, could he have ridden it out? So people are looking at Nixon again.

MAST: Well, is this merely Gen Z discovering history through memes, or are conservatives genuinely revisiting his presidency? Let’s put Watergate on the back burner for a moment. Nixon was for wage and price controls. He declared himself an economic Keynesian, created the EPA and OSHA—just really an economically liberal Republican.

BAKER: Yeah, I would say that Nixon’s primary identity was as a Cold Warrior. He really didn’t care that much about domestic policy. I think that he was willing to consider almost anything, Democrat or Republican, when it came to that sort of thing.

Mostly, he saw himself and the presidency as primarily being about foreign policy and defense, and he was a great Cold Warrior. For those people who remember the controversy with Alger Hiss and Whittaker Chambers, without Richard Nixon in Congress, you never convict Alger Hiss. You never discover how far that conspiracy went. So he was really important that way, and he was a strong Cold Warrior who worked well with Kissinger.

But why bring him back now? The Cold War is over. The foreign policy challenges are different.

I think you’ve put your finger on it with the different nature of his approach to domestic affairs. He was far more interventionist. Importantly, he was different than Reagan. For whatever reason, J.D. Vance and some others want to take the focus away from Reagan, as Trump has already done, and put it more squarely on some kind of new Republican identity.

EICHER: All right. So, if Nixon is being rediscovered, Hunter, what other conservative assumptions from the last 50 years are being reconsidered as well? What do you say?

BAKER: Well, we’ve seen the heavy emphasis on free trade revisited in a massive way.

In addition, Reagan was all about small government. He very much wanted to reduce the size of government, defeat the national debt, and reform the entitlement state.

With Trump, those areas of focus have largely been discarded, and that may have helped him. It’s not really popular to cut spending, and people like an interventionist approach. They like somebody who says they’re going to solve their problems in a forceful way.

I remember my father was a very small-government guy, but when Nixon slapped on those price controls, my dad was like, "That’s decisive leadership." I think a lot of people are like that. They want to see a leader who’s forceful in that way.

MAST: Well, issue two: moving across the pond to the end of Thatcherism. Britain’s new prime minister, Andy Burnham, represents something larger than a change in leadership. He has explicitly tied his political worldview to Catholic social teaching and Labour politics, while advocating an economic vision far removed from Margaret Thatcher’s free-market revolution.

EICHER: Hunter, you pointed out this may be Britain’s clearest rejection yet of Thatcherism, and yet it’s just because he climbed to the top of the Labour Party, not because he stood for a general election. So, are we watching Britain reach the end of the Thatcher consensus, or is this just something else?

BAKER: Well, as I paid attention to the news reporting about Burnham, I just noted he didn’t say anything about Thatcher, at least not that I saw. But he said he was going to make the biggest changes in 40 years. And if you think about 40 years, we’re basically talking about Thatcher, who, of course, was a sea change. In England

If you win the election, you win, and you can pretty much do what you want to do. Margaret Thatcher, the Iron Lady, made some big changes to make Britain more of a free-market country. She reversed a lot of the collectivism that had taken root. She was a tax reformer. All of those things.

And I think that Burnham, by saying 40 years—maybe he doesn’t want to say Thatcher because maybe she’s still popular, kind of in the way that Reagan is still popular—but when he says 40 years, he’s talking about a sea change. He’s talking about wanting to go in definitely a different direction.

MAST: Hunter, do you think if Britain abandons the Thatcher model, that’s perhaps a bellwether for America?

BAKER: It’s interesting how one seems to follow the other. You’ll notice that when we had Bill Clinton as the third-way guy, kind of the business-friendly Democrat in the United States, it was not long before Britain followed with its own prime minister in that sort of mold.

And then, when the Brits had Brexit, it was not long after that that we followed with Donald Trump, who had that Brexit sort of sensibility. So there’s definitely a strong tie between the two nations and what they do. And, of course, they had Thatcher before we had Reagan.

MAST: Well, a third issue for you today. We’ll call this one “50 Laboratories or One.” The Wall Street Journal points to Illinois, while noting neighboring states are moving in very different directions on taxes. You have Iowa flattening its income tax, Indiana continuing tax cuts, Wisconsin debating more relief, and Missouri voters may eliminate the income tax altogether. Yet Illinois continues considering higher taxes on top earners there.

Hunter, I want to use this to set up a discussion about federalism. What strengths do you see? Americans can vote with their feet, and states compete over public policy. What else?

BAKER: The American states are intended to be laboratories of democracy. And what that means is that the states can pursue different strategies with regard to taxes, with regard to regulation, with regard to how they treat business, with regard to how they treat labor—all of those different things.

And the great thing about that is it allows us to see what works and what doesn’t. In recent years, that competition model has typically benefited states in the South and kind of in the Sun Belt.

At one time, California, when it was more of a Republican state, led in just about every indicator, and states were eager to copy California. But now we see a lot of problems there, and people are not necessarily eager to follow.

So what we see is there’s a tension now because there are a lot of national politicians who don’t like this ability of some states to undercut the policy of other states. You see that, for example, with taxation.

I live in South Carolina. There are other Southern states that have lower taxes, and South Carolina feels pressure to reduce its taxes to compete with states like Tennessee and Florida.

EICHER: And to bring it around to a current topic, Hunter, is this not fundamentally one of the things the Democratic Socialists want to overthrow? The DSA put its platform out aiming to weaken federalism by, among other things, getting rid of the Senate, which is, as we know, the representative of the states.

So this interstate competition—the 50 laboratories—isn’t that also fundamentally a bulwark against socialism?

BAKER: It absolutely is. There’s no question that the conservative policies of a state like Florida undercut the policies that somebody may want to pursue in New York or California.

We’ve noted that with the election of Mamdani in New York—that there’s all this talk about how many companies, how many people are going to relocate to Miami.

The Democratic Socialists want to completely get rid of that dynamic. They want to have one big policy that governs everything.

And just to extend that further, when you have people talk about global government, that’s what they’re aiming at. They want global government so that there is nowhere for people or organizations to escape to—that it will just be one big policy environment.

EICHER: All right, we are entering the lightning round. Just some quick questions for you, Hunter, before we go.

MAST: All right, first up: Darlene Graham enters the South Carolina Senate race. Does Trump’s endorsement settle the Republican primary, or has the state become too competitive internally for that?

BAKER: Boy, I’m really tempted to make a prediction here.

EICHER: Do it.

BAKER: I don’t think that Trump’s endorsement will settle the Republican primary. I think that people may have been okay with her serving in this sort of interim fashion, but I think that when it comes to the office longer term, people want to elect somebody with experience.

Maybe we’ll even see another one of those Trump double endorsements, where he says somebody else may also be good.

EICHER: Well, Britain’s “openly Catholic” prime minister, as The New York Times put it—we talked a little bit about him a moment ago. Is this really a religious story, given Burnham’s own description of his Catholicism as cultural identity more than actual practice?

BAKER: It is so fascinating, that language “openly Catholic.” You’re right. What does that suggest exactly? Does it suggest that to be Catholic is somehow scandalous?

But, of course, the other interesting thing about it is that he identifies as Catholic almost in the same way that a man might identify as a woman. He is not really identifiably Catholic. So this is a fascinating sort of story in different directions.

MAST: And real quick, J.D. and Usha Vance’s new baby—it’s not just a family milestone. It’s a historical oddity, really. America hasn’t had a sitting vice president become a new father since the Grant administration, so surely this deserves some note. Even just that: what a cute new baby.

BAKER: I am here for it, because we have already had—by the time we finish Trump’s term—that will be 12 years of semi-octogenarians. So it’s time for some youth in the executive office, and I’m perfectly happy to have it in the form of children who are a lot younger than, say, a Hunter Biden.

EICHER: Well, speaking of Hunters, that’s Hunter Baker. He’s a senior fellow at the First Liberty Center for Religion, Culture, and Democracy, and our regular Washington Wednesday analyst. Hunter, thank you, and we’ll see you next week.

MAST: Thanks, Hunter.

BAKER: Thank you.

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

Cubans are running out of medical supplies, food is hard to come by, and gas is nearly impossible to get. The situation has been deteriorating for years…with increasing pressure coming on the communist country since January.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Cuba introduced some economic reforms this month… but experts say relief may still be far off.

WORLD’s Mary Muncy reports.

MARY MUNCY: A few weeks ago, First Hand Aid director Marc Bohland, handed medical supplies to a young Cuban doctor. The doctor then asked for a few more things, like a stethoscope:

BOHLAND: Just basic, basic stuff that, that he's been trying to, to get to keep his office–and it's a government office—keep his office afloat.

Some hospitals are closing because they don’t have power or medicine. Bohland saw pharmacies with nothing on the shelves.

BOHLAND: To be a physician and not have things at your fingertips to help people is frustrating

And that’s aside from just trying to survive. That doctor he delivered supplies to makes about $14 American dollars a month.

BOHLAND: Two pounds of beans is probably about $2 out of his 14 a month. And that's that's all the prices in Cuba right now. It's hard to live on what you make.

All of Cuba’s government offices are closed. No gas means almost non-existent public transportation and no garbage pickup. Piles of trash make some roads impassable.

Blackouts are getting longer, sometimes lasting days.

BOHLAND: And that doesn't just affect lights. That affects the water pumps in the city, so there is no water. It affects their refrigeration, so they can't buy food ahead because they don't want it to spoil. Certainly affects not being able to run a fan on your children when it's 100 and some degrees with high humidity.

Cuba started moving toward communism a century ago, fully embracing it in the 1960s. And between the support of the Soviet Union and then the rise of the tourism industry, Cuba remained functional.

But in 2020, tourism stopped, partially recovered, and then declined.

LEOGRANDE: Today, tourism is less than 25% of what it was.

William LeoGrande is a professor at American University specializing in Latin America.

LeoGrande thinks the U.S. has wanted to see a popular uprising since Fidel Castro took power in the 1960s. It enacted sanctions then, and recent escalations include enforcing an oil embargo in January after the removal of Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro. Then in May, the Trump administration threatened foreign companies, saying they would be banned from doing business in the US if they did business in Cuba.

The White House says it will allow goods and oil to flow to Cuba if the government opens its economy. This month, Cuba started allowing private banks, imports and exports without intermediation, and investment by Cubans abroad.

LeoGrande says it’s significant, but apparently not enough for US officials to remove the sanctions.

LEOGRANDE: Those reforms are not going to work without relief from these really draconian U.S. economic sanctions that are in place right now.

LeoGrande doubts the Cuban government will give up its national sovereignty in exchange for sanctions relief.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio addressed the Cuban people directly in a Spanish-language video message after they imposed the second round of sanctions.

RUBIO: (Speaking in Spanish) The reason you are forced to survive 22 hours a day without electricity is not due to an oil “blockade” by the U.S… the real reason you don’t have electricity, fuel, or food is because those who control your country have plundered billions of dollars but nothing has been used to help the people.

He says the reason there are blackouts is not because of the U.S. It's because the people in power have taken billions of dollars from Cubans and haven’t used it to help them.

RUBIO: (Spanish) and currently the only thing standing in the way of a better future are those who control your country.

He says the only thing standing in the way of a better future is those in power.

For their part, LeoGrande and non-profit director Bohland believe Cubans are unhappy with both the U.S. and their own government:

BOHLAND: You certainly hear them talk about it a lot. That something has to change. Something has to break in this day to day living situation.

But Bohland says that talk where it ends. The Cuban government has a history of suppressing dissidents, which makes a popular uprising unlikely.

LeoGrande:

LEOGRANDE: Most of them end up driven into exile or landing in prison.

LeoGrande and Bohland say any solution will take time. Meanwhile, ordinary Cuban people bear the consequences.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Mary Muncy.

NICK EICHER, HOST: A Maryland thief picked the wrong getaway car.

Or maybe the right one, depending upon your point of view.

Police say 29-year-old Jalen Godard broke into a Verizon store outside Baltimore.

But while he was inside—allegedly stealing things—somebody else stole his car.

Police say the second thief was unknown, unrelated, and apparently working the same neighborhood.

So Godard didn’t get far with the Verizon loot, obviously.

Investigators matched him to surveillance footage and charged him with burglary, theft, and destruction of property.

The thief who stole the thief's car, however, is still at large.

Imagine being the officer who had to take that police report. So let me get this straight, sir: You’re saying someone stole something of yours, and you think that’s wrong, and we should, what? Arrest him?

It’s The World and Everything in It.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Today is Wednesday, July 22nd.

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: preserving the art of portrait painting.

Photography captures one second of a person’s lifetime. But a portrait artist’s job entails capturing a person’s entire lifetime.

MAST: One world-renowned artist from Russia learned the skill decades ago. He paints everyone from politicians and popes to group portraits of families.

And he’s working to keep the roots of the art form alive. WORLD’s Jenny Rough brings us the story.

JENNY ROUGH: When portrait artist Igor Babailov decided to paint George Washington he ran into a challenge.

IGOR BABAILOV: What did he look like?

Babailov uses oil on canvas to create an artistic representation of a person. And he typically insists on starting with a live session. That allows for meaningful conversations that can help reveal the person being painted. For Washington, of course, that wasn’t possible. So Babailov needed a different approach. He read books and studied other portraits, but that created another challenge.

BABAILOV: I put them all together, and I looked at them, and they all looked like portraits of different people. The hair, whatever, the face, it was like a different person.

Ultimately, Babailov decided to base his portrait on a sculpture of Washington. One done by a French artist who crossed the Atlantic Ocean in 1785 to meet Washington and take a plaster mask of Washington’s face and sculpt his bust.

The works were recognized by Washington himself as his most accurate likeness, so they became Babailov’s main references.

Babailov says many portrait artists today tend to rely exclusively on photographs by simply copying them. Babailov uses plenty of photos to create a composite image. But he finds the traditional method crucial. After all, that’s what he learned growing up in the Soviet Union.

BABAILOV: Everything was done from life, 110 percent.

Babailov painted his first portrait tfour, after a buddy from daycare asked for a painting of his dad.

BABAILOV: Given that I was four, he was very happy. And he gave me a little car, a little truck. So I considered it a commissioned portrait.

At nine, he started a formal arts education. Soon, Babailov set his sights on a school unlike any in the country: the Moscow Specialized School of Fine Arts, a prestigious institute for gifted children. A dream for anyone to be accepted.

BABAILOV: Impossible by all calculations.

But then Babailov’s parents learned of a nationwide competition for one spot at the school. Part of the competition required Babailov to create a painting from his imagination in line with the theme of museums.

He submitted a painting of a church.

BABAILOV: Why? Why do you think I did church?

In his childhood, Babailov had never been to church. The Soviet-era communist regime had destroyed many of them. But the church “Joy of All Who Sorrow” survived—located near Tretyakov Gallery, an art museum.

During World War II, the museum’s valuable artworks were endangered.

BABAILOV: At some point, the leadership of the museum, they decided to, to save their masterpieces, all the paintings, they decided to use that church because of the temperature. Like wine cellars, right? It was just perfect to preserve those masterpieces and to save them.

Babailov went there with his father.

BABAILOV: It was the very first time I walked into a church. I was so taken by it, the whole thing. Cathedral ceilings, frescos, the smell of the burning wax, candles. It was just so beautiful.

So that’s what Babailov painted for the competition: the church as a museum. He earned the spot at school. He was 13. He eventually went on to study at the Russian Academy of Arts.

In 2002, Babailov migrated to the United States and became a citizen.

BABAILOV: I would say I’m privileged and honored to live in this country, one of the greatest countries on earth, if not the greatest.

It’s one of the reasons he was so passionate about painting George Washington.

For Washington, Babailov created the perspective from below, so the observer looks up at Washington’s face. Babailov did this for two reasons. One, Washington was tall. Two:

BABAILOV: To show his leadership, not to mention who he was. There’s no one like George Washington. One of the greatest men ever. One of the greatest leaders.

He also painted Washington standing, not seated, to show his energy and strong conviction.

BABAILOV: He’s standing on the background of a glorious sky. And, of course, he’s looking above our heads, looking into the future because he’s a visionary.

Look closely at Washington’s eyes, and you’ll find only a couple of eyelashes.

BABAILOV: When you’re painting an eye, you don’t have to count every single eyelash. [laughs] Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, you know?

Overall, Babailov says his mission with every portrait, whether a founding father or a banker, or a little child, is to capture a great story.

BABAILOV: A portrait is not just a visual likeness. It’s a story of the person. It’s like a biography almost. What writers do in biographies, I do in my paintings.

The portrait of Washington hangs at the Mt. Vernon Museum in Alexandria, Virginia. Meanwhile, Babailov continues to paint. He recently finished a portrait of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, to be unveiled at a future date.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Jenny Rough.

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.

A congressional hearing on so-called diversity programs in medical schools produced a revealing exchange about biology, language, and institutional pressure. The chancellor of one of America’s leading medical centers was asked a simple question, but gave a tortured answer.

EICHER: WORLD Commentator Albert Mohler says the hearing exposed just how gender ideology has permeated the medical establishment.

ALBERT MOHLER: It has happened again.

This time, it happened at a congressional hearing on DEI ideology in medical schools.

Last week, the chancellor of the University of California, San Francisco, was asked why official university documents refer to “pregnant people” rather than “pregnant women.”

Dr. Samuel Hawgood responded rather blandly that the term is simply meant to be inclusive.

HAWGOOD: So, that is a part of a curriculum to help our students who are facing a wide diversity of patients. Of course, a vast majority of pregnancies are in women. And I have absolutely no problem with using the word “pregnant women.” I use it myself.

Well, good for the chancellor.

He uses the term “pregnant women”—at least in some cases.

He offered that answer as if it should make perfect sense. As if it should simply be accepted by all.

But let’s be clear.

The chancellor’s statement turns the entire world upside down. It rejects biological reality itself—which would seem to be a problem for a major medical research institution.

Representative Mary Miller of Illinois saw the problem. She asked the chancellor a direct question.

MILLER: Has a non-biological woman ever had a baby?

HAWGOOD: A transgender person can.

MILLER: That’s not a biological woman.

HAWGOOD: I would reiterate, we take care of transgender patients. Transgender men get pregnant.

This is one of those moments when only the irrational makes sense.

Consider it an “emperor has no clothes” moment of clarity.

In this case, the emperor has no uterus.

If a human body can bear a child, it is a female body. If a body has male anatomy, it is a male body.

We are not talking here about genuinely unclear sexual development. Such conditions are real, but rare.

We are talking about a male claiming to be female—or a female claiming to be male.

And in the case of a “pregnant person,” biological reality is especially clear.

If you are pregnant, you are female. You began life female, and you remain female.

Period.

Yet this issue came up repeatedly at the hearing. Representative Randy Fine of Florida also asked who can become pregnant. Later, he explained to Fox Business:

FINE: What was extraordinary in the testimony is even he didn’t want to admit to it. He didn’t want to say a transgender man could get pregnant. He stumbled around, frankly, like a fool. And when a doctor who’s running a medical school can’t tell basic biology, we have real problems in this country.

In one sense, all of this has become frustratingly predictable.

Americans are increasingly aware of the irrationality. Most are not buying into this subversion of reality.

Nevertheless, the ideological poison has reached deeply into the upper echelons of American academia—and also the medical professions.

It is as if the chancellor of the University of California, San Francisco—one of the most advanced medical centers in the world—had claimed that the heart has nothing to do with the circulation of blood.

Male and female are, if anything, even more basic to human anatomy than circulation.

Human beings understood the distinction between male and female long before they understood how blood circulates through the body.

Children understand it.

They are blessedly free of ideological contamination.

It is also worth noting that the mainstream media have largely ignored this story.

And that deserves our attention.

The media know full well that transgender ideology is a lie. They also know that any honest report on this congressional hearing would reveal that the emperor has no clothes.

Or, again, as we must now say, the emperor has no uterus.

And just to be clear once again: If you have a uterus and you are pregnant, you are female—not merely a “pregnant person.”

I actually do not believe the chancellor—an intelligent man—actually believes what he said.

Nevertheless, he evidently believed he had to say it.

That’s what is even scarier.

And you are right to fear where this is headed.

For WORLD, I’m Albert Mohler.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Tomorrow: New car loans often leave drivers stranded with debt. We’ll have a report. And, a poet explains the widespread influence of The Book of Common Prayer. 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, “The law of the LORD is perfect, reviving the soul; the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple; the precepts of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes; the fear of the LORD is clean, enduring forever; the rules of the LORD are true, and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb. Moreover, by them is your servant warned; in keeping them there is great reward.” —Psalm 19:7-11

Go now in grace and peace.

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