The World and Everything in It: June 27, 2023

PREROLL: The World and Everything in It is made possible by listeners like us. We're the from Elk Grove, California. I, Jane, beloved wife of 53 years continued to be a prayer counselor, Iron, and a director for the Association of Christian Schools International. We are founding subscribers of WORLD Magazine. We hope you enjoy today's program. 

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning! Nearly 40 years ago Congress passed the last immigration reform, but now a new bipartisan proposal is on the table. Does it have a shot?

KAMSAKI: The lesson I think, from history, is immigration is hard. And it's not surprising if it dies a couple of times before it gets enacted.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Also what happened to the Titan submersible, and why did it take so long for us to find out? Plus a blacksmith family is forging more than steel.

LONON: So how many children get to grow up in a three generation neighborhood like, every day, working in the garden, working the shop together?

And WORLD Founder Joel Belz with a commentary on ethics and human origins.

REICHARD: It’s Tuesday, June 27th. 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: Time now for news with Kent Covington.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Russia » The leader of the Wagner mercenary group is defending his short-lived insurrection in Russia.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, in an 11-minute online rant, said he wasn’t seeking to stage a coup but was acting to prevent the destruction of his private military.

He said, “We started our march because of an injustice.” He has claimed that the Russian military attacked his forces.

President Biden, meantime, says the United States and its allies jointly decided to stay tight-lipped as Prigozhin’s troops marched to Moscow.

JOE BIDEN: They agreed with me that we had to make sure we gave Putin no excuse, let me emphasize, we gave Putin no excuse to blame this on the West or to blame this on NATO. We made clear that we were not involved.

Belarus helped broker a deal between Prigozhin and the Kremlin on Sunday.

In the wake of the ordeal, Moscow is working to project stability to the Russian people, posting a video Monday of Russia’s defense minister reviewing troops in Ukraine.

SCOTUS » The Supreme Court on Monday opted to step aside in battle over how to draw Congressional boundary lines in Louisiana. WORLD’s Anna Johansen Brown has more.

ANNA JOHANSEN BROWN: The high court lifted its hold on the Louisiana political remap case. A legal battle dragged on for more than a year with a federal judge and Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards saying the map drawn by Republicans is unfair to black voters.

The court’s ruling follows its decision to turn away a redistricting case in Alabama earlier this month.

The justices on Monday also dealt a blow to Democrats … ruling a lawsuit challenging for President Trump’s ownership of a Washington hotel while he was president should be tossed out.

And the high court decided not to get involved in a case regarding a dress code at a charter school.

For WORLD, I’m Anna Johansen Brown.

Becerra » Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra says his department is set to go on the “offensive” in promoting gay and transgender rights.

Becerra kicked off the department’s first ever Pride Summit by saying there is a need for the government “to move faster” to push the LGBT agenda.

He told attendees. “Let’s play on the offensive and let’s grow.”

The Biden administration has suggested states that pass laws to protect children from transgender procedures are “breeding hate.”

Starbucks » Meantime, some Starbucks employees went on strike over the weekend over a perceived lack of company support for LGBT “Pride” month. WORLD’s Kristen Flavin has more.

KRISTEN FLAVIN: The union that organized the strike timed the walkout to force the company to temporarily shutter 21 of its stores, including its flagship location in Seattle.

The workers were responding to reports that the company banned “Pride” displays in its stores this month in the wake of the Bud Light and Target boycotts.

Starbucks refutes those reports. It insists nothing has changed and that the Pride flag still flies over its headquarters.

In a statement, the company said, “We want to be crystal clear: Starbucks will continue to be at the forefront of supporting the LGBTQIA2+ community, and we will not waver in that commitment.”

Starbucks also recently ran an ad in India promoting transgenderism.

For WORLD, I’m Kristen Flavin.

Cancer Treatment » The next big advance in cancer treatment could be a vaccine.

Scientists say a vaccine would be used to shrink tumors and hamper the disease’s ability to come back after treatments. The vaccines use mRNA to get the body’s own immune system to attack the cancer.

Dr. Nora Disis works with the University of Washington’s Cancer Vaccine Institute:

NORA DISIS: I am pretty confident that in the next 5 to 8 years, we will have approval of more than one cancer vaccine to be used in that area of preventing disease recurrence.

Scientists are conducting a number of trials to study the efficacy and safety of cancer vaccines.

Hajj » Possibly the largest ever annual Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia is underway with more than two million people participating.

It’s the largest mass pilgrimage since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Hajj was effectively canceled in 2020.

Pilgrims began circling the Islamic site The Kaaba seven times on Sunday.

Muslims are generally expected to make the trip at least once in their life.

I’m Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: A new attempt to fix immigration in Congress. Plus, hammering out a family legacy.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Tuesday, the 27th of June, 2023.

This is WORLD Radio and we’re so glad you’ve joined us today! Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. First up on The World and Everything in It: a shot at bipartisan immigration reform.

Last month, two Hispanic lawmakers from opposing parties came together to introduce a piece of legislation aimed at solving one of America’s biggest problems.

MARIA SALAZAR: The Dignity Act is what this country needs because we have a major problem called immigration. In the last 30 years this body, Congress, has not been able to come together and create legislation that is good for both parties.

That’s Rep. Maria Salazar, a Republican from Florida. Audio courtesy of The Washington Post.

SALAZAR: Number one is it seals the border, it controls the border, it puts an order at the border because no country that respects itself could have the border in the situation that we have the southern border at this hour.

But it also increases legal immigration and gives immigrants living in the U-S illegally an opportunity to earn legal status.

The last time something like this was tried, Ronald Reagan was president. He ended up signing the last comprehensive immigration reform bill in 1986.

Back then Charles Kamasaki spent years advocating for the reform bill with a group called UnidosUS. The bill was introduced in the Senate three times before it finally got through Congress and to the President’s desk.

CHARLES KAMASAKI: And if you want to go back even further, antecedents of this bill had been made literally since 1952. So you know, the lesson I think, from history, is immigration is hard. And it's not surprising if it dies a couple of times before it gets enacted.

REICHARD: No reform bill has made it through since, though Congress got close in 2006 and 2013. But Kamasaki thinks the Dignity Act might have a chance.

KAMASAKI: I mean, first of all, it's bipartisan. Right and just anything bipartisan these days is noteworthy.

And there is a bipartisan sense that the immigration situation has reached crisis levels. Immigration authorities encountered illegal immigrants at the southern border a record number of times last year, 2.76 million to be exact. And U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement released thousands of immigrants into the country to await court hearings that are years away because of backlogs.

TARA WATSON: They're trying to speed up the asylum process, which is, I think, a really good goal.

Tara Watson is an economist with the Brookings Institution who focuses on immigration.

WATSON: Right now, it's, you know, years in the queue of waiting for an asylum claim. And then people often are residing in the U.S. and they make their home here. And then if their asylum claim is turned down, that's a very disruptive removal. So it'd be better if those decisions could be made more quickly.

EICHER: To that end, the bill proposes setting up five humanitarian campuses at the southern border. There, asylum officers would process claims within 60 days. It would also create more legal pathways for workers without college degrees to work in agriculture and construction jobs.

But the bill also proposes things conservatives have objected to in the past. For example, it would provide a pathway to permanent status for so-called Dreamers. These are people who were brought to the U.S. illegally when they were children. And perhaps most controversially, it gives the rest of the illegal immigrants living in the U.S. the opportunity to earn legal status likely incentivizing more illegal crossings.

But Representative Salazar explains the benefits of the bill wouldn’t come for free.

SALAZAR: People who have been here for more than five years, have American kids or can pay taxes are working so those people come out of the shadows under what I call the dignity status , and that is for seven years. And those seven years you pay $5,000. You do not have access to government programs.

REICHARD: To be clear, this program would not offer amnesty or let immigrants off the hook for entering the country illegally. Instead, it offers a way for illegal immigrants to get right with the law. Matthew Soerens is vice president of advocacy and policy for World Relief and the national coordinator for the Evangelical Immigration Table. He says it’s important to make that distinction.

SOERENS: You have people paying really significant restitution for having violated immigration law, but it does make it possible for them to they're in permanent legal status. And for them, those who want to take some additional steps even to pursue US citizenship if they're willing to go through that process.

That process points to another surprising aspect of this bill. Not only does it have bipartisan support, Representative Salazar makes a Bible-based appeal. WORLD’s Addie Offereins explains:

ADDIE OFFEREINS: And so you have the Dignity Act in the title. But the idea of the dignity program is that someone who has violated the law is able to make restitution by paying fines by paying taxes and kind of earn their way to a legal status in the United States. She sees this as reflecting those biblical principles of dignity for someone created in God's image, but then this idea of redemption, and that they are able to earn this legal status, even though they have violated the law.

EICHER: According to the bill, once illegal immigrants complete the seven-year program, the Dignity program, they can live and work in the country on a five-year, renewable basis. That’s called Dignity status. Or, by completing the five-year Redemption program, they can work their way towards citizenship.

So far, the two representatives have recruited 10 cosponsors: 5 of them democrats and 5 of them republicans. It could take years for something like the Dignity Act to move forward, but Matthew Soerens says it’s the best shot at comprehensive reform in decades.

SOERENS: But frankly, this is like the best good faith genuinely bipartisan effort that we've seen since 2013. To broadly reform our immigration laws, not just one little part of it.

This story was written and reported by WORLD’s Compassion reporter, Addie Offereins.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: The aftermath of an undersea tragedy.

Last week, a submersible taking tourists to view the Titanic went missing in Atlantic waters 13,000 feet deep. Agencies worldwide launched searches for it, hoping they could find it before the oxygen ran out.

NICK EICHER, HOST: But then on Thursday officials found the sub’s wreckage not too far from the Titanic wreckage. Turns out the sub imploded early in its voyage. What happened, and why did it take four days to find out?

WORLD’s Mary Muncy has the story.

WILLIAM TOTI: There are times in your life when you think you're right and you hope you're wrong.

MARY MUNCY, REPORTER: That’s William Toti, a retired Navy submariner who has spent a total of more than four years of his life underwater.

TOTI: It was merely a guess that the moment that they lost contact a catastrophic event had occurred.

On Sunday, June 18th, five crew members: A British billionaire, two members of a Pakistani business family, a Titanic expert, and the pilot who was also the CEO went down in the Titan submersible. Less than two hours later, they lost contact with the mothership.

Submersibles differ from submarines in that they require another ship to launch and return.

The owner of the submersible, Oceangate Expeditions, said the Titan had about four days’ supply of oxygen.

SOUND: [Rescue plane searching]

So officials sent planes to see if it had surfaced somewhere else and dropped sonar buoys into the ocean to try to hear them.

But they were searching for a needle in a haystack.

Then, on Thursday, they found pieces of debris on the ocean floor about sixteen hundred feet from the Titanic.

First Coast Guard District Rear Admiral John Mauger:

JOHN MAUGER: This is a incredibly unforgiving environment down there on the sea floor and the debris is consistent with a catastrophic implosion of the vessel.

The U.S. Navy also said Thursday it had detected a sound consistent with an implosion at the time the sub lost contact. So why didn’t the Navy say so sooner?

TOTI: When you have something like this happen, there's no automated system that says, hey, that's an implosion, something bad just happened.

Toti says the Navy would have had to sift through noise from other people and the ocean itself, sometimes from miles away.

TOTI: So you don't if you don't know what you're looking for, it takes you a lot of time to say, "hey, that's suspicious."

He says they still would have launched the search even if they’d known about the implosion sound on Sunday.

TOTI: Because you're not going to say, “Oh, we got an implosion. Everybody give up, they're dead.” You're not going to do that. Okay, you're gonna still do the kinds of things we did, until you know with certainty that, you know, there's there's no hope.

OceanGate has made two previous expeditions to the Titanic, in 2021 and 2022. According to its website it had also planned 18 dives this summer.

In 2018, more than three dozen people signed a letter to OceanGate saying the company’s “experimental” approach would lead to catastrophe on its mission to visit the Titanic.

The Titan is a 22-foot-long vessel made of titanium and carbon fiber with one window in the front.

TOTI: Titanium is a very strong metal, but it's also very difficult to weld well.

He says welding defects could have caused the failure.

TOTI: But there can also be metallurgical defects in the crystalline structure of the metal that might cause it to crack and fail.

Carbon fiber, on the other hand, is a new material in the last 30 years or so, and Toti says it's even newer to vessels that experience internal or external pressure.

TOTI: And carbon fiber has a defect mechanism where it delaminates and gets weaker if it's not handled very gingerly.

It also doesn’t join well with any other material, including titanium.

TOTI: This company was known for wanting to lean into the technology.

OceanGate published a blog post in 2019 that said the Titan wasn’t certified because it would have taken years for the technology to be approved.

Instead, they said they performed their own tests and used their own risk management team.

There are several agencies that certify submersibles, but those are voluntary. There are no governments that regulate vessels in international waters where the submersible was being used.

A government may have certain standards for the vessel that left its shores carrying the submersible, but it likely wouldn’t regulate the vessel onboard.

Toti is concerned that the submarine illustrates that if a person has enough money, he or she can build something without any oversight.

TOTI: For decades, people have been climbing up Mount Everest and dying, doing it. And there's no international organization that certifies you that you're prepared, ready, and ought to be someone who climbs Mount Everest.

The argument is that if someone knows the risk, has enough money to do it, and can convince a sherpa to take him, he should be allowed to do it.

TOTI: I'm not sure these people actually knew the risk.

He says people generally understand the risks of Mount Everest—they know whether they are physically capable of making the journey.

TOTI: In this case, there's no way to independently assess your readiness, and your vessel's readiness to take that journey, you have to push the I believe button.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Mary Muncy.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Looks like those record-breaking snows that fell this winter will be sticking around until at least the 4th of July. And that seems fitting, given Americans’ affinity for watermelon on the Fourth: because this year, out in the Utah mountains, they’re reporting the appearance of what they’re calling watermelon snow.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Sounds de-lish.

RESIDENT: Never heard that that could happen, so I was from a technical perspective interested to see that.

EICHER: But don’t be fooled. It’s actually blooming algae, and the blooms have a pink color and sort of a sweet smell. Thus the name Watermelon snow.

So is it safe to eat? Well, it probably won’t hurt you but experts don’t recommend it.

Of course, if they really want to discourage eating it, they could call it by its other name: blood snow.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Tuesday, June 27th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day. Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Coming next on The World and Everything in It: back to the family business.

For much of human history, families lived and worked together. Parents, grandparents, kids, cousins. Passing on tricks of the trade and wisdom for life from one generation to the next.

REICHARD: We see less of that these days. But one family in North Carolina is doing more: returning to their roots and building a life the good, old-fashioned way.

WORLD features reporter Grace Snell has the story.

SOUND: [BIRDS CHIRPING, HIGHWAY RUSHING]

GRACE SNELL, REPORTER: There’s a small workshop at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Marion, North Carolina. Just off the highway, it stands under spreading oak trees. Wood-paneled walls shelter crowded worktables and heavy machinery.

SOUND: [BIRDS CHIRPING DISTANT HAMMERING]

Jason Lonon is already hard at work inside. He’s a blacksmith and woodworker.

SOUND: [HAND HAMMERING]

Today, Lonon’s making an adze—something like a curved axe for shaping wood. He beats the glowing metal into shape on an old-fashioned anvil.

SOUND: [HAND HAMMERING]

A small forge heats the metal up to two-thousand degrees.

SOUND: [TONGS CLINKING]

Then, Lonon carries it over to a machine with a foot-operated hammer arm.

SOUND: [LITTLE POWER HAMMER SOUNDS]

Lonon makes his living this way, fashioning handmade woodworking tools. Things like axes, chisels, hammers, and gouges.

JASON LONON: We have identified a variety of specialty wood carving tools that aren’t being produced in great quantity. And that’s kind of given us a bit of an edge that we do a lot of tools that are difficult to make that are hard to find.

But it’s not just about making tools. It’s about making a life the good old-fashioned way: founded on faith, family, and hard work.

LONON: One of the things that I keep coming back to is that we’re not just building a business, we’re building a life. And a lot of people get mixed up that their career and their business is the goal. It’s not. Life is the goal. Family is the goal.

Lonon built his business “in the spirit of the old cottage industry.” His team of family and friends work independently from their own homes, with their own tools, on their own time.

Lonon’s family has lived on this land since the 1840s. He bought their current home from his great-uncle in 2016. His brother-in-law and fellow craftsman Paul Clark moved his family back here just a few months ago.

PAUL CLARK: And I grew up out out west out in Idaho, and I think I had best childhood ever doing a lot of gardening and playing in the woods, whatever. So that’s, that’s the life I want to give my kids is run through the woods with their cousins and play and creeks and get dirty and play with sticks. And, you know, none of these video game things and you know, that’s, that’s not part of our life.

It’s not just video games. They like to keep their work low-tech, too.

LONON: So this is the machine shop: Lathe, milling machine, shaper, drill press, these all date from between 19, Well, probably late 1800s.

Most people don’t want these old contraptions anymore. Lonon buys them cheap and fixes them up. He reads old books to learn how to use them.

SOUND: [MILLING MACHINE]

LONON: This has a four tooth rotary cutter that spins and I use these handles to move the work side to side, in and out. Think of it like an Etch-A-Sketch. And we’re able to make very precise shapes.

It’s kind of a trial-and-error process. Lonon and Clark learn as they go.

CLARK: And you do break a tool now and again. That’s a good learning experience, too.

LONON: That’s right. That’s right.

That’s pretty typical for their trade. They spend months—sometimes years—designing prototypes. All in the pursuit of excellence.

SOUND: [POWER HAMMERING]

LONON: It’d be really easy to go just half way and get a pretty good chisel or a pretty good end shave and then start making lots of them. But the last details is what takes so much time.

But, it can be tough to tell when they’ve reached that ideal. Take one of Clark’s knife designs for example.

LONON: The third one I made is actually very, very close to the finished product that we actually sell now and has become one of our most popular tools. But we didn’t know that. We went on to make probably a dozen more prototypes, spent another I don't know nine months, year, whatever of prototyping this, sending it out to different people, having them try it, send it back, give feedback.

Another time, early in his work, Lonon lost an entire batch of hammers in the final round of heat treating.

LONON: That was $900 of material and several thousands of dollars worth of time. Gone. Just like that. Gone. Never get it back.

But Clark and Lonon don’t let those mishaps hold them back.

CLARK: I have a bucket full of knife blades that are no good. And I keep it just so I can look back and say, “Yeah, that’s where I was. How can I make the next one better?”

It’s a hard-won kind of wisdom they’re passing on to their sons.

SOUND: [DRAWKNIFE ON SAWHORSE]

LONON: Hi guys!

ISAAC: Hi.

The boys have started a woodworking gig of their own—making polished butter knives out of firewood. They troop into the woodshop armed with a box of their products.

SOUND: [MAKING CUTS WITH A DRAWKNIFE]

ISAAC: We split it down and cut it to length. We draw it out on a piece of wood, shave the blade down, And then we would sand it with a power sander.

By now, other family members have gathered around.

LONON: Let me introduce you to a few other family members that showed up. This is Paul’s dad, Steve Clark.

Steve Clark lives just down the road. He helps with the shop’s leatherwork. And spends a lot of time with his grandkids, raising chickens and cows, and working in the garden.

STEVE CLARK: I just read in Ecclesiastes today. And I told the children as they were helping me with the garden, I told them that even a prince or a king gets it their food from the earth. I mean, that’s obvious. But you know, we don’t think of it like that.

Moments like that are the reason Clark and Lonon do what they do.

LONON: We’re laying a foundation for this generations that are privileged to work side by side with the previous generation, and the generation beyond that. So how many children get to grow up in a three generation neighborhood like, every day, working in the garden, working the shop together?

SOUND: [BIRDS CHIRPING, DISTANT HAMMERING]

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Grace Snell in Marion, North Carolina.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Tuesday, June 27th. 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, another installment in our classic commentary series by WORLD’s founder. Today, Joel Belz looks at human origins as a foundation for modern ethics—whether for good or ill.

JOEL BELZ, COMMENTATOR: The long debate over how human beings got their start has sometimes appeared to be largely theoretic. I come to the discussion with a personal bias. I grew up assuming that God created all things of nothing, by the Word of His power in the space of six days and all very good. It was just that simple. Then along the way, I came to think that was pretty doctrinaire and presumptuous and decided a good bit more toleration was called for. Now in my later years, I've reverted to my childhood. And here's why.

The really critical point in this issue has to do with the distance God placed between human beings and the rest of his Creation when he made them. Was it a gradual, incremental distance? Or a radical one? Your answer to that question will in turn profoundly affect your answer to other questions like these: 1) Is it right for medical researchers to experiment with chimpanzees, dogs and other animals sometimes even deliberately bring about their disfigurement and death, in the search for cures for human disease? 2) Is it right for those researchers to undertake the same experiments with human beings? Does the age or physical or mental condition of those human beings have anything to do with the answer to that question?

The ability to think with ultimate clarity about any of those issues, I suggest, rests very importantly, on what God did as he created all things. If the first Adam and Eve were nothing more than blips along a single line that includes both their much less intelligent ancestors and their much more intelligent progeny, then there is no significant basis for maintaining distinctions between humans and animals in our present age.

Theistic evolutionists are likely to say, as one friend does to me, that the really critical issue is God's act. And that if God decided to breed that living soul into an advanced ape, there really is no qualitative difference in the act than if he breathed the soul into a handful of dust. Either act, he affirms, is a remarkable miracle. So why not choose the miracle that seems most in accord with what he regards as important paleontological evidence?

The problem was such a scenario is that it stands the Biblical record on its head. Where the Bible pictures a perfect man and a perfect woman, both reflecting God's glorious image and then plummeting from that exalted pinnacle, theistic evolutionists are forced to concoct some sort of ape man and ape woman who are suddenly and wondrously improved to be God's companions on Earth, but only to drop back with crushing quickness to a fallen state. Some reinterpretations of Genesis may work, but that one exhausts everybody's supply of hermeneutic elastic.

Christians can't have this both ways. Either God has two distinct categories of creation, humans and animals, or it doesn't matter too much if we make just one category when it comes to medical and ethical concerns. Or to put it another way, we might ask our evangelical friends who think there is a place for theistic evolution, if the differences aren't creational, what are they based on?

EICHER: That’s Joel Belz, reading a commentary titled “The Problem of Beginnings” from his book, Consider These Things. The column originally appeared in the February 29, 1988 issue of WORLD Magazine.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: on Washington Wednesday we’ll talk about what happened in Russia over the weekend. A coup in the making, or political theater?

And here at the end of so-called Pride month, there was a bit of a consumer backlash. What made boycotts this year different from the past? 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.

We’re down to the last few days of our June Giving Drive, and we appreciate and assure you good use of the gifts we’ve received so far. If you’ve not yet given, and you value this program, please consider donating at wng.org/donate. And thank you so much!

The Psalmist writes: Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation. When his breath departs, he returns to the earth; on that very day his plans perish. Psalm 146, verses 3 and 4.

Go now in grace and peace.

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