The World and Everything in It - June 7, 2022

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

An effort is underway to amend a state constitution to expand protections for the unborn.

Kansans don't want to be a destination state, we want to make sure that we have limits and safety standards to protect women who live and visit here.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Also today religious conscience in the workplace—we’ll tell you about a case involving a postal worker and Sunday delivery.

Plus our Classic Book of the Month:

And scams against the elderly, a personal account of the impact of a cruelty.

REICHARD: It’s Tuesday, June 7th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

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

REICHARD: Time now for news. Here’s Kent Covington.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Zelenskyy visits battlefront in eastern Ukraine » Ukraine’s president visited the front line of the war against Russian invaders on Monday.

ZELENSKYY: [Speaking Ukrainian]

In the town of Zaporizhzhia, Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with troops, local leaders, and the mayors of some other occupied cities in the region.

In a video address, he said, “The enemy wants to occupy” the city.

The Zaporizhzhia region, with a population of 1.6 million, is one of the biggest industrial hubs of Ukraine’s southeast. In the south, Russia has already seized the large Ukrainian cities of Kherson and Mariupol.

Zelenskyy said peace talks with Russia stood at—quote—“level zero.”

Meantime, in France, U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, talked about Ukraine’s struggle for freedom on the 78th anniversary of the D-Day landing.

MILLEY: The fight for Ukraine is about honoring these veterans of World War II. It’s about maintaining the so-called global rules-based international order, the order that was established by the dead that are buried here.

Many World War II veterans and other visitors attended the Normandy commemoration for the first time in a few years after missing previous ceremonies due to COVID-19 restrictions.

Massive caravan prepares for trek to U.S. border » A migrant caravan estimated at about 11,000 people has gathered in southern Mexico, preparing for a long and dangerous walk to the United States. And some officials expect the number of people in that caravan to swell to 15,000, possibly the largest ever recorded in Mexico.

This comes as Border Patrol officials are already overwhelmed. In April, Customs and Border Protection recorded more than 234,000 apprehensions. That was the largest monthly figure recorded in U.S. history.

Chad Wolf is the former acting director of the Department of Homeland Security.

He said if a massive caravan chooses to cross at a port of entry, “It will stop commerce. It will stop legal trade and travel” at that port of entry.

WOLF: But probably the most dangerous is if they choose to cross in the desert or across the river between a port of entry. And what does that do to Border Patrol resources? We’re not going to be able to apprehend all of those individuals and it’s a very dangerous journey.

Wolf and many Republicans on Capitol Hill are calling on the Biden administration to reinstate the “Remain in Mexico” policy.

They’re also decrying efforts by the administration to end Title 42 restrictions. That’s a pandemic measure that allows the government to limit who can enter the country.

Gas prices hit another record high » Another day, another record high for gas prices. The national average is now up for $4.87 a gallon.

This driver in Detroit said he’s feeling the sticker shock.

AUDIO: It’s too high here, bro I can’t even afford to get something to eat nowadays.

Patrick De Haan with Gasbuddy.com explained what’s driving spiraling prices.

DE HAAN: Oil prices have continued to push gasoline prices up. Demand for gasoline is up. Supply remains weakened, partially due to the fact that refineries have closed over the past few years.

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said gas prices and inflation generally remain a top priority for the president.

PIERRE: This is something that everyone is feeling across the globe. But we understand that these gas prices, including food prices, in particular, those two things … is hurting families.

The lowest average price in the country are currently found in Georgia only—if I can use that word—$4.29 a gallon. On the other end, Californians are paying $6.34 a gallon.

Musk threatens to walk away from Twitter purchase » Elon Musk is threatening to walk away from his $44 billion bid to buy Twitter. WORLD’s Josh Schumacher has that story.

JOSH SCHUMACHER, REPORTER: The billionaire CEO of Tesla and SpaceX has expressed concern that many of Twitters users are fake—not real human beings, but spam bot accounts.

And he has accused Twitter of refusing to give him information about those spam bot accounts.

Lawyers for Musk say he has repeatedly asked Twitter to provide information that will allow him to determine how many of the company’s nearly 230 million accounts are fake.

Musk believes the company is resisting his information rights under the April merger agreement. And he is now threatening to pull his purchase offer if Twitter does not comply.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Josh Schumacher.

Boris Johnson survives no-confidence vote » British Prime Minister Boris Johnson survived a no-confidence vote on Monday, securing enough support from his Conservative Party to remain in office.

AUDIO: The vote in favor of having confidence in Boris Johnson as leader was 211 votes, and the vote against was 148 votes. And therefore, I can announce that the Parliamentary party does have confidence.

The vote followed a scandal over social gatherings and parties that he and his staff held during the pandemic, flouting many COVID-19 restrictions imposed on the public.

After the vote, the prime minister expressed gratitude and called it a “very good result for the country.”

JOHNSON: I think it’s a convincing result, a decisive result. And what it means is that as a government, we can move on and focus on the stuff that really matters to people.

But some analysts say the substantial rebellion within the party leaves Johnson as a weakened leader with an uncertain future.

I’m Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: state pro-life groups prepare for a possible end to Roe v. Wade.

Plus, the outrage of scams targeting the elderly.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Tuesday, the 7th of June, 2022.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

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

First up: voting for life.

The Supreme Court will likely announce its opinion in the Dobbs case before the end of the month. If that decision overturns Roe v. Wade, abortion regulation will revert to the states and laws already on the books.

Some states have trigger laws in place that would automatically protect unborn babies by halting all, or almost all, abortions. Other states have taken the opposite approach with laws that guarantee access to abortion.

REICHARD: Pro-life groups are preparing for all possibilities.

In Kansas, that includes a voter referendum. WORLD’s Lauren Dunn reports.

LAUREN DUNN, REPORTER: Mary Wilkinson has volunteered with pro-life groups since 1989. She’s now president of Kansans for Life.

Wilkinson: This summer, in particular, will be very busy. But election years are always that way. And quite honestly, I think it's going to be very busy all the way through November.

Pro-life groups in Kansas are gearing up for the state’s primary election on August 2nd—and not just because of the candidates. Kansans will be voting on a state constitutional amendment known as Value Them Both. It would clarify that the state constitution does not guarantee a right to abortion.

And that would clear the way for laws protecting unborn babies.

Ingrid Duran is the state legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee.

Duran: You're just saying that there is no right to abortion or the funding of abortion. And what our opposition will say is that they're banning all abortions. And that's not true. What we're trying to do is that we're trying to effectively protect a member of our human family.

Kansas legislators have passed several laws restricting abortion over the last few decades. Those include requiring abortion center inspections and parental notification before a minor can have an abortion.

In 2015, Kansas became the first state to pass a dismemberment abortion ban, outlawing the procedure commonly known as D&E (dilation and evacuation). But four years later, the Kansas supreme court ruled the law unconstitutional. Justices said the state constitution implied a right to abortion.

Danielle Underwood is director of communications for Kansans for Life, the Kansas affiliate of the National Right to Life Committee.

Underwood: So all of our laws that were in existence that were previously passed—all of them bipartisan passed—all of those became presumed unconstitutional when that ruling came down. And because of that ruling, we've already seen two of our laws overturned. So we knew that it was only a matter of time before every single one of our pro-life laws was sued and struck down based on that one decision.

Because of that concern, pro-life groups in Kansas joined together to push for the Value Them Both constitutional amendment.

Ingrid Duran says Kansas isn’t the only state doing this. Kentucky voters will consider a similar amendment in November.

Tennessee, West Virginia, and Louisiana have all approved similar measures since 2014. In 2018, Alabama went a step further and approved a constitutional amendment recognizing a right to life for unborn babies.

Duran: When you look at the map of what might happen when Roe’s dismantled, right, you have states that have pre-Roe abortion bans already on the books that they've been unenforceable because of Roe. But then you also have states that have what I mentioned earlier, the trigger law that in the event of Roe’s demise, that the state then is allowed to protect unborn children and, and for instance, Idaho is probably the only state that has a heartbeat trigger.

Some pro-lifers in Kansas are worried that without the proposed constitutional amendment their state will become an abortion destination. In 2021, half of abortions in Kansas were performed on mothers who live elsewhere.

Danielle Underwood says that’s because several nearby states have more protections for unborn babies and their mothers.

Underwood: Kansans don't want to be a destination state, we want to make sure that we have limits and safety standards to protect women who live and visit here.

Before voters could have their say, state lawmakers had to approve the amendment by a two-thirds majority. They tried and failed in 2020. But a year later, lawmakers proposed the amendment again. This time it passed both houses. Now it just needs approval from a simple majority of voters to become law.

With less than two months until the election, Underwood says Kansans for Life and its allies are hurrying to inform as many voters as possible.

Underwood: We have thousands of volunteers who are going door to door in Kansas, reaching out to educate voters and help them understand what they're voting on and why it's important. We also have volunteers who are helping in our call campaigns…This is a person to person effort and a church to church effort.

Mary Wilkinson says that means a lot of long hours ahead for volunteers. But she says the hard work is well worth it.

Wilkinson: It's really hard work to do. A lot of times, it can be very, very stressful. I'm thinking that when I complete this role as president and move into maybe some other roles that aren't as intense, that I'll look back on this time, with some satisfaction, you know, that we've made a difference.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Lauren Dunn.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Up next … a legal battle over working on the Sabbath.

A divided federal appeals court panel in Philadelphia recently upheld the sanctioning of a letter carrier for the U.S. Postal Service. He got in trouble with the post office for refusing to work Sundays.

Gerald Groff worked at a post office in Lancaster, Pennsylvania … where he was denied a religious exemption.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: He eventually resigned from his job after being written up.

Joining us now to fill us in on this case is Steve West. He’s an attorney and writes about religious liberty issues for WORLD.

Steve, good morning!

STEVE WEST, GUEST: Good morning, Mary.

REICHARD: So take us back to the beginning. Did this man suddenly decide he couldn’t work Sundays? Or was Sunday work not originally part of his job?

WEST: Mr. Groff was always observant of a Sunday sabbath, and generally he was able to swap shifts and get other workers to take Sunday for him, but it was a very small office and that eventually became difficult to do–particularly after the office’s workload increased as the Postal Service began Sunday delivery of packages for Amazon.

REICHARD: Okay, so he eventually got written up for not working Sundays. After that he resigned and later took legal action. What’s his legal argument?

WEST: It’s really a First Amendment argument that takes shape under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. That federal law requires employers–including the federal government–to make reasonable accommodations for employees based on their religious views–unless it causes an undue hardship on the employer. There’s the problem too: It’s not been difficult for employers to demonstrate hardship. Courts have said all they have to do is show a de minimis burden–a light burden–and they win.

REICHARD: Let’s talk about what the law requires of an employer as far as providing religious accomodations. And specifically what’s the U.S. Postal Service required to do?

WEST: Well, Groff’s attorneys did persuade the court of one legal point. The court found that full accomodation was required. Partial measures would not do. So, giving him time off for worship or another day for his sabbath would not do. Yet, nevertheless, the majority found that the Postal Service’s arguments that giving Groff Sunday off would burden co-workers and hurt morale were enough of a burden to deny accommodation.

REICHARD: One judge dissented. What did he say?

WEST: He said he would have sent the case back to the district court for more facts. He said the focus on co-workers was irrelevant, that it was hardship on the business that the court needed to consider, not hardship on other employees.

REICHARD: Okay, so what is Groff’s legal recourse at this point?

WEST: Groff’s attorneys could seek a rehearing of the appeal by a full complement of the circuit court’s judges or appeal directly to the Supreme Court. And there is some hope the court could revisit the undue hardship standard. In February 20-20, the US Supreme Court declined to review lower court rulings upholding retailer Walgreens’ right to fire employee Darrell Patterson, a Seventh-day Adventist, over a Saturday Sabbath accommodation. In an accompanying opinion, Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, said the Supreme Court should reconsider the de minimis standard. Another case, another day.

REICHARD: Steve West writes about religious liberties for WORLD Digital. You can read his work at W-N-G dot O-R-G. You can also subscribe to his free weekly newsletter on First Amendment issues, called Liberties. Steve, always good to have you on. Thank you!

WEST: You're welcome.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Students at St. John’s Academy high school near Vancouver, BC recently noticed something unexpected outside the windows … unexpected and a little frightening.

I have never seen a bear before!

A bear was trying to get inside the school’s dumpster and you could hear the excitement among students.

But the teachers were concerned that the bear was dangerously close and tried everything they could think of to scare him away.

Yea, go 'way bear!

Nothing seemed to be working and until thankfully the music teacher had an idea. He grabbed what was handy: his trombone.

Sound of trombone

And, well, that did the trick! Bears, apparently are not fans of brass instruments. Who knew?

It’s The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Tuesday, June 7th.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

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

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: Classic Book of the Month.

You may be heading out on vacation soon and might want to settle into a beach chair with something a bit lighter to read than normal. If so, Emily Whitten has you covered today.

REICHARD: To start us off, she offers a clue from the first few pages of the mystery novel she’s recommending. It’s a phone conversation between a young British gentleman and his mother.

CLIP: ‘Mr. Thipps rang them up this morning. It was his day to come down, you know.’ ‘Yes.’ ‘He rang them up to say he couldn’t. He was so upset, poor little man. He’d found a dead body in his bath.’ ‘Sorry, mother. I can’t hear. Found what? Where?’ ‘A dead body, dear, in his bath.’ ‘What?’

EMILY WHITTEN, REVIEWER: If you guessed that bit of dialog featured Lord Peter Wimsey, well done. That was B.J. Harrison reading Dorothy Sayers’ first major crime novel, Whose Body? It’s from 1923, and as you heard, Sayers sets up her case with a bit of humor.

The rest of the plot goes something like this: hours before a London man finds a dead body in his bath, financier Sir Reuben Levy goes missing across town. Bumbling Inspector Sugg thinks the unknown body in the bath must be Levy. But in this clip, Wimsey’s detective partner, Inspector Parker, points out the folly of Sugg’s logic.

CLIP: As a matter of fact, the man in the bath is no more Sir Rueben Levy than Adolf Beck, poor devil, was John Smith. Oddly enough though, he would be really extraordinarily like Sir Rueben if he had a beard. And as Lady Levy is abroad with the family, somebody may say it’s him. And Sugg will build up a lovely theory like the tower of Babel, and destined so to perish.

Lord Peter Wimsey isn’t officially a detective. He’s just a young, aristocratic gentleman who enjoys solving puzzles—and who has nothing better to do than traipse around England poking into people’s alibis and hidden connections. Like Sherlock before him, he stays several steps ahead of everyone else, though the fact that he’s a novice means he sometimes blindly walks into life-threatening situations. But for Sayers, who loved creating the puzzle herself, it’s all in good fun.

Gina Dalfonzo is the author of Dorothy and Jack, a book about Sayers’ friendship with C. S. Lewis. She recently listened to Whose Body? read aloud on an instagram livestream.

DALFONZO: And I was just struck all over again by what a good book this is. And it was her first novel, and she was just 30. And she writes like a full blown novelist, not like a debut novelist. There's nothing tentative or awkward or stiff about it. She dives right into these characters. Right into this plot. You feel like you've known these people forever.

Dalfonzo also sees themes in Whose Body? that resonate throughout Sayers’ work, including the high value she places on truth and personal integrity.

DALFONZO: Lord Peter has to make some rather weighty decisions about what he's going to do once he's figured out what's going on and who done it. And so, that takes the kind of integrity that we're talking about… 

Of course, Sayers and her characters do change and grow over the course of her 11 Lord Peter Wimsey books. At times early on, Wimsey comes across as somewhat shallow, sort of like P.G. Wodehouse’s Bertie Wooster.

CLIP: Parker, I hope you’re full of crime. Nothing less than arson or murder will do for us tonight.

Here’s Dalfonzo again.

DALFONZO: The biggest development people notice over the course of the series is Lord Peter himself. Even in Whose Body? you see glimpses of the more serious person that's inside him that will come out more. So I mean, it's just like all there in this first novel just waiting to sort of be developed and carried out.

Sayers wrote as a Christian, but she didn’t write Christian novels, per se. So, her main characters don’t engage much with religion or Christian worldview. But you can see Sayers’ beliefs at work in the background. For instance, one of the corrupt characters in Whose Body? sees life as materialistic, with a matra like this one.

CLIP: …the knowledge of good and evil is an observed phenomenon attendant on a certain condition of the brain cells which is removable…

Whose Body? does include some objectionable material. The characters occasionally curse and drink alcohol to excess. In later novels, they joke about past sexual sins. Some today criticize Sayers’ portrayal of Sir Rueben Levy, a Jewish character. But I think overall, the book holds up well—and modern readers will find it remarkably clean and thoughtful.

Sayers is also relevant in one other way. After becoming pregnant out of wedlock, Sayers hid her child from friends and family for many years. Dalfonzo says though painful, the experience seemed to lead to more mature faith.

DALFONZO: As I say in the book, the pregnancy sort of brought her up short, made her, you know, obviously, take a hard look at her life and figure out, okay I need to figure things out, I need to get it together. Her biographer Barbara Reynolds, who knew her very well said that as a high church Anglican, she would have gone to Confession probably and then tried to get things sorted out.

In her novels over the years, Sayers deepened her themes of the value of reality over appearance, with characters like Peter’s love interest, Harriet Vane. In our truth-deprived culture, Dalfonzo says this may be Sayers’ greatest appeal today.

DALFONZO: She just has this, this talent for seeing the truth. And, and speaking the truth. And I love that about her. And I love that about Sayers. I feel sometimes, I think she's the writer or a writer that we need right now because… As we've been saying she was a flawed person, she would never say that she was perfect. She made her own mistakes. But she believed in, like, looking at a thing, seeing it for what it was, and calling it what it was.

Whose Body? is an imperfect but well-written, humorous introduction to Sayers’ classic novels. I suspect Lord Peter Wimsey would agree.

CLIP: You don’t believe me. In fact, You’re still not certain I’m on the right track. Go in peace, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.

I’m Emily Whitten.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Tuesday, June 7th. 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.

Last week, we told you about an investigator who spent much of his career tracking down scammers who prey on seniors. That report was part of a larger project Kim Henderson’s been working on for several months. You can read more about it in the next issue of WORLD Magazine.

While this problem is relevant to all of us, it’s very personal for the Henderson family.

KIM HENDERSON, COMMENTATOR: We’re at the kitchen table, papers strewn. Souls bared. I hold out the phone—on speaker—and a recording tells us we’re No. 14 in the queue. It’s been a hard week of address changes, account closings. The things you must do when elder fraud invades your family.

My dad looks through his now credit card-less wallet. He shows me a 20 dollar bill tucked away behind the plastic photo holder. “Be sure to look through my wallet when I’m gone,” he tells me. “There will always be a twenty in it. Always.”

I nod. What else is a child supposed to do? A child entrusted with the care of the world’s most precious 90-year-old father?

The first clue was the mail carrier. She said I might want to take a look at the junk correspondence in his box. So I checked. Wow, was he getting mail. From political outfits. Flag protectors. Native Americans in Montana. Service dog trainers. Wildlife defenders. A Catholic opinion research survey.

He isn’t Catholic.

Those seemed harmless enough. But my dad—the one who wouldn’t spring for a Pontiac Fiero when I begged for one in ’84—that dad now felt compelled to write back to each one of these groups. Often, he’d include a small donation.

Here’s the real problem, though. Mixed in his mail were lots of phony notifications: You’ve won millions. Respond immediately. Prize ID Certificate enclosed.

So we had a talk. My brothers backed me up. I thought things were good. But I was wrong.

I didn’t know it, but some professional scammers had cherry-picked my dad for a major fleecing, just like they do hundreds of thousands of other elderly Americans each year. Oh, these schiesters were good. They bonded with him over the phone. They convinced him their interests were private, so he didn’t mention what was going on when he came to my house for dinner every evening. It didn’t come up when we played Dominoes either.

The only reason I got a whiff of a problem was when he asked me to sign something from the bank. That’s when I found out our local bank had proved the hero, stopping a major wire transfer. The next day I learned about my dad’s blank checks and overnight envelopes and a guy named Paul Newman on the other end of calls at all hours of the night. They had my dad convinced he’d won 2 and half million dollars. He planned to do wonderful things for the community with that money.

I heard those details at a meeting with bank officers, during which I admit I cried like a baby. I’m still dealing with the fallout, including bills from phone calls to Jamaica Dad didn’t realize he was making.

But it wasn’t all bad.

While going through his wallet, my father pulled out a well-worn, taped up card called a Golden Age Passport. We had some laughs as he described how that passport got him and Mom and their RV into discounted campsites in 48 states. It reminded me of their frugality and the example they set for me.

Which makes this scamming thing all the more despicable.

I’m Kim Henderson.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: the gun-control debate. We’ll talk about proposed legislation in Washington.

And, lessons from the Ark.

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.

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The Bible says: All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever.

Go now in grace and peace.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.