The World and Everything in It: June 13, 2023

PREROLL: The World and Everything in It is made possible by listeners like us. My name is Dan Arndt, and I live and operate a credit card processing company in Phoenix, Arizona along with my wife Laurie and our two sons Joshua and Mitchell. We hope you enjoy the show.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning! The wildfires in Canada: climate change or poor management of the forests?

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Also, families at Covenant School in Nashville now have possession of the shooter’s manifesto. What does that mean for efforts to make the documents public?

Plus, Christians who want to protect unborn life without exceptions, but don’t want to be called pro-life.

And the art of slowing down with poetry.

REICHARD: It’s Tuesday, June 13th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

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

REICHARD: Now here’s Kent Covington with today’s news

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Trump » Police are fanning out around a Miami courtroom this morning where former President Trump will soon be arraigned on federal charges related to his handling of classified documents. The city is allowing protests outside the courthouse.

Miami Police Chief Manuel Morales:

MANUEL MORALES: Even though we’re preparing—we’re bringing enough resources anywhere from 5,000 to 50,000—we don’t expect any issues.

Trump faces 31 charges under the Espionage Act and six more for allegedly impeding an investigation.

Trump insists he has done nothing wrong. And most Republicans say the Justice Department has a different standard for Trump when it comes to prosecuting the mishandling of classified documents. Congresswoman Nicole Malliotakis:

NICOLE MALLIOTAKIS: If President Trump did something wrong, what about Hillary Clinton? What about Vice President Pence? What about President Biden?

Prosecutors allege that this case is different in that Trump knew certain documents in his possession were highly classified, and they say he attempted to thwart an investigation.

Biden bribery » Meantime, on Capitol Hill Monday, Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley on the Senate floor said there may be recorded audio evidence of a bribery scheme involving President Biden.

CHUCK GRASSLEY: The foreign national who allegedly bribed Joe and Hunter Biden allegedly has audio recordings of his conversation with them.

A foreign national is alleged to have paid $10 million dollars to the Biden family to help quash a corruption probe. And according to an FBI document, the foreign national posseses 15 audio recordings with Hunter Biden and 2 recordings with Joe Biden.

GRASSLEY: These recordings were allegedly kept as a sort of insurance policy for the foreign national in case that he got into a tight spot.

Republicans are demanding that the Justice Department release the unclassified FBI document describing the accusations.

China spying » Top U.S. officials are breaking their silence on reports that China has operated a spy base in Cuba for several years.

Word of the spy base was leaked to the media last week. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby:

JOHN KIRBY: Clearly there is a source or sources out there that think it’s somehow beneficial to put this kind of information into the public stream. And it’s absolutely not.

Kirby says it’s part of a larger Chinese intelligence push.

Secretary of State Tony Blinken told reporters:

TONY BLINKEN: We have engaged governments that are considering hosting PRC bases at high levels. We’ve exchanged information with them. Our experts assess that our diplomatic efforts have slowed down this effort.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that China and Cuba had reached an agreement in principle to build an electronic eavesdropping station on the island.

The White House called the report inaccurate.

Ukraine » Ukrainian officials say they’ve recaptured at least four villages in the southeastern part of the country.

AUDIO: [SOLDIER]

This Ukrainian soldier is saying here that Russian troops resisted at first but eventually gave up the fourth village “house by house.”

The Russian defense ministry claims its troops have largely held their ground.

Boycotts » Boycotts over corporate LGBT activism are still taking a toll on companies. WORLD’s Josh Schumacher has more.

JOSH SCHUMACHER: Bud Light is no longer America’s top-selling beer. After months of plummeting sales over its partnership with a transgender social media star. Modelo Especial is now Number One. Bud Light parent company Anheuser Busch InBev has now lost more than $27 billion dollars in market value.

And retail giant Target has lost $15 billion dollars in market value. Consumers pushed back when Target prominently displayed so-called PRIDE merchandise including LGBT children’s books and a swimsuit designed to disguise gender characteristics.

Some are also now calling for a boycott of Cracker Barrel after a Facebook post celebrating Pride Month.

And the maker of the blockbuster video game Call of Duty is facing boycott calls as well. Activision angered millions after it withdrew in–game items tied to a well-known player … because he voiced criticism of policies that push an LGBT agenda to schoolchildren.

For WORLD, I’m Josh Schumacher.

UNESCO » The U.S. is re-joining the United Nations cultural and scientific agency UNESCO this summer to counter Chinese influence in the U.N.

UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulaya:

AUDREY AZOULAY: The US will add not only their financial contribution, but also their expertise, their civil society, which has a lot to bring it to UNESCO.

The Obama administration stopped funding the agency in 2011 when it voted to include Palestine as a member, and former president Trump withdrew in 2018 citing an anti-Israel bias in the group.

Israel last year said it wouldn’t oppose a U.S. return to UNESCO, and Congress in December approved a bill to pay dues owed to the organization.

I’m Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: Bad air in the Big Apple. Plus, the abortion abolitionists.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Tuesday, the 13th of June, 2023.

This is The World and Everything in It and we thank you for coming along with us today! Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown. Up first: Wildfires in Canada send smoke across the border.

On Wednesday, New York briefly logged its worst air quality ever, over 400 on the air quality index scale of 0 to 500. That topped air pollution in Detroit, Michigan, and Delhi, India. With air quality still near 200 on Thursday, residents posted pictures of landmarks such as the Statue of Liberty and Brooklyn Bridge standing out in a sea of orange haze.

Over the weekend, WJI graduate Alex Carmenaty spoke with people living in nearby New Jersey to find out what their experience was like.

ALEX CARMENATY: Josiah Sherman is a high school student who works part time at Hobby Lobby in North Brunswick, which is about 40 miles southwest of New York City. He worked on Tuesday and Wednesday, when the smoke was at its worst.

JOSIAH SHERMAN: It gave everything like a pinkish orange tint. It looked kind of like it was drizzling but with no rain, just really dreary you can almost feel. It kind of smells like a campfire.

Along with businesses, school districts across New Jersey responded quickly. Anthony Scardino is a music teacher in the nearby South Brunswick School District

ANTHONY SCARDINO: They had air filtrations from the COVID times that they were able to place in people's classrooms. And so I thought our school district did a great job. But yeah, we were all looking outside as this orange haze just fell over the whole sky. We're just watching and doing the best that we can.

For many, the best way to handle the smoke was to just stay home. Forty miles from New York, Somerset resident Debbie Heath usually goes to her local church’s Wednesday night Bible Study. But this time, Heath realized she needed to play hooky.

DEBBIE HEATH: My landlord's a DoorDash driver. I got a text from him telling me to stay inside because it's really bad out. He was Door Dashing for maybe three hours and he started getting a headache and its eyes were watering and he was having trouble breathing and his chest hurt and he had dry heaves. And so he said I had to come home.

Heath described last week in one word.

HEATH: Frightening, because you really didn't know what was going on you didn't know how long it would last you didn't know how safe it was to go outside without any kind of protection and yeah it was frightening.

Across America, 18 states had a rapid decline in air quality. The Garden State was one of them. 

Reporting For WORLD, I’m Alex Carmenaty in North Brunswick, New Jersey.

REICHARD: Frightening as it was for Americans dealing with smokey skies, Canadians are dealing with the actual fires. And for many residents in the Eastern part of the country, it’s a new experience. WORLD Associate Correspondent Alexandra Ellison explains.

ALEXANDRA ELLISON: So in Western Canada, we are pretty accustomed to having wildfires, due to our dry summers. But in places such as Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia, this year, we have seen drier conditions, because usually the season is not as bad because they have that cooler climate, which is influenced by the North Atlantic Ocean. But this year the lack of rainfall and the temperatures, higher temperatures have created these conditions for the wildfires.

BROWN: Many Canadians are concerned that these conditions aren’t anomalies but indicators of a concerning global trend. Here’s Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Parliament on Wednesday.

JUSTIN TRUDEAU: Forest fires are raging. It's the worst year on record for forest fires already. But the fact is they are going to get worse in the coming years because climate change is real. And yet the Conservative Party continues to stand against the climate action that we've been taking.

REICHARD: While rising temperatures may be a factor in Canada’s vulnerability to wildfires this year, the immediate causes may actually be much more concrete. Data from Natural Resources Canada reveals that Canada has allocated over $1 billion for wildfire protections in six out of the past ten years. However, forestry management reports since 2017 indicate that the department has cut down on its use of an essential firefighting technique…controlled burns. Dead undergrowth and trees tend to build up over time if not dealt with, and so forest management departments have traditionally set small fires to clean out fire hazards and prevent larger burns down the road. But that hasn’t been happening in Canada.

ELLISON: This year, Parks Canada scheduled only 23 prescribed forest burns to offset large blazes. And in comparison in the US, they did about 800,000 prescribed burns between 2017 and 2019. 

BROWN: So what caused these fires? Natural Resources Canada says the majority of them were likely caused by lightning strikes. But some also had human origins, like unattended campfires, or even mischief.

ELLISON: So since May, there's actually been multiple arsonists that have been arrested across provinces in Nova Scotia, British Columbia, Alberta. And due to this uncertainty of the fires origins, Alberta's United Conservative Party Premier, Daniel Smith has actually called for an independent investigation as suspicion for arsonists.

In the meantime, firefighters continue to battle nearly 450 fires across Canada. Many of them are in western provinces but almost 200 are in the midwest provinces of Ontario and Quebec. And just over half of them are under control or being held in check. South of the border, skies are clearer in the U.S. going into Tuesday, but air quality will remain a concern until the end of the fire season later this summer.

REICHARD: And explanations for the wildfires’ origins and how to prevent similar fires in the future remain hazy.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: The Covenant School shooter’s manifesto.

Back on March 27, a former Covenant student shot and killed six people at the school. Police responded quickly. Here’s Detective Jeff Mathes:

JEFF MATHES: We proceeded continually toward the sounds of gunfire, and then once we got near the shooter, the shooter was neutralized.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: The next day, Nashville Police Chief John Drake revealed the shooter left behind a manifesto. In a briefing filed on behalf of the parents of the victims along with the school, they asked the judge to keep it private.

NEWS ANCHOR: The stance of the families involved in the filing is that no good can come from the release of the writings, referring to them as “dangerous and harmful writings of a mentally-damaged person.”

But then The National Police Association, the Tennessee Firearms Association, and a news organization called The Tennessean filed or joined lawsuits demanding the Metro Nashville Police Department release the shooter’s statement.

BROWN: Now a judge in Nashville is deciding whether to open the manifesto to the public. During a hearing Last Thursday, the lawyer for the shooter’s family made a surprising announcement. Audio here from WSMV 4.

WSMV4: The shooter's parents want to grant ownership of the writings to the school parents who are suing to block the release of those journals.

BROWN: The documents remain in police custody, so this move doesn’t change anything right away. But it points to a deeper question, what’s at stake for victims’ families, law enforcement, and the rest of the public if the manifesto is unsealed, or not?

REICHARD: Let’s start with the families. A top concern for them is keeping their community safe and preventing the shooter’s writings from inspiring other would-be killers.

BROWN: Pete Blair shares the concerns of Covenant School families. Blair trains law enforcement officers across the country on how to respond to mass shootings.

PETE BLAIR: I think that one of the things we know looking at a lot of these events over a lot of years is that one of the major motivations for attackers is a desire for notoriety, fame, and the need for people to know who they are, and to get their issue out there and to make sure that everybody knows what their issue was. And it's kind of crime prevention 101 that if you know what motivates the crime, if you can reduce what motivates the crime, you reduce the occurrence of the crime.

REICHARD: But he isn’t opposed to releasing it in a limited capacity for researchers and law enforcement agencies to examine.

BLAIR: Yeah well certainly you could have the manifesto released in a very limited distribution for researchers to look at. Like I said, it could be something that's transferred to the FBI and the FBI behavioral sciences unit has done reviews of these attackers before. If they're doing an updated review, and they want to look at this particular case and look at those details. I think that that's fine. Again, I think the point here is not to disappear the person or act like the person didn't exist, but not to allow that person to get a platform to speak from because they did something horrible.

REICHARD: Some think that redacting the documents would be sufficient to prevent the shooter’s plan from inspiring copy-cat killers. But criminal profiler and psychotherapist John Kelly takes a different perspective.

JOHN KELLY: I mean this, this, this was evil, personified. And evil can only really operate in the darkness, under the cover of darkness, where, you know, really can't be seen. And I think, and I've always believed that by exposing evil to the light. In other words, in this case, bringing the manifesto out into the light. Are there warning signs that could be picked up in that manifesto? I will bet there are.

BROWN: Setting aside the contents of the manifesto, a core concern for the public is government transparency. Tennessee has laws about how public records need to be handled. Here’s Deborah Fisher, executive director of the Tennessee Coalition for Open Government.

DEBORAH FISHER: So under the Tennessee public records law, there is a presumption of openness unless something is exempted under the law. And so the judge would have to be able to identify the law that allows redaction of particular material.

BROWN: A 2016 Tennessee Supreme Court decision allows law enforcement to deny public record requests to protect an ongoing criminal prosecution. But lawyers for the groups suing for the manifesto’s release say this isn’t an ongoing investigation because the lone perpetrator is dead.

REICHARD: And Fisher said the judge deciding whether or not to release the manifesto is swimming in unprecedented legal waters.

FISHER: Our interest is if the judge makes a decision to override what is open under the public records law, that creates sort of a new law in Tennessee about what evidence is available. And could be applied in different ways, not just to this shooter's manifesto, but it can be applied in other situations where victims don't want certain evidence released to the public. And so that would create a real change in our system where a victim might have veto power. And then it is likely, I believe, that however it comes out, it probably will be appealed to the Court of Appeals, maybe to the Tennessee Supreme Court.

REICHARD: While a decision in this case will likely take months, families at Covenant school and church continue to grieve.

WORLD contributor George Grant who is also a pastor in the same presbytery says the manifesto won’t provide the answers a grieving community is searching for only the gospel can do that.

GEORGE GRANT: It's excruciatingly painful for those of us who have lost loved ones, or members of our congregations. Because nothing that will be revealed in the forensic delving into the manifesto will bring back the ones that we've lost. So there's no justice to be had, per se. And so, I think many of us are ambivalent about where the police investigation goes from here, and what might or might not be revealed in this manifesto.

BROWN: WORLD Reporter Addie Offereins contributed to this report, and you can read her coverage of the story online at wng.org. We’ve included a link in today’s transcript.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: The town of Elko, Nevada, has a problem. They’ve been invaded by Mormon crickets. Millions of them. 

KSL NEWSCAST: The Mormon Crickets, they have converged on this community. They are in the shrubs, they are in the street, they are climbing the walls.

On their own, the bugs are pretty harmless, but a swarm can damage crops, mess with ecosystems, and make roads slippery--creating a safety hazard for humans.

Steve Burrows works at the local hospital. Audio here from KSL TV.

STEVE BURROWS: We had people out there with leaf blowers, with brooms. At one point we even did have a tractor with a snowplow on it just to try to push the piles of crickets and keep them moving on their way.

Yikes! Predators who like to eat these little guys include birds, rodents, and even coyotes. But with so many to eat, bellies fill up fast.

Some people use poisons on them, but that’s gross. Piles of crickets. Not a good scent.

These Mormon crickets don’t fly, so physical barriers can work— if they’re at least two feet high and made out of something smooth and slippery. Some people say loud rock music on boom boxes works.

I’m not sure what’s worse in that scenario.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Me either. Loud music and things that crunch under foot? Sounds like a bad block party to me.

REICHARD: Yeah, I’d stay home. It’s The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Tuesday, June 13th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Coming next on The World and Everything in It: abolishing abortion.

There’s a growing subset of Christians who used to call themselves pro-life but now refuse the label even though they still oppose abortion. Instead, they call themselves abortion abolitionists.

BROWN: This spring, WORLD reporters Leah Savas and Lauren Dunn met with some of these self-proclaimed abolitionists to hear why they left the pro-life movement and what sets their position apart.

Here’s Leah with our story.

JEREMY BROWN: They're human beings. They're made in God's image and likeness.

LEAH SAVAS, REPORTER: On a crisp Friday morning, a middle-aged man with a backpack and puffy brown coat preaches into an amplifier outside of Heritage Clinic. It’s an abortion facility in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The man’s name is Jeremy Brown.

JEREMY BROWN: We want you to be able to live freely. And to be able to not be under condemnation and to be able to walk with the Lord.

Brown is a Christian. He’s against abortion. But he’s hesitant to call himself pro-life. He would have called himself that in the past, and he says he still agrees with the sentiment of the term. Yet he doesn’t agree with the strategies of the movement itself.

The mainstream pro-life movement largely uses an incremental strategy to pass legal protections for unborn babies—like 15-week bills, heartbeat bills, or regulations for distributing abortion pills.

Brown considers himself an abortion abolitionist. He wants laws that will classify abortion as homicide. Abolitionists consider anything less unjust.

JEREMY BROWN: And if you're killing that baby, and it's murder, then the mother and the father and everybody else involved should be held accountable for murder.

Mainstream pro-lifers oppose that because it would include penalties for a woman who aborts her baby. But Brown points to Bible verses condemning partiality as a Scriptural basis for this position. Abolitionists say current pro-life laws are partial by favoring mothers over their babies.

Brown learned about abolitionism online through materials from leaders like Arizona Pastor Jeff Durbin and T. Russell Hunter at Free the States. Like these abolitionist leaders, Brown believes women usually aren’t victims of abortion.

JEREMY BROWN: Without being too crude. We've heard women say, I'm gonna kill this baby. I know it's a baby. When you see it, that narrative of this is just some poor little woman who has been duped and she doesn't know what's going on and she's a victim and if if she did she surely wouldn't do this evil thing—you know?—that goes right out the window.

Brown has another issue with mainstream pro-lifers: he thinks they don’t emphasize the gospel enough. Some pro-life groups avoid spiritual topics and focus on scientific arguments to change peoples’ minds about abortion. But Brown leads with the gospel in his sidewalk ministry.

JEREMY BROWN: The gospel is the way that people are saved and the gospel is the way that you see a culture turn to Christ, and people actually love their neighbor. Right. And so if we withhold that, then we don't have anything to offer these people that that's of any significant value.

Brown is just one man in one state. But others share his beef with the current pro-life movement. Earlier this year, fellow WORLD reporter Lauren Dunn talked to attendees at an abortion abolitionist conference in Wichita, Kansas.

LAUREN DUNN: So before that, you would have called yourself pro-life.

HEATHER GULLEY: Yeah.

DUNN: Would you call yourself that now?

GULLEY: Absolutely not.

DUNN: Would you consider yourself pro-life?

MAGDALIZA SANTOS: Um, well, not anymore. Not anymore. Because I like I don't agree with, you know, incrementalis—incrementalism. I don't agree with it.

DUNN: And so what made you go from the pro-life to the abolitionists?

AMANDA SIMS: Seeing these pro-life bills that claim to save lives that pick and choose the life they save. 

Many people in the pro-life movement say women shouldn’t be punished because they are the second victims of abortion. Some of the people Lauren interviewed critiqued that idea.

JELAINE FONDREN: It's not like we want women to be punished for abortion, and we want them just to not have abortions, but in order to seek justice for the preborn, that necessitates criminalizing the act and all who are involved in it, and that includes mothers who want to kill their babies.

Instead of pushing for laws to make abortion homicide, pro-life groups target the abortion industry by limiting how, when, and where abortions can happen. That frustrates abolitionists.

GULLEY: Why are we lobbying and pushing for safer abortions or bigger hallways or, you know, more medical staff, because abortion always ends in the death of somebody, and we don't want to push for that to be safer. Unfortunately, the pro-life movement from what we've learned, is keeping abortion alive and well. And we don't want our names associated with that whatsoever.

That’s a common view among abolitionists: that the pro-life movement, not pro-abortion groups, are keeping abortion legal.

It’s true that mainstream pro-life organizations oppose abolitionist bills… laws that would classify abortion as homicide. Most conservative lawmakers in majority pro-life states vote against that kind of legislation. But the strategy of these groups is to avoid laws that the culture at large is not ready for. They think any penalties for women would give everyday people the view that pro-lifers hate women, leading to the undoing of all protections for unborn babies. They see recent pro-abortion victories at the ballot box as reason for concern.

But many abolitionists are still optimistic.

BOB GRAY: I think there's momentum growing behind the abolition movement.

That’s Bob Gray. I met him with a handful of other abolitionists outside of Camelback Family Planning—an abortion facility in Phoenix, Arizona.

GRAY: You know, I see a lot of people out here that weren't involved in this a year or two ago. And there's more and more states there, people are popping up and, you know, being willing to sponsor bills.

He’s a part of Apologia Church, the congregation under abolitionist pastor Jeff Durbin. Gray said biblical arguments brought him and his wife out of the pro-life movement and into the abolitionist camp. Scriptural arguments make him, and many other abolitionists, optimistic about their future success.

GRAY: If we believe that God's will will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Then, you know, his will is not to have babies murdered. So I have 100% confidence it will. When it—when it will happen. You know, only God knows. But abortion will be abolished.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Leah Savas in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Phoenix, Arizona.

MYRNA BROWN: To read more about the abortion abolitionist movement, check out Leah’s article “Ideological Enemies” in the latest issue of WORLD Magazine.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Tuesday, June 13th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown. Up next: WORLD Commentator Steve West on how good poetry can help us slow down and savor God’s Creation.

STEVE WEST, COMMENTATOR: I stand at the perimeter of our backyard. Huddled by the fence, lies our grill, veiled, like it is ashamed of its diminutive stature. Arcing above the tired fence is a maple that once nearly died but many years since has bent toward the sun and thrust upward.

A fence. A maple tree. Pulitzer prize-winning poet Ted Kooser writes about such common things yet under his pen the ordinary becomes luminous. Take his poem, “Snow Fence”:

The red fence
Takes the cold trail
North; no meat
On its ribs,
But neither has it
Much to carry.

Kooser is a long time inhabitant of rural Nebraska, and his poetry shines a flashlight down into the people and places of the region. Like any good poet—even one, like him, who is not a Christian—Kooser helps us slow down and pay attention to that part of Creation that’s right in front of us, that part we take for granted. He might notice a change in the weather, as in “How to Foretell a Change in the Weather”:

You will know that the weather is changing
When your sheep leave the pasture
Too slowly, and your dogs lie about
and look tired; when the cat
turns her back to the fire,
washing her face, and the pigs
wallow in litter.

The geese are too noisy, says Kooser, and swallows fly low, skimming the earth. Kooser watches Creation. He reads the clues.

In “The Red Wing Church,” Kooser laments the transformation of a church to a barn:

The good works of the Lord are all around:
the steeple top is standing in a garden
just up the alley; it’s a henhouse now:
fat leghorns gossip at its crowded door.
Pews stretch on porches up and down the street,
the stained-glass windows style the mayor’s house,
and the bell’s atop the firehouse in the square.
The cross is only God knows where.

At first glance, the poem describes loss. But a closer read shows the works of God dispersed–steeples and pews and bells displayed in Creation. God knows where the cross is. It cuts across His good works. It stands over all things.

You won’t find gospel truth here. But what Kooser gets right reminds me of another poet. In Psalm 147, the psalmist tells of how the Lord determines the number of the stars and gives each its name, prepares rain for earth and grass to grow. And the gospels remind us that He knows when a single sparrow falls from a tree.

That’s why I am here, outside, in the surprising cool of a June day, watching a cardinal and robin vie for seed, listening to the fussing of squirrels overhead in the tree, noting an idle kickball lodged against the fence, feeling the wind tapping on my bare knees.

“For God so loved the world,” says John 3:16. I’m working on that.

I’m Steve West.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Tomorrow: Donald Trump is in hot legal water with a new indictment, but what about President Biden’s history with a Ukrainian energy company? We’ll talk about what House Republicans are digging into on Washington Wednesday.

And, helping senior citizens pedal out on the open road again.

All that and more tomorrow.

One more thing: I’m invigorated that we’re in our first fundraiser of the year, one of only two we do each year to keep this enterprise going. Fuel for the car, think of it that way.

Myrna and I are in your ears right now, but all this content comes from Christian writers, editors, and producers who pray and work hard to get the stories you hear— right. Stories other media outlets don’t, or won’t, cover.

If that’s of value to you, and we sure hope it is! Please go to wng.org/donate. It’s easy, it’s fast, and it’s vital. Cannot keep this up without you! Thanks for helping us bring Christian journalism to the marketplace of ideas. wng.org/donate.

I’m Mary Reichard.

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: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the people of old received their commendation. By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.” Hebrews 11, verses 1 through 3.

Go now in grace and peace.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.