← The World and Everything In It
The World and Everything In It
3.5.26 Medicaid fraud, the landmark social-media trial, and teaching children about sexuality
00:32:46
Loading summary
Transcript139 lines
- [00:06]
Mary Reichardt
Good morning. The Trump administration is crowdsourcing the war on fraud.
- [00:10]
Hannah Anderson
We finally have another partner in looking for the fraud with the American public.
- [00:15]
Myrna Brown
Also today, a new tactic lawyers are using to hold social media companies accountable for harming kids. And later, who should get the first word on sexuality?
- [00:26]
Elizabeth Urbanowitz
The public school system or even the church should never be the ones introducing sexuality to children.
- [00:32]
Myrna Brown
And world commentator Cal Thomas says the war in Iran may mark a turning point for the people of Iran.
- [00:47]
Mary Reichardt
It's Thursday, March 5th. This is the world and everything in it. From listener supported World Radio. I'm Mary Reichardt.
- [00:54]
Myrna Brown
And I'm Myrna Brown. Good morning.
- [00:59]
Mary Reichardt
Up next, Kent Covington with today's news.
- [01:02]
Kent Covington
President Trump says Operation Epic Fury in Iran is not just going well. He says it's going even better than hoped.
- [01:09]
Pete Hegseth
Somebody said on a scale of 10, where would you rate it? I said about a 15. And we're going to continue to do well. We have the greatest military in the world by far.
- [01:20]
Kent Covington
Officials insist that regime change is not the mission, but rather the focus is on eliminating ballistic missiles, Iran's nuclear program and its navy. Still, the president says he hopes to see a leader in Iran who is not a violent fanatic like the late Ayatollah Khamenei. Multiple leaders in a line of succession have been killed in recent strikes.
- [01:39]
Pete Hegseth
Everybody that seems to want to be a leader, they end up dead.
- [01:43]
Kent Covington
Also on Wednesday, Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth and the nation's top general, Dan Kaine updated the media on the military action in Iran. Kaine said that the US Military spent days targeting anything in Iran that could be used to take down U.S. aircraft.
- [01:57]
Pete Hegseth
And we will now begin to expand inland, striking progressively deeper into Iranian territory and creating additional freedom of maneuver for U.S. forces.
- [02:09]
Kent Covington
And in a demonstration of confidence, the U.S. air Force just began using its oldest bomber, the B52 in Iran. It is powerful but vulnerable. So its deployment signals that the Pentagon is confident that it has devastated Iran's air defenses. And Hegseth said that indeed, the US Military is very close to owning the skies over Iran.
- [02:30]
Harrison Waters
Iranian leaders looking up and seeing only
- [02:36]
Kent Covington
US And Israeli air power every minute
- [02:40]
Harrison Waters
of every day until we decide it's over.
- [02:44]
Kent Covington
And he said there is nothing the Iranian regime can do about it, adding that Iran's capabilities are evaporating by the hour. Exith also confirmed that a US Submarine sank an Iranian warship in international waters. That marks the first time that a US Sub has destroyed a ship in battle since World War II. Meantime, on Capitol Hill on this, the yeas are 47.
- [03:06]
Matthew Bergman
The nays are 53. The motion to discharge is not approved.
- [03:10]
Kent Covington
The Senate rejected an effort by Democrats to halt the military action against Iran. Republican Rand Paul and Democrat John Fetterman both crossed the aisle siding with the opposite party respectively, on that vote. But aside from that, it was straight down party lines. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer asserts that the White House lacks a clear goal or exit strategy in Iran.
- [03:32]
Matthew Bergman
The conflict is widening. Oil prices are already skyrocketing. Wars without clear objectives do not remain small. They get bigger, bloodier, longer, and more expensive.
- [03:43]
Kent Covington
But Republicans accuse Democrats of putting politics first in their opposition to the mission to Majority Leader John Thune and their blind hatred of the president just being opposed to anything that he wants to do. I mean, clearly there are Democrats, I
- [03:56]
Pete Hegseth
believe, who understand that what we are
- [03:58]
Kent Covington
doing in Iran right now makes all the sense in the world from a national security standpoint. Meantime, the Trump administration is working on plans to secure the Strait of Hormuz to ensure safe passage for oil tankers. The strait is one of the world's most critical energy corridors, and Iran claims to have control of the strait and has launched attacks on nearby commercial vessels. But White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt told reporters that that is about to change.
- [04:24]
Elizabeth Urbanowitz
I don't want to commit to a timeline, but certainly it's something that is being calculated actively by both the Department of War and the Department of Energy. They're working very closely. Both secretaries are in all of the briefings on this subject with the president, and this is again something they're monitoring. And if and when necessary, the United States Navy will provide assistance to escort oil tankers through the straits.
- [04:47]
Kent Covington
President Trump has also ordered the US to provide risk insurance for maritime trade in the Middle East. The House Oversight Committee met Wednesday to grill Minnesota officials about rampant Medicaid fraud. Chairman James Comer what we've uncovered in
- [05:02]
Pete Hegseth
Minnesota is not a paperwork error or
- [05:05]
Matthew Bergman
a few bad actors slipping through the cracks.
- [05:07]
Pete Hegseth
It is sustained failure of leadership.
- [05:11]
Kent Covington
Republicans picked apart statements from Governor Tim Walz and state Attorney General Keith Ellison, both Democrats, about their efforts to investigate misused welfare funds. The committee's investigation pegs nutrition fraud alone at $300 million. Walls defended the state's decision to continue payments for autism support and food programs despite reports of fraud. We're not going to shut down programs
- [05:34]
Pete Hegseth
that have things that are going well in it, and we need to find that proper balance.
- [05:39]
Kent Covington
Turning attention to another matter, the committee wrapped up by voting to subpoena US Attorney General Pam Bondi for what it says has been mixed messages she has sent about handling the Epstein files. I'm Kent Covington. And straight ahead, the government invites Americans to help root out fraud. Plus, who should teach kids about sexuality? This is the World and everything in It.
- [06:22]
Myrna Brown
It's Thursday 5th March. Glad to have you along for today's edition of the World and Everything in It. Good morning. I'm Myrna Brown.
- [06:31]
Mary Reichardt
And I'm Mary Reichard. First up, the war on fraud. Days after President Trump announced the war on fraud, Vice President J.D. bance pinpointed a major focus in combating waste and abuse of taxpayer dollars.
- [06:46]
Kent Covington
The main source of fraud, whether it's a small business or a bigger company, is you have people who are billing the government millions, tens of millions, billions of dollars saying that they're providing a service. But there's no actual confirmation.
- [07:01]
Tahir Akin
There's no follow up.
- [07:02]
Myrna Brown
The Department of Health and Human Services halted funds to Minnesota and a handful of other vulnerable programs and centers for Medicare and Medicaid. Director Dr. Mehmet Oz then called on Americans to join the investigation.
- [07:18]
Kent Covington
We want your input on how to
- [07:19]
Matthew Bergman
prevent, detect and respond to fraud in government funded health care.
- [07:23]
Pete Hegseth
Whatever ideas you have, we're interested in
- [07:25]
Mary Reichardt
what can Americans do to help fight fraud. Washington producer Harrison Waters has the story.
- [07:32]
Harrison Waters
Right before Valentine's Day, a team at the Department of Health and Human Services made an elaborate gesture and it didn't involve flowers.
- [07:39]
Kent Covington
Doge dumped all the Medicaid data online
- [07:42]
Pete Hegseth
for everyone to see. You can now scroll through seven years worth of data for procedures billed, claims submitted and how much Medicaid paid out.
- [07:51]
Harrison Waters
More than 200 million rows of data representing individuals and organizations in all 50 states seeking reimbursement for services provided to low income Americans. One in five Americans are on government assisted health care plans. Medicaid alone cost $618 billion in 2024, and HHS wants to minimize any fraud associated with such programs. After reports of widespread daycare and autism services billing fraud in Minnesota, HHS responded by clamping down on reimbursements to the state. Now the administration is moving forward with a plan to bring in more help.
- [08:26]
Hannah Anderson
We finally have another partner in looking for the fraud with the American public.
- [08:30]
Harrison Waters
Hannah Anderson is senior director of policy at the America First Policy Institute. She also served on HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. S transition team. She says while the Department of Government Efficiency was focused on cutting costs for hhs, officials have also been compiling internal data to release to the public.
- [08:48]
Hannah Anderson
It takes one click to download the data and you can start searching by provider you can start searching by what kind of services are costing the most and really start tracking and trying to figure out is that provider in LA county actually providing the services that they're supposed to be providing to Medicaid or are they using Medicaid fraud to enrich themselves?
- [09:12]
Harrison Waters
The Medicaid data set only shows provider data. No patient information is included for privacy reasons. The providers range from billion dollar companies to mom and pop transportation services. The government already has several departments devoted to investigating and prosecuting fraud. But Anderson says Medicaid has some unique flaws, prompting the government to invite more scrutiny.
- [09:33]
Hannah Anderson
You know, Medicaid is a partnership between the states and the federal government. So if a state has decided that they're going to send in bad or fragmented data or they're not going to take it on themselves to be identifying fraud, it gets even harder for CMS to find that fraud.
- [09:53]
Harrison Waters
HHS told World that allowing access to the information will help identify unusual increases in specific treatments. The Data set covers 2018 to 2024, a time when the government dramatically expanded access to Medicaid during the COVID 19 pandemic.
- [10:08]
Tahir Akin
Because of the urgency, we weren't able to necessarily do our due diligence.
- [10:15]
Harrison Waters
Tahir Akin is professor of analytics at Texas State University and author of the 2019 book Statistics and Healthcare Fraud. He says the Medicaid data set is a helpful starting point for finding red flags.
- [10:27]
Tahir Akin
So for instance, some providers might have billed more than 24 hours per day. So there are those like impossible scenarios that basically any person could track by using their favorite Genai tool these days.
- [10:42]
Harrison Waters
But Aiken has a warning as Americans begin mining the data. He says although some numbers look suspicious, not all overspending is fraudulent and cautions it requires subject matter expertise to tell the difference.
- [10:54]
Tahir Akin
We really need to validate those results. And sometimes those false red flags may have bigger consequences because obviously there is reputation at stake.
- [11:04]
Harrison Waters
Vice President Vance told World that restoring the money that's been lost to fraud, waste and abuse is a complicated task.
- [11:11]
Kent Covington
Yeah, I mean, look, there are certainly ways to cloth some of the money back. It depends on the circumstances of the case. When you're talking about hundreds of billions of dollars potentially in fraud, that's, that's a big universe of cases.
- [11:20]
Harrison Waters
Professor Akin says investigators are likely to get back just a fraction of what's been lost.
- [11:25]
Tahir Akin
Even if we find fraud, even if we validate it within context. Traditional numbers put the recovery as 10 cents over a dollar. So we would only be able to get 10% of the lost money back.
- [11:40]
Harrison Waters
Meanwhile, Aiken says true fraudsters are getting more sophisticated in their schemes as generative AI tools get better and cheaper from the government side.
- [11:48]
Tahir Akin
We need to be also proactively getting ready, knowing that there are really smart actors out there. And whenever we do an adjustment, they do an adjustment as well.
- [11:58]
Harrison Waters
For now, policy analyst Hannah Anderson is hopeful HHS and the American public will shine a light on where taxpayer dollars
- [12:05]
Hannah Anderson
are going, having transparency and whether it's posting it on the Internet or following like the prescribed channels to report fraud. But sunshine's the best medicine.
- [12:16]
Harrison Waters
Reporting for world, I'm Harrison Waters in Washington.
- [12:24]
Myrna Brown
Coming up next on THE WORLD and everything in IT, digital justice. Last week a 20 year old woman testified in a high profile trial that her near constant of social media as a child hurt her mental health. Now she's suing meta and YouTube. It's the first time the social media giants are defending themselves before jury to protect her privacy. The woman goes by the initials kgm. She says the companies built their platforms on purpose to addict children.
- [12:56]
Mary Reichardt
TikTok and Snap settled out of court. This is the first in a wave of thousands of cases against social platforms going to court this year. The trial started in January and is set to end in April. Joining us to talk about it is attorney Matthew Bergman. He is founder of the Social Media Victims Law center and represents the young woman. Matthew, good morning.
- [13:18]
Matthew Bergman
Good morning.
- [13:19]
Mary Reichardt
How are you doing well. So glad you're here. Well, tell us about your client. How does KGM say these platforms harmed her?
- [13:27]
Matthew Bergman
Well, from the age of six when she got on YouTube, she became addicted to social media. It took over her life and robbed her of her childhood. And over a period of time, she developed very extreme mental health challenges that she struggles with to this day. Anxiety, depression and body dysmorphia to be particular as a result of these addictive social media apps.
- [13:51]
Mary Reichardt
Now, in the past, plaintiffs like your client have lost because of a law that says platforms cannot be held liable for content posted by users. That's section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. So how is this case any different?
- [14:06]
Matthew Bergman
Well, we filed the first cases in the country involving individuals such as KGM suffering from harms as a result of social media that were allowed to go forward. Up until we started doing our work, any effort to hold social media companies accountable was stopped in its tracks. The cases were being dismissed under section 230 before they even got started. And we developed a different approach. Not suing the companies for bad content moderation, although they clearly do that, not suing them for negligently allowing maligned material to be posted on its platforms, although they do that, but rather for intentionally designing an addictive product that hooks kids, not by showing them what they want to see, but what they can't look away from. So rather than focus on the content, we focused on the design and the failure to warn. And courts have held that that is a different theory of liability than holding them liable as a publisher. And for the first time, allowed these cases to go forward, allowed discovery to proceed, and allowed us to determine and discover many hot, many smoking gun documents that demonstrate the company's deliberate intention to addict young people to their platforms.
- [15:28]
Mary Reichardt
You know, some people are comparing this to the cases against Big Tobacco back in the 1990s, treating the platforms as a product that causes harm instead of a publication deserving free speech protections. What do you think about that analogy?
- [15:44]
Matthew Bergman
Well, not only is that a viable comparison, Metazone documents support that they analogize themselves to tobacco. Evidence also indicates that the addiction to social media is. Is a physiologic addiction, very similar to the addiction to a substance or to nicotine. And very much like the tobacco companies that focused on adolescents and young teens as being their lifetime users of tobacco products. So have social media companies focused on tweens as the greatest growth potential for their dangerously defective and addictive products.
- [16:25]
Mary Reichardt
Matthew, if you win this case, what do you think will happen to the platforms and the Internet in general?
- [16:32]
Matthew Bergman
Well, it's not just this case. It is the many cases that we have brought. The fact that we simply have the opportunity to bring our case to trial before a fair and impartial jury is a cataclysmic change in the landscape for social media companies, who heretofore have assumed that they don't have to play by the same rules as every other company. And so we believe that simply starting this trial is a great victory. But this is the new chapter of accountability, and we are hopeful that when the companies have to bear the financial consequences of their deliberate design decisions to prioritize profits over safety, that they'll implement modifications that will make their platforms much safer for vulnerable young people.
- [17:18]
Mary Reichardt
Your organization, as we mentioned, is the Social Media Victims Law Center. It's representing thousands of clients. Are there any other cases that stand out to you in particular?
- [17:30]
Matthew Bergman
So the people that I represent are mothers and parents of children who have lost their lives to social media, either through taking their own lives, or through accidental deaths, through dangerous challenges, or, in other cases, fentanyl poisoning. And I have never in 30 years been more privileged to represent clients less concerned about money and more concerned about justice.
- [17:56]
Mary Reichardt
That's quite moving. Are there aspects of this case that you think are underreported?
- [18:01]
Matthew Bergman
What is significant about this case is it was specifically selected by the court as being representative of many other cases. And the young woman in this case is somebody whose injuries are not unique, unfortunately, but are very representative of an entire generation of young people who have literally had their youth stolen from them through these exploitative and addictive and dangerous social media apps.
- [18:34]
Mary Reichardt
If Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg or YouTube's leaders were here right now, Mark, what would you ask them to answer under oath?
- [18:43]
Matthew Bergman
I would ask them first and foremost, why do you produce a platform that you don't let your own kids on? I would ask them, how many billion dollars is enough? Why have you subordinated safety to profit? And why have you been deaf to the cries of parents and the cries of children who've called out again and again and again for safer social media products? What is so important about making money that it subordinates any other ethical or moral or legal priority?
- [19:28]
Mary Reichardt
Matthew Bergman is the founder of the Social Media Victims Law center And he represents KGM, the teenager who is suing Meta and YouTube. Matthew, thank you so much for your time and your work. We will be watching.
- [19:40]
Matthew Bergman
Well, very good. I thank you for covering this issue and it's going to be a very, very interesting and informative process.
- [19:51]
Kent Covington
Additional support comes from Boyce College where truth comes first. Every class begins with Scripture and prepares students to live with wisdom, conviction and Christlike faithfulness. Boycecollege.com from Covenant College where students are equipped with a Christ centered education rooted in the Reformed tradition. Covenant Edu World and from Free Lutheran Bible College grounding students in the world Word of God for life in Jesus Christ on campus and in person in Plymouth, Minnesota, FLBC Edu World.
- [20:46]
Mary Reichardt
A balloon ride over East Texas turned the into a harrowing rescue. Nearly 1,000ft up Saturday morning, a hot air balloon slammed into a radio tower and got tangled up in its guy wires. It took 14 firefighters an hour to climb the tower to save the stranded balloonists. Meantime, the basket just swayed in the breeze and ripped up. Balloon fabric wrapped around the tower after the rescuers got to the pilot and passenger. Then came the hard part getting them down. It took about two hours to hand the balloonists off rope by rope all the way down.
- [21:20]
Harrison Waters
Fireman Stephen Winchell, thankful for the Lord
- [21:22]
Mary Reichardt
being with us and answering prayers allowed
- [21:24]
Matthew Bergman
us to have a very good outcome.
- [21:25]
Mary Reichardt
One firefighter who helped lead the rescue later had a surprise confession. Despite nearly two decades of this, he really doesn't like heights. It's the World and Everything in It.
- [21:47]
Myrna Brown
Today is Thursday, March 5th. Thank you for turning to World Radio to help start your day. Good morning. I'm Myrna Brown.
- [21:55]
Mary Reichardt
And I'm Mary Reichard. Coming next on THE WORLD and Everything in it, Parents rights in education. Two weeks ago, a US District judge in Maryland approved a one and a half million dollar settlement. It grows out of a major Supreme Court case last year about a public school board's refusal to notify parents when teachers present gender ideology to students. The parents who sued, and even some who didn't, wanted to opt their kids out. The settlement lays out how that must now be done.
- [22:25]
Myrna Brown
Even so, many parents find it awkward to talk to their kids about human sexuality and are tempted to to leave it to the schools. World's Ginny Ruff spoke with a former teacher with a master's in Christian apologetics who helps parents navigate the talk.
- [22:45]
Ginny Ruff
The Supreme Court case protected the rights of parents to help ensure their children's education aligns with their faith. But the case begs an important question.
- [22:54]
Elizabeth Urbanowitz
Whose job is that to teach children about sexuality?
- [22:57]
Ginny Ruff
Elizabeth Urbanowitz is the founder of Foundation Worldview.
- [23:01]
Elizabeth Urbanowitz
Is it the job of the public school system or the public library or even the church to teach children about the gift of sexuality?
- [23:10]
Ginny Ruff
She equips Christian adults with resources to help kids evaluate ideas and get to the truth.
- [23:15]
Elizabeth Urbanowitz
I think when we're looking at it from a biblical basis, that God has oriented society around the family, and the family is the primary vehicle through which children should learn about sexuality, urbanowitz says
- [23:30]
Ginny Ruff
elementary school teachers should not have the first word here.
- [23:34]
Elizabeth Urbanowitz
I would say from a biblical perspective that the public school system or even the Christian school system or even the church should never be the ones introducing sexuality to children. That that is always the responsibility of the family.
- [23:49]
Ginny Ruff
When thinking about what age to introduce the topic, Urbanowitz recommends starting young.
- [23:54]
Elizabeth Urbanowitz
Well, the age that I'm going to recommend will probably shock some people, but at Foundation Worldview, we recommend that parents have the first of many sex and sexuality talks with their children around the age of four.
- [24:07]
Ginny Ruff
She says there's two reasons to start the conversation before the world does. Whoever gets the first word often becomes the expert in the child's mind.
- [24:16]
Elizabeth Urbanowitz
So if we want our children to come to us with their questions rather than a teacher or Google or a YouTube influencer, we have to be the ones that talk with them about it first.
- [24:26]
Ginny Ruff
And that initial conversation sets the tone for how kids View sexuality, which when
- [24:32]
Elizabeth Urbanowitz
we look at sexuality from a biblical lens, we know that it is inherently good, that God designed us in his image as distinctly male or distinctly female, and he made the sign and seal of the marriage covenant the act of sexual intercourse.
- [24:48]
Ginny Ruff
Parents can make sure to start with the positive.
- [24:51]
Elizabeth Urbanowitz
But if we wait until our children are exposed to some book at school
- [24:55]
Ginny Ruff
or the secular culture in other ways, chances are their first exposure to the
- [25:00]
Elizabeth Urbanowitz
concept of sexuality is going to be negative. It's going to be how sin has corrupted this good gift that God has
- [25:08]
Ginny Ruff
given us that requires being intentional.
- [25:10]
Elizabeth Urbanowitz
Do we need to fight back against the darkness? Yes, we've been called to do that as Christians, but we need to make sure that we're fighting first, grounding our children in the truth, because we don't want their vision of gender and sexuality and marriage and family to be what's wrong. And, you know, like all the ways that we as humans in our sin have corrupted it. We want them to know what is inherently good.
- [25:37]
Ginny Ruff
Urbanowitz recommends parents have three basic talks with their children between the ages of 4 and 7.
- [25:43]
Elizabeth Urbanowitz
The first one is about genitalia, just the correct name for body parts.
- [25:49]
Ginny Ruff
She says this is the time to emphasize that no one else should see those parts except for mom, dad, or a doctor during a health exam.
- [25:55]
Elizabeth Urbanowitz
So that's the first conversation, just the basic difference between male and female anatomy.
- [26:00]
Ginny Ruff
Urbanowitz says the second conversation is the most uncomfortable, at least for parents.
- [26:05]
Elizabeth Urbanowitz
That's just the basics of sex. And the way that we recommend that parents talk about that is to talk about if their kids have ever made a promise to someone. And then we make the connection to
- [26:16]
Ginny Ruff
the act of sex, explaining that marriage is a promise and that God gave a special symbol for the marriage promise to show it's serious on a different day. The third conversation, reproduction.
- [26:27]
Elizabeth Urbanowitz
For this one, we recommend that parents take a walk with their kids and look at flowers and, you know, gardens. And then when you come back to the house, say, do you know how that flower or those flowers that we saw got started? They started out with a tiny seed. And when that seed was planted in the ground and it got water and sunshine, it eventually grew into a full grown plant. And then we talk about, you know, God has given men and women something in their bodies that are kind of like seeds. And then you introduce the basic terms.
- [26:54]
Ginny Ruff
Urbanowitz says if kids ask questions that are shocking or embarrassing, parents can buy more time to think about how they want to answer.
- [27:01]
Elizabeth Urbanowitz
Affirm their question with a smile on your face. Buy yourself some more time. Say, we're going to talk about this some more tomorrow. Thank you for asking that question.
- [27:08]
Ginny Ruff
Once parents have the foundational conversations with their kids, Urbanowitz says, it's easier from there to have more and harder conversations, like about transgender or same sex topics and the way feelings can sometimes trick people into believing things that aren't true or the difficult topic of divorce, a broken promise that sometimes has biblical justification
- [27:29]
Elizabeth Urbanowitz
and as kids grow, just anchor all of these things in scripture. We're not talking about, you know, like, going into, like, graphic detail about, you know, all the rampant sexual sin that resides in our culture and, you know, even at times within our own hearts. But we're laying the building blocks to help them understand that everything in our body points to the fact that we have been designed, and therefore we have to understand who designed us and what is the purpose of our design.
- [27:59]
Ginny Ruff
She remembers from her own teaching experience how easily young students can idolize teachers, convinced they're always right. She says that, too, is why it's important for parents to know what's going on in a child's classroom.
- [28:11]
Elizabeth Urbanowitz
We don't want to, you know, go in with pitchforks because we want to assume that those who are educating our children have their best interest in mind, even if that they don't really understand what that best interest is. So we want to be kind and loving, but our ultimate goal is we want to disciple our children well, so we have to know what they're being
- [28:31]
Ginny Ruff
taught about that ultimate goal.
- [28:33]
Elizabeth Urbanowitz
Urbanowitz adds, you know, it's not that our children would have, you know, like, perfect marriages or perfect sex lives or perfect families. The ultimate goal in all of this is that as our children see God's good design, that they would turn from their sin, that they would trust him and that they would seek him and serve him all the days of their lives.
- [28:52]
Ginny Ruff
Reporting for world I'm Jenny Ruff.
- [29:19]
Mary Reichardt
Good morning. This is the world and everything in it. From listening listeners supported world radio. I'm Mary Reichert.
- [29:25]
Myrna Brown
And I'm Myrna Brown. World commentator Cal Thomas says the war with Iran carries with it both risks and remarkable opportunity.
- [29:37]
Pete Hegseth
President Donald Trump campaigned on a promise to end America's wars. And now he's done something no previous president dared to do. Strike directly at the leadership of the Iranian regime. In a coordinated operation with Israel, US Forces targeted Iran's top command structure. Among those killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and dozens of senior officials. For decades, the Iranian regime has funded terrorism, threatened Israel and fueled violence across the Middle East. Now, suddenly, the regime looks vulnerable.
- [30:08]
Elizabeth Urbanowitz
Raise the troop.
- [30:09]
Matthew Bergman
Thank you.
- [30:10]
Pete Hegseth
In cities across the United States and inside Iran itself, people with Iranian roots took to the streets celebrating the strikes. The moment has stunned many critics. Some media outlets and political leaders are already warning the attack could destabilize the region. But supporters argue the opposite, that removing the regime's leadership may give the Iranian people their best chance in decades to reclaim their country, which is what President Trump emphasized from the beginning of Operation Epic Fury. I call upon all Iranian patriots who yearn for freedom to seize this moment, to be brave, be bold, be heroic, and take back your country. America is with you. I made a promise to you, and I fulfilled that promise. The rest will be up to you. But we'll be there to help. There are risks, of course. Iran still has proxy militias across the region. Intelligence officials warn sleeper cells could attempt retaliation abroad. But there are strategic consequences as well. Iran supplies the vast majority of its oil exports, ports to China. A weakened regime could disrupt those shipments and reshape the geopolitical balance across the Middle East. For now, the outcome remains uncertain. War always carries more questions than answers. But if this moment leads to a new government in Tehran, one that abandons terrorism, restores basic freedoms, and rebuilds relations with the west, then this operation could mark one of the most consequential turning points in modern Middle Eastern history. And it would give the Iranian people something they've been denied for nearly half a century, a real chance at freedom. For world I'm Cal Thomas.
- [31:57]
Myrna Brown
Tomorrow johnstonestreet is back for Culture Friday, and Colin Gabbarino reviews Disney Pixar's latest. That and more tomorrow. Hi, I'm Myrna Brown.
- [32:08]
Mary Reichardt
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 you have set up a banner for those who fear you, that they may flee to it from the bow, that your beloved ones may be delivered. Give salvation by your right hand and answer us. Verses 4 and 5 of Psalms 60. Go now in grace and peace.