The World and Everything in It: June 1, 2026

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MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

A word before we start—today marks the beginning of WORLD’s June Giving Drive.

NICK EICHER, HOST: But know this: generous friends of WORLD have already ensured that we do not start today at zero. We start today with five zeroes preceded by a one—a $100,000 challenge already on the table.

It’s a practical reminder no one gives alone here. We do this together.

REICHARD: That's right. So if WORLD is part of your daily routine, we’d be grateful for your support this month. Learn more and give today at WNG.org/donate.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

Today on Legal Docket: Finality, fairness, and second chances at the Supreme Court. A death-row inmate has his conviction tossed out; two other prisoners do not.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Also today, the Monday Moneybeat: we’ll talk about the malinvestment caused by climate-change predictions now walked back as improbable. David Bahnsen is standing by.

And, the WORLD History Book: on this date in 1980, a new kind of news:

SOUND: Stand by. Ready three, take three...

CNN, live on Cable TV for the first time.

REICHARD: It’s Monday, June 1st. 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: Iran latest » President Trump says there's still no deal to end the war with Iran.

Over the weekend, the president gathered his national security team in the White House Situation Room, but came out with no final decision. He says he's toughened his demands on Iran's nuclear program and the Strait of Hormuz:

TRUMP: I'm in no hurry. I'd like to say I'm in a hurry because, you know, uh, gasoline prices are gonna come tumbling down. But if you're gonna be in a hurry, you're not gonna make a good deal

Trump warned that if a deal can’t be struck at the bargaining table, the U.S. will — in his words — end it a different way. The Pentagon says American forces are ready to resume strikes.

He said the US is dealing with a different set of leaders than at the start of the war.

TRUMP: We wipe out their leadership, and then we wipe out their leadership a second time. And then at two and a half time, we're dealing with the other half, and by the way, they're much more reasonable, and you could say that's regime change.

For now, an uneasy truce is holding up for the most part. Both sides have discussed an agreement to extend the ceasefire … but there is no deal in place on that either.

Hegseth Singapore remarks » The United States, Britain and Australia are building undersea drones together — to track China’s growing military reach in the Pacific.

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth spoke at a defense conference in Singapore over the weekend.

HEGSETH: There is rightful alarm regarding China’s historic military buildup and the expansion of its military activities in the region and beyond. We share a clear-eyed assessment of that security environment.

Hegseth said America’s Taiwan policy hasn’t changed — but wouldn’t talk about a pending arms deal to Taiwan.

He also announced that joint drone project, part of the AUKUS military alliance, which stands for the Australia, UK, US partnership.

HEGSETH: Today, we’re pleased to announce the first AUKUS Pillar 2 signature project focused on fielding advanced uncrewed undersea vehicles, or UUVs.

AUKUS was formed to counter China’s growing military reach in the Pacific.

Ebola » In eastern Congo, five Ebola patients are walking out of the hospital alive.

They’re the first confirmed recoveries since the current outbreak began. World Health Organization chief Tedros Ghebreyesus announced the news on Sunday — as he marked the opening of a new treatment center in the city of Bunia, at the heart of the outbreak.

This strain of Ebola — called Bundibugyo — has no approved vaccine and no cure. Doctors can only treat the symptoms.

But Ghebreyesus noted:

GHEBREYESUS: People can recover. Of course, we’re working on vaccines and treatments, but that doesn’t mean that people cannot recover from Ebola. So that’s, I think, a strong message.

Still, the virus is outpacing the response. Health officials have counted more than 1,200 cases and at least 240 deaths across Congo and Uganda.

And the fear is now reaching beyond Africa. Brazil is investigating two possible cases.

SOUND: Protesters chanting

NJ anti-ICE protests Demonstrations outside Delaney Hall, a New Jersey immigration detention center where protesters and police have clashed for more than a week.

This morning, a curfew locks down a half-mile around the Newark facility and state troopers hold the line, after a weekend of violence.

Demonstrators hurled projectiles, ripped at barriers, and set tires on fire. Police have made about a dozen arrests — with some protesters accused of punching and biting officers.

Democratic New Jersey Gov. Mikie appealed to protesters over the weekend:

SHERRILL:  I urge those protesting outside of Delaney Hall to bring the temperature down so we can focus on the detainees and their families.

Sherrill sent in state police and set up a protected protest zone. She blames ICE for the unrest.

It started with the roughly 300 detainees inside, who launched a hunger strike over what they claimed was spoiled food and poor medical care. The federal government denies that.

SHERRILL: They have been increasing tensions in a way that's not helpful to public safety. This is not what we believe in here in New Jersey.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has condemned the protests — vowing anyone who attacks officers will be prosecuted.

Va. bus crash » Federal investigators are digging into Friday’s deadly bus crash in Virginia that killed five people.

National Transportation Safety Board member Tom Chapman says they’re taking a hard look at the driver’s actions in the 72 hours before the wreck:

CHAPMAN: We’re looking for, um, uh, you know, s- sleep issues, distraction issues, uh, potential drug and alcohol issues

Investigators are also looking at vehicle performance — including the bus’s automatic emergency braking. A preliminary report is expected within 30 days.

The crash happened around 2:30 a.m. on Interstate 95, nearly 50 miles south of Washington. Traffic had slowed for a work zone.

CHAPMAN: A traffic queue had formed as vehicles were diverted into the left lane of the interstate, and the motor coach failed to respond to the slow and stopped traffic ahead.

The bus plowed into the back of the line — triggering a chain-reaction wreck.

The driver, Jing Dong, faces two counts of involuntary manslaughter — and police say more charges are likely.

I'm Kent Covington.

Coming up, Legal Docket. Plus, the Monday Moneybeat with David Bahnsen, and the World History Book.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Monday the 1st of June.

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

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

Today we kick off WORLD’s June Giving Drive. If you listen regularly, you are already part of what happens here each morning. The reporting, interviews, analysis, and storytelling you hear every day are possible because listeners decide this is reporting worth supporting.

REICHARD: If WORLD has become part of your daily routine—part of how you understand the news and think about faith and culture—we’d be grateful if you’d consider supporting it during our JUNE GIVING DRIVE.

EICHER: You can find out more and give today at WNG.org/donate.

REICHARD: Time now for Legal Docket.

The Supreme Court is entering opinion season, and today three rulings about criminal convictions and sentencing. One says a case deserves another look. The other two say there are limits to how often courts can revisit old criminal judgments.

EICHER: First, a death-penalty case.

PITCHFORD: I’m Terry Pitchford. I’m from Grenada, Mississippi. I’m here for capital murder. They gave me a death sentence.

In this case, Pitchford v Cain, the Supreme Court tossed out Pitchford’s conviction and death sentence.

The case goes back more than twenty years. Pitchford was one of two teenagers who robbed a grocery store, and left store owner Reuben Britt dead. The teen who pulled the trigger took a plea deal and 20 years in prison. Terry Pitchford chose to go to trial. He was convicted and sentenced to death.

The issue before the Supreme Court was not whether Pitchford committed the crime … it’s not in dispute. It was whether the jury-selection process complied with the Constitution.

Prosecutors used peremptory strikes to remove four of the five black prospective jurors. Under a Supreme Court precedent called Batson versus Kentucky, prosecutors may strike jurors without stating a reason—but strikes must not be for reason of race.

REICHARD: Pitchford’s lawyers argued the Batson process broke down. Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined Chief Justice John Roberts, along with liberals Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson in the majority.

The trial judge had asked prosecutors to explain the strikes and accepted their answers as race-neutral … one juror arrived late, two had brothers convicted of violent crimes, and another was a young, unmarried father.

The breakdown was the judge not allowing meaningful challenge from the defense. But during oral argument, Justice Samuel Alito wondered, who’s fault was that?

ALITO: Well, this is the most timid and reticent defense counsel that I have encountered. Any competent defense attorney that I knew would have spoken up …

EICHER: Yet other justices viewed the record differently. Justice Kavanaugh hinted at the eventual ruling during oral argument:

KAVANAUGH: ….the reason this matters is this is a death penalty case, right, and he was 17 when he committed the crime, and he did not, not that this is good, but he was not the shooter, correct?

STEWART: That’s right, Your Honor.

REICHARD: The dissenting justices wrote that Pitchford’s claim of a “muzzled defense team” didn’t square with the record. The dissent criticized the majority for ignoring the high bar that federal law imposes before federal courts can overturn state convictions.

EICHER: The ruling clears the way for further proceedings and maybe a new trial for Pitchford, who’s now served two decades in prison.

—————

The next two cases answer a different question: when should a criminal judgment stay settled?

This one was 8-1, the Supreme Court saying federal prisoners cannot use compassionate release to challenge the validity of their convictions.

Compassionate release allows courts to shorten a prison sentence in extraordinary circumstances—such as terminal illness, advanced age, or certain family emergencies.

That phrase does leave room for interpretation, so defense counsel has tried to use compassionate release to fix what they see are unjust convictions or sentences. Which is what Jose Ferndandez tried doing.

But the Supreme Court has repeatedly rejected those expansions.

REICHARD: And the justices did here, too.

Compassionate release is what the name implies, the court held, and not for correcting a legal error.

Deputy Solicitor General Eric Feigin had the winning argument for the government:

FEIGIN: I think what you’ve just heard …is a proposal to make it instead an open-ended loophole to challenge the validity of sentences continuously through a potentially endless series of collateral attacks on the criminal judgment.

EICHER: Justice Neil Gorsuch underscored the effort Congress made to make final things final:

GORSUCH: And I thought, in our legal system, the jury’s verdict on the facts is not something a court can impeach unless it’s clearly erroneous.

REICHARD: And finally, a federal inmate serving more than 40 years for a string of armed robberies will stay behind bars after another high court ruling on that same doctrine of compassionate release.

EICHER: In a 6-3 decision, the court ruled that prisoners cannot use non-retroactive sentencing reforms as grounds. Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson dissented. 

This case involved a man named Daniel Rutherford. He was sentenced under older and more harsh federal laws after he robbed a Philadelphia clinic. Pretending to be a patient, Rutherford pulled a gun and stole money and jewelry, though he never fired the gun.

At the time, federal law imposed mandatory prison terms for mere possession of a gun during a violent crime. Rutherford’s convictions added up to more than 42 years in prison and much of that was from the federal gun statute’s so-called “stacking” provisions.

REICHARD: Under President Trump’s first term, Congress passed the First Step Act and eliminated mandatory sentence stacking for first time offenders. But Congress explicitly did not make those changes retroactive. Rutherford argued his sentence was so disparate from the new rules that it should count as an “extraordinary and compelling reason” for compassionate release.

Justice Kavanaugh signaled concern during oral argument about the separation of powers:

KAVANAUGH: We’re now going to give a second look for district judges to revisit those sentences even though Congress … did not want them made retroactive … obviously, the Commission was very divided on this question. And the … the Commission dissenters said this is a seismic structural change to our criminal justice system that countermands Congress’s judgment. And that’s my concern in this case…

The majority agreed with that, saying the courts cannot do indirectly what Congress chose not to do directly.

And that’s this week’s Legal Docket!

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It:

The Monday Moneybeat.

NICK EICHER, HOST: All right, time now to talk business, markets, and the economy with financial analyst and advisor David Bahnsen. David heads up the wealth management firm The Bahnsen Group, and he is here now. Good morning, David.

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

EICHER: Well, David, we talked about this on The World and Everything in It last week, last Friday, but there’s an economic side to the story, too, that I wanted to get with you on.

Climate scientists, I’m sure you read last week, have formally dropped one of the most widely used worst-case warming scenarios, and even some news organizations were acknowledging that they treated it more realistically than it ever was.

I read Holman Jenkins in The Wall Street Journal arguing that the bigger issue is not climate science, not culture, but capital allocation—that governments, businesses, and investors directed trillions of dollars based on assumptions that turned out to be far less plausible than advertised.

What do you say about that?

BAHNSEN: Well, I think that that is very true. It was true before this report came out.

The economic story of this is more than money spent on the wrong thing. It is the money that wasn’t spent on the right thing.

This is one of the great lessons of capital allocation. When we refer to this thing called malinvestment, when resources are directed in the wrong way, there is a healthy part of loss where risk-taking teaches entrepreneurs lessons, and they move into something different that is better responded to in the marketplace.

That trial and error is celebrated in America, and risk-taking is largely frowned upon in Europe.

This is in a different category because it is so ideological and so wrong-headed, as this report shows. But the numbers can never capture what was the opportunity cost of not investing in nuclear, of not investing in cleaner ability to emit carbon, quicker access to energy that is more potent and productive, from coal to the cleaner forms of fossil, and their inability to even import what they need of natural gas.

Now, I happened to spend a little bit of time on Friday with Ambassador Andy Puzder. He’s ambassador to the European Union, and he was walking me through a lot of the issues that they deal with with some of the different countries there and some of this environmental stuff.

One thing that is just really shocking to Americans, in particular American investors like myself, is that all of our efforts in this anti-fossil notion in America are mostly virtue signaling and just dealing with a lot of pharisaical silliness that is largely laughed about now.

There’s real true believers in Europe. Some of the authorities are very self-consciously willing to undermine their economic growth and their environmental progress because of their belief.

So tearing down these misnomers is a good thing, and they are behind for a reason.

EICHER: Let’s turn to Dividend Cafe this week.

Deep dive on Kevin Warsh. He’s the new Fed chair.

One of the loudest concerns we’ve been hearing is whether Warsh at the Fed will be independent of President Trump.

Your argument is that we’re using that phrase kind of loosely.

What do people mean when they say Fed independence, and what do you think we’re getting wrong about that?

BAHNSEN: Well, I think that one of the points I try to make in the article is that many are using it selectively.

Through bona fide, obvious, and indisputable—even non-controversial—examples of there being violations of Fed independence, we’ve never really heard the term before.

We use it now either because of people that just want to criticize anything President Trump does, which I do not think is a legitimate reason, or because of the way in which President Trump did it, which I think is a perfectly legitimate reason.

I’m by no means condoning all of his behavior.

But what happens is, like so many things these days, Nick, it obfuscates our ability to have clarity.

If we say, “I don’t think that President Trump should have pretextually had a DOJ investigation about Jerome Powell because he was mad at him about interest rates,” that’s a pretty non-controversial thing to say.

But if we say, “I think the Fed should at all times be perfectly independent, and we should walk around saying that all the time,” I then say, “Wait a second. What does that mean? Where are we getting it from?”

Because we’re most certainly not getting it from the Constitution.

Because so many critics of the president have decided, some for legitimate reasons and some for illegitimate ones, to harp on the issue of Fed independence, I think this seems like a great time to say maybe we ought to clarify the statute.

Maybe Congress ought to do its job and tell us what exactly the Federal Reserve is.

If it is sort of under the executive branch, but not really; if it’s obviously under the legislative branch because it was created by Congress and the Fed chair has to come talk to Congress a couple times a year and the Senate has to confirm all the Fed governor appointments; but it’s also sort of under the president because the president has to nominate the various folks.

We don’t have any other agency or entity in government that functions this way. It’s not an agency. It’s not a cabinet department.

I think there ought to be structural clarity.

Regardless of a president’s misbehavior or bullying or whatnot, let’s have the lines legally and structurally so that we can eliminate a lot of this controversy.

Then, as far as the actual administration of monetary policy, rather than worrying about whether or not Al Gore is mad at Alan Greenspan, or Richard Nixon’s mad at Arthur Burns, or Donald Trump is misbehaving in the way he’s mad at Jerome Powell, all those things could be legitimate.

But let’s have a conversation about what the Fed should and shouldn’t be doing.

I think that the president has a right to share his opinion, his or her opinion.

I don’t think the president should be bullying the Federal Reserve chair.

But nor do I believe the Federal Reserve should or does exist outside of the oversight of Congress.

Therefore, it is the legitimate duty of Congress to clarify the structure and to provide the oversight that it is required to provide by statute and by Article One, Section Eight of the United States Constitution.

EICHER: There was a line that made me laugh out loud, so I want to follow up on this provocative idea:

As you put it, you’re less concerned about whether the Fed is independent of a president than whether it is independent of bad economic assumptions.

Talk a little bit about that. I really love that one.

BAHNSEN: Well, hopefully it isn’t that provocative, because I mean it quite seriously.

I think that the Federal Reserve has been married to something called the Phillips Curve as a model of monetary policy for a long time, whereby they believe there’s a negative feedback loop between economic growth—that which will be evidenced in high jobs, low unemployment, and good wages—and then inflationary pressures.

This is a way I can reduce that position, I think, while still avoiding a straw man but nevertheless intending an internal critique by saying they believe growth is inflationary, and it is not.

There is productive and non-inflationary growth.

But how do you solve for this?

Why is the Fed concerned about Phillips Curve modeling?

Because they believe that they need to use monetary policy, which is to say the cost of capital, to either accelerate or decelerate economic growth.

I do not believe they should.

I do not believe it is the Fed’s job to use their discretion and their intervening forces to accelerate or decelerate market growth.

I believe that is the job of economic actors who will set the price of money themselves and who will go about their business.

Economic growth will go up or down without the interventions of the Fed, and the Fed will be there as a lender of last resort, which was its intent to begin with.

EICHER: Okay, David Bahnsen is founder, managing partner, and chief investment officer of The Bahnsen Group. He writes at DividendCafe.com and at WORLD Opinions.

David, have a terrific week. Thank you.

BAHNSEN: Thanks so much, Nick.

NICK EICHER, HOST: 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.

In the late 1970s, those who wanted to watch the news had to turn on their TVs at a set time.

But on June 1st, 1980 the 24-hour news cycle began.

That was the day the Cable News Network, CNN, first signed on.

WORLD’s Lindsay Mast has the story.

LINDSAY MAST: April 23, 1979. Ted Turner announces his plan to start a 24-hour news network. He calls it “CNN.”

TED TURNER: …the Cable News Network, and will program continually updated half-hour segments of national news, business news, sports, and features 24 hours a day.

He makes a commitment to succeed:

TURNER: I pledge to you that we will not let the American public down.

Turner spends the next year putting together a team of nearly 300 people to run the network. One was producer and copy editor Mark Aldren.

MARK ALDREN: When I came to Atlanta for my interview, there was no real infrastructure for CNN at all. We knew we had a big job ahead of us. It was constant, we were constantly meeting, and outside of our world, there was a lot of skepticism.

But he says Turner was confident and always thinking ahead. Aldren remembers a pre-launch meeting where the team was trying to figure out how to focus newscasts for different U.S. time zones. Turner popped in to listen and described a bigger vision–one that could have implications for the Cold War.

ALDREN: And someday he said, I want to even beam this into Russia, and maybe that way those people will understand us better, and they won’t want to come over here and bomb us. We’re focusing on how do we broadcast to Des Moines, you know, he’s already thinking about how to broadcast around the globe, that was typical Ted.

The team started rehearsals. But just days before the launch, the newsroom desktop computer system malfunctioned.

ALDREN: So we said, get all these things out of here. And so for the actual launch on june 1, 1980, we were back to using typewriters and carbon, carbon sheets again.

The Los Angeles bureau also had problems:

ALDREN: That crew out there had some of their camera gear stolen. I think it was on the day before the launch, and so they had to go get rental camera gear.

AUDIO: ROLL TAPE, ready, 13, full, ready, camera three, one, center up.

But at 6 p.m. on June 1st, 1980, CNN went on the air.

NEWS ANCHOR: Good evening, I’m David Walker, and I’m Lois Hart. Now, here’s the news….

Aldren was in the newsroom that day.

GUIDE: Now we have a pool of producers here. Each one does two hour shows, one hour show, then four hours off, another hour show. They take the material from the pool, and they send it over

The team had proved they could launch a network, but detractors took longer to convince. They expressed skepticism about Turner’s lack of journalism experience—calling the station “Chicken Noodle News,” or the “Chicken Noodle Network.”

Inside, the staff continued to struggle with new technology. A single video cable connected the control room in Atlanta to New York through the bureau in Washington D.C. Someone there had to flip a physical switch to establish the shot.

ALDREN: You’re on a headphone and you’re talking on a com, and you know your New York is coming up, and you’re saying to the guy in Washington, please flip the switch, please flip the switch, please flip the switch, and you’re sweating. You’re sweating bullets.

CNN goes on to become a dominating force in television news. Less than a year after launch, it breaks the news of the attempted assassination of President Reagan. In 1986 it’s the only network to broadcast the Challenger explosion live.

Aldren says the staff was hungry to cover the news. He says at times he would go home and come back the next day– to see coworkers who had never left.

ALDREN: They were so invested, they were on the front lines, and they just couldn’t let it go. That was the way it was in those early days.

He says Ted Turner was a maverick who also took care of the people working so hard for him, offering generous time off in return for the long hours.

ALDREN: People were very loyal, and they had high ethical standards there. It was one of those things where every once in a while, if you’re lucky, you get to be part of sort of a magical, wonderful situation. situation, and that’s what this was,

CNN has been on the air continuously since its launch but has experienced a decline in viewership in the last decade.

Ted Turner left the company in 2003 and passed away last month.

In 2023 CNN moved out of its landmark building in downtown Atlanta. Much of the current staff is located in New York and in bureaus around the globe, but about a thousand report to work on a campus at the original location.

That’s this week’s World History Book. I’m Lindsay Mast

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Well, it’s Day One of WORLD’s June Giving Drive, so beat the rush and give today … WNG.org/donate.

Tomorrow: we will talk to an expert about where talks between the U.S. and Iran stand. And, an interview with the oldest journalist in the world.

That and more tomorrow.  I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. That journalist, by the way, is not me [laughs].

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, “I long for your salvation, O LORD, and your law is my delight. Let my soul live and praise you, and let your rules help me. I have gone astray like a lost sheep; seek your servant, for I do not forget your commandments.” —Psalm 119:174–176

Go now in grace and peace.

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