The World and Everything in It - June 30, 2021

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

President Biden pronounced a bipartisan deal for infrastructure spending, but top Democrats say there are some massive strings attached.

NICK EICHER, HOST: That’s ahead on Washington Wednesday.

Also today World Tour.

Plus agritourism and alpacas.

And what a canoe trip can tell you about your relationships.

REICHARD: It’s Wednesday, June 30th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

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

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

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Top U.S. general says security in Afghanistan deteriorating » The top U.S. general in Afghanistan painted a sobering picture Tuesday of conditions on the ground as U.S. troops pull out.

Gen. Austin Miller said conditions are deteriorating quickly as the Taliban continues to capture districts around the country. He told ABC News...

MILLER: The loss of terrain and the rapidity of that loss of terrain has to be concerning. We’re starting to create conditions here that won’t look good for Afghanistan here if there’s a push for a military takeover.

And he said the Taliban is pushing to take over.

He also said he can’t forget what happened after the U.S. military pullout in Iraq, when ISIS filled the power vacuum.

MILLER: I mean that’s on—that’s on everybody’s mind.

Right now, he said the U.S. military is still able to provide significant support to Afgahn forces, but he couldn’t say what that support might look like in the future.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters Tuesday...

PSAKI: The president met with the leaders of Afghanistan just last Friday, and he reiterated our commitment to working with them not just on humanitarian assistance but security assistance and our commitment to continue to have a presence on the ground.

Pentagon officials have said U.S. troops will be out of Afghanistan by July 4th, though by some accounts, the pullout is ahead of schedule.

Search for survivors continues in condo rubble as Biden prepares to visit » In South Florida, the search for survivors continues in the rubble of a collapsed condo building.

Miami-Dade County Fire Chief Alan Cominsky...

COMINSKY: We’re moving debri piece by piece and searching through. We’ve over approximately 3 million pounds of concrete.

County Board of Commissioners Chairman Jose Diaz said authorities still consider this a rescue effort rather than a recovery operation. They remain hopeful that survivors are still trapped inside.

DIAZ: They hear some types of noises, clapping noises and stuff like that. What that noise actually is, they haven’t really stated, but I do know that they have that hope.

President Biden plans to visit the scene tomorrow. He’ll meet with first responders and spend time with families of the dead and the missing. At least 11 are confirmed dead. More than 150 people are still unaccounted for.

High court: Non-legal immigrants not entitled to hearing, possible release while court weighs legal claims » The Supreme Court issued a major ruling Tuesday about the legal claims of some immigrants to the United States. WORLD Radio’s Kristen Flavin reports.

KRISTEN FLAVIN, REPORTER: The high court ruled 6-3 that immigrants are not entitled to a hearing about whether they should be released while the government evaluates their claims. The court’s three liberal justices dissented.

The case involves people who had been previously deported. They were detained after re-entering the United States illegally and claimed they would be persecuted if sent back.

Determining the validity of such claims can take months or even years.

Justice Alito wrote for the majority that “Although the statute does not specify a time limit on how long DHS may detain an alien,” Tuesday’s ruling does not mean the government can hold a person indefinitely.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Kristen Flavin.

Heat wave shatters records in Northwest » A sweltering heat wave is shattering records in the Northwestern United States this week and triggering blackouts amid heavy power demands.

Many parts of the region that usually see high temperatures in the 70s during the summer hit triple digits, including Seattle.

Samantha Borth with the National Weather Service said Tuesday…

BORTH: We broke our all-time record yesterday for much of the area, including Seatac Airport, which ended up reaching 108 degrees.

Seattle and Portland hit triple digits and broke high temperature records on consecutive days.

And meteorologist Clint Rockey said further inland in Oregon, it was even hotter.

ROCKEY: Temperatures over most of the northern half of the state were above 110, again, 115 to 117.

More than 8,000 utility customers lost power in Spokane, Washington Monday as utilities warned of more rolling blackouts.

Federal court tosses antitrust cases against Facebook » A federal judge sided with Facebook in a major antitrust case on Tuesday. WORLD’s Anna Johansen Brown has that story.

ANNA JOHANSEN BROWN, REPORTER: The Federal Trade Commission failed to demonstrate that Facebook holds more than 60 percent of the social media market. That was the ruling from U.S. District Judge James Boasberg on Monday. He also wasn’t convinced by the FTC’s argument that Facebook wrongfully acquired Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014.

The FTC has 30 days to file a new complaint, but Boasberg said the 48 state attorneys general who also sued cannot re-file.

While the FTC initially allowed the company to purchase Instagram and Whatsapp, its lawsuit claimed those buyouts were anticompetitive.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are pushing for legislative fixes to reign in the power of Big Tech companies like Facebook.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Anna Johansen Brown.

I’m Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: The president and GOP lawmakers have a deal on infrastructure, but top Democrats are attaching heavy strings.

Plus, paddling through a family adventure.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Wednesday the 30th of June, 2021.

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

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Up next: deal or no deal?

Last week, after many weeks of wrangling over a possible infrastructure deal, President Biden huddled once again with a bipartisan group of senators at the White House. When he walked out of the meeting, he declared to reporters, “We have a deal.”

BIDEN: Five Democrats, five Republicans, part of a larger group, have come together and forged and agreement that will create millions of American jobs and modernize our American infrastructure to compete with the rest of the world and own the 21st century.

REICHARD: Republicans agreed to a total package of nearly a trillion dollars. A little less than $600 billion of that would be new spending.

But they were not on board with another trillion-plus in new spending on social programs that Democrats call “human infrastructure.”

So the president and top Democrats said they would drop those measures from the infrastructure bill. But they are not dropping those spending priorities all together.

BIDEN: What we agreed on today is what we could agree on, the physical infrastructure. There was no agreement on the rest. We’re going to have to do that through the budget process.

EICHER: That means passing that spending in separate legislation using the budget reconciliation tactic in the Senate. That removes any possibility of a GOP filibuster and allows Democrats to pass it with no Republican votes.

But many Democrats say they won’t back the bipartisan bill unless the other separate spending bill also passes.

REICHARD: Republicans say if Democrats insist on joining those two bills together, then the bipartisan pact is a sham—a shell game—simply moving the money from one bill to another that passes at the same time.

So what happens next? Will the deal survive? And what will it mean for Americans if it does?

Here to help answer those questions is Brian Riedl. He is a senior fellow at Manhattan Institute. Brian, good morning!

BRIAN RIEDL, GUEST: Good morning.

REICHARD: Well, these two bills together are the infrastructure plan and the separate spending package. President Biden at first said he’d insist on both bills passing. But the White House now says he will sign the bipartisan bill into law with or without a separate spending bill. Is that correct?

RIEDL: The President has been somewhat all over the place on this, but it seems like at this point his position is that he will not wait for the infrastructure bill. He will pass the $600 billion bipartisan compromise if it comes to his desk. The problem, however, is that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said she will not bring the $600 billion compromise to the floor unless the reconciliation bill has already passed. So, even if President Biden's position is that he will sign it, the Democrats aren't all on the same page and the bottle neck just moves over to the House.

REICHARD: Sen. Joe Manchin said on Tuesday that he would support a spending bill that Democrats would push through using budget reconciliation, but doesn’t want that tied to the bipartisan infrastructure plan. That’s key because as the most moderate Democrat in the Senate, he’s kind of the swing vote for Democrats now.
Is there any sign at all, Brian, that Democratic leaders in the Senate will yield on this and agree to pass one bill without the other?

RIEDL: I think in the Senate, they're willing to do so. I have not heard majority leader Chuck Schumer say that they had to be married at the same time. So really, again, it comes down to the House. They might be able to pass it in the Senate, although it's going to take a while because they have to do another budget resolution first. So this could take about two months. Before they would before they would try to do it all. But either way, you're going to need to get Nancy Pelosi to actually break the bottleneck in the House for it to get to the President's desk. One factor, too, is they're dropping Republican support at this point. I thought last Thursday this thing could get about 20 Republican senators to vote for it. Right now, they may not even have the 10 Republican senators they may need to pass the bill without reconciliation.

REICHARD: Well let’s talk about what would be in this infrastructure bill if it does make it to the president’s desk. Give us a high level overview of what spending measures the two sides were able to agree on?

RIEDL: Sure. It's about $580 billion and this is the more traditional infrastructure that's more bipartisan. It's roads, bridges, transit, Amtrak, airports, electrical grid, electrical power, and water infrastructure. There was about $600 billion of that in the President's American Jobs plan and the Republicans have essentially said we'll give you all of that $600 billion dollars for this traditional transportation, electricity, and water infrastructure, as long as you don't do the other things that were in that big bill, such as long term care, housing, corporate subsidies. That was what was negotiated out of the President's American Jobs plan.

REICHARD: Mmm-hmm. And we know that in response, the president did in fact drop a lot of that spending from the infrastructure bill. That was largely because—again—he expects Democrats to deliver that spending in a separate bill.

But where are Republicans stretching on this? What have they agreed to that they didn’t really want to agree to?

RIEDL: The overall price tag of $600 billion, I think is beyond what Republicans would have wanted to put into additional infrastructure on top of what they're already passing as part of the normal highway bill and the normal legislation. There's a lot of Republicans who think $600 billion is particularly too much in areas like transit, and for the airlines. So for Republicans, the $600 billion is a stretch. Additionally, things like the tax gap, where lawmakers are going to empower the IRS to be much more aggressive is not something Republicans have traditionally pushed for. I think a third area is that typically, Republicans have wanted to pair infrastructure spending with reforms to make infrastructure more effective—things to lower the costs, such as addressing the Davis Bacon law, which requires prevailing wages be paid and raises wage costs by 22%. There's a lot of regulatory changes like that that Republicans did not ask for. And so Republicans feel like we're giving a $600 billion increase in things we're not necessarily ready to spend that much money on. We're going to give tax revenues and we're not going to require a lot of infrastructure reforms on the regulatory side. That's their sacrifice.

REICHARD: A major point of disagreement has been how that spending will be paid for. The bill will come due. Where does that stand?

RIEDL: Right now, Republicans have said that they want the bill to be paid for mostly through spending offsets. Manchin has said similar—he wants the bill not to add to the deficit. At this point, they have talking points on how to pay for it. They do not have a set scoring plan. A lot of it is repurposing money from past stimulus bills related to the pandemic that aren't going to be used. There is a little bit of money from what's called closing the tax gap, getting people to pay taxes that they are owing that they're not paying. There is extending certain fees that expire over the last couple of years. I don't think they get the $580 billion to pay for it with all of these, I think they might get about half of it. But that's part of the problem right now is they still don't really have a full deal on the offset side. They have a commitment to pay for it and they have talking points on how to pay for it, but what we don't have is a scoring plan showing that these offsets will actually make much of a dent in the cost.

REICHARD: Anything in this bipartisan agreement that surprised you?

RIEDL: It surprised me that they did not do more on the tax gap. President Biden has said he wants to collect an additional $700 billion over 10 years that is currently being evaded or under reported. Republicans have generally been more tolerant of the tax gap. But the Republicans that I have talked to have said that they want to go after more, too. They want to go after unpaid taxes much more aggressively than they had in the past. They want to give the IRS more money. I'm surprised it was only $40 billion out of the $700 billion that Republicans agreed to, frankly, I expected Republicans to go up towards one or $200 billion.

REICHARD: Brian Riedl with Manhattan Institute has been our guest. Brian, appreciate your insight.

RIEDL: Thank you very much.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: World Tour with our reporter in Africa, Onize Ohikere.

Hong Kong’s pro-democracy Apple Daily News closes » We begin today in Asia.

AUDIO: [Customers buying papers]

Hong Kongers stood in a long line last week, braving rain to buy the last edition of the city’s pro-democracy newspaper. For 26 years, Apple Daily provided a mix of tabloid-style gossip, local news, and political reporting.

In recent years, the paper had become especially critical of Communist party leaders calling for the city to hold on to democracy.

Under pressure from Beijing, last week, Hong Kong police froze the newspaper's assets, so it could no longer pay its employees and continue producing a paper. Then they seized journalists’ computers.

Now, police have also arrested seven Apple Daily employees on national security charges.

AUDIO: [Carrie Lam speaking]

Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam defended the crackdown … saying everything the government does is in accordance with the law and is quote “not attacking the freedom of the press.”

But for pro-democracy supporters, losing the paper is a major blow.

Ethiopia declares ceasefire in Tigray » Next, we come here to Africa where Ethiopia’s government declared a cease-fire on Monday in its northern Tigray region.

The truce comes after more than eight months of deadly fighting between government forces and rebel Tigray militias.

International pressure for a ceasefire spiked last week after a government airstrike on a Tigray market killed 64 people and injured another 180.

The attack added to accusations that government troops have committed atrocities against civilians in the region.

SOUND: [Ethiopian military spokesman]

An Ethiopian military spokesman denied the accusations and said only enemy soldiers had been hit.

The government says the ceasefire will last until Tigray’s planting season ends in September, to ward off a looming famine in the region.

The conflict has already led to thousands of deaths and has displaced nearly two million people.

French authorities Investigate Tour De France crash » Now, we go to Europe. Over the weekend, the top cyclists in the world embarked on the Tour de France—a 21-day race across France.

But day one got off to a rough start.

Crowds gathered in Brest, France to watch the 23 teams set off. But one spectator got too eager, stepping into the road with a sign and causing a massive pileup that shocked event announcers.

ANNOUNCER: Ohh! A massive crash there. What has happened? Right on the side of the road there. Look at this!

The pileup took out about half of the cyclists and covered the road, delaying the race for several minutes. Three riders had to drop out completely due to injuries.

Now, French authorities have opened an investigation and are asking for witnesses who can help them find the overeager fan.

Still, Frenchman Julian Alaphilippe, who got tangled up in the mess, managed to pull out a victory in stage one.

AUDIO: My team did a great job today, they were in control all day, they kept believing in me, they protected me the whole time, even when I got caught up in a crash just before the end.

The race will end in Paris next month.

Notre Dame Reconstruction continues » Finally, we will end today still in France.

AUDIO: [Trucks beeping, driving]

Crews work to load massive oak trees onto trucks that will transport the giants to a sawmill 60 miles away.

These trees are destined to rebuild the Notre Dame Cathedral spire, replacing the one that burned in 2019.

Crews cut down the 200-year-old oaks in March, but getting them out of the forest has proved to be a slow and daunting process.

The oaks weigh 10 to 15 tons each. And the largest log is 85 feet long—much longer than most trucks.

So crews have had to use a special rig: Two cranes, a custom-made trailer, and an escort to accompany the logs along the highway to a sawmill and eventually, Paris, where crews plan to mimic the building technique of the original cathedral as closely as possible.

That’s this week’s World Tour. Reporting for WORLD, I’m Onize Ohikere in Abuja, Nigeria.

NICK EICHER, HOST: 10-year-old Gwen Goldman was deeply disappointed when she wrote to the New York Yankees asking to be a bat girl, only to receive a rejection letter.

At first the team told her that because baseball is a male dominated game, she’d probably feel out of place in the dugout.

But upon further review, the team decided to grant her request 60 years later.

The now 70-year-old Gwen Goldman said her daughter shared the old letter with the new Yankees management. That’s when General Manager Brian Cashman called her up. 

CASHMAN: On behalf of the entire organization, it would be my great honor for you to join us for our game on Monday, June 28th.

The message brought her to tears.

GOLDMAN: Here’s this 10-year-old girl who wrote it, and she’s still inside of me. She’s still there.

Goldman was bat girl for the day. She suited up, spent the game in the dugout, she got her own locker and even got to throw out the first pitch!

GOLDMAN: You see, it was worth writing that letter. It was worth having that hope. It was worth pursuing it and trying it, and even if you didn’t get it at first, you know the old saying - you just keep on going.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Wednesday, June 30th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

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

Alpacas are native to the Andes Mountains in Peru, Chile, and Patagonia. The animals provide people with fleece and meat. Thirty years ago, enthusiasts imported the first alpacas to the United States and their popularity just keeps growing.

EICHER: WORLD’s Sarah Schweinsberg recently paid a visit to an alpaca enthusiast spreading her love of these fleecy camelids. 

SOUND: [ALPACA COOING]

RADTKE: Hi, Girls!

SARAH SCHWEINSBERG, REPORTER: A brown mother alpaca gently coos to her matching brown baby… born just last week. Her coos let him know to stay close by.

SOUND: [ALPACA COOING]

Suzie Radtke lifts the baby into a sling scale to make sure he’s gaining weight.

RADTKE: So 15.4. So he’s doing good.

Suzie Radtke runs the Uinta Alpaca Farm, home to 65 alpacas.

Radtke is out doing her morning chores. That involves watering each pen.

SOUND: [RUNNING WATER]

Using a tractor to distribute hay.

SOUND: [TRACTOR MOTOR]

And raking up alpaca waste.

SOUND: [Raking]

RADTKE: We actually harvest and sell almost all the poop. That's great for gardens.

At one point, Radtke stops to watch an alpaca argument. Some of the males aren’t getting along.

SOUND: [Alpaca screaming]

They’re running around chasing each other. It’s usually harmless antics.

RADTKE: The young one he's kind of obnoxious. He's always running around trying to pick fights.

It’s 100 degrees today. So when she’s finished chores, Radtke gives her fleecy friends a special treat…a hose wet-down.

RADTKE: Come here girls. Come on! There it is!

SOUND: [Spraying water]

The alpacas approach slowly, stomping their legs in nervous anticipation of the cold water.

RADTKE: We never put water on top of their backs because they can have a greenhouse effect, and they have been known to get third degree burns on their backs.

Nearby, other alpacas roll in the dirt.

RADTKE: Their favorite pastime is to roll on the dust and play in the water.

Alpacas aren’t nervous animals. They surround Radtke. One especially outgoing alpaca nuzzles her with her long neck. Others use their large bottom teeth to nibble on shoe strings or sleeves.

RADTKE: They have like human looking teeth on the bottom.

This is Suzie Radtke’s dream morning. She fell in love with alpacas back in 1985. That’s when she was working at a university vet hospital.

RADTKE: I was just so intrigued. I just thought they were clowns. They were just super comical—even when the boys are fighting and stuff, you can there's like some humor in it.

She knew that one day she wanted to have her own. But alpacas were so new in the country that they were expensive.

RADTKE: Alpacas were going to cost $50,000 a piece.

After 20 years of saving and waiting for prices to drop, Radtke purchased her first alpacas in 2007. She started building a herd and breeding for great fleece and straight legs. Many alpacas have legs that turn out slightly.

RADTKE: I want the best confirmation I can get, along with the fleece quality. It’s really important to her.

As her herd grew, so did her neighbors’ curiosity. People began stopping by to ask questions. They were used to seeing cows and horses. Not alpacas.

RADTKE: We would have tons of people just pop in, at all hours of the day, weekends whenever.

So Suzie Radthke decided, why not share her love of alpacas with other people—and get paid for it. So she began offering alpaca tours.

RADTKE: So creating the farm tour, it just sort of naturally created a revenue stream. Plus, it organized all the visits.

Now, she has a group visiting most weekdays.

AMBI: [Group walking around]

Around noon, her second group of the day shows up.

RADTKE: Well, welcome to our farm.

Three sisters are having a reunion in Utah. Kristen Plaisance booked the tour. She said her family has always been curious about alpacas and wanted to learn more.

PLAISANCE: None of them have been on an alpaca farm before now.

The tour starts in a shop, where Suzie Radtke tells her visitors all about alpaca anatomy and behavior.

RADTKE: A regular alpaca will go through a bale and a half a month.

FAMILY: Wow!

RADTKE: Horses go through half a bale a day. We're pretty thrifty.

Then they get to handle alpaca fleece. It’s soft like cashmere.

RADTKE: We use all the fleece off of an alpaca its whole life. There's always something we can do.

After an hour, the family gets the crowning treat: hanging out with the alpacas.

SOUND: [Walking through gate]

Radtke takes them into one pen where the moms and babies are staying cool under shade trees.

Some family members start out shy. One girl hangs back. But as the alpacas curiously approach her, she lets them come close.

GIRL: I’m not really an animal person. Like, I get afraid of animals, but I definitely feel comfortable in front of them. This is very different. They're so gentle.

Suzie Radtke says her favorite part of the tours is watching moments like that.

RADTKE: I get my biggest kick out of introducing people. That's where I get my warm fuzzies is watching people meet alpacas.

For all the joys, Radtke says the alpacas are also a lot of work. Caring for them takes constant vigilance.

RADTKE: You have to pay attention to cleaning up after them. Because of their problems with parasites. You don't want to feed moldy feeder hay. You know, you want to make sure they get the right minerals.

But she expects that alpaca’s popularity will continue to grow. Both for tourism and practical reasons.

RADTKE: They're known as the greenest livestock. That means you can use everything that comes off of an alpaca or out of an alpaca its entire life.

And she’s happy more of them will be around. Because she says they could teach us all a thing or two.

RADTKE: They don't care what people look like, where they're from, or who they are. They treat everybody exactly with the same curiosity, you know, and interest. I think that would be the example that alpacas would say I would say they set.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Sarah Schweinsberg in Willard, Utah.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Wednesday, June 30th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Here’s World commentator Kim Henderson who sees parallels to family life in canoeing down a river.

KIM HENDERSON, COMMENTATOR: Judging by the crowd on the Okatoma River that Saturday, canoeing has plenty of enthusiasts. Travel reporters describe mini-adventures like canoeing as adventure on your terms, close to home. But it’s real-life adventure nonetheless, a leap into the unknown with all that involves.

Sounds pretty good except for the unknown part, which I learned more about during my husband’s pre-paddling preparations. “See, this watertight bag still comes in handy,” Canoe King told me, filling it with sunscreen and a first aid kit.

A first aid kit?

“In case a copperhead drops down from a branch and lands on us,” he replied. “Or someone splits their foot wide open.”

Right.

Moments later we shoved off, with his “left, hard left,” punctuating the air. It’s good to know one’s place in the grand scheme of things, especially in a canoe, so I held down the bow with the seriousness of Sacagawea. After all, Canoe King and I both understood we had something to prove. At the end of the day, our performance must leave no doubt that we still had it.

Yep, it – the ability to keep up with our children, who, by the way, had no heavy coolers in their canoes.

The married couples took a confident lead, due, I’m sure, to experience gained from far too many similar excursions as college students. The newlyweds were fearless, too, fresh from a cave-tubing experience in Belize. Our youngest and her BFF had youth on their side, and then there was the Marine in a stealthy kayak.

After successfully navigating the first set of strong currents, though, Canoe King decided to serenade me. With shards of sunlight dancing on the water like a disco ball, he gave me a blast from the past.

“Rock the boat (don’t rock the boat, Baby),” came his sweet tenor from the stern. “Rock the boat -”

“Don’t tip the boat over,” I couldn’t help myself.

The music propelled us past the pack at rare times, and I’m sure the hipsters were impressed. Or maybe not.

Anyway, the day allowed us to test a behavioral economics theory I read about that says canoe trips are a good indicator of a relationship’s health. They afford opportunities to shift blame for things that go wrong, like paddling into branches and flipping on rapids.

It’s true. Gliding down a river at a speed of three miles per hour doesn’t just let you soak in sights you simply can’t see from a car, it can also expose what’s on the inside in a most surprising way.

So from our vantage point at fifth out of five crafts afloat, two things became very obvious to Canoe King and me. First, kids these days have no appreciation for disco classics. Absolutely zilch. And second, our family, appropriately and symbolically, is no longer in the same boat. The leave-and-cleavers are paddling their own canoes, and I think even Sacagawea, if she were here, would have to agree—they’re managing quite nicely.

I’m Kim Henderson.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: The Civilian Climate Corps. We’ll tell you about the new team of federal workers the president wants to deploy across the country.

And, the side-effects of COVID—what we’re still learning about the disease now 18 months into it.

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.

This is our last day for the June Giving Drive. We are so close. Who’s it going to be who puts us over the top? Will it be you? I hope so. Please visit WNG.org/donate and thank you.

The Psalmist says that children are a heritage from the LORD— the fruit of the womb, a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them!

Go now in grace and peace.

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