The World and Everything in It: January 31, 2024

PREROLL: The World and Everything in It is made possible by listeners like me. My name is Chuck Warbington, and I serve the Lawrenceville, Georgia community as city manager. And I hope you enjoy this program.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning! Border reform bogged down in the Senate, but it’s really an issue of math.

AUDIO: This is a unique opportunity where a divided government has given us an opportunity to get an outcome.

NICK EICHER, HOST: That’s ahead today on Washington Wednesday. Also today, World Tour. And...

SOUND: [Igniter and torch]

...the thrill of going up, up, and away.

AUDIO: We’re sponsors of the balloon race. And so she got the opportunity to go up!

And WORLD Opinions commentator Jerry Bowyer calling out religious discrimination at Apple.

REICHARD: It’s Wednesday, January 31st. 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: Up next, Kent Covington with today’s news.

AUDIO: [gavel] A quorum being present, the committee will be in order.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Mayorkas » On Capitol Hill last night, a marathon session of the House Homeland Security Committee.

AUDIO: The committee is meeting today to consider H.Res. 863, impeaching Alejandro Nicholas Mayorkas, the Secretary of Homeland Security, for high crimes and misdemeanors.

Lawmakers debated into the early hours of this morning with Chairman Mark Green arguing that Mayorkas has willfully refused to enforce immigration laws.

GREEN: Secretary Mayorkas is the very type of public official the framers feared, someone who would cast aside the laws passed by a co-equal branch of government, replacing those with his own preferences, hurting his fellow Americans in the process.

Republicans are charging the secretary with refusal to follow the law and a breach of public trust.

But the committee’s top Democrat, Congressman Benie Thompson countered:

THOMPSON: Neither of the impeachment charges are a high crime and misdemeanor under Article 2 of the Constitution. No serious person believes they are.

Democrats argued that carrying out the policies of his boss, President Biden, is not an impeachable offense and called the entire proceeding a political stunt.

A full floor vote on the articles of impeachment could happen as early as next week.

Border » Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer says negotiators are close to finishing work on a supplemental national security bill … that would tackle the border crisis while also funding aid to Ukraine.

SCHUMER: We are approaching the finish line, but the work is not done. We’ll continue to finish the supplemental.

But House Speaker Mike Johnson says from what he’s heard so far about the Senate bill, he does not believe it would secure the border.

JOHNSON: We have to insist — We have a responsibility, a duty, to the American people to insist that the border catastrophe is ended. And just trying to whitewash that or to do something for political purposes is not going to cut it.

And that, he said, would be a non-starter in the House.

President Biden said this week, “I’ve done all I can do” to secure the border. He suggested there’s nothing more he can do without new legislation.

White House Deputy Press Secretary Olivia Dalton:

DALTON: If speaker Johnson is serious about securing the border, which he also said this morning that he is, then he should work across the aisle with us.

But Republicans say the president already has all the authority he needs to curb the border crisis, but chooses not to and is trying to shift the blame to GOP lawmakers.

Trump Illinois » Donald Trump will appear on Illinois’ presidential primary ballots despite an effort to disqualify him. WORLD’s Josh Schumacher has more.

JOSH SCHUMACHER: The State’s Board of Elections ruled unanimously to keep Trump on the ballots. The ruling came after the board’s hearing officer recommended removing Trump's name.

He suggested Trump’s actions surrounding the Capitol riot qualified as insurrection under the 14th Amendment to the U-S Constitution.

The U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear arguments next week on whether Colorado can remove Trump from its state’s primary ballots.

For WORLD, I’m Josh Schumacher.

Iran » In the wake of an Iran-backed drone attack that killed three U.S. service members on Sunday, Republican lawmakers say they want answers from the White House.

Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell says the Biden administration has a duty to inform Congress of what its strategy will be going forward to deter threats from Iran and its proxies.

McConnell said President Biden’s existing strategy clearly has not worked. And he said recent comments by top officials in his administration are only making matters worse.

MCCONNELL: Their public hand-wringing and fear of escalation sends exactly the wrong message to Tehran and other enemies of America.

The White House has vowed to answer the attack “decisively,” but has repeatedly said its “focus” is to not escalate tensions or expand conflict in the Middle East.

Meantime, President Biden on Tuesday spoke with the families of the troops killed in the drone attack in Jordan.

National Security Council spokesman John Kirby:

KIRBY: He expressed to them how proud we all are of their service, how we mourn and feel sorrow over their loss.

The president will attend a ceremony on Friday transferring the remains of the fallen troops to their families.

HALEVI: [Speaking Hebrew]

Israel covert operation » Israel’s top general Herzi Halevi says Israeli Defense Forces (or IDF) will not allow terrorists to hide inside hospitals.

His remarks came just hours after IDF troops carried out a covert operation in the West Bank. They walked into a hospital in the town of Jenin dressed as women and medical workers.

SOUND: [Shouting]

The troops killed three Palestinian militants that they say were planning to carry out a terrorist attack.

Hamas claimed one of the men as a member of its forces while the Islamic Jihad group said the other two belonged to its armed branch.

UNRWA » The United Nations is working to convince global leaders not to cut off funding for its Palestinian relief agency. But more than a dozen nations have already done so in the wake of serious allegations that some of the agency’s staff actively took part in the October 7th terrorist attack against Israel.

U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric:

DUJARRIC: We expect the secretary general to brief the member states on the actions being taken to deal with the allegations regarding some UNRWA staff. And we’ll of course listen to their concerns.

The agency, known as UNRWA has already fired at least nine workers accused of aiding Hamas, and the U.N. condemned the “abhorrent alleged acts.”

The U.N. workers are accused of crimes including kidnapping and actively taking part in the assaults and massacre of Israeli citizens last October.

Neuralink implant » Elon Musk’s company Neuralink made history this week by placing a computer chip to a human brain that could allow recipients to control computers and phones just by thinking. WORLD’s Kristen Flavin has that story.

KRISTEN FLAVIN: Musk announced that the first-ever recipient of the new device called “Telepathy” underwent a successful surgery and is recovering well.

He said initial results show “promising neuron spike detection.”

The computer chip is about the size of a large coin. It’s implanted in the skull attached to thin wires that connect to the brain.

Neuralink is working to connect the human nervous system to a computer system hoping to cure brain disorders like ALS.

The FDA gave Musk’s company the green light to embed the device in human brains last year after testing the device on monkeys.

For WORLD, I’m Kristen Flavin.

I’m Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: Senate politics on Washington Wednesday. Plus, World Tour.

This is The World and Everything in It.

I'm Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: Senate politics on Washington Wednesday. Plus, World Tour.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Wednesday the 31st of January, 2024. This is WORLD Radio and we thank you for listening. Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. First up on The World and Everything in It: Washington Wednesday.

Last week, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell played up the benefits of a narrowly divided Senate and the prospect for compromise on the border.

MCCONELL: If this were not divided government, we wouldn’t have an opportunity to do anything about the border. In fact, I don’t think we’d get 60 votes for any border plan if we had a fully Republican government. So this is a unique opportunity where a divided government has given us an opportunity to get an outcome.

REICHARD: While some Republicans would prefer to pass reforms much tougher than the ones likely to be in the final deal, many are pleased to be doing something.

EICHER: One of those Republicans is Senator Pete Ricketts of Nebraska. Ricketts is a former governor of Nebraska, and he’s been in the Senate about a year now … filling the unexpired term of former Senator Ben Sasse

REICHARD: WORLD’s Washington Bureau reporter Carolina Lumetta interviewed the senator in his office on Capitol Hill. Here’s part of their conversation.

CAROLINA LUMETTA: ​​So talk me through some of just the highs and lows of the past year. How would you characterize your first year in this office?

SEN. PETE RICKETTS: Well, it’s learning a new job. And that’s a steep learning curve, especially in the U.S. Senate. You know, it’s different from being governor. So in the executive branch, you’re much more about running operations. It’s about urgency, getting things done right away. The legislative branch is slower. And the Senate, by design, is even slower than a regular legislative branch. And so it’s about committee meetings and hearings and writing legislation and writing letters and developing consensus. So you have to take maybe a little bit of a different perspective on how you’re doing your public service. But we deal with incredibly important issues. So for example, our border right now is an absolute catastrophe, and having the opportunity to weigh in on how we fix that, to be able to work with my colleagues on how we can get some legislation to really force the Biden administration to do something that they should have been doing all along. So that’s an example. You know, when we have 300,000 people come across in the month of December alone, that’s about the size of the city of Lincoln, right? That’s how many people are coming across our border, and mostly unvetted and released into our country. It is a huge national security risk. I get to be a part of solving that problem, and that that’s what makes this job exciting.

LUMETTA: You mentioned that the Senate is a slow process, and intentionally so and that makes sense. We don’t want new laws or new legislation just popping up that nobody gets a chance to see. But there’s also a sense that it is taking so long to fund the government, to address the border. So what’s your impression of kind of the push and pull of urgency versus being deliberate?

RICKETTS: Well, the system really is broken. And in part, the blame can be laid upon Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. We’re supposed to pass 12 appropriations bills every year to fund government, both in the House and in the Senate. Then they’re supposed to do a conference report, resolve differences, back to the House and Senate and ultimately to the President’s desk. The last time that worked was 1997. And Chuck Schumer, in particular, has had an opportunity this year to make it work right. And he’s refused to take it. All 12 bills for the first time in five years got passed out of the Senate Appropriations Committee - many of them unanimously, many of them with only a dissenting vote. And so these bills were all passed out in June and July. And yet, we didn’t start taking them up until October after the end of the fiscal year. In fact, we last voted on a package of three of these appropriations bills, three of the twelve on November 1st. And we have done nothing since then - over two months, where Chuck Schumer has not brought up a single appropriations bill to be voted on. Now, we can’t help what goes on on the House side, but we absolutely could take care of business on the Senate side, and Chuck Schumer is not even bringing these bills up for a vote. Now, there are things we could do to reform this process to make the system work better. But if you have a leader like Chuck Schumer, who is not going to do his job, who was not going to bring these bills up. That’s why we get the broken process that we have. So there is lots of opportunities to improve things around here. But part of it is we have, Republicans have got to get the majority so we can start making a difference here.

LUMETTA: In terms of internal politics, too, a lot of stories that I’ve covered over the past year have been a lot of, at least from the perception of the rest of the country, is Republicans fighting with each other. Do you think the Republican Party is at this inflection point that they need to start unifying or they’re just going to keep splintering?

RICKETTS: Well, first of all, you always want people to present differing points of view. Because you don’t want to get into this idea of groupthink, where nobody questions what you’re trying to do, and you make a mistake. The famous example is the Bay of Pigs invasion, when nobody wanted to tell President Kennedy it was a bad idea, and they went forward with it, and it was a disaster. So you want people to question ideas. The problem is not how you’re fighting, but also, how you do it. Like, can you, can you have those disagreements and still remain a unified caucus, and that’s what I think we have to focus on as Republicans and understand we’re gonna have differences, and sometimes I’m just not going to vote with my Republican colleagues and vice versa. But we want people to bring up alternatives, because that’s how you get better ideas. I think, frankly, the way Republicans see how to run the country is going to be best for the long term health of our nation, because we are focused on how can we be economically sustainable, right? We can’t just continue to spend money like we have been, and think it’s not going to have an effect. It will. It’s, we’re burdening our great-grandchildren with debt they will never hope to pay off, and that will undermine our national security, it’s going to ruin our economy. Those are the things that, you know, I think Republicans, keep Republicans up at night. We’ve got to have a strong defense, to be able to make sure that we have a safe country. We’ve got to have a strong border, because a country without a border isn’t a country. And I think those are things that we have to continue to keep, as you know, the top level goals. And if we do that we may disagree on how to get there for a lot of those things. But if we can stay focused on those big picture goals for what we need to accomplish in this country, we'll be successful as a party.

LUMETTA: What about bipartisan work? Is there room for that in today’s Congress?

RICKETTS: Well, in fact, that’s the only way to get things done in the Senate, right? Because you need 60 votes to get anything done, and the Democrats only have 51. So, now there are some things, some things they can do to kind of get around that occasionally. But by and large, if you want to get a bill passed, you have to have 60 votes. And that’s where, you know, for example, if you look at my Flex Fuel Fairness Act, I’m doing that with Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat from Minnesota, to be able to get that passed.

LUMETTA: And lastly, any predictions for 2024?

RICKETTS: It is going to be a very tumultuous year as far as our own internal politics; I don’t see the country getting less polarized. And just in general, it’s going to be a very dangerous time in the world. And we can already see that. And frankly, again, I’ll lay the blame primarily at the foot of President Biden for being so weak in his appeasement-first foreign policy. But obviously, we’ve got the ongoing war with Russia’s unprovoked attack on Ukraine. We’ve got the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel on October 7, we’ve seen Iran attacking our people, our soldiers in Syria and Iraq, we see the Houthis attacking commercial shipping in the Red Sea. We see China being more and more belligerent with every passing day, threatening to take Taiwan by force. I mean, it’s going to be a very dangerous time in the world this year and really, for the foreseeable future, which is why it’s important that we get some of these policy issues right.

LUMETTA: Great. Well, thank you so much for speaking with me today.

RICKETTS: Yep. My pleasure. Thanks for coming in.

REICHARD: That was Senator Pete Ricketts of Nebraska speaking with Washington Bureau Reporter, Carolina Lumetta.

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

AUDIO: [Protest]

ONIZE OHIKERE: ECOWAS withdrawal — We start today with celebrations in Niger’s capital of Niamey. On Sunday, Niger and two of its neighbors, Mali and Burkina Faso, withdrew from the regional West African economic bloc known as ECOWAS.

OFFICIAL: [Speaking French]

A minister with Mali’s military government announcing the withdrawal, which he says the junta leaders made out of concern for the people.

The three Sahel nations have all faced military takeovers since 2020.

ECOWAS suspended their membership and also imposed heavy sanctions on the countries. The military leaders responded by hardening their stances and formed a joint Alliance of Sahel States.

Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger all struggle with jihadist violence. The junta leaders have argued that they plan to resolve their security crises before holding democratic elections.

ACTIVIST: [Speaking French]

This Nigerien activist says ECOWAS tried to suffocate the people with sanctions and he looked forward to possible bilateral agreements with other nations.

ECOWAS has said it remains committed to resolving the political impasse in all three countries.

AUDIO: [Street sound]

Turkey church attack — Over in Istanbul, Turkey, authorities are still investigating a Sunday church attack that left one person dead.

Security footage showed two masked men entering the Roman Catholic Church of Santa Maria, while priests conducted Mass.

The suspects opened fire, sending worshippers to the floor for cover. Both assailants left shortly after.

Turkey’s interior minister on Monday said authorities detained two Islamic State group suspects linked to the shooting.

INTERIOR MINISTER: [Speaking Turkish]

He says here that the two suspects are foreign nationals from Tajikistan and Russia.

Turkish authorities detained more than 50 other suspects and also banned media coverage of the attack.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack.

AUDIO: [Highway sound]

French protests — In France, protesting farmers have used tractors to block major highways in the country, restricting traffic in and out of Paris.

The farmers began the demonstrations weeks ago to demand better pay, less red tape, and protection from cheap imports.

Agricultural unions vowed to begin what they called a “siege” on Paris this week.

After a crisis meeting, French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin announced defensive security measures.

DARMANIN: [Speaking French]

He says here that authorities have mobilized 15,000 police officers and also deployed armored vehicles.

Similar farmer protests have also hit other European countries.

AUDIO: [Tractor horns]

In Belgium, farmers blocked a major highway with dozens of tractors and piles of straw.

AUDIO: [Protest]

Honduras femicides — We wrap up today in Honduras, where some 300 women dressed in black protested against rising femicides—that is, the targeted killing of women.

Protesters held a black banner with the names of some of the women murdered last year as they marched to the National Congress in the capital of Tegucigalpa.

The march last week coincided with the Honduran Women’s Day celebration. The Central American nation has the fifth-highest femicide rate in the world.

Police reports say at least 15 women were murdered in the first 15 days of this year.

Authorities recorded 380 femicides last year.

AUDIO: [Protest]

Over in Kenya, similar protests filled the streets over the weekend.

Kenyan media outlets have reported the deaths of at least 14 women this year alone.

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

NICK EICHER, HOST: “Bad company ruins good morals,” the Apostle Paul teaches. We know that’s true. Today, an example from the animal world.

Consider: Five people bequeathed parrots to a zoo in England, but the foul language the African Grays learned at home didn’t stay at home.

Steve Nichols is zookeeper. He told the BBC:

NICHOLS: The African Grays, it’s really good, because whoever teaches them, that’s the voice that they have.

So he tried rehabilitating the blue talkers by isolating them. That just made them worse.

Then they put the naughty birds with other birds that make the sounds of people laughing or that repeat nursery rhymes.

But the problem here is the birds’ exposure to the public who love the bad language and egg them on. Again, bad company.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Wednesday, January 31st. 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.

This week on Concurrently: The News Coach Podcast, Kelsey Reed joins professor, author, and pastor Jim Hamilton. They talk about the transformative power of stories—even stories we might not expect. Here’s a preview.

HAMILTON: One of these ancient men made the comment he said, "My father wanted me to be a good man, and so he had me learn the whole of Homer by heart." Now the thing about story is that embedded in the story are all these assumptions about what you should value and what you should regard as noble and heroic and these kinds of things. And if you know the Bible, and if you embrace the Bible's values, and then you go compare the story of the Iliad and the Odyssey, I think we would say well, what they consider righteous and noble and excellent and good is actually really wicked and proud and with all that said, it is still the case that Homer's breadth of mind and exquisite descriptions are life-altering and, and heart opening and glorious to experience. So there's value in reading Homer, even though we don't think learning his stories is going to produce good people. But that's also useful for us to know that, you know, there was a world, the Greco-Roman world that thought these stories would lead to people being good.

You can hear the entire episode of Concurrently today wherever you get your podcasts. And find out more at concurrentlypodcast.com.

EICHER: Coming next on The World and Everything in It: Hot air balloons. They’re graceful. Colorful. They deny the pull of gravity.

And they offer recreation, as well as competition opportunities for their owners. But what’s the real draw for balloon enthusiasts?

REICHARD: WORLD Senior Writer Kim Henderson takes us to a hot air balloon festival to find out.

KIM HENDERSON: The Natchez, Mississippi, Balloon Festival is an annual event—nearly 40 years strong. It draws participants from all over the United States. The balloonists enjoy flying over historical homes and the Mighty Mississippi.

PILOT: The river’s a pretty challenging flying event for a lot of pilots. It’s very intimidating going across the river.

But it’s not the river that’s causing trouble this afternoon. It’s the wind.

JASON: The wind direction is not good from here right now. It’s kind of shifted a little bit, and launching from here will put us out in the forest with no place to land. So we’re going to pack up and move spots.

AUDIO: [Rolling up nylon balloon envelopes]

That’s Jason Gaines. His St. Louis crew is rolling up the huge nylon balloon envelope that’s stretched out across the ground. Their balloon is called “Sugar Momma.”

They’re joking around, having a good time.

MAN: I think the number one word for ballooning is uncertainty.

AUDIO: [PROPELLERS BLOWING AIR INTO ENVELOPE]

A couple miles away, balloonists have decided the conditions are right for flight. One crew is inflating its envelope with air from a large fan.

WOMAN: It’s the same as an airplane propeller, actually. And it really puts out a whole lot of air. And it inflates the balloon much faster.

AUDIO: [FLAME IGNITES AND BLOWS REPEATEDLY]

Next, the roar of burners fills the air.

A man is perched near the edge of the balloon’s envelope. He’s aiming two propane burners at the air inside, warming it with the flames. That’s what makes the balloon rise.

Before long, several balloons are upright, baskets attached. Passengers are climbing aboard. And they’re up!

CROWD: Bye, balloon! Bye, balloon.

Then the chase is on. It’s hard to tell where the balloons are going. Trees block the view. Traffic. But the official chase teams have radio and phone contact.

A Memphis balloon named “Sky Bird” lands on a piece of church property. It was a short, but memorable, ride. Especially for a young woman who went up … and for her co-workers waiting on the ground.

WOMAN: She’s our front office manager. And we’re sponsors of the balloon race. And she got to go up!

WOMAN: It was amazing. It’s breathtaking. All the views in the air, compared to on the ground. It’s amazing.

Walt Rudy is another pilot here for the festival. His love of hot air balloons started when he was in high school.

RUDY: I worked for a regional pizza chain out of Champaign, Illinois, called Garcia's Pizza in a Pan. It was the home of the Flying Tomato Brothers, because they incorporated (and this is back in the 70s) a hot air balloon in a lot of their promotionals. It was called the Flying Tomato.

Rudy was part of the chase crew for the Flying Tomato. Since then, he’s racked up 39 years flying over America’s heartland.

He can tell you the history of ballooning.

RUDY: Do you know who the very first passengers were that flew in a hot air balloon in 1783? The very first passengers were actually a rooster, a sheep, and a duck.

He can tell you the rules.

RUDY: Balloons are aircraft. So they require an annual inspection or an inspection every 100 hours of flying time.

He can tell you about the balloon itself.

RUDY: We go by cubic feet for how we size balloons and that goes, it's 1000s of cubic feet. Our particular balloon is 105,000 cubic feet in volume, which means 105,000 basketballs can fit inside the envelope of the balloon.

Hot air ballooning is an expensive sport. It’s also an endangered sport. Fans from its 1970s heyday are aging out, and new enthusiasts are needed.

Ballooning has risks, too. In January, three passengers and their pilot died in an Arizona balloon crash.

Rudy says that’s very uncommon.

RUDY: We hit some power lines one time back in the ’90s, but everyone was safe. And that was weather related, not bad weather, just weather that we didn't understand at the time.

Today’s balloonists are using today’s technology. Rudy has an iPad app for ground tracking, and they have better maps.

RUDY: We have tools that tell us, that forecast the winds at various heights in the altitudes so that it gives us an idea of what to expect.

For Rudy and his wife, Deb, ballooning is something they can enjoy together. One simple, yet romantic, flight stands out in Deb’s memory.

DEB: We didn't have any crew that evening, so he took his bicycle. And he and I inflated the balloon by ourselves. He strapped the bicycle on the back of the basket. And we got to fly together. That was really kind of fun. And landed. And then he rode his bicycle back and got the van and we packed up.

Ballooning alone is a rare thing for the Rudys, though.

They’re usually up in the air with passengers, and their bird’s-eye views are filtered by a Christian lens.

Rudy says in the basket, it’s easy to believe.

RUDY: I've seen some very beautiful stuff. We are blessed because God has provided us with a platform to see things that we can share with others that most people aren't able to see.

MUSIC: [Up, Up, and Away — The 5th Dimension]

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Kim Henderson in Natchez, Mississippi.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Wednesday January 31st. 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: Religious bias in big tech.

WORLD Opinions commentator Jerry Bowyer says it’s past time for investors with a stake in corporations like Apple to demand protections for religious freedom.

JERRY BOWYER, COMMENTATOR: Being a shareholder of a company is a bit like being a citizen of a country. For example, shareholders have a right to vote at annual meetings. They can elect representatives to the board of directors. In addition, shareholders can put their own questions on the ballot. Instead of just responding to management’s agenda, investors set the agenda.

For roughly four decades, that authority has been used almost exclusively by the cultural left. The center and right simply did not know how to do it, nor even that it was an option.

That is now changing. For example, the American Family Association or AFA is an investor in Apple stock. They recently submitted a proposal that would require Apple to investigate and report on its policies that limit free speech. Apple responded by asking the Securities and Exchange Commission or SEC for permission to ban shareholders from seeing that proposal on their upcoming ballots. Apple claimed that it was already substantially being transparent about its banning criteria.

It’s no wonder the SEC rejected that argument. The reasoning was thoroughly rebutted by Alliance Defending Freedom, which represented AFA before the SEC. The only thing transparent about Apple’s terms of service is that they transparently block pretty much whatever they don’t like, or at least whatever enrages the interest groups to which Apple has given veto power.

For instance, Apple removed an app created for the Manhattan Declaration, which affirmed in a sober and scholarly tone the traditional Christian teaching on same sex-marriage and abortion. Later, Apple temporarily banned LifeSiteNews, another Christian group. At the demand of the Chinese government, Apple removed both a Bible and a Quran app. I have yet to find a single example of similar banning of groups on the left.

The company’s terms of service are shockingly vague. Although the terms of service document claims, “We strongly support all points of view being represented on the App Store,” it goes on to warn that it “will reject apps for any content or behavior that we believe is over the line. What line, you ask? Well, as a Supreme Court justice once said about pornography, ‘I’ll know it when I see it’.” In other words, Apple gives itself an utterly subjective blank check when it comes to banning.

The AFA’s proposal has created a tremendous opportunity for Christians and others of goodwill who are concerned about “cancel culture” in big tech. Their proposal will be voted on in a meeting scheduled for February 28th at noon Eastern, and if you own any Apple shares at all, you can log in with your control number, which comes with your proxy card. Once the meeting starts you can not only vote, but you can ask questions in the portal. Asking questions there is like asking questions at a town hall meeting; it gets noticed.

Many Christian ministries own stocks. They are commonly gifted by donors. Let this be a challenge to other Christian ministries as well. Corporate America is perhaps the largest unreached people group for Christian cultural engagement. AFA is using its shares to win a hearing for religious freedom. Where are the rest of you?

I’m Jerry Bowyer.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: Using technology to keep people connected as they age. We’ll have a report on the pros and cons. And, legal compensation for people injured after receiving a vaccine. You’ll hear from a lawyer who specializes in getting compensation for them. 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: “The Lord is the strength of his people; he is the saving refuge of his anointed. Oh, save your people and bless your heritage! Be their shepherd and carry them forever.” —Psalm 28:8, 9

Go now in grace and peace.

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