The World and Everything in It: June 24, 2026

Editor's note: The following text is a transcript of a podcast story. To listen to the story, click on the arrow beneath the headline above.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: You may remember that WORLD’s June Giving Drive began with a challenge gift that helped kick off the month with momentum.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Now, as we enter the final days of both the giving drive and our fiscal year, two generous WORLD families have stepped forward with another challenge gift—$110,000—to help us finish the way we began: strong.

Think of it as encouragement for the home stretch.

They’ve already made their commitment. Now they’re inviting you to join them if you haven’t made yours yet.

MAST: If WORLD has helped you understand the news more clearly, think more biblically about the world around you, or simply start your day better informed, we hope you’ll make a gift today.

WNG.org/donate.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Good morning!

Vice President Vance navigates his lead role in global diplomacy.

VANCE: This region has been a basket case and what the president has set us to do, again: lay the foundation, see if we can get to a permanent peace.

EICHER: That and more on Washington Wednesday with Hunter Baker.

Also today, World Tour. The U-K looks for its seventh prime minister in 10 years.

And later, the most expensive World Cup in history.

VAZQUEZ: What we've spent on the world cup is $11,911

And WORLD commentator Cal Thomas on the dangers of socialism.

MAST: It’s Wednesday, June 24th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Lindsay Mast.

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

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

AUDIO: On this motion, the yeas are 50, the nays are 48. The concurrent motion is agreed to.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Iran: War powers resolution » For the first time ever, the U.S. Senate has voted to rein in President Trump's war powers over Iran.

The resolution invokes the War Powers Act to demand an end to American military action against Iran — unless lawmakers vote to authorize it.

But it's largely symbolic: it doesn't carry the force of law, and it won't even reach Trump's desk, but it does send a message. The House passed the same measure this month, putting both chambers on record.

Tuesday's Senate vote was a turnaround. Nine straight times, Senate Democrats had tried and failed to pass something like this.

Democratic Senator Tim Kaine says the chamber has more information now than before those failed votes.

KAINE: We now have, the administration has come to us with a supplemental request asking for $80 billion more, largely necessitated by the consequences of the war to replenish munition stockpiles and take other actions.

This time, four Republicans crossed the aisle: Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, Rand Paul and Bill Cassidy.

Not every Republican was voting to oppose military action against Iran. Some, like Paul, framed it as Congress reclaiming its constitutional war-powers role. Cassidy said he needs more clarity from the administration.

Iran: GOP unease over funds to Iran » Republican unease runs deeper — many also object to the $300 billion promised to help Iran rebuild. The Trump administration says those funds would come from private sources in the Middle East, not taxpayer dollars, and would be conditional, based on Iran’s compliance.

But GOP Sen. Tim Sheehy is among those with concerns nevertheless:

SHEEHY:  They're not gonna use that cash for bridges and schools. They're not gonna use it to rebuild their country. They're gonna use it for bu- bullets, bombs, rockets, suicide vests, and to broadly kill Americans and kill Israelis

Trump heads to the Capitol this week to shore up his party.

Meantime, Sec. of State Marco Rubio says talks with Iran are on track despite some public remarks out of Tehran. After the White House announced that Iran agreed to allow international nuclear inspectors back into its facilities a Foreign Ministry spokesman claimed his government made “no new commitments” regarding nuclear inspections.

RUBIO:  We know what they agreed to. I don't know why they have to say the things they say. Whatever their internal or domestic politics is, I guess they'll navigate it. But we know what they agreed to do, and now they'll either do it or they won't.

Rubio added that if they don’t, President Trump will have some decisions to make.

Ukraine update » In Ukraine:

SOUND: Russian attack

Firefighters battled a blaze in the Odesa Region after officials say a Russian missile strike killed one person and injured three others.

Ukraine retaliated on Tuesday by striking a railway bridge and power plant in Russian-held Crimea.

Earlier this week, Ukrainian Ambassador to the UN Andrii Melnyk told the UN Security Council that nearly 40 percent of Russia's oil refineries are damaged. He said Moscow cannot sustain its military campaign.

MELNYK: Ukraine stands ready to engage in direct negotiations with Russia to secure a just and lasting peace in accordance with the UN Charter. But our patience is not endless.

PUTIN: In Russian

Russian leader Vladimir Putin accused Kyiv of using drone attacks to create a false image of strength ahead of any potential peace talks.

But Moscow does appear to be feeling the heat. Numerous regions across Russia have imposed fuel sale restrictions over rising gas prices. And fuel shortages are prompting long lines at filling stations.

Eight convicted in Texas immigration center shooting » Eight people are headed to prison for a coordinated attack on a Texas immigration detention center. WORLD’s Kristen Flavin reports:

KRISTEN FLAVIN: A federal court Tuesday sentenced the ringleader of the group, Benjamin Song, to 100 years behind bars. Prosecutors say he opened fire on police outside the Prairieland (PRAIR-ee-land) facility near Dallas last Fourth of July. Body-camera video caught him shouting "get to the rifles" as an officer was shot in the neck. The other seven defendants drew 30 to 70 years.

Authorities say the group plotted the ambush to strike at immigration enforcement, luring officers out with fireworks before the shooting started.

The Justice Department calls it the country's first federal terrorism case tied to antifa.

The wounded officer has fully recovered. A jury convicted nine in all back in March; the ninth will be sentenced next week. Seven more defendants pleaded guilty earlier to supporting the attack.

For WORLD, I’m Kristen Flavin.

MLB commissioner admits mistake re: pride caps » Three San Francisco Giants pitchers have not been and will not be punished for writing Bible verses on their so-called Pride Night caps. That's the word from Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred.

In a letter to Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, Manfred admitted the league acted too soon: it issued a warning before realizing that not all Giants players were told they could skip wearing the rainbow caps altogether.

Still, the Justice Department has referred the matter to federal regulators, citing religious-discrimination concerns.

The pitchers wrote the scriptures on their caps during the Giants' LGBT Pride Night this month — one pointing to Genesis, where the rainbow marks God's covenant.

NY drag queen school board VP arrested » A New York school board official is behind bars on child-exploitation and pornography charges.. WORLD’s Benjamin Eicher has more.

BENJAMIN EICHER: Police arrested Travis Longo — vice president of the Cazenovia school board in central New York. Longo made headlines in 2024, when he became the first drag queen performer elected to a public school board.

Authorities say the 46-year-old sent sexually explicit messages to a child under 12, and charged him with four counts of child endangerment. He also faces federal charges of receiving and possessing child pornography, after investigators say they found explicit videos on his phone — including infants being abused. If convicted, he faces at least five years in federal prison.

Longo resigned after the board — which called the allegations shocking — voted to begin the long process of removing him.

For WORLD, I’m Benjamin Eicher.

I'm Kent Covington.

Coming up, Hunter Baker is standing by for Washington Wednesday.  And later: A look at the most expensive World Cup in history.

This is The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s Wednesday the 24th of June.

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

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

First up, Washington Wednesday. This week, the Trump administration claimed the largest health care fraud bust in American history. Vice President J.D. Vance emerged as the face of both anti-fraud enforcement and high-stakes diplomacy with Iran.

EICHER: Democrats, meanwhile, got a real-time test of how far the party’s socialist wing can extend its influence beyond a single mayoral race in New York. And in Washington, even the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has become a political controversy. President Trump painted it blue, and it made Democrats green with algae.

Hunter Baker is here. Good morning.

HUNTER BAKER: Good morning.

EICHER: Well, the Trump administration announced charges against hundreds of defendants in what officials describe as the largest health care fraud takedown in American history. It involves billions of dollars in allegedly fraudulent claims. So, true or false here: when fraud reaches this kind of scale, the problem is not the crime, it’s the government. True or false, Hunter?

BAKER: I think that both things are true. I think that crime obviously is sort of an eternal problem in human affairs, this side of paradise anyway. And when you have a government that becomes really large, it is going to attract fraud.

In fact, I think the dynamic that people need to understand is that anytime there is an ocean, just a vast ocean of money that is freely available from the government for different kinds of programs and reimbursements, there is a strong incentive to figure out how to extract that money.

Most voters have a diffuse interest in controlling fraud. They’re not thinking about it all the time. They’re not demanding that somebody’s doing it all the time. And the politicians are not thinking about it. So fraud can proliferate fairly easily in a free society with a very large government.

MAST: Well, Hunter, for years conservatives have talked about waste, fraud, and abuse. Does this case suggest they were understating the problem, or they didn’t have the stomach for the fight to come?

BAKER: I think that politicians in the United States have loved to talk about waste, fraud, and abuse in a theoretical sort of a way. When asked how we can afford a certain program, they would always calculate some amount of waste, fraud, and abuse that they would be able to reduce, and we have never really seen that.

So I think we’ve been aware of the problem. I think you said they didn’t have the stomach. I think that’s exactly right—not the stomach or the eye for detail.

This is unglamorous hard work. And then once you do it and you actually catch the wrongdoers, there’s some serious political benefit.

EICHER: All right, prediction for you: does this become one of the administration’s strongest political arguments heading into the midterms? Do they use this?

BAKER: If they’re smart, they will. I mean, I can’t think of anybody—this is not a partisan issue. Voters do not want to see fraud in our country’s major health programs or other programs that are designed to benefit people.

People should understand that every dollar that goes to some thief or swindler is one dollar that does not go to somebody who deserves it. And it also is part of that sort of reckless spending by the government that ends up helping to cause inflation and to add to the deficit, which is growing at a breakneck pace.

So this is a huge issue.

MAST: Well, similar to Marco Rubio, J.D. Vance is now wearing several hats at once. He’s leading the administration’s anti-fraud effort. He’s playing a central role in negotiations with Iran. And he’s released a new memoir that reads, in part, like a statement of political philosophy. Hunter, is J.D. Vance still Trump’s running mate, or is he front-runner to succeed the president?

BAKER: He is occupying a very interesting sort of place in American politics right now.

Yes, he’s the guy who Trump chose. We may all remember that there was quite a sweepstakes. Who was Trump going to choose? Well, he chose J.D. Vance, who was ambitious and who wanted that role.

As we pass the midterms, that sort of lame-duck mantle will settle firmly upon Trump’s shoulders. I think that’s part of why Trump has been more active with endorsements. He’s trying to ensure that he remains relevant instead of sort of fading into the shadow of whoever is going to run next.

I have to note that with this new memoir, he sort of joins the small club with Barack Obama of two politicians who, while still fairly young, had already had two memoirs, so there’s that.

I also can’t help but notice that he bears some similarity to young Richard Nixon. Nixon was in the U.S. Senate for about five minutes before he was tapped to be the vice-presidential nominee for Dwight Eisenhower. And so Vance similarly was chosen very quickly upon his entry into the Senate.

So he’s a big deal. He’s front and center right now. And I feel like his fortunes are going to rise and fall with the way the ultimate settlement of affairs in Iran lies.

EICHER: So thinking about 2028 then, Hunter, what about Marco Rubio? What about Ron DeSantis? What about a more traditional Republican and the rest of the field, however it might shake out?

BAKER: I have a real passion for good government, and I think if that’s what people really cared about, then Ron DeSantis’s stock would be really high.

EICHER: But they don’t, is what you’re saying. Right?

BAKER: I suspect (laughing), I suspect that will not be the determining factor.

It looks to me like it’s going to be a slugfest between J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio, but it may not be. Rubio has acted like he would defer to Vance, but if things with Iran fall apart, then Rubio’s star may rise.

MAST: All right, Hunter, fill in the blank. If Vance becomes president someday, historians will say his defining idea was—

EICHER: —blank.

BAKER: Anti-war.

He was obviously a veteran in our conflicts earlier in the century. He has been vocal about his desire to keep the United States out of international wars and misadventures. And I think that would be his defining idea.

EICHER: Well, New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani urged voters to support a broader slate of allied candidates in congressional and legislative races in New York. Last night’s results certainly are strong evidence that Mamdani’s movement extends beyond himself.

Hunter, on congressional races, Mamdani’s picks were three for three. In two of the races, socialists knocked off Democrat incumbents. A Democratic Socialists spokesperson in New York specifically called out Hakeem Jeffries, the Democrat leader in the U.S. House. She said, “Americans are tired of status quo politics.”

So imagine, Hakeem Jeffries, of all people, called out for not being partisan enough. What an ideological shift last night.

BAKER: It’s pretty shocking if you think about it.

In your narrative there, you talked about socialists defeating Democrat incumbents. More accurately, we would say socialists defeated progressives. The socialists are rooting out the progressives in New York, which is a pretty significant kind of statement.

And of course, to see Hakeem Jeffries, who is maybe the most partisan Democrat in Congress, be called out as too much of a compromiser, as not being partisan enough, is shocking.

Now, what I will say is that the strategy has been brilliant in the United States. We have a two-party binary, and so if you try to start a third party, whether the sort of way that H. Ross Perot did or the way the Green Party did, typically you fail.

What the socialists have done is they have decided to operate within the Democratic Party, so a third party within one of the two parties. And they are winning that fight within the Democratic Party, at least in New York.

MAST: Well, beyond New York, Hunter, I know you were watching the South Carolina GOP governor’s primary with interest. What was important there?

BAKER: We had a runoff between the state’s attorney general, Alan Wilson, and the state’s lieutenant governor, Pam Evette.

And what was interesting is that in the original primary, Trump had endorsed Evette, and so she was going into this runoff with Wilson with that endorsement.

But strangely, a few days before the runoff, Trump basically said that he endorsed both. I suspect that’s because he saw the way the wind was blowing and Wilson was likely to win. And indeed that’s what happened. Wilson did win, which I think is encouraging. He’s arguably the biggest pro-life politician in the state.

EICHER: Well, Hunter, as we go out, Algae Gate. We’ve got to know about this.

When President Trump says that vandalism is responsible for problems at the newly renovated Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, internal documents, if The New York Times is to be believed, suggest the story may be a bit more complicated, involving equipment failures, algae growth, and peeling sealant after just a couple of weeks, which seems kind of strange.

But what is the lesson of Algae Gate here? Do we have Trump derangement syndrome at its most deranged?

BAKER: I think the lesson is that the Reflecting Pool is a problem. It was a problem addressed by President Bush. It was a problem addressed by President Obama. And now it is being addressed by President Trump.

And here’s what I would say: if any president should be trusted with a project of this type, it maybe is Donald Trump. …

EICHER: … the skating rink.

BAKER: Yes, I have pointed out that he is actually a public administration case study for his work on the New York City skating rink. And I think that he’s probably better set up to deal with a problem like this than almost anybody else.

MAST: Hunter Baker is provost at North Greenville University and our regular Washington Wednesday contributor. Thank you so much, Hunter.

BAKER: Thank you.

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

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced his resignation this week—the sixth to exit in ten years.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Who’s in the running to replace him, and what can the next leader do to steady the premiership?

WORLD’s Mary Reichard has the story.

MARY REICHARD: Prime Minister Keir Starmer addressed the press outside number 10 Downing Street on Monday.

STARMER: Walking up this street two years ago was the proudest moment of my life: a new Labour government, the first in 14 years.

He touted economic and welfare policies his liberal majority achieved, but then admitted it was time for a change.

STARMER: The question my party is asking now is whether I am best placed to lead us into the next general election.

That answer was “No.”

DUERR: A lot of labor leaders look at him and say there's no clear vision that he's not fixing the issues of the economy or immigration.

Glen Duerr was born in the UK and now teaches International Studies at Cedarville University in Ohio.

He says the issues that rocked Starmer’s term date back ten years, to the Brexit referendum of 2016.

DUERR: Roughly 550 out of the 650 parliamentarians at the time opposed Brexit. The people voted differently, some 51.9% voted in favor of Brexit, and ultimately it took until January of 2020 to leave the European Union.

Prime Minister David Cameron resigned soon after that vote.

CAMERON: I was absolutely clear about my belief that Britain is stronger safer and better off inside the European Union but the British people have made a very clear decision to take a different path.

That started a trend of Prime Ministers with short tenures. Theresa May in 2019:

MAY: I believe it was right to persevere, even when the odds against success seemed high. But it is now clear to me that it is in the best interests of the country for a new Prime Minister to lead that effort.

Boris Johnson in 2022:

JOHNSON: It is clearly now the will of the parliamentary conservative party that there should be a new leader of that party and therefore a new prime minister.

Johnson’s successor, Liz Truss, made strong attempts to lower taxes and boost growth, but resigned after just 45 days.

TRUSS: I recognize though given the situation I cannot deliver the mandate on which I was elected by the conservative party.

Conservative Rishi Sunak spent two years working to fix the economy and illegal immigration. But in 2024, British voters booted Conservatives from power by electing a Labour majority to the House of Commons. Here’s Sunak.

SUNAK: I have given this job my all but you have sent a clear signal that the government of the United Kingdom must change and yours is the only judgment that matters.

Now Starmer’s resignation kicks off Labour party elections for a new leader to replace him by September.

Duerr suspects that in addition to a failure of economic and immigration policy, Starmer stumbled on the foreign policy front, favoring relationships with center and leftist leaders over conservatives.

DUERR: His relationship, for example, with President Trump was really quite good from 2024 into 2025, but it really soured to the point where the United States is celebrating its 250th anniversary, King Charles came over. It wasn't Keir Starmer.

Duerr says the front-runner among several potential Labour party candidates is a Member of Parliament from Manchester: Andy Burnham.

DUERR: He recently won a by-election in Makerfield in the northwest of England, and he was the sitting mayor of Greater Manchester. He also held some cabinet positions, and so he is very experienced, and a lot of Labour leaders like him, they think he will have a clearer vision.

Nominations for Starmer’s replacement will open on July 9th. Whoever wins will need to convince British voters to keep him or her in power after the next General Election, which the law requires to take place by 2029.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Mary Reichard.

AUDIO: Oyez, oyez, oyez!

NICK EICHER, HOST: An Australian town crier has a new proclamation:

He’s officially the loudest man in the world.

Fifty-eight-year-old Joseph McGrail-Bateup set a Guinness World Record with a shout measured at 122.4 decibels.

For reference: That’s louder than a chain saw, but a touch quieter than the sound of a jet taking off.

MCGRAIL:-BATEUP: It took me seven attempts just for one word, which was the word “now,” and my voice was shot for the next couple of days.

McGrail-Bateup says he discovered the record while looking for town-crier accomplishments in the Guinness book.

He broke a mark that had stood for more than three decades, when the now-second loudest person in the world shouted, with a trace of irony: “QUIET!”

It’s The World and Everything in It.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Today is Wednesday, June 24th.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Lindsay Mast.

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

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: The World Cup.

This year, the United States is co-hosting the global soccer showcase for the first time since 1994. Canada and Mexico also are hosting venues. And it happens to be the most expensive World Cup ever for fans.

SOUND: [Soccer match]

Ticket prices may be too rich for some die-hard fans and that leaves a few empty seats in some stadiums … but for others, money’s no object when it comes to experiencing a World Cup.

SOUND: [Atlanta streets]

MAST: On a humid Thursday afternoon in Atlanta, about 70,000 fans watched South Africa and Czechia compete. A little more than a mile away, hundreds more watched the game on a large screen in Centennial Olympic park.

Some had tickets to see live games elsewhere. Nina Wenklaar of Curaçao paid more than $700 combined to see her team play in Houston and Kansas City.

WENKLAAR: I know it's a lot, but it's a once in a lifetime experience. So for us, no price can overdo that.

That’s not a universal sentiment.

Soccer player Damian Efraingarro lives in Georgia, but his family is from Argentina. He wanted to watch the legendary Lionel Messi play in person but couldn’t.

EFRAINGARRO: It's just, it doesn't make a lot of sense for it to be that much money, to be honest.

EICHER: In the early stages of ticket sales, FIFA offered a $60 option. But that price was for only a fraction of the tickets. Most group stage games cost hundreds. For the final match in July, prices start at about $11,000 on FIFA’s resale marketplace.

Victor Matheson is an economics professor at the College of the Holy Cross. He says it hasn’t always been this way. When he saw Spain play Germany in the 1994 World Cup, Matheson paid just $50.

MATHESON: At the minimum, we’re talking about tickets that are four times as much after inflation.

MAST: This year, FIFA is using dynamic ticket pricing. Kind of like airline tickets… the costs change based on demand. FIFA also controls resale and charges both the buyer and reseller an additional 15%.

MATHESON: In 1994, you had to actually print a ticket and write a price on it. And there were laws that prevented resale at higher prices.

Matheson believes FIFA changed prices partly because Americans have more disposable income than in the past. In 2024, the median household income was above $83,000. In 1994, that figure was $63-K. And generally speaking, the whole world is wealthier.

MATHESON: We have a large number of people who can afford to purchase tickets in a way they couldn't before.

Plus, soccer is becoming more popular with a growing number of Americans.

MATHESON: We have more people in the United States today that identify soccer as their favorite sport than there are people in England who do the same.

EICHER: Generally, Americans are used to expensive sporting events. The average cost of seeing pro football or major league baseball in person rose 300% between 1990s and the early 2020s.

But few fans expected World Cup ticket prices to soar as they did. Some predicted the increase would affect attendance… and at least three games have had more than 1,000 empty seats each. But that’s not even 2% of seats in stadiums that hold more than 60,000 fans.

There are more countries competing than ever before, so matches between smaller nations may not be as popular at such high prices. But Matheson says early worries about half-full stadiums have been overblown.

MATHESON: I’d say the concern is real, but so far we've seen pretty exciting in-stadium environments.

A trip to the United States was always out of the budget for many international fans. And that is how it’s always been.

MATHESON: Even in the old days of the 1994 World Cup, the subsistence farmer in Romania was not able to make it to Detroit to see their team match up against Switzerland. Anytime you've got an international tournament involving 5,000 miles of travel and some type of lodging for weeks, this was always an event for the rich.

MAST: Some fans invented creative justifications. Viviana Vazquez got married last year … and made the World Cup part of the honeymoon experience.

VAZQUEZ: To date what we've spent on the world cup so far is eleven thousand nine hundred and eleven dollars and that includes like what we've spent at the games and like transportation and all that.

Vazquez and her husband have been able to afford five World Cup games because they started saving in 2022. Many die-hard soccer fans didn’t do that kind of preparation.

VAZQUEZ: There's a lot of people that I know or that I've heard that are taking on debt to be able to buy a ticket, I think that stress is not worth it.

AUDIO: [Sound of watch party]

Still, some are enjoying the World Cup experience outside the stadiums. Back in Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta, Kevin Bolaños traveled from Costa Rica, just to be nearby.

BOLANOS: Soccer, football, whatever. It's like my passion since I was a kid. I used to play football since I was four years old. So I'm a big fan of this. So to have the World Cup this close was really a great opportunity to come.

NICK EICEHR, HOST: Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

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

As America prepares to celebrate its 250th anniversary, one group is planning an unusual reminder of what freedom is—and what happens when it disappears. Here is WORLD commentator Cal Thomas.

CAL THOMAS: In the classic film Doctor Zhivago, a revolutionary commander explains that private affections, family loyalties, even personal convictions must yield to the demands of history.

Then he delivers one of the most revealing lines ever spoken in a movie.

COMMANDER: Private life is dead for a man with any manhood.

ZHIVAGO: We saw a sample of your manhood on the way. A place called Mink.

COMMANDER: They’ve been selling horses to the Whites.

ZHIVAGO: No. It seems you burnt the wrong village.

COMMANDER: They always say that. And what does it matter? A village betrays us. A village is burnt. The point’s made.

ZHIVAGO: Your point. Their village.

COMMANDER: Molya!

In other words, the state comes first. The individual comes second.

That wasn’t merely a movie script. It was the governing philosophy of communist regimes throughout the 20th century.

Now, as America approaches its semi-quincentennial, a small organization is planning an anti-communist film festival featuring movies like Doctor Zhivago and Red Dawn. The organizers say their original venue backed away from the project. It appears the screenings will now take place at the Victims of Communism Museum in Washington.

But the larger question remains: Why is there such interest in revisiting these stories in the first place?

Many younger Americans know socialism only as a theory. They never experienced its consequences. These films show what happened when socialism and communism moved from theory to government.

But they show something else, too.

In Red Dawn, a group of American teenagers finds itself resisting a foreign occupation. After a successful attack against enemy forces, one of them shouts a single word:

AUDIO: Wolverines!

It’s a brief moment, but it captures an enduring truth.

If Doctor Zhivago shows the temptation of totalitarianism, Red Dawn shows the refusal to surrender to it.

One film declares that history has killed the personal life.

The other insists that some things are still worth defending: Family, home, freedom.

The story of liberty is not merely the story of bad ideas gaining power. It is the story of ordinary people refusing to yield to them.

Socialism and communism have been tried. The historical record is complete.

The question is whether enough Americans still remember it.

For WORLD, I’m Cal Thomas.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Tomorrow: a new data center divides a rural Michigan community. We’ll have a report. And, how one author fits UFO sightings into a Christian worldview. That and more tomorrow.

I’m Lindsay Mast.

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

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio. WORLD’s mission is biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

The Bible says, “For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope. May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.” (ESV) —Romans 15:4-7

Go now in grace and peace.

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