← The World and Everything In It
The World and Everything In It
4.7.26 Training for a military rescue, Iran’s leadership choice, Astronauts travel farthest from Earth, and a book about today’s cultural crisis
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- [00:06]
Mary Reichert
Good morning. Details from a daring rescue mission in Iran.
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President Donald Trump
We will always come find you and we will always bring you home.
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Lindsay Mast
Also, the astronauts of Artemis 2 make their way around the moon. And Carl Truman on what happens when a culture rejects God's design.
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Carl Truman
If the problem we face today is desecration, then the answer is consecration.
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Lindsay Mast
And world commentator Daniel sir on the quiet cogs in the wheels of justice.
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Mary Reichert
It's Tuesday, April 7th. This is the world and everything in it from listeners supported World Radio. I'm Mary Reichert.
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Lindsay Mast
And I'm Lindsay Mast. Good morning.
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Mary Reichert
Time now for the News with Kent Covington.
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Kent Covington
Iran has until tonight to open the Strait of Hormuz or face massive US Strikes on its infrastructure. That's the threat from President Trump reiterating that threat once again at the White House on Monday, where every bridge in
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Pete Hegseth
Iran will be decimated by 12 o' clock tomorrow night, where every power plant in Iran will be out of business, burning, exploding and never to be used again.
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Kent Covington
The Iranian regime has used terrorist strikes and the threat of them to largely close the Strait of Hormuz to shipping since the start of the war. That is a critical choke point for oil tankers. Democratic Senator Chris Murphy, though, warned that even partial strikes on those kinds of targets could kill thousands of innocent people, calling it, quote, a war crime. Trump has issued similar ultimatums before pulling back each time after citing diplomatic progress. Cease fire talks involving Pakistan and Oman are still ongoing. Also at the White House on Monday, the president and other top officials touted that daring weekend rescue of two American aviators from a downed F15 fighter jet in Iran.
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Pete Hegseth
A rescue that's very historic. It'll go down in the books.
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Kent Covington
Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Dan Kane said the rescue sends a message to every American in uniform that you
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President Donald Trump
will not be left behind. We will always come find you and
- [02:15]
Andrew Miller
we will always bring you home.
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Kent Covington
The pilot was recovered quickly, but the weapons systems officer spent nearly 48 hours evading Iranian forces. Earlier information suggested that he may have sustained serious injuries, but officials now say he escaped with only a sprained ankle. More on that rescue later in the program. In Israel, residents of the coastal resort city of Netanyahu rushed to shelters Monday as air raid sirens warned of incoming Iranian missiles. No injuries were reported there, but that was not the case in the northern Israeli city of Haifa. Crews there recovered the bodies of an elderly couple and two others who died when authorities say an Iranian missile hit a residential building overnight. One resident of Haifa told reporters, try
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Lindsay Mast
to
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Jonathan Saya
keep living normally to do the things we are used to do and to try to lift the spirit. And we're not living Haifa.
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Mary Muncie
We want to stay here.
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Lindsay Mast
We stay here.
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Jonathan Saya
It's safer than driving outside of the city.
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Kent Covington
Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed the Israeli military destroyed Iran's largest petrochemical chemical plant. And he says Israel continues to destroy Iran's factories and kill its senior leaders. The Artemis 2 mission crew is on its way home after circling around the moon and traveling deeper into space than anyone has ever traveled.
- [03:47]
Victor Glover
But we most importantly choose this moment to challenge this generation and the next. To make sure this record is not
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Kent Covington
long lived, the crew on Monday snapped pictures of the far side of the lunar surface and the first deep space mission in more than 50 years. We will also have more on that story a little bit later. Flooding and landslides have killed at least 110 people across Afghanistan, with seven people still missing. And more dangerous weather on the way. World's Kristin Flavin reports.
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Mary Muncie
Afghanistan's disaster management authority says storms have been battering most of the country for nearly two weeks, destroying more than 200 miles of roads and damaging or leveling thousands of homes. The military airlifted two people to safety in the western province of Herat after they were trapped by floodwaters. Two major highways remain closed by landslides and floods, including the main road linking Kabul to the Pakistani border. Authorities have issued more weather warnings for today, urging people to stay away from rivers and flood prone areas. For WORLD I'm Kristen Flavin.
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Kent Covington
Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon has won a big Supreme Court order that is expected to lead to the dismissal of his criminal conviction. Free future refusing to testify to Congress, the justices on Monday threw out an appellate ruling upholding Bannon's conviction for defying a subpoena from a House committee that investigated the Capitol riot. The move frees a judge to act on the Republican administration's pending request to dismiss Bannon's conviction and indictment. The dismissal would be largely symbolic. Bannon already served a four month prison term after a jury convicted him of contempt of Congress in 2022. I'm Kent Covington. And still ahead, a closer look at that daring rescue mission in Iran. And later, more on that new deep space record set by the Artemis 2 mission crew while rounding the moon. This is the world and everything in it.
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Lindsay Mast
It's the 7th of April. Glad to have you along for today's edition of THE WORLD AND EVERYTHING IN it. Good morning. I'm Lindsay Mast.
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Mary Reichert
And I'm Mary Reichard. First up, a daring rescue. President Trump and the heads of the Department of War and the Central Intelligence Agency yesterday laid out the details of the weekend rescue of two American aviators in Iran.
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President Donald Trump
In two extraordinary combat search and rescue operations deep inside enemy territory in Iran, our warriors executed missions of breathtaking skill, courage and precision.
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Lindsay Mast
Iranian forces shot down an F15E Strike Eagle on Friday. The pilot and weapons specialist on board both ejected from the plane, leaving them behind enemy lines. The rescue of the pilot involved a seven hour daylight mission over Iran by helicopter.
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Mary Reichert
But the weapons specialist on board landed a significant distance away and was injured in the process.
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Pete Hegseth
Despite the peril, the officer followed his training and climbed into the treacherous mountain terrain and started climbing toward a higher altitude, something they were trained to do in order to evade capture. He scaled cliff faces, bleeding rather profusely, treated his own wounds, and contacted American forces to transmit his location.
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Lindsay Mast
That all made getting to him more difficult, but CIA director John Ratcliffe called it a no fail mission.
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President Donald Trump
The CIA possesses unique capabilities that only the President can deploy. Some of these capabilities fall under covert action authorities. And because covert means exactly that, I'm not going to be able to tell you everything that you want to know.
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Lindsay Mast
Even with specialized tools and operators. He compared the task to hunting for a single grain of sand in the desert.
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President Donald Trump
CIA executed a deception campaign to confuse the Iranians who were desperately hunting for our airmen. On Saturday morning, we achieved our primary objective by finding and providing confirmation that one of America's best and bravest was alive and concealed in a mountain crevice still invisible to the enemy, but not to the CIA.
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Mary Reichert
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth recounted the first message received from the weapons officer.
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Pete Hegseth
God is good.
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President Donald Trump
In that moment of isolation and danger, his faith and fighting spirit shone through.
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Mary Reichert
A massive rescue mission to retrieve him got underway. The President said it involved 155 aircraft,
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Pete Hegseth
four bombers, 64 fighters, 48 refueling tankers, 13 rescue aircraft and more.
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Mary Reichert
Once the weapons officer was found, getting everyone out involved a contingency plan. Planes meant to evacuate the crews got stuck in the wet sand of a rudimentary landing strip. The President said three more were waiting 15 minute intervals.
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Pete Hegseth
One load out. One load out. One load out. It happened and we were watching and we said, that's amazing. In many ways, I was. I was almost more impressed by the contingency that we had than the fact that, you know, if we would have had a Runway or decent soil.
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Lindsay Mast
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff, Air Force Gen. Dan Kane said the planes flew out protected by tactical drones and strike craft. He said the rescue made good on a Promise. To members of the military, this was
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President Donald Trump
an incredibly dangerous mission, an incredibly dangerous undertaking, but a filled promise made to every American warfighter that you will not be left behind.
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Lindsay Mast
But he chalked the success up to the aviator's tenacity.
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President Donald Trump
The single most important contributor to a successful rescue operation is the spirit of attack. Inside the heart of that downed aviator, their will to survive, their will to evade, their will to recover is everything.
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Lindsay Mast
Joining us now is Andrew Miller. He's a retired lieutenant colonel from the United States Marine Corps and Air National Guard. He served for over 20 years in roles that included training and instructing Lt. Col. Miller. Good morning.
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Andrew Miller
Good morning, Lindsey.
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Lindsay Mast
This rescue mission sounds incredible. I want to start at the beginning of what you can tell us about what would go through a soldier's mind when they know they've been hit and need to get out. How do you prepare, especially psychologically, for something like this, where apparently this man was separated from the pilot, so he's on his own, he's having to make life or death or possible prisoner of war decisions all by himself. What does that look like?
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Andrew Miller
Well, the first thing that you have in mind is at least when I was in the service, I had complete confidence that I'd be rescued. I had confidence in my wingman that I was flying with, that he was going to do everything in his power to keep me safe. And then the Cesar rescue teams, the combat search and rescue teams, they're the elite of the elite in the world and they will do whatever possible and anything possible to get to you. And then finally, I had just confidence in the military writ large. So with that in mind, I was going to do my part to make their job as easy as possible.
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Lindsay Mast
I want to talk a little bit about this from the rescuer side. In 1980, the US lost eight soldiers and some equipment trying to get the American hostages out of Iran. So talk about the attitude and training from that side, because suddenly the mission gets a lot bigger and in many ways exponentially more serious in terms of potential for lives lost.
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Andrew Miller
Well, I would imagine not being a part of the combat search and rescue squadrons, but I would imagine that they train their entire on a mission that they hope they never do. And everything has to go right because much like you see the incident that happened in Iran back in 1980, things can go wrong, go sideways really quick, and the entire mission can fall, whether it's an equipment breakdown or bad weather or something along those lines. So you have to be trained to a high level in order that this one person that all These resources are being provided to can come home safe.
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Lindsay Mast
The weapons officer was a colonel with that high of a rank. Does that change how much of an imperative it is to rescue him given the level of classified information he might know?
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Andrew Miller
I don't think so. Because really any member of the United States military that's in that scenario, they are all the same worth in the military's eyes. They all have important information in their head. But also they are important just from the sense of they're an American serviceman. We need to get them back before the enemy gets them.
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Lindsay Mast
Can you speak how unique that is to the American military mindset versus other places, other countries?
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Andrew Miller
Well, I think it first starts from the idea that it's an all volunteer force. Right. So the idea that if you're going to volunteer to join the military and put yourself in harm's way, then you would want, or at least I did, that if I volunteered for these dangerous missions, that the military is going to support getting me back. So we owe this to him as well.
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Lindsay Mast
What else? As you're reading and learning about this rescue mission, what else stands out to you?
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Andrew Miller
There's been times in the military's past where we talked about the Iranian mission, the embassy in Iran where hostages were paraded out in front of the cameras, or I've seen the video of pilots that were captured and held in the Hanoi Hilton back in the Vietnam War area. I think the United States military and the United States in general has learned from those incidents that that is not a winning strategy for us as a country. If we're going to dedicate our most valuable resource, men and women that are going into these dangerous missions, then we should be equally as willing to dedicate resources to rescuing them as well. And not allowing things like that to happen, you know, to allow, you know, on the streets of Mogadishu, a pilot was dragged through the streets. The emotions that go through me just thinking about those items, even though it's been some time since I was in the military, certainly would encourage me to do whatever is possible if I was in that scenario, to protect, save, rescue. An operator that's on the ground.
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Lindsay Mast
Andrew Miller is a retired lieutenant colonel from the United States Marine Corps and Air National Guard. He served for over 20 years in roles that included training and instructing. Lt. Col. Miller, thank you so much.
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Andrew Miller
Thank you very much.
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Mary Reichert
Coming up next on the World and everything in it, a deadline looms for Iran. President Trump on Monday laid out the stakes for Iran. If it does not make a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz by
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Pete Hegseth
this evening, where every power plant in Iran will be out of business, burning, exploding, and never to be used again. I mean, complete demolition by 12 o'.
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Mary Muncie
Clock.
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Pete Hegseth
And it'll happen over a period of four hours. If we wanted to, we don't want that to happen.
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Lindsay Mast
Joining us now to talk about it is Jonathan Saya. He focuses on Iranian domestic affairs and the Islamic Republic's regional influence at the foundation for Defense of Democracies. Jonathan, good morning.
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Jonathan Saya
Good morning. Great to be with you.
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Lindsay Mast
Jonathan, you're from Iran, so I want to lean into that and have you tell us about the Iranian perspective. As this deadline looms, The Trump administration says the events of the weekend have left the country humiliated. What's your sense about whether the regime would agree?
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Jonathan Saya
The regime would, of course, try its best to save face domestically, but ultimately the videos speak for themselves. The heavy loss of regime figures also are a great indicator of loss. If the supreme Leader is gone, his son is nowhere to be seen. Many of the IRGC commanders have been eliminated or in hiding. That is indicative of a regime that is paranoid and is weakened. On the other hand, it does boost anti regime morale. Of course, Iranians on the ground continue to see this as a war against their oppressors. But that said, any threats that go after Iranian critical infrastructure or bridges or petrochemicals would send the wrong message to the average Iranian. But ultimately, this is an avenue that the Islamic Republic has opened up by closing the Strait of Hormuz. So Trump's remarks are mostly reactionary, meaning once the regime goes after economic targets, Israel and the United States can only respond the same way.
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Mary Reichert
Well, over the weekend, President Trump posted a threatening message for Iran on social media. He's had to do some damage control on that. It, it included obscenities and some religious mockery. I'm curious. We have seen how that goes over here in America a bit. How does that go over in Iran? How did they read a message like that?
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Jonathan Saya
You pointed out two components. One was the humorous angle of ridiculing some of the ideology of the Islamic Republic. And that is the best way to resonate with Iranians, of course, being oppressed by Islamism. They are the first to defend freedom of speech. When it comes to countering Islamism, it goes a long way with them. And I do remember growing up there to see that there is a president out there that hears our voices and knows what our concerns and grievances are and knows what is the best way to signal that diplomatically, of course, resonates greatly. On the other hand, threatening critical infrastructure is a double edged sword. On one hand, there is an understanding that this is an Islamic republic that is embedding itself in civilian infrastructure and there's only one way to go about it. On the other hand, you want to ensure that should there be a new government in Tehran, you want them to have the resour asset to stand on their own. But as an Iranian, talking to folks on the ground as often as I do comes down to one main sentiment, which is Iranians can rebuild all this infrastructure, but they cannot revive the tens of thousands that have been killed and are getting executed daily on sham political trials.
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Lindsay Mast
So you think President Trump still has the respect of the Iranian people?
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Jonathan Saya
Without a doubt, so long as the campaign is ongoing. And the message is clear that they are going after regime officials and military infrastructure or facilities that enable Tehran's kleptocracy to prevail. Ultimately, when we talk about petrochemicals, for instance, or we talk about bridges, these are all assets that the regime exploits. They use the same bridges to transfer munitions and personnel. They use petrochemicals to launder money. And of course, they've monopolized every corner of Iran's economy. So to the average Iranian, it's debatable whether any of these infrastructure was benefiting them to begin with. Of course, the situation is less than ideal, but we have to remember Iranians are still very desperate, but they're eager for change. So ultimately comes down to how messaging toward them is being carried out. Few instances here and there are not going to change the overall image. And as the president noted on February 28, he was the only American president willing to aid the Iranian people. And that signal in itself is strong enough that a few tweets here and there are not going to change anything systemically.
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Mary Reichert
Jonathan Saya focuses on Iranian domestic affairs and the Islamic Republic's regional influence at the foundation for Defense of Democracies. Jonathan, thanks so much.
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Jonathan Saya
Thank you so much for having me.
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Kent Covington
Additional support comes from Asbury University, committed to the formation of students through discipleship calling and career preparation. Asbury. Edu from Pensacola Christian College Academic Excellence Biblical Worldview, Affordable Cost Go pcci. Edu World. And from Ambassadors Impact Network, where entrepreneurs raise raising capital, find investors who celebrate their redemptive mission. Ambassadorsimpact.com.
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Mary Reichert
Up next, a new record in spaceflight. The astronauts on the Artemis II mission traveled farther into space on Monday than any other humans have gone. They snapped pictures of the moon and scoped out a place for NASA to Land a spacecraft in the future. World's Mary Muncie reports.
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Mary Muncie
The four astronauts on the newly christened Integrity spacecraft dimmed the lights and aimed their cameras at the moon as they waited to break the record. Then mission control came on the radio again.
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Mary Reichert
Integrity crew on April 15, 1970, during the Apollo 13 mission, three explorers set the record for the farthest distance humans have ever traveled from our home planet. Today, for all humanity, you're pushing beyond that frontier. Integrity, over to you.
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Victor Glover
Yeah. From the cabin of Integrity here. As we surpass the furthest distance humans have ever traveled from planet Earth, we do so in honoring the extraordinary efforts and feats of our predecessors. But we most importantly choose this moment to challenge this generation and the next. To make sure this record is not
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Mary Muncie
long lived, the crew planned to travel over 250,000 miles away from Earth. That's about 2,000 miles past Apollo 13's record. As of last evening, NASA had not confirmed the exact distance traveled. For the next few hours, the Integrity crew took pictures of the moon from about 4,000 miles away.
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Victor Glover
It is blowing my mind. What you can see with the naked eye on the moon right now. It's just unbelievable.
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Mary Muncie
NASA says the human eyes of the astronauts may be able to pick up different aspects of the moon's surface than their cameras can. So they documented everything they saw. At 6:44 Eastern Time, the astronauts approached the far side of the moon and entered a zone where they couldn't communicate with mission control.
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Mary Reichert
From all of us, it's a privilege to witness you carrying the fire past our farthest reach. Thank you. Godspeed.
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Victor Glover
Thank you for that. Jenny. Christ said in response to what was the greatest command that it was to love God with all that you are. And he also said the second is equal to it, and that is to love your neighbor as yourself. And so as we prepare to go out of radio communication, we're still the field your love from Earth. And to all of you down there on Earth and around Earth, we love you from the moon.
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Mary Muncie
For about 40 minutes, the astronauts were completely cut off. They could not communicate with or even see their home planet. During that time, they reached their farthest point away from Earth and their closest point to the moon. And at around 7.25pm as the astronauts gazed out the windows of their Orion capsule, Earth emerged from behind the moon.
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Victor Glover
Houston, integrity, comm check.
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Mary Reichert
Integrity. We have you loud and clear.
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Mary Muncie
Houston, we have you the same. And it is so great to hear from Earth again. On Sunday, the four celebrated Easter. Pilot Victor Glover is a Christian and shared a message from space.
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President Donald Trump
I'm trying to tell you, just trust me. You are special in all of this emptiness.
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Mary Muncie
He says seeing Earth from space made him realize how few differences there are between nations and cultures and that living together on one planet is special.
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Victor Glover
This is a whole bunch of nothing, this thing we call the universe. You have this oasis, this beautiful place that we get to exist together.
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Mary Muncie
The crew now heads back toward Earth with plans to splash down in the Pacific Ocean on Friday off the coast of San Diego. Reporting for World I'm Mary Muncie.
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Lindsay Mast
Well, reports of the death of the world oldest living land animal were greatly exaggerated. Jonathan the giant tortoise, believed to be about 193 years old, is alive and well on the island of St. Helena. Local officials calling word to the contrary a hoax. The false report spreading quickly on, you guessed it, April Fool's Day. And as these things so often do, the fake story was halfway around the world before truth even had its pants on. The Post drew millions of views and an outpouring of condolences. People meant well. As for Jonathan, he's now outlived empires, wars and Internet rumors too. It's the world and everything in it.
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Mary Reichert
Today is Tuesday, April 7th. Thank you for turning to World Radio to help start your day. Good morning. I'm Mary Reichardt.
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Lindsay Mast
And I'm Lindsay Mast. Coming next on the world and everything in it, what makes us human? The first chapter of the Bible records that God created mankind in his own image. In the image of God, he created them. Our guest today says that by rejecting that one fact, modern man has spiral into the current crisis of falling church attendance, rising cases of suicide and plummeting birth rates.
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Mary Reichert
Carl Truman's new book, the Desecration of How the Rejection of God Degrades Our Humanity, lays out that case and offers some ideas for what true reconsecration might look like. Truman is a professor of biblical and theological studies at Grove City College and a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy center, and he joins us now.
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Lindsay Mast
Carl, good morning.
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Carl Truman
Great to be here. Thanks for having me on.
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Lindsay Mast
The term disenchantment has been appearing more frequently over the last few years. I hear it particularly in discussions among those who are pondering the evidence of Western civilization's decline. But you wrote a whole book to say that perhaps the better term is desecration. Can you explain that?
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Carl Truman
Yeah, I think disenchantment, which is a term so popularized in the wake of Max Weber early in the 20th century, captures something of the modern experience we tend to feel these days that we are numbers. We tend to feel that we're treated as categories. We don't feel that we're. We lack the feeling that the world has depth and mystery in a way that the previous generations did. But it doesn't really explain some of the things that are happening today. And in the book, I look, for example, at the language surrounding abortion, which has moved. Its advocates have said it should be safe, legal and rare to being something that is to be shouted and boasted about. And I think that you can explain the former with disenchantment, but the latter, there's something deeper going on. And ultimately, as human beings, fallen human beings, what we want to do is to declare our liberation from God. And therefore the modern project. The modern project of liberation really requires a kind of desecration, a rebellion against God, in order for us to feel truly authentic and truly liberated.
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Lindsay Mast
You talk a good deal in the book about technology, and I don't think you're anti technology, but you say that our own physical and intellectual limitations have seemingly become problems to be defeated through innovation, technological innovation. So I want to talk a little bit about how we can establish a clear moral framework to distinguish between technology and. If we're just talking about medicine legitimately heals the body and technology, that crosses the line into what you might call the realm of. And I love this term, the meat. Lego.
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Carl Truman
Yeah, that's actually Mary Harrington's term. I wish I'd coined it, but it was Mary that did that. Yeah, I think that the question of technology is a significant one. As you say, I'm not opposed to technology at all. We're interviewing over the Internet at the moment. Clearly, I'm deeply embedded in a technological world, but I want to encourage people, in particular Christians, to think critically about the way they use technology. Is the technology that's being developed, for example, in the sphere of medicine, is it something that allows us to restore what it means to be normatively human, or is it something that leads us to aspire to transcend what it means to be human or go beyond what it means to be human? For example, if a child is born with one leg, I see no problem in a technological solution that allows the child to grow another leg in the future to have two legs, the normative humanity is being restored. But if we use that same technology to grow a third leg, something fundamental about what it means to be human is being transformed. So really, I'm worried that Christians in particular have not thought critically about how they use technology, and we've allowed technology to reshape what we think it means to be human.
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Lindsay Mast
I want to talk a little bit about young people, young Christians in particular. You write that transgression of that once considered sacred has become the primary task of the cultural elites rather than just an accidental outcome of social forces. So given that many young people, many young Christians, aspire to enter elite institutions, how can they remain faithful to their convictions?
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Carl Truman
It's a good question. Well, I think first of all they need to be well grounded in a local church. To put it simply, if the problem we faced today is desecration, then the answer is consecration. Where do we find ourselves consecrated? It's in the teaching and the worship and the practice of Christianity within the church community. So for young people out there wanting to move into the realm of the cultural movers and shakers, I would say you don't stand a chance unless you're well grounded in a local church. Secondly, I think that the time is ripe in some ways for the presentation of an alternative picture. Another of the things that lies in the background to me writing the book is the number of intellectuals over the last few years who've begun to take religion seriously again. And I think that provides a tremendous opportunity to our young people that they can have conversations with elite culture makers that I couldn't have had when I was a younger person. So I think be grounded in the local church and then seize the conversations and the opportunities that come your way.
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Lindsay Mast
You write a lot towards the end of the book about the importance of that local community worship. We are in a culture that is characterized by very personalized, non communal experiences. Talk about how the rituals of the church practically shape the moral imagination of members who probably spend the majority of their week immersed in a very desecrated, as you say, self centered world.
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Carl Truman
Yeah, well, one very, very simple way, and this was quite a surprise to me when I researched into it, is, you know, in the church we tend to sing communally. It's one of the only contexts today where human beings sing communally. And there's been sociological research done that indicates that anybody who sings communally, if you're part of a choir, for example, will instinctively feel more connection to the people around them. In other words, singing communally makes you less autonomous, makes you feel more responsible for others, makes you feel more dependent upon others. Restores something, I think, of that biblical vision of what it means to be a human being. So that would be one very simple way in which the church does that. Of course, there are other ways. And in the book I talk about the importance of doctrine of understanding what the Christian faith stands for and how that doctrine can shape the liturgy so that going through the drama of the liturgy each week shapes our imagination and also how that plays over into hospitality. If the problem today is that we are autonomous and we tend to think of ourselves as sovereign and supreme, where is it that we can engage with other people, give ourselves to other people in a way that makes us feel more human and makes them feel more human? I would say one very simple way is opening our homes to other people in hospitality. I don't remember many lectures, if any lectures at all from when I was a university student. I do remember spending time socially with professors. Why? Because that was when my humanity and their humanity were most richly developed, I would say.
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Lindsay Mast
Well, Carl Truman is a professor at Grove City College, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy center, and the author of his latest book, the Desecration of Man how the Rejection of God Degrades Our Humanity. Carl, thank you so much for your time.
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Carl Truman
It's been a pleasure. Thanks for having me on.
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Lindsay Mast
Good morning. This is the world and everything in it from listener supported World Radio. I'm Lindsay Mast.
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Mary Reichert
And I'm Mary Reichard. When we think about how government works, we tend to picture elections, court rulings and big speeches. But a lot of the real work happens in places you don't typically see. Here's World Opinions commentator Daniel sir,
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Daniel Sir
when most people think about the U.S. department of justice, they think about the Attorney General or whatever legal case is dominating cable news that week. They probably do not think about the Office of Legal Counsel. Yet if you want to understand how governing actually happens, you have to look in places like this, offices that operate outside the spotlight, where policy translates into action. OLC serves as the executive branch's in house law firm. That means when the president or federal agencies face a difficult legal question, what the law allows them to do or not do, do they turn to OLC for answers? These opinions do not make law on their own. At his Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing last year, the current head of the office, Elliot Geiser, described the office's role this way.
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President Donald Trump
The functions of OLC date to the Judiciary act of 1789, and it has served to uphold the rule of law and the separation of powers into the modern era by issuing opinions and answering legal questions. According to According to the best reading
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Daniel Sir
of the law, the office establishes that legal framework that allows policy to move forward. And in recent months that framework has been moving policy in a distinctly conservative direction. Take a familiar example, the Federal Lifeline program The one critics dubbed the Obama phone program. Now Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr is making sure benefits go only to those lawfully entitled to receive them. That means no dead recipients and no ineligible non citizens. But that effort relies on a legal foundation and part of that foundation comes from the Office of Legal Counsel through opinions correctly concluding that certain federal benefits programs are limited to citizens and lawful long term residents. Here's how Geyser puts it.
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President Donald Trump
When you're a law clerk, your first task is to do your best to state the law in a way that the judge can use your work and you're not the decider. You're there to do research, to provide your independent, candid and honest view of the law. And should I be so fortunate to be confirmed, that would be my primary aim, to always provide the best legal advice that I could give.
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Daniel Sir
There are other examples of the office's impact. OLC recently concluded that race based education grant programs cannot stand under the Constitution's guarantee of equal protection protection, especially following the Supreme Court's decision in Students for Fair Admissions. In another case, OLC withdrew a prior opinion that allowed abortion in Veterans affairs medical facilities, reasoning that Congress had already made clear that the VA cannot provide taxpayer funded abortion. And OLC has cleared the way for lawful gun owners to ship firearms through the mail, reasoning that that these long standing restrictions can't be squared with our nation's even longer history and tradition of firearm regulation. None of these decisions on their own dominate the news cycle. But taken together, they show how governing actually works. Let me put it this way. Campaign promises do not implement themselves. They have to be translated into actions that are legally defensible that turn the President's priorities into policy. That may not make headlines, but it is one of the places where the real work of governing gets done quietly and often out of view. For World, I'm Daniel Sir.
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Lindsay Mast
Tomorrow we'll talk politics on Washington Wednesday with Hunter Baker and parliamentary elections in Hungary. We'll have a report that and more tomorrow. I'm Lindsay Mast.
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Mary Reichert
And I'm Mary Reichert. 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 in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God. And the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him and without him was not anything made that was made in him was life. And the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. John, chapter one, verses one through five. Go now in grace and peace.