The World and Everything In It — April 12, 2021

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

A years-long legal battle reaches the Supreme Court over whether the NCAA violates antitrust law in the way it benefits athletes.

NICK EICHER, HOST: That’s ahead on Legal Docket.

Also today, the Monday Moneybeat, a unionization vote that goes down in flames, woke capitalism on the march, and a global minimum tax.

Plus, the WORLD History Book. Today we mark the 155th birthday of a committed teacher.

REICHARD: It’s Monday, April 12th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

EICHER: And I’m Nick Eicher. Good morning!

REICHARD: Now it’s time for news with Kent Covington.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Defense Sec. Austin meets with Israeli counterpart in Tel Aviv » Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin traveled to Tel Aviv on Sunday where he met with his Israeli counterpart, Defense Minister Benny Gantz.

AUSTIN: During our meeting, I reaffirmed to Minister Gantz, our commitment to Israel is enduring and it is ironclad. 

Austin’s visit comes as the Biden administration renews its efforts to rejoin the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran. And Gantz said Israel will work closely with the United States to try to ensure that a new nuclear deal does not threaten Israel.

GANTZ: The Tehran of today poses a strategic threat to international security, to the entire Middle East and to the State of Israel

As Austin visited Tel Aviv, Iran reported that its underground Natanz atomic facility lost power just hours after starting up new advanced centrifuges.

The Iranian government claimed it was the victim of—quote—“nuclear terrorism.”

But did not immediately blame anyone directly.

Flying overnight from Washington, Austin arrived in Tel Aviv in the tense aftermath of the country’s fourth inconclusive election in the past two years. Israel’s president last week gave embattled Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the difficult task of trying once again to form a new government.

COVID-19 cases surge in Michigan » New COVID-19 cases and hospital admissions are still ticking upward in the United States. But in the state of Michigan, new cases are spiraling upward. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer told CBS’ Face the Nation …

WHITMER: We are seeing a surge in Michigan despite the fact that we have some of the strongest policies in place: mask mandates, capacity limits, working from home. We have asked our state for a two-week pause. So despite all that, we are seeing a surge because of these variants. 

Infections have increased roughly sevenfold since late February in the Wolverine State.

Whitmer said she’s asking the Biden administration to push more vaccine doses into the state of Michigan. Former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said the White House should say yes.

GOTTLIEB: It’s a request that’s been made for weeks now, and I think we should have done it weeks ago. And it’s not just additional vaccine, but it’s the resources to actually get the vaccine into arms. Some of the federal resources that FEMA has. 

Gottlieb said the federal government should consider allocating resources according to need rather than by population.

On Friday, health officials recorded more than 85,000 cases nationally. It was the first time new infections have hit that number since the middle of February.

Maryland lawmakers override governor’s veto of broad police reforms » Maryland lawmakers voted over the weekend to override GOP Gov. Larry Hogan’s vetoes of multiple far-reaching police reform bills.

Supporters said the new measures are needed to make law enforcement more accountable and restore public trust.

But opponents said the measures went too far. Harford County, Maryland Sheriff Jeffrey Gahler:

GAHLER: Oh, it’s going to be devastating to the men and women of law enforcement under the guise of police reform. It’s not police reform, it’s the guise of police reform. 

Gog. Hogan said the measures will further erode police morale and community relationships.

One of the measures repeals job protections in the police disciplinary process that critics say get in the way of accountability. Maryland approved the nation’s first Law Enforcement Officers Bill of Rights in 1974. About 20 states have adopted similar laws setting rules for investigating police misconduct.

Maryland is the first to repeal those laws, replacing them with new procedures that give civilians a role in the police disciplinary process.

Royal family mourns loss of Prince Philip » Prince Andrew said Sunday that his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, and the rest of his family are left with a “huge void” after the death of his father, Prince Philip.

ANDREW: It’s a great loss. I think the way I would put it is we’ve lost almost the grandfather of the nation. And I feel very sorry and supportive of my mother who is probably feeling it, I think, more than everybody else. 

Prince Philip died on Friday at the age of 99.

Andrew’s brother, Prince Edward, told reporters,

EDWARD: It’s been a bit of a shock. However much one tries to prepare oneself for something like this, it’s still a dreadful shock, and we’re still trying to come to terms with that, and it’s very, very sad. 

Their sister, Princess Anne, praised Philip’s work with many charities, and his ability to—quote—“treat every person as an individual in their own right with their own skills.”

Hundreds of well-wishers continued to leave floral tributes on Sunday outside the gates of royal residences.

I’m Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: the Supreme Court takes a turn at college sports.

Plus, a Soviet victory in the space race.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Monday morning and we’re back for another week of The World and Everything in It. It’s April 12th, 2021. Good morning to you!  I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Just before midnight on Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court placed a hold on California’s Covid restrictions against in-home religious gatherings. It was an emergency ruling and not a final opinion, but it’s significant nonetheless in that it does expand religious free-exercise.

The ruling has to do with California’s limit on home gatherings to three or fewer households a mitigation measure it does not place on secular settings like WalMart stores or tattoo parlors.

Pastor Jeremy Wong argued California’s restrictions violate the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. On an explicit constitutional right, the legal analysis required is known as “strict scrutiny.”

In other words, before any government may infringe a First Amendment right, it must first have a compelling interest to do so and then, second, to do it in a narrowly tailored way.

The slimmest majority of five found the in-home restrictions did not pass Constitutional muster, even though an appellate court said that it did.

In a pointed rebuke of that court, the opinion said, quoting here, “This is the fifth time the court has summarily rejected the Ninth Circuit’s analysis of California’s Covid-19 restrictions on religious exercise.”

REICHARD: A dissent by Justice Elena Kagan that two others joined said “the law does not require that the state equally treat apples and watermelons.” Meaning, home gatherings are not the same as commercial enterprises and ought not be treated as such.

Chief Justice John Roberts didn’t join the dissent, but he voted with the dissenters in trying to deny the emergency request.

This is a temporary hold while litigation proceeds in the lower courts.

EICHER: The court handed down another opinion last week in a years-long dispute between two tech giants over copyright protection.

It was a 6-2 win for Google: the majority justices ruled Google’s use of parts of computer software code that Oracle owns is permissible under the legal doctrine of Fair Use. That doctrine analyzes the use of intellectual property under four criteria: purpose, nature, amount, and effect of using the work of others. Bottom line: Oracle will get no money from Google.

Oracle’s supporters warn innovation will suffer because cash-short startups don’t have the ability to fight wealthier, established corporations that claim fair use in intellectual-property disputes.

REICHARD: Now on to oral argument in what could be an upset for the NCAA, the National Collegiate Athletic Association.

This fight’s been going on for years over the NCAA’s cap on benefits to college athletes related to education, in the name of “amateur sports.”

This dispute is playing out on several fronts: state legislatures, courts, public opinion, and in Congress.

The NCAA has asked Congress to create a uniform rule across all fifty states.

Meanwhile in the courts, a federal court last year decided the NCAA violated antitrust law by restricting what schools can offer their athletes. Sometimes called competition statutes, antitrust laws protect consumers from predatory business practices like price fixing.

But the NCAA’s lawyer, Seth Waxman, argued the ruling creates a pay-for-play system that ruins the distinction between college sports and professional leagues.

WAXMAN: For more than 100 years, the distinct character of college sports has been that it’s played by students who are amateurs, which is to say that they are not paid for their play. Maintaining that distinct character is both pro-competitive because it differentiates the NCAA’s product from professional sports, and can be achieved only through agreement.

REICHARD: But for Justice Brett Kavanaugh, it’s not enough to stand on history and tradition. He speaks at length, but I’ve edited to highlight his main points.

KAVANAUGH: I start from the idea that the antitrust laws should not be a cover for exploitation of the student-athletes, so that is a concern, an overarching concern here. It does seem that schools are conspiring with competitors, agreeing with competitors, I’ll say that, to pay no salaries to the workers who are making the schools billions of dollars on the theory that consumers want the schools to pay their workers nothing. And that just seems entirely circular and even somewhat disturbing. 

REICHARD: And Justice Clarence Thomas noted the economics of the situation:

THOMAS: Well, it just strikes me as odd that coaches’ salaries have ballooned and they are in the amateur ranks, as are the players. 

REICHARD: Understand, this case isn’t about whether student athletes should be paid the fair market value of their labor.

This is strictly within the context of education. A narrower question, of whether colleges are allowed to recruit players by offering more benefits that are tied to education. Think computer equipment and study abroad expenses.

The NCAA pounded on what makes its “product” of college sports distinct from the professional leagues: it’s athletes are not paid.

Waxman got lots of pushback. Justice Samuel Alito:

ALITO: You say that what’s distinctive about your product is that your players are not paid. And that was true a hundred years ago. But, in fact, they are paid. They get lower admission standards. They get tuition, room and board, and other things. That’s a form of pay. So the distinction is not whether they’re going to be paid. It’s the form in which they’re going to be paid and how much they’re going to be paid, isn’t that right?

WAXMAN: It is not right.

REICHARD: Waxman countered that by NCAA definition, those benefits are not pay. They are compensation, but not pay in the usual sense.

But Justice Amy Coney Barrett questioned the whole premise of that.

BARRETT: Why does the NCAA get to define what pay is? I mean, some people want to play in college for the love of the game. Some people think they’ll be able to go pro. A lot of people do it because they want to be able to afford college educations or, you know, get the in-kind benefit equal to, you know, say, 30- or 40,000 dollars worth of tuition. So why do you get to define what pay is?

WAXMAN: Well, I think there’s a, the general principle…

BARRETT: A general principle that producers get to define their own product. And the NCAA’s been successful to keep up demand for its product of college sports. Mess with that? Mess up competition, he argued.

On the other side, lawyer for the athletes, Jeff Kessler. He pointed out inconsistencies.

KESSLER: As recently as 2015, the NCAA said you couldn’t provide even the most basic cost of attendance for the athletes. This case is more of the same; it is just the latest iteration of the repeatedly debunked claims that competition will destroy consumer demand for college sports and that the NCAA should have a judicially created antitrust exemption because of an imaginary revered tradition that they argue for.

REICHARD: So, don’t exempt the NCAA from the same antitrust laws other industries face.

Yet Justice Stephen Breyer wasn’t so sure.

BREYER: This is not an ordinary product. This is an effort to bring into the world something that has brought joy and all kinds of things to millions and millions of people, and it’s only partly economic. OK, so, I worry a lot about judges getting into the business of deciding how amateur sports should be run.

REICHARD: And Justice Kavanaugh worried that handing victory to the athletes would invite massive future litigation.

KAVANAUGH: What in your view is the endgame of this litigation if you—not this particular litigation but of future litigation. Is the endgame collective bargaining? Is the endgame legislation?

REICHARD: Kessler, for the players, wasn’t sure about collective bargaining or legislation. But he argued antitrust law is what this case is about, and the most common analysis leans in his favor.

Justices of different ideologies seemed sympathetic to the players. Justice Alito pointed out that athletes have little time to study, have shockingly low graduation rates, and most are used up and cast aside without even a college degree.

But there was a moment of levity here, and I’d like to end with it, as these are rare moments because the arguments are still by phone. And, well, Justice Antonin Scalia isn’t around anymore.

It happened during Justice Thomas’s time of questioning. Lawyer Waxman for the NCAA made a very human error referring to Justice Thomas as chief justice, when that, of course, is Chief Justice Roberts. But Waxman handles this beautifully.

Listen:

THOMAS: Did we conduct a deferential quick look review?

WAXMAN: Well, the—Mr. Chief Justice, the amateurism rules…

THOMAS: Thank you for the promotion, by the way.

WAXMAN: I’m sorry, but I’m sure you would be terrific at that, Justice Thomas. Let me just say that—

ROBERTS: There’s no—there’s no opening, Mr. Waxman.

WAXMAN: There’s nothing more I can say that will not get me into trouble, so let me answer Justice Thomas’s question.

REICHARD: A light moment in a case with huge ramifications for college sports and antitrust law. It’s complicated, far beyond even these arguments. Any prediction on the outcome would be only a guess, and I’d rather not.

Also, before we go, a quick mention of one other argument from March, an issue that’s already come up once before.

It asks when do you forfeit your chance to challenge the administrative law judge who hands down a disability-benefits decision you don’t like.

And it’s not clear what you have to object to specifically or when you have to object before taking it up with the courts.

The Social Security Administration could simply fix this, which the justices would prefer it do.

And that’s this week’s Legal Docket.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Don Muchow has a message for everyone else living with type-1 diabetes: Don’t let it hold you back!

And that’s not just a nice sentiment. The Texan is walking the talk!

Well, running, to be precise.

He recently completed a long run from one park to another. He began at Disneyland in California and finished at Disney World. Yes! Coast to coast.

Muchow became the first person to run from one Disney property to the other: 26-hundred miles.

A crowd of supporters cheered him at the end.

AUDIO: [cheering, talking]

EICHER: Muchow is 59-years-old. He spread the run out over the course of a year rather than his original plan to run it in 90 days, thanks to Covid.

But he never considered quitting.

Here he is after his run, talking to TV station WESH.

MUCHOW: I have just been on cloud 9 since then.

EICHER: And how will he celebrate his accomplishment?

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Have fun at Disney World?

EICHER: Well, he did leave the closed one in California for the open one in Florida, so why not?

It’s The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Next up on The World and Everything in It, the Monday Moneybeat.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Several items to talk about in the world of business, economics, and finance from the unionization battle with Amazon, to political activism in corporate America, and global taxation. Here to talk about it now is financial analyst and adviser David Bahnsen. Good morning.

DAVID BAHNSEN, GUEST: Good morning, Nick, good to be with you.

EICHER: David, this vote to unionize a large Amazon warehouse in Alabama was receiving lots of attention in the business press, and it was pretty big, given that the president of the United States weighed in on the side of the union organizers. So, pretty closely watched unionization vote, and the result was a blowout against a labor union: 71 percent against. David, what’s the import of this to your mind?

BAHNSEN: The import would have been if went the other way. So it’s kind of a non story because of the way it went. But it would have been a big story had gone the other way.

It’s really fascinating. I happen to know that President Biden was also giving backdoor whisperings through aides and staff to the other side that, you know, he didn’t believe it was gonna go through and, and, you know, understood that this was complicated and supported tech. And then he was playing the public game of, you know, wanting to support this idea of unionization.

So it’s a very odd circumstance, because you have really on the left, just that progressive Bernie camp really pushing this issue, and a very, very large constituency of what all of us would consider to be the left: big tech, Silicon Valley, you know, a lot of social left wing environmental types that are all on the other side of the issue. So this is much more of a civil war issue within the left. And the big tech companies are going to successfully fight off unionization for quite some time. And the Bernies and Liz Warrens are going to push for it. And the best thing you and I can do is just sort of grab some popcorn.

EICHER: The Wall Street Journal had an article titled, “The Business of Business is Politics and CEOs are ill prepared for the kind of politics that’s being required of them.” The two big corporate political plays the last few weeks were around Georgia’s voting law, by two huge Georgia-based businesses, Coca-Cola and Delta Airlines, and this raises the idea of Woke Capitalism. Is this as big a story as the Journal suggests?

BAHNSEN: Yeah, well, there’s kind of two different things going on there. I think it is the fundamental fight within corporate America right now for their principles of free enterprise, and their virtue signaling that’s taking place in the culture war.

And it’s something I write about constantly. I was on Kudlow’s show on Fox this week, talking about my company, we had sold well over $50 million this week of Coca Cola stock. And I do not sell stock and I do not buy stock because of the political views of their C suite. They have to do something to harm shareholders to get me to sell, and all their pomp and circumstance about environmental stuff here and LGBT stuff there, those things do not end up generally harming shareholders. And I don’t really believe most in corporate America believes the nonsense they spew on some of this stuff.

Coca Cola, actually put a mandate out that they were going to not pay invoices to law firms until they can see their employee survey and understand their hiring practices around diversity, sexual orientation, racial diversity, trans gender, all these things.

Listen, Coca Cola is in the middle of a $9 billion dispute with the IRS. This is no time for them to be playing around this stuff with their legal and accounting firms. So we made the decision to exit and and it’s not a decision I made lightly I assure you. So I would just tell you that I think a lot of the woke capitalism stuff going on in corporate America is very distressing. But a lot of it is not actionable. A lot of it is just Phariseeism. And and marketing and other things. And some of it is real.

EICHER: Before I let you go, the debate is taking shape over corporate taxation, raising corporate taxes to pay for the president’s $2-trillion infrastructure bill. But I want to home in on one point and that’s the effort of the Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen, negotiating with foreign governments for a kind of global minimum tax. The idea being to collectively agree not to undercut one another to compete for corporations to shift operations to lower-tax countries in what Secretary Yellen has described repeatedly as “a race to the bottom” in corporate tax competition. In other words, the United States wants to raise corporate taxes but wants to try to prevent its companies from leaving and avoiding taxes. What do you think about that?

BAHNSEN: Well, first of all, let’s just talk about the principles of our country and the notion that tax policies would ever be remotely set around global coordination. I generally don’t use the word globalism or globalist very much because I think it’s really misused and overused. Globalization factors in a lot of economic expansion realities in a more internationalist economy. Globalism, I think is generally more used in a sort of paranoid and conspiratorial way.

And yet, in this case, this is about as great of a way for them to feed the paranoids as possible, the idea that Janet Yellen would say that our country’s global tax policy should be a part of a coordinated effort with other countries is so anti American and anti the traditions of our country that I am speechless.

It isn’t going to go anywhere and any countries that end up agreeing to something, and then the day it goes against their best interest, they’re going to do exactly what they should do, which is just reverse course, unless they’re talking about a treaty, the only thing that’s gonna be binding as a treaty.  So it’s total politics. It’s, it’s and I don’t even think it’s good politics for them. Why would Janet Yellen and Joe Biden want that middle America Rust Belt state, working class part of the country to again, get ammo that suggests they’re going globalist, and all this type of stuff, feeding the kind of the things that President Trump used effectively when he ran successfully against Hillary Clinton. So I think it’s insane politics, I think is even more insane economics. And it’s not going anywhere, unless they just do some kind of toothless press release. But really, this is going to have to be done as a treaty if it’s going to go anywhere.

EICHER: Financial analyst and adviser David Bahnsen. He writes daily at DividendCafe.com. It’s easy there to sign up for his daily email if you’re interested. David, thanks! Talk again soon.

BAHNSEN: Thanks so much, Nick.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Next up on The World and Everything in It: The WORLD History Book. Today, a milestone in the race to space, the birthday of a celebrated teacher, and the trial of the leader of the Reformation.

Here’s senior correspondent Katie Gaultney.

KATIE GAULTNEY, SENIOR CORRESPONDENT: We begin today with a pivotal anniversary from the Reformation: It’s been 500 years since Martin Luther first appeared before the Diet of Worms on April 17, 1521. Those proceedings aimed to hold Luther accountable for his controversial protests against the Catholic Church.

Bishop Robert Barron of the Los Angeles Archdiocese confesses a fascination with Luther and his incredible zeal.

BARRON: Luther quite obviously was a fighter. He took on the pope, he took on the emperor, he took on the electors of the Holy Roman Empire, he took on the inquisitors. Luther was a very pugnacious figure.

That drive served him well as he went up against heavyweights at his trial.

The 2003 movie Luther, starring Joseph Fiennes, reenacted Luther’s final stand at the trial.

LUTHER: I cannot and I will not recant. Here I stand. I can do no other, God help me. [Cheers]

The Diet of Worms concluded in May of 1521. Emperor Charles V declared Luther a heretic, but declined to arrest him.

Jumping ahead now more than 300 years to commemorate the birth of Anne Sullivan. She taught Helen Keller how to overcome the difficulties of blindness and deafness by communicating. This 1930 news footage shows Sullivan recounting her time with Keller.

SULLIVAN: When I saw Helen Keller first, she was 6 years and 8 months old. She had been deaf and blind and deaf and mute since her 19th month….

Sullivan was born on April 14th, 1866—155 years ago—in Western Massachusetts. A child of Irish immigrants, Sullivan—like her famous pupil—was no stranger to disability. Repeated childhood illnesses left Sullivan with severely diminished vision. Then, her mother died when she was only 8 years old. Her father abandoned his children shortly after. Sullivan lived in the squalor of a poor house.

At age 14, inspectors came to evaluate conditions there. Sullivan made the most of their visit—telling them of her ambition to attend a school for the blind. A 20-12 short film reimagined that moment:

FILM CLIP: My name’s Anne Sullivan, and I want to go to school. 

Her boldness paid off, and she began attending the nearby Perkins School for the Blind. She graduated as valedictorian in 1886 at the age of 20.

Shortly after, Sullivan learned about the Keller family in Alabama. After plenty of trial and error, the pair found effective methods, and Keller learned to communicate.

SULLIVAN: And I let her see by putting her hands on my face how we talk with our mouths. 

In her memoirs, Keller referred to the day she and Sullivan met in March 1887 as “my soul’s birthday.” The two remained lifelong friends, until Sullivan’s death in 1936 at age 70.

And for our final entry today, a breakthrough in the Cold War Space Race.

Sixty years ago today, on April 12th, 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to travel into outer space.

SOUND: [launch of Vostok 1]

That milestone had been over a decade in the making, since NASA sent fruit flies into space in 1947. After that came dogs, like the Soviets’ notorious 1957 attempt with a Moscow stray, Laika, who died in space just a few hours after launch. In January 1961, the U.S. sent a chimpanzee into space to test the effects of orbital travel. But, the USSR ultimately nabbed the distinction of being first to put a man into orbit less than three months later.

NEWSREEL: It was no secret, either in Moscow or anywhere else, that Russia was ready to make the attempt, and just after 7 a.m. our time, the 450-ton rocket went up. 

Gagarin’s Vostok 1 spacecraft made a single orbit of Earth before reentry. That flight lasted only 1 hour and 48 minutes. America launched its first astronaut into orbit in May 1961, but the Soviets got the jump on them, beating that milestone by about three weeks.

NEWSREEL: A long, red-carpeted walk to the platform where Krushchev greets him. Gagarin puts party first by thanking the Communists for the opportunity. 

The achievement ushered in the era of manned space exploration.

As for Gagarin, though, his star burned out quickly. He died in a training exercise seven years after that career high. The Kremlin has stonewalled investigations into the exact circumstances that led to  Gagarin’s death.

That’s this week’s History Book. I’m Katie Gaultney.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: alternatives to Amazon. The online retail giant has enormous influence over the books we buy. But some authors are forging new ways to sell books. We’ll tell you what implications that may have for Christians.

And, we’ll take you to Poland, a conservative outlier in the more liberal European Union.

That and more tomorrow.

I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: 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.

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Go now in grace and peace.

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