The World and Everything in It: April 3, 2024

PREROLL: The World and Everything in It is made possible by listeners like us. My name is Gayle Cousins and I am a retired audiologist from Minnetonka, Minnesota, and I love listening to your broadcast every day. I am here today with my five year old granddaughter. Hi, my name is Hazel. We hope you enjoy today's broadcast.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning! Robert F. Kennedy Jr. now has a running mate, but can they pull together a winning base? 

ALDRICH: Republicans and Democrats don't agree on much but they do agree that they don't want any third party.

NICK EICHER, HOST: That’s ahead on Washington Wednesday. And, World Tour. Later, cherry blossoms.

PARSELL: She saw this wonderful match of this magnificent centuries old custom, and the growth of tourism in the nation's capital.

And WORLD’s Janie B. Cheaney on the idol of DEI.

REICHARD: It’s Wednesday, April 3rd. 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. Here’s Kent Covington.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Iran calls on UN to condemn Israel » Iran is calling on the United Nations to condemn Israel for a reported airstrike that flattened a building at Iran's embassy compound in Syria.

Iranian representative Zahra Ershadi told the UN Security Council:

ERSHADI: Iran reserves its legitimate and inherent right under international law and the United Nations charter to take decisive response to such reprehensible acts.

Israel has neither confirmed nor denied responsibility for the airstrike which Iran said killed at least seven military leaders on the compound, including a top-ranking general.

Contrary to initial reports, the United States says Monday’s airstrike actually hit a structure adjacent to the main embassy building, not the embassy itself.

US Ambassador Robert Wood:

WOOD: We do not yet have confirmation of the status of the building that was struck in Damascus. Any confirmed attack on property that was in fact a diplomatic facility would be of concern to the United States.

Wood cited reports that terrorists may have been housed in that facility.

He also said the United States was not involved in the airstrike.

Iran has long funded and armed Hamas and other terror groups that have publicly stated their intent to annihilate Israel.

NETANYAHU:  [Speaking Hebrew]

Netanyahu on death of aid workers » Meantime, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took responsibility Tuesday for what he called an unintended strike in Gaza that killed seven aid workers with the charity World Central Kitchen.

Netanyahu called the strike a tragic incident and said he would launch an investigation to make sure it would never be repeated.

Biden/Xi call » President Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping spoke by phone Tuesday with tensions between the two countries still at an all-time high.

KIRBY: Over the course of about an hour and 45 minutes, the two leaders held a candid and productive discussion on a range of global issues.

National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said among those issues were the fentanyl crisis, tensions over Taiwan, and keeping open lines of communication between the world’s top two militaries.

KIRBY: President Biden also raised continued concerns about the PRC’s unfair trade policies … and non-market economic practices, … which harm American workers and families.

The call meant to demonstrate a return to regular dialogue between the two global powers. Tuesday’s call was their first conversation between Biden and Xi since November.

Trump bond, Michigan campaigning » Donald Trump has posted a $175 million bond in his New York civil fraud case.

That will buy him time to appeal a judgment ordering him to pay almost a half-billion dollars to the state.

Trump told supporters on Tuesday:

TRUMP: I had to put up a bond this morning for $175 million dollars. I did nothing wrong. They can shoot somebody, kill somebody, and walk out of jail an hour later. How about that? Do you think that’s a fair policy? That’s called radical left.

The former president heard there campaigning in the battleground state of Michigan where he now enjoys a lead of about three-and-a-half points in recent polls.

TRUMP: We have an empty podium right here to my right. You know what that is? That’s for Joe Biden. I’m trying to get him to debate.

Trump said he’ll debate anytime, any place.

Biden abortion ad » Meantime, President Biden is out with a new campaign ad once again championing abortion, a central theme of his reelection campaign.

BIDEN: I’m running to make Roe v. Wade the law of the land again so women have a federal guarantee of the right to choose. Donald Trump doesn’t trust women. I do.

The ad comes one day after the Florida Supreme court upheld protections for the state's unborn after 15 weeks while also allowing a November ballot measure that could challenge those protections.

Wisconsin Gov. Evers vetoes girls’ sports protections » Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers dropped his pen on a desktop …

SOUND: [Pen drops]

after vetoing a bill aimed at protecting girls scholastic sports.

EVERS: And we have now helped our trans kids. Thanks everybody. 

The Democratic governor making good on a promise to shoot down the bill passed by the state’s majority-Republican legislature.

The bill would have protected girls from having to compete against boys who identify as transgender.

Paula Scanlan with the Independent Women's Forum responded, saying, helping kids “is NOT done by allowing girls to be injured and have their opportunities stolen.”

Sunak sides with Rowling on new Scotland ‘hate crime’ law » British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is defending author J.K. Rowling's recent remarks slamming a new law in Scotland that has many Scots worried that they’ll be committing a crime by simply voicing their beliefs. WORLD's Benjamin Eicher has more.

BENJAMIN EICHER: A new law bans “stirring up hatred” related to someone’s identity, including things like race and religion as well as transgender identity.

Many Scots now wonder if it’s still legal to voice religious beliefs about gender or to even simply state the fact that there are two sexes.

One of Scotland's most famous residents, author JK Rowling — of Harry Potter fame said that the law — her words “places “a higher value on the feelings of men performing their idea of femaleness … than on the rights and freedoms of actual women and girls.”

And she dared authorities to arrest her for saying so.

Prime Minister Sunak backed her up on Tuesday saying people shouldn’t be targeted for stating simple facts on biology.

For WORLD, I'm Benjamin Eicher.

I’m Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: The viability of a third party candidate on Washington Wednesday. Plus, World Tour.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Wednesday the 3rd of April, 2024.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. It’s Washington Wednesday.

This week, Erin Burnett of CNN interviewed independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Asked who was the bigger threat to democracy, President Biden or former President Trump, Kennedy gave an answer she probably wasn’t expecting: Biden.

KENNEDY: Thirty-seven hours after he took the oath of office, he was censoring me, no president in the country has ever done that. The greatest threat to democracy is not somebody who questions election returns, but a president of the United States who will use the power of his office to force the social media companies to open a portal and give access to that portal to the FBI, CIA to censor his political critics.

Recent polls indicate that a majority of Americans would rather have a candidate other than Trump and Biden…but is Kennedy the one to fill the gap?

From WORLD’s Washington Bureau, here’s reporter Carolina Lumetta.

CAROLINA LUMETTA: Amber Impellizzeri is a mom and homeschool co-op tutor in Grand Rapids, Michigan. And like many Americans, she’s found herself politically homeless this year.

AMBER IMPELLIZZERI: I wanted to educate myself on the other options that were out there because I knew that I was not going to support Biden. And I wasn't thrilled about having Trump be my other option.

Then she found a third option in June, when she heard psychologist and podcaster Jordan Peterson interview Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the nephew of President John F. Kennedy.

IMPELLIZZERI: And I was like, “Wow, I really like this guy. He's talking about politics, and he's talking about them in a different way than what I'm used to hearing people talk about. He's not talking about them with the same vitriol. He's not talking about them with the same, you know, blame shifting.” It was refreshing.

LUMETTA: Kennedy ran as a Democrat until October, when he switched to independent, because the national party would not recognize candidates other than President Joe Biden. Kennedy’s platform priorities include environmentalism, small government, healthcare, and securing the border. That caught the attention of Cody Marks, an associate pastor at a Methodist church in North Carolina.

CODY MARKS: He wants to have a proactive agenda. He wants to actually take steps to solve problems. I even like the fact that he’s willing to change his mind, but not just because of some pressure. I think of the case, you know, where he went to the border and investigated it for himself, and then from there he shared where he had changed.

LUMETTA: The first hurdle for Kennedy has been simply getting onto ballots. Each state has different signature requirements for an independent candidate to be listed. So Kennedy founded a new party, We the People, to get around some of these requirements. Across the country, volunteers canvas street corners, front porches, and farmers markets to collect signatures and ask voters to allow the new party on the ballot. Marks is one of these volunteers.

MARKS: I’ve got a family member who is most likely going to support Trump, but said they would sign the petition. So it's actually, even in that case, it's been good for just promoting some good, healthy conversation.

LUMETTA: On Monday, the Kennedy campaign said it secured enough signatures to get on the ballot in North Carolina, though the state has yet to officially receive the documents. Right now, he is only on the ballot in Utah, but his campaign says he has qualified in seven other states: Nevada, Hawaii, New Hampshire, Michigan, South Carolina, Arizona, and Georgia.

As far as campaign funds go, Kennedy says he needs roughly $15 million dollars for the ballot access drive alone. According to the latest FEC filings, submitted on Monday, he has roughly $5 million in cash on hand, and the data shows his campaign has been spending more than it’s bringing in. Kennedy’s new running mate could help with this dilemma.

NICOLE SHANAHAN: There is only one candidate I have met for president who takes the chronic disease epidemic seriously, it is Robert F. Kennedy Jr. And I will be his ally in making our nation healthy again. [Cheers]

LUMETTA: Nicole Shanahan is a wealthy Silicon Valley lawyer, and up until she became Kennedy’s vice president candidate, she was a Democrat. She renounced the party in her acceptance speech, but said she will take its best values and ideals with her. That could cost Kennedy some conservative support, particularly when it comes to abortion. Kennedy has said he supports “a woman’s right to choose” but then in October he indicated he might support a law protecting babies from abortion after 15-weeks of pregnancy. That mixed stance has not dissuaded Michigan voter Impellizzeri, though.

IMPELLIZZERI: He is pro-choice, but he is not your typical pro-choice candidate. When you hear Biden or Vice President Harris, you know, talk about abortion, they will a lot of times vilify the pro-life movement, and RFK, he doesn’t ever do that.

LUMETTA: Abortion isn’t Kennedy’s only policy stance that may divide voters. Elections expert Bernard Tamas says Kennedy lacks a galvanizing theme that can bring together disaffected Republicans and Democrats who would consider voting for a third party.

BERNARD TAMAS: So as an example, on the one hand, he is running on an anti-vax theme, basically the idea that that well, we can't trust scientists, and it's a conspiracy. But on the other hand, he's asking people to accept the word of scientists on climate change. So it’s unclear how exactly he’s going to build a campaign compared to the other Independent and third party campaigns that were relatively successful.

Kennedy is the highest polling independent candidate since Ross Perot ran in 1992. That year, Perot gained 19 percent of the popular vote but he did not win a single electoral vote. Current national averages of general election polls give Kennedy about 10 percent, but early election year polling is unpredictable.

Elections expert Tamas also specializes in third party candidates. He says it wouldn’t surprise him to see Kennedy pull support from both Trump and Biden without winning any states.

TAMAS: Third parties, even at their heyday, they were barely winning anything. Really their role is, could be called “spoiling with a purpose.” It's the idea is they bring up issues that the major parties are ignoring another way.

LUMETTA: John Aldrich is a professor at Duke University. He says Kennedy is tapping into a strong desire from voters for something new. But the country is likely not ready to elect an independent president just yet.

JOHN ALDRICH: Because Republicans and Democrats don't agree on much but they do agree that they don't want any third party - make it as hard as possible for a third party. This is the clearest example of duopolistic two-party politics dominating the construction of the electoral rules. Let us in, let nobody else in.

LUMETTA: In North Carolina, Marks says he will not vote for either Biden or Trump, even if Kennedy drops out. His state could be an important swing this year, where both parties are fighting for the 16 electoral votes in November.

MARKS: When I hear about some of that in the polls about the spoiler effect, I'm not going to fully rule it out. It can happen. But I would say most people, if they weren't going to vote for the candidate of their choice, would probably either stay home, write in somebody, hold their nose and vote another third party candidate or leave it blank.

LUMETTA: That’s it for today’s Washington Wednesday. Reporting for WORLD, I’m Carolina Lumetta.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: WORLD Tour with our reporter in Africa, Onize Ohikere.

AUDIO: [Water rushing]

Southern Africa drought — Today’s global roundup starts in southern Africa where an ongoing drought has hit a crisis point.

Last month, Malawian President Lazarus Chakwera declared a drought disaster in the majority of the country’s districts.

That follows Zambia’s declaration in February and Zimbabwe is on the brink of a similar call as it battles with food shortages.

The World Food Program says that month was the driest February that areas of Zambia and Zimbabwe have seen in four decades.

Francesca Erdelmann is the World Food Program’s Zimbabwe director.

ERDELMANN: I just spoke with some of the elders from the community, and the last time they can remember this type of drought is 1947. This is not a normal circumstance. And they say this drought now, with this type of heat that they've experienced has not happened before.

El Niño weather conditions have brought extreme weather to the region. The natural weather pattern brings hotter weather and erratic rainfall. Tropical storms and flooding drenched parts of the region only a year ago. Now, other countries like Mozambique and Angola are also recording severe rainfall deficits.

AUDIO: [Food distribution]

A local named Lonely Kanyerere has received food aid in Malawi. She says she planted maize late in December, but the rains stopped in January.

KANYERERE: [Speaking Chichewa]

She says all her crops dried and she couldn’t harvest anything.

AUDIO: [Street]

Jerusalem protests — We head over to Jerusalem, where anti-government protesters set bonfires and danced in the streets on Sunday.

The demonstrators called for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to step down. Netanyahu’s leadership has faced growing criticism over the October Hamas attack and the dozens of hostages still held by the group.

Haggai Levin joined the protests.

LEVIN: The people of Israel demand from the government to find solution to release all the hostages. They are simply dying there and the government ought to do their duty and release all of them. If they are unable to do so, maybe someone else can do that.

Police fired water cannons to break up roadblocks. Thousands of protesters also gathered on the streets of Tel Aviv.

AUDIO: [Clashes]

Elsewhere in Jerusalem, reservists and Ultra-Orthodox Jewish protesters clashed in the Mea Shearim neighborhood.

The reservists back a bill that could end the blanket draft exemption for Ultra-Orthodox Jews. The Israeli military says about 600 soldiers have died since the Oct. 7 attack.

AUDIO: [Bookstore]

Hong Kong bookstore — In Hong Kong, hundreds of shoppers paid their last visits to a now-closed independent bookstore.

Mount Zero bookstore announced its closure at the end of March after complaining about weekly government inspections.

Margaret Ng is a barrister and former pro-democracy politician. She said the two-story bookstore provided like-minded readers with a much-needed place to gather.

MARGARET NG: As life becomes more difficult in other ways, it helps for us to have that spirit of overcoming difficulties, finding our way forward.

Hong Kong recently enacted a second national security law, which is widely expected to further clamp down on pro-democracy efforts.

The U.S.-funded Radio Free Asia said last week, it has closed its Hong Kong bureau over the law, citing safety concerns for its reporters and staff.

Canada-solar eclipse — We close today in Canada’s region of Niagara where authorities are preparing to host more than one million visitors during the total solar eclipse next week.

Jake Foster is an astronomer with the Royal Observatory Greenwich in London.

FOSTER: Usually, twice a year, the moon will come directly in between the sun and the earth, blocking out some or all of its light.

The eclipse will be the first to be visible in Canada in more than four decades.

National Geographic has declared Niagara Falls one of the best places to view it.

Jim Diodati is the mayor of Niagara Falls in Ontario, Canada.

JIM DIODATI: Even though we get 14 million people every year, it's over the year, it's not all at one time. To get 1 million at one time, would be by far the biggest crowd that we've ever had.

The eclipse will hit Mexico’s Pacific coast in the morning of April 8 then cut diagonally across the United States before it exits in eastern Canada by late afternoon.

Other parts of the continent will only see a partial eclipse.

That’s it for today’s WORLD Tour. Reporting for WORLD, I’m Onize Ohikere in Abuja, Nigeria.

NICK EICHER, HOST:  You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can’t … well, you know the thing.

On April Fools’ Day product marketers got into the tomfoolery.

Amtrak introduced an emotional baggage train car. The maker of sriracha hot sauce trotted out Sriracha Mayo toothpaste. Disgusting.

But then the co-brands:

Cereal maker Post got together with Kraft to make Fruity Pebbles Mac & Cheese, the two comfort foods: “together at last!”

7-Eleven and Miracle Seltzer dreamed up a sparkling water that tastes like a hot dog.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: What’d they call it? Hog wash?

EICHER: It’s The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Wednesday, April 3rd.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day. Good morning! I’m Mary Reichard.

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

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: preserving a symbol of international friendship.

Washington D.C. is in the middle of a weeks-long tradition: a festival celebrating the cherry blossoms. It all culminates with a Japanese street festival and parade.

This year the trees in D.C. bloomed early. They reached peak bloom a couple weeks ago, while in Japan they bloomed later than usual, just two days ago.

REICHARD: But now trouble is blooming … because the Potomac River is flooding some of the trees. So the National Park Service is stepping in to help preserve them. WORLD’s Kristen Flavin has our story.

PARK VISITOR: There was actually a story on the national news. So that's where I saw it first.

One unique cherry tree is getting a lot of attention.

PARK VISITOR: We're here to see Stumpy if we can actually find him. Its name is Stumpy. It's a cute little tree…

Cute? If Charlie Brown’s Christmas Tree had a cherry tree cousin, this would be it.

LINUS: I never thought it was a bad tree. 

Stumpy has a hollowed-out trunk and a single flowering limb.

PARK VISITOR: They call him the little tree that could, because he just has no inside, but yet he continues to flourish.

A million and a half people flock to the city every Spring to see the blossoms. And ever since the Stumpy craze went viral in 2020, many visitors made sure to snap their own picture with the tree.

But this year, people are not just taking pictures. They’re leaving tributes.

They bring cards and flowers of their own, placing them on the ground by Stumpy’s roots. The cards say things like “Thank you for the memories.”

PARK VISITOR: We had to come back and see Stumpy.

This year is the last time Stumpy will bloom.

That’s because the National Park Service is going to cut it down—Stumpy and about 150 other cherry trees. Mike Litterst of the park service says it’s part of a multi-year restoration project beginning this summer to restore the sea wall holding back the Potomac River.

MIKE LITTERST: It inundates the roots of the cherry trees, resulting in the deaths of many trees, threatens infrastructure like sidewalks. It's even forced us to close the Jefferson Memorial from time to time as the water overflows the walkways leading to the site.

The project is expected to take about three years and cost more than $110 million dollars.

LITTERST: We will anchor those seawalls in bedrock to keep them from settling. We will raise the height of the seawall to keep the water where it’s supposed to be in the Tidal Basin. And we’ll widen the walkways as well to accommodate 21st century crowds.

The trees are part of a lineage representing an important part of America’s relationship with Japan.

LITTERST: The original gift were not mapped when they were planted, so we don't have a good idea of where they were located. Average lifespan of a cherry tree is really only about 40 or 50 years.

That history is something that Diana Parsell has studied for years. She wrote a book about it that was published last year.

DIANA PARSELL: She saw this wonderful match of this magnificent centuries old custom in Japan, and the growth of tourism in the nation's capital, and she said the city was at its best in the springtime.

She’s talking about a woman named Eliza Scidmore—a journalist in the 1800s who traveled extensively in Japan. Scidmore witnessed the development of Potomac Park.

PARSELL: She thought cherry trees were the most beautiful thing in the world. Why didn't we have them in America, and what better place than Washington and, she said, this new Potomac Park would be a perfect spot.

When President William Howard Taft was in the White House, Scidmore got a helping hand from First Lady Helen Taft and saw her idea realized. In 1912, the Japanese government sent 3-thousand cherry trees to America.

This was at a time when international tensions were rising, and many world powers were frightened of Japan’s military victories against both China and Russia.

PARSELL: This gift came on the heels of all that. And so you can see that it was as much a diplomatic move as it was a gesture of friendship.

And that gesture of friendship in 1912 was reciprocated after World War Two.

PARSELL: After the things were very tense, and then relations were restored, America helped Japan restore its stock of cherry trees.

Mike Litterst says the park service plans to honor the history of the trees by turning each cut tree into mulch that they will spread over the fragile tree roots of surviving trees.

But all the well-wishers haven’t seen the last of Stumpy:

LITTERST: Stumpy, in particular, our partners at the National Arboretum will take clippings of Stumpy and create genetic matches, essentially clones with the same genetic material as that tree and we'll plant those around the Tidal Basin when the work is finished.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Kristen Flavin. Additional reporting by Emma Perley.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Wednesday April 3rd. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Up next: making an idol of politics. WORLD commentator Janie B. Cheaney says one idol on the left these days is easy to spot, but folks on the right have their own temptations.

JANIE B. CHEANEY: DEI—shorthand for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, has come a long way. Here’s how the Greenlining Institute, a California-based non-profit, describes its progress: “[T]he focus in the 1960s into the 1970s was on tolerance, meaning the acceptance of integration in workplaces, schools, and communities. From the mid-1970s into the 1990s, the focus was on multiculturalism and being aware of the achievements of various racial and ethnic minorities.”

Today, “there has been an increased emphasis on accountability to ensure that diverse groups are represented at all economic and social levels.

Accountability is important, and DEI could be a means to the end of a just and considerate society. But DEI has become an end in itself: a never-ending, rock-turning search for violations of a shifting ideal. Consider the case of Amy Wax, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Carey Law school.

This lady served in the U.S. Department of Justice and argued 15 cases before the Supreme Court. She has published widely in law journals, authored books, and won awards for excellence in teaching. She earned tenure in 2001, which is supposed to guarantee her freedom to voice opinions without fear of reprisal. But that was before running into the DEI buzzsaw.

In 2017 students complained about a column in which Professor Wax mourned the “breakdown of bourgeois culture” and its consequences, claiming that “all cultures are not equal.” In 2022 the dean of Carey Law filed a formal complaint asking for an investigation. Wax had allegedly denigrated the intellectual capacity of black students, labeled Asian students as timid and conformist, and invited a self-identified “white advocate” to speak to her class.

It’s true, Wax does sometimes stereotype other cultures and ethnic groups. But DEI is itself built on stereotypes. Last summer the Supreme Court decided against Harvard’s admissions policy because it consistently rated Asian students as “unlikeable” and “lacking courage and kindness.” Who was stereotyping then?

Amy Wax’s case has lumbered through faculty courts, online editorials, and podcasts. Last June, the Carey Law School Hearing Board recommended that she be suspended for one year at half-pay, that her named chair be removed, and that in all her speaking appearances she disassociate herself from Penn Carey. If not for tenure, she would be out of a job.

“Dei” is also the Latin word for “god,” and it’s achieved godlike status in classrooms and boardrooms. But diversity, equity, and inclusion are subordinate goods, not ultimate ones; doors not destinies. When doors become destinies, the Bible calls this idolatry.

In the case of DEI, the left is at fault. But the right is not immune to political idolatry. Capitalism, family values, and so-called Christian nationalism can all become ends-in-themselves. The first commandment says, “You shall have no other gods before Me”, and it applies to all of us.

I’m Janie B. Cheaney.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: Another total solar eclipse just five days away. What’s NASA hoping to learn from this one? And, cameras that read your license plates. 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 records Peter saying: “And he commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one appointed by God to be judge of the living and the dead. To him all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.” —Acts 10:42-43

Go now in grace and peace.

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