MAGA-linked pastor Doug Wilson’s plan for a Christian theocracy

You've called for repealing women's right to vote which is protected by the 19th Amendment. Why? Because it's a good idea. I wouldn't just impose a Christian hard theocracy on the country as it now is. You can't do that. Politics is the art of the possible. You do what you can with what you have. This is Newsmakers, NPR's biggest interviews. I'm Steve Enske. We question some of the most influential people of our time. New episodes drop whenever they're available. And the best way to stay caught up is to follow or subscribe to this show on Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you watch or listen. You can also find us in the NPR app. Today, NPR's Leyla Faddle is your host. Earlier this year, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth invited Pastor Doug Wilson to give a sermon at the Pentagon. Wilson was invited as part of Hegseth's Monthly Christian Worship Service. Pastor's appearance was controversial. Wilson is a self-described Christian nationalist and not long ago his beliefs were seen as extreme. Today, even though Wilson's church network and followers are still few in number, his teachings, according to religious studies scholars, are entering the mainstream. And that's why we sat down with Doug Wilson here at Christ Church Hall in his church community in Moscow, Idaho. Doug Wilson, thank you so much for having us here in Moscow, Idaho. Great to have you here. Thanks for coming. Part of the reason we came is because you've shown up a lot in the National Spotlight lately, because of your association with the Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. You're invited to the Pentagon to lead a monthly worship service earlier this year. And I just wondered what that was like to do that service in this hall of power. So there's a certain element of it that is kind of trippy. So I'm a pastor in North Idaho. And that is not the normal thing you would expect. So there have been some twists and turns along the way. So yes, trippy is a good way to put it. When you say that, but did you explain what you said you didn't expect? What was it like? Well, it was a very well-run service. About 300 people there came. I noticed that the morale in the Pentagon, the people that I interacted with was very high, a very exuberant group. The message was very well received. It was just a good event. It was very hard. Pentagon is a very hard place to get into, to find your way. But I did it. Secretary Hegseth attends a chapter of your network of churches that you co-founded. What about the church and your teachings appeal to Secretary Hegseth, do you think? So there's a little bit of history there. When Pete Hegseth was still with Fox News as a correspondent and hanker type. He did a documentary on the state of American education and was so impressed at what he saw about this classical Christian school movement. That he moved to Tennessee to put his kids in a school like that. He was still a correspondent with Fox. So he was flying in and out of Nashville because of his job. And he would fly in to Nashville on Sunday and not in time for church. There was one church in the area that was meeting in the afternoon because they didn't have a facility. And that was Pilgrim Hill Church, which is pastored by my friend Brooks Pateger. And he's part of our denomination, the CRAC. And there are connections between the classical school movement and the CRAC, the denomination. And it was there that he made all the connections before he was the Secretary of War. He knew about me because that was one of the founders of the resurgence of classical Christian education. So he was familiar with my work because of that as well, I think. So after he moved to Washington and was the Secretary of War, we started the church service, the church service in DC. You opened a church? We opened a church service, yeah. And it was under the authority of the church here. And we didn't have a pastor. We just had an opportunity. And so we raised enough money to fly Pulpit Supply in for like a year. And we had different men from here and other places around the country who would come into DC and preach and lead the service. And so Secretary Hegseth began attending that service, which was a CREC church, like the one he had joined in Tennessee. So it was a natural place for him to attend. When you say we had an opportunity, what do you mean? So if Kamala had won the presidency, there would have been basically zero evangelicals in the White House administration. And although Donald Trump is not an evangelical by any stretch, he's not, he's, he's a professing Christian, but he's not, he's not an evangelical, that's probably the best way to put it. Even though that's the case, his administration is full of them. They're Christians everywhere. And in DC, there are other even fine Christian churches performed evangelical churches. But our, our movement has a couple of distinctives that made it necessary for us to think about putting a church service there. And that's because with all the Christians, all the evangelical Christians in the administration, that included a number of our people from around the, the country, CREC people. And one of the distinctives that we have is we, we're Presbyterian, paedabaptist, baptized infants, but we, a distinctive feature that we have the lot of reform churches don't have is that we commune children. We practice weekly communion at the culmination of every service. And we commune our children. Right. You can, as you can see from spots on the floor. So it's a war zone. So you're giving a little cup of wine to, to the kids included. If you're, if you're a CREC family man and you've been offered a job in the administration, you don't want to move to DC and have to join a church where basically your kids are going to be excommunicated. Right. So we're the only reform church in the area that, that serves the children in that way. So that, that was one doctrinal distinctive. The other distinctive is what the writer Kevin de Young called the Moscow mood, which is basically a particular approach to cultural engagement, where it's more exuberant than what you often get from Christians. Now, I want to come back to the church in DC, but I also have a couple more questions about your relationship with the secretary of defense before we get into your broader views. How often do you talk to him now? Not a lot. I've communicated with him some. He obviously invited me to do the Pentagon service. I met with him when I was there. I've communicated, I've met with him, I met him a few times at church once in Tennessee and once or twice in DC. And, and we've texted some, but that's not, not a lot. Does he ever seek your advice or the advice of other pastors within your church network on policy matters? Not to my knowledge, certainly not for me. And there's a, there's a fine distinct, an important distinction to be made here. I think it is crucial for pastors when it comes to situations like this to stay in their lane. Let's say I've got thoughts on the straight straight of form moves. I don't have security clearances. I wasn't elected to anything. I don't have, I don't have the information that I'm sure he has. So, no, I want to stay in my lane and not do anything. At the same time, I, I'm a pastor and a writer and I will write columns and I will talk, I'm happy to talk about the straights of form moves and, you know, in different things in sort of public for the public. And if I were to say something there and ptexeth read it and said, I think that's a good point. That's his business. But in terms of, it's not my business to take a position of a spiritual pastor and muddled the categories. Now, having said that. That there are certain areas where spiritual issues and political issues overlap. So let's say, this is not real, but let's say President Trump said, "Let's nuke him all and let God sort it out." I mean, he did at some point say, "We're going to end a civilization." Yes, something's around. Yeah, he said that, but he didn't do that. He didn't do it. I didn't do it. But let's say, and one of the things that's interesting is you're looking at the things the President says and you're thinking, "Okay, is this just New York bluster? Is this the art of the deal? Is this a serious threat?" When Donald Trump talks, he often doesn't do what he says, but he usually does something and something's going on. But let's say I had reason to believe that I'm not accusing or anything like that. But let's say I had reason to believe that I thought the President was going to commit a war crime and require people under him to be complicit in the war crime. I think that pastors there have an obligation to say, "You may not." Do you think the U.S. has committed war crimes in Iran? No, I don't know. Not the school. Well, there's a difference. If we had said, "See that school? We're going to kill the kids." That would be a war crime, yes. But one of the things that's awful about war is that several things are awful about war. One is the antiseptic terminology that's used like collateral damage. But there is a very real difference between civilian casualties as a byproduct or because they were in the blast radius as opposed to targeting civilians on purpose. That would be a war crime. But just to keep the lines distinct, if Christians are told to do something that would dishonor God, it doesn't matter that you're superior told you to do it. You must not. What is your view of the Iran war? Is it a religious war? In a very broad sense, small-ar religious. It's not a religious war in that the way the crusades were, it's not that. If there is a civilizational difference between the Islamic civilization in Iran and the historically Christian civilization, it is a civilizational collision and there are religious elements mixed up in it. So you see this as a Christian Muslim war? No, I think it's a geopolitical war with Christian Muslim elements mixed up in it. Do you think it's divinely sanctioned? Well, I'm a Calvinist, so I think everything is ordained by God, but there's a difference between a holy war in the Old Testament where God says go in and exterminate the Canaanites that's God's command, that's a religious sanction for the war and it's a holy war. As opposed to, that was under Joshua in the invasion of the land. There's later, under King David, for example, the wars that Israel had were, you might say, ordinary wars, geopolitical wars that happened to have believers and unbelievers on opposite sides and the rules of war and an ordinary war were different than the wars of extermination that God commanded under Joshua. So I don't believe that the wars of extermination are ever justified in the Christian era. I don't think that is our place, I don't think that's what God is up to, but I do believe that we come into ordinary conflicts and we must fight like Christians and there are rules of engagement and they ought to be observed. You said you don't support forever wars. No, I don't. Has this gone on too long? Yep. Yeah, I think that this, and this is a stop and start kind of thing. The bombing campaign was a short brief war. I would have much preferred to have us just do that and get out, but it seemed like more of an entanglement than I think anybody in the maggot right likes. Do you think it should have started at all? I've written about this too. I much prefer the older constitutional system of Congress declaring war and the president executing it. However, with the War Powers Act and the way Washington has function since World War 2, that was the last declared war that we had. It would, you would have to unravel a good deal of Washington in order to get to a constitutionally declared war, which I would prefer. I would prefer that. But given the fact of hostilities, I like the fact that Congress has the authority to pull the plug. And is that what you want to see happen? Well, I'd like to have them pull the plug at a sensible time. And I would appeal to Colin Powell's statement about Iraq. He appealed to the pottery barn rule. If you break it, it's yours. So I think you can't go thundering in and then tiptoe out like nothing happened. I think you've got to, I think we did that, for example, in Afghanistan. Afghanistan was a terrible overreach. I don't think we should have been there. I don't think we should have been there for 20 years. We certainly shouldn't have extricated ourselves the way that we did. So the way we came out was as much of a disaster as the way we went in. So if we extricate ourselves from the Iranian war, I don't want that extrication to make things worse. Have you communicated these concerns directly to the Secretary of Justice? No, I've written about them. I've written about them and he may have read them, but I've been very careful not to take my position as pastor and say, I've got a pipeline to the secretary. I'm going to tell, let me tell you what I think about these things. No, I would. Now, you've made it clear that you want a Christian deocracy in this country. You've declared yourself a Christian nationalist. What would that look like in the United States? You would look like fluffy clouds and unicorns and everybody would be happy. That's my vision. What would look like in practical terms? What would change, for example, what would change? I would want basically the same constitutional framework that we have now. I love the U.S. Constitution. I think it's a work of theological genius. I like the federal system of subordinate states that have their own powers. I like the separation of powers at the federal level. I love the constitutional structure. So, I'd want that to remain. The things that would change would be things that would be at the statutory, but some would be Supreme Court, excuse me, constitutional amendments, or they might be dealt with other ways. I'd want to see abortion outlawed everywhere. I'd want to see a Berger fell overturned. I'd want to see no fault divorce rejected overturned. Things like that. So, no same-sex marriage, no one should- No, no same-sex marriage, no, I'd like the LGBTQ+ thing to go away at the legal level in terms of law. There would be no legal protections for LGBTQ+ folks. Correct. There would be no special carve-outs for them, right? He said you love the Constitution. Right. When the First Amendment of the Constitution protects your right to believe all the things you believe, it protects other Americans' rights to believe what they believe or not believe. It says very clearly that there shall never be a religious test to hold public office. It says very clearly that there shall never be a religion of the land. So, how can you love the Constitution, but also envision a Christian theocracy in this country? So, let me divide it in that question, it's actually two questions. One is the established church issue and the other is the First Amendment Free Expression issue. There's two things going on there. First on- The First Amendment says there shall be no establishment of religion. Right. And that is, the First Amendment says Congress shall make no law concerning the establishment of religion. The only entity on Earth that can violate the First Amendment is Congress. What the founders were prohibiting was a church of the United States. They didn't want a federal denomination. And this makes sense because if the Oriole is the state bird of Maryland and the bald eagle is the national bird, that's not likely to cause any civil war, the state flower, national flower, state anthem, national anthem, everybody's fine. But if you had state denominations, which at the founding we did, so Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont all had the Congregational Church as the official Church of their state, not Vermont, excuse me, New Hampshire, then Vermont came in as the 14th state after the Constitution was ratified and they came into the union with an official Christian denomination as the state church in in the other Colonies, South Carolina, for example, had a law that said basically the Protestant religion is the official faith of this state, okay. Now if you then made the Anglican Church or the Episcopal Church, the National Church, you're just begging for conflict between the federal and the state. So the prohibition of a religious test is a prohibition of a religious test for federal office. For federal office, okay. For state office, when the men who ratified the Constitution, they had all kinds of religious tests for office at the state level, right. And so now there's an important thing here. I'm not a big fan of established religion at the state level either. I don't like it. But how do you get to a Christian theocracy? I would prefer the South Carolinian system of where we publicly recognize that Jesus rose from the dead without giving tax money to any particular Christian denomination. So I don't want, there's a difference between a formal recognition of Christianity and tax support for ministers or tax support for particular churches, which I'm against. But so if I were a citizen of Connecticut at the time, I would have been opposed to the Congregational Church being the state Church of Connecticut. And I think it's a bad idea. But it's not an unconstitutional idea because all the people who ratified the Constitution were doing it. They had established Christian religion in the states that ratified the Constitution. So the thing that's excluded is an official denomination of the United States. And I support that. So I support the First Amendment as originally written. And I am an opponent of established state churches at the state level, which I think is a bad idea, but a state should be allowed to do it if they want. It's not unconstitutional. Now the other part of your question on the First Amendment is, I believe that LGBTQ+ people have the right to think what they think and say what they want to say. And I don't want to prohibit their right to express their views. So that's not, I don't believe in a priori censorship. I don't believe in restricting, persecuting people who think differently. I think religious minorities, for example, in a Christian Republic, should have civil protections. But you would want to make it illegal for them to be in partnerships. You would want to restrict what they could do in their bedrooms. So you mean like sexual partnerships like marriage? Yeah. So I don't want legal recognition of those relationships, right? What happens? You said you want civil protect. What happens to non-Christians in a future Christian theocracy that you imagine. So Muslims, Jews, Hindus, many other non-Christian faiths, people without a faith? So if you took the United States as it currently is, so my joke about this is, if I were president of the United States, I want to glorious three days, that would be. You can't do that. And so there's a distinction to be made between what would if I were in a position of political influence, what would I do next? What fish would I fry? And that's one question. And the other is, what do you envision as the ideal civic arrangement of 250 years from now, if everything evolved to that point, right? So a lot of the questions about that I get asked on this have to do with the 250 year scenario, and not what I would do right now. What I would do right now is outlaw abortion, overturned a Virgothel. Those are the fish that I would want to fry now. But the long term view of what happens to non-Christians in a country that has long given equal rights and equal protections to all faiths and all what happens in the old public office. Can they vote, can they pray in public? So probably the best illustration of this would be church bells. Yes. Minerets know. Why? Because the public space would belong to Christ. So church bells can occupy the public space, but a minaret is a loudspeaker, a big call to prayer. Could Muslims pray to Allah? Yes. Could they gather together to pray to Allah? Yes. Should they be free from being hassled and persecuted? Yes, they should be free from that. But they should do it quietly and in their homes. But they should recognize that they're in a Christian country. Now, and consequently, they should defer to that. Now, the only, but the only way, go back to what I said about the politics of the politics being the art of the possible, the only way that that is ever going to happen is by means of persuasion, evangelism, mass conversion to Christianity. There's no way you can't just flip a switch and make this country as cosmopolitan and secular and diverse as it is and just say, okay, everybody, we're going to do it the Christian way. That's not going to happen. Do you believe Catholics should have a role in shaping a future Christian America? Do they count as Christian in your view? Yeah, I would want a basic apostles creed definition of Christian for these purposes, yes. Mormons, Pentecostals. Well, the Mormons couldn't sign off on the apostles creed. Pentecostals could. Could they serve in public office? So if you had a Christian republic, the Constitution would be Christian and an office holder would have to vow to uphold the Constitution. So everybody who holds public office would have to be Christian? Would have to vow to uphold the Christian Constitution, yeah. So they could be technically Muslim or Jewish or Hindu and then vowed to this, which they wouldn't? So technically, they wouldn't be in public office. By technically, they would not be. And, but could they vote? Yes, probably. Yes. Now you've called for repealing women's right to vote, which is protected by the 19th amendment. Right. Why? No. A lot of women wouldn't agree, all right. But this is the, this is one of my favorite questions down to. This is not an XXXY chromosome issue. What I, because I don't want women voting as individuals, because I don't want men voting as individuals. So what I want to, what I envision is a system that we are, we have practiced in our church here for four decades. And that is household voting. Okay. So in, in our polity in our church system, the congregation votes on the installation of deacons and elders and calling a pastor. Those are the areas where the church exercises its voice. And when we hold a church election for an elder, about 7% of the votes are cast by women, because we have a number of women who are heads of their households. And when a, when a young man, let's say a college student comes to move to Moscow, and he's 19 years old, and he's going to college, and he wants to become a member, we interview him. And one of the things we ask is, are you paying, who's paying for your school? And if his folks back home are putting him through school, we bring him into membership, but he's non-voting member, because he's not a household. So, but with the concept of headship within your church, which is households led by men, when there's a man, when there's a man, that would mean the vote would ultimately be decided by the head of the household. Well, the, the vote would be decided, the vote would be cast by the head of the household, which would typically be the man. Right. And when it isn't, and in our church, we have a number of households headed by women, and when they had the household, they vote. So, it's the household that votes. So, so for example, I'm a woman who's not married, who doesn't have children, and who is Muslim. So, in a future Christian theocracy, where the 19th Amendment is repealed, what is my role in public life? Do I get to vote? Do I get to run for office? Do I get to do these things? Okay. Holy in this hypothetical. In this hypothetical. Hypothetical. No, you wouldn't hold office, because you couldn't vow to uphold the Christian constitution. And whether you voted or not would have nothing to do with whether you were a woman or not, whether you voted would be, if I'm the head of my household, if you're the head of the household, if you were head of the household and Christian, you would vote. And if I'm head of the household and not Christian, then that would depend probably on the state. Right. Now, you've talked about about wanting patriarchy. And that's because you believe that men are supposed to protect women. Provide and protect. Provide and protect. But you also use words that don't feel Christian. Okay. Cunt, small breasted bitties, you've spoken of the propriety of rape for women who reject patriarchy. So women who reject patriarchy, do they deserve protection? Of course. So that phrase, propriety of rape, a number of those things are gathered from people taking arguments out of context. Let me give you the propriety of rape thing. One consequence of rejecting the protection of good men is that you're opening yourself up to the predations of bad men. When they've walked away from the protections of fathers and brothers, what it amounts to is a tacit. Right, plicit in principle not over acceptance of the propriety of rape. This is from the 2016. Correct. I'm not saying anything about the propriety of rape. What I'm saying is the women who do these things, they're the ones saying that. So if you refuse the protection of good men, then you're the one asking for it. I'm pleading with you to stop asking for it. I don't think there's ever a time when. Let's say here's an illustration. Let's say someone parks his car in a bad part of town, leaves his wallet on the dashboard with $20 bills sticking out of it. I think that if someone breaks his windshield and takes his wallet, that person should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. He has no right to take the wallet. He has no right to do that. And he should be prosecuted for doing that. So I don't argue for the propriety of theft. What I'm saying is that the idiot who left his wallet on the dashboard, he was arguing for the propriety of theft. He's the one. So the women who reject this protection are arguing for? And my argument was they ought to stop doing that. I'm opposing the propriety of rape. I'm not urging the propriety of rape. I'm opposing it and I'm saying that there are certain downstream consequences to rejecting the protection and provision of good men. You expose yourself to the predations of bad men. I'm curious about what punishment would look like in this future, Christian teocracy if it were to come to be. And you've taught that homosexuality is an abomination to God and that either execution or exile are permissible punishments. In the Christian America you want to usher in, would homosexuality be a crime and what would be the punishment for that crime? The punishment would vary depending on jurisdictions and whatnot. And when I say punishment, execution or exile, that first arose in a debate in back in the '80s. There was a movement called Christian Reconstruction. And there were people arguing that the penalty, Old Testament penalties ought to be executed period. You know, homosexuals need to be executed, period. Old Testament penance. Stoning. Yes, stoning. And my argument was no wait, King Asa and King Jehosephat, both are recorded as basically shutting down the bathhouses, they exiled the homosexuals and they didn't execute them. And so my argument was execution is not the minimum penalty in the Old Testament. It's the maximum penalty. It's not a minimum, you must do this in all circumstances. So I was arguing for the civil magistrate having the leeway to deal with the problem, deal with the social problem of public autonomy and pride parades and whatnot. He can do that without shooting people. He can do that without executing people. And Asa and Jehosephat did that. So what would happen? I mean, what would punishment look like in a future Christian theocracy? Would it be stoning? Would it be exile? And for other things too, adultery, blasphemy. Yeah, adultery was a capital crime, just as homosexuality was. But in one of the things you have to bank on, budget for, is the coming of Christ. When Christ came, the apostle Paul in his epistle to the Corinthians after the coming of Christ gives a whole list of gnarly sins, including homosexual sins and adultery and whatnot. And then he says to the Corinthians, and such were some of you, Christ came to seek and to save that which was lost, not to kill everybody. So the Old Testament, the holiness code, the requirements there, were instituted in order to teach right from wrong, up from down, left from right. And when Christ came, he came in order to save sinners. We are, I'm not interested in taking a grappling hook, grabbing Old Testament law as it is in then dropping it on modern society. I'm not interested in that. I am interested in, as the Westminster Confession says, that the judicial laws of Israel are ceased along with that nation ceasing. And do not pertain today except as the general equity thereof may require. So I'm interested in arguing from the general equity of Old Testament law. I'm not interested in applying Old Testament law straight across with no variations. How do you actually get, though, to a Christian theocracy? I know you talk about 250 years, but there has to be a mechanism because it forces the schools as it violence. No, it's on violence, not violence. It is preaching the gospel, planting churches, starting classical Christian schools means working your tail off, basically, until the majority of Americans are convinced. Yeah, so basically what I'm talking about is a radical experiment in democracy. But you would have to change portions of the constitution to become a theocracy. And actually no. I mean, a lot of constitutional scholars would disagree with you. Yeah, right. I disagree with them. Okay, go ahead. After there's an important issue, all societies are theocratic. In every society, there's a point past which there is no appeal. There's always got to be the buck stops here. And when you've identified the point past which there is no appeal, you've identified the God of the system. In secular democracies, the God is demos, the people. In Saudi Arabia, the God is Allah. In a Christian republic, the God would be the father of Jesus Christ. So every society has a point at which debate stops. And that is the final authority in that system. So my argument for Christian nationalism is very simple. If this is the state or society, and God is over that society. If there is no God over the state, then the state becomes God. You have about, you're just under 170 churches. The CRC is about 170 churches, yes. Would it be your interpretation that is the blueprint for a future Christian theocracy here in the United States when really you're a minority among Christians in this country? Oh, yeah. I'm a big time minority. So why would it be your vision, your blueprint? Well, right now it isn't. So this goes back to persuasion, right books, preach sermons, look to persuade, do everything peacefully, and see what happens. With so many evangelicals, as you mentioned in the administration that are connected to your church, do you feel in this moment that your religious worldview is closer to power than it's ever been, that your vision of what the US should be is closer? I think it'd be fairer to say that my vision, our vision of what the intersection of theology and politics should be, our theopolitical vision is closer to getting a hearing. We're not closer to getting a hearing, closer to getting a hearing, which is very different than being here the levers of power, that's not where, that's not where we are, but where we are is like, I would say 15 years ago, we've been, we've been teaching and preaching and talking about these things for 40 years. And 20 years ago, the faithful would listen to it and that was a great, that was a great conference. I enjoyed your book, in the last five years, we have gotten a much more significant hearing than we ever have before, where people are actually listening to what we say, are actually able to reproduce what we're saying, so, and this is a backhanded compliment to you. But the reporters I've been talking to over the last few years have come prepared. They know what we're saying. They've read it. They've watched a bunch of the video. They come prepared 10, 15 years ago, they would just throw mud at the wall. You're a fascist, you're not say you're a, you know, this is, and-- - And some people still think that about you. - Oh yeah, they're still people, that's still going on. But we have risen to the dignity of needing to be intelligently opposed. Okay, the slander doesn't cut it anymore. Screaming doesn't cut anymore. Although there are still screamers, there are still people doing that. But the last five reporters I've talked to have commented to my friends, man, they knew what they're talking about. They knew, they came into the interview knowing what our positions were, rather than coming in half-cocked, half-baked, and then misrepresenting them. And what that means is we're getting a respectful hearing, maybe not a friendly hearing, but we're getting a respectful one. And that is progress compared to the way it was before. - Doug Wilson, thank you so much for sitting down with us, we appreciate it. - Happy to do it. (upbeat music) - The news does not keep a schedule and neither do we. New episodes of newsmakers publish as soon as they're available any day of the week. The best way to stay caught up is to follow or subscribe to this show on Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you watch or listen. Newsmakers relies on supporters who value independent journalism and a free press. You can join NPR Plus today to support our work and get perks from the podcasts you trust. Just go to plus.npr.org. I'm Steve Innskipe. Thanks for listening to NPR's newsmakers. (upbeat music)