The World and Everything in It: July 29, 2024

PREROLL: The World and Everything in It is made possible by listeners like us. I'm Craig Williams. My wife Ginger and I live in Crossville, Tennessee. I'm a retired nuclear power plant engineer and she's a retired homeschool mom. We hope you enjoy today's program.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning! A public school district’s commitment to gender ideology lands teachers and schools in court.

SAGER: To put in a policy like they have that's so anti -constitutional and that restricts freedom of speech scares teachers.

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

Also today, the Monday Moneybeat. Economic growth plus lower inflation, is this the soft landing?

And the WORLD History Book: A young Jewish girl and her diary: 

OTTO: It took me a very long time to read it. And I must say, I was very much surprised about the deep thoughts Anne had.

REICHARD: It’s Monday, July 29th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

EICHER: And I’m Nick Eicher. Good morning!

REICHARD: Now news. Here’s Kent Covington.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR:  Israel responds to Hezbollah attack » Israel has struck back against Hezbollah after a rocket attack killed 12 children and wounded dozens of others at a soccer field on Saturday. Israeli Defense Forces say they’ve hit seven targets in Lebanon with rockets of their own.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer: 

SCHUMER:  We know that Iran, through its surrogates, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, is really the real evil in this area.

And Republican Senator Lindsey Graham says he's concerned that Iran could be close to getting its hands on a nuclear weapon, citing a report that the Senate received last week that he calls "stunning."

GRAHAM:  I am very worried that not only you could open up a second front, but they could use these three or four months before our election to sprint to a nuclear weapon. And we have to put them on notice. That cannot happen.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cut his trip to Washington short … after the Saturday attack against Israel.

US-Japan defense ties » The United States and Japan are deepening their defense partnership.

Defense Sec. Lloyd Austin: 

AUSTIN:  Today we unveil some of the most important advances in the U. S. Japan defense ties in the history of our alliance. And the bottom line is clear. The U. S. Japan alliance is stronger today than ever, and getting stronger by the day.

The two countries have agreed to upgrade the command and control of U.S. forces in Japan.

The United States is also ramping up production of American-licensed missiles there.

Secretary of State Tony Blinken says it’s an effort to curb the aggression of China, also known as the PRC. 

BLINKEN:  We have a shared vision for a free and open Indo Pacific. We strongly oppose the PRC's efforts to unilaterally change the status quo by force in the East China Sea and the South China Sea around Taiwan. We agree on the importance of upholding peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.

Blinken and Austin joined their Japanese counterparts for security talks Sunday in Tokyo.

Putin vows response to US missiles in Germany » Russia may deploy new strike weapons in response to Washington’s plans to station longer-range and hypersonic missiles in Germany.

Vladimir Putin vowed—quote—“mirror measures” after the U.S. earlier this month announced that it will start deploying the missiles in 20-26.

Both the U.S. and Russia this month signaled their readiness to deploy intermediate-range ground-based weapons that were banned for decades under a Cold War-era treaty.

Trump shooting investigation » Authorities are still investigating the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump. And new information is emerging about the would-be assassin. Congressman Michael McCaul told CBS’ Face the Nation: 

MCCAUL:  He had a detonation device on him and two bombs in the car. What his plan was, was to assassinate the president, create a diversion by blowing up his vehicle on the other side of the property, and then he could escape.

But Republican Sen. Ron Johnson says many questions remain. New reports indicate that Secret Service snipers spotted the shooter on the roof of a nearby building minutes before shots were fired. 

JOHNSON:  We need detailed, uh, interviews with those individuals to, to find out exactly what happened. It's, it's unbelievable how, how little information has been coming from federal law enforcement.

Federal agents were reportedly combing the scene of the shooting again on Sunday.

Trump and Buttegieg on Harris-border » Meantime, Donald Trump is pulling no punches as he campaigns against the newly installed presumptive Democratic White House nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris. 

TRUMP:  Kamala Harris's deadly destruction of America's borders is completely and totally disqualifying for her to be president. You can't have a person like this as president.

The media widely dubbed Harris the "border czar" after the president, in March of 2021 … put her in charge of addressing the root causes of mass migration from Central and South America.

But White House officials are pushing back, saying “border czar” is a made up title that she never held … and downplaying her role in addressing the border crisis.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttegieg: 

BUTTEGIEG: She was not in charge of the border. The Homeland Security Department is in charge of the border. She did do something important, though. She was assigned to conduct diplomacy with Central American countries, knowing that that's part of the bigger picture of what's affecting the border. 

Republicans are also calling out Kamala Harris for her past stances on the border and immigration.

CA Wildfire » Thousands of firefighters are tackling California's biggest wildfire so far this summer. The Park Fire in the northern part of the state has scorched several-thousand acres and forced many people from their homes.

One evacuee said Sunday: 

MOS:  People that we know that went by and looked at the property said it's burned down. Everything, our stuff is all burned up.

Cal Fire Incident Commander Billy See briefed reporters on fire on Sunday. 

SEE: Moving forward. We have over 4,000 personnel assigned to the incident and the incident currently sits at 12 percent contained.

Forecasters say cooler, less windy, and more humid conditions are giving those firefighters a break for the next day or so, but that's going to change … with hotter weather moving in.

I’m Kent Covington.

This is The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s The World and Everything in It for this 29th day of July. We’re so glad you’ve joined us today. Good morning! I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Time now for Legal Docket.

It may be summertime, but the living is not easy because legal disputes continue roiling in the lower courts, some of which seem to be candidates for Supreme Court review. That most likely includes clashes over gender ideology in public education.

A first-of-its-kind law in California has the highest probability to produce lots of legal fodder in this area. Governor Gavin Newsom signed a law under which teachers are no longer required to inform parents of a child’s change of gender identity at school. This so-called “Safety Act” is set to take effect in January.

EICHER: One day after Newsom signed the law a local school district and several parents filed a court challenge.

These battles are not confined to California, either.

Up in Oregon, a school district fired two teachers who had proposed alternate ways of handling the gender wars.

One of those teachers is Katie Medart. She taught science at Grants Pass School District 7.

MEDART: I was in the classroom, started out in high school, went to teach college, came back and about eight years of being away, before we never thought, Mary, about pronouns. There was no such thing as a pronoun request. And then after eight years of stepping away and coming back into public K -12, I was, it was alarming to hear that a student of 11- to -13 year -olds saying, “these are my pronouns that I go by.” And seeing that concern and then hearing adults talk about not involving parents.

REICHARD: At the invitation of the school district, Medart and assistant principal Rachel Sager came up with solutions aimed to help all kids and to respect families with different ideas.

They started a grassroots organization called “I Resolve.” Its purpose was to put their policy ideas before others for input … and allow teachers to teach without violating their consciences. The goal was to protect parental rights and conscience rights.

The school was not identified in the platform and the two did this on their own time. The only work resource used was email to help spread the word.

The baseline question: does this policy serve and respect all? Here’s Rachel Sager, the assistant principal:

SAGER: Well respecting students is always something that I strive to do and feel that I’ve accomplished. But respecting students doesn't always look the way that they demand of you in some ways. And that's not just with gender. That's in other ways, right? If a student says, no, I'm going to stand. I'm going to pace around the classroom. I can be respectful to a student and kindly ask them to sit down. But when it comes to pronouns, I've always been able to, with students, they've wanted to go by a different pronoun or a different name, been able to say, can I try to just not use pronouns with you? Can I call you by your last name? I've been a coach of various sports, and calling students by their last name, I've never had an issue with that. And so I’ve never had a student be concerned about how I’ve treated them.

EICHER: The school district had received complaints from people upset by Sager and Medart’s proposed policy solutions.

And then things changed …

SAGER: So it actually wasn't a policy and that was the concern. We had an admin memo that came down that was secretly given just to administration and it was in regards to use of pronouns, use of preferred names for students and use of bathrooms. And it didn't go through the school district board. It was just given to administrators and there were some concerns that I had about the violation of freedom of speech that was in that memo in regards to requiring pronoun use, requiring preferred name use. And one of the large concerns as well was that parents were not involved in the way that the memo was written. You could actually cut parents out completely, not let them know what was happening. And then bathroom use in terms of letting students use the opposite gender bathrooms and locker rooms was also of concern for the safety of our students.

EICHER: Now’s a good time to note: the school district took no disciplinary action against employees who expressed support for gender ideology.

The teachers pointed to that as evidence of viewpoint discrimination.

REICHARD: Still, Sager and Medart were fired. So they sued on free-speech grounds, equal protection, and Title VII which bars discrimination in the workplace.

One of their lawyers is Tyson Langhofer of Alliance Defending Freedom:

LANGHOFER: And what we know about the First Amendment is that the public schools can't retaliate against staff for sharing their opinion on matters of public concern. Another really important fact is all that Katie and Rachel were doing was advocating that the school go back to the policy they had prior to this recent change. That's really important to understand because what we're, the principle that we're fighting for, is that teachers should be able to participate in policy discussions about important policy decisions being made by schools, especially when it affects the rights of teachers and when it affects the rights of parents to understand what's going on with their students in school.

But last year, district court Magistrate Judge Mark Clark granted summary judgment in favor of the school district. He based his decision in part on a finding by the school that the teachers had been “disruptive” to the “school environment.”

Sager and Medart appealed that decision and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit heard the argument last month.

Now, I sought an interview with the school district but received no response to my request.

So here’s what I gather about the position the school district has taken: The level of opposition among some members of the community required school employees to respond to voluminous complaints, and that was so disruptive that firing Sager and Medart was the only solution.

EICHER: The appeals court panel tried to figure out how to measure that “disruption” and determine what speech was off campus and what was on.

It didn’t seem to go so well for the school district at the appeals court hearing. Listen to this exchange between lawyer for the school district Beth Plass and Circuit Judge Danielle Forrest:

FORREST: Are teachers allowed to get involved in the politics of an election?

PLASS: Of course. Of course.

FORREST: And isn’t that potentially disruptive when people disagree, as we live in an age where there’s a lot of disagreement?

PLASS: Absolutely.

FORREST: So I guess I’m struggling in the same way that Judge Rawlinson is. And how does that work?

Judge Johnnie Rawlinson saw another problem with the school district’s approach:

RAWLINSON: But to prohibit speech in advance, that's the problem. I understand that the school district has the ability to deal with the speech once it has been once the speech has taken place, but to prohibit it in the beginning. Why isn't that unconstitutional to say you can't even speak without knowing what the speech is going to be. How is that constitutional?

The school district attorney did not really have an answer to that.

Representing Sagar and Medart in the same hearing, ADF lawyer Matthew Hoffman pointed out that constitutional rights cannot be infringed based on mere the volume of complaints:

HOFFMAN: We don’t know who they’re from, they’re not from current North parents or students, and they don’t threaten that their kids will leave the school … and so just the volume alone doesn’t mean much …

… going on to argue for an informed public:

HOFFMAN: They just advocated for a change, and the Supreme Court has been clear that teachers should be free to advocate for change. Otherwise, you know, we don’t really have the ability to create an informed public opinion and continue on with our free debate.

For now, they await the 9th circuit’s decision in the next few months.

REICHARD: People who stand up for their rights in court have to withstand a lot of pressure. I asked each teacher what she’s learned so far.

For Sager, it’s how cancel culture made teachers who privately supported her back down—as the school district did:

SAGER: The number of teachers that reached out to us and said, we're now fearful. Can you take us off of your support list? Can you not let them know that we support you? It was surprising, but also not surprising, right? To put in a policy like they have that's so anti-constitutional and that restricts freedom of speech both on and off campus scares teachers and to see what they did to us scares teachers.

Medart told me that the focus of school discussions was to villainize parents, assuming that most parents are not loving and do not want the best for their own children.

Still, she says:

MEDART: God is faithful. I mean, it's probably one of the most challenging stages of life. And just experiencing his faithfulness going through the process the last three years, when you feel discouraged, He will give you a reminder that says He has you. I've also learned that it's worth standing up for truth. And I’m really grateful for random strangers to show acts of kindness and to rally to stand with us with truth.

We will report back on what the appeals court decides.

And that’s this week’s Legal Docket.

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

NICK EICHER, HOST: All right, time now to talk business, markets and the economy with financial analyst and advisor, David Bahnsen. David is head of the wealth management firm, the Bahnsen Group, and he is here now. David, good morning.

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

EICHER: All right. David, a couple of key data points this past week: a reading on inflation, a reading on economic growth, one of them down, one of them up, both good. Could it be said, David, that the soft landing that we've been hearing about, reducing inflation without sending the economy into recession, that we've accomplished that?

BAHNSEN: Yeah, I think that that's been mostly a fait accompli for quite a while, because the the essence, the violence of the tightening cycle, meaning the suddenness, the rapidity with which rates went way higher, from 0% in May of 2022 to eventually 5.5% by July of 2023, you really would have expected to see recessionary consequences by the end of 2022 certainly into the early part of '23 and so there's been a number of reasons we've talked about over the last couple years as to why I think that didn't happen.

The issue now Nick is not so much recession or no recession, inflation or no inflation, it's on the margin. It's in two particular different areas. You know, how quickly will we get prices lower with housing? How will the ramifications be in the economy when they do begin cutting rates, what will some of that look like? There's a few other things that are still to be determined, but that this particular bout of Fed tightening has not created a recession I think is at this point undebatable.

EICHER: David, we did not get a chance to talk about this, because, well, as you know, we have had a couple of weeks where huge news has broken over the weekend and so it feels nice to sort of be returned to normal. So I'm going to ask you about an old story which is going to feel new because we, again, we didn't get a chance to talk about it. It was this plan where the White House was asking Congress for a policy to place a 5% cap on rent increases each year, and this would apply to landlords who have more than 50 rental units, conditioning an important federal tax deduction on this rent control.

In other words, they get to keep the deduction if they comply. They lose it if they don't. So two things: first, your analysis of this proposal, David, and second, I recognize this as a as a form of price control, and maybe let's make that our defining terms as we wrap up today.

BAHNSEN: Well, there's a few things that we have to kind of look at here. First of all, how many units are we talking about where there really are landlords who own over 50 units, where their market capacity to raise rent would be over 5% year over year? I don't think the White House actually believes this is something that is real life. It is much more political and cosmetic, and yet, there have certainly been periods where rents may have been more than 5% below market, and landlords and owners and developers would have had an opportunity to set the market rate. And it would have required them, in this case, to forfeit economics that they purchased the property believing they had so there is, all at once, something that is mostly political, cynical and potentially economic destructive.

But why do we need to do this to begin with? This is the question I always want us from a matter of first principles to ask, is there an ability to raise rent over 5% if the market rates are not that level? In other words, the only reason somebody could raise rent 6%, 7%, 8% is if the market would bear it out, and there is surely another landlord somewhere who does not have rents going up that much, and therefore people are competing for price. If I'm wrong, and actually there's greed, and there's other factors at play where people are getting away with things that we just find absolutely unseemly, and we just believe there is no other remedy than for Joe Biden and the White House to set what rents ought to be in Barstow, California.

My question is, why would that only apply to apartments. Why would the government not be the effective price setter across the economy? Why not set how much prices can go up for all sorts of items? The reason, of course, is that government intervention where they become the price setter intervenes with incentive for production. And if there is apartments that are under market, they ought to be going up in rent more than 5% and if they're not, no one's going to be raising prices more than 5% so always and forever, the question is, who is most qualified to set those prices, and in this case, that includes the growth of prices, the rate of increase. Is it the buyer and the seller, or is it the federal government, the beltway, the body of people who have run up $35 trillion of debt in their own stewardship of economics? Am I more impressed with their ability to steward a P&L, a balance sheet or a checkbook, if you will? Or do I think landlords and tenants have the ability to figure this stuff out on their own?

That's why, to me, the entire thing is extremely misguided and ultimately pushes prices higher because federal intervention of these things takes away incentive to build new supply. And so when you distort incentives for production, you end up with less competition which provides a higher price level, not a lower price level. And this is the unequivocal testimony of history about price fixing.

EICHER: David Bahnsen, founder, managing partner and chief investment officer of the Bahnsen Group. You can check out David's book, Full-Time: Work and The Meaning of Life at the website fulltimebook.com. David, I hope you have a great week. I'll see you in a couple of weeks.

BAHNSEN: Thanks so much, Nick.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Monday, July 29th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Up next, the WORLD History Book. Today, workers try to unravel a mystery stolen away in a bog. Plus, a NASA expedition to the Moon comes to a disappointing end.

EICHER: But first, a diary that would become one of the most widely read books in the world with writings now 80 years old. Here’s WORLD Radio Reporter Emma Perley:

EMMA PERLEY: The year is 1944, a 14-year-old Jewish girl by the name of Anne Frank is in hiding from the Nazis. The diary entries she kept are a window on her world. In one entry … she muses on the meaning of contradictions … Voice actress Leah Johanson reads the diary entry.

ANNE FRANK: Like so many words, it can be interpreted in two ways: a contradiction imposed from without and one imposed from within …

Anne Frank writes … that she feels like two people. One person fun and spirited. The other “deeper and finer.” But THAT person never publicly reveals herself.

ANNE: If I'm being completely honest, I'll have to admit that it does matter to me, that I'm trying very hard to change myself, but that I'm always up against a more powerful enemy.

Anne’s diary is a faithful account of two years of her life in hiding … It describes the big picture and the small details: the war itself and the terror that goes with it … down to the complex relationships she has with her parents and sister. August 1st, 1944 … with but 7 months left to live: these are Anne’s last-known written words.

ANNE: A voice within me is sobbing, "You see, that's what's become of you. You're surrounded by negative opinions, dismayed looks and mocking faces, people who dislike you, and all because you don't listen to the advice of your own better half."

Three days after she wrote that, Gestapo agents find and capture Anne and her family. She would die of typhus in a Nazi concentration camp in March, 1945. The exact date is disputed. 

Her father Otto would be the only surviving member of the family. He was able to recover Anne’s diary after the war. Otto Frank spoke with NBC about what he read.

OTTO FRANK: It took me a very long time to read it. And I must say, I was very much surprised about the deep thoughts Anne had. Her seriousness, especially her self-criticism … it was quite a different Anne I had known as my daughter.

Anne’s diary becomes one of the most widely read books in the world after its publication in 1947. It’s been translated into more than 70 languages.

AUDIO: Sounds of excavating.

Next, August 1st, 1984. Commercial peat moss-cutters discover a leathery object in an English bog. One of them describes the scene for a QED documentary.

AUDIO: I said, ‘we found something there.’ Took it out and he chucked it over here and it landed here, where this shovel is. I said, ‘It’s a foot! Part of a leg!’

Archaeologists would soon find more parts of a man who had been preserved in the moss for almost 2,000 years. They call him “Lindow Man,” for the Lindow Moss bog where he was found. It’s speculated that his violent death was due to a pagan ritual of human sacrifice. Audio here from a 2022 University of Birmingham lecture.

AUDIO: That preservation thing is exceptional within wetlands and peatlands because of … the absence of oxygen, the lack of decay from bacteria, from fungi.

Nearly 1,000 bog bodies have been found around the world. And they provide valuable insight into the religious practice and even eating habits of ancient cultures. The bog kept Lindow Man so well preserved that scientists found what he ate for dinner the night before: burnt flatbread. His body is now .. permanently displayed at the British Museum.

Finally, July 31st, 25 years ago. A spacecraft crashes into the Moon. NASA scientists have carefully orchestrated the impact in an effort to reveal secrets from the planet’s surface … and establish a lunar outpost for the future. Audio here from a 1998 interview with Principal Investigator Alan Binder.

BINDER: I firmly believe that we are on the verge of moving back to the Moon and starting a lunar base, starting a lunar colony, and to me this is the future of mankind.

NASA sends the unmanned Lunar Prospector into orbit for 19 months. It studies gravity, maps surface composition, and searches for water. If the Prospector finds water, then hopes of colonization on the moon might become reality.

BINDER: The significance of finding water at the poles is very simple. We need it for life support, and we need it for rocket fuel.

The Prospector’s data shows evidence of water at both lunar poles, where the sun never shines and temperatures reach around -310 degrees Fahrenheit. It also discovers strong magnetic fields and an iron-rich core. At the end of the mission, the Prospector hurtles toward the Moon’s surface. Audio here from NASA.

BINDER: If water ice exists on the moon’s surface, scientists thought the impact could free up water vapor that might be detectable from Earth-based observatories and the Hubble Telescope.

Unfortunately, scientists do not detect any water vapor within the dust cloud. But the mission overall proves a success … and it returns much more encouraging data than originally hoped for.

NASA plans to launch a crewed mission back to the Moon in 2025 for further exploration … and to prepare for long-term studies there. 

BINDER: Exploring the universe is a phenomenal thing to do. It’s exciting, it’s beautiful, it’s rewarding and it helps develop where we’re supposed to go, in my mind. It’s the future of mankind.

 That’s this week’s WORLD History Book. I’m Emma Perley.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: Venezuela’s presidential election. We’ll tell you about the results from weekend voting and what it might mean for the future of strongman socialism in South America. And an athlete heads to a competition that celebrates the culture of Scotland. 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.

Jesus said: “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable shall we use for it? It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when sown on the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth, yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes larger than all the garden plants and puts out large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.” —Mark 4:30-32

Go now in grace and peace.

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