The World and Everything In It - June 8, 2022

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning! 

Renewed calls for gun control have both sides talking past each other, but can they find common ground?

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

Also today, World Tour.

Plus Myrna Brown visits a summer destination and learns a few things about the Biblical account of the flood.

And World commentator Janie B. Cheaney on unexpected expenses and windfalls.

REICHARD: It’s Wednesday, June 8th. 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: Now news with Kent Covington.

1. DHS warns of “heightened threat environment” for domestic terror » The Department of Homeland Security issued a warning on Tuesday.

DHS said the United States is in a “heightened threat environment” for extremist violence and domestic acts of terrorism.

On Capitol Hill, a Senate panel heard from experts on domestic terrorism. University of Chicago professor Robert Pape testified,

PAPE: I do think that we have an obligation as a country. And it’s our political leaders, it’s our community leaders, it’s our university leaders. It’s not just one side, and it’s not simply a law enforcement problem.

The Senate Judiciary Committee also heard from people affected by recent mass shootings. Garnell Whitfield Jr. lost his mother in last month’s massacre at a Buffalo, New York supermarket.

WHITFIELD: Our lives are forever changed, forever damaged by a profound act of hate and evil. And nothing will ever take away the hurt, the pain, or the hole in our hearts.

Homeland Security warned that extremists could exploit high-profile events to justify attacks. They said those events include the possible Supreme Court reversal of the Roe v. Wade decision, the ongoing migrant surge at the southern border and midterm elections in November.

2. Yellen: inflation to ‘remain high;’ hopes it’s beginning to ease » Also on Capitol Hill Tuesday, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said she is hopeful that inflation is beginning to ease, but she does expect it to remain high into next year.

Yellen told members of the Senate Finance Committee that “bringing inflation down should be our number one priority.”

YELLEN: We now are entering a period of transition from one of historic recovery to one that can be marked by stable and steady growth.

The hearing was an opportunity for lawmakers to press Yellen on the causes for inflation.

Republican members of the committee said President Biden’s big-spending policies have helped to fuel spiraling costs.

Others say the Federal Reserve acted too slowly to raise interest rates. Both the Fed and the Biden administration repeatedly declared that high inflation was only temporary but later had to concede it would last much longer than they expected.

3. Biden to attend Summit of Americas as other key leaders skip event » President Biden is expected to arrive in Los Angeles this morning for the Summit of the Americas. The event is intended to foster cooperation between countries in the Western Hemisphere. But some key leaders have decided not to attend. WORLD’s Anna Johansen Brown has more.

ANNA JOHANSEN BROWN, REPORTER: The event takes place every few years, and it’s being held on U.S. soil for the first time since 1994.

The Biden administration said it hoped to use the summit to rally governments to work together to address surging migration.

But that will be much harder to do without the president of Mexico.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is skipping the event this week.

He has led a chorus of mostly leftist leaders pushing Washington to invite Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to the gathering.

But the White House stated, “We do not believe that dictators should be invited.”

López Obrador is skipping the event in protest, though a member of his administration will attend.

Other leaders indicated they would stay home, too. They include leaders from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador--the three biggest drivers of the surge at the U.S. border.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Anna Johansen Brown.

4. Russia claims advances in Ukraine amid fierce fighting » Russia claims it has now taken control of 97 percent of one of the two provinces that make up Ukraine's Donbas region.

If true, that brings the Kremlin closer to its goal of fully capturing the eastern industrial heartland of coal mines and factories.

Moscow says it now controls nearly all of the Luhansk province.

Ukrainian officials and military analysts say it appears Russia now occupies roughly half of the Donetsk province.

Moscow-backed separatists have been battling Ukrainian forces in the Donbas region since 2014.

Louisiana enacts Fairness in Women’s Sports Act » Louisiana is the latest state to enact a law barring school athletes who are biologically male from participating in girls and women’s sports. WORLD’s Josh Schumacher has more.

JOSH SCHUMACHER: The law is called the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act. It requires grade schools and colleges to assign student athletes to male or female sports teams or divisions according to their biological sex.

Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards this week criticized the legislation. But he said he would not try to block it because the bill has more than two-thirds majority support in the legislature, which would allow supporters to override any veto.

The governor did veto a similar bill last year.

With that, Louisiana becomes the 18th state to bar biologically male athletes who identify as female from participating in girls' and women's sports.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Josh Schumacher.

I’m Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: the bipartisan push for gun restrictions.

Plus, living in the abundance of God’s provision.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Wednesday the 8th of June, 2022.

So glad you’ve joined us today on The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

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

First up: straight talk about guns.

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are debating various measures aimed at curbing mass shootings and gun violence. In the House, Democrats may soon pass a bill largely down party lines that Republicans say won’t actually fix the problem.

Meantime, in the Senate a small group of Democrats and Republicans are holding bipartisan talks trying to find common ground.

REICHARD: But today, rather than talking to a pundit or a public policy analyst, we thought we’d talk to a different kind of expert--someone who understands guns about as well as anyone in the country.

His name is Brandon Webb. He’s is a former combat-decorated Navy SEAL sniper, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a U.S. Navy Chief, he was head instructor at the Navy SEAL sniper school.

He is also the author of multiple bestselling books drawing on his experiences including Cold Fear out this week. Brandon, good morning!

WEBB: Good morning. Thanks for having me.

REICHARD: Thank you. Well, you know that emotions run high on both sides of the arguments, we do have a Constitution through which gun measures must be run. But for our personal purposes here, I want to ask you about some of the measures, both sides are suggesting - no need to take a side or recommend a policy or talk about the legalities—just as a weapons expert, whether these measures might be effective. So one idea is to allow willing teachers to carry concealed handguns. And just thinking about the Uvalde shooting, for example, would that have made a difference if the teachers had been armed?

WEBB: So I just wrote an  article about being being able to realistically practice defensive shooting and most people, even the police departments, they don't have to enough training and due to no fault of their own. It's just a lot of these departments are under understaffed. They don't have the budget to really train to the level to use a firearm effectively.

I think it takes years of practice and training to really get to a level where you can use a firearm effectively in an offensive or defensive situation. So putting handguns in the classroom? Uh, yeah, it may seem like a good idea, just like a lot of my friends in New York Cities, say to me, oh, I want to get a gun. And I said, Look, you can get a gun, but you're gonna have to put a few years into training yourself, to be able to really think that you're going to be able to effectively use this in a in a defensive situation, because I can tell you this, depending on especially in a crowded city like New York, you have an issue of bullet path where you shoot, you could hit the bad guy, but that bullet keeps on going. So where's it going? We saw a shooting in Times Square where officers shot a threatening man, and the bullets hit tourists, because the bullets keep on going. So that's an issue called bullet path.

Then you deal with just the stressful situation of drawing a weapon in a high stress situation against an active shooter, referencing the Uvalde shooting, I think it's very unlikely an arm teacher would be trained enough to deal with that situation. That's just the reality of it. In the SEAL teams, we trained for three, four years, we go through extensive training. And we have a drill called a hooded box drill where you stand fully kitted on a wrestling mat, and a hood goes down around your head, the hood goes up and you're thrown into a crazy scenario, maybe there's a guy holding a woman hostage, another guy running at you with a knife and then a guy pointing a gun at you and you have to deal with that situation. Then they reset you, you deal with another situation. And so that gives you an idea of the level of intensity and stress that professional shooters are under to be able to react in a stressful situation like Uvalde. But to make a long story longer. I don't think putting guns in the classroom is solving the problem. The big issue I see with what's happening with these mass shootings is it's a mental health issue. You have to look at the underlying issues like what's driving these shooting scenarios. Most of it is mental health issues. So how do you keep the guns out of the hands of the mentally ill and put more onus on the firearms owners that a lot of times these mentally ill people can easily get access to a friend or relative’s firearms? Like there should be severe penalties for for people not being good custodians of the firearms they own.

REICHARD: Another measure that is often brought up is banning so-called assault weapons. Would that make any difference in your view?

WEBB: Well, here's the thing. In reality, I can take a hunting rifle with a high capacity magazine that maybe doesn't look like a military style rifle, but it holds the same amount of bullets. It fires just as fast as the assault style rifle. But it's just packaged up as a hunting rifle. So it really is the same exact thing. So I think there's a lot of frustration on the gun owners side when, you know, people on the on the opposite side of the argument, they don't really have an understanding of what they're talking about. And that just makes, you know, when it's content, you know, it's a very heated issue. And I think when both sides are arguing, and the opposition doesn't really know what they're talking about, it just further frustrates and kind of in flames the issue on the on the gun owner side.

REICHARD: Another proposal often talked about is banning high-capacity magazines. You have said that you don't think that would make a difference. Why not?

WEBB: Because you look at the capacity, the magazine capacity issue. And states like California, say you have to have an eight round - and I don't know the the laws of California what they are today - but let's just say they outlawed any magazine capacity over 10 rounds, I think that's actually the law. So you can't have a 30 round 30 bullets in a magazine, but you can have 10. So a shooter will just go buy more magazines and load them up and have them pre-loaded in a backpack. And so it really doesn't solve the issue. On the magazine capacity. It just it shows up to the gun owner side is this silly law that gets passed that punishes the responsible firearms owners. And it really doesn't make sense. And when you look at how do we stop, you know, what's the fundamental core issue of behind these mass shootings? And typically, it's a mental health issue.

REICHARD: Brandon, you have criticized some of the proposals from the gun control lobby but have also said that you feel gun owners should be more open to real conversations about how to solve these issues. Expound on that if you would.

WEBB: Yeah, I wrote an article for Newsweek few weeks ago about this. And essentially, look, yeah, there's always this argument. Well, it's my constitutional right to own firearms. Well, I'm not advocating taking away the Second Amendment rights. I'm just saying there should be some flexibility on the issue in an effort to keep the guns out of the hands of the mentally ill, and background checks don't—just because you can pass a background check doesn't solve this issue of mentally ill people being able to get their hands on firearms. So it's a very complex issue. My whole point was that we need to have a dialogue. We can't just sit across and not make any compromises. And this goes for a lot of the other problems we face in this country as well. We need to have, we need to get to a point where we can have a intelligent conversation and debate, I think — let me take a step back.

I was a Speech and Debate judge for my son and daughter when they were in Speech and Debate competitions in high school. And the one thing I really enjoyed about judging these competitions was the effort that both teams took to understand the other person's position. It requires a lot of listening, putting yourself in the other person's shoes, and then truly understanding where this person is coming from to get to a point of conclusion where there's some compromise on the issue. That's what I think we need to do in this country. And it's sad that I can go to a high school debate competition and see better behavior and intelligent conversations and debate around these heated topics in this country than the adults running the country. So, you know, we just need to have a discourse. And it's it's not just the firearms issue. We have big problems. We need to compromise. And we need to hear each other out and get that back in this country. It's desperately needed.

REICHARD: Brandon Webb is an author and former Navy SEAL sniper. His new book, Cold Fear, is out now. Just released yesterday. Brandon, thanks so much.

WEBB: Thank you.

REICHARD: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: World Tour. Here’s our reporter in Africa, Onize Ohikere.

ONIZE OHIKERE, REPORTER: Nigeria Church attack— We start off here in Nigeria, where authorities and community members are still dealing with the aftermath of a Sunday attack on Christian worshippers.

AUDIO: [People inside the church]

The gunmen opened fire in St. Francis Catholic Church in the town of Owo in southwest Ondo state, just before Mass ended. The majority of parishioners were still inside.

Witnesses said the attackers closed the main entrance of the church and shot at anyone who tried to leave.

Rev. Andrew Abayomi is the priest who led the Sunday Mass.

ABAYOMI: When you saw people that you started with, then you even gave them the Eucharist. You prayed for them, and then you are the one trying to rush some of them into the hospital, some lifeless, then, like, so I'd summarize and say, 'Okay, anyway, that's our lives as Christians, to witness to the point of death.'

The final death toll is still unclear. Some officials have said more than 20 people died, while others counted at least 50. The victims include children.

Several people also remain hospitalized. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack in one of the country’s more peaceful states.

Nigeria is witnessing a surge in violence, from Islamist insurgents to criminal gangs. The country’s upcoming national elections next year are also stoking tensions.

AUDIO: [Press conference]

Meanwhile, advocacy groups like Open Doors are calling on the United States to put Nigeria back on the list of countries flagged for human rights abuses and religious persecution.

Tiananmen Square Anniversary—Next, we head over to Hong Kong, where authorities cracked down on public events marking the Tiananmen Square anniversary.

AUDIO: [Police searching people at Victoria Park]

Police said they detained five women and one man on Saturday near Victoria Park. That’s where tens of thousands of people previously attended candlelight vigils to remember the crackdown on democracy protesters in Beijing’s Tiananmen square.

Authorities shut down parts of the park and warned people not to gather ahead of Saturday.

Here’s a member of the now disbanded alliance that organized the vigils.

Chiu Yan-loy: [Speaking in Cantonese]

He says the fight for democracy is no longer about collective social activism, but now about keeping the memory alive.

Hong Kong used pandemic restrictions to block any anniversary events over the past two years. Hundreds of people joined a vigil in Taiwan, while Japan, Australia, and India had similar gatherings.

North Korea launches more missiles—Next, to North Korea.

AUDIO: [Missiles taking off]

South Korea and the United States fired eight ballistic missiles into the Sea of Japan in a retaliatory move on Monday.

That’s after North Korea fired eight short-range missiles over 35 minutes from at least four different locations on Sunday—a single-day record.

North Korea has conducted 18 missile tests since the start of the year.

South Korea’s military said the retaliation shows the military's ability to respond swiftly to North Korean attacks. U.S. and South Korean forces also held joint exercises with 20 fighter jets on Tuesday.

D-Day Anniversary— Finally, we wrap up this week in France.

AUDIO: [Planes flying overhead]

Thousands of veterans returned to the beaches of Normandy on Monday to remember the day troops from Canada, Britain, and the United States landed there during World War II.

Several bystanders cheered at a military re-enactment parade in the first French village liberated from Nazi occupation. At the U.S. cemetery in Normandy, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley made comparisons to Ukraine’s fight against Russia's invasion.

MILLEY: Well, Kyiv maybe 2000 kilometers from here, they, too, right now today are experiencing the same horrors that the French citizens experienced in World War Two at the hands of the Nazi invaders.

D-Day events were reduced to the minimum over the past two years due to pandemic restrictions.

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

NICK EICHER, HOST: Thousands of drivers in suburban Chicago spent hours at a standstill on Monday, stuck in gridlock on Interstate 80.

That’s normal around big cities, but it’s not common in the pre-dawn hours and not for this reason.

Drivers waited for several hours as cleanup crews cleared the interstate of nearly 8,000 pounds of frozen pies.

The driver of a tractor trailer hauling the pies said his headlights malfunctioned, causing him to veer into the median. The driver was unharmed as the truck rolled over, but the pies spilled onto the interstate in both directions.

And any way you slice it, traffic was a big sweet mess.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Wednesday, June 8th.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio.

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

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

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: Summer Road Trip! It’s not quite summer yet, but if you’re already preparing for that traditional family adventure, why not build your confidence in the reliability of scripture while you’re at it? Here’s WORLD’s Myrna Brown.

MYRNA BROWN CORRESPONDENT: It’s 8 a.m. and the early birds are already parked and positioned…visitors in cars and minivans waiting to drive through the gates of the 800-plus acre Ark Encounter.

AUDIO: [Bus sounds]

My husband and I get to skip that step today, as we hop aboard a 20-passenger employee shuttle bus. Tim Chaffey has been catching this ride since the Ark Encounter opened in 2016.

TIM CHAFFEY: I remember when they offered me the position, one of the things I thought through was can I really spend the next five plus years of my life just being so narrowly focused on those first eight chapters or nine chapters of Genesis.

Chaffey developed and oversees much of what you read and hear when you visit the Ark Encounter. But his fascination with Creation began when he was a kid growing up in Wisconsin.

CHAFFEY: Like most boys, I think I was fascinated by dinosaurs, but I never bought into the evolutionary storyline, the millions of years of creatures evolving. I’ve always believed that the Bible is true from the very beginning to the very end.

Today, the 6 foot 8 former basketball player has both faith and credentials. With several masters degrees, Chaffey is working on a doctorate in advanced Biblical and theological studies.

He draws from that vast wealth of knowledge to answer a few of my head-scratching questions. But not before he gives us a quick tour of the massive structure. Stretching 510 feet in length and 85 feet in width, the Ark is enormous, dimly-lit, and timber-framed.

CHAFFEY: Alright, this is the way guests would normally come on the ark. (sound of thunder) What’s that? That’s the thunder so when you get in, the idea is that the flood is just getting started and so you’re going to hear the thunder.

AUDIO: [Animal sounds]

We also pick out other clear, yet unidentifiable sounds. Snarls, snorts and squeaks made by exotic creatures Noah likely housed in small cages on the Ark’s first deck. Evolutionists wonder how he fit millions of different species on board.

CHAFFEY: You don’t have to. The Bible talks about in Leviticus how the life of the flesh is in the blood. Insects don’t have blood. When was the last time you saw insects go two by two?

Chaffey argues Noah only had to account for the 1,400 kinds of land-dependent animals, which represented all 40,000 species of identified land animals.

CHAFFEY: When I say species that’s taken into account like the wolf and the coyote and the dingo. Those are all different species as well as foxes, those are all different species of the dog kind. Noah doesn’t need two wolves and two coyotes. He just needs two members of the dog kind.

Moving now from the animals on board to the humans in charge. How could Noah build a vessel durable enough to survive such a catastrophic global event?

CHAFFEY: We know that the Lord told him how big the Ark needed to be. We shouldn’t assume that Noah was somebody who was unintelligent. And if you lived for over 900 years, like Noah eventually did, you can learn a lot of things during that time.

Chaffey adds there’s also much we can learn about how God prepares us for His purposes.

CHAFFEY: I can look back on my own life for years and years, God was preparing me to do what I do right now, long before I ever knew I was going to be doing it. Why couldn’t the same thing be true with Noah?

On any given weekend, as many as ten thousand people visit the Ark Encounter—including skeptics and doubters. Chaffey says most of them have the same question: How could he fit dinosaurs on the ark?

CHAFFEY: We believe that dinosaurs are made on day six. They’re land animals, so that would be the same day that man was made.

Chaffey believes that the fossil record is a record of a world-wide cataclysmic event. And that the flood created most of the fossils we see today. As dinosaurs showed up in those layers, that means they were present during the time of the flood.

CHAFFEY: And from the fossil record we estimate there are between about 50 to 90 kinds. The average size of an adult dinosaur is about the size of a bison, a large cow. And you could fit 50 to 90 pairs of large cows on board the ark.

But what about the 16-foot tall, 40-foot long T-rex dominating movie screens this summer? Chaffey says Noah likely brought the younger ones aboard.

CHAFFEY: One because they take less space, two they eat less and three they have less waste, which means you don’t have to clean up as much.

As we make our way back to the employee parking lot, we take one last look at a somber exhibit featuring Noah and his family praying.

CHAFFEY: When we were thinking about how they should look, our view has always been that Adam and Eve and then later on Noah, most likely middle brown because you can get anywhere from light to dark.

Chaffey points to Acts 17:26 when explaining the significance of skin tone. And He made from one man every nation of mankind to live. It’s a passage Chaffey says is reflected in the faces of Noah, his family and every man, woman, and child about to begin their journey through the Ark Encounter.

CHAFFEY: I have to remind people that we are all from one blood. We all go back to this and from a Biblical perspective, there’s no basis for racism. It’s a powerful message of unity, especially in this day when we truly need that.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Myrna Brown in Williamstown, Kentucky.

MR: If you’d like to see some of what Myrna described from the Ark Encounter, she produced a companion piece for WORLD Watch, our video news program for students, that also airs today. We’ll post a link to that video in today’s transcript.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Wednesday, June 8th. 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 now is WORLD commentator Janie B. Cheaney.

JANIE B. CHEANEY, COMMENTATOR: Last month I received two unexpected checks, amounting to a significant sum of money. Yay! I thought—of course I’ll tithe on it, and then I’ll have plenty left over for some long-delayed household projects.

Then my oven quit, and it’s so old, replacement parts for it don’t exist anymore. More recently my hot-water heater went out, and I’m waiting to hear the damage on that. New oven, possibly a new water heater—easy come, easy go, says the world. I say, thanks be to God who provides what we need when we need it, not necessarily what we want when we want it. And yet, I sometimes think … where’s the abundance he promises?

Reading through II Corinthians, I encounter chapters eight and nine, and get my answer.

The backstory is a famine in Jerusalem, the home church, and a fund-raising drive conducted by Paul and his protégées Titus and Timothy. He uses several persuasive tactics: commending the Corinthians for their particular talents, presenting the Macedonians to them as an example, even encouraging some friendly competition between the two to see who can outdo the other in generosity. Modern-day prosperity preachers use these passages to convince their listeners that if they give they’ll receive in kind. Send money; you’ll get money.

But Paul says the Macedonians gave out of their extreme poverty, and he doesn’t indicate that God made them materially richer for it. Rather, he explains that they gave themselves before they ponied up the cash, not out of an abundance of riches but out of an abundance of joy. They gave not to get, but because they had already gotten.

I have to remind myself of ordinary abundance, and when basic appliances break they do the reminding for me. I missed the convenience of baked goods at the turn of a dial, but even more the luxury of hot water. We lived without running water for several months back in the 1970s—kind of adventurous for a few weeks but when the water finally got turned on, I experienced an abundance of joy.

Paul is talking about the joy of people whose sins are forgiven, who can practice grace because they’ve received it. As a result, their eyes are open to see God behind every good, and good behind every affliction. Because Christ became poor for their sake, they can make themselves even poorer in the short term, knowing he has riches stored up for them.

Those checks I received were not for services rendered. They were given out of grace and arrived when I needed them not only for material need but for spiritual encouragement. I’ve got your back, says God—and your front, and both sides. It’s going to be okay.

That’s why God loves a cheerful giver: because he is one.

I’m Janie B. Cheaney.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: the battle over biblical standards for human sexuality within the Christian Reformed Church.

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.

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