The World and Everything in It - June 21, 2021

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

The Supreme Court handed down a win for religious liberty. But it’s so narrow it doesn’t resolve much beyond the facts of the case.

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

Also today: explaining the Federal Reserve and decoding the central bank’s code language.

Plus, the WORLD History Book. Today, the anniversary of Britain’s decision to exit the European Union.

REICHARD: It’s Monday, June 21st. 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.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Hard-line cleric wins presidency in Iran » A hard-line cleric will be Iran’s next president.

Judiciary chief Ebrahim Raisi won the presidential election in a landslide amid the lowest voter turnout in the nation’s history.

But U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan says when it comes to nuclear talks with the West, it hardly matters who Iran’s president is.

SULLIVAN: The person who will call the shots on Iran’s nuclear program is not Raisi. It’s the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei.

Raisi is the supreme leader's protege.

The United States has sanctioned him in the past for human rights violations stemming from his involvement in the mass execution of political prisoners.

Saturday’s election became more of a coronation after his strongest competitors found themselves disqualified from running. That sparked calls for a boycott and many, it seems, did stay home. Out of more than 59 million eligible voters, only about 29 million voted.

On Sunday, top diplomats in Vienna said they’ve made more progress toward restoring the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran.

The Biden administration hopes to rejoin the pact after President Trump pulled the plug on it in 2018. But many Republicans, like Sen. Lindsey Graham, continue to warn against it.

GRAHAM: The ayatollah is a religious nazi. He controls the place. Religious zealots run the place. Why in the world do you want to give massive enrichment capability to the largest state sponsor of terrorism in the world? I don’t know.

Israel's new Prime Minister Naftali Bennett is also warning against it. In his first Cabinet meeting on Sunday, he slammed Iran's newly elected president and called on world powers to “wake up” to the perils of returning to the nuclear deal.

VA to begin paying for gender transition surgeries » The Biden administration plans to begin using taxpayer dollars for gender transition surgeries for veterans.

Veterans Affairs Secretary Denis McDonough announced the plans at an LGBT pride event over the weekend.

It could take years for the government to install the new regulations and rules that will govern the use of VA benefits for such surgeries.

McDonough said his agency will spend the next few years building the—quote—“capacity to meet the surgical needs.”

Storm claims 12 lives in Ala., continues trek toward Atlantic » Tropical Depression Claudette claimed 12 lives in Alabama over the weekend as the storm swept across the southeast, spurring tornadoes. Jason Holmes with the National Weather Service said heavy rain triggered flash flooding.

HOLMES: We had two reports; one was over 7 inches. And we also had another report that was closer to 9 inches.

Ten people, including nine children, were killed Saturday in a 15-vehicle crash south of Montgomery on Interstate 65. A van belonging to a youth ranch was involved in the accident on the rain-soaked highway.

The storm pushed into Georgia and South Carolina on Sunday. And Eric Blake with the National Hurricane Center says it continues to trek toward the Atlantic where the storm’s expected to strengthen.

BLAKE: We do expect it to become a tropical storm again in the vicinity of eastern North Carolina. And tropical storm watches are in effect for much of eastern North Carolina.

Flash flood watches were posted Sunday for parts of Alabama, Georgia, Florida, and the Carolinas.

Heat wave continues to bake southwestern U.S. » Meantime, states in the southwest are praying for rain as a dangerous heat wave continues to bake the region.

High temperature marks didn’t fall over the weekend as feared. But Phoenix did set a record for consecutive 115-degree days. Saturday marked the fifth day in a row that the city hit 115.

And meteorologist Lara Pagano says Tuscon, Ariz. has been well over a hundred degrees for more than a week.

PAGANO: 110 so far was in Tuscon, Ariz. That’s the eighth day in a row of 110.

The extreme heat is fueling a wildfire in Arizona that started late Wednesday and grew by Saturday to nearly 27 square miles between Phoenix and Flagstaff.

Officials ordered evacuations over the weekend while aircraft and about 100 firefighters battled the blaze.

I’m Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: religious liberty advocates celebrate a major Supreme Court victory.

Plus, a milestone in Hollywood.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Monday June 21st and welcome back to another week of The World and Everything in It. Glad you’re along with us today! I’m Mary Reichard.

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

We’re down to that time of year when Supreme Court decisions come fast and furious and we’ll get to Legal Docket in just a moment.

But very quickly, let me say first that we’re in the home stretch of our June Giving Drive. We’re more than halfway there and if you’ve given already, thank you. We do rely on you to provide the resources we use to produce and deliver this program to you each morning—this and all the journalism we do at WORLD.

This is our last full week and then just three days the week after to reach our goal of $950,000. If you look online you’ll see the running tally—with 10 days remaining—we need to average about $45,000 a day.

I know that sounds like a lot and it is, but how we get there is we have something like 200,000 people just like you who listen and from that large population lots of people chipping in as they’re able has so far gotten the job done.

REICHARD: Right, so we do need you to visit WNG.org/donate and make that gift of support and we’d be grateful if you’d do that today. I do find myself clicking the “refresh” button a little too obsessively, but this time of year it just goes with the territory. So please make your gift today and then pray others follow your example and we reach our goal.

EICHER: The place to go is WNG.org/donate. 

Well, giving drive season is also decision season at the U.S. Supreme Court and let’s get going on a jam-packed Legal Docket.

Fifteen decisions to go and five to report from last week.

REICHARD: We’ll start with the biggest religious-liberty case of the term, Fulton v City of Philadelphia.

All nine justices handed a unanimous, yet narrowly decided, victory to a Catholic foster care agency in Philadelphia.

Quick word of background: The city would not renew its contract with Catholic Social Services to vet foster parents because the agency doesn’t place children in LGBT homes.

Catholic teaching that’s based on the Biblical truth that marriage is “one man, one woman” placed the organization at odds with the city’s policy of nondiscrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

Catholic Social Services sued, arguing the city discriminated against it.

And all nine the justices agreed with that, but only on slender contract reasoning: a clause in the contract permits discretion by a city official to grant exceptions to the city’s nondiscrimination policy on non-religious grounds. That discretionary element makes the law not generally applicable and not neutral in application.

So this is a win for Catholic Social Services, but barely. It doesn’t stop other government intrusions into religious freedom going on across the country.

As Justice Samuel Alito wrote in his concurring opinion, the city could easily remove that offending language to satisfy this ruling and go right back to discriminating.

Alito expressed what many people thought of this case during argument in November:

ALITO: If we are honest about what is really going on here, it’s not about ensuring that same-sex couples in Philadelphia have the opportunity to be foster parents. It’s the fact that the city can’t stand the message that Catholic Social Services and the Archdiocese are sending by continuing to adhere to the old fashioned view about marriage.

Alito’s concurrence, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, details why the court should overturn a precedent the courts still rely on: Employment Division v Smith. That decision said any law that is neutral and generally applicable is okay, even if it infringes on religious freedom.

Alito summed up the ruling this way: “... the Court has emitted a wisp of a decision that leaves religious liberty in a confused and vulnerable state.”

EICHER: Another big case: by a 7-2 vote on technical grounds, the majority turns away the third legal challenge to the Affordable Care Act. The opinion found that challengers to Obamacare lacked standing to sue because they’d not sustained any direct injury. Meaning, the opinion did not reach the merits of the case.

Again, Justice Alito, joined by Justice Gorsuch, wrote a caustic dissent, finding states are burdened by Obamacare’s financial requirements, and that ought to be enough standing to qualify to sue. Quote: “Fans of judicial inventiveness will applaud once again. But I must respectfully dissent.”

REICHARD: I’ll add that Democrats’ warning about Amy Coney Barrett during her confirmation hearing did not pan out. They’d predicted she’d vote to undo the ACA. She did not.

Okay onto the third ruling: a big win for big chocolate.

Six former child slaves from the country of Mali allege American companies Nestle and Cargill aided and abetted child slavery in cocoa bean production on African plantations. Those operations in turn supplied the companies with cocoa.

The plaintiffs sued under the Alien Tort Statute. That permits foreign nationals to seek redress in U.S. federal courts for serious violations of international law.

You can hear the eventual ruling in this comment from Justice Stephen Breyer during oral argument in December:

BREYER: Now what counts as aiding and abetting for purposes of this statute? … it seemed to me that all or virtually all of your complaints amount to doing business with these people. They help pay for the farm. And that's about it. Well, unfortunately, child labor, it's terrible, but it exists throughout the world in many, many places.

A majority of eight justices ruled the companies are not liable under the Alien Tort Statute for labor abuses that happened in distant points of their supply chain. Decisions related to child labor happened overseas, not on American soil.

EICHER: Fourth opinion makes it easier for appeals courts to affirm the sentences of felons found in possession of a firearm.

Here, two men are convicted felons found in possession of guns. That’s a crime in itself and carries heavier penalties. They each want a new sentencing hearing based on a Supreme Court ruling from 2019. That said only people who actually know they are felons should receive the enhanced penalty.

But the court by a 8-1 vote disagrees, given that these men had multiple prior felonies. Bottom line? No new sentencing hearing for either man.

REICHARD: And last, the final opinion from last week. A decision that doesn’t give low-level drug offenders a break on their sentences.

Former President Trump’s criminal justice reform aimed to let drug offenders caught with large amounts of crack cocaine seek a reduced sentence. But eight justices agreed the language of the law doesn’t apply to lesser drug offenses. In her concurrence, Justice Sonia Sotomayor called on Congress to fix the problem if lawmakers don’t like it.

EICHER: Today we turn our attention to what’s going on in the lower courts. That’s where the vast majority of litigation ends, because so little of it makes it to the Supreme Court. So during the summer months to come, when the high court is out of session, we’ll talk with several religious-liberty legal organizations that deal with lower court cases.

REICHARD: Today, you’ll hear from First Liberty Institute. Jeremy Dys is special counsel for litigation and communications.

So Jeremy, let's start with Massachusetts. That state’s been stringent to toss religious practice into the bin labeled non essential as far as COVID restrictions. And First Liberty Institute got involved in a dispute there. Tell us about that.

DYS: Yeah, we've been doing this now for what? A year plus? About whether or not churches are going to be able to exercise their religious beliefs, even during a time of a pandemic. Let's take ourselves back at the beginning of this whole thing to recognize that we were facing kind of this unknown quantity trying to figure it all out. And I thought a lot of churches pivoted very well to address that, to figure out how to go online, doing creative things like drive in church services, because they've got a command themselves that they have to gather with fellow believers as well. But it became pretty clear pretty quick that local officials especially and then some governors, too, were going to take the inch that they were given and go a full mile with the whole thing. The more and more we understand this virus, the more we realize that the real virus has been this overreach by government. And so thankfully, when we push back, we're able to get good resolutions on these things.

REICHARD: So sometimes a well-placed letter can resolve these problems short of suing. Okay, let's move on now to the case of the US Army chaplain Andrew Calvert. He posted something on his personal Facebook account and got in trouble. What happened?

DYS: Well, he made a statement on his Facebook page expressing his religious beliefs and his support for the Department of Defense's prohibition against transgender service members. And when his post was posted those statements were completely consistent and very supportive of existing DOD regulations and policies. But it didn't matter. The army investigator concluded that chaplain Calvert's religious beliefs violated army policy, and the army suspended him from his duties as a chaplain. And so we've submitted a letter rebutting these allegations and this investigation. And we're asking now the reprimand against Chaplain Calvert be removed so that he wouldn't end Chaplain Calvert's career.

REICHARD: This next case we’ll talk about is particularly interesting, about prayer in the jury box. And a juror mentioned in the jury room he had prayed about his evaluation of the case, and someone told the judge, who threw the whole case out. But that didn’t hold on appeal, did it?

DYS: Yeah, Judge Pryor said of the 11th circuit when he handed down this decision. He said quote, “jurors may pray for and believe they have received divine guidance as they determine another person's innocence or guilt, a profound civic duty but a daunting task to say the least,” unquote. That shouldn't be terribly surprising. But I'm grateful to have these words from Judge Pryor reminding us that even in the most basic of civic duties when we're sitting in on a jury, we are still allowed to carry our religious beliefs and practices into that jury room and consult a higher being than even the judge sitting on the bench.

REICHARD: OK, final case I want to talk about, Jeremy. A college student at odds with a request to get a covid vaccine. What’s this one about?

DYS: Yeah. Jackie Gail is a student at the University of Alabama-Birmingham. So she’s gone through one year already as a freshman, and she's reapplying for her second year picking out her classes. Here's a young lady who their family made a decision years ago for religious reasons that they would not receive any vaccinations. And so her entire life, she's not had a single vaccination. And she's turned out, okay, it turns out it. But she goes to reapply for the next semester and there's a hold on her account, she's not allowed to re register. And it turns out that they are requiring her to have vaccinations in order to return in the fall.

Well, that's a non-starter for the Gale family. And so she asked for religious accommodation, which the state of Alabama provides to its students. And in this, the University was very slow to respond on this and initially said, no. But once we send a letter to them pointing out what the law has to say about this, they began adjusting their position on that fairly quickly, and recognizing that you know, look, people can have different perspectives on this. But if you're going to allow a medical exemption for vaccinations, you can't then turn around and say that people who have a religious objection to have an exemption should be treated differently. And so thankfully, I think that's resolving itself.

But I suspect we're gonna see a lot more of these kinds of cases around the country as colleges get back into session in the fall and university officials begin to demand not just regular vaccinations, but these COVID vaccinations that there's still a lot of concern about here.

Good on Jackie, for standing up against a position that most people would just simply, you know, take, take a pass on. I wish we had more young men and women in this country that were willing to have a strong presence of their convictions and to live by those. So good for Jackie Gale for standing up for religious convictions.

REICHARD: That’s Jeremy Dys of First Liberty Institute.

And that’s this week’s Legal Docket.

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

NICK EICHER, HOST: Financial analyst and adviser David Bahnsen joins us now for our regular conversation and commentary on the economy. David, good morning to you.

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

EICHER: So the Federal Reserve indicated—to use the funny phrasing of Fed chairman Jay Powell—it’s “talking about talking about” changing the central bank’s policy position. Not talking about it, talking about talking about it.

David, tell me why the Fed’s signaling matters or doesn’t matter that much and why.

BAHNSEN: Well, to be clear, he said they were “talking about talking about” tapering of quantitative easing. So why don't we just do a little background for the listeners: There are two major policy tools since the financial crisis, and then again since COVID that have been used very heavily by the Federal Reserve.

The first is, of course, the interest rate, which has been their primary policy tool for decades. And the interest rate went to 0 percent after the financial crisis, and they kept it there for about seven years, and then really kept it very near there for, you know, over eight years. The 0 percent rate was brought back last year after COVID.

And all that happened this week was, instead of them indicating, “oh, we think it'll be early 2024, that rates start going higher”—what they call dotplot, all of the central bankers forecasting where they think rates will be in the future, had it at 0.5 percent in June of 2023. That's two years away.

So it's really hardly very hawkish, you know, that they're talking about getting rates something very close to zero, still two years from now. The “talking about talking about” is the quantitative easing, which is essentially them starting to warm the market up for the idea that they don't need to continue buying $120 billion a month of bonds with money that doesn't exist.

This is the whole thing where they were providing liquidity to the banking system. Most of that money ends up in financial assets, it sits in excess reserves at the banks. And they did this to the tune of trillions of dollars after the financial crisis. They've done a couple trillion dollars since COVID. And now they're still adding over 100 billion a month.

And most of us are sitting around going, “Why are you doing it? What's the benefit right now? There's not financial conditions that are super tight, that need this extra liquidity.”

They're not controlling any kind of interest rate activity with it. So it just seems like an unnecessary policy tool, but they don't want to pull it away too quickly.

So they're “talking about talking about” reducing it, which I believe is code for, “Give us a couple more meetings and then another meeting,” and they'll sort of phase it down. But they don't want to shock financial markets.

And yet this is certainly inevitable that it's coming.

EICHER: One more question on the Fed: We saw stories last week that connected the market falling to a Fed governor saying he thinks the Fed will raise rates a bit sooner. And we see these kinds of stories all the time.

According to a story in The Wall Street Journal …

“U.S. stocks retreated Friday, as traders warily eyed the Federal Reserve for hints of where monetary policy is headed. The Dow Jones Industrial Average had its worst week since the [end of October].”

How do you interpret stories like these?

BAHNSEN: Well, that's typical news coverage. I don't think that there's anything surprising about it. The markets are not easy for news outlets to cover, because news outlets can't say the painful truth, which is that they have no idea why markets go up and down.

Markets right now are where they were a few weeks ago, okay? Markets are down this week, a fair amount, you know, but in the grand scheme of things is not very much. But my point being that the markets know that higher interest rates are coming. And the market spent years 2012, ’13, ’14 all these years saying, “oh, wow they're about to raise,” and then they didn't raise, didn't raise, and eventually they end up raising.

The best thing that can happen for markets is for us to raise rates, not in the short term, then you get a bunch of weak hands that sell out you're going to be enhanced volatility. But eventually it stabilizes markets because markets then no longer have the question in front of them as to when rates will go up.

And you get the signal the markets, “Oh, wow, things are strong enough that we don't need the training wheels. We don't need this ongoing medicinal support from the Fed.” And, “oh, by the way, you've given a policy tool back to the central bank for next time a really bad thing happens.”

So I there's nothing I'd want more as a person who's overseeing billions of dollars of public equities than for the interest rate to be higher. So it's a very good thing to think we might get back there. My concern is not that “Oh, no, they're going to raise rates too soon.” My concern is “Oh, no, they're not going to.”

EICHER: David Bahnsen, financial analyst and advisor. He writes at dividendcafe.com. Thanks!

BAHNSEN: Good to be with you. Thanks so much.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Next up on The World and Everything in It: The WORLD History Book. Today, Hitler’s forces face failure, Brexit breeds bickering, and a movie maven makes a mint. Here’s senior correspondent Katie Gaultney.

MUSIC: SILENT FILM MUSIC

KATIE GAULTNEY, SENIOR CORRESPONDENT: Actress Mary Pickford claimed plenty of milestones as America’s sweetheart in the silent film era.

NEWSREEL: … Here’s something sweet for America’s sweetheart. Yes, it’s Mary Pickford in Hollywood...

Pickford’s place as a movie legend is secure, with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, hand and footprints in front of Graumann’s Chinese Theater, and the honor of being the second Academy Award recipient. But she nabbed some firsts too. In fact, 105 years ago, on June 24th, 1916, the so-called “girl with the curls” nabbed the distinction of being the first female star to sign a million-dollar contract.

She garnered a weekly salary of $10,000 and half of each film’s profits. But, though the contract terms stayed intact, the end of the silent film era dinged her popularity. She scandalized her audience when she starred in her first “talkie,” the 1929 movie Coquette.

CLIP: Didn’t Michael Jeffrey want to marry you?/Yes, if he had to, I reckon./Didn’t you discuss your marriage that night in the cabin?/No!/ Then what did you discuss?/I don’t remember!

It wasn’t so much the racy plotline, about murder and a reckless socialite’s love affairs. It was because she had cut her signature ringlets into a flapper-style bob. Gone was the appearance of female virtue. And, audiences didn’t take kindly to her transition from silent film acting to talkies. Despite her Oscar win for the performance, Pickford's star began to fall. She headlined 52 films in her career, dying in 1979 at the age of 87.

And we’ll transition now from the glitz of Hollywood to the stark winters of the World War II-era Soviet Union.

NEWSREEL: And now the bear came into its element, for now before besieged Leningrad and Moscow, the first snows had fallen. Across those white plains, the Nazi divisions crawled forward and stalled at a diminishing pace.

MUSIC: SYMPHONY NO. 2 IN B MAJOR BY SHOSTAKOVICH

On June 22nd, 1941, Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. It was the beginning of the end for the Nazi effort. That campaign would turn the tide of the Second World War.

Despite Germany and the Soviet Union entering a nonaggression pact in 1939, Hitler considered the Soviet Union Germany’s enemy. He coveted the resource-rich nation’s potential and vast living space and began planning to destroy its military and enslave its people.

German forces began the operation aiming for Leningrad in the north, Moscow in the middle, and Ukraine in the south. German forces expected a quick victory against the massive but untrained Soviet Army.

Ewald Okrafka was a soldier in Hitler’s army. He told the Documentary Channel through an interpreter:

OKRAFKA: One could see that the Russians had been preparing for attack, but they weren’t prepared for defense when we arrived. We were a few days faster than they were.

At first, Germany dominated, killing and capturing hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers. But the vast expanses and rugged terrain—plus the cold weather—began to hamper Hitler’s forces. As the massive Soviet military endured, German casualties mounted.

Hitler preempted his generals, ordering that they delay marching on Moscow to regroup. That decision meant the Russians gained precious time to protect their capital. The Soviets gained the upper hand, dealing the Reich its first major defeat of the war.

Finally, let’s jump ahead 75 years and over a continent for our last entry of the day.

NEWS: Well at 20 minutes to 5 we can now say that the British people have spoken, and the answer is, “We’re out.”

Just five years ago, on June 23, 2016, the United Kingdom voted 52 percent to 48 percent to leave the European Union. The result of that referendum would earn the catchy portmanteau: “Brexit.”

That “British exit” had been years in the making. The U.K. had been a member of the EU since 1973. But small business owners increasingly felt frustrated by EU fees. Older, blue-collar residents of England's countryside believed job opportunities for British citizens had long been eroding due to EU economic policies and immigration. And there was an overall sense that the EU got more out of the arrangement than the British.

So, in 2015, the Conservative Party called for the referendum. Then-Prime Minister and Conservative Party leader David Cameron said at the time:

CAMERON: We are approaching one of the biggest decisions this country will face in our lifetimes: whether to remain in a reformed European Union or to leave.

For the most part, those who voted to remain lived primarily in London, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. They saw benefits to the EU partnership—free trade, and a solid pipeline of young EU immigrants eager to work. They argued membership in the EU gave the U.K. status as a global entity.

After three tiresome years of political deadlock following the Brexit vote, the Conservative Party and its allies put together a majority in October 2019. After some negotiations, the chapter finally closed on the U.K.’s 47 years of EU membership on January 31st of last year, at the stroke of midnight.

SOUND: Midnight chimes and cheers, January 31, 2020

That’s this week’s History Book. I’m Katie Gaultney.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: Southern Baptists have a new leader. Shortly after his election, he talked with WORLD’s reporter on the scene. We will find out about his plans for the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

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.

Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

Go now in grace and peace.

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