The World and Everything in It — July 20, 2020

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

Supreme Court decisions are sometimes decided on unexpected grounds. Today, a hidden nugget in a majority opinion that could influence future cases.

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

Also on the Monday Moneybeat—debts and deficits—when do we start worrying about them?

Plus the WORLD History Book. 400 years ago this week, a farewell sermon by the pastor of the pilgrims headed to the New World.

And a remembrance of theologian J.I. Packer.

REICHARD: It’s Monday, July 20th. 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 has the news.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Ohio Gov. warns of growing virus surge » Ohio Governor Mike DeWine warned on Sunday that his state is on track to become the nation’s next big coronavirus hotspot.

DEWINE: You look at our numbers today versus where Florida was a month ago, we have very similar numbers. Se we’re very, very concerned. It’s occurring in bars. It’s occurring in churches. It’s occurring from people who have traveled out of state. 

But he said much of the spread is caused by people gathering in casual settings like backyards. The GOP governor has ordered face coverings in public for about 60 percent of the state. 

Twenty-eight states now mask mandates. But former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb warned that if many people don’t comply, the mandates might not be enough for containment. 

GOTTLIEB: So if 30 percent of the population won’t wear masks anytime and then you only maybe only have maybe 75 percent compliance among the other portion of the population because nobody’s going to do everything all the time, that might not be enough mask wearing to fully get this under control. 

Trump says he can’t guarantee he’ll accept election results » President Trump, in an interview with Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace said he supports wearing masks. But he still feels that decision is best left to governors. 

Also on Sunday, the president said it’s too early to say whether he’ll accept the results of the November election.

WALLACE: Can you give a direct answer—you will accept the election?
TRUMP: I have to see. Look, I have to see. No, I’m not going to just say yes, I’m not going to say—and I didn’t last time either. 

Joe Biden’s campaign responded—quote—”The American people will decide this election. And the United States government is perfectly capable of escorting trespassers out of the White House.”

The president also scoffed at polls that show him lagging behind Biden. He called them fake polls and noted that he trailed in many surveys four years ago as well. 

Ga. Democrats to decide replacement for late Rep. John Lewis on ballot » Georgia Democrats will gather today to decide a replacement on November’s ballot for the late Congressman John Lewis. He died Friday at the age of 80 after serving for more than 30 years in Congress. 

The civil rights icon helped organize the 1963 March on Washington and suffered a fractured skull during the “Bloody Sunday” clash in Selma, Alabama, two years later. He later worked with Republicans to pass legislation authorizing the Museum of African American History on the National Mall. 

Lewis’ seat will remain empty until Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp schedules a special election.

Meantime, lawmakers and other leaders continued to honor his memory on Sunday. Florida Congresswoman Val Demings told ABC’s This Week…

DEMINGS: It really felt like a part of America died on Friday. John Lewis was larger than life. I don’t think I’ve ever really met anybody like him. I was in awe of him growing up in the 60s.

Funeral plans for Lewis are not yet public. He announced in December that he had advanced pancreatic cancer.

Netanyahu trial set to resume in January » A Jerusalem court ruled on Sunday that the corruption trial of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will resume in January with evidentiary hearings three days per week. 

The trial opened in May after a two-month delay prompted by concerns over the coronavirus.

Netanyahu faces charges including fraud, breach of trust, and accepting bribes. Prosecutors say he accepted lavish gifts from billionaire friends, and offered political favors to media moguls in exchange for favorable press coverage. 

Netanyahu maintains that he’s done nothing wrong, and that the prosecution is politically motivated. 

Blue Jays can’t play home games in Canada » As the big league baseball season begins this week, one team will have to move to a new city. 

The Canadian government told the Blue Jays it would not allow them to play home games in Toronto. Major League Baseball needed an exemption to Canada’s coronavirus quarantine rules, and the government there says it’s not safe for players to travel back and forth from the United States. 

Team President Mark Shapiro said the simplest alternative would be for the Jays to pay at their spring training facility in Dunedin, Florida. But the Sunshine State is now a hotspot for the coronavirus.  

SHAPIRO: Dunedin is the only one that is 100 percent seamless right now and ready to go. That from a player health standpoint has some challenges. 

With the Blue Jays home opener just nine days away, Shapiro said the club is exploring other alternatives. That includes Sahlen Field in Buffalo, New York, which is home to Toronto’s Triple-A minor league team.

I’m Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: an environmental case about more than just streams and forests.

Plus, remembering theologian J.I. Packer.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD: It’s Monday the 20th of July, 2020. Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning—

NICK EICHER: Whoa, whoa, hang on. You sound an awful lot like Mary Reichard!

REICHARD: The very same! Back from vacation. Thought I’d jump in here before you jump out, Mr. Eicher!

EICHER: Yes, taking the whole family to the beach and—as Norah Jones might say—you’ll find me somewhere between my dreams / with the sun on my face. 

Hope the Reichards had some restful time…

REICHARD: Ha! “Restful” isn’t a Reichard trait, really. We did some heavy-duty hiking in the Great Smoky Mountains. 

I also went to my high school reunion on Saturday. By the time you get to the 40th one, all the facades are gone and everybody’s just folks, you know?  

I feel refreshed and it feels good to be back in the saddle here.

EICHER: Well, your legal-eagle partner Jenny Rough assembled last week’s and this week’s Legal Docket‚ so let’s get into it. Her case this week concerns an old yet timely constitutional law issue that goes beyond the dispute between the parties. So let’s listen.

JENNY ROUGH, REPORTER: The Appalachian Trail runs from Georgia to Maine. It’s over 2,000 miles and passes through 14 states. My husband and I have hiked sections of it near our home in Virginia. A wonderful footpath.

Well, the Appalachian Trail ended up being the focal point of a case before the Supreme Court this year: U.S. Forest Service v. Cowpasture River Preservation Association. 

The facts involve a natural gas pipeline. A development company wanted to dig a tunnel through the George Washington National Forest in Virginia. 

The purpose was to run a pipeline from one side of a mountain to the other. 

Part of the Appalachian Trail is in that forest. The pipeline would cross 600-feet underneath it. 

Environmental groups sued to stop it. 

They argued the Forest Service, which owns the forestland, didn’t have the authority to allow the pipeline to run underneath the trail. That the National Park Service has jurisdiction over the trail, so permitting had to come through the channels of that separate federal agency. 

Other federal agencies and acts apply here, too. 

An alphabet soup of them: FERC, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission; MLA, Mineral Leasing Act; NTSA, National Trails System Act. You get the idea. 

The important thing to know is that they conflict and override each other, and have different philosophies and interests. 

Oh, and also? The laws at play here are administered by agencies that fall under the executive branch. 

The nonprofits who sued also have their interests. 

Southern Environmental Law Center lawyer Sarah Francisco explains a common concern with natural gas. This clip is from a video on the law center’s website. 

SARAH FRANCISCO: We’re concerned about impacts to water quality, we’re concerned about impacts to wildlife habitat in the national forests, and people are concerned about the impacts on their land and on the places that are important to them.

The debate over natural gas versus renewable energy has been going on for years. Natural gas is a fossil fuel. Its extraction involves fracking, a process that uses water, sand, and chemicals to crack rock formations deep in the Earth. 

Environmental lawyer Jim Vines says the environmental groups were not playing “small ball” with the case.

VINES: The environmentalists were what I might call, you know, swinging for the fences here, going for the grand slam home run. If they could effectively get the Supreme Court to say that the Appalachian Trail is an impenetrable barrier from Maine to Georgia to get natural gas through to the East Coast that would be huge victory for the environmental community. 

Basically, the 2,000-mile trail would be like an insurmountable rock wall blocking similar projects. Given all that, you might have made the same assumption I did:  

VINES: What looks to be just from the names of the case and a superficial understanding of the nature of it. You would think this is an environmental law case. 

But it’s not.

The court applied property law to resolve the dispute. Here’s a quick summary of the majority opinion.

VINES: If you’re a farmer and you grant somebody horse trail rights for recreational horse riding, you haven’t, so to speak, given away the whole farm. You know, they have rights to traverse your property probably limited by statements about not tearing up the land too much, and things like that. But it’s very restrictive. And so the court’s analogy here is the majority says those are two different things, that ribbon of easement sitting on top of a big land mass are two different land rights, and one party controls one and the other party controls the other.

They kind of finish up with this catchy sentence that says a trail is a trail and land is land.

The easement is a different thing than the land underlying the easement. Case resolved. 

VINES: It seems pretty elementary.

An elementary property issue, yet it took the highest court in the land to resolve it… 

VINES: I thought, there’s, you know, what’s going on here? This is, why is the court suddenly interested in the Appalachian Trail and mineral rights? I mean, it’s not abortion. It’s not flag burning. It’s not First Amendment. 

For me, this all brought to mind the movie Amistad. Anthony Hopkins plays John Quincy Adams arguing before the Supreme Court.

ANTHONY HOPKINS PLAYING JOHN QUINCY ADAMS: Why are we here? How is it that a simple, plain property issue should now find itself so ennobled as to be argued before the Supreme Court of the United States of America?

Amistad is about the evils of slavery. This case is not about that, not by a long shot. But—to quote Adams’ oral argument in the movie again—it might be about the “long, powerful arm of the executive branch.” 

Vines says this Cowpasture opinion could be a carefully planned effort to tee up a significant constitutional law issue: the delegation doctrine. 

Sometimes called the non-delegation doctrine. Or the over-delegation doctrine.

Whatever any given lawyer calls it, here’s how every lawyer defines it: The doctrine holds that the legislative branch can’t delegate its powers to other entities. 

The Cowpasture decision came down 7-2. Justice Clarence Thomas delivered it. 

He could’ve ended the opinion after the property law analysis. But he didn’t.

VINES: And that jumps out at you because if you notice up at the beginning where it talks about what justice joined, the opinion, it lists Justices Bryer and Ginsburg joining the majority. But then in a little footnote, it says Justice Ginsburg does not join Section III(B)(2). Why would she drop out of that? Just that particular portion? And that’s what I think really takes you to the secret of why this case is interesting.

Section III(B)(2) is dicta, not part of the court’s formal ruling. 

VINES: If you scan about halfway through that section you hit the word delegation. And if you have any familiarity with what’s called the non-delegation doctrine that really focuses on what FDR, president Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was trying to do with New Deal legislation in the ‘30s at the heart of the Depression. Basically what was going on there is the Roosevelt administration was trying to do things to help the country get back on its feet. And they were creating a lot of executive branch agencies to have a lot of authority over things, like setting prices for particular industries, and setting various standards for particular markets. Back in those days, that was very uncommon in that we didn’t have a whole laundry list of federal agencies in the ‘30s that we have now.

The Constitution grants legislative authority to Congress. That’s Article 1, Section 1.

The executive branch is not given that power. 

VINES: So, you—if an FDR New Deal agency, suddenly sets a price control regime for some industry the conservatives would say hey, that’s the work of Congress. That’s not what an executive branch agency is supposed to do. And so the New Deal folks would say, well, no, it’s clearly in the legislation that was passed by Congress to allow the agency to do this particular thing. 

Today, we’re used to these agencies and departments and commissions and bureaus. We barely give them a second thought.

VINES: We now live under a federal executive branch that’s got countless agencies, countless offices, countless administration, and the regulated community has to follow, you know, this incredibly complex spider web of agencies. 

But that wasn’t always so. In the 1930s, the Supreme Court developed a line of cases that struck down pieces of legislation because Congress gave the executive branch too much federal rule-making authority in violation of the Constitution.

But then the makeup of the court shifted.  

VINES: The court started upholding those pieces of legislation. The court for all practical purposes effectively buried the delegation doctrine. 

The court gutted it.

But—in 2001—along came a case where Justice Thomas wrote this in a short but significant concurrence: “On a future day … I would be willing to address the question whether our delegation jurisprudence has strayed too far from our Founders’ understanding of separation of powers.”

At the time he was the only one willing to think about it.

Fast forward another 20 years. Today, the makeup of the court has changed again. Two more justices have expressed skepticism over delegating power to agencies.  

VINES: Gorsuch and Kavanaugh have stated in various ways that they would be interested in turning the clock back on that. They think the quote unquote “administrative state” has gotten too large and that the Supreme Court’s case law to sort of reign in the administrative state has become essentially toothless. 

The undercurrent of this Cowpasture case seems to be a quiet signal. A proposal. An invitation for a future delegation doctrine challenge.

And that’s it for this week’s Legal Docket.

MARY REICHARD: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: The Monday Moneybeat.

NICK EICHER: Grab bag of economic data this week: retail sales up for June, second straight month, and so that’s almost fully recovered, with spending now about the same as before the shutdown. 

Industrial production up more than expected, but that remains a long way off. The COVID drop-off was much bigger for the months of April, May, and June, it fell at an annual rate exceeding 40 percent. That hasn’t happened since World War II. 

New claims for unemployment benefits—they’d been tapering off fairly consistently—but the rate of decline seems to have halted. Ongoing unemployment claims much better, back to the level they were in early April. 

Financial analyst and adviser David Bahnsen is back. David, good morning.

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

EICHER: As I say, lots of news. Where do we start?

BAHNSEN: It was a mixed bag of data this week. 

The continuing claims was a positive just because it dropped more than expected and it hasn’t really been doing that. But I think that the initial weekly claims were once again a disappointment. They’re staying so stubbornly high. 

By the way, much like a lot of the COVID health data, it’s impossible to read too much into it because of data anomalies and reporting issues. On the weekly jobless claims, there’s hundreds of thousands of claims from March and April that have still not been processed. And yet you just want to see that number drop to feel that we’re in a better place.

And the reason I make an analogy there, Nick, to the COVID data is it’s a huge part of why the market is shrugging off a lot of the COVID health data because you’re seeing the headline number of 10-, 12-, 13,000 new cases in Florida. But the market knows that thousands of those per day are coming from very old reporting, and even on the mortalities in Arizona, Texas, Florida, there’s a significant backlog of data. So whether it’s economics or health, it’s really hard for data analysts like myself right now to be able do our job.

EICHER: I mentioned at the top the recovery in retail sales. It basically snapped back to where it was before the COVID lockdown. But you have said before don’t read too much into it. People will spend in a bad economy.

BAHNSEN: Well, they’ll spend as long as they have access to money to spend.

EICHER: And we do have access to money to spend.

BAHNSEN: And, by the way, when it comes to the things that are rate-sensitive, like one of the most encouraging data numbers we’ve seen in the economy—auto sales this week were way higher than expected and then new home sales, new home mortgage applications have risen week over week over week, compared to year over year data they’re higher. So, we’re in the middle of a COVID recession, we still have significant parts of the economy either closed or somewhat closed, and yet you have more people wanting to buy homes and buy cars. 

Those are rate-sensitive things and that’s a direct byproduct of the monetary policy making the cost of money so low. 

But, I will tell you the most encouraging data of the week. NFIB, small business optimism, was through the roof. And I was absolutely not expecting that. But small business optimism is not generally a data point that is filled with Pollyanna or excessive optimism. It’s filled with very realistic assessment from people who have skin in the game. 

The bad news, I believe, is that we’re very likely to see some of the joblessness issues continue because I’m now so convinced that the overwhelming concentration of it is in lower wage jobs that just don’t have to come back right away. And I believe that with the pauses and stuttering and in a lot of cases just a lot of excessive response from government, I think you’re going to see some of those jobs really continue to delay coming back on. 

So, if someone’s looking for clarity about is the economy doing well or not, I can’t help because the answer is yes.

EICHER: Let’s talk about the government. A couple of different measures. If we look at last June (June 2019) to this June (June 2020) for an annualized deficit number, it’s an eye-popping $3 trillion. Biggest deficit-to-GDP ratio since World War II—14 percent of GDP, that June to June number. When do you start worrying about that?

BAHNSEN: Well, you started worrying about it when they passed the legislation that was going to ensure it. All they’re doing now is reporting the numbers that we already knew were coming, right? And this is the mistake people make when they get concerned is they think this is going to be devastating in two months or in two years. That’s not really where the greatest liability is. The greatest liability is in the growth that they suck out of the economy for decades with artificially low rates and this sort of deflationary spiral the deficits represent, the government crowding out the private sector. 

You said a really important thing. The issue is the debt as a percentage of GDP, OK? And so just think of it as a household because it’s the same thing. A household with $50,000 of debt but $2 billion of assets, no one would blink at. A household with $10,000 of debt but $100,000 of assets, that all of a sudden is a different concern. It’s not the absolute level of debt, it’s as a percentage of the economy. And because we’re now in a deflationary spiral, we’re not able to grow our way out of it, it’s going to force more grown-up conversations as to how we deal with this debt going forward. 

And the one thing I know we’re not going to do is austerity. They’re not going to shrink the cost of government to get out of it. The public has no appetite for that, let alone the politicians.

EICHER: I’m going to leave it right there. David Bahnsen, financial analyst and adviser. Thank you for your continuing service to us. Appreciate it.

BAHNSEN: Thanks, Nick. Enjoyed being with you.

NICK EICHER: Today is Monday, July 20th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day. Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD: And I’m Mary Reichard. Coming next on The World and Everything in It: The WORLD History Book.

Today, just one story—the anniversary of a farewell address from a well-loved pastor to his persecuted congregation. Here’s Paul Butler.

PAUL BUTLER, REPORTER: We begin today in Holland. A group of separatists who fled England 11 years earlier, are about to return to their native land—not to live, but to catch a ship, the Mayflower.

FOSTER: When he left them at Delfshaven in Holland, in July of 1620, with his Geneva Bible open he declared he was sending them out as the army of God. 

Marshall Foster is the founder of the World History Institute. He’s talking about the farewell sermon from the pilgrim’s pastor, John Robinson—delivered 400 years ago this week. 

FOSTER: He said, as they torture us, we will overcome them with our weapon, which is dying. As they continue to persecute, we will persevere…

Robinson isn’t going with them. He is staying behind in Leyden, Holland, with the rest of his congregation. Reminiscent of Paul’s final words to the Ephesian elders in Acts chapter 20, pastor John Robinson tearfully commissions his followers as he says goodbye. No transcript exists of his sermon, but pilgrim Edward Winslow later published summary notes of Robinson’s address. 

SERMON: As we part, only the Lord knows whether we will see each other’s faces again. 

David Perizenski with a recreation inspired by Winslow’s notes.

SERMON: Only follow me as much as I’ve followed Christ. And if God should reveal to you any truth beyond what I have given you, be ready to receive it, for the Lord has more light to break forth from His word than I can know. 

JEHLE: His teachings is a bit unique… 

Paul Jehle is an author and pastor in Plymouth, Massachusetts. 

JEHLE: In fact, one of the most dramatic statements by Robinson was that you should not get stunted in your growth by following Christ, only as far as your reformer.

SERMON: We are in a period of religion that refuses to go further than the instruments of our reformation. The Lutherans can not be drawn to go beyond what Luther saw. The Calvinists stick where he left them. A misery much to be lamented. It is not possible for the Christian world so lately come out of such thick anti-Christian darkness, to attain full perfection of knowledge all at once. 

JEHLE: John Robinson told the Pilgrims, unquestionably, they don’t wear a label. They didn’t bear the label of Calvinists, they wore the label of Christians…

That doesn’t keep others from labelling them. Some label the Pilgrims as “Brownists.” That’s because when the pilgrims first fled England for Holland in 1607, they joined a group of separatists in Amsterdam led by Robert Browne. But after a year, the pilgrims and John Robinson left for the nearby town Leyden as quarrels within the Brownist congregation were splitting the church. Robinson never forgot that experience. 

ROBINSON: Also, by all means, avoid and shake off the name ‘Brownist.’ It is nothing more than a nickname—a brand to make religion odious…

And despite being separatists, Robinson was known to work with Puritans and Presbyterians in his later years. As the pilgrims boarded the ship for England, he pleaded with them to follow his example.

SERMON: When you arrive at your destination, endeavour to be at peace with all. Align with the godly party of the kingdom of England. Strive more for union than division. 

Again, Marshall Foster.  

FOSTER: And he ended his speech with this powerful message about how the gates of hell shall not prevail against my church. I send you out under the banner of the Lord Jesus Christ…

John Robinson never saw his friends again. He died five years later. But the pilgrims who survived and the latter arrivals eventually paid to bring Robinson’s widow and son to the colony. 

JEHLE: I believe John Robinson is the founding pastoral shepherd of this nation. 

FOSTER: He is the forgotten founder of America. He’s the founding father, of the founding fathers. 

And the church that the Pilgrims founded here based on Robinson’s instruction would eventually spread across the country becoming the Congregational Church movement in America.

That’s this week’s WORLD History Book. I’m Paul Butler.

MARY REICHARD: Today is Monday, July 20th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER: And I’m Nick Eicher. The evangelical world lost one of its most influential theologians on Friday, J.I. Packer. Here’s WORLD’s Katie Gaultney with a remembrance.

KATIE GAULTNEY, REPORTER: J.I. Packer knows God more fully than ever now. He entered heaven’s gates Friday after following Christ for over 70 years. He was 93 years old.

Here he is talking about his faith with Mark Jones, a minister at Faith Vancouver Presbyterian Church.

PACKER: The sense of God’s greatness and my own comparative smallness, I think I can truly say, has been deepening all along throughout that time. 

Packer’s work spanned more than half a century, but he’s best known for his 1973 book Knowing God. Publishers have sold more than 1.5 million copies since the book’s release. It’s been translated into more than a dozen languages. 

His theological knowledge was deep and his credentials impressive: Packer earned several degrees from Oxford University and served as general editor of the English Standard Version of the Bible. But his overriding message to the world was simple and beautiful: “God saves sinners.” 

Packer would have celebrated his 94th birthday on Wednesday. He was born on July 22, 1926, in Gloucester, England. For his 11th birthday, Packer had dropped heavy hints that he was hoping his parents would buy him a new bicycle. But they had other ideas.

PACKER: On the birthday morning, however, what I found waiting for me was an old typewriter. The gift of the typewriter was almost prophetic. 

He called it the best present he had ever gotten as a boy. And he used that gift to develop gifts of his own. 

As a teenager, Packer began considering more carefully the claims of Christianity behind his nominal Anglican upbringing. Then, as a freshman at Oxford University, he embraced saving faith in Jesus Christ. 

Through the Oxford Inter-Collegiate Christian Union, Packer discovered the writings of Puritan theologians.

PACKER: Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress is a book that I reread every year; I hope that no one will tell me that it’s not a theological book, because it is, on a very deep and insightful level. 

Eventually, Packer’s admiration of Puritan teachers like John Owen and Richard Baxter led him to write A Quest for Godliness—a book about Puritan writings on the Christian life.

In 1954, he married Kit Mullet, and the couple raised three children. After a stint as a lecturer and a librarian, Packer moved with his family to Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1970. Packer taught systematic theology at Regent College, and he continued teaching courses at the school until he was nearly 90 years old. 

Living by the truth of Scripture led Packer to make painful moves during his long career and ministry. In 2002, when the Anglican diocese of New Westminster authorized its bishop to produce a service for same-sex unions, Packer joined a handful of other synod members in walking out of the meeting. His church later withdrew from the Anglican Church in Canada and became a member of the Anglican Church in North America. 

In 2016, at age 89, Packer announced his vision had deteriorated due to macular degeneration, and that he could no longer read or write. Shortly before that announcement, Packer recounted to his biographer, Dr. Leland Ryken, how he would like to be remembered.

PACKER: As I look back on the life that I lived I would like to be remembered as a voice  that focused on the authority of the Bible, the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ, the wonder of his substitutionary sacrifice and atonement for our sins… 

And, Packer hoped that the many who have benefited from his life’s work would reflect on his legacy with joy.

PACKER: I ask you to thank God with me for the way that he has led me. And if your joy matches my joy as we continue in our Christian lives, well then you will be blessed indeed. 

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Katie Gaultney.

EICHER: To learn more about J.I. Packer’s life and ministry, look for Jamie Dean’s story on WNG.org. We’ll link to it in the transcript of today’s program.

NICK EICHER: Tomorrow: Politics. The Republican Party has a record number of women running for Congress. We’ll tell you what’s driving that trend.

And, we’ll take you to two churches in the South that are rethinking plans to start meeting together again in person.

That and more tomorrow. 

I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD: 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 Apostle Paul wrote: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith…”

Nick, have an amazing vacation and we’ll hear you again in a few weeks, Lord willing. 

Go now in grace and peace.

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