The World and Everything in It: September 4, 2025

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MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

The U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee is rewriting its rules about men in women’s sports, with ripple effects that may soon reach local fields and courts.

PETTY: Most high school leagues…all refer to these national governing bodies for the rules of the game for eligibility standards…

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Also, analysis of the push for universal pre-K and preschool subsidies and why the fight is heating up.

And NASA is heading back to the moon. But first, it’s practicing in the lava fields of Oregon.

VANESSA IVEY: You need to know how to use this equipment. You don't want to get up to the moon, and this is the first time you're experimenting with it.

And WORLD commentator Cal Thomas on doing what we can to make our children safe.

REICHARD: It’s Thursday, September 4th. 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: Up next, Kent Covington with today’s news.

SOUND: [China parade music]

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Russia-China » Music and fanfare as Beijing held a Chinese military parade Wednesday to mark the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II.

Russia’s Vladimir Putin and North Korean dictator Kim Jung Un joined Chinese leader Xi Jinping for the festivities.

President Trump criticized the spectacle on social media, writing that the three leaders were conspiring against the United States. But he told reporters Wednesday.

TRUMP: I thought it was a beautiful ceremony. I thought it was very, very impressive. But I understood the reason they were doing it and they were hoping I was watching. And I was watching. My relationship with all of them is very good. We're gonna find out how good it is over the next week or two.

Meanwhile, Russian leader Vladimir Putin met with reporters after returning to Moscow, calling China a powerhouse of the global economy. He also addressed Trump's calls for a peace deal in Ukraine.

PUTIN: [Speaking in Russian]

Putin says he's ready to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy if Zelenskyy wants to come to Moscow. Ukraine's foreign minister called that proposal unacceptable.

Polish president visits White House » Trump’s remarks came as he welcomed the new president of Poland at the White House just one month after he was sworn into office.

TRUMP:  He had an incredible race. Uh, he came from behind and he won, uh, very handily. The people have fallen, have taken to him immediately.

Trump had taken the unusual step of endorsing Nawrocki in the elections earlier this year. For his part, the Polish president said the two countries share a bond.

NAWROCKI:  The Polish American relations are very important, very strong.

And he said it is now better than ever.

The two leaders reaffirmed a strong defense partnership, including Poland’s continued investment in U.S. military equipment. And President Trump told reporters that the United States will keep a robust troop presence in Poland.

There are currently more than 8,000 U.S. service members stationed there.

Venezuela boat strike » The Trump administration says a military strike that annihilated a Venezuelan boat in the Caribbean this week took out members of the Venezuela-based Tred De Aragua gang.

 It's the first lethal operation since the American warships arrived near Venezuela. The strike took out a speed boat, killing all 11 on board.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio:

RUBIO:  The president of the United States is going to wage war on narco terrorist organizations. This one was operating in international waters, headed towards the United States to flood our country with poison and under President Trump. Those days are over.

Over the years, the standard procedure might be for the US military to shoot out the engine block. Or the Coast Guard might board the boat and detain the crew.

But with the cartels and gangs designated as foreign terrorist organizations, the Pentagon can now shoot to kill.

The goal of the military operation in the region is to cut off drug trafficking routes and networks coming out of Venezuela.

Drug bust » Meantime, in Texas federal authorities are announcing what they say is the biggest seizure of meth-making chemicals in US history.

U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro:

PIRRO:  We announced a very significant seizure of two shipments of chemicals shipped on two different vessels on the high seas and route to the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico, from China to Mexico.

Authorities stopped two shipments in the Port of Houston carrying over 300,000 kilos of precursors destined for labs controlled by the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico.

Officials say it is highly likely that the cartel would have refined the chemicals into methamphetamines and then smuggled the drugs across the US border.

Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons:

LYONS:  Had these precursors made at a destination, they would've made hundreds of thousands of pounds of methamphetamine with profits of over half a billion dollars, which would led to more American deaths here.

He said it took two 18-wheeler trucks to transport all of the chemicals to a DHS storage facility.

Epstein-related news conference » Victims of late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein joined a group of lawmakers on Capitol Hill Wednesday to demand the release of all files related to the Epstein case.

LACERDA: My name is Marina Lacerda. I was one of dozens of girls that I personally know who were forced into Jeffrey's mansion in New York City when we were just kids.

The GOP-led Oversight Committee has released tens of thousands of pages connected to the Epstein investigation.

But an effort led by Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna and Republican Thomas Massie aims to force the release of all the case files.

Massie took a jab at House Speaker Mike Johnson over a nonbinding resolution directing the Oversight Committee to continue its Epstein probe.

MASSIE:  When you wanna kill the momentum, when you wanna kill initiative, you introduce a placebo, a different bill that does nothing, and then try to pull the wool over the eyes of the American people. That's not going to happen this time. We demand real accountability.

President Trump has called the issue a Democrat-led hoax and a political distraction. He says no matter how many pages the Justice Department releases, it won’t be enough to satisfy some people.

I'm Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: how a U.S. Olympic rule change could affect female sports overall. Plus, preparing to walk on the moon, and learning a thing or two about our own planet along the way.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Thursday the 4th of September.
This is WORLD Radio and we’re glad you’ve joined us today! Good morning, I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

First up on The World and Everything in It, new top-down protections for women’s sports.

Earlier this summer, the U-S Olympic and Paralympic Committee, or USOPC, quietly revised its Athlete Safety Policy. The change? It now pledges to work with national governing bodies of amateur sports to comply with President Trump's executive order on men in women’s competitions.

BROWN: It’s a shift that could be good news for millions of female athletes at all levels, if the policy sticks. WORLD’s Lindsay Mast has the story.

LINDSAY MAST: Macy Petty figured out her dream pretty early in life.

PETTY: I was homeschooled in elementary school, so I would sit outside for hours learning how to overhand serve a volleyball.

She set her sights on a college scholarship and started playing club volleyball.

PETTY: I would travel all over the country every weekend. Never got to go to prom or anything like that because of my commitment.

She recalls one high-stakes tournament, where college scouts would be watching. Also there: a male playing with a female team, against female teams.

PETTY: I was really confused because the men's courts were on the other side of the convention center and they had plenty of opportunities to play over there, but still this male athlete was playing on our court.

Petty says playing against a male made her concerned for both her safety and her chance to stand out on the court.

PETTY: It jeopardized my opportunity to play in college, something that I had been dreaming of for a long time.

AUDIO: DENIED BY PETTY!!!!

Petty did go on to play in college and started speaking out about the need to protect female athletes.

She now works as a legislative analyst for Concerned Women for America. The group recently released a report that found that American male athletes have taken the top spot over females more than 1900 times, pushing the girls and women below them down in ranking. The prize money involved totals nearly half a million dollars.

That’s one reason Petty welcomes the USOPC’s new athlete safety policy.

PETTY: It does have far reaching effects.

The new policy is expected to quickly trickle down, protecting both elite athletes and those who play at lower levels. The Ted Stevens Amateur Sports Act chartered the USOPC in 1978 and gave it authority over sports national governing bodies, or NGBs—think USA Swimming, USA Wrestling and more than 45 other similar organizations. They govern and set rules for their respective sports.

Petty says those leagues with nationally competitive rankings and events often serve as a pipeline to the Olympics.

PETTY: Most high school leagues, the club league that I was playing for for recruitment, they all refer to these national governing bodies for the rules of the game for eligibility standards. So you'd want your standards for eligibility to remain pretty in line.

But even as governing bodies change and clarify rules to fall in line with the new USOPC policy, it’s unclear what effect that will have. For example, USA Volleyball now says competitors must compete in the category that aligns with their birth certificate, but many states allow birth certificates to be changed. Petty says that makes enforcement difficult and doesn’t align with the order–which is based on biological sex.

MACY PETTY: USA Volleyball is not even acknowledging that sex exists. They will not use the words female or woman anywhere in their policy. They're just treating it as if this is something that some doctor is just deciding when they're born and putting it on their birth certificate. There's no way to give women the dignity and safety that they deserve if you don't acknowledge that women exist, period.

USA Fencing’s new policy does say those competing in the women’s category must be “of the female sex.” In response, Minnesota Division Fencing released a statement saying the new policy has caused pain and confusion, and that it would offer only mixed events. Eliminating a women’s category could effectively leave females in direct competition against males.

Another problem: the USOPC changes hinge on an executive order, which could change under a different administration. At least one lawsuit challenging the order is making its way through the court system.

Florida Representative Greg Steube has introduced an amendment to the Ted Stevens Act that would codify protections for female athletes. Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville has also supported similar legislation in the Senate.

The movement to protect female athletes has some high-level international support.

KIRSTY COVENTRY: I want to ensure that front and foremost we protect Female category.

That’s Kirsty Coventry, the new President of the International Olympic Committee. She was clear on her stance before her election in March. Audio from Sports Insider.

COVENTRY: I do believe that everyone has the right to play sport 100% but when it comes to the Olympic Games we're not having a discussion around how transgender athletes are impacting male category only the female category. And being a former female athlete having two young girls I want to ensure that that category is protected.

Just how far those same protections for American female athletes ultimately go, remains to be seen.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Lindsay Mast.

MARY REICHARD, HOST:  Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: the high cost of child care.

A new The Wall Street Journal analysis found families can spend anywhere from $24,000 to $147,000 on just the first five years of daycare. That’s one of the biggest expenses many households face.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Lawmakers have pushed for child care to be subsidized more heavily. But some experts warn: the real cost may be paid by the children themselves.

WORLD’s Anna Johansen Brown brings us the story.

ANNA JOHANSEN BROWN: Nearly 68% of children under age 6 live in homes where both parents work. During the workday, it’s becoming more common for children to be looked after at daycare and preschool centers rather than by relatives or friends. In 2017, just under 9 million children were in child care centers.

In a TikTok video, working mother of four Paige Connell explains what the expense of child care looks like for her family.

CONNELL: So, I’m gonna break it down for you. Our two youngest kids are in daycare full time. They are two and four, and so they are full time day care. They are charged like a toddler and preschool rate. That is about $3,400 a month for the two girls.

That’s a little higher than average. Child Care Aware of America reported in May that the typical married couple would have to devote around $13,000 per year to child care. And it’s only getting pricier. Across the board, the average price of child care rose 29% between 2020 and 2024.

Many daycare and preschool centers are privately owned, but there is some government assistance available to low-income families. Yet, as of 2020, most of the children eligible for assistance didn’t get any. In July, Democratic Representative Bobby Scott spoke about a bill aimed at helping families access child care funding.

SCOTT: The Child Care for Working Families Act makes the investments that we need to turn our childcare system around and meet the needs of children, parents, and childcare workers.

Subsidizing child care isn’t just a Democratic concern. The Trump administration’s reconciliation bill raised the amount of child care expenses that earners can claim.

Universal pre-K is also becoming more popular. About a dozen states, including California and Florida, have passed universal pre-K policies. Advocates report that these programs can help parents earn up to 20% more every year. But those programs may take a toll in other ways. Quebec embraced universal pre-K in 1997. Jenet Erickson is Senior fellow at the Institute for Family Studies. She has seen a troubling trend:

ERICKSON: Quebec really experimented with that with a massive rollout of a universal daycare system and what you saw was a significant increase in risk for children socio-emotionally.

Those risks include behavioral problems like anxiety and aggression. And adults who grew up in Quebec child care programs were more likely to become incarcerated.

And that leads Erickson and others to suggest a more customized approach. Instead of free pre-K for every family, Erickson says legislators should prioritize helping low-income families get assistance. But most of those families don’t like to rely on institutional daycare centers. They would prefer to choose their child care provider.

ERICKSON: So I think as much as the states can free things up in the sense that they could give vouchers to families to go contract directly with their child care provider, that frees that up some.

Some suggest that making child care cheaper would also allow parents to have more children. The national birth rate dropped to 1.6 at the end of last year. But Erickson isn’t sure that subsidizing child care would do much to fix that.

ERICKSON: If you're at all aware of what's happened in Western Europe, the Nordic countries that provide extensive welfare options for families with children, that would mean mother might have paid leave for a whole year, access to daycare immediately, access to daycare, federally funded daycare for two to three to four or five years, and it's done nothing to the birth rate.

Katherine Stevens is the president of the Center on Child and Family Policy. She says the loss of valuing parenthood is at the root of the birth rate problem.

STEVENS: If that were acknowledged and we had a society where people were able to raise their own young children, that, I think, would do more to increase fertility rates than making leaving your child with a paid stranger more affordable for you.

Instead of fully funding daycare, Stevens says it would be better to give parents the option of working part time temporarily. That would allow parents of young children to stay in the workforce if they’d like to.

STEVENS: It's really a very small amount of time that we're talking about investing in, as I said, creating a whole new human being who's going to be here in this society with us for their whole life.

Stevens believes there needs to be a culture shift. She likens making things easier for more parents to leave their children during the day to a person buying a puppy, knowing that they would never be able to spend time with it.

STEVENS: I don't take it lightly that a person would get a puppy and drop it off in doggy daycare all day. I don’t think that’s good for puppies at all. Why did you get a puppy if you were already planning ahead to never be with your puppy? Right? And so why? Don't we have that identical parallel mentality with young children?

That’s not to say institutional child care is useless. Stevens acknowledges that children who come from unstable home environments may benefit from child care.

But she says that doesn’t mean everyone should rely on it or expect the government to supply it.

STEVENS: But I think that the term, quote, child care, we need to be thinking about what that term child care means. What it means is the care of young children. And we need to be asking, who is it in our society who should be caring for young children? And the answer is their family.

For WORLD, I’m Anna Johansen Brown. Reporting by Bekah McCallum.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: The world’s biggest food fight happened last week in Spain. One hundred twenty tons of overripe tomatoes dumped into the streets for 20,000 revelers who by the end were ankle-deep in pulp, white shirts turned pink, and arms all sore from hurling fruit.

The tomatoes are grown just for this festival and not fit to eat. The only rule? Squash before you sling.

This man loves the whole thing:

MAN: Fantastic time. Yeah…The town’s really beautiful. Everyone does such a great job and such great fun.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Yeah, but who does the laundry?

BROWN: The good news is the streets are cleaner than before because the acid in the tomatoes is an effective cleaning agent on pavement.

REICHARD: So I guess you could say they really ketchupped on the cleaning.

BROWN: I’m not gonna try it!

It’s The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Thursday, September 4th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day. Good morning. I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: a landscape that seems truly out of this world.

Central Oregon’s lava fields stretch for miles. Barren rock left behind by ancient volcanic eruptions, with active volcanoes watched today. At first glance, it’s easy to mistake the scene for the surface of the moon.

BROWN: And that’s why NASA is using those fields to prepare for its next giant leap. Here’s WORLD’s Mary Muncy.

MARY MUNCY: Astronaut Walter Cunningham could barely see through his foggy facemask. As he tripped over jagged black rock, his glove tore open. Perhaps not life or death here, but he was training for a mission where it would be. The lesson: if he couldn’t survive Oregon lava fields, he wouldn’t survive on the moon.

OREGON PUBLIC BROADCASTING: Scientists from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration consider Oregon “Moon Country” an ideal area for testing the astronauts maneuverability on lava surfaces.

In 1964, scientists weren’t exactly sure what the moon was made of, but they suspected lots of volcanic rock and ash and before sending probes, they didn’t know whether they’d land on solid ground or sink into dust. NASA searched for a terrestrial training location that might approximate the lunar surface. They settled on central Oregon.

KGW NEWS: Attune your eyes to variations in the surface of the lava.

In this archival video, scientists and astronauts are on top of a volcano.

KGW NEWS: When you’re seven miles up and just about ready to tilt the nose of that thing down and land, why you’ll be looking for some soft, easy country to land on.

Closer to the surface they practiced picking up rocks with their big gloves.

VANESSA IVEY: You need to know how to use this equipment, right?

Vanessa Ivey is the museum manager for the Deschutes County History Society.

IVEY: You don't want to get up to the moon, and this is the first time you're experimenting with it.

34 astronauts, including the Apollo 11 crew, trained on the lava fields.

IVEY: It's one thing to sit in a classroom and learn about the geology of an area and learn about the geology of what you might find. It's another thing to be in person, looking at these rocks, touching these rocks, seeing what they feel like.

It was hot, and sometimes frustrating. But five years later it all paid off...

ABC: Very very fine grain as you get close to it. It’s almost like a powder down there. It’s very fine… that’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.

After returning to Earth, the astronauts told a newspaper that the moon’s surface really was similar to the Oregon lava fields, so NASA still uses them as a testing ground today.

If you look at pictures of the lava flows from the 1960s to now, it’s hard to spot any differences. But there are signs that life is slowly taking root.

SANDY PERLMUTTER: It's not exactly, you know, healthy soil to grow—nutrient-rich or anything.

Tourists Sandy and Neil Perlmutter are walking through a lava field near Bend. Towering pieces of black rock flank the trail.

It’s practically silent—no birds, or rustling trees—but here and there, a few bushes and saplings push through cracks.

PERLMUTTER: I just like the resilience of all these plants that are growing up and, you know, nothingness, you know.

NEIL: And even that a few animals can survive in this environment. That's pretty amazing, too.

The Newberry National Volcanic Monument visitor center is at the bottom of the lava flow. Bob Burpee is a ranger there.

BOB BURPEE: Either a bird or the wind had dropped seed and then there was enough moisture and enough nutriment for that tree, as an example, to grow right out of the lava flow.

Usually there’s not enough soil for anything to survive, but as plants grow and die, and more soil is blown in, it creates more space for life, even though the process is very, very slow. And the lava flow created other things.

BURPEE: It created the two water falls. It created a class three white water. People can, you know, run the white water. Created the little lava island. It created the great meadow and sun ruler. So it creates a lot of things, but it covers up, you know, a lot. It does provide for animal life, some animal life. But other than that, it's pretty I mean, it's dead, you know, it's not alive.

Meanwhile, scientists are watching the Pacific Northwest for the next eruption.

WEISS-RACINE: More than likely, all of them are going to erupt eventually.

Volcanologist Holly Weiss-Racine studies the Cascades. There are 13 active volcanoes there.

WEISS-RACINE: It's just a matter of which one and when, and we have to be monitoring them in order to to know and have that heads up.

This summer, Racine and her colleagues watched the biggest earthquake swarm they’d ever seen on Mount Rainier.

WEISS-RACINE: There were about 1300 earthquakes that we had enough data to locate, and there were over 10,000 very tiny earthquakes that were. Too small to be located.

She says the swarm was probably due to hot water moving under the volcano. If it had been magma, the quakes would have been stronger and more alarming.

WEISS-RACINE: We would see weeks to months of strong indication that the volcano was waking up before an eruption occurred, and we're not seeing any of that.

The volcano has since calmed down. Racine says the Cascades are high risk because they’re close to civilization.

BILL HOESCH: I think God is sovereign when it comes to volcanoes.

Bill Hoesch directs the Mount St. Helens Creation Center.

He says recovery varies. Sometimes a lava field can look brand new after centuries, another may be green within decades.

HOESCH: In places, and around the Pacific Rim, you live with that potential. That's just the way it is. People build up, and later on, it gets knocked down.

And besides, another eruption could mean more testing ground for crews heading back to the moon and potentially on to Mars.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Mary Muncy.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Thursday, September 4th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Finally today, WORLD commentator Cal Thomas reflects on the lessons from last week’s violence in Minneapolis.

CAL THOMAS: Leave it to a politician to take advantage of a tragedy and attempt to use it for political advantage.

Following the horrific shooting at a Catholic school in Minneapolis that killed two children and wounded 18 others, Democratic Mayor Jacob Frey said this of the self-proclaimed transgender woman:

FREY: Anybody who is using this as an opportunity to villainize our trans community or any other community out there has lost their sense of common humanity.

It was a shocking comment as parents and others mourn the dead and injured.

The mayor said nothing specific about the shooter's YouTube postings that contained hatred for Jews, Blacks, Hispanics, Catholics and President Trump. The shooter didn't discriminate when it came to bigotry.

I will not use the shooter’s name. But The Washington Times described him this way…he “scoffed at religion, idolized the nation's most notorious mass shooters and fantasized about carrying out a public massacre where children would be at their most vulnerable.”

In a hand-written journal posted online before the shootings, the killer admitted he “was tired of being trans.” The New York Post reported that he wished he “never brain-washed himself.” I wonder what Mayor Frey thinks of that?

Sadly, a new school year encourages some people with twisted and evil minds to act out their fantasies and bemoan their station in life by killing the innocent. As with prior incidents something more can be done to safeguard against future repetitions.

I am a supporter of the Second Amendment, but with a caveat. No one should be allowed to buy a semi-automatic rifle as the one used in Minneapolis without a long waiting period and a complete mental health and background check, including interviews with parents, relatives and friends. The shooter clearly displayed abnormal behavior. His mother allowed him to legally change his name from male to female and his gender identification. She has reportedly hired a criminal defense attorney.

The killer had two other weapons, all reportedly bought legally. If purchased as a minor, a parent likely would have had to sign off on it. Where were the guns kept? If they were not secured, along with ammunition, who is at fault? There are people, including possibly his parents, who witnessed erratic and hateful behavior. Did they report it? If not, why not? If they did and nothing was done, again why?

ABC News reports that Minnesota has had a red flag law since last year, which would have allowed a judge to remove the shooter’s weapons—if a parent or police officer had filed a petition and demonstrated he was a risk to others or himself. Why wasn't it invoked and who is responsible for not invoking it?

Other than making weapons designed to kill humans less easily available, an investment is going to have to be made in greater security. This may include increased police presence or security guards inside and outside schools. It might also include blocking road entrances onto school property with an armed security guard checking everyone seeking admission. Identification badges might also help.

Hotels in some Middle East countries where I've stayed do some of this and it has virtually eliminated terrorism and other violent acts. Yes, it would cost money and delays, but how much is a child's life—or any life worth? If it also serves as a deterrent to the sick of mind who search for soft targets, so much the better.

It's a safe prediction we will see additional incidents this school year if more, a lot more, isn’t done. The victims of this shooting deserve it. So do their parents. So do the rest of us.

I’m Cal Thomas.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Tomorrow: John Stonestreet is here for his weekly take on cultural news shaping our world. And, Collin Garbarino reviews a new comedy from the producers of The Office this time. The spotlight’s on journalists at a small-town newspaper. That and more tomorrow.

I’m Mary Reichard.

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.

The Bible says, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” John 1:14

Go now in grace and peace.

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