The World and Everything in It: July 23, 2025

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LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Good morning!

CBS cuts Stephen Colbert’s Late Show, the Department of Justice releases files on Martin Luther King Jr., and Congress cuts some of its spending.

MASSIE: This is the biggest cut I’ve ever seen. It’s like the only cut I’ve ever seen

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Hunter Baker joins us to talk about it on Washington Wednesday.

Also today, WORLD Tour.

And have you ever wondered how scientists figure out what dinosaurs looked like?

LEINEWEBER: I’ve got the knees a little more crouched… the tail’s a little more curved.

An explanation of the science and sketching of ancient creatures.

And WORLD opinions writer Andrew Walker says borders are Biblical.

MAST: It’s Wednesday, July 23rd. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Lindsay Mast.

REICHARD: And I’m Myrna Brown. Good morning!

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

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: New U.S. trade deals » President Trump says the U.S. and Japan now have the framework in place for what he called a “massive” new trade deal.

The agreement will place a 15% tax on imports from Japan down from the planned 25% starting next month.

The United States has also reached a framework deal with the Philippines. That came after Trump hosted Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. in the Oval Office Tuesday.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt:

LEAVITT:  And they have agreed to lower their tariff and non tariff barriers so we can sell our products to them and they will continue to pay tariffs to sell products to us.

Under the deal, the U.S. will lower its planned tariff on Philippine goods from 20% to 19%.

Trump also said the two nations will also deepen military ties.

That comes as China continues to act more aggressively in the South China Sea … where Beijing and Manila have clashed over hotly contested territory.

Marcos told reporters:

MARCOS:  We are essentially, uh, concerned with the defense of our territory and the exercise of our sovereign rights. Now, uh, whether, uh, we do this not alone … we need to do this, uh, with our partners.

He added that his country’s “strongest partner has always been the United States.”

Trump says time to “go after” Obama officials »  President Trump says he thinks former President Barack Obama should face criminal charges.

TRUMP: He's guilty. They, this was treason. This was every word you can think of. They tried to steal the election.

His remarks come after Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard sent a criminal referral to the Department of Justice. She asked the DOJ to look into allegations that some in the Obama administration—her words “altered intelligence to push the narrative of a Trump-Russia plot days before Trump took office in 20-17, despite prior intelligence reportedly indicating otherwise.”

GABBARD:  There was a shift, 180 degree shift from the Intelligence Communities assessment leading up to the election to the one that President Obama directed be produced after Donald Trump won the election.

Obama's team responded, calling the allegations bizarre, and saying they are a ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction.

In 2019, a report from the Justice Department’s inspector general detailed wrongdoing within the FBI … in the handling of the Russia probe. But the IG said he did not find provable evidence that political bias drove the Russia investigation.

Epstein files » House Speaker Mike Johnson has abruptly sent Congress into recess to avoid a vote on whether to force the Department of Justice to release more files related to Jeffrey Epstein.

JOHNSON: There's no purpose for Congress to push an administration to do something that they're already doing. And so this is for political games.

President Trump says he has ordered the Justice Department to release all “credible” evidence in the Epstein case.

That comes as the president has taken heat on the matter from some even within his own party. GOP Congressman Thomas Massie:

MASSIE:  People have wanted these files for years. And then, you know, the president's staff administration, his own children, his vice president, have promised that these files would come out. And now we're being told it's a hoax. It just, it doesn't wash.

The Trump administration has effectively said there was nothing else to see in the case, that for example, there was no written Epstein client list.

The DOJ has now asked a judge to unseal grand jury transcripts in the Epstein case as well as those related to the trial of Ghislaine Maxwell who was convicted of aiding the now-deceased billionaire in sex crimes against minors.

And Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche is set to meet with Ghislaine Maxwell this week. If she has any additional information to provide, it’s unclear if she’ll be offered a deal for her cooperation.

Israel-Gaza latest » In the Middle East, living conditions in Gaza continue to deteriorate.

SOUND: [Soup kitchen]

Palestinians crowded at a soup kitchen in Gaza City, standing in long lines, holding empty pots they’re hoping to fill.

PALESTINIAN: [Screaming in Arabic]

One Palestinian voicing frustration and anguish amid a humanitarian crisis. He says they continue to eat and negotiate … while people in Gaza starve to death. He says there’s no one left in Gaza…they are all dead.

Meanwhile, Israel is facing increasing pressure to end its military campaign against the terror group Hamas in Gaza.

SOUND: [Deir-al-Balah bombardment]

Israel Defense Forces launched an attack on Deir-al-Balah yesterday. The city in central Gaza has remained relatively untouched since the war began...but Israel now believes Hamas is hiding Israeli hostages taken during the October 7 attacks inside the city.

And in an exclusive interview with the Associated Press yesterday, United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres said there is only one acceptable way out of this conflict:

GUTERRES: An immediate permanent ceasefire, an immediate and unconditional release of all hostages, and full humanitarian access without any restrictions.

He went on to call for a two-state solution that would see a Palestinian state in the Middle East.

Ozzy Osbourne obit » Heavy metal rocker Ozzy Osbourne has died at the age of 76.

The Grammy-winning performer was often at the center of controversy over the use of dark, occult imagery in concerts and music videos.

But in the 2000’s, he assumed an entirely different persona as the star of the hit MTV reality TV show “The Osbournes” that of a doddering, mild-mannered family man.

OSBOURNE:  My wife Sharon, is the leader. We all depend on her for everything, you know, even me,

His career spanned six decades. As a lead singer and as a solo artist, combined, Osbourne sold nearly 150 million records.

I'm Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: Hunter Baker is back with analysis of some of the top political stories of the week on Washington Wednesday. Plus, what the Bible has to say about borders.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Wednesday, the 23rd of July.

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

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast.

Time now for Washington Wednesday.

Before lawmakers head home for August recess, they managed to pass another one of President Trump’s priorities, putting cuts from the Department of Government Efficiency into law.

A bill Congress passed last week rescinds government spending on funds including for public media and foreign aid.

WORLD’s Leo Briceno reports.

LEO BRICENO: The rescissions bill is one of the first actual reductions in government spending that Congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky can recall.

MASSIE: This is the biggest cut I’ve ever seen. It’s like the only cut I’ve ever seen. So, if we have more of them, that’s great.

On Friday, the bill cleared the House of Representatives by a 3 vote margin. It includes a $7.8 billion reduction to U.S. foreign aid programs and a $1.1 billion cut from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting—the organization that provides financial support and policy direction to services like NPR and PBS.

Congressman Massie has opposed his own party in 1 out of 5 votes this year. But he told me he’s on board for rescissions.

MASSIE: I’m just happy about the process. It’s whatever we can agree to cut, we cut.

But agreeing on what to cut is tricky. Senator Susan Collins of Maine objected to $400 million in spending reductions to PEPFAR—a U.S. foreign aid program meant to combat the AIDS epidemic in Africa.

COLLINS: You are eliminating a lot of the prevention programs.

Collins voted against the rescission bill. But because this kind of legislation is not subject to the filibuster process, the Senate passed it by a vote of 51 to 48. And the final version left PEPFAR spending untouched.

After the House passed the final version, I spoke with Congresswoman Lisa McClain of Michigan, the GOP conference chair:

MCCLAIN: Listen, the House is going to continue to do what the House does and we’re gonna put the most conservative rescissions package on the floor that we can put and the Senate’s gonna do what they do.

The next big challenge for Congress will be passing spending bills for 2026…after the August recess.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Leo Briceno in Washington.

BROWN: Hunter Baker joins us now…he’s provost of North Greenville University and a contributor to WORLD Opinions. Hunter, good morning.

BAKER: Good morning.

BROWN: Well, as you heard there, lawmakers are now codifying spending cuts from DOGE into law…Hunter, Republicans have been concerned about the federal debt for decades…so why do you think it’s taken them so long to tackle the behemoth [beh-HEE-muth] of government spending?

BAKER: Well, so in my lifetime, I think that we have only had a balanced budget or a surplus a handful of times. One was with Richard Nixon, and there were two or three others with Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. We have much more often had problems with accumulating debt, with yearly deficits, and I think the reason that we don't fix it is, is very simple, which is that anytime there's an appetite to cut, there's an opportunistic opportunity to attack whoever wants to cut. I can remember Paul Ryan arguing for deficit reduction, and then there was an advertisement with a man who looked like Paul Ryan pushing a grandmother off the edge of a cliff. That's that's a common sort of a thing, right? Anytime you talk about cutting government, including reducing the rate of growth of the budget, you hear attacks on those proposing it.

So one thing that's important to note with the rescission package is that it is only $9 billion. We're talking about an infinitesimal, tiny amount of federal spending. But what is significant about this is that it is an action toward fiscal discipline, so maybe we're flexing the muscles little, a little bit on trying to actually figure out how to tame the budget.

MAST: Another big story out of Washington this week is President Trump’s decision to release thousands of documents concerning Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

CRONKITE: The apostle of nonviolence in the Civil Rights Movement has been shot to death in Memphis Tennessee.

The investigation goes back to before King’s assassination on April 4th, 1968, when FBI director J. Edgar Hoover wanted to find dirt to discredit King. His family had mixed feelings about this week’s document release…King’s niece Alveda King thanked President Trump for his transparency, while King’s children Bernice and Martin III asked readers to view the documents within the larger historical context.

And they’re not the only ones talking about it. So Hunter, is this welcome transparency? An attempt to distract from criticism over the handling of the Epstein files? What’s your take?

BAKER: Well, I think first of all, you'd have to be naive not to view this as, to some extent, an effort to pull attention away from the Epstein controversy. There's no question, especially on the right, that people are talking about the Epstein thing a lot, and so I think that Trump is interested in pushing some other narratives out there. And in fact, you notice they said something about telling Pam Bondi she could go ahead and release information that she thinks is appropriate on the Epstein files. So clearly that's getting through.

Now, coming on to MLK, regardless of what the motive is. I think it's good that that information is coming out, as with the Kennedy assassination. I think the more that we have, the better. And I think that the King family is striking the right posture on this thing. On the one hand, they're grateful. They want to see that information come out and so that people can have confidence that what the government said happened is what happened. But they're also concerned, because it is true that the FBI was bugging phones and following King and perhaps trying to discredit him, they were worried that he was going to engage in communist activism and things of that nature. And so they're concerned that, as those papers come out, that there may be some things in there that cast Dr. King in a negative light, but that, having been said, I think that a lot of that stuff is stuff that we already know and have seen, discussed and presented in movies, so I don't think there's going to be any surprises in these files.

BROWN: One more story, Hunter, last week, CBS said it will cancel The Late Show with political comedian Stephen Colbert. (Co- bear)

COLBERT: It's not just the end of our show, but it's the end of the Late Show on CBS. I'm not being replaced. This is all just going away.

The network cited financial reasons, while Colbert seemed to imply the cancellation was political. Hunter, what implications do you see here for the direction of political commentary?

BAKER: Well, a lot of people are going to assume that the motivations are primarily political, or it has something to do with Trump's lawsuit against CBS, but I think that it may be much more of a financial issue. I spoke with an industry insider, and what she said to me is that she thinks that it has more to do with Paramount's merger with Skydance. In advance of a merger of this type, you want to try to clean up the balance sheet as much as possible, and getting rid of this huge money losing show is a big part of that. I think a lot of people are going to think that this was done because of politics. I actually don't think that's the case. Probably the least political of the late night hosts, which would be Jimmy Fallon, is currently having the lowest ratings. Maybe the one who is the most political would be Greg Gutfeld of Fox News, and he's on cable, and he has the highest ratings. His ratings are even higher than Stephen Colbert's. So I think that what's really going on is that it's the impact of streaming Johnny Carson's Tonight Show had an audience regularly of 15 million people. Stephen Colbert gets about 2.5 million a night, and so it just doesn't make sense to have a show like this that loses $40 million a year for a much smaller audience.

MAST: Hunter Baker is Provost of North Greenville University and WORLD Opinions Contributor. Thanks for joining us!

BAKER: Thank you.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: WORLD Tour. Onize Oduah is on maternity leave, so WORLD’s Paul Butler has this week’s international news run-down.

SOUND: [Arab League]

PAUL BUTLER: We begin today with an emergency meeting in Cairo. Members of the Arab League gathered yesterday to discuss Israel's ongoing war with the terror group Hamas in Gaza, and a continuing humanitarian crisis there.

HOLI: (Arabic) Gaza is dying of hunger, Gaza is planned to be displaced, a so-called humanitarian city is being prepared for Gaza, a new city of death and prison under humanitarian labels.

Speaking here, Palestine Liberation Organization executive committee member Ahmad Abu Holi says residents of Gaza are dying of hunger. He goes on to say plans to evacuate Gazan civilians to a so-called humanitarian city will only result in their ultimate imprisonment and death.

The Israeli military says it has called on Gazan civilians to evacuate areas of central Gaza including Deir al-Balah. It remains the only Gaza city that has not seen major ground operations or suffered widespread destruction since the war began.

Israel now believes Hamas is holding large numbers of Israeli hostages there. The Israeli military is in the process of splitting Gaza into military corridors to pressure Hamas to release more captives.

Next to Iran where officials are gearing up for nuclear talks with France, Germany, and Britain.

The three European nations threatened to implement the “snapback” mechanism from the 2015 nuclear deal. That means they would reimplement their earlier sanctions at the end of August if Iran doesn’t limit its nuclear actions.

BAGHAEI: (Farsi) The agenda is clear: removal of the sanctions and issues related to Iran's peaceful nuclear program.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman calls the country’s nuclear program “peaceful” and says they’ll do whatever it takes to remove sanctions.

Iran’s Foreign Minister told Fox News Channel's Special Report with Bret Baier that the U.S. and Israel’s bombing of their nuclear facilities set them back, but:

ARAGHCHI: We cannot give up our enrichment because it is an achievement of our own scientists. And now, more than that, it is a question of national pride.

Iranian officials say the country has no plans to resume talks with the U.S.

Next, to Bangladesh.

SOUND: [Protesters]

On Tuesday, students gathered to protest against the Bangladesh government, after an airforce fighter jet crashed into Milestone School in Dhaka, the nation’s capital.

Shafiur Shafi is a student at Milestone.

SHAFI: At around 12 to 12:30pm, the plane crashed here. There were two fighter planes and one of them crashed here. It crashed onto the section where the pupils of English class 1-8 were.

He says here that the plane crashed into several classrooms as instructors were teaching English to teenagers and young children. At least 31 people have died, and many more are injured.

The interim government says the fighter jet was on a training mission when it suffered a mechanical failure. But protesters are demanding more answers.

SOUND: [Protesters]

In Dhaka, students broke into a government building demanding the resignation of an education official. Police dispersed them with tear gas grenades and batons.

Bangladesh’s interim leader, Muhammad Yunus, declared Tuesday a national day of mourning.

Saiful Islam is a Milestone teacher.

ISLAM: I am deeply shocked and stunned. It is unbearable that such a thing could happen suddenly. The little children were waiting for their parents to come and take them home, and now they are no longer with us. I have seen many parents mourning their children.

He says here that children were waiting for their parents to come and take them home at the time of the crash. And now, many parents are in mourning.

Next, to Chile, where Latin American officials and the Spanish Prime Minister are meeting for the “Democracy Always” forum.

SANCHEZ: (Spanish) Our societies face a real threat led by a coalition of interests between oligarchs and the far-right.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez says here that societies face a real threat from a coalition of in his words— “oligarchs and the far-right.”

SANCHEZ: (Spanish) What we could call an international network of hatred and lies.

He calls it an “international network of hatred and lies.”

Chilean President Gabriel Boric says the threat includes forms of extremism, misinformation, and inequality.

And finally today, saying goodbye to the so-called “Turbaned Tornado…”

SOUND: [Last rites]

Friends and family members gathered this week to honor Fauja Singh in Jalandhar, India. He’s the centenarian marathon runner who was struck and killed by a vehicle near his village last week.

His grandson spoke at the funeral:

HARLEEN SINGH: [TRANSLATOR] When he started participating in marathons, he never kept a single penny in his pocket... he donated his earnings.

Singh began running in his youth. But he didn’t start running competitively until age 89. He completed the Toronto Waterfront Marathon in 2011 at age 100. It would have made him the oldest competitor to complete the race, but Guinness Book of World Records refused to officially recognize the feat as Singh had no documentation to prove his birthdate.

That’s this week’s World Tour, I’m Paul Butler for Onize Oduah.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Superman may be flying high at the box office, but it’s a furry guy with four legs stealing hearts on the ground.

GUNN: This is my dog Ozu barking at the screen. Krypto was actually 3-D modeled after Ozu’s body.

That’s director James Gunn talking about his own rescue pup named Ozu, who gets excited when he sees his digital double Krypto on the screen. That’s Superman’s super dog.

And movie goers aren’t just falling for Clark Kent. They’re falling for canines! Google searches for “adopt a dog near me” soared 500% after opening weekend. Happily, hundreds of pets have found homes since then.

Krypto may be faster than a speeding bullet, but adoption? Now that’s the real superpower.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Wednesday, July 23rd. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Myrna Brown.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: bringing fossils to life. What can ancient bones, shells, and scraps of soft tissue really tell us?

In the hands of skilled scientists and artists, they can reveal ancient stories.

BROWN: WORLD’s Mary Muncy takes us to the rugged Badlands of South Dakota, where turning fossils into full illustrations is part science, part sleuthing, and part imagination.

MARY MUNCY: At Badlands National Park in South Dakota, there’s a big blue mural on the wall of the Visitor Center with a creature that looks kind of like a sea monster.

AUTUMN CARLSON: What is that?

HEATHER CARLSON: It's called a mosasaur.

Autumn Carlson and her mom are walking through the park’s fossil exhibit.

AUTUMN: What is this?

HEATHER: That's its jaw.

There are illustrations and replicas of what scientists think ancient animals might have looked like all over the Visitor Center but not everyone agrees on those interpretations and trying to figure it out is a long process without much confirmation.

While Autumn peppers her mom with questions about the fossils they’re seeing, paleontologists are in the back, trying to uncover more buried creatures.

MARY CARPENTER: I've got a pond turtle.

Mary Carpenter is a paleontologist. She’s holding a turtle shell encased in rock.

CARPENTER: I've been working on this, trying to expose the bottom side, especially. The top of the turtle shell was relatively exposed.

AUDIO: [Sound of airscribe]

She looks through a microscope and uses a tool with a needle on the end to chip away at the rock.

The work is very slow—there’s just a few inches of the shell exposed—and Carpenter is only removing dust-size pieces.

CARPENTER: Every time we chip that rock away, it's the first time that this animal gets to see the sunlight again.

Exposing the fossil is one of the first steps in figuring out what the creature used to look like.

If it’s something less well-known than a turtle, paleontologists will study the bones and compare them to similar finds. They’ll record their findings and make educated guesses about what an animal might have looked like then it’s the illustrators’ turn.

JOEL LEINEWEBER: Today I'm working on a drawing of an animal called Codypterics.

Joel Leineweber is the Vice President of Design at Answers in Genesis.

He’s moving an evolutionist-made model of a fossil around on his computer.

LEINEWEBER: Some scientists say this animal was a dinosaur and other scientists say that this animal was a bird.

And some say it’s a link between them because they found fossilized feather impressions. Right now, the illustration on Joel’s screen is standing upright with its arms hanging down to the side and its tail straight out. It looks like a raptor. But Leineweber says he doesn’t think that’s quite right.

LEINEWEBER: For one, the tail is really short. It's, I think it's less than 20 tail vertebrae. And dinosaurs, we expect to find 30 or more tail vertebrae. And that pattern is really consistent across these animals.

Another reason is that birds today have special wrists and shoulders that allow them to tuck their wings up and to fly and this fossil has both.

So, Leineweber starts making adjustments to the skeleton.

LEINEWEBER: Now, I've got the knees a little more crouched, I've got the wing a little more folded, and you can see the, you know, the next little marker, the tail’s a little bit more curved.

Now, it looks a lot more like a chicken.

Before he started posing and drawing it, Leineweber and a team of scientists spent years researching what the paleontologists found.

LEINEWEBER: How big would the beak be? What color were the feathers? How long were the feathers? All of those types of things.

He sends the pose over to his iPad and starts drawing feathers around the head and neck

LEINEWEBER: So I'm kind of drawing around the legs now. Codypterics had pretty long legs, and so some scientists think that he was a quick runner.

He adds some dark greys and browns, and a few white highlights to the feathers.

LEINEWEBER: There are some microscopic molecules, color molecules, that are sometimes found in the fossil record, but not very often, and these, this coloration in this drawing is kind of based on those.

Some scientists think there must have been more colors than what we find in the fossil record, because there isn’t much variation. Plus, the molecules themselves underwent a lot of pressure when they were buried and the bones fossilized, and that could have changed their structure.

So, just like the pose, the colors are left up to at least some interpretation. All of it combined can result in some vastly different results based on worldview.

Leineweber adds a couple of finishing touches to the sketch and saves the file… He talked to me again from his office.

LEINEWEBER: A creationist will look at that evidence and say, ‘Oh, look, look at that. It's clearly a bird.’ But an evolutionist will look at that and say, ‘Oh, well, it has some of these characteristics so, and it was in this rock layer, so it must be a transitional form between this animal and this animal, and they come to a different conclusion.

He started drawing dinosaurs as a kid. Now, he’s drawing them for other kids like Autumn at the visitor center, who have big questions about their world. He hopes his work will give them a more accurate understanding of the world before them and help them understand the world around them now.

LEINEWEBER: When I create artwork, I can draw attention to the fact that God's word is trustworthy. When you can trust the history in the Bible, then you can trust that what Jesus did on the cross and the history that that's rooted in is trustworthy as well.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Mary Muncy in Badlands, South Dakota.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Today is Wednesday, July 23rd. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Lindsay Mast.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown. A recent family vacation has WORLD Opinions managing editor Andrew Walker thinking about borders.

AP SOUND: [CDG IN PARIS (TRANSIT WORKER STRIKE)]

ANDREW WALKER, COMMENTATOR: If you’ve traveled internationally, you know the sound of a foreign airport terminal, that low thrum of voices speaking unfamiliar languages. Add small kids into the mix, as we did this summer, and it’s a real challenge. But heading home, even with the long customs lines, I felt something unexpected: Gratitude. Gratitude for national borders.

Immigration debates can stir up a lot of emotion—especially when our call to love others seems to run up against immigration law.

The tension can tempt us to shrug off the whole conversation.

But we should not.

Christians need to understand the deeper purpose and value of borders.

To begin with: Borders are not arbitrary. Look at Scripture and you read of God’s providence in the way He orders the world. Look at the book of Acts. In Chapter 17, we read about God making every nation—having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place. From the beginning, God established nations, languages, and borders. This was no mistake or problem He had to overcome. It was a way to check humanity’s pride and limit our drive for control.

Borders also make the rule of law possible. Christians may disagree on immigration policy, but we ought to be able to agree that government is commanded to begin with justice and order. Borders are essential for that.

They also define political communities. Without them, how do we even know who belongs to a nation and what laws apply to whom? Borders allow us to live together under shared rules that promote the common good. Seeing them that way, borders aren’t a necessary evil. They’re a moral necessity.

Borders also reflect a principle of good government: that laws are made for specific communities—not vague, undifferentiated masses. Different countries have different customs, interests, and ways of life. That’s a good thing! The idea of one global “brotherhood of man” may sound appealing to some. But the reality is that cultural differences exist—and they require coordination, structure, and leadership. Even though God’s Kingdom is made up of people from every tribe and nation, that’s no call to eliminate them by eliminating borders.

Borders protect order, the foundation of justice. Where there are no borders, there is no final authority to turn to when conflicts arise. Nation-states strike a balance: they’re big enough to provide security and small enough to reflect shared values. Borders let societies govern themselves according to their moral and cultural traditions.

Because nations are diverse, borders help preserve what makes each one unique. It is good that Nigerians live like Nigerians. It is good that South Koreans live like South Koreans. In a borderless world, cultures lose their shape, and with it their language, customs, and traditions.

Despite what some critics say, borders are not signs of fear or hatred. They’re not xenophobic. They’re not nativist or bigoted. They remind us that people with real differences also carry real responsibilities—to one another and to the communities they serve.

Enforcing borders isn’t always easy. But it is necessary. As I stood in that long line at the Cincinnati airport, I felt thankful for the men and women who work to protect our borders. Thankful for the rule of law. Thankful to be home inside America’s borders.

I’m Andrew Walker.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Tomorrow: as kids start to head back to class, many states are banning cell phones in schools. How are students and parents responding? And, last month the Trump administration announced a peace deal in Africa. We’ll check in on the progress. That and more tomorrow.

I’m Lindsay Mast.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

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: “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.” –Matthew 25:31, 32

Go now in grace and peace.

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