The World and Everything in It — May 11, 2020

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

The Supreme Court gets technological and an order of nuns once again pleads for religious liberty.

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

Also the Monday Moneybeat—no surprise, record job loss, but we’ll tell about one data point in the fine print that’s a glimmer of hope.

Plus, the WORLD History Book: a lovable, and very useful tank engine makes his way into the hearts of children 75 years ago.

And WORLD commentator Andree Seu Peterson on the Song of Solomon.

REICHARD: It’s Monday, May 11th. 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: White House economic advisers push toward reopening » Some of President Trump’s top economic advisers are stressing the importance of getting more businesses and offices open.

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said the White House believes it can work with governors to limit risk of reopening. He acknowledged that jumpstarting the economy will not be easy. 

MNUCHIN: The reported numbers are probably going to get worse before they get better. But that’s why we’re focused on rebuilding this economy. We’ll have a better third quarter. We’ll have a better fourth quarter. And next year is going to be a great year.

The president and governors who will decide when to reopen their states are facing competing pressures. More economic activity and travel will likely lead to more people contracting COVID-19. But continued shutdowns are adding millions to the ranks of the unemployed.

Another 3.2 million U.S. workers applied for jobless benefits last week.

Ohio reopening businesses » Ohio is among the many states wrestling with the right balance between guarding against COVID-19 and restarting its economy. 

Governor Mike DeWine told Fox News Sunday… 

DEWINE: Well, it’s really a risk no matter what we do. It’s a risk if we don’t do anything. It’s a risk if we do this. What we have done is we have come up with the best practices for businesses to reopen.  We’ve put business people together with health people, had them come up with these best practices. 

The Republican governor announced this past week that bars and restaurants in his state can fully reopen on May 21st with certain precautions. Barbershops, salons, and day spas will also reopen this Friday.

DeWine said the state has reached a plateau with regard to the rate of new cases and hospitalizations, but he conceded that those rates are not yet falling. 

The governor said, “We’ve got to try to do two things at once… No one is underestimating how difficult this is, but it’s something that we have to do.”

Boris Johnson outlines “the first careful steps” in the UK » Meantime, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Sunday outlined a “conditional plan” for reopening his country in the coming months. 

JOHNSON: At the earliest, by June the 1st, after half-term, we believe we may be in a position to begin the phased reopening of shops and to get primary pupils back into schools. 

In a televised address, Johnson said members of the public will also be able to exercise outdoors, drive to destinations such as beaches and play certain sports such as golf and tennis—but only with members of the same household.

And he said it was appropriate to encourage people with jobs that cannot be done from home to return to work.

But he said it would be “madness” to loosen restrictions so much that a second spike in cases emerges. As of Sunday, the UK has recorded almost 32,000 virus-related deaths, the most in Europe. 

The prime minister said, “We must continue to control the virus and save lives.” But he added “we must also recognize that this campaign against the virus has come at colossal cost to our way of life.”

Cuomo: coronavirus may seriously threaten some children » Two young children and a teenager have now died in New York due to possible complications from the coronavirus. Governor Andrew Cuomo said the issues involved swollen blood vessels and heart problems. 

CUOMO: One of the few rays of good news was young people weren’t affected. We’re not so sure that is the fact anymore. 

At least 73 children in New York have been diagnosed with symptoms similar to Kawasaki disease—a rare inflammatory condition in children—and toxic shock syndrome. Most of them are toddlers and elementary-age children.

There is no proof that the virus causes the mysterious syndrome. Cuomo said children had tested positive for COVID-19 or the antibodies but did not show the common symptoms of the virus when they were hospitalized.

Doctors still believe that most children with the coronavirus develop only mild illness.

Little Richard dies » Rock ‘n’ roll pioneer Little Richard has died. 

MUSIC: [Good Golly Miss Molly]

Born Richard Penniman, Little Richard was one of rock ‘n’ roll’s founding fathers who helped shatter the color line on the music charts. He joined Chuck Berry and Fats Domino in bringing what was once called “race music” into the mainstream. 

He sold more than 30 million records worldwide, and influenced countless other performers, including the Beatles.

Little Richard died on Saturday after battling bone cancer. He was 87.

I’m Kent Covington. Straight ahead: Little Sisters of the Poor head back to the Supreme Court.

Plus, Andrée Sue Peterson on finding meaning in the Song of Solomon.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD: It’s Monday morning. Welcome to a new week for The World and Everything in It. Today is the 11th of May, 2020. Good morning to you, I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER: And I’m Nick Eicher. Last week, a first at the U.S. Supreme Court: Oral arguments over the phone. It got the job done, with very few problems, and only one big one, about which more in a moment. 

Four cases last week, six this week. 

Today, we’ll have the first case heard Monday, and then another case from Wednesday.

REICHARD: Yes, things started as usual.

AUDIO: Oyez, Oyez, Oyez! God save the United States and this honorable court. [Gavel]

Supreme Court Marshall Pamela Talkin didn’t miss a beat. She was on the phone, too, and we heard her issue the traditional call to order.

Then the chief justice announced the case.

ROBERTS: We’ll hear argument this morning in case 19-46, the United States Patent and Trademark Office versus Booking.com.

EICHER: And away they went! After the first lawyer’s opening two minutes, Chief Justice Roberts asked his questions. Then he called the justices for their questions—in order of seniority. And when time was up? It was up!

ROSS: The point here…

ROBERTS: Thank you, thank you, counsel. Uh, Justice Thomas?

THOMAS: Uh, yes, Ms. Ross, a couple of questions.

REICHARD: That Justice Clarence Thomas even asked questions was news. He once went a whole decade without asking a question! So it was nice to hear his voice. 

Then next in seniority:

ROBERTS: Thank you, counsel, Justice Ginsburg?

GINSBURG: Two questions.  First question…

And so on in that manner. Once in a while, there’d be some delay. Justice Sotomayor had trouble with the unmute button. Or there’d be distortion for some reason. Justice Breyer:

BREYER: It’s a combination of four things…

But really nothing outside of what you’d expect in a teleconference—well, except for an oral argument on Wednesday. A distinct, easily identifiable, sound in background came through while one of the lawyers was talking:

MARTINEZ: [toilet flush sound…] And what the FCC has said when the subject matter … [flushing sound]

EICHER: (laughs) Oh, man! I don’t know how I feel about that. I love the decorum of the Supreme Court and I have to wonder whether this kind of thing that will say to the chief justice, famously not open to technology in the courtroom, to say I told you so and once the crisis is over, it’s back to the dark ages for technology.

But I also loved that the chairman of the FCC weighed in on social media. I’ll relate it to you with what I believe is the requisite sarcasm level: To be clear, said chairman Ajit Pai, the FCC does not construe the flushing of a toilet to reflect a substantive judgment of the Supreme Court, or of any Justice thereof, regarding an agency determination.

REICHARD: Touché, Mr. Chairman! 

Well, back to the first case. 

Maybe you’ve made reservations using a website called “Booking.com.” That company sought a trademark for its name. But the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office turned it down, because you can’t trademark generic terms. 

“Booking” is generic, and “dot com” is generic. But if you put them together as “Booking-dot-com,” does it change anything?

Lawyer for the Trademark Office, Erica Ross, says no. Supreme Court precedent from 1888 in a case called Goodyear tends to back her up.

ROSS: The point of this case, I think what really matters is the ability to block out competitors like ebooking.com and hotelbooking.com. And I think that’s exactly the type of anti-competitive concern that this court expressed in Goodyear…

Maybe so, but Justice Breyer asked the same question several justices asked in different ways:

BREYER: You can have a trademark that’s an address. 1418 35th street or something. You can have a trademark that’s a telephone number. So why can’t you have a trademark that is a dot-com?

Ross answered, just let the Patent Office decide as it always has: decide what’s generic versus what’s descriptive. The Goodyear precedent wouldn’t permit a brick-and-mortar business to trademark the name “Booking Company.” 

So why should the internet be any different? 

But Booking.com’s lawyer Lisa Blatt argued the Goodyear case is now passé. A law passed in the 1940s called the Lanham Act governs trademark law. And it says the test for whether a word can be trademarked is the “primary significance test.” In other words,  how consumers think about a certain term.   

Justice Samuel Alito saw a problem with both sides.

ALITO: What do you think I should do if I think that Goodyear is a case from a different era and doesn’t control here? But also think that the Lanham Act similarly was enacted in a different era, namely, in the pre-internet era. How can a rule that makes sense in the internet age be reconciled with the language of the Lanham Act?

The justices searched for some way to balance competing interests: 

Such as, how to avoid a monopoly over certain otherwise generic words. And weighing that against the reality of internet business and how consumers view domain names.  

The justices also worried about inviting loads of litigation.

The way forward is not at all obvious to me. The justices have many threads to consider.

Now, my final case today is one we know well, because it’s been here before:

The fight over Obamacare’s mandate that employers provide contraceptive coverage for employees in their insurance plans.

A brief history, for review: The Supreme Court in 2014 decided that a closely held for-profit corporation owned by people with sincere religious objections could opt out of that part of the ACA. That’s the Hobby Lobby case. 

Two years later, more battles, as religious nonprofits said the opt-out procedure itself still burdened their religious exercise rights. During that case, Justice Antonin Scalia died, and that left the court only eight justices—and a likely tie vote. So rather than issue a split decision, the court sent the case back with instructions for both sides to try to work out a solution. 

That failed. In 2017, though, the Trump administration expanded the exemption to include many other employers who might want to opt out of providing abortifacient drugs. The states of Pennsylvania and New Jersey sued, and some judges issued nationwide injunctions against the compromise rule, and now here we are at the Supreme Court once again.

In another first for the court, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg took part in the oral argument as a justice and as a patient. She was in the hospital during this oral argument and phoned in from her hospital room.

She and the other two female justices were clear where they stood on the question.

GINSBURG: At the end of the day, the government is throwing to the wind the womens’ entitlement to seamless, no cost to them, it is requiring those women to pay for contraceptive services. And if it turns out that there is no other plan that covers them, then they lack coverage. And the only way they can get these contraceptive services is to pay for them out of pocket. Precisely what Congress did not want to happen in the Affordable Care Act.

But lawyer for the Little Sisters Paul Clement pointed out that Obamacare never required birth-control coverage. Congress delegated that decision to the Department of Health and Human Services. And HHS didn’t make contraceptive coverage mandatory. That’s why millions of other employees didn’t have such coverage, even in secular settings. 

Justice Brett Kavanaugh pointed out the strong interests on both sides: religious liberty interests and ensuring womens’ access to preventive services. He addressed lawyer Michael Fischer who argued against the exemptions:

KAVANAUGH: So the question becomes who decides? Who decides how to balance those interests? And the answer is, of course, Congress in the first instance.

And because Congress delegated that authority to HHS, the agency falls under the executive branch. Elections happen, presidents change and the president has discretion to change course.

KAVANAUGH: And then the question is what’s the judicial role? And it seems to me the judicial role is not to put limits on the agency discretion that Congress has not put there.

Ergo, perhaps what’s reasonable in this circumstance is to allow that deference to the executive branch. He had this question for Fischer, again, lawyer arguing against exempting the nuns:

KAVANAUGH: Why isn’t that the way to look at the case, and if we get down to the bottom line of is this reasonable, not maybe everyone’s preferred choice but at least within the bounds of reasonable. Why isn’t this a reasonable way to balance it?

Fischer had several objections to that, including that the “moral exception” standard is too broad and capricious.  For example, an employer could believe women ought not be in the workplace, and use that as the moral objection to avoid providing insurance coverage for abortifacient drugs. 

Chief Justice Roberts asked whether the Little Sisters objected to employees obtaining contraceptive coverage at all, from elsewhere. 

Clement had a ready answer:

CLEMENT: …don’t have any objection if their employees receive those services from some other means. Their objection essentially is to having their plans hijacked and being forced to provide those services through their own plan and plan infrastructure.

Fischer argued despite that, Obamacare’s original rules struck the right balance by letting employers opt out, but still letting women get contraceptive coverage. 

Perhaps Chief Justice Roberts summed up everyone’s frustration when he said this.

ROBERTS: The problem is that neither side in this debate wants the accommodation to work. The one side doesn’t want it to work because they want to say the mandate is required, and the other side doesn’t want it to work because they want to impose the mandate. Is it really the case that there’s no way to resolve those differences?

Let’s hope this time the court makes a decision on the merits. Or even better, Congress does its job and clarifies the issue.

And that’s this week’s Legal Docket.

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

NICK EICHER: It appears the coronavirus shutdown has in a little over a month’s time destroyed the number of jobs it took a decade of job growth to create.

In other words, the April jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics is in. And it estimates job losses of 20.5 million, on top of 800-thousand lost in March.

For context, February 2020 was the record-setting 113th straight month of job gains going back into 2010. The job creation in that decade was 22.8 million.

That’s why I say these last two reports are very close to wiping all of those jobs out.

Financial analyst and adviser David Bahnsen is on the line for our weekly conversation. David, good morning.

DAVID BAHNSEN, GUEST: Well, good morning, again, Nick.

EICHER: You’ve been predicting this and we’ve been talking about it for some time. But I can’t take my eyes off this Labor Department report. I’ve never seen anything like it and I know you haven’t either. Larry Kudlow, the White House economic adviser, called it heartbreaking. There’s probably no other appropriate word.

But it is a rearview mirror look, and we did have a week-to-week decline in initial jobless claims, that trend continues, and we’re starting to see phased reopening.

Start where you like, but how do you analyze the week?

BAHNSEN: Well, the most significant thing about yesterday’s jobs report—once you’re past the tragedy of the basic realities, all of which were not a surprise and yet no less tragic by their foreknowledge—but the most surprising piece or interesting piece and perhaps hopeful piece is that 78 percent of those 21 million newly unemployed are expecting temporary, they’re in the temporary jobless category, OK? That’s a really, really important reality here. 

This is employee-identified as being on a temporary layoff, so obviously their employers may feel differently and may end up acting differently. 

But my point being that if 50 percent—instead of 78 percent—prove to be temporary, that means that you have 10 or 11 million people going back to work by July 1st. 

That is going to be a really, really positive thing. And it’s, frankly, what I expect. I’d love for it to be all 78 percent. I think that’s too optimistic, but that’s the interesting part. I was not expecting that high a percentage to identify in the temporary layoff category.

EICHER: So, is that what you attribute the pretty decent stock market week to or are they looking at something way farther down the time horizon?

BAHNSEN: Yeah, it’s going to be kind of a weekly conversation for us because it’s the same factors week in and week out right now, and that is that the stock market was well aware of the fact that people were losing jobs hand over fist far before the jobs report came out. 

So, just as has been the case with the initial jobless claims data for the last seven weeks, the monthly Bureau of Labor Statistics report is not reporting anything that could not have been predicted. 

Now, what you do get out of the reports, though, is the weeds. You get to see, you know, that 5.1 million of job loss was in food and beverage, hospitality. That 2.1 million were in retail, 1.4 million in blue-collar manufacturing. And that average hourly wages went up month-over-month. 

And so the initial impulse might be that someone says, “Wow, that sounds positive!” But it’s, of course, a disaster because the reason hourly wages went up is because the vast majority of the new unemployment is in the lowest decile of wage earners. So you are seeing the highest pain and misery with the most unfortunate in society. That’s what that data point really indicates. 

So, all that to say that the stock market is going higher because of unprecedented Fed intervention, monetary stimulus, fiscal stimulus, and the expectation that there’s going to be a recovery in the economy and that 10,000 points coming off the market priced in a good portion of it. Half of that’s been made back and we’re in this sort of middle ground zone now and there’s not a lot of other places to put capital. 

So, large cap U.S. stocks become a more attractive alternative than a bond market that pays zero and international stocks that are much more volatile.

EICHER: David Bahnsen, financial analyst and advisor. He’s Chief Investment Officer at the Bahnsen Group. David, grateful for your time. Thanks again for talking this through with us week after week and we’ll catch you next time.

BAHNSEN: Thanks so much, Nick.

NICK EICHER: Today is Monday, May 11th. You’re listening to WORLD Radio and we’re glad you are! 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, the first woman to scale Mount Everest by herself and without bottled oxygen. Plus, 75 years ago, a book series published for children that’s still popular today. 

But first, the birthday of a nursing pioneer. Here’s Paul Butler.

PAUL BUTLER, REPORTER: We begin today on May 12th, 1820. A wealthy English couple traveling in Italy give birth to their second daughter. They name her “Florence” after the city of her birth. 

At 17, she was overcome with a strong feeling that God was calling her to devote her life to the service of others. Her family expected she would marry and start a family, but she chose instead to become a nurse. 

MCDONALD: Florence Nightingale got the nickname “ministering angel” by one of the reporters who saw her in action in the Crimean War. 

Biographer Lynn McDonald.

MCDONALD: The sickness rate was awful. Nightingale worked to make things better. She got out the data and said this is what went wrong, and here’s how to do it differently. So she made a lasting contribution.

After the war, Florence Nightingale returned to England and spent her life advocating for better trained nurses and improved medical facilities. Her nursing school opened in 1860 at St. Thomas Hospital. Five years later, the first graduates of trained Nightingale nurses entered service.

Every nurse she educated took the Nightingale pledge, a modified version of the Hippocratic Oath—a pledge still used by many programs today.

NURSES: I solemnly pledge myself before God and in the presence of this assembly to pass my life in purity and to practice my profession faithfully.

I shall do all in my power to maintain and elevate the standard of my profession…

Often described as a Unitarian due to her unorthodox views on salvation, Nightingale was actually a member of the Church of England her whole life. As a young woman, she was also influenced by Wesleyan theology—asserting that true religion requires active care and love for others. 

Florence Nightingale died at age 90. Dozens of hospitals, clinics, and training programs around the world are named in her honor.

Next, May 12th, 1945. The first publication of “The Railway Series” by Anglican priest Wilbert Awdry. The children’s book makes a blue tank engine named Thomas a household name around the world. 

MUSIC: THOMAS THE TANK ENGINE THEME SONG

Britain’s ITV Network began producing the series as an animated children’s program in 1984. A few months later, the BBC interviewed the author. 

HOST: What prompted you to write them in the first place? (LAUGHTER) 

AWDRY: I’ve been answering that question for 40 years! See, we had exhausted all the entertainment value of the nursery rhymes, except two. One was, “Early in the morning, down at the station, all the little engines standing in a row.” So I, just for fun, I drew some engines standing in a row. 

In recognition of the 75th anniversary of the popular children’s stories, Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, recorded this special introduction for the latest animated episode:  

HARRY: It all began when a young boy lay ill in bed. His loving father entertained him with stories of a special railway, on the magical island of Sodor. 

Before Awdry retired, he wrote more than 100 short stories about the engines of Sodor. His son Christopher continues in his father’s footsteps and has written more than 40 additional stories about the “little engines standing in a row.”

And finally, 25 years ago this week:

SOUND: I can see the summit! It’s amazing! Well done, you’re doing really well. Keep it up. 

Alison Hargreaves approaches the top of the world’s tallest mountain.

SOUND: We can see your every move now. Fantastic. 

The 33-year-old British mother of two becomes the first woman to ascend Everest without bottled oxygen or the help of a local guide. 

SOUND: Tell my dear children that I’m in the prettiest place in the world and love them dearly…

Hargreaves was already a legend. Seven years earlier she was the first solo climber to conquer all the great north faces of the Alps in a single season. 

In 1995, she intended to scale the three highest mountains in the world in a single year. On May 13th, she checked the first off her list:

SOUND: To finally stand on that summit meant so much to me. I mean I’d been in the mountains since I was 4 or 5 and to stand on the world’s highest…that was just unbelievable. It really was. I just couldn’t stop crying. 

A few months later, Hargreaves joined a handful of other climbers on Pakistan’s K-2—a much more dangerous mountain. She succeeded in topping it on August 13th, 1995. Two down, one to go, but K-2 was her last. Hargreaves and five other climbers died in a violent storm coming back down from the summit. 

Hargreaves’ son Tom Ballard followed in his famous mother’s footsteps—becoming a record breaking mountain climber himself. He also died in a climbing accident while attempting to climb Mount Nanga Parbat in Pakistan last year.

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

MARY REICHARD: Today is Monday, May 11th. 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. Next, commentator Andrée Seu Peterson has some thoughts on why God gave us a book in the Bible about romance. This is from her 2008 book Normal Kingdom Business.

ASP: What do you do with the Song of Solomon? It is the uncle in your living room that no one talks about. He’s part of the family so you have to let him in, but he’s just so weird—and vaguely threatening. Preachers don’t go anywhere near the Song, except to offer some obligatory concession that sex is a beautiful gift from God.

Our betters tried for centuries to find in it the promised content “profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16). The old Greek translation, as well as Josephus and Philo, do not allegorize away such sensuality as “hair like a flock of goats,” and “browsing among the lilies.” Hippolytus and Origen are another matter. 

These early Christian interpreters, with body-despising hangovers from Platonic dualism, can divine only the divine, seeing nothing under any spreading tree but metaphors of Christ and the Church—and doubtless there exists no small grounding for this in Hosea, Ezekiel 16, and Revelation 19.

Among those who do find romance more than Christology, Professor George Schwab hears not only major chords but minor, a whisper of caution in the valley of God’s delights, in his work The Song of Songs’ Cautionary Message Concerning Human Love. It is fun, I suppose, to feel faint like the “Beloved” in the poem, with signs in the quicksand of her emotions, “I am sick with love” (2:1-7). There is some kind of pleasure, I suppose, in a frantic search through village streets in wee hours for one’s lover (3:1-5; 5:2-8). But it begins to seem, too, that love has its drawbacks.

Falling in love can be debilitating, enfeebling, and all-consuming. You forget to eat. You cannot work. You certainly wouldn’t want to live this way indefinitely, as the “songs” of this world would have you do, encouraging serial lapses.

“My lover is mine and I am his”—covenantal language. He is one sweet tree in a forest. She is a flower, all others are brambles. Exclusivity is the hallmark of love when pleased to be aroused,” writes Schwab.

But love is a sleeping tiger, and Song a solemn warning of its bottled-up danger, a force which if approached unwisely will consume a man and all he has. Are you ready for these feelings?

I adjure you, O children of Jerusalem, that you “not awaken love until it pleases,” says the Song of Songs, inspired Word of God. Heed the caution, that you may also enjoy the garden in its season. The wise man will take care for his affections and keep them in the bounds of God’s design, while the foolish will tickle the slumbering Leviathan before its time.

I’m Andrée Seu Peterson.

NICK EICHER: Tomorrow: Churches in some states are free to start meeting in person again. So pastors are figuring out how to bring social-distancing to their churches.

And, we’ll meet a single dad supporting his kids’ extracurricular activities by joining them.

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.

Ecclesiastes tells us for everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven. 

Go now in grace and peace.

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