The World and Everything in It: July 7, 2025

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MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

Today on Legal Docket, an update on the county clerk who refused to issue same-sex marriage licenses. Ten years after Obergefell: could her case be the path to overturn it?

STAYER: … what caused all this mess was the five -four opinion that has no basis in the Constitution, therefore it should be overturned.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Also today, the Monday Moneybeat. Economist David Bahnsen standing by … for a midyear assessment of the markets and the strength of the economy.

And later, the WORLD History Book…how DNA evidence cleared up a nearly 100 year old mystery of what happened to the family of Russia’s last monarch.

REICHARD: It’s Monday, July 7th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

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

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

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Texas flooding » The death toll from flash floods that raged through central Texas has risen to 78 after crews found more bodies.

Authorities say many more remain missing, including 10 girls from a summer camp wiped out by the flooding on Friday.

Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha:

LEITHA:  We extend our sincerest condolences and prayers for every single family affected by this tragedy  and we continue to work around the clock and reunite these families.

He said rescue crews will continue to search until everyone is found. And Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick added:

PATRICK:  We are not giving up on a miracle happening because they've happened in the past. We know that people can be found down river, uh, days later.

The destructive, fast-moving waters rose 26 feet on the river in only 45 minutes before daybreak Friday, washing away homes and vehicles.

Gov. Greg Abbott has declared an emergency in several counties. And President Trump has declared a major disaster for Kerr County, activating federal assistance.

And flash flood watches remained in effect earlier this morning.

Tropical storm » Meantime, in the Southeast, Tropical Storm Chantal slammed South Carolina Sunday with heavy rain and sustained winds around 50 miles per hour.

Meteorologist Adam McWilliams said as of last night, the storm had weakened:

MCWILLIAMS:  Down to a tropical depression near the Florence area, and then a remnant low as it moves through parts of, uh, North Carolina.

As of last night, there were no reports of any deaths related to this storm. But it has raised concerns about flash flooding in North Carolina, as forecasters predicted up to 6 inches of rain in parts of the state through today.

Authorities are urging residents to avoid flooded roads and heed road-closure signs.

Big beautiful bill reactions » In Washington, Republicans and Democrats continue to clash over what President Trump called his “one big beautiful bill.” That is, of course, now law after the president signed it on Independence Day at the White House picnic.

But Democratic Congressman Tom Souzzi says it’s nothing to celebrate.

SOUZZI:  I describe it as the big ugly bill, not the big beautiful bill. Uh, it's gonna do a lot of things that are gonna hurt a lot of people in our country.

Democrats say the law will take away healthcare from many Americans, kicking them off Medicaid. Republicans insist that spending cuts are focused on eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse—and won’t affect benefits for those rightly receiving them.

Some critics of the bill also pointed to a projection from the Congressional Budget Office ... estimating that it would pile onto the national debt. But top White House economic adviser Stephen Miran argues that those predictions aren’t accounting for the economic growth that he says the law will generate.

MIRAN:  You're gonna get more people investing in factories as a result of these tax benefits. More investment means more income. More income means more tax revenue, and as a result, deficits go down.

Both the House and Senate narrowly passed the bill last week, largely down party lines. It will, among other things, lock in tax cuts passed during President Trump’s first term.

Immigration enforcement » The bill also includes more funding for border security. And Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin says, the Trump administration actually agrees with the top Democrat in the House about one thing the new law will do.

MCLAUGHLIN:  Hakeem Jeffries, the minority leader, saying that if they passed the big beautiful bill, it would allow us to unleash a deportation machine on steroids, and he's absolutely correct. We will do just that.

Of course, there’s a difference of opinion across the aisle about whether that’s a good thing.

GOP Sen. Markwayne Mullin says the law also provides funding to help finish the border wall.

MULLIN:  Last time that President Trump started the wall, obviously you saw the Biden administration come in and just [wreak] havoc on it and sell the material at pennies on the dollar. So the first thing we're doing is we're actually putting this into law.

During Trump’s first term, the president declared a national emergency at the border, and then reallocated existing funds to build the wall.

But the new law directly funds the wall to the tune about $47 billion dollars.

Biden mental fitness probe » Republicans on the House Oversight Committee are expected to grill former President Joe Biden’s White House doctor, Kevin O’Connor, this week.

It’s part of a probe into Biden's mental fitness during his time in office. Committee Chairman James Comer said Sunday:

COMER:  we have a lot of questions about the health reports that he would issue to the American people about Joe Biden that I don't think anyone in America … believes that Joe Biden was anywhere near as healthy as Dr. O'Connor would continuously publish.

The committee subpoenaed O’Connor, after he declined a request to appear for questioning. He’s now set to testify on Wednesday.

Republicans say the probe is digging into whether former White House officials covered up Biden’s cognitive decline, and whether anyone other than the president was making presidential decisions.

The panel has planned to question nearly a dozen former White House officials or aides.

Democrats call the probe political theater and a waste of time.

Ukraine latest » Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has announced deals with Western partners to boost production of military drones. Kyiv has increasingly relied on drones to counter Russia's offensives. Zelenskyy said he talked with President Trump about that in a phone call over the weekend:

ZELENSKYY: (Ukrainian)

He said they discussed—quote—“air defense issues, adding, “I’m grateful for the willingness to help.”

Zelenskyy said his latest phone call with Trump was the most productive yet.

And President Trump for his part, seemingly signaled a commitment to get more Patriot missiles to Ukraine, telling reporters:

TRUMP: Well, they need them for defense. I don’t want to see people killed, and they’re going to need them for defense. They are amazingly effective.

The Pentagon recently paused shipments of certain weapons and munitions to Ukraine, saying stockpiles were thinning out for domestic defense.

I'm Kent Covington.

This is The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s The World and Everything in It for this 7th day of July, 2025. We’re so glad you’ve joined us today. Good morning! I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. It’s time for Legal Docket, summertime edition!

The Supreme Court takes a summer recess, ours is a little different.

When the Supremes are on break, we turn attention to disputes brewing in the lower courts. A tiny fraction of those can wind up at the high court eventually, an even smaller slice of the caseload can cause the court to reconsider prior rulings.

EICHER: It took 50 years to course-correct on the abortion decision Roe versus Wade, and the cultural, political, and legal groundswell that led up to it had its roots in Christian churches.

AUDIO: The question before us is on the adoption of Resolution Number 5. Are you ready for the question?

Ten years ago this summer was the Obergefell v. Hodges case the Supreme Court used to rewrite marriage laws.

On that 10th anniversary, America’s largest protestant denomination openly called upon the court to have another look.

AUDIO: Microphone 1A, does your amendment pertain to Resolution Number 5?

Yes, it does.

All right, go ahead.

My name is Dean Scoular

REICHARD: The Southern Baptist Convention resolution said:

“Legal rulings like [Obergefell] and policies that deny the biological reality of male and female … are legal fictions, [they] undermine the truth of God’s design, [they] lead to social confusion and injustice.”

It calls for “the overturning of laws and court rulings, including [Obergefell], that defy God’s design for marriage and family.”

AUDIO: The question now is on adoption for Resolution Number Five as amended. All in favor, please raise your ballots. You may lower them. Any opposed? Raise your ballots. The affirmative has it. Resolution passes.

EICHER: It’s one sign that efforts to overturn the 20-15 ruling are gaining a foothold. At least five states have introduced resolutions urging the court to reverse Obergefell: Idaho, Michigan, Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota. They haven’t gotten far, though, and even if the resolutions progress, they have no legal force.

REICHARD: But the Supreme Court is a much different place than it was a decade ago, when Justice Anthony Kennedy issued the 5-4 opinion.

KENNEDY: The Court now holds that same-sex couples may exercise the fundamental right to marry in all states; no longer may this liberty be denied to them.

EICHER: Kennedy’s off the court. Brett Kavanaugh took his place. Another justice who made up the Obergefell majority was the late Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Replacing her, Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

REICHARD: Among the four who opposed Obergefell, three remain, Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, and the Chief Justice, John Roberts, who read the dissenting opinion.

ROBERTS: From the dawn of human history until a few years ago, for every people known to have populated this planet, marriage was defined as the union of a man and a woman... But today, five lawyers have ordered every State to change its definition of marriage... Just who do we think we are?

Justice Kennedy in the majority opinion took pains to suggest there are good people on both sides of the debatel

KENNEDY: Of course, those who oppose same-sex marriage, whether on religious or secular grounds, they continue to advocate that belief with the utmost conviction. … Many who deem same-sex marriage to be wrong hold that view based on decent and honorable premises. Neither they, nor their beliefs, are disparaged here.

EICHER: But the disparaging would take mere days, and would show up in a county clerk’s office in Rowan County, Kentucky ,where same-sex couples came into conflict with a clerk who refused to grant marriage licenses.

CLERK'S OFFICE: No, we’re not leaving until we have a license. Do your job. Everyone in this office should be ashamed of themselves. Is this what you want to be remembered for? There are children that will look at you and realize that you’re a bigot!

That county clerk is Kim Davis, she was jailed six days for refusing to go along. After her release, she pleaded for some kind of accommodation that would respect both her conscience and the rule of law.

DAVIS: So I’m here before you this morning with a seemingly impossible choice that I do not wish on any of my fellow Americans: my conscience, or my freedom. My conscience, or my ability to serve the people that I love.

What Davis got instead was a fine and a lawsuit against her personally.

REICHARD: The same sex couples did receive marriage licenses from other clerks who didn’t have religious convictions about the matter.

Later on, the political landscape changed and a new governor as well as the Kentucky legislature gave Davis a religious accommodation. Her office implemented a system in which licenses were issued without her name or title on them.

But same sex couples came after her anyway.

I spoke with her attorney, Mat Staver of Liberty Counsel

STAVER: Their feelings were hurt, and they claimed that they were entitled to what they call emotional damages …against Kim Davis personally, that Kim should pay them personally, hundreds of 1000s of dollars. When you tack on the attorney's fees, it goes up to $360,000 plus dollars ….

EICHER: Davis appealed. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in March this year upheld the damages award. It said that as county clerk, her job was a “quintessential state action” that required her to issue same- sex marriage licenses, no matter what. Today, her lawyer Staver says the case could become a vehicle to challenge Obergefell.

STAVER: She should, at a minimum, have the First Amendment Free Exercise Clause as a defense. But also what caused all this mess was the five -four opinion that has no basis in the Constitution, therefore it should be overturned.

REICHARD: Staver traces many of the culture battles of the past ten years to the fallout from Obergefell:

STAVER: But beyond that, what does this policy say? That gender doesn't matter in a gender based relationship? Well, let's take it outside of marriage. What about boys and girls sports? Boys going into women's private spaces? If gender doesn't matter in a gender based relationship, then it extends out to these other areas as well. So the Kim Davis case is symptomatic of a bigger problem. It affects all of us. You may not be involved in the marriage issue. You might even say, well, it doesn't affect me, no, it does affect you. It affects everyone. It affects the cake baker. It affects the website maker. It affects the florist….It affects you in the workplace. It affects the LGBTQ indoctrination in the public schools. All of this is really rooted in the issue and the problems in the Kim Davis case 10 years ago, in 2015.

Staver says that precedent must not stand. The Supreme Court in 2020 declined to hear an earlier appeal from Davis. So we wait to see whether the court will accept this appeal once it’s filed.

EICHER: Now, another matter out of Kentucky: Back in 2020, Governor Andy Beshear issued orders banning mass gatherings to limit the spread of Covid. The ban was unevenly applied; for example, big box stores could stay open. Churches could not.

REICHARD: Maryville Baptist Church held an in-person Easter service where people could show up, stay in their cars, and hear the service on a big screen. Others entered the church.

Kentucky State Police put quarantine notices on all the windshields.

STAVER: They ticketed every single person that was in their car with the windows rolled up listening to a loud speaker. Now they could have gone to the big box center or an abortion clinic and listened on the radio or to a loudspeaker would be no problem, but doing that in a church parking lot was a problem for that governor, and so as a result of this citation, these people had to stay in quarantine for a month. They could not leave the county without permission. They could not take public transportation, and several of them, when they returned to work on Monday and Tuesday of that following Sunday, they were terminated by their employers when they realized that these individuals had attended Maryville Baptist Church. So some of them lost their livelihood over this issue.

The church and its pastor sued Governor Beshear, alleging violation of First Amendment rights. Beshear argued it was all about public health.

Liberty Counsel also represents the plaintiffs in this case:

STAVER: We got the first court of appeals injunction in the entire country blocking these church lockdowns. And we got several injunctions at the court of appeals, all of them unanimous, three to zero decisions. Interestingly, there were some other people that were not attendees of this church, that wanted to come to the church because they knew that it was open, and so they were there on the same Easter Sunday. And so using our pleadings in the case that we filed and for which we got an injunction, they also filed a separate lawsuit, and they too, because of our injunction, got an injunction.

EICHER: The problem is, each case with similar facts under similar laws drew a different judge, with different results.

STAVER: But in our case, a separate judge ruled, even though it's identical, and we're the ones who led the case, that we were not prevailing parties. It went to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, and the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals said, look at the decision we just issued in the identical same situation, go back and reconsider it. Went back down to the lower court judge that originally ruled against us and ruled against us again.

So, no attorneys fees in that case—those are awarded only when you are deemed a “prevailing party” in these kinds of cases.

Complicating matters is a recent Supreme Court ruling against making someone a “prevailing party” when they have only a preliminary injunction and still received the remedy sought.

The consequence of that is that civil rights lawyers may not want to take cases… when a deep-pocket state can just wait it out. 

STAVER: So that's why this needs to be addressed by Congress, so that this particular decision, which really, I think hurts civil rights litigations and constitutional rights issues needs to be reversed and changed in accordance the way it used to be for decades.

REICHARD: That’s a common refrain these days: Pushing Congress to do its job. Other Supreme Court decisions do seem to be trying to get the three branches into their proper lanes.

And that’s this week’s Legal Docket!

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Next up on The World and Everything in It, the Monday Moneybeat.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Time now to talk business, markets, and the economy with financial analyst and adviser David Bahnsen. David heads up the wealth management firm The Bahnsen Group. He is here now. Good morning to you, David.

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

EICHER: We’ve just passed the Fourth of July, so it’s a natural point to pause and take stock of the stock market. Looking back at the first six months of the year, what stands out to you about the markets? Any themes or trends that have really defined the first half?

BAHNSEN: Well, I mean, it was certainly—if you’re just looking backwards on the first six months—a very interesting kind of full-circle ride, in the sense that we started off the year with markets pretty frothy in their price, and a lot of the big tech, mag-7, AI names really kind of expensive.

Then, in between the start point of the year and where we are now at the mid-year point, you had a lot of headline-driven events, primarily around the threats of a trade war and tariffs. There were some geopolitical sparks in there as well, with Israel and the U.S. attacks on Iran.

By the end of the first half of the year, you just kind of went back to where you started—with a pretty good economy, pretty good earnings, and a pretty expensive market.

EICHER: So when you look at the big picture beyond just market performance—how would you assess the health of the overall U.S. economy right now? Are the fundamentals solid, or is there more going on beneath the surface?

BAHNSEN: Well, I continue to believe that there is a very different conversation about the short term, intermediate term, and long term outlook, and that the primary issue long term is still—and is going to stay—the indebtedness of the country and the burdens that the excessive governmental debt represents on the U.S. economy.

In the short term, the jobs report that came last week, right before the holiday weekend, was really instructive on both fronts—the good and the bad—as to what I think is the state of our labor market.

On one hand, you had a pretty low unemployment number—4.1%. You had pretty decent job creation: 147,000—that was higher than expected. You continue to kind of defy the critics who think DOGE is eliminating a lot of government jobs, when the government was the biggest addition to jobs created, albeit more on a state and local level than federal.

So certainly, the DOGE layoffs so far have vastly underestimated—underwhelmed—what people expected in terms of eliminating some of the government excess.

But, Nick, the decline in the labor participation force—again, over 200,000 people leaving the workforce, which is the mathematical reason that the unemployment percentage went down—that’s just an awful development that is getting worse, not better.

So on one hand, you have a pretty good jobs market for people who want a job being able to get one. On the other hand, you have far too few people who want a job.

EICHER: Well, that sounds less like a structural economic problem and more like a cultural one. Can you unpack that a bit—how our culture is shaping economic outcomes?

BAHNSEN: Well, you’re exactly right. It is a cultural problem, but that doesn’t necessarily bifurcate from an economic problem, because the cultural problem, which is a cultural cause, results in an economic effect.

So I think that the price paid in the economy for the cultural causation of just simply a society that is less embracing of work is less productivity. By the way, it increases the need for immigration, which then adds to the political hostility.

We clearly have a lot of forces that are working against higher immigration. We could say we want to isolate that topic to just really focus on the perils of illegal immigration, but the problem is that that topic gets a lot more complicated and a lot more controversial around illegal immigration when there is a significant amount of the labor force that is leaving and increasing incentives for employers to look to the immigration pocket to meet their labor needs.

EICHER: David, we’ve talked before about the so-called “Big, Beautiful Bill”—but now it’s law, the big beautiful law, lost a little alliteration.

But it’s no small thing, politically, that House Speaker Mike Johnson kept his narrow majority together. But we can set the politics aside and now that this is passed, what do you make of the substance? What should we be watching for as the economic effects start to play out?

BAHNSEN: Yeah, well, it is a big political victory for both Speaker Johnson and President Trump.

The reason it’s a political victory for President Trump is there is absolutely no denying right now that this is his party—that the Republican Party is his.

Now, the question that people are asking me, Nick, is what do I think of the bill when you put aside the politics—what it teaches us, where things stand. Speaker Johnson’s clearly underrated ability to manage his own caucus.

But all that stuff is really political and a little less interesting to me than the economic side.

I think that three things are true. I’ll say them very quickly.

One: The tax cuts got extended. They had to be extended. You would have created a recession to have that kind of big tax increase. So the part that everyone knew was going to happen—that’s the least surprise to it—got done, and that’s a good thing.

Second is the most negative—that it is a significant increase to the deficit over time, and that this was a chance to actually decrease the deficit, and it just simply didn’t do it. The fact that some knobs got moved around that I like—but most of those knobs that got moved I liked were offset by other knobs moving the wrong way.

I don’t think the Democrats will get a lot of political benefit other than people that are already predisposed to not liking President Trump with their “Oh, he’s slashing the social safety net, he’s slashing Medicaid” argument. It isn’t true, but I don’t think that’s going to have a big impact here.

I’m more focused on the Medicaid side—that the Republicans did such an absolutely awful job making the case that they were not slashing Medicaid.

And then the third thing, which is more relevant to markets: there’s some modestly good stuff on the business side. Full expensing of capital investment—that was made permanent, not just a four-year thing.

Now look, I think this “no tax on tips” stuff is just totally silly. The “no tax on overtime” and some of the personal tax stuff—it isn’t pro-growth. It picks a certain winner over a loser. A few people will benefit. People always tell me I’m supposed to say I’m in favor of any tax cuts, but I really am not.

I mean, I’m in favor of tax cuts that are evenly distributed across the economy, and I think that this doesn’t do that. But it’s so interesting—it’s only a few years, and then it goes away.

So that side of it is not the pro-growth side. The business stuff is more pro-growth, and I hope that there will be a good result there.

But it isn’t the big needle mover that President Trump’s fantastic legislation was in 2017. That was a much bigger deal in my mind.

EICHER: All right, David Bahnsen is founder, managing partner, and chief investment officer at The Bahnsen Group. He writes regularly for WORLD Opinions, and at dividend-cafe.com. David, thank you so much. We’ll see you next week.

BAHNSEN: Thanks so much, Nick.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Monday, July 7th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Up next, the WORLD History Book. Back in 1917, the Bolsheviks overthrew the royal family during the Russian Revolution. Soldiers forced the Romanovs into house arrest, and for many years, their fate was shrouded in secrecy. WORLD’s Emma Eicher has the story.

EMMA EICHER: On July 16th, 1918, the Russian royal family sleeps soundly in a modest, two-story stone house, a far cry from the opulent palaces they’re accustomed to.

Guards downstairs are quietly slipping Colt pistols into their pockets. If all goes according to plan, the Romanovs will be dead by dawn.

Voice actor Kim Rasmussen reads what the head guard, Yakov Yurovsky, later remarked:

RASMUSSEN: It’s no easy thing to arrange an execution, contrary to what some people may think.

The Romanovs have been under house arrest for more than a year. In 1917, Tsar Nicholas II was forced to abdicate the throne during the Russian Revolution, and the provisional government wasn’t sure what to do with the family.

They only knew they must protect them, and limit their influence over counter-revolutionaries.

So under constant guard, the family of seven moves from house to house around Russia. At each location, they lose more food, money, and possessions.

The children have to adjust to life outside the royal palace—there’s Olga, the oldest at 23. Then there’s Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia, and the only son, Alexei. He’s the youngest at 14.

Nicholas’s wife, Alexandra, writes about the hardships in a letter to her sister-in-law, voice actor Michelle Schlavin reads.

SCHLAVIN: We live quietly, have established ourselves well although it is far, far away from everybody. But God is merciful. He gives us strength and consolation.

At first, revolutionaries treat the Romanovs gently. They want to cultivate good public opinion at home and abroad.

But anger at the royal family starts to mount. Communist Vladimir Lenin and violent Bolsheviks—a Marxist faction—replace the provisional government. They ask themselves: why should the exiled Romanovs still live, protected and comfortable, while peasants scrape by on meager rations?

Then, loyalists to the crown begin to gain ground. The White Army—as they’re known—advances, threatening to topple the Bolsheviks. They’re getting close to the place where the Romanovs are imprisoned.

If they find them, they’ll set them free.

The head guard Yurovsky and his friends at Bolshevik headquarters decide it’s time to send a message. One of Lenin’s officials says later:

RASMUSSEN: The execution of the Tsar’s family was needed not only to frighten, horrify and dishearten the White Army, but also to shake up our own ranks to show them that there was no turning back, that ahead lay complete victory or complete ruin …

So Yurovsky orders his soldiers to clear out the cellars. He hand picks a few of them to carry out the execution. At 1:30 in the morning, he wakes up the family. He says, the White Army is approaching and they have to go down to the cellars. For their own safety.

The family complies, getting ready with their maids, the family physician, and the house cook.

Then, guards lead all eleven of them into the cellars below.

Yurovsky recalls:

RASMUSSEN: They still did not imagine anything of what was in store for them.

Three days after the execution, the government releases an official statement saying they killed Nicholas II, but the rest of the family is safe, though they won’t say where they’ve taken them. One official says privately:

RASMUSSEN: The world will never know what has become of them.

The White Army captures the town a week later. Officials are still hopeful the Romanovs are alive. Soldiers search the house … and find the cellar pockmarked with bullet holes. But there aren’t any bodies. So they figure the family may still be alive. Or at least some of them.

News of the Romanovs’ mysterious disappearance swirls through the nation, and beyond, into Europe and the Americas.

What happened to them?

For 8 years, the Russian government insists that Alexandra and the children are safe.

But the family gathers mystique in the public eye. Rumors of their survival circulate across the globe. People report seeing the Romanov daughters in Crimea, North America, even Japan. In fact, individuals claiming to be Anastasia, or Marie, or Alexei step forward. More than 200 people claim to be the missing children over the next 60 years.

Until investigators finally uncover the truth. Audio here from a National Geographic documentary.

AUDIO: So … what did you find?

[SPEAKING RUSSIAN]

They discover a shallow grave in the forest, near the house where the Romanovs were last imprisoned.

On July 9th, 1993, British forensic scientists use DNA samples to determine that the remains are indeed that of the Romanov family and their royal entourage.

AUDIO: In 1991, nine sets of remains were found. There were 11 people that were killed … that night. Two sets of remains were still missing.

But it takes more than a decade to find evidence of the other two bodies. In 2007, archaeologists unearth another grave a few hundred feet away containing bone fragments. They take DNA samples, but it’s difficult to conduct tests.

AUDIO: The mystery within the mystery is, what happened to Anastasia? Did she escape? Or, is she here? Right now, I can’t tell whether we have 2 females or a male and a female, or whether these fragments are part of the other bones that were already recovered.

Using advanced technology, they determine the fragments belong to both Alexei and one of his sisters: either Maria or Anastasia.

Nearly 90 years after the early morning executions, the analysis finally puts to rest the secrecy behind the Romanov family’s fate.

DOCUMENTARY: It was surely not the end any of them expected, but the DNA evidence makes it clear that’s what really happened, on the night Russia’s longest dynasty came to its abrupt and bloody end…

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

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: Medicare, Medicaid, and what qualifies as a cut. And, we’ll meet some enthusiasts who don’t just collect old flint arrowheads, they make them. That and more tomorrow.

I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

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 that “when [Jesus] got into the boat, his disciples followed him. And behold, there arose a great storm on the sea, so that the boat was being swamped by the waves; but he was asleep. And they went and woke him, saying, ‘Save us, Lord; we are perishing.’ And he said to them, ‘Why are you afraid, O you of little faith?’ Then he rose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm. And the men marveled, saying, ‘What sort of man is this, that even winds and sea obey him?’” —Matthew 8:23-27

Go now in grace and peace.

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