The World and Everything in It: May 13, 2024

PREROLL: The World and Everything in It is made possible by listeners like me. My name is Dennis Miranda. I live in southwestern Pennsylvania with my beautiful wife of 35 years and our three children. I'm a retired marine gunnery sergeant who now works for the Department of Veterans Affairs and soon to be Colson Fellow. I hope you enjoy today's program! (A-roo-wah!)

JENNY ROUGH, HOST: Good morning! To arbitrate or to litigate, that is the question. Well, it’s one question. The key question is: Who decides where cases get resolved?

AUDIO: We have two people running in with contracts, one of which suggests that this is supposed to be decided by the court. The other suggests that this is supposed to be decided by the arbitrator.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Legal Docket is coming up.

Also today the Monday Moneybeat and the WORLD History Book. 35 years ago protesters in China make a stand: literally a brave stand before a tank.

AUDIO: There has never been a challenge to the leadership of Communist China like this one.

ROUGH: It’s Monday, May 13th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Jenny Rough.

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

ROUGH: Up next, Kent Covington with today’s news.

SOUND: [Airstrike]

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Israel-Gaza » Columns of black smoke rose from parts of the city of Jabalia in northern Gaza over the weekend as Israel carried out more airstrikes against Hamas targets.

Israeli Defense Forces are also pushing further into the southern city of Rafah over strong objections from the White House. That after cease-fire talks broke down again last week. But Secretary of State Tony Blinken said Sunday:

BLINKEN:  It remains our view that the fastest way to get to a cease-fire, the fastest way to get hostages home, is through an agreement. And we're determined every single day to pursue that, and to try to get it to happen.

Blinken also delivered some of the Biden administration’s strongest criticism yet of Israel’s offensive in Gaza. He said it has resulted in “a horrible loss of life of innocent civilians” but has failed to neutralize Hamas leaders and fighters and could drive a lasting insurgency.

White House again makes case against Rafah ops, defends policies » Meantime, in Rafah Israel has ordered thousands of civilians to evacuate ahead of a larger offensive.

But UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk argues …

TÜRK:  The latest evacuation orders affect close to a million people in Rafah. So where should they go now? There is no safe place in Gaza.

Rafah is considered the last refuge in Gaza for more than a million civilians.

National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan tells ABC’s This Week that a major offensive there would be a humanitarian catastrophe. And he said President Biden believes it would not accomplish the goal of destroying Hamas.

SULLIVAN: While Israel would also be able to kill some Hamas folks, many Hamas folks would melt away, because they’re terrorists. They’re not really organized fighters in the way that we think about a typical military.

Israel: Washington debate over Israel policy » Israel, though, is adamant that Rafah is the last remaining Hamas stronghold and there is no way to win the war without going into the city.

Republican Sen. Rick Scott defended Israel’s position on Sunday:

SCOTT: Hamas is, you know, the last battalions are in Rafah. Uh, if they're going to destroy Hamas, which they have to do for any security, uh, they have to go in.

The president says the United States is withholding certain heavy bombs and artillery shells until or unless Israel abandons its Rafah plans. And that is drawing some bipartisan backlash on Capitol Hill.

A group of House Democrats is pressing the White House for answers, and centrist Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin added …

MANCHIN:  Now making decisions on what you can and what you can't use, you gotta do it our way or no way at all, uh, that's not who we are and that's not what we should be doing.

Republican Sen. Mike Lee called the decision “reprehensible.”

Trump trial » Donald Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen is expected to take the witness stand today in a Manhattan courtroom. He is the prosecution's star witness in the state’s criminal fraud case against him.

The former president’s son, Eric Trump said Sunday that his father has done nothing wrong.

ERIC TRUMP:  They try and slander him, they try and keep him off the campaign trail, they try and waste his time, they try and destroy his reputation and his image with a nonsense case.

Cohen will testify that he paid $130,000 dollars to a pornographic film actress on Trump’s behalf … to keep quiet about an extramarital affair. Prosecutors allege that Trump reimbursed Cohen … and then illegally disguised that payment as a valid business expense.

Trump says neither the supposed affair, nor the alleged fraud ever happened.

The defense will call Cohen’s credibility into question. He has admitted in the past to lying under oath, both in a courtroom and to Congress.

Trump in NJ/Burgum » Meantime, former President Trump campaigned in an unexpected state over the weekend: New Jersey.

TRUMP:  As you know, I've come here from New York where I'm being forced to endure a Biden show trial, all done by Biden.

He told supporters that he believes the deep blue state is in play in this year’s election. But his appearance also drew media coverage in the nearby Philadelphia market, which is, of course, in the key battleground state of Pennsylvania.

And at the campaign stop, he continued auditioning possible running mates.

TRUMP:  You won't find anybody better than, uh, this gentleman in terms of his knowledge of, you know, he made his money in technology, but he probably knows more about energy than anybody I know. But Doug Burgum has been incredible, and, uh, the country's lucky to have him.  

The governor of North Dakota is on Trump’s VP shortlist. A list that is also believed to include South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem and Senators Marco Rubio and Tim Scott.

Northern lights » The Northern Lights could continue to light up the night sky in parts of the continental United States and beyond once again tonight and according to forecasters, possibly tomorrow night too.

Ian Cohen with Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory says what we’re seeing is basically a “sort of huge explosion.”

COHEN: This is sort of a huge explosion that can be associated with the flare, but basically what happens is part of the sun, this plasma, the charged particles, the magnetic field that makes up the sun, part of it actually lifts off the sun and streams away into space.

Scientists say even if you can't see it with the naked eye, snap a picture on your phone, and it may well capture the colorful lights.

I’m Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: Arbitration cases at the Supreme Court on this week’s Legal Docket. Plus, the Monday Moneybeat.

This is The World and Everything in It.

JENNY ROUGH, HOST: It’s Monday morning, May 13th, and you’re listening to The World and Everything in It from WORLD Radio. Good morning! I’m Jenny Rough.

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

It’s time for Legal Docket. Today, arbitration as an alternative to litigation.

The U.S. Supreme Court is considering three arbitration cases this term.

Put simply, arbitration removes disputes from courtrooms and allows them to be resolved in private. Typically, an attorney or a business professional comes in to oversee an arbitration. But there’s no judge and no jury.

Courts are clogged. So arbitration helps clear some of the congestion. It also saves money and time, because it’s considerably less expensive than litigation and arbitration typically resolves more quickly.

But as we know from economics, there are always tradeoffs: Your savings in time and money come at the cost of legal protections—like rules of evidence—and the right to appeal. You don’t get that with arbitration.

ROUGH: You also don’t get what lawyers call “nuclear verdicts”—those monster damages awards of multi-millions of dollars that American juries use to send messages. So speaking of economics … there are trade-offs there, too. The nuclear verdict can and often does change behavior that needs changing for some overall benefit to society.

But the tradeoff of reasonable rewards and fair compensation may be the bigger benefit, and so arbitration has its place.

EICHER: Okay, here’s our first arbitration case: It involves truck drivers who deliver bread and other baked goods to grocery stores. The truckers operate under the terms of a contract with a baking company that produces and markets the product. Conflicts cropped up over pay, and so the company pointed to the arbitration agreement in the contract and sought to resolve things that way. But the truckers wanted the leverage of litigation and they pointed to a provision of the Federal Arbitration Act that exempts certain transportation workers, those who move goods by rail or by sea, but also this vague category, “other class of workers.” That’s where the bread truck drivers say they fit, and so despite the arbitration agreement they contend they have a right to sue.

ROUGH: Yeah, and it was hard for me to figure out why this exemption exists. The law review articles I read talked about how the Federal Arbitration Act was originally designed to manage contract disputes among merchants engaged in commerce. Not for disputes between a big business and a single employee.

So the exemption protects the individual laborer.

EICHER: Well, here, the legal question is whether the exemption applies only to the workers in the transportation industry? Or whether it speaks more to the workers’ job responsibilities?

And the court ruled on this case last month.

ROUGH: It held the right litmus test is what the workers do, not what industry they’re in. So the fact that the truckers worked for a baking company isn’t what matters. You can hear the reasoning in this comment from Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. This is from oral argument in February.

JUSTICE JACKSON: You can have transportation workers in a different kind of industry. That's why I don't understand where the industry limitation is coming from. That's not in the statute.

EICHER: Case two: Coinbase versus Suski. Here, we enter the strange new world of cryptocurrency. The company Coinbase offers online services to support crypto transactions..

David Suski signed up for the Coinbase platform. And when he did, he entered into the kind of agreements we enter into all the time with a single click of the “OK” button, namely a User Agreement.

So we’ll call that click Contract One.

It had a clause saying that in the event of a dispute over the services Coinbase offers it’s resolved in arbitration.

ROUGH: Yes, and usually a judge decides whether any given dispute falls within the scope of the arbitration clause. That’s the default rule.

But Contact One that you referred to also had a delegation clause. Meaning, the parties delegated to an arbitrator the responsibility of who decides where the dispute goes: Does it belong in arbitration or does it remain in court?

ROUGH: But here’s what happened next: Coinbase sponsored a sweepstakes. And Suski paid $100 to enter. In doing so, he clicked another OK button and entered into another contract with Coinbase.

Contract Two, as it were.

Contract Two laid out the rules of the sweepstakes. It did not have an arbitration clause. It didn’t have a delegation clause, either. Instead, it had a provision that said California courts have jurisdiction over disputes regarding the sweepstakes.

ROUGH: So if that sounds like a contradiction between the two contracts, that’s because there is! We’re right on track.

Before we go on, I need for you to know this case has many layers, and that makes me think of a cake.

EICHER: And that makes me think of dessert.

ROUGH: Me, too. So let’s think of three components of the dessert: The cake itself. The frosting. And the candles.

Suski thought Coinbase misled users into entering the sweepstakes. So he sued and others joined with him. They told the court that Coinbase engaged in false advertising and other wrongdoing.

That’s the underlying dispute. The lawsuit is the cake.

Did Coinbase engage in false advertising?

EICHER: Now the frosting, a second dispute: The question whether the false advertising claim belongs in court or arbitration? And like frosting, it’s sticky.

Then the candles shedding light on a third question: Who decides the sticky question? We need to know where the case gets resolved, but first we have to know who decides?

ROUGH: Yes, that’s what the parties are fighting about here.

Coinbase argues the delegation clause in contract one is broad enough to sweep contract two into its scope, so an arbitrator should resolve the threshold question of where the original dispute belongs.

David Suski argues no, Contract Two supplants Contract One, so a judge is the decider.

At the Supreme Court Justice Jackson during oral argument recapped the dispute.

JUSTICE JACKSON: We have two people running in with contracts, one of which suggests that this is supposed to be decided by the court. The other suggests that this is supposed to be decided by the arbitrator. And so, in that situation, isn't the question which contract controls in this situation?

It is. And the answer will depend on whether the second contract supersedes the first one.

Both parties agree that the lower court, the Ninth Circuit, did not resolve that specific question.

EICHER: Justice Brett Kavanaugh saw that as an opportunity to quickly dispose of the matter. He asked Coinbase attorney Jessica Ellsworth …

JUSTICE KAVANAUGH: Can we just remand and say that’s for the Ninth Circuit to figure out in the first instance?

JESSICA ELLSWORTH: You can. I think it would be important -

JUSTICE KAVANAUGH And if we do that, are we done? (Laughter)

Even though the Ninth Circuit didn’t decide which contract controls, it did decide that a judge is the right person to decide.

Suski is fighting to keep that ruling.

But Justice Neil Gorsuch struggled to understand why the “who decides” question mattered so much. He asked Suski’s attorney, David Harris, why not simply let an arbitrator decide where the case goes.

Here’s an exchange between those two, with a follow up by Justice Elena Kagan.

JUSTICE GORSHUCH: Why are we litigating all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States up and down and up and down over where this goes when, frankly, I would have thought you had a really good shot of getting an arbitrator to say this belongs in court.

HARRIS: I would agree. But that wasn’t, we don't want to take this to an arbitrator.

ROUGH: Justice Gorsuch has a point. In theory, a judge and an arbitrator would apply the same law and reach the same conclusion. But as a practical matter, arbitrators and judges are human. And reasonable minds can differ.

And the real reason the parties are fighting so hard about this? Listen to this question by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, then Harris’ answer, and then Justice Kavanaugh’s response.

JUSTICE BARRETT: How much money are you seeking in your complaint for this sweepstakes entry thing?

HARRIS: So, I mean, at the time we filed, we didn't know. At the time we filed, all we knew is that entrants were manipulated into being -- into paying $100 per person or more to -- to enter the sweepstakes. We are left to estimate, you know, how -- how many people were affected by that.

JUSTICE KAVENAUGH: It's a class action, putative, right? That’s the answer, isn’t it?

A class action is a device that allows people with small dollar claims to be a part of a larger action with a lot of people who have similar claims.

EICHER: Each person on his or her own isn’t going to try to pursue a lawsuit to recover $100. But if a lawyer can represent a whole class of plaintiffs in court in front of a jury? That nuclear verdict comes into play.

ROUGH: But remember the tradeoff: Class actions aren’t allowed in arbitration. Only in court.

That’s why Suski wants litigation over arbitration.

So even though this Supreme Court case centers on who decides, what really matters in the end is where it’s decided!

If in court with a win, Suski can have his cake …

EICHER: … and eat it, too.

Our final case: another employment dispute. Here, both parties agree it belongs in arbitration. What they disagree on is what happens next.

The Federal Arbitration Act says when all claims in a lawsuit are subject to arbitration, courts shall stay the action. Meaning, keep the case on the court’s docket while the arbitration goes forward. Set the court case on the back burner, even though it’s inactive.

But the lower court here dismissed the case outright.

ROUGH: It did. But the plaintiffs argue that’s wrong.

Now, both sides think the language of the statute favors their position. But arbitration is supposed to help overburdened courts. This case might come down to which alternative creates less work.

If something improper happens at arbitration, a stay allows the parties to quickly move back to court. But if dismissed, the parties would have to file a lawsuit all over again.

Chief Justice John Roberts seemed to think dismissal was a bad idea.

JUSTICE ROBERTS: You’re saying it’s more trouble to let the thing just sit there than to file a new action? It seems to me that the alternative would be a lot more burdensome.

So those are the court’s arbitration cases this term.

To wrap up, I’ll note that arbitration falls under a larger umbrella of what’s known as Alternative Dispute Resolution including voluntary mediation and negotiation. So even though today’s use of arbitration clauses in employment contracts and user agreements raises concerns, the overall practice of Alternative Dispute Resolution can be a healing mechanism.

And that’s this week’s Legal Docket.

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

NICK EICHER, HOST: It's time now to talk business markets and the economy with financial analyst and advisor David Bahnson. David's head of the wealth management firm, the Bahnson group, and he is here now. David. Good morning.

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

EICHER: Well, David, we talked about this back when it was proposed, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau had put forward a cap on the amount of money credit card companies can charge consumers whenever they make a late payment. It would place an $8 max. on late fees with some exceptions to the rule. It was set to take effect tomorrow. But a federal judge in Texas last week issued a temporary injunction. The rule is blocked for now. He's considering a lawsuit challenging whether this CFPB reg. is within the scope of powers granted by the Constitution. Now, we don't need to go into the legal finer points. Our legal correspondents are more than capable of doing that. They will weigh in in due course. But as an economic matter, David, what is the effect of these kinds of rules?

BAHNSEN: Well, look, this should not be thought of as any different than any other price. What is the natural limit on price? It is what consumers will pay, and what competition will do. And can anyone argue with a straight face that people do not have competition with credit cards? There are thousands of banks that issue credit cards. And so to the extent that someone says this bank's late fee is $20. And every now and then I have to pay my credit card late. And there's another bank that has a fee of only $11, or whatnot. There is a natural ability to compete around late fees, just like there is around interest rates. What would be the economic limiting principle for the federal government mandating what a late fee could be, but not mandating what the interest rate could be? Or how much time? Right now everyone has to pay their credit card bill within a month. Why not have the federal government come in and say you must give three months? 

The whole entire issue is that these decisions are made by market actors. And why are market actors better prepared, better qualified, better suited to make these decisions than the bureaucrats in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an unconstitutional arm, I might add, of the executive branch of government? Why? Because they have skin in the game. They actually are participating. And so transactions either benefit them or hurt them. Where for a government bureaucrat, they have no connection, either in incentive—it doesn't affect them one way or the other—or in knowledge—they don't know what the factors are, what that might make somebody take a certain card at a certain fee, you know, have decision making, why the originating banks set the terms that they do. There's knowledge and incentives that go into economic decision making. And the federal government is the least qualified entity I can imagine to have any opinion. And as you said, you can let the legal—the very capable I might add—legal scholars at The World and Everything in It frequently feature to talk about the constitutionality. But this federal judge sure seems to me to be reading the clear intent and black and white of the law. And if I were wrong about that, that the federal government could set what the fee would be for an operational term of a transaction like this, I would love to know why they couldn't set 15 Other terms as well.

EICHER: Well, David, I know you don't mean to give them any ideas.

BAHNSEN: Somehow I don't think they need the ideas from me. They are limited only by their own imaginations.

EICHER: Well, and sometimes the Constitution. We'll see how that case progresses. Let's turn to the markets. David, you made a comment in the introduction to your Dividend Cafe web posting this week that it appears the markets have turned for the better. Tell us a bit about that.

BAHNSEN: Well, I mean, we certainly had a pretty good drop in the month of April, a few percentage points. And now we've had a few percentage points reversed in the first couple weeks of May. And this is the volatility that we expected to see in the market this year, up and down movements around some of these various factors we've talked about. The will-they/won't-they of the Fed. Are earnings going to be worse than expected or better than expected? Is inflation going to be lower than expected or higher than expected? And each data point that comes out with some of these different categories can tend to have a little bit of an exaggerated effect on markets. And the only thing I want to add, Nick, is that that's all being done with markets already at a rather high valuation. And so it makes it even more, to use the phrase, “trigger happy.” 

But since the Fed came out of their last meeting, said they were not going to be raising rates anytime in the near future. But announced that they also were not cutting rates, but then did ease up on the quantitative tightening. They had been removing 60 billion a month from their balance sheet, and they lowered that target number to 25 billion. So that point, I think the market said, Okay, well, on the margin, financial market’s liquidity is getting better, not tighter. The Fed has given us a signal that they're not at any risk of reversing course there. And in the meantime, that's with a backdrop—as much as it may be a surprise for a lot of people—have pretty good fundamentals within the markets. The earnings have come in on target margin: profit margins have stayed rather significant level, profits are on track to meet their goals, not wildly exceed them. But those three things put together have kind of changed sentiment in just a couple of weeks. Can it reverse the other way, with a high CPI number, or a certain level of employment number, or a certain GDP number? You know, there's all kinds of data points that can pull it back and forth for those that are really concerned about the short term moves. But those are the gyrations that we're seeing right now.

EICHER: Right. Well, David, for defining terms, I'd like to pick up on something that you said just a few minutes ago about markets responding to the Feds easing up on quantitative tightening. So for this week, I'd like for you to define that term. And of course, take your time doing that, because I know it's complicated. We talk a lot about the will-they or won't-they of whether the Fed will reduce interest rates, and we've talked about that. But what we've not talked about is this other set of policy tools the Fed uses around quantitative tightening. That's outside the whole interest rate conversation that dominates most of the coverage. So run with that quantitative tightening.

BAHNSEN: Well, and it does have something to do with interest rates. But let's just define it and kind of pull it all in together. It's good to make our term both, because there's no point in defining quantitative tightening apart from its predecessor, which is quantitative easing. If there hasn't been quantitative easing, there's nothing to tighten. And again, the shorthand that is used throughout, you know, the jargon of the culture and the media and economists is QE for quantitative easing, and QT for quantitative tightening. So what was QE? It was a program where essentially the Federal Reserve buys bonds. It has to be government-backed securities where the Fed isn't allowed to own it. The Fed was coming in and buying those bonds from banks with money that didn't exist. The banks then ended up with more cash and the Fed ends up with the bonds on their balance sheet. But the reason why people would say, “Well, isn't it the same as just printing money?,” is that the Fed was crediting the money to the banks' excess reserves. And that money doesn't become money, it doesn't become circulation until the banks lend it out. And banks generally are not lending from excess reserves. And they certainly weren't after the financial crisis. 

I know we're getting in the weeds here, but it's really important to understand. To really make sure the banks weren't lending this money out, the Fed began paying interest on excess reserves. So now banks had an incentive to just get free money. The Fed was putting money on their excess reserves and paying them a little bit of money. And so it kept the banks from lending the money out. And this is why I say it does have to do with interest rates. Why do all of this hocus pocus? It was a way to manipulate the interest rate. And so quantitative easing in the Fed's mind worked so well they did a second round. And then they ended up doing a bazooka round with QE-3. And then finally, between 2013 and 14, after adding another couple of trillion dollars to the Fed's balance sheet, they stopped that and then we didn't do any QE until COVID. And then they did $5 trillion of it. So that's what quantitative easing is. 

And all quantitative tightening is is the opposite. Instead of the Fed buying bonds, as they mature, they're not reinvesting them, so that money just gets extinguished from the financial system. The Fed has less money on its balance sheet, and that ends up taking liquidity. It's a way of tightening monetary policy. My view is that QE was done to further stimulate when interest rates are already at zero. How do you stimulate further when you're at zero, you can't go lower than zero. So QE gave them an additional policy tool to add more liquidity to financial markets and ease monetary policy further. 

QT, on the other hand, they could always tighten more, you could always adjust raise rates higher and higher. So why do QT? My view is that it's because they want to do QE again.

EICHER: Alright, David Bahnson, founder, managing partner and chief investment officer at the Bahnson group. You can check out David's latest book, it's titled Full-Time: Work and the Meaning of Life at fulltimebook.com. David, I hope you have a great week. We'll talk to you next time.

BAHNSEN: Thanks so much, Nick.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Monday, May 13th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day. Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

JENNY ROUGH, HOST: And I’m Jenny Rough.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: the WORLD History Book. Today, the Tiananmen Square massacre destroys hopes for democracy in China.

And, a Supreme Court decision 70 years ago helps to kickstart the civil rights movement.

EICHER: But first, the Queen of the Netherlands becomes a radio personality. Here’s WORLD Reporter Emma Perley.

EMMA PERLEY: During the early morning hours on May 13th, 1940, Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands receives some troubling news. German troops have invaded the country and Wilhelmina’s life is at risk. Though the almost 60 year-old matriarch resists leaving her people at first, she finally agrees to board the HMS Hereward of the British Royal Navy. And they set sail for England. Audio here from Internet Archive.

AUDIO: Ik wek mijn landgenoten in het vaderland en overal waar zij zich bevinden op om hoe donker en moeilijk de tijden ook zijn, te blijven vertrouwen in de eindoverwinning van onze zaak, die niet alleen sterk staat door de kracht van wapenen, maar niet minder door het besef dat het gaat om onze heiligste goederen.

["I urge my compatriots in our homeland and wherever they find themselves to keep believing, no matter how dark and difficult the times, in our ultimate victory. Our cause is strong not only because of the strength of weapons, but no less so because we know it concerns our most sacred goods."]

Wilhelmina’s first broadcast from England, transmitted to the Netherlands through the BBC. She begins late-night radio segments encouraging her people to resist the German occupation. The Nazi regime outlaws radio, but the Dutch secretly tune in anyway. Audio courtesy of BBC Ottringham.

WILHELMINA: Al heeft ook de vijand dan vaderlandse bodem bezet. Nederland zal den strijd volhouden, zoolang tot voor ons eene vrije en gelukkige toekomst opdaagt.

Wilhelmina’s strong, lifelong Protestant beliefs fuel her rousing speeches of eventual victory against Adolf Hitler’s tyranny.

WILHELMINA: Voor ons een strijd tussen het goede en het kwade. Een strijd tussen God en ons geweten enerzijds en anderzijds de duistere machten die in deze wereld hoogtij vieren.

The Queen organizes a Dutch government while in exile. After the war is over, she immediately returns to the Netherlands to rebuild her country.

Wilhelmina remained a strong symbol of national unity until her abdication due to poor health in 1948, marking the end of a 58 year long reign.

Next, in 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court hands down a landmark decision for desegregation. And at the center of it all is a young girl named Linda Brown.

AUDIO: It all started for me on a balmy day in the fall of 1950, in the quiet Kansas town of Topeka, when a mild-mannered black man took his plump 7 year old daughter by the hand and walked briskly, four blocks from their home, to the all-white school, and tried without success to enroll his child.

Linda speaking at the 50th Anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education court case. Her father, Oliver Brown, and the plaintiff in the case, became upset over having to take Linda back and forth from an all-black school miles away from their home.

AUDIO: My father pondered, ‘Why? Why should our children have to travel so far to school, facing unbearable winter weather, when there is a school only four blocks from our home?”

He partnered with the NAACP, using the 14th Amendment to claim his daughter had the right to go to a closer school. Four other similar lawsuits joined Brown and formed one large set of arguments, led by prominent NAACP lawyer Thurgood Marshall. The Supreme Court released its verdict on May 17th.

AUDIO: At 12:52 p.m., the announcement came. The court’s decision on ending segregation was unanimous. That evening in our home was much rejoicing.

The decision overturns the “separate but equal” precedent set almost 60 years before.

And finally, on May 4th, 1989, thousands of students gather in Tiananmen Square in Beijing to protest against a corrupt Chinese government. Since the collapse of Mao Zedong’s Communist regime in 1976, China faced a weak economy, widespread poverty, and political turmoil. This is one of many protests from an unhappy people.

AUDIO: There has never been a challenge to the leadership of Communist China like this one. In cities all across the country, crowds are taking to the streets to demand democracy and freedom.

The people are particularly angry that their liberal political leader, Hu Yaobang, was forced out of office by Communists. From April to May, the government remains silent as nearly one million protesters set up demonstrations in the Square. When they declare a hunger strike on May 13th, 400 cities around China also take up the cause. Finally, the government declares martial law. Audio from the 2019 documentary Tremble and Obey.

AUDIO: On the night of June 3, 1989, the People’s Liberation Army turned its guns on the people.

The army storms the square and opens fire. Some protestors fight back, setting fire to army vehicles and throwing stones. Audio from CBC News.

NEWSCAST: In all, the army put on a vicious show of brute force. Midnight Beijing time, Saturday night, it began its attack. It moved towards the Square from both the East and the West. 

The next morning, the army rolls through Beijing in victory with gunshots still ringing out—when suddenly an unknown man walks in front of a tank to halt its advance. CBS News reports.

NEWSCAST: The man was alone, the tank was not. It wasn’t just a single tank he stopped, there were 18 tanks and armored carries in this convoy, and while he talked to the crew and ignored the gunfire, he stopped all of them.

The tank tries to maneuver around him, but he continues to stand in its way. People cheer for his show of resistance. Never identified, he famously becomes known as Tank Man for his refusal to back down.

NEWSCAST: One man alone, of course, can’t stop an army. Except for a moment, that’s exactly what happened here. For three minutes, in the middle of the day, an army was stopped by a man who stood still.

Tank Man’s fate remains unknown. China suppresses information about and reminders of the Tiananmen Square incident to this day, though Hong Kong regularly held a vigil for the protestors until they were forced to stop by the government in 2020.

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

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: Victories and setbacks for the unborn. We’ll go state by state with a policy analyst.

And, staying on the life-beat, what happens when a pillar of the community gets arrested for blocking the entrance to an abortion business? That and more tomorrow.

I’m Nick Eicher.

JENNY ROUGH, HOST: And I’m Jenny Rough. 

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio. WORLD’s mission is biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

The Bible says, “For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” —II Corinthians 4:18

Go now in grace and peace.

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