The World and Everything in It - April 18, 2022

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

Veterans are protected from job discrimination but Texas claims immunity from those lawsuits. Turns out, the dispute has grave implications.

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

Also today, the Monday Moneybeat. I’ll talk with economist David Bahnsen about Elon Musk’s bid to take over Twitter.

Plus the WORLD History Book. 55 years ago, the daughter of a dictator flees Russia.

REICHARD: It’s Monday, April 18th.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 news with Kent Covington.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Mariupol on verge of falling to Russian military » The Russian military appears to be on the verge of capturing the shattered port city of Mariupol.

Russian commanders have issued an ultimatum to Ukrainian troops: Surrender or die. But Ukraine’s Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal told ABC’s This Week:

SHMYHAL: We will not leave our country, our families, our land. So we will fight absolutely to the end, to win in this war.

Russia estimated 2,500 Ukrainian fighters were holding out at a hulking steel plant in the last pocket of resistance in Mariupol. Much of the city now lies in smoldering ruin.

The fall of Mariupol would hand the Russians their biggest victory of the war thus far. And it would give them their sought after land bridge from Crimea to eastern Ukraine.

Meantime in Kyiv, President Volodymry Zelenskyy said he would welcome a visit from President Biden to the capital city. He spoke Sunday with CNN’s State of the Union.

TAPPER: Do you want President Biden to come here?
ZELENSKYY: Yes.
TAPPER: Are there any plans for him to come?
ZELENSKYY: I think he will. I think he will. But it’s his decision, of course.

Zelenskyy said he understands that Biden will only visit if the White House is confident that it’s safe to do so.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and other Western leaders have visited Kyiv in recent weeks.

Migrant arrests at border hit two-decade high in March » At the U.S. southern border the Border Patrol arrested more than 210,000 migrants attempting to cross into the United States in March.

That was the highest monthly total in two decades.

That news comes as the Biden administration prepares to roll back the pandemic order known as Title 42, which limits those allowed to enter the country.

Republicans warn that lifting that measure will further throw up the floodgates and worsen an already untenable border crisis.

Christians flock to Jerusalem for Easter while tensions mount in Old City » Many Christians celebrated Easter Sunday in person for the first time since the pandemic began. And tens of thousands of worshipers flocked to Jerusalem for Easter.

AUDIO: [Sound from church]

Many gathered for a service at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, identified as the site of Jesus's crucifixion, burial, and resurrection.

But elsewhere in the Old City, Palestinian protesters clashed with police at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound after officers closed the flashpoint shrine, which Jews recognize as the Temple Mount.

This year Easter coincides with the Jewish holiday of Passover and the Muslim Ramadan for the first time in more than three decades.

North Korea tests new weapon bolstering nuclear capability » North Korea just test-fired a new type of tactical guided weapon designed to boost its nuclear fighting capacity. WORLD’s Josh Schumacher has more.

JOSH SCHUMACHER, REPORTER: North Korea’s state news agency released a photo of a beaming Kim Jong Un clapping his hands with military officers after another new weapons test.

State news did not provide many details in describing the weapon it test fired. But it used the words “tactical nukes.” That suggests the weapon is likely capable of carrying a nuclear warhead that could hit strategic targets in South Korea, including American military installations.

This was the North’s 13th weapons test this year. And Western officials are worried that Pyongyang is gearing up for an even larger provocation.

Sunday’s reported launch came a day before the United States and South Korea begin annual military drills. The North views those drills as a rehearsal for an invasion.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Josh Schumacher.

USDA probing reports of illnesses linked to Lucky Charms cereal » More than a hundred consumers who recently ate a popular breakfast cereal say they’re not feeling so lucky.

COMMERCIAL: Frosted Lucky Charms, they’re magically delicious!

The USDA is investigating official complaints that many people become ill after eating Lucky Charms.

Several hundred people have also posted on a food safety website, iwaspoisoned.com, complaining of nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting after eating Lucky Charms.

General Mills Inc. said it’s aware of those reports and takes them seriously. But the company said its own investigation has not found any evidence of consumer illness linked to Lucky Charms.

I’m Kent Covington. Straight ahead: an injured National Guardsman sues after his employer fires him.

Plus, the daughter of a Soviet dictator defects.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Monday, April 18th, 2022. This is The WORLD and Everything In it and we’re so glad you’ve joined us today. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. It’s time for Legal Docket.

Today, one oral argument the U.S. Supreme Court heard last month, the outcome of which will affect hundreds of thousands of people who serve in the military.

At the center of the case is LeRoy Torres. He served 16 years in the US Army Reserve and for about half that time he also worked as a state trooper for the Texas Department of Public Safety—DPS. You will hear that initialism frequently in our report today, DPS. Again, it’ll refer to the Texas Department of Public Safety.

REICHARD: The army deployed Torres to Iraq in 2007. His military base, like many others, smoldered continuously with trash burned in open-air pits. Much more than trash—it also contained human waste, amputated body parts, plastics, ammunition—that and more filled the air with thick smoke.

Soldiers inhaled that noxious mix, as did Torres. He was honorably discharged after a year of service and developed serious lung problems.

EICHER: When he returned home, he faced new problems with his job and so he asked for a different one, citing health limitations.

Federal law requires employers to restore the same or a similar job to a returning service member.

But DPS only offered him his old job as state trooper on a temporary basis and said they’d fire him if he didn’t do it.

So Torres resigned.

REICHARD: And some years later, he sued for job discrimination under that federal law that protects the jobs of returning military members.

Listen to his lawyer before the Supreme Court, Andrew Tutt:

TUTT: Captain Torres went to war, and when he came home, he brought a piece of the war with him, and if he had been a member of the local sheriff's department or a U.S. marshal or worked for any other employer, he would have been able to sue to vindicate his rights. But, because he worked for Texas, he had no cause of action. The war powers do not—do not countenance that result. It's not right. We're asking this court to make it right.

In other words, the DPS (as agent of the state of Texas) asserted its sovereign immunity against lawsuits like this one. Lower courts agreed and dismissed the case.

Torres’ lawyer mentioned the war powers. Where does that come in? Well, it dates back to America’s founding.

Justice Stephen Breyer made mention that George Washington and other leaders were fed up with how the states mistreated the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War. The states wouldn’t pony up money or manpower, and they imposed unfair taxes on servicemen.

So these leaders negotiated with the 13 states to divvy up power between the federal government and the state governments.

Arguing for DPS, Texas Solicitor General Judd Stone characterized the deal back then this way. Note I’ve edited for time.

STONE: …they gave away certain parts of sovereignty, including the ability to raise Armies, to declare war, et cetera… -- at minimum, the states have retained their prerogative not to be sued which isn’t conventionally considered a war power in some sense…

So it wasn’t a whole-hog giveaway of state power, he argued.

True, Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution does give Congress the power to “raise and support Armies” and “provide and maintain a Navy.”

Justice Stephen Breyer seized the gravity of it all:

BREYER: This has the potential of being a pretty important case for the structure of the United States of America. The war power is not copyright, and it is not the Indian Commerce Clause. It is, and, you know, as Lincoln said, will this nation long endure? We hope it is never necessary, but maybe that question will come up, okay? Now you see why I think it’s very important.

You may wonder how we went from one veteran’s claim for job discrimination to a justice of the Supreme Court asking if the nation will long endure.

A brief filed in support of Torres may well explain it. The Reserve Organization of America points out that protecting jobs for veterans boosts recruitment, retention, and morale of our fighting forces. And that’s essential for a nation to “long endure.”

Justice Breyer referenced the Broadway play Hamilton to remind everyone of the mindset of the Founders, vis-a-vis King George:

BREYER: -- in the play, they say -- George the Third says: They'll be back. Wait and see. They'll come crawling back to me. And that was in the Framers' mind, though not the music.

So if the federal government’s concern is to raise an army, and it needs to encourage willing participation …why not make states defend themselves against claims of job discrimination?

Lawyer Stone for DPS saw no such connection:

STONE: There is no evidence that the Founding generation saw the power to expose states to private lawsuits as inextricably intertwined with warfare or that the states intended to be sued without their consent by giving Congress the power to raise an Army. Without such compelling evidence, Torres cannot prevail…

The Supreme Court’s made some exceptions to the general rule that states have immunity from private litigation.

A foot in the door, so to speak.

For example, job discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin. No state immunity for those things. And more.

That led Justice Brett Kavanaugh to spot inconsistency in the argument of the DPS:

KAVANAUGH: …well, if you're going to allow suits against the states in bankruptcy, if you're going to allow eminent domain suits, you're going to allow suits under the Family and Medical Leave Act, you're going to allow Title VII suits against the states, it would be bizarre not to allow suits in the War Powers area, where the national interest is at its apex as compared to those other areas.

The quintessential question in the law: what is the limiting principle? Just how far does that “war power” go?

Justice Samuel Alito imagined a ridiculous scenario that could involve potholes. After all, the national highway system was created out of the war powers of Congress.

ALITO: So would that mean that Congress could authorize individuals to sue states for failing to maintain highways properly or failing to patrol them properly?

Justice Neil Gorsuch brought the argument around to the great American separation of power between the federal government and the states.

GORSUCH: And so I guess I am wondering what are the limits? …-- the broader you argue for the war powers of the United States, the broader the consequences are for federalism…

Federalism, that fought-over balance of power. Still debated to this day.

Also arguing in support of Torres, the federal government. Government lawyer Christopher Michel pointed out that of America’s two- million-person military, nearly half of them are Reservists and National Guard members.

MICHEL: They've never been more important to the military than they are right now. And one of the first questions that people like that will ask when they're considering whether to join the military is, well, do I get to keep my job? Does my employer have to let me take leave for training exercises or be deployed? And it really does matter in the real world for the Army to be able to tell them, “Yes, your employer does have to do that.”

Lawyer Tutt for serviceman Torres quoted from the Federalist Papers, specifically here Number 23, by Alexander Hamilton.

TUTT: The purpose of sovereign immunity is to protect liberty and the local autonomy of the states, their democratic accountability. But in the area of war, it is only by vesting the war powers exclusively in the federal government that liberty can be protected in the way the Constitution intends. The Constitution did not intend to protect an abstract sovereign immunity of the states when it would cost the liberty of individual citizens. The war powers do not favor a peacetime draft over the encouragement of volunteers to put their bodies and their lives on the line in our military.

The justices are left to decide the scope of Congressional war power and the plight of war veterans.

For his part, Army Captain LeRoy Torres and his wife founded Burn Pits 360 to help service members injured by those burn pits.

Meanwhile, a measure approved in the House of Representatives called Honoring our Pact Act is now under consideration in the Senate. It would put up to $300 million to help pay for treatment of injuries endured by soldiers like Torres.

He is a sympathetic figure, and I see wide appeal for his cause all across the ideological spectrum.

And that’s this week’s Legal Docket.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Anti-Russia activists in Washington did a little more than light a candle outside the Russian embassy last week. The activism could be measured in candlepower, though.

Two different groups protesting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine projected onto the outer walls of the Russian Embassy images, light images, of blue and yellow Ukrainian flags.

The Russians fought back with a spotlight, trying to wash out the images.

A game of cat and mouse ensued as the Russians moved their spotlight to outshine the Ukrainian flags.

The activists had some fun with it, posting this recording via Twitter.

EMBASSY: They’re trying to drown you out! The Russians – They’re trying to drown you out. What?!

This went on for hours until the activists’ generators ran out of gas. Kind of ironic.

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: Time now for our regular conversation on business, markets, and the economy. Financial analyst and adviser David Bahnsen is here. Morning, David.

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

EICHER: Another month, another inflation report, the consumer price index still at a four-decade high, March prices 8-1/2 percent higher than prices in March of 2021. That’s the government consumer price index report out last week and again, to emphasize, we’ve not had CPI price spikes like these since the early 1980s.

Of course, this has been the reality for several months, just putting a number on what we’re all noticing every time we go to the store or fill our gas tanks. David how do you read the consumer price index report?

BAHNSEN: Yeah, I think it was 1/10 of a point better than expected, meaning lower inflation than expected on the goods side. The services inflation is, not surprisingly, still going higher. I'm of the opinion, and this may be a bit out of consensus, but I have a high conviction about it, that the inflation number for goods has seen its peak. I think that number will begin to go down. And the main reason is that the very high contributor to goods inflation that has been both new and used car sales appears to have peaked, and those numbers came substantially down. And so if that starts to bring the goods inflation number down, it will bring the aggregate a bit lower, but really, on the food side, the energy side and the services side, there's more to go. I'm one who has believed the housing number is far too high for quite some time, pretty much unrelated to the current round of inflation, I think there's a lot of distortion in housing price assets. And if we haven't seen the peak yet, I think we're very close to it, just simply on the basis of interest rates alone, have really gotten out in front of this and mortgage rates on the 30 year now being above 5%, I think will start to substantially erode demand. And at first, we're already seeing this, the volume of housing transactions comes way lower, and then all the sellers that get met with reality start to have to lower prices. We're not there yet. But I think that that comes in the quarters ahead. So the overall picture is pretty mixed. But we're still you know, in this price escalation phase, and we'll stay there for a bit more to come in aggregate.

EICHER: Let’s talk about Elon Musk and this drama around his bid to purchase Twitter—the offer of $54 per share—works out to $43 billion, give or take. This one we could file under cultural news, but I want to get your sense of things from a business perspective, David. How do you see this one playing out?

BAHNSEN: Well, it depends on what people mean, do I think that Musk is going to end up owning Twitter? I would be very surprised. There are some paths that could happen. But my best guess is that it ends up being a mixed bag, where he doesn't go away right away. It isn't binary of either a yes or no kind of a thing. But rather that he has a sort of strategic angle here in the little chess he's playing. This initial offer is way too low to really think that the board would either meet it or would be pressured to meet it legally. You know, there is a perfectly plausible argument that it doesn't capture all the value that Twitter would ultimately have, and therefore, the board is not under obligation legally, to meet this current offer. But I think Musk is up to something. And I think it will be interesting to watch but I don't expect from the media super impressive capturing of what's going on because I don't think the media is quite up to the job of being inside Elon Musk's brain.

EICHER: Yeah, imagine that’s a pretty complicated place. But take a stab at it. What do you think he’s up to?

BAHNSEN: Oh, I think he's definitely up to the process of getting Twitter to be less censorship oriented and to being a bit more open of a platform. And then also, I think unlocking value around some of the other operational things that he thinks are subpar - not having an edit button, not having the ability to do long form tweets, little things like that. That stuff's more small ball, it probably makes Twitter a better company and unlocks value, but it's not super ideological. But on that front about modern centralized moderation versus a more open platform, I think he's going to try to come out of this with some kind of progress, and he could very well end up running the company in the end or owning the company, but not at $54 a share.

EICHER: So the offer’s too low, he doesn’t get Twitter for that price, and he’s just playing chess here, what change can he bring without actually acquiring the company?

BAHNSEN: Well, he would need board seats, he'd need concessions from management, he’d need to see new policies implemented. All of that I consider very unlikely to happen. but there are plenty of things that could, in theory, you know, Twitter without Elon Musk could implement those things. It's a question of will. And I'm not entirely clear at this time as to where this will go. I think Twitter is a more valuable company if they were to allow themselves to be rebranded as something different than a sort of anti-right-wing, you know, highly moderated, censorship driven platform. I don't think all those things are totally true all the time. But they're true enough that it has created this impression in the marketplace. The companies that are far more a threat here are all these little startup right wing alternative Twitters. I mean, President Trump's Twitter alternative is dead if Elon Musk were to take over Twitter, and I don't even remember the names of all the others GETTR and Parler and these other things that have really just become kind of you know, I, well let me put it this way: I think that we have plenty of innings to go in this - I think it's nowhere near done.

EICHER: All right, David Bahnsen, financial analyst and advisor, head of the financial planning firm The Bahnsen Group.

You can catch David’s daily writing at DividendCafe.com. Sign up there for his daily email newsletter on markets and the economy. David, thanks again!

BAHNSEN: Thanks so much, Nick.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Monday, April 18th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Up next, the WORLD History Book. Today a trip to outer space, plus a secret flight, and the first running of a famous foot race. Here’s Associate Correspondent Harrison Watters.

HARRISON WATTERS, ASSOCIATE CORRESPONDENT: During the first international Olympic Games in 1896—one of the 43 events caught the eye of a man from Boston.

CLIP: U.S. Olympic team manager John Graham, inspired by the marathon at the first modern Olympic Games in Athens in 1896, brought the race closer to his hometown.

John Graham organized the first Boston Marathon to run on the new state holiday of Patriot’s Day—celebrated on April 19th, 1897.

Fifteen athletes ran the 24.5 mile course through the city. John J. McDermott of New York finished the race in 2 hours, 55 minutes and 10 seconds. The distance was later adjusted to 26.2 miles in 1924 and race organizers introduced qualifying standards in 1970. Otherwise the only thing about the race that has changed in its 125 year history is who runs it.

The first women ran in the 1960s. The first wheelchair racer competed in 1975. And today many other athletes with physical limits compete. The number of contestants has also grown—to nearly 30,000 this year with half-a-million spectators along the route. Runners from across the globe crowd Boston’s streets every year to compete in one of the world's oldest annual marathons.

From running a race to running to another country. Fifty-five years ago this week, Joseph Stalin’s daughter defected to the United States.

CLIP: A woman once known as the little princess of the Kremlin arrives in America from Switzerland. Svetlana, the 42-year-old daughter of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, sought asylum here.

When her father died in 1953, Svetlana changed her last name to her mother’s maiden name: Alliluyeva. She had been married several times and was working as a lecturer and translator in Moscow. YouTuber The History Guy explains what life was like for Alliluyeva.

CLIP: A friend later said of her she was a very kind and warm-hearted person but it was impossible to escape her terrible heritage. She couldn't trust anyone. How could you, if you were Stalin's daughter?

In 1967, during a trip to India, Alliluyeva decided she wanted to leave Russia behind. After the Soviet government refused her request to stay in India, Alliluyeva visited the American Embassy in New Delhi.

CLIP: Ambassador Chester Bowles met with her two days before her scheduled return to the Soviet Union and after not hearing anything in response to his messages to Washington he arranged for her to board a Quantus flight to Rome just a few hours later.

From Rome to Switzerland and finally to New York. Once in the United States, Alliluyeva spoke at a press conference about the impact of her father’s death on her decision to leave Russia.

CLIP: He was always for me the authority which could not be – well, I loved him I respected him and when he was gone I have lost maybe a lot of faith.

Alliluyeva toured America and Great Britain, giving lectures and writing several books on her father and life in Russia. In 1984 she returned to the Soviet Union and renewed her citizenship, explaining she had become disenchanted with the West.

But just two years later, she returned, and had to walk back statements critical of the United States. Alliluyeva lived alternately in America and England under the name Lana Peters. She died on November 22, 2011 in Richland Center, Wisconsin, far away from Stalin’s shadow.

CLIP: Five, four, three, two, one and liftoff of the space shuttle Discovery with the Hubble Space Telescope: our window on the universe.

We end today with the famous telescope that defied all odds. NASA initially committed to launching a Large Orbiting Telescope in 1979. But budget cuts, production delays, and the Challenger space shuttle disaster delayed Hubble’s launch until April 24th, 1990. Just weeks into the mission, scientists discovered a problem. Deep Space TV explains:

CLIP: Spherical aberration, a flaw in the main mirror, meant that the telescope couldn't focus properly. Where Hubble's images should have been razor-sharp, astronomers instead struggle to make out the fine details of their observations.

Thanks to the Space Shuttle program, scientists were able to diagnose the problem and send astronauts to fix the mirror. NASA made several more repair missions in the 32 years since its launch to replace components and change batteries. Despite talk of retiring the telescope in 2004, Hubble continues to reveal God’s creative power in far-off galaxies.

With the James Webb Space Telescope now in orbit, scientists say Hubble will finally retire by 2025. But who knows? Maybe Hubble will continue to surprise us.

That’s this week’s WORLD History Book. I’m Harrison Watters.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: resettling refugees. We’ll check in on the effort to provide new homes for Afghan and Ukrainian asylum-seekers.

And, prison reform. We’ll tell you about the push to make changes at the U.S. Bureau of Prisons.

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.

The Bible says: Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world. (James 1:3 ESV)

Go now in grace and peace.

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