The World and Everything in It: October 22, 2025

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

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

Presidential pardons, bailing out Argentina, and a mayoral election that keeps getting stranger.

HOCHUL: I've had major differences with the candidate, Zohran Mamdani, on many issues. But I believe he's touched a nerve.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: That and more is ahead, on Washington Wednesday.

Also today, a WORLD Tour special report from Greece.

And how a medical emergency pushed a mother into action.

WILSON: Somewhere down the line… there’s a possibility a mom and dad and sister may not have to face what we faced.

And WORLD commentator Daniel Darling on advocating for the vulnerable…

REICHARD: It’s Wednesday, October 22nd. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

MAST: And I’m Lindsay Mast. Good morning!

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

SOUND: [Cheering crowds]

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Vance in Jerusalem, Israel latest » A hostage comes home. Crowds cheered yesterday as Avinatan Or returned home. A police-escorted caravan drove him back to a settlement in the West Bank.

He told reporters:

OR: I very glad to be here, to (be) back to my place, to my home. To see all the love I get from all of the people, all the citizens of Israel...I'm very happy. My heart is blown. Thank you very much.

Meanwhile, Vice President J.D. Vance was on the ground in Israel.

VANCE: Things are going frankly better than I expected that they were...

The vice president there voicing optimism that the Trump-led roadmap to peace between Israel and the terror group Hamas will be successful.

Many in Israel though expressing frustration that while the 20 living hostages have been released, Hamas has yet to turn over all of the remains of deceased hostages. The vice president said that may take some time.

VANCE: Some of these hostages are buried under thousands of pounds of rubble. Some of the hostages, nobody even knows where they are. That doesn't mean we shouldn't work to get them, and that doesn't mean we don't have confidence that we will. It's just a reason to counsel in favor of a little bit of patience.

Over the weekend, two Israeli soldiers died during a Hamas attack in southern Gaza. That led to an Israeli airstrike. But Israel says it has returned to enforcing the ceasefire.

Hamas leaders claim they’re also dedicated to upholding the truce.

Gaza aid » Meantime in Gaza,  images released by the UN's World Food Program show the distribution of food moving smoothly. The head of the WFB in Gaza, Willy Nyeko says it aims to scale up deliveries inside amid the ceasefire.

NYEKO: We plan on expanding to 145 of those sites throughout the Gaza Strip. So as you can see, uh, the food distribution points like this are critical.

UN Agencies are distributing food boxes containing items like oil, salt, lentils, sugar, and canned beans.

WFP is aiming to provide up to 1.6 million people with bread, wheat flour, and food boxes in the first three months of the ceasefire.

Ukraine latest/Trump-Putin meeting on hold » President Trump says his plan to meet once again face to face with Russia’s Vladimir Putin is on hold:

TRUMP: I don’t want to have a wasted meeting. I don’t want to have a wasted time.

After Trump and Putin spoke on the phone last week, the White House announced a planned meeting in Budapest, Hungary, though the date had not been set.

But President Trump scrapped those plans after a phone call Tuesday between Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

Lavrov made clear in public comments yesterday that Russia is opposed to an immediate ceasefire without Russia’s demands being met.

Government shutdown week three » It is officially week-three of the partial government shutdown, with Congress still locked in a stalemate.

GOP Sen. Roger Williams said House Republicans have previously passed a continuing resolution—or C-R for short— that would temporarily extend the funding that was already in place to reopen the government while the two sides negotiate.

WILLIAMS:  The same CR that eight or nine times under Biden they had voted for, but now they vote against, we passed that they need to pass there so the government can open.

Democrats have repeatedly blocked that bill in the Senate.

They insist they’re fighting for healthcare, and still say they won’t pass government funding until Republicans agree to extend Obamacare tax credits. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer:

SCHUMER:  If Congress doesn't act by October 31st, millions of Americans will see higher premiums when open enrollment begins November 1st.

Republicans say they’re willing to negotiate on those tax credits after Democrats agree to reopen the government.

Military buildup in Caribbean » The US military has continued a major buildup in the Caribbean Sea near Venezuela, raising questions about what might come next. WORLD’s Benjamin Eicher has that story:

BENJAMIN EICHER: The Trump administration has been shifting assets to the region as part of what it calls its war against narco-terrorism.

At least eight warships are in the region—along with a nuclear submarine, a special-operations mothership, missile destroyers, and an amphibious assault ship with Marines.

Analysts say the buildup likely does not signal a full-scale invasion … but rather, possible targeted strikes against cartels … or a pressure campaign against Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, not a full-scale invasion.

The White House says the mission aims to weaken cartels and cut drug-smuggling routes.

The US Navy has used deadly force in recent weeks against what the Trump administration has identified as drug-running boats in the Caribbean.

For WORLD, I’m Benjamin Eicher.

SOUND: [Crowd noises]

Sarkozy begins prison sentence » A crowd of supporters gathered around former French President Nicolas Sarkozy Tuesday, as he reported to a Paris prison to begin serving a five-year sentence.

The 70-year-old was convicted of a criminal conspiracy to finance his 2007 election campaign with funds from Libya.

Sarkozy is appealing both his conviction and sentence.

His attorneys say they’re hoping to see him freed on early release by Christmas.

I'm Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: Hunter Baker is standing by for today’s Washington Wednesday conversation. Plus, recovering from loss and finding purpose in pain.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Wednesday the 22nd of October. Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast. First up on The World and Everything in It: Washington Wednesday.

First up, New York cozies up to socialism.

REICHARD: New Yorkers are now less than two weeks out from electing a new mayor. Democrat-turned-Independent Andrew Cuomo trying to gain some amount of momentum against socialist candidate Zohran Mamdani. Cuomo pleaded with Republicans to give up on Curtis Sliwa. Cuomo took to WABC radio to make the case that while a Mamdani win would set up Republicans to fight back against socialism, it would be at a cost, namely, well, socialism.

CUOMO: Yes, it's good Republican politics for Mamdani to win…. It's death for New York City.

MAST: Mamdani, for his part, continues to shore up support. He already had an endorsement from Governor Kathy Hochul but last week they appeared together at a press conference and she seemed to be cozying up to him even more. Let’s have a listen:

HOCHUL: I've had major differences with the candidate, Zohran Mamdani, on many issues. But I believe he's touched a nerve. He's created an energy around the will to just focus on what will make New York City even more exceptional, and that is to make it more affordable. So I have found an ally who understands, as I do, and have tried to implement statewide, all the priorities that I've talked about.

Political scientist and WORLD Opinions contributor Hunter Baker joins us now to talk about this and more. Hunter, good morning.

HUNTER BAKER: Good morning.

MAST: Mamdani’s policies certainly stretch any reasonable definition of “affordable.” And The Wall Street Journal last week pointed out that his plan to raise taxes is opposed to Hochul’s previous pledges not to raise them. So what’s going on here–she’s looking to lasso some of that same political “energy” she mentioned, harness the vibes? Can vibes win out over the political fallout of tax hikes?

BAKER: This is a very complex political chessboard right now, and there's, there's a lot of different things going on. So first of all, you have Kathy Hochul who has to worry about the competition between New York and all the other states. So certainly states like Florida and Texas are chomping at the bit to be more appealing to rich people, to be more appealing to big corporations. And so she knows that New York needs to try to maintain its position over against those other governments. There's a sense in which governments are competing with each other the same way that companies do.

So there's that angle, then there's another angle where there's kind of a battle within the Democrat Party between progressives and Democrats who might be a little more centrist, a little more business friendly, and Kathy Hochul has to think about that. You know, she could, on the one hand, say, Look, I'm not going to pay for any of these things that Mamdani wants to do. And he needs me, he needs the state legislature to do most of the things he wants to do, and we're just not going to do it. But if she does that, then she has to worry about the attack from the left and whether progressives will be able to primary her, primary other people in the assembly, and be victorious. Are we going to have kind of an AOC-type movement spreading in the state of New York and maybe other places in the country? So there's a lot going on in New York right now.

REICHARD: Such a chess game going on. On to another New York story, this one out of Queens. Former Congressman George Santos hails from there. President Trump just pardoned Santos last week of several crimes, including wire fraud, identity theft, embezzling funds, other things. He’d only served three months of a seven year sentence. I know the executive has broad pardon powers….although the president can pardon only federal crimes, not state crimes. But here’s my question, Hunter: Republicans brand themselves as the party of law and order. So how does this pardon square with that message?

BAKER: It doesn't. I mean, you know, there's, in one sense, we all may kind of think about that lovable rascal who's always getting in trouble and and we want to see them get out of trouble as easily as they got in maybe that's the way Trump is thinking about George Santos. But the reality is, there are a lot of serious crimes here, people who lost money and other things. He has been deceiving people for a long time, and it really does not help to build respect for the law when you pardon somebody of doing those sorts of things, what it leads people to believe is, is that there's one system of justice for people who know people, and then there's another system of justice for the rest of the people. So it's not a good message, and I don't think that the president should be doing this.

MAST: President Trump is also helping out a different sort of friend, Argentina’s President Javier Milei visited the White House to seal the deal on a 20 billion dollar currency swap.

MILEI (Spanish): I also want to thank the great work Secretary Bessent has made to help overcome this problem of illiquidity that Argentina had as a consequence of the political attacks we have suffered from our opposition.

Milei heard there…thanking Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent for helping Argentina to overcome the problem of liquidity…he blames the political opposition for blocking growth.

Now, Argentina has gotten aid from the International Monetary Fund more than 20 times since 1958…and still has a lot of IOUs. Milei is using his economic background to turn the ship around…but what’s the opportunity and risk here you see with helping out Argentina this time?

BAKER: First of all, I just want to say, if people don't know Millais, look him up. What a fantastic character, Wolverine brought to life in the form of a politician with the crazy hair styled by the invisible hand, he says, and he goes around with a chainsaw with his plans to cut all the government programs. And I just want to say he has done incredible work. I mean, you're talking about a guy who took over Argentina that had something like 25% inflation per month. Imagine trying to live in a place where the inflation is that bad, and really has just been incredibly brave and charismatic in trying to fight that back. But when you do that, you are cutting government, you're cutting programs, you know, you start to lose popularity fast. So whatever he's going to do, he has to do it, and he has to succeed as rapidly as possible. And so that's why Trump and his Treasury Secretary is kind of stepping in trying to help Argentina and to basically back malaise play. And I think that this is actually very important. It's an important sort of a thing to do as a project against socialism, to show that free markets can work and can serve the people much better without this sort of ruinous instability of the currency and things like that, but also because it's important to have allies in Latin America. The United States should have good relationships with those countries for purposes of trade and for a variety of other reasons. So I'm very happy that Trump is doing this, and I'm pretty confident that it's going to work out.

REICHARD: While that’s going on, our government here in the US, shutdown continues…the Senate is meeting daily to vote on a Republican bill to keep funding levels the same through November but Democrats just aren’t buying it. Meanwhile, House Speaker Mike Johnson is keeping his chamber on the sidelines until a bill gets passed:

JOHNSON: Now that Democrats have had their protests and publicity stunts, I just pray that they come to their senses and end this shutdown and reopen the government this week.

Until then, no other business is getting done…including swearing in a recently elected Democrat from Arizona, Adelita Grijalva [ah-deh-LEE-tuh gri-HALL-vuh]. Grijalva has said as soon as she’s sworn in, she’ll sign a petition to force a vote on releasing the Epstein files…and the discharge petition needs just one more signature to move ahead. So what do you make of the position Speaker Johnson is in, Hunter?

BAKER: It is pretty tough to read the tea leaves here, so Johnson says that he has not sworn her in, just because he's following the Pelosi precedent and delaying swearing in new members while the house is out of session. I wonder if that's true. You know, there's a lot of noise out there that Republicans are trying to get some of their members, such as Nancy Mace, to back off of her signature on that petition to discharge the Epstein files. You know, if that's the case, I'm uneasy, you know, what? What exactly are we worried about with the Epstein files? Like I said, with regard to New York, there's different levels. You know, on one level, you could just have Democrats trying to win the week. A lot of politics is you're trying to win the week, right? You know, make make your opponent look bad and score points, or there could be something deeper here, and that's what we don't know. We don't know what's going to happen when they turn over that card.

MAST: Before we go…I want your thoughts on last weekend’s nationwide protests calling for “No Kings.” Organizers estimate nearly 7 million people turned out. It’s not clear just what the protests are calling for… Last I checked, we still have a chief executive with constitutional limits and courts checking his actions. Hunter, do these protests say more about the President…or the people wearing the inflatables and carrying the signs?

BAKER: They say a lot about retail politics. Retail politics are all about mobilizing voters and getting your base to the polls. So if you can get a lot of people to give up their Saturday to go to a no kings protest, then you can probably get them to vote in the midterm elections, and that's what this is really about. It is obviously way over the top to think about Donald Trump as some kind of a king who needs to be resisted. He is currently a fairly elected president, popular vote majority, electoral college majority, neither of which were razor thin and is currently struggling despite having control of the White House and both houses of Congress with a government shutdown. That doesn't sound like a king to me, but what I will concede is that Presidents of both parties significantly exceed executive power the way it was originally conceived in the Constitution. And so what I would say is, let's not have a No Kings Day. Let's have a Return to the Constitution Day. Let's have an Honor our Governing Document Day instead, and we can all participate in that.

REICHARD: I’ve got my pocket Constitution right here! Hunter Baker is a political scientist and provost at North Greenville University. Hunter, thanks again.

BAKER: Thank you.

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

Last week, strikes in Greece shut down and slowed buses, trains, and ferries, as the country’s parliament voted in a new labor law that’s supposed to increase labor flexibility. Protesters say the law will open them up to abuse from their employers.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: The country has been slowly rebuilding since a financial crisis in 2009… and this summer the government announced it would be able to pay off its debt 10 years early. But this labor law is just one indication that the country is not yet out of the woods. WORLD’s Mary Muncy reports.

SOUND: [Protest]

MARY MUNCY: Two weeks ago, protesters marched toward parliament in Athens, holding banners and flags for their unions. It was just a few days before the end of the public comment period for a law that would increase the allowed workday to 13 hours.

SPANOU: Overstretched, stretched schedules will lead to more workplace accidents.

Giota Spanou is with the engineers' union for a Metro line.

SPANOU: We demand seven hour work day, five days per week, 35 hours per week in total.

The government is going the opposite direction, it says the law allows more flexibility for employers in an effort to boost the economy.

Under the law, employers will pay for any extra labor, and any extra hours would be voluntary, the bill also stipulates that an employee can only work a 13-hour day 37 days a year, and can’t be fired for refusing overtime. But fellow protester Niki Chronopoulou thinks employers will abuse any new freedom.

CHRONOPOULOU: We will be living only for working, and the money that we will gain will not be enough for us to live.

Chronopoulou is the president of a union for university administrative staff.

She says wages in her industry haven’t kept up with inflation—claiming they’ve fallen 32 percent in the last 10 years.

The bill includes consequences for mistreating employees, and there is a government agency over enforcement. But protesters don’t trust the government to protect them, and they sound a lot like protesters during the financial crisis 15 years ago.

ROBOLIS: (French) Everybody feels like the state is broke, with a large deficit, a big debt.

Director of a Union Savvas Robolis told AFP in 2010 that, in his words… “everybody feels like the state is broke[n], with a large deficit and a big debt.”

And he was right.

CBS: A decade of frantic overspending has left it roughly $400 billion dollars in debt and in order to get a loan, an emergency loan, just to tide it over just to it doesn’t default on its next round of payments.

SOUND: [Protest]

Greeks in Athens protested those austerity measures frequently from 2009 to 2012 with many demonstrations turning violent.

PAPAKONSTANTINOU: The only other crisis that the Greek crisis compares with is the US Great Depression 29 to 32.

George Papakonstantinou is an economics professor at the European University Institute, and he was Greece’s Finance Minister at the start of the crisis. His government discovered the previous administration had misrepresented how the economy was doing, and began trying to correct it.

PAPAKONSTANTINOU: It was a very dark period. I signed a loan agreement for 110 billion euro in exchange for a three year initially, and then it was extended period of very harsh fiscal consolidation, austerity measures and reforms.

Over a four-year period, there was an average drop of 26 percent in earnings. Papakonstantinou says many families were living off of one person’s salary or one grandparent’s pension, which were dramatically cut in an attempt to reign in spending.

PAPAKONSTANTINOU: The difference with the US Great Depression is that while GDP fell about the-about the same in both cases, about a quarter was lost. In the US case, the rebound was much faster. In the Greek case, we still haven't quite gotten back to where we were before the crisis.

But this summer, the Greek government announced it would be paying off its debt 10 years early, and recent numbers show the economy rebounded faster after the COVID-19 pandemic than other European countries at least according to some metrics.

PAPAKONSTANTINOU: That does not mean that the problems of the country have been resolved.

The country’s purchasing power is second to last in the EU. At the height of the crisis, 1 in 4 Greeks were unemployed. Today it’s much lower bout 8 percent. For context, the current EU average is about 6 percent.

Papakonstantinou sees three main reasons the country is still behind. First, productivity remains low. That’s partly because tourism plays a big role in the country’s economic growth, but it’s an industry with long hours for little pay.

Second, he says the current recovery measures aren’t lifting many of the most vulnerable Greeks from poverty.

PAPAKONSTANTINOU: And the third problem is that, unfortunately, we didn't follow the maxim that you should never waste a good crisis, and we did not, during the crisis, reform the institutions of the country.

All of these things lead many Greek citizens to distrust the government, and he says that increases resentment.

PAPAKONSTANTINOU: And that's, that's the context in which you need to interpret the new labor law.

In general, Papakonstantinou says he’s in favor of deregulating the labor market, But he’s concerned that the current system may not be able to handle it without too much harm to an already depressed citizenry.

PAPAKONSTANTINOU: Greece is a country with many, many small businesses which are very hard to monitor, and where you're much more vulnerable and you don't have the protection of a trade union like you do in a larger firm.

Papakonstantinou says the way out probably involves increasing investment in education, high-level manufacturing, and other things that will boost the country’s productivity.

SOUND: [Protest]

Back in Athens, Parliament passed the new law last week while workers held more strikes and protests.

That’s it for this week’s WORLD Tour. I’m Mary Muncy in Athens, Greece.

MARY REICHARD, HOST:  You never know when something’ll catch the fancy of a kid. But for a five year old in New Jersey, his birthday party theme is rather unlikely: his hero, Jimmy Carter!

LAUREN RAMOS: Hey, whatcha got there?

RYAN: It’s a Jimmy Carter mug.

Ryan’s mom Lauren Ramos pulled out all the stops: full-sized cardboard cutout of Carter, campaign buttons, a cake with Carter’s face on it.

Now that president’s been out of office for 40 years, but three year old Ryan saw Carter’s toothy grin on a presidential chart and he’s been captivated ever since.

Even cooler? Carter’s daughter Amy heard about the party and sent in some merch! Including that mug.

RAMOS: Yea. Whatcha got in there?

RYAN:  Chocolate milk.

RAMOS: Do you like it?

RYAN: Yeah. I don’t like it. I love it!

Doesn’t just like it, he loves it! Me too!

Peanut farmer to preschool hero? Pretty cool.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Wednesday, October 22nd.

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

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

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

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: one woman’s unexpected mission.

Every year, hundreds of thousands of people suffer a cardiac event. They prove fatal for ninety percent of people who have one outside of a hospital.

REICHARD: Interventions like CPR and automated external defibrillators, or AED’s, can improve the rate of survival. Lindsay, you spoke with a mother who has worked to increase those chances…for very personal reasons.

LINDSAY MAST: On January 17th, 2013, Lisa Wilson got a call from an unknown number that would change her life.

AUDIO: Hey Miss Lisa it's Caroline…

Wilson was at work as a nurse and let it go to voicemail.

AUDIO: We were just sitting in class with Cory, and all of a sudden he passed out.

The young woman calling attended the same university as both of Wilson’s children.

AUDIO: He started snoring, and then he just like, passed out, and he's not responsive right now..

Her son, Cory. A 21-year-old junior. Wilson describes him as full of life. Healthy, kind, gregarious. But that day, something was terribly wrong.

Wilson grabbed her keys, got in the car, and prayed the entire 45-minute drive to the hospital.

WILSON: ...that God would be in that room, that he would take care of Cory and he would live.

When she arrived the doctor said CPR was ongoing. Wilson asked to join. After all, she was a CPR instructor, a nurse–and his mom. Surely he would come back for her.

WILSON: And I'm pushing his chest, and I'm thinking he's going to wake up. And this story is going to be about how God has intervened and allowed Corey to live. And it's going to show people too, how important it is to know CPR, and it's just going to be such a blessing.

But an hour after he collapsed, the doctor called a code–Cory wasn’t coming back.

WILSON: And I just remember just, just saying, No, like I'm not tired, he's gonna live. And she just kept she said, he's not. He's not.

They went through Cory’s backpack to see if there was anything in it that might indicate why he collapsed. Wilson pulled out pencils and a calculator. Then she felt a small book. She thought it was the thesaurus the family had given Cory at Christmas—he loved words.

WILSON: But when I took it out, it wasn't a thesaurus. It was Cory’s Bible.

She says that was the first small step in carrying on.

WILSON: And when I took that Bible out, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that God was in that room. I would never be able to live if I did not know God was in that room. I'm just that faithless that I had to have a sign that he was in that room to go forward.

But how? Cory had a zest for life that she still misses.

WILSON: He would come down the stairs at our house, and if it was raining, he would be like, Ma, look at this rain. Like it's, it's, isn't it great? And he loved being in the rain. He loved walking in the rain. And you know, if it was cold, ‘Ma, it's, it's so cold, but it feels so good.’” I love the fire…

Moving on without him felt impossible.

WILSON: This morning we were a family of four, and then we're a family of three, and we're minus one, and that's going to be the rest of our lives we're going to be minus one. All the silliness and the goofiness and the “ma” and all of the things, they were just gone.

She started pouring herself into something that she already cared about: CPR instruction. She also started advocating for putting AEDs in public places. Those are the defibrillators you see in schools, sports venues, and parks.

AUDIO: Stay calm. Follow these instructions…

They walk users through the process of using them, so anyone can. She carries one in her car.

AUDIO: Remove the white square package from lid of AED…

It’s not clear if an AED would’ve saved Cory, but there wasn’t one available when he collapsed. Others who knew him joined Wilson in raising awareness and money for AEDs.

Still, healing progressed slowly. Moving forward was one thing, but finding joy again proved harder.

WILSON: It's been hard on our marriage, it's been hard on our family. It's been hard on our friends.

She had to give herself permission to live again. Help there came from an unexpected source: watching her daughter get on an airplane to study abroad in Italy after Cory’s death.

WILSON: She has taken not just her own pain as a child, but her parents’ pain, her grandparents’ pain, and she has been able to strengthen her resolve to go forward and live this life. And if she can do that, I owe it to her to let her know she will always be enough for us to strive for.

There’s been a lot of living since then. Wilson now has grandchildren and is nearing retirement. But she still finds Cory inspiring her.

WILSON: He didn't get up in the morning and go, ‘I'm going to make a difference today.’ He just lived his life in a way that was full of gratefulness. And Corey was content.

Cory’s name is on a law requiring Georgia high schoolers to learn CPR and how to use an AED. Wilson doesn’t think cardiac awareness is why God put her son on earth, but she takes comfort knowing his story and her work may help others.

WILSON: For me as Cory’s mom, it's a blessing because I know that somewhere down the line there's a possibility that there'll be a mom and dad and a sister that may not have to face what we faced, because people knew what to do in an emergency.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Finally today, WORLD Opinions contributor Daniel Darling says the First Lady is an illustration of how we can use our influence to help others.

DANIEL DARLING: Recently First Lady Melania Trump revealed that she’s maintained an open line to Russian president Vladimir Putin for one purpose: persuading him to return Ukrainian children taken from their families during his war against Ukraine.

MELANIA TRUMP: My press representative has been working directly with President Putin's team to ensure the safe reunification of children with their families between Russia and Ukraine. In fact, eight children have been rejoined with their families during the past 24 hours.

This has been a significant issue of importance for the first lady. In August, as her husband was engaging in high-stakes diplomacy with President Putin in Alaska, he handed him a letter from Melania asking for him to do the right thing and return these children.

The president and his administration continues to pressure Vladimir Putin to stop his war on Ukraine. The plight of these children is a continued point of negotiations. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said this is a key demand in peace talks. Audio here from his appearance on Face the Nation.

MARCO RUBIO: I don't think there's any ambiguity on our side and they shouldn't even be you know a bargaining chip in regards to a broader negotiation, but it's just one more element of how tragic this war is.

One group in Ukraine working on the problem from another angle is Save Ukraine. It’s an evangelical Christian organization based in Kyiv that has identified more than 19,000 children taken from their families. So far the ministry has helped rescue more than 650 of them.

Advocacy for these children and families seems personal for Melania, who grew up in central Europe during the height of the Cold War. In her address at the 2020 Republican convention, she spoke of the harsh rule of the totalitarian regime and its contrast with America:

MELANIA TRUMP: Growing up as a young child in Slovenia, which was under communist rule at the time, I always heard about an amazing place called America: a land that stood for freedom and opportunity.

Now as an American citizen and first lady, Melania Trump is more than an example of the American Dream. Her advocacy for others is a testament to the importance of evangelical engagement in politics.

Recently The Wall Street Journal highlighted the work of many politically connected Christians who have worked with the Trump administration to raise awareness of the plight of these children. At a time when many voices are pressuring believers to step back from the public square, this work underscores the importance of leaning in and stewarding our citizenship on behalf of the most vulnerable.

Seeking power for power’s sake is unhealthy, but Scripture is full of examples of men and women in power who used their positions for the benefit of others…people like Esther, Joseph, Daniel, and others. In a democracy like ours, where the government is “Of the people, by the people, and for the people,” how can we not raise our voices on behalf of what is true and good and beautiful? How can we not speak out against injustice? Both here and abroad. We have more power and agency to do good in our day than Christians have ever had in human history.

As the war in Ukraine drags on, we should pray for President Trump and his team as they seek to bring an end to a conflict that has cost millions of lives. We should pray for the families that have been shattered by war and for the communities that have been destroyed. We should pray for Christian organizations like Save Ukraine who are meeting human needs in a time of war. War is terrible. Blessed, Jesus said, are the peacemakers.

And we should be thankful for a first lady who is not silent on the plight of Ukrainian children.

MELANIA TRUMP: A child's soul knows no borders, no flags. We must foster a future for our children which is rich with potential, security, and complete with free will. A world where dreams will be realized rather than faded by war.

May her work—and the work of so many others—see more children rescued and reunited with their families.

I’m Daniel Darling.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Tomorrow: A teacher says a school employee helped high school students schedule and pay for abortions without notifying their legal guardians. We’ll have a report. And, WORLD’s Arsenio Orteza talks with a composer who uses his time as a soldier in his experimental jazz. That and more tomorrow.

I’m Lindsay Mast.

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.

The Bible says: “Oh give thanks to the Lord; call upon his name; make known his deeds among the peoples! Sing to him, sing praises to him; tell of all his wondrous works! Glory in his holy name; let the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoice!” —Verses one through three of Psalm 105.

Go now in grace and peace.

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