The World and Everything in It - April 25, 2022

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

A child is caught in an international abduction dispute between his father and mother.

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

Also today, a milestone in the stock market: businesses that thrived during Covid start to lose value, in a big way.

Plus the WORLD History Book. 30 years ago this week, a not-guilty verdict leads to riots and looting in L.A.

REICHARD: It’s Monday, April 25th. 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 the news with Kristen Flavin.

KRISTEN FLAVIN, REPORTER: Latest from Ukraine/2 months of war/U.S. delegation to Kyiv » The U.S. secretaries of state and defense traveled to Kyiv Sunday night to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. It was the highest level visit to the country’s capital by a U.S. delegation since the Russian invasion.

Before the meeting, Zelenskyy said he hoped for meaningful results in the form of weapons and aid.

AUDIO: [Sound of women singing]

The visit fell on the day Orthodox believers celebrate Easter. Many Ukrainian worshippers braved the threat of shelling to go to church.

On the eastern frontline, soldiers attended open-air services and greeted each other with, “Christ has risen!”

ZELENSKYY: [Speaking Ukrainian]

In an address to the nation recorded in St. Sophia's Cathedral, Zelenskyy appealed to God to remember the towns and cities that have suffered so much.

Sunday marked two months since Russia’s invasion.

During an interview on CBS’ Face the Nation, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said his country is still willing to negotiate for an end to the war.

SHMYHAL: Russia done many atrocities and many war crimes in Ukraine. But we understand that this terrible war could be finished only on the table of negotiations, with presence of our partners, of world leaders, of civilized countries.

But he added he does not think Vladimir Putin is interested in negotiating.

Russia continued to press its offense in eastern Ukraine on Sunday, reportedly striking 423 targets overnight. It claimed its warplanes destroyed 26 military sites, including an explosives factory and several artillery depots.

Russia also launched fresh airstrikes on a steel plant in Mariupol, where 1,000 civilians and about 2,000 Ukrainian fighters have taken refuge. It is the last corner of resistance in the port city.

Wildfires in New Mexico, Arizona, and Nebraska » New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed emergency declarations on Sunday as wildfires continue to burn in more than half the state’s 33 counties.

David Shell is a spokesman for Cooks Peak Fire. He blamed extreme weather conditions for fanning the flames.

SHELL: Very strong winds. Winds up to 60 miles an hour. Single-digit humidity. And take into account the fuels. The fuels in this area are a combination of timber, such as pinyon juniper up in the ridges. And in the lower-lying areas you have the grasses and like a Western prairie.

Officials ordered evacuations for residents in the northern counties of Mora and San Miguel. A new fire that ignited in the area Saturday merged with an existing fire to form the largest blaze in the state. By Sunday, it covered 84 square miles.

Meanwhile, firefighters in Arizona and southwestern Nebraska gained ground over fires in their states over the weekend.

Alyssa Sanders is with the Nebraska Emergency Management Agency. She said fighting fires in the state presents some unique challenges.

SANDERS: We’re largely volunteer fire departments. And just trying to juggle the hardships that come with not knowing how many people you’ve got to work with, and then managing everything else that they’ve got going on, it can be difficult. But our volunteer firefighters in this state have been amazing.

Nebraska officials lifted all evacuation orders Sunday. And in Arizona, some residents forced to evacuate near Flagstaff also returned home Sunday morning.

Macron wins second term in French election » AUDIO: [Sound of cheering, chanting]

Emmanuel Macron claimed victory in France’s presidential election on Sunday. It was the first time in 20 years that voters elected a president to serve a second term.

Speaking to thousands of supporters at the base of the Eiffel Tower, Macron pledged to reunite the country. He’s heard here speaking through an interpreter.

MACRON: I also know full well that many people tonight voted for me, not to support my ideals, but to block the far right.

Macron also vowed to address the issues that drove so many people to vote for his far-right rival.

Marine Le Pen was projected to take about 42 percent of the vote—8 percent more than her previous attempt to win the presidency.

In her concession speech, Le Pen called her results “a shining victory,” adding “in this defeat, I can't help but feel a form of hope.”

COVID restrictions in Shanghai » Chinese officials are doubling down on their strict “zero-COVID” strategy in Shanghai. WORLD’s Josh Schumacher has that story.

JOSH SCHUMACHER, REPORTER: Volunteers and government workers put up metal barriers in multiple districts to block off small streets and entrances to apartment complexes. Buildings where COVID patients live have been sealed up so that no one can leave.

The new crackdown prompted angry posts on social media that censors quickly removed.

China reported nearly 22,000 new community transmitted cases on Sunday. Most are asymptomatic and reported in Shanghai.

But officials in one district of Beijing announced a mass testing campaign would begin Monday. The news prompted panic buying Sunday night amid fears of a potential lockdown.

China’s National Health Commission has reported fewer than 5,000 COVID-19 deaths across the country since the pandemic began. But analysts say the real number is likely higher.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Josh Schumacher.

I’m Kristen Flavin. Straight ahead: an international child custody dispute.

Plus, a rousing rendition of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.”

This is The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s Monday the 25th day of April, 2022. Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. It’s time now for Legal Docket. And today, legal reporter Jenny Rough is here. Hi, Jenny!

JENNY ROUGH, LEGAL REPORTER: Hi, Mary! Yeah, we’re getting to that time of year when opinions start becoming more frequent and today’s an example: We have five opinions from last week. And we’ll review oral argument from a case involving an international child custody dispute.

REICHARD: Well, let’s get to it. The first opinion deals with billboards in Austin, Texas.

The Supreme Court upheld Austin’s ordinance that prohibits companies from digitizing billboards not on business premises. Two billboard companies sued, arguing that’s a restriction on free speech. But a majority of six justices disagreed because the rule doesn’t affect content, or the words on the sign.This isn’t about speech; it’s about location. Therefore, the strictest level of judicial scrutiny doesn’t apply and the ordinance passes constitutional muster.

ROUGH: Next, government benefits and who’s entitled to them. This one is an 8-1 ruling, and in it, the court held that Supplemental Security Income benefits don’t extend to residents of the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico. The Territories clause of the U.S. Constitution gives Congress broad powers to make laws regulating U.S. territories, like Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Virgin Islands. At oral argument, Justice Elena Kagan described that authority.

KAGAN: It does seem as though that clause goes pretty far towards authorizing Congress to make rules about the territories, which inevitably means or may inevitably mean to make distinctions between the territories and other parts of the United States. 

Puerto Rican residents don’t have the burden of paying federal income taxes but also don’t receive all tax benefits. The court said that differential treatment did not violate the Fifth Amendment’s equal protection clause. It’s okay as long as Congress had a rational basis to treat the territories differently.

REICHARD: The third opinion is unanimous in favor of a law firm that missed a tax deadline. The question was whether the underlying dispute stopped the clock on the deadline. The answer is yes, it did, and the law firm can now contest the IRS’s ability to seize its property under what’s known as the doctrine of equitable tolling. During oral arguments, Justice Stephen Breyer defined that term.

BREYER: The law dictionary says equitable tolling is a court’s discretionary extension of a legal deadline. So they extended the legal deadline, therefore, it is timely.

ROUGH: Okay, moving right along!

The fourth case arose from a murder conviction. During his jury trial, authorities shackled the prisoner at the waist, wrists, and ankles. Some jury members noticed those shackles, others didn’t. At oral argument, Justice Brett Kavanaugh asked about that effect to the inmate’s lawyer:

KAVANAUGH: What about the fact that all the jurors testified that the shackles did not influence the verdict?

BAHAL: This Court has made clear that relying on juror testimony as to whether the effect of shackles affected their verdict is unreliable, because a juror will not always be aware of the effect of seeing a defendant in shackles. It has sort of a subconscious effect on the jurors.

Both sides agree those visible restraints violated his constitutional right of due process. But they don’t agree about which legal test applies to determine whether that violation is merely a harmless error. In a 6-3 ruling, the court held that both tests apply.

REICHARD: Lastly, a case I haven’t yet covered. I aim to cover oral argument before decisions come down, but sometimes the black robes beat me to it.

Here, a family in California seeks return of a painting that the Nazis stole from the family’s grandmother. The painting is now in the hands of a Spanish museum. The legal issue boils down to how a court should determine which jurisdictional law applies. The court held 9-0 that the court should look to California law for that answer, not federal law.

It’s a small victory for the family who can now pursue the case in lower court.

ROUGH: Now onto our oral argument for today. This dispute has to do with child custody—specifically it centers on a question of international child custody. Here are the facts: Narkis Golan and Isacco Saada married in 2015 and had a son a year later.

Golan is an American citizen. Saada is an Italian citizen. They married in Italy and spent the first two years of their son’s life there.

REICHER: Theirs was a turbulent relationship. Saada abused Golan, physically and verbally. That’s uncontested. She wound up in the ER at least once. Their son witnessed the abuse at times. But according to the record, he wasn’t the target of abuse.

When the child was 2, Golan took her son to the United States to attend a wedding in New York—and she stayed. She went to a domestic violence shelter.

ROUGH: The father filed a kidnapping complaint. He also filed a petition in federal district court in New York, asking the court to order the return of his son to Italy.

Part of what governs this fight is an agreement called “the Hague Convention.” That’s a treaty that establishes a way to return an internationally abducted child from one member country to another. 

Contained in the Hague Convention is a basic rule: International child custody cases are to be resolved in the child’s country of “habitual residence.”Habitual, the key word. In this case, that would be Italy. The idea is that it’s in the child’s best interests for the family matter to be resolved in the courts of his home country.

REICHARD: But there’s an exception to the general rule. If returning the child would place him in grave risk of harm, a court doesn’t need to order the return.

Given the father’s history of domestic violence, the court initially found that returning the boy to Italy would pose a grave risk of harm. 

But despite that, the court still ultimately handed a victory to the father. And did order the child’s return to Italy. Here’s why: Under a Second Circuit rule, the court was required to consider whether the father or local authorities in Italy could improve the situation. Take additional measures to reduce that grave risk of harm.

ROUGH: That lower court determined that yes, they could. The father could attend therapy, stay away from the mother, and Italian authorities could make sure the dad had supervised visits with his child. Because those protective measures could be taken, the court ordered the child’s return to Italy.

Golan, the mother, then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. 

The question here is whether that Second Circuit rule is appropriate. A court has discretion to consider whether the parent can undertake mitigating measures. But the court shouldn’t be required to consider that. That’s the mother’s argument.

REICHARD: Lawyer Karen King argued on her behalf. She reminded the justices that one purpose of the Hague Convention is quick resolution. And the Second Circuit’s mandatory rule that requires an additional step drags things out.

KING: The child here is almost 6 years old. He has spent the vast majority of his life in legal limbo. Reversal provides the safe and swift closure he deserves.

Chief Justice John Roberts said the inquiry wouldn’t necessarily prolong things.

ROBERTS: Okay. But, if it was something pretty, you know, cut and dry and very simple, I mean, the grave risk is that, you know, his house is next to a nuclear waste dump, and he says, well, I'm moving in two weeks, you know, here's the agreement.

But Justice Amy Coney Barrett pointed out that domestic disputes fall into a different camp.

BARRETT: It just seems to me that that's a much different case for ameliorative measures than, say, the nuclear plant next door that the Chief posited at the outset. That would be a very—pretty straightforward move, and then there would be no more grave risk, whereas I think you get into the complexity of the financial support payments and the undertaking or restraining order, however it should be categorized, in these domestic abuse cases that pose maybe a unique circumstance? 

KING: That's right, Justice Barrett. I think that the nature of the grave risk in a domestic violence case is extremely complicated, and it gets into mental health issues, psychological, very detailed family issues, and it would be very difficult to resolve that in an expedited proceeding, much less try to resolve that thinking about what it's like in a foreign country.

ROUGH: Richard Min argued for the father. When Justice Roberts pointed out that the Hague Convention doesn’t explicitly require what the Second Circuit requires, Min argued it’s implied.

ROBERTS: This ameliorative conditions doctrine, rule, it has no basis in the convention or the statute, right, and by which I mean it's not a concept that the statute or the convention refers to?

MIN: Yes, but we believe that it's inherent and implicit in the text of the convention, meaning that (a) grave risk inquiry necessitates an analysis of the future risk of harm to the child…

There’s a split among the appellate courts here: one circuit ruled one way, another ruled a different way. It’s called a circuit split and that is the precise reason it’s at the high court. A decision won’t resolve the family’s pain and trouble. But it could provide uniformity so that return petitions will be subject to the same standard, regardless of what region of the United States they’re filed in.

REICHARD: And that’s this week’s Legal Docket.

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: Well, what launched these regular conversations, David, and I hear from listeners and I know you are reading the same emails, that they’re glad for these conversations, but what launched them was an event no one’s glad for, and that’s Covid-19.

So, to remind the listener: What has become your “DC Today” or “Dividend Cafe Today” started as a “Covid and Markets” daily email (actually still have the first one in the archives). And we decided to bring this conversation to The World and Everything in It.

Parenthetically—I should say—we’re not ending this. Economics is massively important and there’s a theological component around human action and how humans use scarce resources. So we’ll keep talking, because there’s always something to talk about.

But relative to Covid, a huge milestone from last week. A milestone pointing to an endpoint for Covid as an ongoing economic story. So David, your thoughts on what appears to be the end of a bleak time period.

BAHNSEN: Yeah, after Omicron, it was very apparent that it was a brutally low severity and high infectiousness, the politics of this whole thing changed. The social relationship to COVID policy substantially shifted. So this kind of symbolic thing, holding on to the remnants of COVID restriction was an airplane mask mandate. And finally, this week a federal judge in Florida booted that, and so I decided to bid farewell to all public mention of COVID. Now, people are brought up to me, by the way, since then, that the Department of Justice has appealed the decision.

But it would be very difficult to find a more halfhearted appeal than one that says, “we have to appeal because it's a public health emergency, but we're not going to ask for a public health emergency,” meaning a stay on the on the judge's order. They're saying, Okay, well, we'll let the thing just go now. But we're still appealing, and it may not get to the courts for months. And by then the CDC may not be very likely will not have the restriction. So the politics of it are forcing the DOJ to pretend like they're doing something but they're not really doing something. I think it's gone. I think that people will not be wearing masks again on planes.

The federal judge made the law and with that, symbolically, this normalization, which is profoundly important economically, but also, I think, very important to the harmony of the society, because it did prove over the last couple of years to be incredibly divisive. The notion that various extrinsic COVID compliances became a social and cultural and political marker has been really damaging. And I'm very much excited for the rest of society to now be able to be normal. Quite frankly, things have been incredibly normal in my home, and in my business for almost two years. But now the rest of the country is catching up.

EICHER: It’s also interesting last week a milestone in the stock markets—so-called “innovation technology." Companies that really helped us through Covid, the financial gains those companies enjoyed during the pandemic—and I’m thinking Netflix in particular—they gave back those gains. Big story from last week.

BAHNSEN: Well, yeah. So first, let's start with just a broad category of what we call innovation technology. There's an ETF—an ETF is sort of a basket of a lot of different stocks that is meant to be representative of a certain sector or index or what have you. And there's a very, very well known ETF called Ark, the ticker is ARKK. And it went up from about $50 to $160, by the end of COVID. And they were buying a lot of these hot, cool new tech companies and various aspects of what they call innovation technology. And this week, it officially came back down to where it had been at the beginning of COVID. So a 300% gain became a 0% gain from basically two years ago till now - a round trip. It's interesting Netflix, obviously, people could understand why their revenues went way higher during COVID, as everyone was locked into their homes for a period of time, some people for six to eight weeks like in my family, but other people for many, many, many months. So Netflix saw a big pickup in subscribers.

Well, Netflix did not give back its COVID gain, Netflix has given back five years of gains, it reached its 2017 level. So there's two different things going on here. One is that a lot of the boost from COVID circumstances that people for some reason thought would be permanent, has come down, and that's brought some of the business fundamentals down.

But the far bigger issue, Nick, is that these brutally overvalued companies have had to give back so much of this excess valuation. And that always happens always, the only question is when - excessive valuation does go away. Now there have been companies in history that grew into their excessive valuation. Google is famously one of them. But we're talking about one in a million. And so to see some of these excessive, frothy valuations fall to pieces, is of no surprise to us. It's been a huge theme of what we've been talking about and forecasting for a long time. I did believe it would happen sooner than it did. And but that's always the way things go too. They're not really time-able. But it's a profoundly important story in markets right now.

EICHER: All right, David Bahnsen, financial analyst and advisor, head of the financial planning firm The Bahnsen Group. You can receive the aforementioned daily writing at DividendCafe.com. David, thank you. Let’s talk again next week! Have a good one. 

BAHNSEN: Thanks so much, Nick.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Monday, April 25th. 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 the 75th anniversary of a perilous voyage. Also 30 years ago this week, Los Angeles was ablaze in riots.

But first, the start of a baseball tradition. Here’s WORLD Associate Correspondent Harrison Watters.

CLASSICAL ORGAN MUSIC

HARRISON WATTERS, ASSOCIATE CORRESPONDENT: In the early 1900s, pipe organs began moving from churches into public spaces like movie theaters and sports arenas—including Chicago’s hockey stadium in 1929. After the more efficient electric Hammond Organ was invented in 1935, the instruments were added to other venues, including baseball stadiums. Here’s music historian Jesse Strickland from his documentary on baseball and organ music.

JESSE STRICKLAND: On April 26, 1941 organist Ray Nelson became the first to play an MLB game entertaining fans at the cubs cardinals game at Wrigley Field.

But Nelson could only play before and after the game because he couldn’t play copyrighted music during the live broadcast.

In 1942, the Brooklyn Dodgers hired organist Gladys Gooding, who set the standard for the style and tone of ballpark music.

STRICKLAND: Not content to simply be background noise she would often play songs as commentary to the game like the one time she trolled the umpires with three blind mice after a bad call, which is just brilliant, or playing sad songs after the Dodgers lost.

While many ballfields switched to recorded music by the 1990s, a few, like Wrigley Field, keep the organ playing at the old ball game.

From baseball to sailing, seventy-five years ago this week, six Scandinavians set out on a bizarre expedition.

TRAILER CLIP: By crossing the Pacific for 5,000 miles I will prove that Peruvians were the first to settle Polynesia.

Audio from the 2013 film Kon-Tiki.

Thor Heyerdahl was a geologist honeymooning in the Polynesian Islands when he met a village elder who said his ancestors came not from Asia but from the East, led by a man named Tiki. The name reminded Heyerdahl of a South American legend about a sun king/god named Con-Tiki, whose people were massacred and the survivors forced to flee by sea to the West. Despite pushback from scholars and anthropologists, Heyerdahl decided to test his theory by making the journey himself.

Simon Whistler with Highlight History explains…

SIMON WHISTLER: After scrounging up from various sources a little over $22,000 for the journey, he then went searching for a few people to accompany him, placing an ad stating: “Am going to cross the Pacific on a wooden raft to support a theory that the South Sea islands were peopled from Peru. Will you come? Reply at once.”

Heyerdahl and five other Scandinavians built a 45 foot-long raft of balsa logs named the Kon-Tiki. They filled the bamboo cabin with rations, and set sail on April 28th, 1947. They survived several storms, rough seas, and persistent sharks to run aground on a reef in the Polynesian islands 101 days later.

While most scholars agree that the Polynesian Islands were actually settled by people from Australia and Asia, Heyerdahl’s journey raised interest to look deeper. In 2020, geneticists from the University of California discovered strains of ancient South American DNA in some Polynesian gene pools. Regardless of where the settlers of Polynesia came from, they were courageous men and women who exercised creativity and courage to find a place in the world, much like their descendants.

We end today with the not guilty verdict that sparked the 1992 Los Angeles Riots.

30 years ago this week, the police officers who beat Rodney King after a high speed chase were acquitted of all excessive force charges. Within hours, the news and a video of the beating sparked violent riots. Enraged African Americans in South Central L.A. burned and looted stores in Koreatown as owners fought to defend their property.

Three days into the riot—with dozens of people dead and injured—Rodney King gave an impromptu press conference. He tearfully asked the residents of L.A. to get along.

KING: I mean, we’ve got enough smog here in Los Angeles, let alone to deal with setting these fires and things. It’s just not right. It’s not right.

Governor Pete Wilson called in the National Guard to quell the violence, ending the riots six days after the verdict. Three months later a Federal court indicted the police officers who had beaten King.

Just months before his accidental death in 2012, King spoke with Oprah Winfrey. His body may have still borne the scars of the beating, but he said he’d experienced healing of the heart.

KING: I did have hate for the cops for a time, but I know the way my mom had raised me because if I walk around bitter and mad I'm doing the same thing they did to me. And that's not the way, that's not the way generations are supposed to leave the next generation.

That’s this week’s History Book.

I’m Harrison Watters.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: Conflicts in outer space. We’ll tell you how war between nations has disrupted research beyond the Earth.

And, Chinese influence. We’ll tell you why Western leaders are concerned about Beijing’s latest security pact.

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.

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Go now in grace and peace.

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