The World and Everything in It: August 1, 2023

PREROLL: The World and Everything in It is made possible by listeners like me. I'm Marcy Trader. I live in Parsonsburg, Maryland. I listen while getting ready for work at an ophthalmologist office where I help people see God's world. Thanks to my dad, Lester, for introducing me to the program six years ago. Hope you enjoy today's program.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning! Hunter Biden’s plea deal falls through and Donald Trump faces new charges. What’s going on?

NICK EICHER, HOST: We’ll talk to a former U.S. Attorney to find out. Also, a House debate on transgender medical practices on minors. And WORLD’s Classic Book of the Month: Christianity and Liberalism by J. Gresham Machen. And WORLD Opinions commentator Daniel Darling volunteers to stand up for Tennessee.

REICHARD: It’s Tuesday, August 1st. 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: Time now for the news. Here’s Kent Covington.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Hunter Biden » Hunter Biden's friend and former business partner Devin Archer testified behind closed doors on Monday about Biden family business dealings overseas.

He served alongside Hunter on the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma.

GOP Congressman Scott Fitzgerald:

FITZGERALD: It appears Devin Archer was definitely very close to the whole thing.

As for what Archer said, that depends on who you ask.

Republicans say Archer told lawmakers that Hunter Biden was selling access to his father. But a Democrats say Archer testified that Hunter was selling the illusion of access to Joe Biden.

Archer testified that Hunter put his father, then Vice President Biden, on speaker phone more than 20 times to help boost his credibility. But he reportedly said Joe Biden did not discuss any business dealings on those calls.

Heat moves east » If this summer seems a little hotter than usual to you, you’re not wrong.

NASA climate scientist Gavin Scmidt said Monday:

SCHMIDT: It’s very, very likely that July will be not only the warmest month of the year, but the warmest month in the entire record.

Tens of millions of Americans remain under excessive heat advisories.

And a sweltering heat dome continues to shift eastward. A combination of heat and humidity could bring the heat indexes well above 100 degrees across much of the south.

Nuclear reactor » A new nuclear reactor is up and running in Georgia today. WORLD’s Josh Schumacher has more.

JOSH SCHUMACHER: Unit 3 at Plant Vogtle is the first nuclear reactor built from scratch in the United States in more than 30 years.

Georgia Power flipped the switch on Monday after years of delays. Construction on Unit 3 and a fourth nuclear plant started 14 years ago. And the cost has swelled to more than $30 billion dollars, more than doubling the expected price tag.

The company expects the plant to power a half-million homes and businesses in several states.

A fourth reactor is nearing completion and is expected to online next spring.

For WORLD, I’m Josh Schumacher.

Haiti kidnapping » State Dept. spokesman Matthew Miller spoke out Monday on the kidnapping of an American nurse and her young daughter in Haiti. He told reporters:

MILLER: We are in regular contact with the Haitian authorities and will continue to work with them and our U.S. government interagency partners.

New Hampshire native Alix Dorsanvil works with a ministry called El Roi Haiti, which runs a school and provides medical care to the poor. In a video on the group’s website, Alix called it a blessing to serve.

DORSAINVIL: Haitians are such a resilient people, they’re full of joy and life and love, and I’m so blessed to be able to know so many amazing Hatians.

Kidnappings are alarmingly common in Haiti.

The U.S. State Department has warned Americans not to travel there. 

Russian ballistic missile » Russian ballistic missiles killed at least six people and wounded nearly 70 others Monday. WORLD’s Anna Johnansen Brown has that story.

ANNA JOHANSEN BROWN: The missiles struck an apartment complex and a university building in President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s hometown of Kryvyi Rih.

ZELENSKYY: [Speaking Ukrainian]

Zelenskyy called the attack an act of terrorism, saying that one of the victims was a 10-year-old girl and her mother.

And he called on the world to ramp up sanctions against Russia.

Meanwhile Russia is accusing Ukraine of terrorism after it claims Ukrainian forces tried to attack Moscow with drones over the weekend.

For WORLD, I’m Anna Johansen Brown.

Pee Wee Herman » Actor Paul Reubens, better known as Pee-Wee Herman has died at the age of 70 after a six-year battle with cancer.

HERMAN: Hi Boys and Girls, I’m going to play with my new toy.

The TV show Pee-wee’s Playhouse ran for five seasons and earned 15 Emmy’s.

He also starred in successful Pee-Wee Herman movies.

His reputation took a big hit in 1991 when Reubens was arrested for indecent exposure.

But he reprised the role 25 years later in the Netflix feature Pee-Wee’s Big Holiday.

I'm Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: Hunter Biden’s plan to avoid prison time hits a roadblock. Plus, Classic Book of the Month for August. 

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Tuesday the 1st of August, 2023.

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. First up: the legal woes of Donald Trump and Hunter Biden.

Well, last week, Hunter Biden walked into a federal courtroom in Delaware thinking he was going to walk away with a no-muss, no-fuss deal. Didn’t work out that way, at least for now.

ABC News: The plea deal that Hunter Biden had initially made on those misdemeanor tax charges has basically fallen apart.

NBC News: But the federal judge overseeing the case said she was not ready to accept the plea agreement, questioning its legality.

REICHARD: Both sides walked out with instructions to demonstrate that the plea deal is constitutional. Hunter Biden originally pleaded guilty to two separate tax misdemeanors. That also allows him to avoid prosecution for a gun-related charge. But when all that fell through, Biden changed his plea to not guilty.

EICHER: Meanwhile the special counsel investigating Donald Trump’s handling of White House documents added new indictments. Special counsel Jack Smith alleges Trump and his aides tried to erase security camera footage at Mar-a-Lago and moved boxes around.

What does all of this mean for Trump and Biden?

Joining us now to talk about it is Bobby Higdon. He’s a lawyer in private practice in North Carolina and formerly served as a U.S. Attorney.

REICHARD: Bobby, welcome.

BOBBY HIGDON: Good morning, Mary. Thank you.

REICHARD: First, and most briefly, the new charges against Donald Trump. The DOJ released a superseding indictment on Thursday. What is that?

HIGDON: Well, superseding indictment is basically a tool whereby the prosecutors go back to the grand jury, following the issuance of an original indictment. And they asked the grand jury to make some change in the indictment. They may be asking to delete charges or defendants or in this case, they added a defendant and added additional charges revolving around the facts that you've just summarized. It's a, it's a very common tool. And it's being used to do just what I've described.

REICHARD: Turning to Hunter Biden’s plea deal that fell apart. What happened?

HIGDON: Well, Mary, the prosecutors and the defense attorneys, according to statements made to the judge during the hearing, crafted an arrangement to "Suit the facts and circumstances," which included what they call "political drag" was the phrase they use. And they admitted to the judge that there was no precedent for the type of deal with arrangement that they had crafted that they wanted her to approve. She was very uncomfortable with the format and with the fact that it cast her in a role that she wasn't sure she was constitutionally permitted to assume. And that's why it fell through.

REICHARD: What goes on between the prosecution and defense to craft a plea deal with a high profile person like this? What’s next?

HIGDON: Well, of course, I don't know exactly how the deal that was negotiated and rejected was actually crafted. This is a case that's been percolating for some time, years really. But as a general rule, prosecutors will attempt to resolve every criminal case by agreement if they can. I prosecuted thousands of people as a federal prosecutor, and resolved the vast majority of those cases by plea agreement. It's an extremely commonly used tool in the federal court system to conclude cases. And it's a practical result of having more cases than any one prosecutor or frankly, all prosecutors across the country can resolve if they had to try them before courts and before juries. There are tools which are part of the plea bargaining process that can be used to resolve the cases and to accomplish the goals that the prosecutor and the defense attorneys have. Used right, plea bargains are the result of both sides taking a hard look at the law and at the evidence in a particular matter. Evaluating the strengths and the weaknesses of the case, determine the goals for the prosecution and defense and assessing the resources that are available to pursue a particular case, as opposed to other cases that you might pursue. High profile cases, as a practical matter, you have sort of an added level of scrutiny. And prosecutors may feel increased pressure to send a message of deterrence and also to send the message that we're not giving anybody special, special treatment. So all that swirling around in a plea bargaining situation is certainly, wasn't this case.

REICHARD: Okay, that’s helpful. But I want to dive into another aspect of this. As I understand it, the original deal had two parts- probation for the tax misdemeanors, and a “diversion agreement” for the gun felony. DOJ wouldn’t prosecute if Hunter did a two-year pretrial diversion program. What is that and why did the judge say no? 

HIGDON: Well, the goal of a diversion agreement is to allow some mercy, if you will, to someone who, perhaps a prosecution is not going to achieve a good result for them or for the government, but yet their situation needs to be addressed. And so you try to find a way through an agreement and this is legally permitted to avoid charges, you leave them kind of hanging over the individual's head until they show a pattern and a long term good performance according to the terms you negotiate. But really when you have to look at the entire arrangement that was in front of the judge in this case, to understand how it why she rejected it. So here, they agreed to defer his prosecution, require him to comply with certain rules in return for an agreement to dismiss his case in 24 months when the agreement ends, if he's successful. And where this gets unusual is that the parties, the prosecution and the defense, agreed to tie the two agreements together when they wouldn't normally be linked. The prosecutors agreed not to bring additional charges on the facts laid out in the addenda to the two agreements. In other words, this is all that's going to happen to him and all we're going to base it on it both as to the tax charges and the gun charge. And there will be consequences. He'll get the benefits if he complies with the agreements. And that's not unusual. But rather than leave that up to the court and the plea agreement, the document which the court normally reviews and is involved with, they're silent in that agreement on what happens if Mr. Biden breaches the plea agreement. But in the agreement that would not normally be before the court, they included the process for determining whether there is a breach of that agreement and tasked the judge with making a determination as to whether there was a breach in the future and made that a condition to the filing of any firearms charges. And that's authority that is not normally invested with the court, but in the executive branch, here the Justice Department under our constitutional principle called separation of powers, and that's what upset the deal. 

REICHARD: Anything else about this case listeners should keep in mind as it continues to unfold?

HIGDON: Well, so if the court had accepted the arrangement last week when they were in court, it would have run through at least July of 2025. And I suspect that they fear that any new administration that comes in might have a different view of the matter and might look to void the agreement based upon some type of violation if one occurs, resume the prosecution of Mr. Biden for the gun charge, which would then have him facing jail time. And so I think that's probably the political drag that the prosecutor was referring to when asked that question about the judge.

REICHARD: Bobby Higdon is a former federal prosecutor now in private practice in North Carolina. Bobby, thank you for your time!

HIGDON: Thank you, Mary.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: Transgenderism for minors.

Last week, a congressional subcommittee clashed during a hearing on transgender policies for young people. The hearing featured testimony from a range of witnesses.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: One of the witnesses defending transgenderism was Myriam Reynolds. She’s the mother of a daughter now identifying as a boy. Reynolds contends her child’s life was saved by the transition, and the process wasn’t as manipulative as some have claimed.

MYRIAM REYNOLDS: I want to make it clear that the care we received was slow, very thoughtful, provided with the utmost care and consideration. There was no rush. Absolutely no coercion, lots of double-checking, and making sure we were all on the same page.

EICHER: But other witnesses argued that the core issue here isn’t process, but the legality of transgender procedures themselves. One of those witnesses was Chloe Cole. She underwent hormonal changes and a double mastectomy at age 15. Cole has since de-transitioned and become as she puts it an advocate for victims.

CHLOE COLE: I used to believe that I was born in the wrong body, and the adults in my life, whom I trusted, affirmed my belief and this caused me lifelong, irreversible harm. I speak to you today as a victim of one of the biggest medical scandals in the history of the United States of America.

REICHARD: Many states have grappled with how best to approach transgender procedures like the ones experienced by Cole. As of July, nineteen states have taken steps to curtail or ban transgender medical practices. But at the federal level there’s little consensus on what should be allowed.

EICHER: Opponents of the practices say there’s no way for minors to fully understand the implications. More concerning still, many in Congress fear minors may feel pressured. Louisiana Representative Mike Johnson opened the hearing by describing the dangers.

MIKE JOHNSON: Today we see adults inflicting unspeakable harms on helpless children to affirm the adult’s own worldview—that gender is somehow fluid, that sex can be surgically altered, that there are no lasting consequences to all this madness as a result of the sex change procedures.

REICHARD: New York Representative Jerry Nadler disagrees sharply with Johnson. He contends transgender procedures should not be curtailed because they limit parental choice.

JERRY NADLER: I trust parents and medical professionals, not politicians, to make decisions about their children's health when it comes to gender affirming care. And so does the Constitution.

EICHER: Shannon Minter, director of an LGBT group, made the same point in his testimony.

SHANNON MINTER: You know, parents should have the freedom to make health care decisions for their transgender children. Parents want what's best for their children. Americans differ about a lot of things, but there is one point on which we strongly agree and that is that parents, not the government, are best situated to make medical decisions for their own children.

REICHARD: But not everyone agrees that the so-called medical consensus is correct. Jennifer Bauwens of the Family Research Council says it’s politics, not medicine, that is driving the medical associations.

JENNIFER BAUWENS: The term evidence-based does not mean that this practice is standing on the merits of solid research findings addressing gender dysphoria. Instead it refers to a vote by those who are ideological supporters of the practice. Compared to other psychological disorders found in the DSM-5-TR, gender dysphoria is currently being treated with the most invasive invasive interventions connected to a psychological issue with the lowest quality of evidence to support that practice.

EICHER: At the core of the hearing was a debate over what counts as care and who gets to decide. Nadler pointed out what he thought was an irony: that Republicans traditionally oppose government intervention into family matters. Republicans, on the other hand, say there are some things even parents should not have the right to do. Chairman Johnson once again.

JOHNSON: Our American legal system recognizes the important public interest in protecting children from abuse and physical harm. No matter how liberated you may be, you still don't have the legal right to ignore seat belt safety laws or minimum driving age laws or drinking and smoking laws for your kids. No parent has a constitutional right to injure their children.

REICHARD: With a Republican-controlled House and a Democratic Senate, legislation on the issue is unlikely to go anywhere.

But the debate has begun.

JOHNSON: Without objection, this hearing is adjourned.

EICHER: Thanks to Leo Briceno in our Washington Bureau. He helped pull this story together. If you’d like to read more political stories free, you can subscribe to our politics newsletter we call The Stew. A fresh helping each week. You can find a link in today’s episode description.

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s one thing for an editor to mark something in red, you fix the problem, no one’s the wiser. But what happens when you work in paint?

Welp, sometimes some really un-cool things.

See, a town in Massachusetts hired someone to paint a warning on the street to let drivers know they’re coming near a school. So the painter purposed to spell out S-C-H-O-O-L.

All the letters accounted for. Just in the wrong order.

He painted “S-H-C-O-O-L”  Shh, cool. Not cool.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: No!

EICHER: So, what do you think? Repent and repaint? Or just leave it.

REICHARD: As a lawyer I say leaving it is sh-cool and unusual punishment.

EICHER: She said it.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Tuesday, August 1st. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day. Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Coming next on The World and Everything in It: a centennial celebration. Our Classic Book of the Month for August hits 100 years old this year. WORLD’s Emily Whitten says the book is dated in some ways, but not out of date.

EMILY WHITTEN, REVIEWER: Our Classic Book of the Month is J. Gresham Machen’s 1923 book Christianity and Liberalism. Machen was a professor at Princeton at the time, and his calling out of liberalism made plenty of waves. Here’s an audiobook clip read by Ray Porter.

AUDIOBOOK: The great redemptive religion which has always been known as Christianity is battling against a totally diverse type of religious belief, which is only the more destructive of the Christian faith because it makes use of traditional Christian terminology. This modern non-redemptive religion is called “modernism” or “liberalism.”

The title Christianity and Liberalism conveys with it the idea that Christianity is not Liberalism. They’re two separate, contradictory belief systems. Machen really grappled with “modern liberal religion” as a college student in Germany. His professors there were winsome, brilliant scholars. But eventually, he saw through their philosophy.

AUDIOBOOK: But manifold as are the forms in which the movement appears, the root of the movement is one; the many varieties of modern liberal religion are rooted in naturalism–that is in the denial of any entrance of the creative power of God.

We often use the word “liberalism” today for leftist or Democratic political beliefs. That’s not what Machen means here. He refers to theological beliefs that tried to reconcile Christianity with science—or the naturalistic philosophy—of his day. It’s not as popular now, but you can still find that kind of liberalism at your local university or a mainline church down the street.

Ligon Duncan is an author and pastor. He’s also President of Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi. He warns Christians to watch out for liberalism even in evangelical spaces.

LIGON DUNCAN: You can listen to popular evangelical preachers today saying exactly what theological liberals were saying at the beginning of the 20th century and so, the indifference to doctrine, the indifference to truth claims of Scripture. What is often called progressive Christianity today is dumbed-down just theological liberalism.

Machen’s book is short, with only seven chapters. But each chapter takes on a crucial point of contention.

DUNCAN: He walks you through the issue of doctrine, does doctrine matter? Then he says, what, what does theological liberalism think about God? And what does theological liberalism think about humanity? Then he looks at the Bible and then he'll eventually look at salvation and the church.

Duncan especially appreciates the chapter on Christ. Liberals often see Jesus as “an example for faith, not the object of faith.” They admit Jesus was a great man, but they might argue his death didn’t atone for sin and that trust in him doesn’t save. Duncan reads Machen on this point.

DUNCAN: Without the conviction of sin, there can be no appreciation of the uniqueness of Jesus. It is only when we contrast our sinfulness with his holiness that we appreciate the gulf which separates him from the rest of the Children of men. And without the conviction of sin, there can be no understanding of the occasion for the supernatural act of God. Without the conviction of sin, the good news of redemption seems to be an idle tale.

Duncan first read the book in seminary in the 1980s. Machen helped him understand his own religion professors back then. This year, because of the 100th anniversary, he read the book again with faculty at RTS.

DUNCAN: You'd be surprised how many professors at RTS have that story of growing up in a mainline Protestant setting, not hearing the gospel, hearing the claims of liberal Christianity made. And they're deeply gratified when somebody like Machin who cannot be gainsaid for his intellect, for his academic accomplishment is able to grapple with that, you know, in such a way to make a compelling argument.

Professor Machen won’t be a great fit for everyone. If your family or church has teens headed to college soon, I recommend Surviving Religion 101 by Michael Kruger instead. Kruger treats some of the same arguments in a simpler way. He’s also less stringent in his rhetoric. Duncan says this of Machen:

DUNCAN: I wouldn't encourage every seminarian to adopt his tone in addressing every problem in the church. Walter Lippman, a very well known writer says this, this book is a cool and stringent defense of orthodox protestantism. Well, it is definitely a stringent defense of Orthodox Protestant that is an understatement, so that definitely hit me.

But anyone headed to seminary or ministering in a campus setting should consider reading this book. Duncan often hands it to his RTS students, even though in other writings Machen did express racist views.

DUNCAN: We have a letter in hand from Machen to his mother in which he complains about the admission of an African American student into the dorms at Princeton.

Still, that doesn’t change the book’s helpfulness in fighting liberalism.

DUNCAN: The president of the National Baptist Convention USA is a graduate of RTS twice. And interestingly, he is fighting a battle against theological liberalism in some of the educational institutions of his denomination. And so he finds Machen very helpful though he and I would both agree that Machen was wrong about his racial attitudes.

This year, both Ligonier Ministries and Westminster Seminary Press are releasing new versions of our Classic Book of the Month. So I encourage you to pick up a copy or listen to an audiobook version, a teaching series, or even a podcast. However you engage, I hope J. Gresham Machen’s Christianity and Liberalism might help you see both Christ–and his counterfeits–a little more clearly.

I’m Emily Whitten.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Tuesday, August 1st. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHR, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. WORLD Opinions writer and proud Tennessean Dan Darling took exception to a magazine writer who questioned whether his state is even a democracy. After all, it’s a virtual one-party state!

REICHARD: Like California. And New York. And Illinois.

I think I could go on.

Which is Darling’s point, and he’s volunteered to stick up for the Volunteer State.

DAN DARLING, COMMENTATOR: “Is Tennessee a Democracy?” That’s the headline of a recent article in The Atlantic by Anne Applebaum. Applebaum’s sometimes thoughtful work has chronicled the horrors of Russian gulags and Stalin’s starving of Ukraine. Here, though, she brings her focus on democracy, not to the many failed states worldwide, but surprisingly, to the Volunteer State—Tennessee.

From Applebaum’s analysis, one could think that Tennessee is joining the ranks of tyrannical regimes. She is exercised by the messy conflicts in county board races, the conservative state legislature, and state government in general. She is particularly outraged by the governor of the state signing legislation restricting abortion and so-called gender transition care for minors. Now Progressive-majority states, such as Illinois or California, passing progressive legislation doesn’t seem to signal those blue bastions are sliding into authoritarianism. But the land of mountains, music, and medical innovation suddenly seems third world to Appelbaum and the Atlantic.

As someone who lived in Nashville for nearly a decade, I found The Atlantic’s description of a dystopia to be laughingly at odds with my family’s experience. Every community has flaws, but we found Tennessee well-managed and enjoyable.

The most significant sign that democracy has eroded in Tennessee, according to Applebaum, is its one-party rule. It has a Republican governor and legislature. Republican appointees run the state supreme court. The state’s nine-member U.S. House delegation contains eight Republicans; unlike in other states, the attorney general and secretary of state in Tennessee are appointed, and they are both Republicans too.

Tennessee, once ruled by moderate Democrats, now boasts unified Republican control of state government. But this is far from the only state in the union to experience one-party rule. California, which used to send Republican presidents to Washington, and Illinois, once a bipartisan capital of corruption, are both now solid blue in nearly every statewide office.

This sorting reflects years of Americans moving according to political preferences. Tennessee has been the beneficiary of blue-state refugees escaping draconian COVID restrictions, increasingly left-wing public school propaganda, and high costs of living in progressive states. Tennessee is among the states with the highest population gains.

This trend may or may not be healthy as America further polarizes. It’s understandable to lament the lack of bipartisan give-and-take in states like California or Tennessee. But in one-party states often there are subgroups within majorities that make the politics as fractious and messy as the swing states. The idea that the Volunteer State’s increasingly conservative makeup is somehow a malicious assault on democracy is preposterous. What is happening in Tennessee is the essence of democracy, as people vote to elect leaders that reflect their values. It’s not that Applebaum is witnessing the end of democracy. It’s that she’s witnessing an outcome of democracy that she doesn’t like.

Her perspective reflects a certain bias, where progressive one-party rule seems normal. But in our system of government, living with policies we often dislike is a feature, not a bug. The solution is to make the case, persuade your fellow citizens, and vote to change the outcome.

Preserving democracy is an important goal, but hyperbole and misrepresentation will not get us there.

I’m Daniel Darling.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: The Supreme Court shut down President Biden’s plan to cancel student debt. But he’s going to try a different way. We’ll talk about it on Washington Wednesday.

And, a Japanese photographer documents the work of the Navajo code talkers who helped to end WWII. 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 Psalmist writes: Blessed be the Lord! For he has heard the voice of my pleas for mercy. The Lord is my strength and my shield; in him my heart trusts... Psalm 28, verses 6 and some of 7.

Go now in grace and peace.

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