8.13.26 Trump’s secret escape, WPATH backtracks, Britain's homeless, and a WWII veteran

**Myrna Brown** (0:05)
Good morning. The organization that has set standards of care for the gender confused now says those standards were merely opinions.

**Chloe Cole** (0:14)
And I think it's incredibly lousy of them to now backtrack to try and defend themselves.

**Mary Reichard** (0:19)
Also, Iran flexes its cyber attack muscles. We'll talk to an expert about the threat. And the UK works to fight a growing homelessness problem.
Also, a member of the greatest generation who is still going strong.

**Bill Quarles** (0:33)
Well, I'm prepared, but I ain't quite ready.

**Mary Reichard** (0:35)
And World commentator Janie B. Cheaney says a renewed interest in Jesus should also come with more visits to his church.

**Myrna Brown** (0:50)
It's Thursday, August 13th. This is The World and Everything In It from listener-supported World Radio. I'm Myrna Brown.

**Mary Reichard** (0:58)
And I'm Mary Reichard. Good morning.

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

**Kent Covington** (1:06)
White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt will be stepping down at the end of the month to spend more time with her young family. Levitt, in a social media post, called it a bittersweet decision shortly after President Trump on Wednesday announced that she would be leaving her role.

**Kellyanne Conway** (1:21)
Former senior adviser to the president, Kelly Anne Conway, said of Levitt, She will go down as one of the best White House press secretaries, definitely for her work behind the podium, but her work behind the scenes that the public doesn't always see.

**Kent Covington** (1:33)
At 28 years old, she is the youngest person in history to hold that role and recently gave birth to her second child. She said that since returning to the White House for maternity leave, she has felt that she could not devote enough time or attention to both roles. Trump has said Levitt will remain in the fold as one of his top outside advisers.
In Wisconsin, election officials had to keep counting votes into Wednesday, but Democrat David Crowley pulled off a razor thin victory over Democratic Socialist Francesca Hong.

**David Crowley** (2:04)
Today, I stand before you filled with gratitude, with humility and hope as I formally accept the Democratic nomination to be the next governor of the great state of Wisconsin.

**Kent Covington** (2:15)
It was an upset win, surprising pundits and pollsters who had long placed Hong as the frontrunner. That means Crowley will square off in November against Republican Congressman Tom Tiffany.
The Justice Department has charged a former Southern Poverty Law Center official with fraud. World's Benjamin Eicher reports.

**Benjamin Eicher** (2:35)
Authorities arrested Heidi Birick Wednesday. She ran the Center's extremism research until 2019
Prosecutors say she shared a bank account with a paid neo-Nazi informant that she was dating. They say the Center told donors it was dismantling extremist groups and instead paid over $4 million to the people inside them. Attorney General Todd Blanch says the Center is, his words, manufacturing racism to justify its existence. Birick's lawyers call the charges politically motivated and the Center says the payments prevented violence. For World, I'm Benjamin Eicher.

**Kent Covington** (3:14)
In Moscow, a threat from Russian leader Vladimir Putin Wednesday, speaking aboard a missile warship taking part in a naval exercise, Putin said the risk of conflict in the Asia-Pacific region is growing. That comes as European countries have been seizing some Russian commercial vessels, mainly Shadow Fleet tankers used to evade oil sanctions amid the Ukraine war. Putin said if that continues, Russia will respond in kind, seizing European ships.
Meantime, Ukrainians formerly held by Russia say their captors are systematically torturing both prisoners of war and civilian captives alike. One Ukrainian soldier said this week, I was lucky enough to survive.

**SPEAKER_9** (4:00)
Not many of my friends were lucky enough. Two of my friends were beaten up to death in detention centers in the Donetsk region. Two of my friends died because of the conditions they were put in in Russian prisons and were returned in the plastic bags to their homelands.

**Kent Covington** (4:17)
He said Russian captors regularly employed beatings, electric shocks and sexual abuse and warned that thousands remain in captivity.
Federal prosecutors say some soon to be wed couples met for the very first time just minutes before they picked up a marriage license because those marriages were shams. The Justice Department charged 11 people Wednesday with arranging more than a thousand fraudulent marriages over a decade. Investigators say facilitators in New York recruited American citizens, paying them up to $30,000 to marry a foreign national, most of them Chinese. Attorney General Todd Blanch.

**Todd Blanch** (4:56)
Chinese nationals would pay these facilitators as much as $100,000 for assistance in obtaining a marriage, which then allowed them to apply for a green card.