The World and Everything in It: October 23, 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.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning!

A former national security advisor pleads not guilty to sharing classified information…how serious is the case against John Bolton?

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: We’ll talk about it with a former Assistant U.S. Attorney.

Also today, a teacher says her school’s social worker is helping underage girls get abortions without their guardians’ knowledge…

And an experimental, war-inspired jazz album gets a long-awaited sequel.

THOMPSON: I like the idea of composing from sounds that aren’t necessarily music.

And commentator Cal Thomas calls for a little historical perspective when it comes to evaluating presidents.

BROWN: It’s Thursday, October 23rd. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

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

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

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Trump hosts NATO chief at White House » At the White House:

TRUMP:  Well, thank you very much. It's an honor to have a friend of mine, a very good friend of mine, Mark Rutte, Secretary General of NATO…

President Trump hosting the NATO chief in the Oval Office Wednesday, where the two leaders talked a great deal about efforts to bring the war in Ukraine to an end. Rutte told the president:

RUTTE:  I want to help, NATO wants to help, my colleagues, want to help to, uh, basically deliver on your vision of peace in Ukraine.

The meeting came as the United States announced new sanctions against Russia’s two biggest oil companies to apply more pressure to Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

TRUMP:  Among the biggest in the world, but they're Russian. They do a lot of oil, and, uh, hopefully it'll push, uh, … hopefully he'll become reasonable.

This week, Trump pulled the plug on another planned face to face meeting with Putin, saying he got the sense that the meeting would be a waste of time, with Moscow unwilling to budge from its maximalist demands for halting the war.

Vance-Netanyahu » Another top Trump administration official is headed to the Middle East.

Israeli government spokeswoman Shosh Bedrosia told reporters:

BEDROSIAN: Secretary of State Marco Rubio is coming back to Israel this week. He will be arriving on Thursday and is scheduled to meet with the prime minister on Friday...

Vice President J.D. Vance was already on the ground in Israel Wednesday.

In a joint news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Vance said he was optimistic that a peace deal between Israel and Hamas would hold up.

VANCE: I mean, we're really creating a peace plan and an infrastructure here where nothing existed even a week and a day ago. That's going to require a lot of work. That requires a lot of ingenuity...

Netanyahu said his government will continue to work closely with the White House, but he also added:

NETANYAHU: When it comes to Israel's security, we do what we have to do. That's always the case. That's not a question.

Around 200 U.S. troops have been sent to Israel, but the vice president said they will not be deployed on the ground in Gaza. Instead, their purpose is to monitor and help implement the ceasefire.

Another U.S. drug boat strike (in Eastern Pacific) » The Pentagon says the U.S. military has launched its eighth strike against a vessel it says was smuggling drugs in international waters.

But this strike, on Tuesday night, occurred in the eastern Pacific Ocean. The seven previous strikes all targeted vessels in the Caribbean.

All of those operations came after President Trump signed an order declaring cartels foreign terrorist organizations.

Officials say two people were killed in this week’s strike.

Trump to host Saudi prince » President Trump is reportedly preparing to host Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman next month in the United States. WORLD’s Benjamin Eicher has more.

BENJAMIN EICHER: Associated Press reports work is underway to prepare a package of agreements Trump and the crown prince could sign or witness during the visit.

The AP cites several sources not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

The planned trip would likely be part of the push Trump has made to restore relations with Gulf Arab nations, incensed by Israel’s recent attack on Hamas leaders in Qatar. Also:

It would be the first visit to the United States by the crown prince since the killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Consulate in 20-18.

U.S. intelligence agencies have said Prince Mohammed likely directed the killing … which led to U.S. sanctions against several Saudi officials.

For WORLD, I’m Benjamin Eicher.

Minnesota Trans powerlifting lawsuit » The Minnesota Supreme Court is sending a lawsuit brought by a transgender powerlifter back to lower courts for another look.

JayCee Cooper, a biological male, sued USA Powerlifting in 2021, after the association barred him from competing in the women’s category.

His attorneys argued that under the state’s Human Rights Act, barring Cooper from women’s competitions was discriminatory.

But attorney for USA Powerlifting Ansis Viksnins argued:

VIKSNINS: Well, it's not discrimination based on gender identity…the differentiation here was because of … biological sex, not…gender identity…And that is a legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason for the action that USA Powerlifting took.

The state court said that rationale must now be tested by a lower court.

American missionary kidnapped » The U.S. State Department says it’s working with authorities in Niger after reports that an American missionary pilot was kidnapped.

A diplomat told Reuters the man serves with the U.S.-based Evangelical missions group Serving in Mission. He was reportedly abducted by three armed men as he headed to the airport in the capital city, Niamey.

Authorities believe the kidnappers fled north, toward an area where Islamist militants linked to ISIS and al-Qaeda operate.

I'm Kent Covington. 

Straight ahead: allegations of mishandling classified information. Plus, a presidential history lesson.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Thursday, the 23rd of October.

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

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

First up on The World and Everything in It…a family project under federal investigation.

Last week, a federal grand jury in Maryland indicted former National Security Advisor John Bolton…on charges of retaining and sharing national defense information.

BROWN: During a speaking event at Harvard in September, Bolton fielded questions about the investigation. You’ll hear him refer to his 2020 book, The Room Where It Happened, about working for President Trump.

BOLTON: Well, I'd love to talk about it at greater length, but for pretty obvious reasons I can't. I will just say I'm very confident that there's nothing in the book that's classified. That's why there was a pre-publication review.

How serious are the charges Bolton is facing?

MAST: Joining us now is veteran attorney Bobby Higdon…he was U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina, and served 24 years as Assistant U.S. Attorney before that.

Bobby, good morning.

BOBBY HIGDON: Good morning, Lindsay.

MAST: Bobby, break down the indictment for us-what does it say Bolton was doing with this National Defense Information?

HIGDON: Well, when you boil it all down, what it says is that Mr. Bolton was taking national security information that included his personal schedules, details of meetings he had, and information he obtained while he was functioning as National Security Advisor for President Trump in the first administration, and he was using those, it looks like to me, to maintain sort of a diary and also to prepare and save information so that he could write a book or make other use of it going forward. But it alleges that all of that information was national security information, protected and classified, and that he would have no right to use that information or to handle it in a way apart from the government controlled protections that surround that type of information.

MAST: So what do we know about who he was sharing the information with?

HIGDON: Well, it doesn't, in the indictment, say specifically. At least two individuals, individuals A and B, I've seen a media reporting that those are family members. But the indictment doesn't tell us that. That will come out in the proceedings, because the government will have to tell Mr. Bolton. But right now we don't know officially who they are.

MAST: Well, to that end, I think many of us take notes on our work and may occasionally share details with family around the table, but what are the rules for top government officials about keeping those types of personal records or sharing them?

HIGDON: Well, the rules are very tight. You're right. We all have the habit of sharing information with family and friends, but you cannot, absolutely cannot do that with classified national security information. Mr. Bolton had security clearances at the highest level in the government. Not only did he have top secret clearance, but he had what they call compartmentalized approval for specific projects specific types of information, and so he was regulated at the highest level. And those regulations govern how you handle the information, how you store it, how you transmit it, and who you can share it with. They're very specific, and as someone who had those clearances, I can tell you that they make it very clear what information is covered and how you're to use that information, where you have to keep it, and they make it very clear that you cannot use that information outside of those parameters, and you cannot use that information after you lose your security clearance, usually when you leave the position that you're functioning in.

MAST: This is just the latest in a series of indictments this fall against perceived enemies of President Trump, following charges against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. How does the Bolton case look similar or different, in your view?

HIGDON: We know in looking at the indictments, there are several things that strike me as different.

Number one is the Bolton indictment is a much more detailed indictment. It's what we call a speaking indictment, and this is often used in white collar cases, national security cases, fraud cases, where you lay out some of the facts to tell the story that surrounds the crime. Now, that was not done in Mr. Comey's case. It was done in a small way in the Attorney General New York's case, but the crime that she's alleged to commit is a very focused, narrow one that deals with her own personal ownership of real estate. But Mr. Bolton's indictment is very detailed. It goes on for many pages, outlining the type of information and how he allegedly handled it. That's the first thing I noticed.

Number two is, you'll note that in the other two indictments, the Comey one and the James one, those were returned by the grand jury at the specific request of the United States Attorney. That's who signed those indictments. In this case, the indictments were signed by an assistant United States attorney and also an attorney that is from Maine, justice dealing with this type of issue in the national security section of the Justice Department. These are both longtime career people, both of them have been with the department more than a decade, so this matter is being handled by people with that specialty. Now I don't know whether that makes any difference, but those are significant differences in those first two indictments versus this one.

MAST: What do you know about how long this investigation has been going on? Does it date? Is it just since the President has been in office? Does it date back further than that? Is there anything to say about that timing?

HIGDON: It's hard to know when the investigation began, but the dates that it covers time periods back when Mr. Bolton, of course, was working for President Trump in the first administration, and it brings it current until very recently. It's not clear from the indictment exactly what has happened at each stage of those time periods, but the indictment alleges that some of the misconduct was very recent, including it in, I think, August of 2025.

MAST: Bolton pleaded not guilty at a Maryland district court last week…so what comes next in the case?

HIGDON: Well, what comes next is there'll be a process where there's an exchange of discovery. That's that's where the government has to show what evidence they have. I'm sure there will be litigation over the use of classified information in the courtroom, because in order to prove this case, they're going to have to prove what type of information had access to, how he used it, and probably much of it has not lost its classified nature. And so the government will have to handle that very carefully. The court will, and the defense counsel will, so it'll be litigation and procedures that are put in place around that. So this could take a little while, because it is a very delicate thing to do to bring national security information into an open courtroom.

MAST: Well, I do think it's worth pointing out when Donald Trump was indicted for storing classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, Bolton spoke with NPR. Here's what he said then.

BOLTON: If Trump had followed standard procedures, if anybody could have trusted him with the documents, if he wanted to write a book about his time as president, there were procedures that could have been set up. He disregarded all of those.

And now it appears Bolton may have been swimming in similar waters. So what do you make of that?

HIGDON: Well, as in any case, prosecutors always look at what the individuals that are being charged have said about the issue that they're being charged with, and so I imagine that Mr. Bolton's statements will be carefully reviewed to see if they provide an indication as to what his state of knowledge was. Because, of course, the government, in order to convict him, has to prove that he understood what the rules were and that he violated, knowingly violated, those rules, and so any statement that he has made around that issue will certainly be something that they'll look at carefully and determine whether or not it is evidence in this matter.

MAST: Is there anything else you think that's worth highlighting in this case as we wait for it to proceed?

HIGDON: Well, you know, it's interesting that one of the things that I looked at is, you know, how this compares to other cases, and this is not the first time that anyone has been charged with a mishandling secret and classified information that was, you've already referred to President Trump's case. This was what was investigated with respect to President Biden, when you go back to Sandy Berger, the national foreign national security advisor in the Clinton administration, he was convicted of a similar type of thing—he pled to a misdemeanor. General Petraeus, when he was the director of the CIA, he was charged with a similar type of violation, actually, in the Western District of North Carolina, and then the CIA director before him, John Deutch, was also charged with this. Now those last three all pled to misdemeanors. They worked out deals with the Justice Department.

Won't be able to tell right now how this case may be resolved, whether it's going to be something more serious, or whether it's going to be resolved with an agreement. I will note that one of the differences, as best I can tell, is that the allegation as to Mr. Bolton is that bad actors that are enemies of the United States apparently accessed some of this information by breaching his email system. And I think in those other three cases, there was no suggestion that the information had been obtained by any bad actor. So I don't know if that's going to make a difference, but there is precedent for pursuing these types of cases in that list of individuals.

MAST: Bobby Higdon is a former Assistant U.S. Attorney now in private practice in North Carolina. Thanks so much.

HIGDON: Thank you, Lindsay.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: Virginia public school teachers may be helping students procure abortions.

Recently, a teacher claimed another staff member helped at least one student get an abortion without her guardian’s knowledge.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: The allegations triggered a cascade of local, state, and federal investigations. WORLD’s Lauren Canterberry reports that while the teacher is sticking to her story, the district claims the allegations are false.

ZENAIDA PEREZ: My name is Zenaida Perez. I am originally from Cuba and came to the United States when I was very young, in my early 20s.

LAUREN CANTERBERRY: In 2008, Perez moved from Florida to Virginia, where she took a job teaching English to non-native speakers in Fairfax County Public Schools.

PEREZ: I have been a teacher most of my life, since I was 23 years old.

One day in May 2022, while taking attendance she noticed one of her female students had missed several classes. Another student told Perez that her absent classmate had had a baby. Then the girl said she had told her absent classmate that the school social worker could have helped, like she had helped her a few months earlier.

PEREZ: I asked her, how did the social worker help you? She said, ‘I got pregnant. My boyfriend got me pregnant and I didn’t want to have the baby. I was scared that my family would not let me have an abortion, so I went to the social worker, Carolina Diaz, and she called the place to make the appointment.

The student told Perez that Diaz had also paid for the procedure. According to Perez, the girl’s legal guardian, her uncle, only learned about the abortion after he took her to the emergency room due to heavy bleeding.

Virginia, like most states, does not permit abortions for minors without a guardian’s consent or knowledge. Perez says she immediately brought the allegations to school officials who she says did little to investigate the situation.

Then, earlier this year another student told her that Diaz had helped her find information about abortion when she was about five months pregnant. Perez says that student told her mother about the plan and decided to keep her son.

PEREZ: I learned about it by just a confession from one victim, but I am pretty sure that many other girls went through that. It has been kept secret and it has been kept away from their legal guardians or the family members who are representing them. And it is absolutely not right.

After Perez went public with her story in August, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin directed state police to open a criminal investigation. Later, Republican Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy demanded information about the situation and the U.S. Department of Education initiated enforcement actions against the district.

Late last week, lawyers representing the school responded to both Cassidy and the Department of Education. The district claims that its own preliminary investigation found evidence that Perez’s claims may not be true. The lawyers say school officials followed protocols when advising the pregnant students and allege Perez falsified the students’ statements.

Perez said Monday she had been placed on paid administrative leave. Meanwhile, her lawyers from Americans United for Life said they were preparing a lawsuit on her behalf against the district.

PEREZ: It has been atrocious. I have been going through a lot of hostility, a lot of harassment.

Perez’s allegations sparked questions and concerns among parents and community members about how a school staff member could participate in a student’s health decisions. Schools do have some rights to make choices on behalf of students in an emergency situation, but if the social worker pressured the girls to get an abortion, that crosses a line.

TRACY REYNOLDS: School counselors and officials can be held liable for forcing or coercing a girl to have an abortion because, in their opinion, it’s going to ruin your life.

Tracy Reynolds directs the Center Against Forced Abortions at the Justice Foundation. The group has produced template letters to students, school employees, parents, health officials, and police to clarify the legal rights of pregnant girls and women.

While parents are responsible for caring for their daughter, when a girl is pregnant she is ultimately the one who makes decisions about the child in her womb.

REYNOLDS: The law works both ways, but the bottom line is, it’s to protect the pregnant woman for whatever she is wanting.

When a young woman becomes pregnant, it is important that she knows about all of the resources available to her. Sara Smith is the executive director of Center for Pregnancy Choices in Meridian, Mississippi.

SARA SMITH: A lot of people only think that there’s one option out there, and when we say we provide options counseling, it’s letting people know that it can go one of many ways.

Some pregnancy resource centers try to make sure that school social workers and nurses know about their services. When a pregnant student comes to a trusted adult at school, it is vital that they make sure she does not make a decision out of fear.

SMITH: We know people are coming to us sometimes in the most vulnerable and broken time of their life and we’re to steward that well. We can’t use that as a means of us pushing an agenda.

While the school claims Perez fabricated the allegations, Perez says she hopes the state and federal investigations will uncover the full story…adding that it’s critical parents and guardians know about what is happening in their child’s life, especially when it comes to things like abortion.

PEREZ: I trust God and I know that everything will come to light. I have God and truth on my side, and I will continue fighting until the end of times.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Lauren Canterberry.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: In D.C. love…found a loophole

The D.C. Council passed what it’s calling the “Let Our Vows Endure, or LOVE—Emergency Act.

It let Mayor Muriel Bowser issue marriage licenses despite the federal shutdown. So couples like Elizabeth Seremet and Bruce Herriott could say their “I do’s.”

SEREMET: We weren’t sure if we’d still be able to keep that day. But thanks to the LOVE Act, we are now able to get married.

The bride wore white, and the groom went a bit bolder:

SEREMET: I’m wearing a Scottish kilt. My mom and my whole family on that side are from Scotland, and this is the Innis tartan—my family’s colors.

Proof that you just can’t shut down love!

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Today is Thursday, October 23rd. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Lindsay Mast.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: a conversation with the creator of the new album, XX: Twenty Years of Silence.

In 2004, William A. Thompson IV was an Army National Guardsman in Iraq, charged with gathering intelligence. He was also a jazz pianist with an experimental bent. His debut album, Baghdad Music Journal, was released by the High Mayhem label while he was still overseas. Now, 20 years later, Thompson has released a kind of sequel. WORLD’s Music Reviewer Arsenio Orteza talked to him about it.

ARSENIO ORTEZA: If you condense the name “William A. Thompson IV” into initials and add the Roman numeral for “four,” you get the word “WATIV.” That’s one of the names under which William A. Thompson IV has been releasing music for the last 20 years. He first used it on Baghdad Music Journal. The album was exactly what its title said—an aural document of an Iraq-war soldier’s experience. While its experimental, electronic nature might have normally made it “niche,” the uniqueness of its origin and purpose got it some rather high-profile attention.

HOWARD MANDEL: “Kind of freaky” is the way many people might describe Thompson’s music.

That’s National Public Radio’s Howard Mandel describing Baghdad Music Journal on a 2005 episode of NPR’s All Things Considered.

MANDEL: He uses static as a rhythm instrument and incorporates eerie ambiences like the whirring of an air conditioner, overheard conversation, or random bits of short-wave radio that he records on his iPod. He says he adapted quickly to this new technology. But Thompson is less about the medium than about the moods he tries to capture…

Mandel’s description was accurate.

William Thompson’s latest release, XX: Twenty Years of Silence, has no air conditioners or short-wave radio, but it does incorporate eerie ambiences and human speech. Consider, for instance, the opening cut, “Speaking in Tongues.” It’s based on the melodic suggestions of a recording of a preacher discussing threats facing the family.

MUSIC: [Speaking in Tongues]

It’s one of several speech-to-music experiments on the album. Thompson earned a Ph.D. in experimental music in 2022. So I asked him what sparked his interest in what he calls the “musicality of speech.”

THOMPSON: It’s really interesting, I think, because the way people speak is pretty musical and—to the point that you can look at populations regionally and—and their dialects and then compare it to their folk musics, and it’s very similar. You know, like the first track on this record, “Speaking in Tongues,” it’s some Southern gospel preacher, and it’s very blues sounding to me, and it sounds like church music of that caliber. I like the idea of composing from something that just—sounds that aren’t necessarily music, because I don’t really necessarily distinguish between music and noise the way that I think a lot of people do.

One of the other speech-to-music pieces on Twenty Years of Silence leans into Thompson’s wartime experiences. It’s called “Dirge for Two Veterans,” and it’s based directly on the last two stanzas of Walt Whitman’s nine-stanza poem of the same name.

MUSIC: [Dirge for Two Veterans]

As with “Speaking in Tongues,” a recitation establishes the melody, which Thompson then develops on piano. He then reintroduces the recitation in increasingly degraded forms, transforming it into a kind of decaying memory. Another piece, “Not to Keep,” takes its title from a poem by Robert Frost and also utilizes recitation. In this case, however, the speaking is all but buried by a piano, a bass, and a drum kit that seem to be in a slow but gradually intensifying struggle. The poem’s last line emerges clearly only at the end. Thompson said that the poem itself was “a little too on the nose about war and veterans” and that he didn’t want the piece to feel “corny.”

Not being too on the nose isn’t something that Thompson is likely to be accused of any time soon. Thompson includes detailed track-by-track explanations of his process with each selection, but even listeners who read the notes for Twenty Years of Silence may find that the pieces reveal themselves only after multiple listens.

One group of listeners who might have an edge are fans of classical music. The genre tags on Twenty Years of Silence’s Bandcamp page are “experimental,” “sound collage,” “electronic,” “jazz,” “war music,” and “New Orleans.” But I detected a classical echo at the beginning of the song called “Computer Riot.”

MUSIC: [Computer Riot]

Thompson, who in addition to jazz, is also conversant with the high-culture canon, confirmed my suspicions.

THOMPSON: I like that you’re saying that because I’ve—I’ve always really liked classical music, especially modern classical music. And I think my writing is definitely informed by that, and my improvisation. I mean, because I minored in composition, so I was writing—just writing music for—modern music for composition lessons, yeah, the entire time. So that also influenced it. But even, you know, with Baghdad Music Journal, I was listening to a lot of, like, Bach. I think I can hear Bach, you know, like a fake, like, kind of jazz version of Bach happening.

None of which is to overshadow Thompson’s real jazz. On this album, the loveliest real example is “122-60,” a song based on the first time that Thompson met his wife.

MUSIC: [122-60]

To quote the album’s liner notes, “122-60” “expresses the joy that [his wife] brought into [Thompson’s] life.” What the liner notes leave out is that the song can bring joy into the lives of Thompson’s listeners as well.

I’m Arsenio Orteza.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Thursday, October 23rd. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast. We end today with commentary from Cal Thomas…who says last weekend’s protestors need a history lesson.

CAL THOMAS: People who are protesting and complaining that President Trump is behaving like a dictator apparently skipped history class. Either that, or they took the subject from liberal professors who have re-written the subject to conform to their worldview.

Someone who is trying to reverse that trend is author, and syndicated radio and television host Mark Levin. Last weekend, he reminded his audience that past presidents—who are regarded as some of our best—did things far worse than what Trump is accused of doing.

Levin reminded listeners that John Adams, one of America’s Founding Fathers, imprisoned several citizens under the Sedition Act, including four journalists. The Insurrection Act was used by Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant, and many others to call up the military to achieve political and social objectives.

According to Levin, here are a few other historical events to remember:

Abraham Lincoln “shut down pro-peace newspapers, or papers thought to be sympathetic to the Confederacy during the Civil War. He suspended habeas corpus. Only Congress can do that.” Lincoln also “confiscated printing materials and sometimes imprisoned reporters, editors and publishers.”

Lincoln isn’t alone. Levin reminds us that Woodrow Wilson—a favorite of many liberals—was “a racist and a bigot. He believed in eugenics. He also passed the Espionage Act in 1917 and a Sedition Act in 1918, so opponents of Wilson were charged and imprisoned on a scale never seen in American history…” upwards of 2,000. More than half of those were imprisoned. Among them “the Socialist candidate for president of the United States.”

Levin isn’t finished. He explains Franklin Roosevelt’s “war against the press.” FDR established the Federal Communications Commission in 1934 and reduced the length of broadcast radio licenses from three years to six months to make sure they “abide(d) by the policies of the government.”

That’s not all. FDR “appointed a political confidant to run the IRS. He would order this director to conduct audits on political opponents and newspaper publishers.” He also “ordered the IRS to lay off a young congressman they were investigating.” That congressman was Lyndon Johnson. On top of that, “At FDR’s direction,” says Levin, “Senate Democrats subpoenaed tens of thousands of telegrams from Western Union because they… thought it was run by Republicans.”

Levin’s history lesson continues. John F Kennedy “appointed a loyalist to be IRS Commissioner and he would routinely read tax filings of political opponents.” Not because they were truly under investigation, but in Levin’s words: just “for the fun of it.” Many of those documents were then leaked to Ben Bradley, who wrote for Newsweek magazine and later became editor at The Washington Post.

Back to Lyndon B Johnson for a moment. Levin mentions how he “used the IRS, the FBI, the CIA…and went after his political opponents, businesses, publishers. He spied on the Goldwater campaign and had bugs by the FBI placed in the Goldwater headquarters.” Johnson also ordered the phones of Martin Luther King Jr. and other Black civil rights leaders to be bugged

Fast forward to Barack Obama…about whom so many say was free of scandal…Levin reminds us that Obama had his Justice Department subpoena and seize “20 Associated Press phone lines used by 100 reporters…and communications between reporters and the CIA.”

Levin chronicles so many more actions ordered by mostly Democrat presidents that taken together, or individually, pale in comparison to President Trump’s efforts to uphold the law. Levin says it’s not hard to really see who the real authoritarians are. In his words, “They’re the ones who reject the outcomes of elections…they’re the ones who seek to change the citizenry of this country because they don’t much like the way that we vote and that way they can pick up more congressional seats…”

They’re also the ones lobbying to get rid of the Electoral College. If that happens, only the 11 or 12 most populous states—mostly controlled by Democrats—will then control the country…yet they have the audacity to claim they’re the ones “protecting democracy.”

I wonder how many history teachers today, if they get around to the subject, are prepared to call any of these former presidents “dictators?” Not many.

I’m Cal Thomas.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Tomorrow: John Stonestreet is back for Culture Friday. And, the Bible meets The Office in a new mockumentary style TV show called The Promised Land. We’ll have a review. That and more tomorrow.

I’m Lindsay Mast.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: 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.

“Thus says the Lord, ‘Stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.’” —Jeremiah 6:16

Go now in grace and peace.

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