The World and Everything in It: March 2, 2023

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning! 

Life’s not back to normal in rural Ohio after that train derailment a few weeks ago. But residents are coping the best they can.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Also, protecting children from medical activism. Several states are working to pass laws to stop transgender surgeries on children.

Plus, breaking down walls with gospel music. We’ll meet a choir director kindling revival with songs of praise.

And World commentator Cal Thomas poses tough questions as we enter year two of the conflict in Ukraine.

REICHARD: It’s Thursday, March 2nd. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

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

REICHARD: Now news. Here’s Kent Covington.

Havana syndrome » American intelligence agencies say they cannot tie suspected sonic attacks against US diplomats to Russia, China, or any adversary. In fact, they’re not even sure that the incidents were sonic attacks. That’s according to a new intel assessement of so-called “Havana Syndrome” cases.

But State Dept. spokesman Ned Price told reporters:

PRICE: The book is never fully closed. We are going to, as a government, going to continue to look at every single input and every source of information that is available to us.

Starting in 2016 in Havana, Cuba, workers at American embassies around the world complained of headaches… dizziness… and buzzing and humming in their ears.

Last year, intelligence officials said the symptoms were consistent with a focused energy weapon. But they have since found no evidence that any US adversary possesses such a weapon. And they now say there could be a wide array of explanations for the symptoms.

COVID origins » Intel agencies also still don’t know for sure where exactly COVID-19 came from. But FBI Director Christopher Wray said his agency does not believe it came from a bat.

WRAY: The FBI has for some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan.

In the wake of a Wall Street Journal story which reported that the Department of Energy shares that view … the White House insists that there’s no consensus among US agencies.

But the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Marco Rubio, says we’ll probably never know for certain.

RUBIO: This is all going to be circumstantial. It’s doubtful we’ll ever have a smoking gun because, frankly, China’s a closed society. They’re not gonna put that stuff out there.

Christopher Wray also said China seems to be doing everything in its power to thwart the search for answers.

Greece train » The Greek government is investigating a deadly rail accident that killed at least 43 people.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis visited the site Wednesday.

MITSOTAKIS (Greek): I have already asked for the formation of an independent committee of experts, which will fully investigate the causes of the accident.

A passenger train carrying roughly 350 passengers when it collided head-on with a freight train late Tuesday night.

Authorities arrested a 59-year-old stationmaster … and charged him with manslaughter in connection to the crash.

The Greek transportation minister also resigned Wednesday saying the country’s rail system has not been properly maintained.

Senators introduce rail safety bill » Meantime, in eastern Ohio, executives with the company that operates the rail line where a train spilled its toxic cargo last month … will get an earful from residents today.

EPA regional administrator Debra Shore said Wednesday …

SHORE: At EPA’s request and per EPA’s order, Norfolk Southern will attend tomorrow’s town hall.

Cleanup continues in the town of East Palestine. Gov. Mike DeWine told residents:

DEWINE: We’re here. We’re with you, and we’re going to continue to work to get the job done.

And on Capitol Hill, a bipartisan group of senators has unveiled a bill that would install a series of new safety regulations for rail companies like Norfolk Southern.

But even before Congress acts, regulators plan to step up inspections of the tracks that carry the most hazardous materials.

Senate 401k rule » The Senate has passed a bill that would keep so-called ESG investment policies away from 401-K retirement funds in the U-S.

ESG stands for “environmental, social, and corporate governance.” It has to do with a company’s perceived ethics … something conservatives have dubbed “woke capitalism.

The U-S Labor Department under President Biden ruled that 401-K managers could consider ESG when deciding where to invest Americans’ retirement money.

White House Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.

JEAN-PIERRE - This is unacceptable to the President, and that is why he will veto this bill if it does come to his desk.

The bill passed the Republican-controlled house on Tuesday… and Democratic Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Jon Tester of Montana voted with Republicans to pass it in the Senate.

California Snow » They’re shoveling snow in Flagstaff, Arizona this morning.

A winter front could dump as much as 2 feet of snow on the northern part of the state.

Officials closed schools and even some interstate highways.

David Roth with the National Weather Service said winter weather will impact most of the lower 48 states.

ROTH: The system is going to be moving generally east-northeast and fairly fast. So it’s going to cross the country in a few days.

Meantime, in Northern California, emergency crews have been scrambling since Wednesday to shuttle food and medicine to mountain communities stranded … after back-to-back winter storms. Some residents that their roofs caved in under the weight of the snow … while others say they can barely see out their windows.

I'm Kent Covington. Straight ahead: the sights, sounds, and smells of East Palestine after the train derailment.

Plus, singing Gospel music in college.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD: It’s Thursday, the 2nd of March, 2023. You’re listening to today’s edition of The World and Everything in It and we’re so glad you are! Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN: And I’m Myrna Brown. First up on The World and Everything in It: life after a chemical spill. On February 3rd, a train carrying hazardous materials derailed in East Palestine, Ohio. Our own Carolina Lumetta visited that small town and listened to residents talk about what life is like three weeks after the accident.

CAROLINA LUMETTA, REPORTER: The office phone at First Church of Christ in East Palestine, Ohio, has been ringing nonstop for weeks. Callers from all over the country are asking where to donate pallets of bottled water and food items—so much so that the church has had to instate a full-time volunteer to manage its gym-turned-donation shelter.

Mallory Aponik spends most of her days coordinating donations ranging from food to offers of homes available elsewhere… in case residents just want to move. It’s a question many of East Palestine’s 4,700 residents are weighing following a train derailment and chemical spill last month.

MALLORY APONIK: I talk people through how to donate. And these are people who are bringing in water, or they're going to call next week to schedule to bring in water or food supplies or cleaning supplies, or things along those lines. approximately 800 cases of water, give or take.

Meanwhile, industrial street sweepers run through neighborhoods, and contractors with the Environmental Protection Agency mount air monitoring devices on telephone poles. This is part of the new normal for East Palestine. A two-mile-long Norfolk Southern train derailed on the edge of town around 9pm on Friday, Feb. 3. Some cars carried chemicals like vinyl chloride, a substance used in making PVC pipes. Oil and chemicals spilled onto the ground and into the nearby creek, Sulphur Run.

Kari Lentz lives with her husband and homeschools her two sons less than a quarter mile from the crash.

KARI LENTZ: It sounded louder than a snowplow. You know, like when the snowplow kind of scratches like the cement and you hear that sound. It was much louder than that. And then all of a sudden, I just heard like the explosion, we saw a big fireball. And then smoke just billowing like out a lot of it.

By Saturday, police evacuated everyone within a two-mile radius—most of the town. That allowed the railroad company to conduct a controlled burn of the remaining cars to prevent an explosion.

The state and federal environmental protection agencies are overseeing the railroad’s cleanup and running air and water quality tests. But some residents refuse to move back.

RESIDENT: As soon as I pulled in my driveway and smelled that I knew they were lying to me, I knew that stuff was toxic.

That smell is something no one can fully describe… metallic, sweet almonds, stifling and plastic-like. Tom and Carol McKim have lived in East Palestine for four years. They say the crash was deafening… and the smell was even worse.

CAROL MCKIM: The smell is still bad at night. Occasionally. Some nights it'll be good. (CL:Can you describe the smell for me?) It's strong. It's– I can't I can't describe it. It's metal mixed with sludge. It's like a like a smell of a pond. I really, it just stinks. It's pretty. It's stinky. And some nights it's worse than others, which is an instant headache.

Cleanup crews have installed filtration devices along the contaminated Sulphur Run creek and Leslie Run which connects to it. I poked around Leslie Run’s creek bed and discovered that same indescribable smell.

DON YAGER: They keep saying the water is okay to drink…everywhere else.

Don Yager is a retired heavy equipment operator who moved to town for some peace and quiet...he’s not so sure he can trust the government’s word…he points to the assurances after 9/11.

DON YAGER: Then they're gonna say the same thing here and five years from now it's gonna be the same thing that they had to deal with a bunch of toxic stuff. People die of cancer having problems? I don't know. I don't know. But do you? Do you want to live through that?”

The fears haven’t dissipated with national attention. Panelists at a town hall meeting hosted by an environmental nonprofit said the combustion created dangerous carcinogens called dioxins…which the EPA is not testing for. This worries Dana Linger, who lives in a town roughly three miles away.

DANA LINGER: At this point I don't believe them at all, I really don't. In my opinion they're bought and paid for by these big corporations. They line their pockets, get them into office, they owe them favors, you know and then it is just a circle of favors then at that point where the little people don't get the help that they need. So yeah, I'm not going to trust the government.

But other scientists say while the burn could have created dioxins, it’s not a guarantee. Nevertheless, people from towns up to 50 miles away claim they have suffered headaches or respiratory effects from the smoke. At another town hall last Friday, environmental advocate Erin Brockovich, said anyone who does not believe the peoples’ medical claims is gaslighting them.

The Ohio Department of Health’s pop-up free clinic has been booked solid for a week with physical checkups and toxicology assessments. Most of the residents I spoke with have not experienced significant problems or cannot connect them with the derailment. But they can’t rule it out either. Tom McKim explained.

TOM MCKIM: Well, what's it going to be like? You know, every time every time you get a headache or you get a cold? Is it going to be in the back of your head: “Is it something from this?”

Local homeschool mom Elizabeth Shofstahl experienced chemical-induced headaches during the fire but has not had an issue since—nor have her three children. She said she trusts the railroad company and the EPA to clean up the town she’s lived in for nearly 15 years. She said all this attention is egging on fear and promoting rumors rather than helping them move on.

ELIZABETH SHOFSTAHL: So it's just a sad situation, a human situation, you know, of being in the limelight and creating a fantastical story, I guess. You know, I'm just trying to find information and truth and it's hard to discern, you know, in the moment when you're just trying to find what's going on now.

Congress has asked Norfolk Southern’s CEO to testify soon on what happened, and the company is footing the bill for all cleanup and reimbursement costs. A preliminary National Transportation Safety Board report blames the crash on an overheated wheel bearing.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Carolina Lumetta in East Palestine.

MB: To find more of Carolina’s reporting on location, make sure to sign up for The Stew, a weekly political newsletter. That’s at wng.org/newsletters.

MARY REICHARD: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: Banning transgender surgeries for minors. Eight states currently have laws prohibiting either cross-sex hormone injections or transgender surgeries for minors. That includes Arkansas, Arizona, Alabama, Utah, Nebraska, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Florida. Nebraska is on the verge of joining that list.

MYRNA BROWN: In January, State Senator Kathleen Kauth introduced a bill that would prohibit transgender medical treatments in Nebraska. Some other states criminalize parents and doctors who arrange transgender surgeries for children. But this bill would hold medical providers accountable and could suspend their practice licenses if they violate the law. Here’s Kauth explaining the bill’s rationale at a hearing back in February…

KAUTH: The intent behind Let Them Grow is to give children the time they need to work through the gender dysphoria and any other complicating issues they may be experiencing before they engage in radical irreversible and damaging interventions to alter their appearance.

REICHARD: The bill is scheduled for a vote this week, but a state senator from Omaha started a filibuster on Monday that continued through yesterday. Here’s Machaela Cavanaugh last Friday when she announced her intent to filibuster. You’ll hear her call the bill LB547.

MACHAELA CAVANAUGH: You can decide, you can talk to the Speaker, you can say, listen, LB547 is the priority of this legislature, or it’s not. But if this legislature collectively decides that legislating hate against children is our priority, then I am going to make it painful—painful—for everyone.

BROWN: Activists are condemning the Nebraska bill and similar legislation in other states as unscientific and harmful, but a growing number of people who have detransitioned…meaning, they went back to living as their biological sex…are speaking out about the dangers of the transgender industry.

REICHARD: One of those young people is Luka Hein, a biological woman who received transgender surgery at age 16. Hein says that at the time, it seemed like the only option. But now at age 21, she realizes that her parents were pressured into making a devastating decision.

LUKA HEIN: Like my parents’ biggest. Like biggest crime in all this was the fact that they wanted to help their child and they trusted a medical industry that only gave them one path forward. Yeah. Like they they trusted what they thought were going to be like caring professionals.

BROWN: WORLD’s Lauren Canterbury recently wrote a story about state laws like the one in Nebraska, and she says that Hein’s case is not unusual.

LAUREN CANTERBERRY: For a lot of these parents, they believe their physician when they say that their child is at risk of taking their own life if they don't get these treatments. But in reality, that is really dangerous. And it really pushes parents to approve and consent to treatments without themselves fully understanding what it means. And that's really hard for a lot of kids to deal with, knowing that their parents also were not given all of the information they should have, and then condone them doing these things as minors that they can't possibly consent to themselves. So I think that's really important, not to vilify the parents, because they are also just wanting to do the best thing for their child and why wouldn't they trust a medical professional who's supposed to take care of them? That has to be an incredibly difficult thing to balance.

REICHARD: But now that more people like Luka Hein are speaking out about their experience of gender transition, lawmakers are seeing a more compelling case for banning transgender treatment for minors.

LAUREN CANTERBERRY: It's not just parents, or political figures on the right, drawing attention to the dangers of these practices anymore. Now we have A. Detransitioners, who experienced this, and B. Medical providers who previously supported a lot of these practices and treatments are now coming out and saying, there is not enough evidence to support what we're doing and when we prescribe it. That has really shaped the conversation in a lot of these state’s hearings is the medical side of things. They're not just hearing from the people who claim this is life-saving interventions anymore, they're hearing from people who have done it and have been practicing it and say: We don't know that for sure. It's not clear if this is benefiting or harming kids.

BROWN: For Senator Kauth, the sponsor of the bill in Nebraska, the evidence is clear.

KAUTH: The facts are that these novel and irreversible procedures lack sufficient long-term research yet our country and our state are witnessing a push to encourage youths with gender dysphoria into these interventions.

BROWN: While lawmakers in Nebraska wait to vote on Kauth’s bill, over a dozen other states have similar bills going through the legislative process. And Lauren believes that this legislation will protect children from Luka Hein’s experience of making an irreversible medical decision.

LAUREN CANTERBERRY: I think bills like this will serve to step between the social rhetoric and actual practice and really make it easier for kids to get access to helpful mental health treatment, rather than being pushed down this medical pathway.

REICHARD: Lauren Canterberry is a reporter for WORLD…if you’d like to read her story, we’ve included a link in today’s transcript.

MARY REICHARD: Last week we reported on an owl named Flaco who escaped a zoo in New York City…well, other creatures have apparently caught on.

MYRNA BROWN: Uh oh…

MR: Just yesterday, a zoo in Omaha confirmed a cheetah escaped from its enclosure…and the day before that a Malayan tapir (it looks like a pig with a long nose) squirmed out of its cage in Miami…

And recently a bear escaped its pen at the St. Louis zoo…and in Kentucky a pet monkey was on the lam for two days...And then, Myrna, did you see this video from Scotland?

MB: Nope…

MR: Well on Monday, workers at a farm figured out how their sheep kept escaping their pen. You can hear this Leicester sheep opening the latch with her mouth…then pulling the gate open, and letting all her friends.

MB: Spring is in the air…

MR: Apparently…it’s The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN: Today is Thursday, March 2nd. Thank you for listening to WORLD Radio. Good morning. I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD: And I’m Mary Reichard. Coming next on The World and Everything in It: a Nashville gospel choir. Gospel music has a rich history rooted in the African American spirituals—sung across centuries of slavery. But it’s a heritage unfamiliar to many college students today. Now, one Lipscomb University professor is challenging stereotypes and inviting his students into that legacy.

AARON HOWARD: Amen. Are you ready to praise the Lord on this morning? Hallelujah!

GRACE SNELL, REPORTER: It’s a Sunday morning at Belmont Church in Nashville. A group of college students crowd the stage, dressed in black. Mic stands bristle around them. Cords tangle at their feet.

HOWARD: This is Lipscomb University Choir, Gospel Choir, here at Belmont Church in Nashville. That’s exciting…

Aaron Howard is an assistant professor at Lipscomb University. He also directs the school’s gospel choir.

HOWARD: We make a joyful noise, we shout unto the Lord, we lift our hands, so we invite you to sing along with us and be part of the worship as we give praise to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords who is worthy of it all. Let’s do it!

WORSHIP LEADER: Good morning Belmont Church! If you’ve come today with an expectant heart of joy to worship our Father then just sing this out with us! Hallelujah!...

Howard started the choir in fall 2021 with a simple vision.

HOWARD: We want people to know God intimately, and know each other intimately, through gospel music.

Ashlynn Perry is an alto. She’s joined the group two weeks after its launch.

ASHLYNN PERRY: I’m from a small town in Texas, definitely not. Does definitely doesn’t have any gospel influence or anything like that. And so I didn’t really have a background, singing it or listening to it or anything.

That’s true for most of Howard’s students.

HOWARD: So a lot of our students have never been exposed to the genre, at least, as far as singing it. So this is really their first time. So they’re really learning, they’re learning on the fly, as it were.

David Green is Howard’s assistant director. He’s an exception to that rule.

DAVID GREEN: My dad was super heavily involved in gospel music. He was a drummer, my grandma was a choir director. And so gospel music is very much like, it’s home for me.
Green says gospel is very different from traditional choral music.

GREEN: So gospel music is, at its heart, it’s, it’s expressive, and it’s embodied. And it’s exuberant…almost every song we sing is loud…there’s very rarely ever times we’re singing soft and round, like, “Oh,” you know, stuff like that. It's, it's very, very pointed. And so every rehearsal, every performance we do, like you come away from singing that genre tired, like physically tired, because you have to use your your body and your vocal cords and your diaphragm in a way that that pushes, pushes your voice to the limit.

Howard says that’s how it’s supposed to feel. Gospel music descends from African American spirituals and its intensity testifies to those roots.

HOWARD: That experience of God’s presence, that nearness of the Holy Spirit to the slaves as they sing from deep down in their belly, and deep down in their soul, that’s part of the genre even today. And so you’ll still get that real, you know, the sounds of the voice straining, and the full embodiment of singing is also a part of the genre.

It’s a spiritual legacy Howard passes on to his students.

HOWARD: By providing a way of worship, and introducing them to some practices that maybe they haven’t participated in before, we’re giving them a mechanism and a vehicle to say, “Hey, you know, God responds to our desperation, God responds to us, when we cry out loud, when we lift our hands.”

The choir practices Tuesday evenings in Lipscomb’s Ezell Chapel. They sit in rows facing a big stained-glass window. Sopranos on the left. Tenors and altos to the right. Practice time starts with devotions. Last week, one of the students shared her testimony. And that sparked something more.

PERRY: We had a lot to do this rehearsal. But instead of stopping and going and doing all the technicalities of learning a song, we just were flowing with the Holy Spirit. And for like an hour, we just were worshiping the Lord together and praying over one another.

That’s catching the attention of more and more students at Lipscomb. The group started with less than 20 singers. Now, it’s ballooned to around 50. The gospel choir performs mostly at churches and schools in the area. Sometimes they sing at Lipscomb’s chapel service, “The Gathering.” Recently, the choir released their first single “Alright.” It’s a remix of a 90s gospel song called “He’ll Make it Alright.”

A video of the song posted on Twitter drew 3.5 million views…and some surprising backlash.

HOWARD: There are a lot of people who are very, very negative toward us, because they say, Well, you know, only black people are supposed to be singing gospel. And this is cultural appropriation. And this is not right. And my kids were hurt. They were like, you know, they were really wounded by it, because they just want they're just like, “Hey, Doc, we’re just trying to lift up Jesus.” And yeah, “Don’t worry about that. You know,” I said, “You can’t worry about that. As long as you’re doing what you know the Lord has called you to do, and we’re lifting up his name.

Howard says that’s what the group is all about.

HOWARD: It’s not like we’re doing some some vocal acrobatics that no one else is doing. All I can say is that the Lord is really shining the light on us because I believe he wants the church to see unity.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Grace Snell.

MARY REICHARD: Today is Thursday, March 2nd. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN: And I’m Myrna Brown. Commentator Cal Thomas now with hard questions about the war in Ukraine.

CAL THOMAS, COMMENTATOR:

CAL THOMAS, COMMENTATOR: In John F. Kennedy’s 1961 inaugural address, he said, “…we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of liberty.”

Those were simpler, though not less dangerous times. The Soviet Union was seen as America’s number one enemy. China had not begun to challenge our position as the world’s most powerful nation. Foreign policy then was mostly nonpartisan.

Over the past year, America has supported Ukraine in its attempt to push back the Russian invasion and hold Vladimir Putin accountable for what Ukraine President Zelenskyy has charged are war crimes. Now it’s time to ask some hard questions.

First among them is, what is our goal? If it is not victory (and victory defined) what is it? Since America’s victory in World War II, we have been engaged in almost exclusively either stalemates or defeat. First there was the conflict in Korea, which ended in a draw, resulting in more than 33,000 American battle deaths.

Then there was Vietnam, where 58,220 U.S. soldiers perished. We lost that one to the communist North.

In 1991, Operation Desert Storm was a quick success, but the Iraq War, which began in 2003, led to a government that remains shaky. “Only” 4,487 American troops were killed in that war.

Afghanistan, America’s longest war, saw more than 2,000 American service members killed. An additional 3,800 U.S. contractors lost their lives. Not only has the Taliban returned to rule, that war cost an estimated $2 trillion, in addition to the expense of military equipment left behind.

And now Ukraine. Not many U.S. troops have been sent there (yet), but once again, it’s the United States that is bearing most of the financial burden in a war that is sapping resources we don’t have. Our debt is now over $31 trillion, and President Biden has promised another $500 million in aid to Ukraine. Are there controls on this money? Will it be used for its intended purpose, or will it sink into the black hole that has been defined by the country’s history of corruption?

There are strong arguments in favor of continuing to help Ukraine push back against Putin, but those arguments become weak if our intentions are not made clear and our military aid continues to resemble an installment plan.

Former Joint Chiefs Chairman General Colin Powell viewed the purpose of the military as winning with overwhelming force. Former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger shared Powell’s views in a 1984 speech in which Weinberger outlined what should be considered before American forces (and I would argue resources) are sent anywhere: “Vital national interests are at stake, the nation is prepared to commit enough forces to win, clear political and military objectives have been established, forces are sized to achieve those objectives, there is reasonable assurance of support of the American people and Congress.”

Putin clearly believes the U.S. will grow tired of the expense and draw back its support. President Biden has promised we will support Ukraine for “as long as it takes.”

The president should explain the goal and in the meantime ask European nations to step up their aid to Kyiv.

I’m Cal Thomas.

MARY REICHARD: Tomorrow: John Stonestreet returns for Culture Friday. And, Collin Garbarino reviews Creed III: a new sports film in the Rocky film series. The 9th! That and more tomorrow. I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN: And I’m Myrna Brown. The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio. WORLD’s mission is biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

The Bible says: Jesus looked up and saw the rich putting their gifts into the offering box, and he saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins. And he said, “Truly, I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them. For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.” Luke 21:1-4

Go now in grace and peace.

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