7.23.26 Preserving America’s past, educational value, the trade-in trap, and writing Arthurian poetry

**Myrna Brown** (0:05)
Good morning. Heated debate on Capitol Hill over how the Smithsonian frames American history.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:11)
In the museum's current telling, history is just an ongoing power struggle between oppressors and the oppressed.

**Nick Eicher** (0:18)
Also today, new regulations aimed at curbing student debt could put ministry-related degree programs at risk, and how negative equity can bring car-buying to a halt, later inside the creative life of poet Malcolm Guite.

**Malcolm Guite** (0:34)
I usually get the first lines of a poem when I'm out for a walk.

**Nick Eicher** (0:37)
And World commentator Daniel Suhr says it's more difficult than ever to deny America's elections are fraud-free.

**Myrna Brown** (0:51)
It's Thursday, July 23rd. This is The World and Everything In It from listener-supported World Radio. I'm Myrna Brown.

**Nick Eicher** (0:58)
And I'm Nick Iker. Good morning.

**Myrna Brown** (1:02)
Up next, Kent Covington with today's news.

**Kent Covington** (1:06)
The House of Representatives passed the annual defense bill on Wednesday, authorizing a record $1.15 trillion in defense spending. It was a near party-line vote, 216 to 212 Speaker Mike Johnson.

**SPEAKER_6** (1:19)
House Republicans passed the NDAA to provide a much-needed pay raise for our troops and to rebuild the arsenal of freedom.

**Kent Covington** (1:27)
The bill would give troops a raise of 5 to 7% and officially rename the Defense Department to the Department of War. A short time later, they also pushed through a $95 billion budget plan to fund the Iran War, among other things.

**SPEAKER_6** (1:41)
The budget resolution that unlocks our third reconciliation bill, which of course is Republicans' best shot, to get as much of the Save America Act into law as possible, in addition to funding our national defense and our farmers.

**Kent Covington** (1:54)
That squeaked through on a vote of 216 to 214, a handful of Republicans balked, uneasy that none of it is paid for.
And it is not money yet, but a blueprint that lets them move the funding past a Senate filibuster on party line votes. The plan steers more than $70 billion to the Pentagon and the Iran War, GOP Congressman Marlon Studtsman.

**SPEAKER_7** (2:15)
US service members are working day and night to be sure Americans are safe from a nuclear bomb in Iran and to advance peace in the Middle East.

**Kent Covington** (2:23)
But Democrats insist it is the wrong fight, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.

**SPEAKER_8** (2:27)
Donald Trump's reckless and costly war of choice in Iran has skyrocketed gas prices on everyday Americans who are already suffering.

**Kent Covington** (2:38)
The plan now heads to the Senate where its fate is uncertain.
President Trump stood and saluted at Dover Air Force Base on Wednesday as service members carried four flag-draped caskets off a military plane, the remains of soldiers killed in Iranian airstrikes. The fallen ranged in age from 19 to 30 Two were killed in an Iranian missile and drone attack on a base in Jordan. A third went missing in that attack and is now presumed dead. The fourth died in Iraq. The president described his message to the grieving families.

**SPEAKER_7** (3:10)
We love you.

**SPEAKER_9** (3:11)
We love your child. And that's what they are to them. They're their children. There's no games, no nothing. That's their child.

**David Blight** (3:20)
And all you can do is throw out your heart.

**Kent Covington** (3:23)
It was the third such ceremony Trump has attended since the war began in February. 18 American service members have now been killed.
Former Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro appeared in a New York courtroom on Wednesday. World's Benjamin Eicher reports.

**Harrison Waters** (3:39)
The ousted ruler sat quietly as a federal judge set a date for his drug trafficking trial. He and his wife Celia Flores will stand trial June 1st of next year. They're accused of working with cartels to flood the United States with cocaine in what prosecutors call a narcoterrorism conspiracy. Both have pleaded not guilty and could face a life in prison.
US forces captured the couple in a middle of the night raid in Caracas back in January and flew them to New York. They've been behind bars in a Brooklyn jail ever since.
Maduro's lawyers plan to argue that he can't be tried at all because as a foreign head of state, he has immunity. A judge will hear that argument in November. For WORLD, I'm Benjamin Eicher.

**Kent Covington** (4:26)
In Russia, flames billowed from a warehouse in the southwestern city of Nemanomysk, that warehouse owned by the company Wild Berries, Russia's largest online retailer. Ukraine's military has been targeting multiple sites owned by the retailer, accusing the company of providing logistics for Russia's military. Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is in Manila, where he plans to have a sit-down meeting with US. Secretary of State Marco Rubio later today.